part II - raffles

i've realised that when you stay somewhere for a bit longer than just the odd week, you become lazy and don't do all the things you would normally manage to squeeze in to short trips. mainly because you have so much time! and then all of a sudden all that time is just gone and you've reached the end of your stay. that's (one of the reasons) why it's so good when people come to visit. they are tourists and they want to do all those things that you had planned on doing, but been too lazy to actually do.

so.. when betina was here, we also took the opportunity to go to raffles for a (or maybe two) singapore sling(s). we were of course taking a lot of photos to capture this big moment and a very nice gentleman offered to take a picture of us both.

(the gentleman's friends also posed very gently in the background)

on each table there was a bowl of peanuts and in spite of raffles being a quite posh place, you are supposed to throw the shells on the floor.
there was also a great band playing and before we knew it, they had sweet talked us (with stories about having been to sweden loads of times and what a lovely country it is) into getting up on stage, singing along to 'hey jude'. but if you're a tourist, you're a tourist, right? i did of course manage to find a tambourine as well to accompany (read: drown) our lovely singing. and with my excellent sense of rhythm..
the singapore sling is a very popular (tourist) cocktail here in singapore. raffles has broadened the concept and also created spring sling, summer sling, autumn sling and winter sling. i just had to try the spring sling (would of course never in my life had had a second drink on a school night if it wasn't for the fact that i had to try the spring sling so it turns out to be a quite successful strategy).

(as you can see, this was an evening of crashing photos. one of the band members decided to jump in and to be honest, there is not that much he could have done to make these photos worse)

they also got this russian guy up on stage. i'm not a very good singer, probably one of the worst in the world to be fair. my sister says that if i had been able to find the right tone and melody, then maybe it wouldn't be that bad. don't know what to think about that actually - is it a disguised compliment or just a full on insult?

anyway, this guy was bad. really bad. so bad he didn't even manage to get the words right for 'laalaalaalalalalaaaaaaaa, lalalalaaaaaa, hey jude'. plus his name was igor. don't know why we thought it was so funny, just such a typical russian name.. hmm.. probably one of those things you must experience. it might also have been a trick to get us up on stage as we did of course not feel as intimidated after his performance..