i was out today with W.Y. who’s in nagano and his 2 singaporean friends who’re here on holiday, and for the first time in a long while i was out with a bunch of people for dinner on a weekend and there was no alcohol involved at any point in time.
i do like my alcohol, but i dont drink when no one else is drinking. and of course, since i enjoy it quite a bit, if someone’s having a drink i’ll have one too. but it just occurred to me that drinking has become so standard that the reflex is to sit down, order a drink, and then order food.
perhaps japan, and hanging out with caucasians, has trained me well.
after dinner – which i will blog about another time – we sat down and chatted over coffee and cake, and one of the guys said something which made me realise that hey, this is what i used to do all the time back home. we used to socialise over food and drink, rather than socialise over alcohol. it just didnt register quite so clearly that singaporeans hang out over coffee and stuff, cos i’ve gotten so used to chatting with people over alcohol after a year here.
and it’s nice too. there’s something different about hanging out when you’re sober.. you get none of the cheeriness that comes as an influence of alcohol which affects your attitude and behaviour, and conversations arent quite as loud. in a way it’s more calm, relaxed.
it might also be because it’s singaporeans whom i was hanging out with. somehow things are different. not quite as stressful, and the conversation just flows, and there was never a point when i was bored or feeling like there’s a cultural reference that i’m not quite getting or having the sense that i’m not quite ‘in’ the conversation.
and writing that, it occurred to me that i never really had as much trouble talking to guys back home as i do here. it’s not quite ‘trouble’ per se, but it seems like here, unless you’re a lot like them or have the same interests – mainly games, computers, movies (perhaps tv shows too) and women – there isnt much you can do to get into a conversation among guys. whereas i never felt this way back home.. men seemed to just talk crap about random stuff which i could contribute to and enjoy, and oh. it makes me feel like i’m missing out on the comfort and familiarity with which conversations occurred. no stress whatsoever, nor boredom.
people are always saying that singaporeans dont know how to have fun and all that, but thinking about it, i’m not sure i’m having more fun per se now either. it’s definitely a different kind of fun; senses are heightened in some ways due to the alcohol (and dulled in other ways too, of course), and there’s this enhanced sense of gaiety that perhaps leads one to think that they’re having more fun. but there’s something simple, direct and real about the interactions that i had today, and probably the interactions that i used to have when i was still in singapore too. and that’s extremely enjoyable too. it feels meaningful – probably because among singaporeans, we sit down and we talk about stuff, while among caucasians you socialise, flitting from person to person and mingling with most of the people present.
i dunno.. i cant imagine living in singapore forever from the time at which my JET contract ends, but living somewhere else would mean more of those interactions that are interesting but sometimes somehow not quite fulfilling in some ways.. which makes things difficult!
i really am looking forward to going home in december… will probably view things with new eyes and have lots to reflect upon!
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