The weekend rolls on

After a fairly fun start to the weekend, Nick and I decided to try and stick with our low key, well behaved approach to life, and so Thursday was spent achieving very little, and getting used to the fact that the Chinese world was busy being at home and with their families today, and there was very little outside of the flat to do.

            As the first day of the Chinese New Year celebrations, it was a bit like a Christmas Day in England yesterday. All the shops were shut, most of the taxis were off the road and only a handful of cafes and restaurants were open – most of those were at the big city hotels.

            We had plans to meet Joyce and Cheall for lunch, so after a slow morning mooching around the flat we met up with them in the heart of Little India, the only place in Singapore that was even busier than normal. When you venture into Little India it’s normally a fairly female heavy place. With the men at work all day, shopping and eating along the streets is mostly for the children and women. However, when you brave Little India on either a Sunday or a Chinese holiday, Little India is choc-a-block with the whole Indian community and there is very rarely any space to walk on the roads, let alone fit along the pavements, or find anywhere with space to eat.

            Luckily our friends were a little late meeting us, so we headed into Little India for a nice late lunch at a café that we go to fairly often, run by an older Indian couple who lived just outside of London for a number of years, and who are always very welcoming, and who are not afraid to wrap some of their amazing curry up in a tortilla, or whack it on a salad to suit Western preferences.

            

It was a lovely relaxed lunch, followed by a slow walk home through all the action, ready for an afternoon FaceTiming with the lovely Charlie and Max back home, cleaning, cooking and generally mooching around. I love afternoons at the flat, so long as we have achieved enough in the morning, so it was a pretty glorious way to pass the rest of the day.

            Along with ticking a lot of jobs off my list, I managed to make a good dent in the book that I have just started reading – The Thorn Birds. Once I have completed this book there will only be 12 more to go on my top 100 list, bringing me one step closer to completing my 30-Before-30 challenge. There’s still quite a way to go, but I can’t wait to get the book list done and dusted and to get another challenge started soon too!