Ghetto Life

Saturday 12 September

After spending the morning doing some volunteer work at Telok Blangah, I caught a quick flight up to Kuala Lumpur in order to check out the local activation around music at the national stadium there. Without going into detail, the highlight was when the power died at the 15,000 strong event for about 40 minutes, and Kevin and I were able to do some imaginary Olympic action in the wildly huge and mainly empty stadium.

Had some quiets at the Social on Bukit Ceylon, Kevin was the self-professed 'loner' who knew everyone from the outside. Left the good quality crowd and location to a no-budget Irish bar on the other side of town, Claudia was there and we ended up going back and playing a totally nerdy card game until way too late. Watched two thirds of The Spirit, a hilarious and very good-looking film, before catching a few hours sleep.

Back to the Developing World

Sunday 6 September

Slept till around noon and spent the afternoon chillaxing with Luke in the hotel. Jeff gave us a ride to the airport and a huge bag of super fresh chillies - very kind. The evening flight home was spent studying the road code, discussing Kai's education, and watching the twisted Robot Chicken.

Overall I got a very good impression of Chengdu - friendly people, mild climate and relaxed vibe. It felt very well developed in comparison to somewhere like Vietnam or Thailand, and strangely enough, even the taxi ride home from Changi airport felt a bit bumpy and backwards in comparison, as if Singapore's a sleepy island nation while the juggernaut of China is pushing ahead at breakneck speed and with jillions of dollars.