Meet Up (with wine)

For the past few weeks I’ve had a bit of back and forth via email with a girl who found me on the Meet Up website, and who sounded like she might be a nice little addition to my Singaporean world.

            We had a couple of plans that ended up being cancelled for various reasons, but last night we finally managed to stick to the arrangement, and headed out after work to meet up at Wine Connection on Robertson Quay.

            As the time to meet drew nearer she went into what can only be described as a bit of a panicky meltdown. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the strangeness of meeting up with a stranger who she hadn’t met in real life yet. I think it’s fair to say that she started to go a bit mental.

            Thankfully, having only ever worked in jobs where I have to meet strangers and try to make them my best friend within he first ten minutes, I wasn’t worried at all, and after some attempted reassurances, we set out from our various locations to meet up.

            Part of her fear was that she was going to be stranded at the bar, with no idea who I was or how she would know it was me. Aside from the fact that I had her phone number, we were in pretty constant text communication for the 15 minutes before we met, and I had seen a picture of her, she decided that only a “selfie-exchange” would do. Shamefully, this happened:

Once we had shared the apparently obligatory selfie, had made it to the bar, located each other and found a table it was finally (although it was still very early in the evening) time to drink wine.

            The bar that we met at ships in lovely European wine and it’s the only place I have found in Singapore that sells it at a reasonable price. So wine time it was! We had discussed sharing a bottle, but instead somehow ended up buying wine by the glass and working our way through the list of wines on offer, starting at the bottom of the page and working our way up. We didn’t start on the very bottom, line, and we didn’t reach the very top, but we made quite an impressive dent in it.

Wine Challenge

The actual chat was quick good – she seemed really nice, if not slightly stressed out / overwhelmed at braving meeting a stranger alone, but we got on well, shared a cheese board and generally past a couple of very nice hours out under fans in the warm evening.

            She made a number of comments about the fact that she wasn't entirely happy living in Singapore, even hinting that she might not hang around too long (boyfriend situation dependant) even thought she’s sonly been here for a couple of months, but we’ll see how things go. I assume that really she's struggling with the adjustment, which can be really tough, and the fact that looking for a job out here is a complete nightmare. Ever time I meet a new girl who's still looking for work after months of hunting I count myself lucky that I had four months of prep time and planning to get something sorted before I moved. Not least because they are now making it as impossible as they can for foreigners to get their essential Employment Pass Visas - I was just in the nick of time.

             Still, if nothing else she’s a good potential wine guzzler for when wine guzzling is the only thing that will do!