Counting down ...

I know I kind of promised that my next post would be one of peace, tranquility and happy thoughts ... but somehow I feel that I cannot write about what I've been through here in the last 3,5 months without adding this next post. So in case you only want to read happy and positive posts about travelling and such ... you better skip this one ;-)

It feels good to get it out in the open but I'm counting down the days to when this is all going to be over. And with that I don't mean that I feel like I have to return to Belgium ... I just need this Insead period to be over and done with. And really, I can understand that for Wim this is one of the most exciting years of his life, and I am really happy for him ... but everything evolves around Insead Insead Insead.

In the beginning that I was here and we went to a party, some people at first probably thought that I was a student ... imagine the look on their face when I had to 'admit' to them that I'm just a "partner" and also one that gave up a job to be here with Wim. They all gave me a look like ... wow, that's just 15 minutes of my life I have wasted talking to you. Then after a while when people started to know me as Wim's partner they started asking different questions like "what do you do to keep yourself busy all day?" ... waiting for me to say "after having my hair done, I went shopping on Orchards Road and got a manicure afterwards" ... well the truth is that I really did enjoy myself the first 3 months (besides having to deal with these idiotic questions all the time) ... I met a few really cool people that I hope to always stay in touch with, I traveled a lot, I explored Singapore, I even followed Mandarin classes. But now that everyone has left Singapore, and after visiting about évery single place in Singapore (it really isn't thàt big), and after running out of a budget to be doing more travelling and after realising I will never ever in my life be able to say three phrases in a row that any Chinese person is ever going to understand ... I am just really ready to go back home. And the crazy thing is that with home I don't even mean Belgium, I just mean away from this entire Insead environment. Okay I must admit, I miss my friends like crazy and would do anything just to see them again so I could go out to diner with them, or for a drink or to a club or whatever. But I also just miss the friends I made here ... so to be honest I just miss having a job, I miss having people that I can talk to about other subjects than about their job before, the jobs they want to apply for, their stocks, the courses they are folowing, the work they have to do for these courses ..... AAAAAaaaggghhh, really ... enough is enough.

I just came back from a BBQ tonight in the condo next door and I stayed there exactly 40 minutes ... after the usual conversation topics and a few shallow how-are-you-doing's (on which I always reply 'fine' but lately I've just felt like skipping fine and shouting or crying instead) ... I came back home and afterwards I feel terrible for Wim, that I left so soon, but I really can't handle it anymore. And I know I'm kind of generalizing here, there àre some students that I can talk to and that I really enjoy hanging out with ... the problem is that of the hundreds of students here I can probably count these people on both hands.

I sometimes even started doubting myself here, thinking that maybe I've suddenly become this asocial person that doesn't want to go out anymore but that's so far from my real personality ... I would still love to go out almost every night, and be busy and surround myself with friends, I love meeting new people and I usually get along with many people from different backgrounds, with different jobs, different ages ... but it's just the circumstances here. I want to have a job again, and have people be really interested in what I do and have them know that I'm not this stupid blond bimbo that likes to shop all day and talk about the performance of her maid and nanny ... I also went to university for 5 years, but here because I don't have an Insead MBA, none of that seems to matter somehow.

I warned you this wasn't going to be a pleasant post ... but one that I really needed to get off my chest.

Reflexions ...

Today I was taking the MRT to again another random location to pass time ;-) and while I sat down with my music playing I realised that after 3,5 months of being here I still hadn't gotten used to some of the behaviours here. I started thinking about it when I noticed that the guy sitting across from me (big, tall and macho guy ... for Asian norms ;-) ) had nails that were about 1cm longer than mine and seemed perfectly manicured. Well most of the times it's just the pinkie nail but this isn't the first guy with 'female hands' I saw.

Okay this comes close to what I deal with on a daily base ;-)

Another thing I haven't gotten used to ... is the burping and the sniffing of their snot. People who know me can probably imagine the evil look I give them ;-) but they just continue sniffing away 15cm away from my ear.

Another thing ... now that I'm getting the hang of this ... even though I sometimes check my clothes to make sure I haven't accidentally forgot to wear clothes that day when some Indian guy is staring without shame and without looking away ... It also sometimes feels that to other people I could easily take the MRT naked and probably nobody would even notice ... that is to say that a lot of the times I just feel like I'm invisible ... and I guess this is one of the things that still annoy me the most. To give you an example: for the last 3,5 months, every time I walk to the MRT I always seem to pass two or three people walking next to each other and they NEVER move for me ... right before bumping into somebody I always have to walk on the street or in the grass because really, they don't move ... so I developed a new walk where I walk really fast and kind of slightly wave my arms when I march so they might get afraid of me ... :-) ... sometimes this works, sometimes I end up just "accidentally" hitting someone in the side. Today however I came home from the store and since I don't have a car here I'm always loaded like a mule with 5 bags in each hand ... while this tiny little lady and her husband were walking on the same path ... my arms were about to fall off from the weight ... I was like ... "this time I'm not going to move one inch" ... result ... frontal collision, where I almost dropped my bags and I started swearing in Dutch but she didn't even look back ... they just kept walking. Also, today, I was waiting in line in a store because I bought a new skirt ... when this lady pretends to be looking at something near the cashier and just cuts in front of me ... this is not the first time off course this happened ... so I said "excuse me I'm waiting here" but she just nodded like "yes, lady I can see that" and she didn't move. When the lady before me had finished paying it was a battle of who had the longest arms me or the other lady (which kind of made me feel like a 5 year old ... but she had it coming) ... so this was one of the times I was glad to be 1m80 and therefor have longer arms than the average population ;-)

