sentosa-san
first thing's first, i forgot to tell you about my japanese haircut. this happened yesterday, in case you're wondering. so shehz, farha and i are wandering through city hall station when we come upon a charming little haircut place. as if the sleek design weren't enough, several large plasma screens outside the barbershop displayed the message "10 dollars for 10 minutes". some of you may be under the impression (as were we), that this message was more befitting of a bangkok brothel. however, having had my follicles chopped by none other than the best (read: mike schnurr using kitchen shears; payal, mashal, and kim using... kitchen shears), i realized even if these guys couldn't cut my hair better than a thai prostitute, it was still a deal. so in we went.
in typical japanese fashion, you couldn't just pay for your haircut after it was completed. no sir. you were forced to pay in advance through a little electronic machine, which subsequently produced a credit-card sized ticket proving that you did, in fact, pay for this quality haircut. were farha and shehzad allowed to wait with me? of course not! this is a barbershop! were they allowed to take a picture of me waiting to get my haircut? no! no cameras allowed! i think they were worried their secret japanese haircutting techniques would be stolen by pig-dog westerners.
anyways, they had a brightly lit indicator facing the entranceway displaying to all passers-by the exact waiting time until they could receive their own haircut. seeing as there were two kids waiting in front of me in the "queue", i did some quick math and came up with an approximate 10 minute waiting time. i had to make sure to take into account the fact that there were two hair stylists. in the meantime, i had a moment to read about their other locations in singapore, as well as how sanitary and convenient this whole service was. finally, i got to sit down in my chair and the entire process began.
i'll just skip through the majority of the cutting process, because it was really quite painful. i couldn't understand much of what my hairdresser was saying. this comes into play later on. so he begins by asking how much i want taken off. i can tell he's a bit worried about the fact that he's about to start cutting shaggy white-man hair, seeing as he's spent the majority of his career giving other asian people crew cuts. regardless, he starts gently combing the tips of my hair and cutting off about a quarter of an inch. in terms of my overall hair length, that's really not much at all.
fast forward. he asks me a question. i say "huh?". he asks it again -- "wha?". says it one more time. at this point, i feel it would be rude to ask him to qualify it once again. so i nod along and say "sure, yeah. sounds good. go ahead and do that." big mistake. out come the scissors. he lifts up the entirety of my "bangs", and performs a clean cut across them. my eyes widen in horror, thinking he's just massacred my coiffe. alas, he was only using thinning shears, and proceeds to remove large clumps of hair which he throws onto the floor while saying "yes, soft. yes, much softer. softer."
as any good japanese haircut goes, this one ends with the hairdresser producing a vacuum head from the haircutting cubicle which he/she uses to clean any excess hair from your scalp for the ultimate in efficiency. unfortunately, this process resulted in yours truly having a center-parted flooshy-fro. there's really no other way to describe it. i smiled, he gave me my newly sanitized comb as a "complimentary gift", and i tried not to laugh as i excited the room quickly. after having a good laugh, i headed straight to the bathroom to try to salvage what remained of my hair. the new plan is to get my hair re-cut in bangkok. i'll let you know how that goes.
after that epic tale, i'll tell you a bit about today.
shehz and i woke up fairly late and tried to get things ready to head to sentosa island. it's a tiny little "fantasy island" just south of singapore, and is accessible (theoretically) by cable car and bridge. Nargis-auntie had prepared us some yellow watermelon (which tastes, scarily enough, like the normal kind), and off we headed to the MRT (subway). as a sidenote, it's so hot i'm actually sweating profusely just writing this down on the computer. phew. anyway, we took a little bus over to sentosa and began our explorations. things all began at underwater world. upon our arrival, we noticed a man standing beside a large basket. shehz and i approached, only to realize that the contents of this basket were: one large burmese python. shehz became quite irritable/distracted, and i wasn't sure why. myself, being fascinated, commenced asking a series of questions to the owner about the habitat of the burmese python, whether or not in was venomous, where this particular one was kept, etc. only after we left did shehz admit that he was, in fact, terrified of snakes, and that the whole process had been quite painful for him. at that point, i regretted not spending the S$7.50 to have our picture taken with the snake wrapped around our necks. yes, it's a constrictor.
into underwater world we went! just after getting through the gates shehz and i discovered the touch pool. what a feat of engineering! this touch pool is a 15ft long pool, about 2ft deep and 2ft wide, full of marine creatures that are (apparently) harmless! this means that any child willing to pay the entrance fee can abuse these poor things all day. and shehz and i were no different. we made sure to spend a good 20 minutes handling each and every critter in the pool. we started with the starfish, which really just sat there. they were easy to pick up! then we headed up to the MOVING things, such as the bamboo sharks and the archer fish. my personal goal was to hold every fish in the tank, but the smaller ones are so wily i had to abandon that one. however, my displeasure was offset by the amazing feeling of holding an archer fish in your hand. they're all gooey, but not in a gross way. it was like holding one of those crazy things they had back in the day filled with water, where you'd try to squeeze them and they'd jump out of your hand. except better. can you believe that?!
