Today Flips and I were sitting at Ichiban-Boshi eating (not-so-great) food and it started to pour in Marine Parade. I thought that maybe this would greatly reduce the number of people coming in and out of Parkway. Nope...... in fact as Flips smart-pantsly pointed out, there seemed to be more people coming in than out.
So there we were sipping our (not-so-great, not houjicha) green tea, when we began to notice the endless streams of odd umbrellas.
There were the too-small-to-cover-my-body mico ones, and it's not always the ladies carrying them. There were the XXXXL ones that spanned the entire stretch of walkway. In between were the really odd ones.... Flips and I gathered that there was a very primal protective instinct in all of us to protect our heads. Our fat torsos may get wet, our white blouses may get transparent, but somehow, our heads must not be wet. We saw at least 2 aunties using things like plastic bags to wrap around their head/hair while the rest of their bodies were soaking.
We also saw creativity! There were people trying to use balloons as umbrellas. Rather cool. Would have been if it had been been more than one balloon.
Flips was commenting how Singaporean umbrellas are rather ugly and we got into an intellectual discussion of the scarcity of good umbrellas and how prices of umbrellas are shocking to most men. Freakin' 30 something bucks?! Sidenote: Flips showed me a trivia on why a dollar can also be known as a buck. Apparently somewhere in Minnesota, USA, there used to be plenty of deer. And one deer carcass used to be equivalent of a dollar. Hence a buck. Imagine the size of their wallets then.
We also saw a weird guy (uncle of sorts) use an umbrella that was made to look like a yellow American Football helmet. It covered the width of his shoulders but it looked odd to me. It was a tiny umbrella, but a massive helmet. Flips thought it was something he wore on his head but he returned soon again and we managed to ascertain it was an umbrella he was using/wearing. But I suppose he would have to take the crown for Most Outstanding Umbrella of the day....
We saw a Random Act of Kindness too! A man with an umbrella sheltered a crippled man with no umbrella and stoically, the 2 men just silently walked the length of the crossing and parted ways just like that.
p.s.: Flips was horrified and claimed she saw something crawl out from the wasabi container on the table of Ichiban-boshi... I always found those left out on tables things rather suspicious.....
