To the max

Friday, August 6

When W gets home from finishing his recording, we head out the door. The shuttle drops us off about 1km away, at Elias Mall. There's not much there, but we have dim sum from a courtyard hawker stall. Shu mai (pork), chicken bao (buns), glutenous rice with chicken. Really tasty.

Jennifer, working at the shop, notices my AGTS shirt with a logo of the cross on it, and comes over to chat. She sits at our table and admits that she's in the middle of a life of highs and lows, spiritually speaking. "God doesn't give us what we want," she says. Apparently she's had some challenges: her father has died, her mother is very old, she is not a regular church attender anymore.

"God our heavenly Father knows what we need. Let's trust him together." We pray together before W and I head out the door with some bonus baos as her thanks.

"I think it's not more than a mile from here to the shoreline." W has his Garmen E-Trex out. "Want to see?"

Nope, if one of us knows where we're going, I'm fine. We walk through a nice neighborhood of detached and semi-detached houses (almost unheard of on this island of highrises), past a canal filled with seawater. The Singapore neighborhoods are riddled with paved drainage troughs and canals. The salty tide rushes up the canals for miles, then recedes with the waste and excess runoff.

School children are zooming around the coastal park on the paved bike and pedestrian lanes, some with rollerblades, some on bicycles. There's garbage floating in the shallows and cigarettes on the beach. Pasir Ris beach is marginal, in spite of attempts to clean it up. But a lot of people enjoy barbecues in designated areas, and there are several shoreline campgrounds where tents can be pitched. Several dozen teens drag suitcases along to the water theme parks. These might be athletes competing next week in the Youth Olympics. I skip the reflexology walk with its small stone ends imbedded in cement; my feet are too tender from walking miles.

We walk back to the flat, surprising a wave from our shuttle driver since we're coming from the other way, still a mile or two from home.

Saturday, August 7

I heat up the duck leftovers for breakfast, and we head out the door for our massages. We lie face down on massage tables in the main room where others are having foot massages. Nearly all the workers are watching a local soap on TV as they work.

"The most painful thing I have experienced in Singapore!" W groans about the deep tissue massage by his masseur when we're done. On the other hand, my masseuse gave me a fairly light once-over and stretch through the towels, rubbing my head for at least 10 minutes of the hour session. She pushes my calf to my the back of my thigh, flexes the sole all the way down so my ankle cracks. Ouch. She finishes with a few slaps on my back as I am sitting. I'm relaxed, but when we walk, my hips, thighs, and ankles are so relaxed they become quickly exhausted.

W's chicken briyani lunch is "very tasty," but my chicken noodles are awful. The meat is a soggy beige, the noodles are tasteless and limp. I can't finish, but we order 5-spice prawn rolls. I like them, but they're greasy enough to give W the runs for the rest of the afternoon.

We share an aloe and lime juice, I get an herbal tea, and we pop into a donar shop for two "chicken to go." Into W's backpack, and on and on  we walk. It rains a bit, keeping temperatures to a cool 32oC (almost 90o).

W gets pictures of a Hindu temple that celebrating 140 years and the neighboring Chinese temple. Commerce is being done in the name of the gods: shops sell incense, paper money and cellphones, and fake food for the ancestors. It's heartbreaking, seeing so much earnest religion, money, and devotion poured into a void with no salvation in sight.

At the Takeshimia Japanese department store, I find a few cheap fountain pens and some divided plates for sauces. W finds some cooling discs for the bottom of a thermos (to instantly cool juice or pop). Otherwise, we are shopped out.

We have arrived downtown via the third MRT station on a connecting line, but by the time we go home, we have spent a few hours on our feet, walking miles. We've walked back to our original green East-West Line, at the stop before our transfer station. There's nothing we need in the maze of vendors at Bugis, so we hop the MRT and walk another mile from the Pasir Ris station to home.

My legs and feet haven't been this tired since I rode my lousy bike around the outskirts of Cambridge. If I were in Seattle, I'd hail a taxi or sit by the side of the road to rest. As it is, we keep hiking slowly up the slope to the last building in the huge condo complex, take the elevator up to the top floor, and unlock the door to our flat.

We pull out the chicken donars and eat as much of them as we can. Then it's time for a quick shower before turning on the fan in the LR and relaxing for the rest of the evening.