we went downstairs and checked out some more exhibits. highlights were (see picture below) the "human" exhibit at which the majority of the crowd were gathered. children were screaming with pleasure at the sight of a diver cleaning the enclosure. amusingly enough, the diver was cleaning the "dangerous fish" tank, with various sorts of eels and other abrasive kinds. he seemed to be ok though.
admittedly, the underwater world was a bit pricey for what it had to offer. although i really wouldn't have traded the touch pool for anything. we made sure to stop by again on our way out to see if we could put a few more notches in the fish-touching bedpost. shehz was pretty bad at grabbing fish, so i tried to show him my technique. i think it helped.
we had some time to kill before the next dolphin show started (the second half of our ticket paid for this!), so we decided it was time to check out the fabled merlion. sure, we'd already seen one in singapore harbour, but this one was even bigger! ten stories tall! i had decided it was my mission to ascend this beast, so off we went. things were getting quite hot at this point, so we were glad to pay the S$8 each to head inside the belly of the air-conditioned beast for a rest. we wandered past a few meaningless displays about the history of mer-people (?!), only to reach a little room showing a pre-elevator movie detailing the selection of the merlion (make sure to pronounce this as a quick merLIon, not MURR-lion, as i was tempted to do) as singapore's official symbol. it was really quite terrible, but kept shehz and i laughing for a few minutes while the elevator desceneded. after the film, shehz and i were told to insert the "gold coins" we had been given earlier into various merlion-like slot machines which dispensed tickets -- apparently we had "won" a free gift! we must have been very attentive listeners in the movie. these tickets could be redeemed at the gift shop for a complimentary gift! more on that later.
we headed up the elevator, and went straight to the head of the merlion. what a view! for some strange reason, this attraction was almost barren (perhaps people had heard about the introductory film). it was good news for us though, as we were two of four people up on top of the merlion's head! eventually, the other couple left, so shehz and i had a few romantic minutes to ourselves taking pictures of singapore from the surface of the mythical creature's noble head. how enchanting! we went back into the merlion's head so we could check out the view from the mouth. it was similar, but with giant teeth in the way. we decided to take some pictures anyways, because honestly: how many chances do you get to take pictures from the mouth of a merlion?
we had to rush a bit from the merlion to make it to the dolphin show. make no mistake though, this was not your run-of-the-mill dolphin show. these were PINK dolphins. yeah, you read it right. apparently these actually exist, and they don't just spraypaint normal ones. who knew?! the show was pretty boring, to be perfectly honest. the dolphins were all so young that they hadn't really pinked-up yet (apparently this is age-dependent). their age also rendered them incapable of performing some of the cooler dolphin tricks i've seen in my time. "whoopedy-doo, it knocked the ball off the stick! look! it's waving to us now!" a nice break, anyway. we had some smoothies and blew that popsicle stand.
our intention was to hang around for a few hours to see the magical laser light fountain show, so we headed over to the orchid gardens to kill some time. i obviously went a bit overboard with the flower shots, but can you blame me? nobody can take a bad picture of a beautiful flower, and i stand by that statement. so below, you have a whole bunch of pictures of various orchids we saw. i don't think anybody doubted our sexuality when the two of us were seen perusing the various orchid species, commenting on their beauty, and then sitting together by the central fountain. we decided the laser light show could wait, and that we were way too tired to stick around. bussed back to central singapore.
we finally got a chance to sit down on emerald hill rd (this really nice area right off of orchard ave). i had wanted to eat there since yesterday, and we sat down at this trendy place. turns out it was a bit too trendy for us (S$36 for a 3/4 pitcher of tiger beer), so we up and left. however, let me tell you, if you've got money to burn take a trip down to the alley bar on emerald hill rd. it's the most beautiful bar i've ever seen! i felt sorta bad about taking pictures of it, even though it was empty. however, let me say this place had some serious feng shui going on. massive skylights and mirrors, nice little lanterns. there was a lounge attached that may draw shehz and i back despite its cost. i'll let you know how that goes.
so after hitting a spot a little further north (cheaper) and grabbing some san miguel (phillipino) and kirin ichiban (japanese) beers, as well as god-awful mermaid fish crispies, we headed home. we began watching tv, and after about ten minutes i commented to shehz that i was tired. he didn't respond -- he was asleep. he's off to bed now, and i'm just finishing off this blog entry. our plan isn't very concrete for tomorrow, but i plan on setting up some travel arrangements to head over to malaysia. i think farha is hanging out with us again, so that's sure to be a good time. we'll let you know how it goes.
