Sunday, 27 April 2008

diplomatic relations
a few weeks ago one of our university friends took me back to look at her apartment on the back of her bicycle, and i asked her if i could be the one cycling and she be the one sitting at the back when we went back to school.

she refused at first, but she finally let me try to cycle myself around, while she stood by and kept laughing and telling me that she didn't think i'd be able to make it.

i told her to stop laughing and get on - she did, and i moved off, but then i realised that she was running alongside me and still laughing. however, when she saw the look i gave her she hurriedly tried to put on a straight face and said, pleadingly, 不要宰了我,这对新加坡和中国的外交关系不好 (bu4 yao4 zai3 le4 wo3, zhe4 dui4 xin1 jia1 po1 he1 zhong1 guo2 de4 wai4 jiao1 guan1 xi4 bu4 hao3) please don't strangle me, this will not be good for diplomatic relations between china and singapore.

ah well, she was a lot bigger sized than me anyway. i couldn't stop laughing when she said that, and i let her take me back to school again.

this morning i was running for the bus because i didn't want to be late for church, and i overtook a man on a bicyle - i could feel his surprised gaze as i went past, and heard him start to pedal more furiously. because men are just like that, i think.

but all the bicycles here seem to be able to move only at one speed, which is slow. which isn't a bad thing, really. that way the chances of people getting hurt are much less.

so of course he couldn't catch up.

i was almost at the bus stop and was speeding up to get to the bus when i heard the tinkle of metal striking the pavement. looking back, i saw that my house key had fallen out from my bag and i heard the man on the bicycle say, in a rather pleased tone (maybe it was my imagination), 你的锁匙掉了! (ni3 de4 suo3 shi2 diao4 le4) you've dropped your key!

he finally managed to cycle past me.

one more thing about church services here - at the very end, the choir will sing peter lutkin's the Lord bless you and keep you in chinese, and if you're sitting in the overflow hall, while they're singing it, an extremely garish and highly-coloured picture of Jesus, complete with a flickering animated candle, will be displayed on a huge screen.

you can even pick out the pixels.

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