Running at Botanical Gardens and Fruit Party

My friend took me running yesterday. Isaac and I were supposed to go for breakfast, because I needed to sign something for my insurance forms. He called me around 7.30 in the morning, and asked if I wanted to go running before breakfast. Although I had only 3 hours of sleep the night before, I said why not. So he came to pick me up, and drove to the Botanical Gardens. He wanted to do it as a way of "repaying" the favor of me trying to convince him to be spontaneous in life.

Isaac runs there 3 times a week. To get out of the huge rat race that Singapore is. It's beautiful in the gardens, not too many people in the morning, nice greenery, far away from the ever present hustle and bustle. I liked it too. It's quiet enough to give me the space that I need to stay sane. It's a place that reminds me that Singapore still has a few places that can cater to my need of space and peace. A place to help me transition back to this crazy place. We ran around the garden, and talked about our lives, catching up with what happened the past year. Breakfast was at the NIE canteen. It was cheap and tasty. 2 Roti Pratas, 2 Eggs, toast, Milo, a typical Singaporean breakfast. It's good that most foods are cheap in Singapore. Breakfast has always been a cheap meal.

In the afternoon, I went to watch "The Island" with Guohao. We did our basic chatting and talking about life as usual. He'll only be back to 2 weeks this time, and has to go back to Cambridge next week to continue on his research on genetic stuff. I still need to beat him in Dota somehow before he leaves. "The Island" was pretty good. Interesting, with lots of ethical and moral questions about cloning for medical reasons.

At night, the Stanford people got together near my place for dinner and fruits. We went for dinner at "No Signboard Seafood". The seafood is really yummy there. We then bought durians, mangos, longans, dragon fruit, plums, rambutan-like fruits and went to Shuzhen's place to eat them. It was Jason, Chee Hau, Hon Mun, Chris, Joan, Shuzhen and me. Deyao and Melissa joined us later. It's the second fruit party that we had already. The topic of conversation? National Service, and our government bond.

Deyao is already working in the Ministry of Finance, and he was telling us about his first 2 weeks there. He told us to ask lots of questions about our ministry before making any decisions on them. Apparently, he said that a lot of the information is kept from us, shrouded in mystery, like the different pay in the different ministry and other important considerations. I think that's a horrible way to treat the scholars, to hide information from them, to try to "fool" them into joining a certain ministry. I think things should be more transparent. We want to be part of the system, not have to be lured into it. I'll go look into this more deeply first and find concrete evidence and ask the questions I need before making any decisions or further comments.