One of my favourite Singlish words is lepak (pronounced ˈlɛpak; leh-pak) which means to loaf around and basically be lazy all day a la Gudetama. The word’s origins comes from the Malay word for lazy, ‘lepa‘, and is just the term to describe most of what I’ve been doing since I’m back.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBE8UP7j09X/
Sure, I’ve met friends but we like lepak-ing together y’know. Just chillin’ at a cafe and catching up over a good ol teh ‘c’ peng (ice milk tea, but the ‘c’ stands for evaporated milk instead of the usual condensed milk).
I did go catch ONE OK ROCK live in Singapore on their final leg of the 35xxxv Asian Tour which was FANTASTIC. Fort Canning was packed to capacity and damn, did they put on a great show, those amazing vocals, oh boy. It was strange how I wasn’t quite that much into the album until I heard it live and then I was begging for more later but it was over all too fast.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BA4zHCiD0yi
Ohhhh did it tug at my heartstrings listening to Taka’s voice echoing on ‘Heartache’. A concert is really something you cannot quite explain to people who haven’t experienced it. Some people understand, some just don’t.
I don’t feel like I am quite ready for 2016 – because things are going to change. Sometimes I like constants, sometimes I like ennui.
I wanted to write so much more but my neighbours broke my chain of thought. Another thing to get used to again when back in Singapore – living in public housing. Basically we have this thing called HDB flats, like apartments built by the government (Housing Development Board, HDB, see?) and most Singaporeans live in HDB flats. With neighbours that you tend to see more often than if you lived in an apartment block in Japan. Sometimes your neighbours are loud.
In Japan, family disputes and quarrels seem to be a very hush hush thing because the Japanese are very private people when it comes to airing dirty laundry in public or addressing issues but none of that in Singapore. Sometimes you end up being privy to private matters you rather not know just because it is happening right ‘in front of you’. Or more like the shouts were so loud that most of the block probably heard them…
Also I tend to find that Singaporeans are very kaypoh (inquisitive) so once something happens sooner or later it becomes the talk of the town. There are also those so called ‘vigilantes’ or ‘social justice warriors’ who basically just have nothing better to do than take photos or videos of things people do in public and publicly shame them online on the horrible recesses of this thing called STOMP. Singaporean culture is so weird and difficult to explain sometimes like how do you create a metaphor for what STOMP is and its part in our culture? It’s like this inside joke you won’t get unless you followed the local news and online trends.
“Eh don’t eat in the train la, later you get STOMPed how?”
“Wah lao I was damn scared later someone video and put on STOMP. Damn malu sia.”
Hah, maybe if you googled you’d find some interesting things.
I also miss Japanese television which while people say is quite rubbish, I say that statement is rubbish because Japanese television is so darn entertaining. Compared
to the local free to air channels with beyond rubbish television drama series (only the Chinese ones seem to be any good) and the foreign dramas they screen are also quite terrible like what is this unknown series called The Librarians? None of the Channel 5 variety programs can ever touch the likes of ItteQ, VS Arashi, Shabekuri 007 etc
Plus there is censorship here which I won’t go into because that is a looooong topic. There are some gems like The Noose, Phua Chu Kang and Under One Roof, but now that Netflix is in Singapore and most people don’t watch much TV anymore………
….wah Bernie you digress until like that.
It is 4 days to Chinese New Year. I finally got CNY clothes from Plus Size store The Curve Cult. I’ll write more about them later (hopefully with pictures of outfits, yay!).
I also failed the JLPT N1 (again), hah. I guess also another post on that for next time aka where I contemplate studying Japanese and how terrible it is to stagnate in language studies.
Enough rambling from me.
How is 2016 so far?
And did you throw some beans around for Setsubun in Japan?
beanmylife 