On the LOOSE!

Many people who have known me.. my family, my colleagues, friends, teachers and my dearest buddies – they will describe / define me as someone who’s funny (as I tease them a lot and they ended up laughing their ass off) who just loves to have fun – though not necessarily outgoing (my friends should have already know how much I hated the sunlight when I’m not on the beach, I hate physical exercises and I hate to sweat – I worship the AIR-Con – the most important innovation of all time!). Some may even go as far as to labeling me as prissy, uptight, and they keep telling me that “a little sun/sweat won’t kill u” and I honestly don’t really blame them, cause I admit that some people (like myself) have our own weaknesses..

However today, the impossible has happened. (warning: u will be sooo surprised)

This morning, the YMCA-SAMH Chorus (my beloved community service activity) are going to have an outing with our beneficiaries to the “Celebrate Canada Festival” in East Coast (Singapore). On the way there, I have (already) been complaining how blinding the sunlight is, how I’m going to sweat a lot because the weather is just too HOT, (though I admit it’s better sunny than raining – yesh I know, after yesterday night I TRIED and promised to myself to stop complaining, I already broke it – after only a night :P)

When we got there and started to enter the festival arena, this is when my ‘hell’ embraced me.. Yes!! Those are my feet, and my stark-white havaianas/brazilian praia gladiator sling backs – All MUDDY and DISGUSTING, not to mention the insects!

The most important lesson of the day: Apparently, I can handle A LOT MORE than I thought I could.. I can proudly say that I am a SURVIVOR.. yes, DIRRTY, rowdy, (insert thesaurus for filthy) just oh-so-UNGLAM :(

And the funny this was that I truly had fun at the event, accompanying my beneficiary to enjoy the games, and take a look around all the various booths in the festival (yes, in the MUD, though my feet felt itchy and I was totally repelled and disgusted but I eventually let all my inhibitions go away!)

Yes, this is Owen on the LOOSE – completely UNINHIBITED!

I can’t resist to play one or two games, the spider attack (which I turned out to be really good at, out of 3 tries to throw the spider to a wall with nets, I got 2 out of 3!) and I got an umbrella and a ruler for it! (which are considered free, as I didn’t pay a cent for the tickets – subsidized entirely by YMCA – the tickets actually are $10 singapore bucks, with 5 coupons attached – u need 1 coupon to play each game.. I gave my other coupons to my beneficiary to play more games and he was totally a CHAMP – he brought home so many gifts!) after all, like I said before – who doesn’t like freebies?

As the sleepyhead that I am, I was about to skip this outing because I just can’t bring myself out of bed – at 8am, it’s too early in the morning – on a SATURDAY – my weekend!

Fortunately I didn’t and I can safely say that if I skipped the outing, I would regret it so much because it was SO MUCH FUN – (yes, I really did have FUN – in spite of sweating like mad, under the heat of the blinding sun, with my feet drenched in mud and who the hell knows what kind of insects are there!)

Then I had a wonderful lunch of LAMB SHAWAMARS – like a Kebab, from SHIRAZ – the Persian Restaurant booth – (the restaurant is located at Clarke Quay).. and was soooo SINFULLY delicious.. (there goes my strict diet and hard-core gym – but it was definitely worth every bite, every piece of it!) I am even considering hosting my next birthday bash there! You can see how mouth-watering this delicacy is, and how greedily I was devouring each bite of it.. it was WORTH IT!

But, the most important thing was that, not only I was doing community service (a good deed :) but nothing really beats having FUN TIME a bunch of AMAZING friends – my fellow volunteers; Pauline, Joyce and Chor Ming – (I’m going to miss u sooo much when u left for LSE..) U guys are just the BEST (so sad Ying Hui is not there.. we miss ya!)

Now u can really see what Owen is like when he is on the LOOSE – and at the end of the day – I do like the uninhibited version of me (a drastic departure from my usual prim-proper-appropriate-well-kept me).

After all, “Living in fear is INDEED a life half lived” [“Vivir con mideo es como vivir a medias!”] So, to all you guys, take chances and risks - u won't regret it! As always, I hope u all have a nice day and a great weekend, because I sure did!

All thanks to my dearest YMCA friends (once again) who made all this possible!