Etiquette Dinner

All right, exams are over, and the past few days have been quite busy. 

The Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka happened on Sunday, which Vettel won while Alonso crashed out first corner, reducing the Championship gap to a dangerous 4 points. Massa came in second; his first podium in 36 races. Welcome back, Felipe. And Kobayashi was third, first podium in his F1 career at his home race. Quite fitting. Button came fourth, so he still has the favour of his girlfriend's countrymen for not overtaking homeboy. 

Most dreaded exam paper of the semester happened Monday morning: Chem Hons. I don't think I'd ever been so deathly afraid of an exam paper before. But thank God by some kind of miracle it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Managed to answer the 10-mark each mechanism questions, so I have a high chance of not failing. 

Hopefully I'll be able to do well for the Physics paper, but I only studied for the few hours after Chem before the paper, so chances are a bit low. We'll see.

Went out to West Coast Park with half of 05 afterwards. I love my class. We kind of went nuts and acted like immature little kids and climbed everything and played with all the children's recreational equipment and got stared at and then ate at Mac's. Om nom. 

Also bought Mark of Athena on the way back. Finished reading it last night, and it's good. There's this sort of consistency that Rick Riordan has, but somehow I don't find that I love it any more. I was entertained, and I quite enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the next book, but I don't feel as immersed as I was when I read the Percy Jackson books. Either the series has lost its novelty to me, or I'm growing up. I hope the former.


Went out to meet Woan Chyi at Bugis for lunch on Tuesday, then Fatinn joined us and we walked around Bugis street dress-shopping. I think a lot of people from Year 5 went out to shop that day (and Wednesday, too), because most of us really lack formal clothing. 

Watched 'Taken 2' on Wednesday (never seen Taken, but didn't matter). Adithya texted before noon, then went out for lunch with KT, Wee Thean, Kelvin because Adithya always has mysterious "business" to attend to. Ate at Fatboy's, and it was surprisingly filling even though the portions looked quite small. Even the guys said so, so it wasn't only me. Good burgers. Then we wandered around Vivo and bought tickets (and did not shop for guys' shoes or ties at all, because shopping is for girls and we totally did not do any of that sort) and hung around in Challenger until the movie had to start. Then Wai Yin joined us, then Adithya, Daryl, Pradeep, and Mitra (we left their tickets at the counter, and we told the guy he could recognise them as a group of four Indian guys). 

Anyway the movie was good, but we figured it was all an elaborate plot set up by the main character to get back with his ex-wife (and it totally worked, whoa spoiler).


Reuben's first birthday party was today. Ms Kong invited us and there was food and cake. It's awesome that their family let us into this momentous part of their lives. It's really sweet to have shared it with us. And Reuben is so ridiculously cute. 

Etiquette dinner happened afterwards. Everyone looked great, and here's a low resolution shot of the whole level (minus a few). I think it's quite cool how we care and respect the occasion enough to bother to dress up. 

Most of what the instructor taught us was common sense, like leaving your fork and knife to the side when you're done, being polite to your waiter and not spitting food into your napkin. But then there was stuff like "When you drop your fork, do not bend to pick it up and ask the waiter to bring you a new one", which we found quite douchey. Why would you make someone pick up something you dropped? That's really mean. 

And you're also apparently supposed to scoop your soup up outwards, instead of bringing the spoon towards you. What kind of crazy unnatural behaviour is that? Weird stuff. 

Then by the time the food actually came we were starving, so I can't tell if the food was quite decent, or if it was because we were really hungry. Milled around and took a bunch of photos after our quite meagre (also because we were hungry, I think) bread and soup, chicken and ice cream. 

Quite fun. 

Hostel time ending soon. 

Man. 

I kind of don't want these people to leave us.