A Night of Firsts

Though this entire trip has been full of things I haven't done, seen, or tried before, last night seemed to be a little more saturated with them than usual. We went to the Arab quarter of Singapore for the evening, for Katie's birthday. From the time we spent walking around it, my general impression is that it consists of several streets literally lined with open-air textile storefronts: silks, carpets, etc. There was a beautiful mosque at the north end of one street we walked up, though my guess is that it's more central to the quarter; we just didn't see the other side. I took some really nice shots of this mosque, with the sun going down ... but with Katie's camera! I'd left mine at the hostel. Figures. I'll post them once I get them.

We had dinner at a restaurant in this area, on one of the streets (i.e. nestled between fabric shops), and sat at a table out on the sidewalk (which is overhung by the shops). I had a drink called karkelah (? ... my sense of spelling goes to shit with certain languages. Arabic is one of them. Chinese is another :-), which is an exract from the hibiscis flower, and actually tastes remarkably like pomagranate juice. For dinner I had quail ... which is a much smaller bird than I realized. They taste good though. Afterwards, Want and I shared a double-chocolate sundae ... certainly not something new, but even with all the Arabic desserts on the menu, how can you resist that? I mean really. And Katie got a rose hookah ... so I smoked for the first time. Anyone who knows me at all shouldn't be surprised by this ... or that it was a hookah, a completely non-addictive kind of smoking! It tasted (smelled) like some kind of potpourri I remember from a long time ago, which was nice, but I'm not crazy about inhaling smoke that deeply, pyro that I am.

During dinner, jet fighters were making flybys very close, right overhead sometimes and, when the buildings permitted, we could see them a few times: one on its own, another time 4 clustered together, with a fifth off to the right of them. Very loud. Katie got annoyed; Justin and I loved it (when we saw them at least). And as we were walking back to the MRT (train) station, the mosque behind us, we heard them playing the evening call to prayer, which I haven't heard before. While Justin and I were looking at the mosque, he said he'd be interested to go to a service, even though he wouldn't understand it. I didn't really feel that calling, as beautiful a religion as I'm sure it is. Justin's also an ex-Catholic ... it's amazing how many of us there are. I guess the trick is to replace it with something else. I guess for me Islam feels like just another organized religion with a long series of guidelines. There's only one guidebook, and it has surprisingly little to do with rules and rituals ...