> ian the merlion and shehz the orchid goddess
in typical japanese fashion, you couldn't just pay for your haircut after it was completed. no sir. you were forced to pay in advance through a little electronic machine, which subsequently produced a credit-card sized ticket proving that you did, in fact, pay for this quality haircut. were farha and shehzad allowed to wait with me? of course not! this is a barbershop! were they allowed to take a picture of me waiting to get my haircut? no! no cameras allowed! i think they were worried their secret japanese haircutting techniques would be stolen by pig-dog westerners.
anyways, they had a brightly lit indicator facing the entranceway displaying to all passers-by the exact waiting time until they could receive their own haircut. seeing as there were two kids waiting in front of me in the "queue", i did some quick math and came up with an approximate 10 minute waiting time. i had to make sure to take into account the fact that there were two hair stylists. in the meantime, i had a moment to read about their other locations in singapore, as well as how sanitary and convenient this whole service was. finally, i got to sit down in my chair and the entire process began.
i'll just skip through the majority of the cutting process, because it was really quite painful. i couldn't understand much of what my hairdresser was saying. this comes into play later on. so he begins by asking how much i want taken off. i can tell he's a bit worried about the fact that he's about to start cutting shaggy white-man hair, seeing as he's spent the majority of his career giving other asian people crew cuts. regardless, he starts gently combing the tips of my hair and cutting off about a quarter of an inch. in terms of my overall hair length, that's really not much at all.
fast forward. he asks me a question. i say "huh?". he asks it again -- "wha?". says it one more time. at this point, i feel it would be rude to ask him to qualify it once again. so i nod along and say "sure, yeah. sounds good. go ahead and do that." big mistake. out come the scissors. he lifts up the entirety of my "bangs", and performs a clean cut across them. my eyes widen in horror, thinking he's just massacred my coiffe. alas, he was only using thinning shears, and proceeds to remove large clumps of hair which he throws onto the floor while saying "yes, soft. yes, much softer. softer."
as any good japanese haircut goes, this one ends with the hairdresser producing a vacuum head from the haircutting cubicle which he/she uses to clean any excess hair from your scalp for the ultimate in efficiency. unfortunately, this process resulted in yours truly having a center-parted flooshy-fro. there's really no other way to describe it. i smiled, he gave me my newly sanitized comb as a "complimentary gift", and i tried not to laugh as i excited the room quickly. after having a good laugh, i headed straight to the bathroom to try to salvage what remained of my hair. the new plan is to get my hair re-cut in bangkok. i'll let you know how that goes.
after that epic tale, i'll tell you a bit about today.
shehz and i woke up fairly late and tried to get things ready to head to sentosa island. it's a tiny little "fantasy island" just south of singapore, and is accessible (theoretically) by cable car and bridge. Nargis-auntie had prepared us some yellow watermelon (which tastes, scarily enough, like the normal kind), and off we headed to the MRT (subway). as a sidenote, it's so hot i'm actually sweating profusely just writing this down on the computer. phew. anyway, we took a little bus over to sentosa and began our explorations. things all began at underwater world. upon our arrival, we noticed a man standing beside a large basket. shehz and i approached, only to realize that the contents of this basket were: one large burmese python. shehz became quite irritable/distracted, and i wasn't sure why. myself, being fascinated, commenced asking a series of questions to the owner about the habitat of the burmese python, whether or not in was venomous, where this particular one was kept, etc. only after we left did shehz admit that he was, in fact, terrified of snakes, and that the whole process had been quite painful for him. at that point, i regretted not spending the S$7.50 to have our picture taken with the snake wrapped around our necks. yes, it's a constrictor.
into underwater world we went! just after getting through the gates shehz and i discovered the touch pool. what a feat of engineering! this touch pool is a 15ft long pool, about 2ft deep and 2ft wide, full of marine creatures that are (apparently) harmless! this means that any child willing to pay the entrance fee can abuse these poor things all day. and shehz and i were no different. we made sure to spend a good 20 minutes handling each and every critter in the pool. we started with the starfish, which really just sat there. they were easy to pick up! then we headed up to the MOVING things, such as the bamboo sharks and the archer fish. my personal goal was to hold every fish in the tank, but the smaller ones are so wily i had to abandon that one. however, my displeasure was offset by the amazing feeling of holding an archer fish in your hand. they're all gooey, but not in a gross way. it was like holding one of those crazy things they had back in the day filled with water, where you'd try to squeeze them and they'd jump out of your hand. except better. can you believe that?!
