My Singapore Travel Diary, Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Wednesday, July 20

Slept 1:30 AM - 7:09 AM. Heavy rain since 5:00 AM, with thunder and lightning.

Breakfast. On the smoking deck beyond the dining room I have a conversation with the hotel food supplier, who is also a smoker. He asks me where I am from. He says that I don't look like a Filipino, but probably because my maternal grandfather was Portuguese (from Portugal, not from Brazil).

Back in the room, I watch a wuxia. There are two women  with classic faces who could very well be named Peach Blossom and Plum Fairy, out of a Judge Dee novel.

Now looking out through my ninth-floor window into the ninth-floor and lower-floor windows of the hotel wing across mine. I can actually see people naked on their beds or stripping to go into their bathrooms. The heavy drapes are left open by the chamber women. The sheer, light drapes are left on to let the daylight in, but hotel guests can be seen from other windows when their interior lights are switched on. The drapes and the curtains are 20 feet long because there is a loft in every room. A nightmare to sew.

11:30 AM. Walking to the theatre to meet up with TT and E. I take some photos on Alkaff Bridge.

Lunch with TT and E. in an expensive restaurant. I like TT's lunches because he has impeccable, gastronomic taste. He knows every good restaurant in the city.

After lunch Clarissa takes me in a taxi to the learning institute, where I conduct my second playwriting workshop for a second group of senior citizens. Afterward I go to the hotel room to rest.

This evening, Day 3 of the major workshop. The participants brought their own laptops and gadgets to encode their scripts.

I love the theatre's security doors and wish that I could have doors like those in my house. After the workshop I go to the nearest 7-11 outlet and buy a box of cereal, a bar of Hershey's dark chocolate, and two packs of U Kretek cigarettes. all of these very pricey. They would have cost far less in the Philippines.

Then I am in the smoking area outside the hotel cafe, waiting for the barter man, who does not show up. I go up to my room.

At 11:10 PM the barter man calls on the house phone and says that he is on his way and would I please wait for him. I instruct him to go directly to my room, 952, because I have already undressed. Minutes after I put down the phone I realize that the barter man might not be able to get up to my room because one can go up in the lifts only by using one's room card. I get dressed again and go down to the lobby to wait for the barter man, informing the lady at the counter that I am waiting for a delivery man whose name I do not know. I wait outside the glass doors and keep watch on the lift doors from outside, but no single man with a bag that looks like it could contain a B.L. figure comes by.

At 12:00 MN a frantic chamber person calls the lady at the counter, who then calls me. Apparently the barter man arrived, kept ringing my room bell, and was waiting in the corridor for half an hour. The barter man gets on the phone and tells me to stay at the counter. He comes down. I ask him how he could have gone to the ninth floor without a room card. He says, "I managed."

We sit outside the hotel cafe and I complete our deal.

It is way past midnight, but, as of now, I will do anything, and at any time, for B.L.

I shower before going to sleep. This is always about the time I get homesick and long for my own bed in Cubao.