International Day... may 2, 2007

After the busy Easter, one would think that sleepy Loughborough would be tame but nothing could be further from the truth. Just a week into taking a breather from all the travelling, 2 Singaporean girls asked for our help in setting up the Singapore booth for International Day. They are 2 of the 7 arts girls from NUS on exchange here -- Melody, Aida, Joan, Yingzi, Huiran, Mei and Yushan. Amazingly, we never talked even though they stayed in Butler Court too!

Apparently, we were unfriendly when they approached us on the first day of our arrival in UK. Now, after our gruelling trek to Butler Court with our luggage and whatnot, we were so drained that we did not remember being unfriendly. Also the usual stereotypes came in, engin people have low EQ... so only when there's a time of crisis then we came together!

The Singapore Society's new head is a Singaporean but most of his committee members are non-Singaporeans... so he's shorthanded on International Day where international students (exchange students are neither here nor there) set up booths to showcase their home country. Our job is to do what we were told to do as he's got everything down pat.

Maybe it's his first assignment, but the Singapore booth was not very well done. Firstly, Xianhong and Lester arrived before him to set up the tables. Then there were stains on display items that he did not notice. Luckily Lydia (the female doraemon) had wet tissue that Xianhong and I used to scrub off. He did not see the posters the arts girls did but luckily, they were good and one on Singapore's 10 facts was funny. For food, we had vacuum packed ba gua (bbq pork), teh tarik, kopi and tiger beer. Unfortunately, Xianhong and I had to run out to buy more disposable cups and missed the opening ceremony by the mayor.

Oh well, we had fun though, going around trying food from all the stalls like everyone else. Most of the stalls were Middle Eastern and so the food was about the same but nice, and the girls were all so pretty! There was also a fashion show on all the national costumes followed by some dance performances. The Greeks invited people to dance with them and Xianhong, Lydia and I did! Then the arts girls came dressed up in baju kurong and cheongsam and looked lovely.

http://picasaweb.google.com/guai.ah.lian/InternationalDay

I think the best thing about this International Day was meeting people. We knew the arts girls because of International Day and had amusing conversations with people who visited our booth. The mayor's wife did not want to try teh tarik after reading about newater (we drink our pee), a Brit lady was going to Singapore because her boyfriend was posted there and a cool rapper dude asked about the chewing gum ban and shocked us with him not smoking and drinking. Guess we must not be trapped by stereotypes!