Well enough complaining for today :-) ... normally I would complain to Wim about all this but he's back in Belgium for a few days and I should probably not nag too much when I'm on the phone with him ... because I'd like him to still come back ;-) ... but my next post will be one of peace and tranquility since it will be the report of me and Wim going on the first trip just the two of us since we've been here ... to lovely Krabi :-) :-)

Goodbye Party Ellie & Malacca

On Monday we held a party for Ellie who is leaving Singapore :-( We had a BBQ at our condo and it ended up being a really lovely evening. Priscilla, a Singaporean girl, brought her some durians because nobody can say they have actually experienced Singapore without eating one. I can honestly say that was an experience to never forget ... To give you some side information, durian is the fruit that is forbidden to take into taxi's and the metro ... Why? ... well the first time somebody told me "do you smell this, this is the smell of durian" I replied "I never knew I smelt it so many times before, I always thought it was the smell of garbage". This hopefully gives you an idea. Well tasting it wasn't much better. It was like a combination of garlic and onions that have gone bad for weeks :-) But besides the awful taste and the awful burping you get from it we got some great pictures out of it and at least we can say we've tried it once in our lives :-)

Ellie & Priscilla

Priscilla & Wim

... and me

The next day, me and Ellie left for Malacca for a few days and had to be at the bus station at 8am ... which isn't that early but early enough for two zombies who still suffered from drinking too much wine the night before ;-)

We arrived in Malacca with the sun shining and as soon as we had checked into the hotel and stepped outside it started raining ... great! ... we still decided to do some sightseeing because there were so many "must-sees" on the map that we couldn't waste any time because we were only there for 4 days ... little did we know we would have finished 3/4th of them after an hour :-)

The day after the sun was shining again and Malacca turned out to be a cute little town with nice houses and cheap little restaurants but 2 days is really the maximum anyone (that isn't above the age of 75) should spend there.

So we went into the tourist office and asked them about the tours we could do from there and they gave us back a look like we came from another planet ... they replied us there wasn't much else to do but the city centre. We could take a sightseeing bus to drive us to all the things there were to see in the centre ... the same things me and Ellie did by foot the day before in less than 2 hours ... can you believe that.

Anyway we decided to do the river cruise that one of our friends Alice advised us and when this was finished there was a guy handing out leaflets of tours around Malacca ... great! Our savior!

So he picked us up the next day at 9am and there was another Irish girl that joined us. Our first stop on the tour was an island (sounds exotic) that actually turned out to be an abandoned housing project on some sort of a hand made island with 1 mosque on it and about 50 empty apartment buildings. A great investment for us according to the guide who could already see him and his three new Western wives living there. Later that afternoon he would share with us that he had a friend who had two wives and while they worked all he had to do was take care of the kids which was great according to him because then he could watch TV all day ... you can imagine the kind of looks went back and forth between us girls :-)

Next stop we went to the jungle ... I already got a comment from him that my shoes were not appropriate to go hiking in the jungle which was kind of weird considering the jungle turned out to be a stone path through a regular forest. Here we got bombarded with questions like "Do you know what that is?" ... Euhm, yes a banana tree "have you ever eaten bananas?" Euhm, yes who hasn't? "Do you know what that is?" Euhm, yes an ants nest! I think he thought he could share all of is wisdom with the young Western girls ... me and Ellie were so ready to go back after this. In the forest he kept making comments about us moving there to come live with him, he even introduced us as his future wives to other visitors there. Ellie replied quickly "don't listen to him, the man's crazy" :-) Back in the car he drove by the place were we could get the visum if we were going to marry him ... and this continued all the way. He was supposed to drop us off at a water park that afternoon but we could already imagine him sitting next to us 'keeping an eye on things' so we asked him to just drop us back at the hotel. But he wouldn't before also showing us a Malaysian factory (?!?) and Malaysian houses (?!?) after about the 50th house which was either an old house, a new house or a Chinese house according to the wise guide, I was praying for this to end ;-)

After also asking if we would go to the disco with him (No!) or maybe the supermarket then? (No!) and after he drove by his "villa" (which if he hadn't bought, he would be so rich that all he had to do was wave his money and all the girls would sleep with him ... euhm sure man, they call them prostitutes) he gave up and just dropped us back off at our hotel ... we spend our last afternoon going to the cinema and were already counting the minutes we could leave Malacca.

But except for Malacca being small with not much to do I enjoyed spending the last days with Ellie there before she leaves Singapore ... I'm really going to miss her!

Here are the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.be/claudiaclaessens/Melakka

http://picasaweb.google.com/ellieklerlein/SingaporeGoingAwayBBQ

http://picasaweb.google.com/ellieklerlein/MalaccaMalaysia

Change of Language

Since a lot of people I've met here can't read my blog in Dutch ... and definitely not if I write in my Antwerp dialect ;-) ... I've decided to improve my English writing skills.

My apologies in advance for any spelling mistakes, or wrong use of words, or when you just absolutely have no idea what I'm trying to say :-)

Anyway ... because I really want to keep in touch with all the people I've met here after I go back, I'll start writing my "adventures" in English. I just hope that with travelling less than now (or to less exotic locations like the Belgian coast) I'll have lots of other cool things to write about ... but I guess being with Wim, that won't be a problem ;-)

I will do my best not to become one of those people with a blog (like I read one this week) that writes a detailed minute report of their week including the daily weight gain of their newborn and the number of times they have given breast milk :-) )

Also ... the competition has started between me and Wim of who has the most blog visitors, how many times do they read, how long do they read, ... all of which you can track via the Google analytics site (that's what you get when you fall for an engineer who loves statistics ;-) )

So guys and girls ... keep reading ;-) ...