French Class, Prince of Persia & the MRT

What do all of these things have in common? Nothing except three seperate experiences I had.

So French classes, huh? Yep. My wife and I had been wanting to do this for a while, especially since our daughter is learning French at school and we wanted to at least understand what she was learning and to participate with her. It would also help us if we travel to some parts of Europe (we have been wanting to go there for a while now). So we picked a class that my wife found on the Net.

Our teacher (for lack of a better word) is a cute half French half Italian blonde called Letizia. She made the two hours that we spent in class a fairly engaging experience. But what I found most surprising was this: She had been living in Singapore for around 7 years and had only started to pick up English after she moved here. That fact was so evident as she proceeded to talk Singlish through the entire conversation. While speaking French, her accent was like you would expect a French person's. But while conversing in Engish, she sounded as much like a Singaporean as anyone I know. The same expressions, the same gramatical constructions. I was quite surprised about this fact.

On to the Prince of Persia. As you might have noticed from a few of the posts, I am fairly engrossed in this game. Whenever possible, I try to complete at least a level in a day so that I can feel better (why else?)

Yesterday, I finally defeated the second monster, the one who moves really fast and the one you need to slow down time to fight with. It took a while (she's cheeky to kill, but I finally did it. Problem was...it took a while before I could save tha game (there was no water receptacle in sight for a while). So obviously my wife got pissed off about me spending a lot of time on the "stupid game" as she calls it. But that was not it. After playing the game for 45 minutes, I was completely drenched. My shorts were soaking wet and so was my t-shirt. I actually had to take a bath at 11 in the night before I could get into bed. How playing a video game could cause all of this...Go figure.

Then there's the MRT and the inevitable journeys one has to take when one travels in Singapore. Most of the time people don't bother with sitting down, even when there are seats available. And a lot of time, I have seen people offer their seats to people who need them. Today, I saw the opposite for the first time.

I was sitting in the MRT going towards office. There was one seat available across from me which had not been occupied despite there being more people in the train. At the next station, two people got on, both eyeing the same seat. The guy who entered from the door closer to the seat moved towards it and had even turned to sit down when the guy, who actually entered from the door further away from the seat, rushed up to it and slid into it from behind the other guy. This guy was left standing with a dumbstruck expression on his face. I'm sure he was experiencing something like this for the first time.

Three completely different experiences, but all in the span of 24 hours. Not a bad deal, huh?