we went downstairs and checked out some more exhibits. highlights were (see picture below) the "human" exhibit at which the majority of the crowd were gathered. children were screaming with pleasure at the sight of a diver cleaning the enclosure. amusingly enough, the diver was cleaning the "dangerous fish" tank, with various sorts of eels and other abrasive kinds. he seemed to be ok though.
admittedly, the underwater world was a bit pricey for what it had to offer. although i really wouldn't have traded the touch pool for anything. we made sure to stop by again on our way out to see if we could put a few more notches in the fish-touching bedpost. shehz was pretty bad at grabbing fish, so i tried to show him my technique. i think it helped.
we had some time to kill before the next dolphin show started (the second half of our ticket paid for this!), so we decided it was time to check out the fabled merlion. sure, we'd already seen one in singapore harbour, but this one was even bigger! ten stories tall! i had decided it was my mission to ascend this beast, so off we went. things were getting quite hot at this point, so we were glad to pay the S$8 each to head inside the belly of the air-conditioned beast for a rest. we wandered past a few meaningless displays about the history of mer-people (?!), only to reach a little room showing a pre-elevator movie detailing the selection of the merlion (make sure to pronounce this as a quick merLIon, not MURR-lion, as i was tempted to do) as singapore's official symbol. it was really quite terrible, but kept shehz and i laughing for a few minutes while the elevator desceneded. after the film, shehz and i were told to insert the "gold coins" we had been given earlier into various merlion-like slot machines which dispensed tickets -- apparently we had "won" a free gift! we must have been very attentive listeners in the movie. these tickets could be redeemed at the gift shop for a complimentary gift! more on that later.
we headed up the elevator, and went straight to the head of the merlion. what a view! for some strange reason, this attraction was almost barren (perhaps people had heard about the introductory film). it was good news for us though, as we were two of four people up on top of the merlion's head! eventually, the other couple left, so shehz and i had a few romantic minutes to ourselves taking pictures of singapore from the surface of the mythical creature's noble head. how enchanting! we went back into the merlion's head so we could check out the view from the mouth. it was similar, but with giant teeth in the way. we decided to take some pictures anyways, because honestly: how many chances do you get to take pictures from the mouth of a merlion?
we had to rush a bit from the merlion to make it to the dolphin show. make no mistake though, this was not your run-of-the-mill dolphin show. these were PINK dolphins. yeah, you read it right. apparently these actually exist, and they don't just spraypaint normal ones. who knew?! the show was pretty boring, to be perfectly honest. the dolphins were all so young that they hadn't really pinked-up yet (apparently this is age-dependent). their age also rendered them incapable of performing some of the cooler dolphin tricks i've seen in my time. "whoopedy-doo, it knocked the ball off the stick! look! it's waving to us now!" a nice break, anyway. we had some smoothies and blew that popsicle stand.
our intention was to hang around for a few hours to see the magical laser light fountain show, so we headed over to the orchid gardens to kill some time. i obviously went a bit overboard with the flower shots, but can you blame me? nobody can take a bad picture of a beautiful flower, and i stand by that statement. so below, you have a whole bunch of pictures of various orchids we saw. i don't think anybody doubted our sexuality when the two of us were seen perusing the various orchid species, commenting on their beauty, and then sitting together by the central fountain. we decided the laser light show could wait, and that we were way too tired to stick around. bussed back to central singapore.
we finally got a chance to sit down on emerald hill rd (this really nice area right off of orchard ave). i had wanted to eat there since yesterday, and we sat down at this trendy place. turns out it was a bit too trendy for us (S$36 for a 3/4 pitcher of tiger beer), so we up and left. however, let me tell you, if you've got money to burn take a trip down to the alley bar on emerald hill rd. it's the most beautiful bar i've ever seen! i felt sorta bad about taking pictures of it, even though it was empty. however, let me say this place had some serious feng shui going on. massive skylights and mirrors, nice little lanterns. there was a lounge attached that may draw shehz and i back despite its cost. i'll let you know how that goes.
so after hitting a spot a little further north (cheaper) and grabbing some san miguel (phillipino) and kirin ichiban (japanese) beers, as well as god-awful mermaid fish crispies, we headed home. we began watching tv, and after about ten minutes i commented to shehz that i was tired. he didn't respond -- he was asleep. he's off to bed now, and i'm just finishing off this blog entry. our plan isn't very concrete for tomorrow, but i plan on setting up some travel arrangements to head over to malaysia. i think farha is hanging out with us again, so that's sure to be a good time. we'll let you know how it goes.
> ian the merlion and shehz the orchid goddess
posted by ian at 9:20 AM
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