So, what did you do last weekend?

Friday 7.30pm: Time to log-off at the office. It’s been a short week due to public holidays on the 1st and 2nd of January, but the weekend is always welcome! Timmo is running home from the office, so I’m going off for a quick beer at Harry’s on Boat Quay with Winfried, one of the Dutch colleagues around. At least one of us needs to do the drinking… Harry’s is THE place for the Dutch expats to gather, but this evening the group of Dutch people I’m having a beer with has a little quarrel with a (drunk) local lady. Apparently it’s not appreciated when you put your empty glasses on a table other people are sitting at… unlike in Europe, here bar furniture is not for common use. Well, sometimes you have to learn it the hard way.

Friday 10pm: Timmo soaked in the jacuzzi after his homerun and we settle in front of the TV while eating dinner (left-overs from the week, we buy too much every time…). As the cable is not installed yet, we’ve been (re)-watching the films in our collection. We can’t get enough of the BBC documentary The Blue Planet anyway… hmm, I must plan a diving trip as soon as the rainy season is over…

Saturday 4am: I finally go to bed, I’ve started reading Tai-Pan (a book about the first Hong Kong settlers in the 1800’s) and I can’t put it down (great book D.!)… Timmo is long fast asleep and feels a lot fresher when we get up at 9.30am

Saturday 10am: The contractor/handyman arrives to do some touch ups in the house. We hang around to make sure all the chores are done, but he has to come back next week again to finish it off. After he leaves, we have breakfast: durian which I bought at the Carrefour on Thursday… not bad, but the ones from Geylang are definitely better. Then we put on our sports clothes (yes, not a joke!) and go to the gym. It’s hot and heavy and after 45 minutes of exercising I give up. I’m starting to believe the local fairy tales about durian; a quote from Wikipedia: “In some Asian countries, durian is believed to have warming properties liable to cause excessive sweating. The traditional method to counteract this is to pour salted water into the empty shell of the fruit, after the pulp has been consumed, and drink it. An alternative method is to eat the durian in accompaniment with mangosteen that is considered to have cooling properties. People with high blood pressure or pregnant women are traditionally advised not to consume durian.” I badly need to cool down, so we change into our swimming gear and we go for a dive in the pool. Then it’s a quick lunch for Timmo at McDonalds, we wonder around the main street near our house and discover a lovely furniture shop, where I’m ready to spend thousands of Sing dollars on a beautiful teak cupboard, a huge teak mirror and everything else they have in the shop. Timmo and my sense of reality kick in and I decide not to buy until we’ve visited at least one other shop… but it was real nice stuff….

Saturday 5pm: We go for a Javanese massage in a shop around the corner… excellent treatment and more comfortable then the (cheaper) ones in Chinatown. Especially for Timmo who always got offered more than he bargained for by the Chinese ladies. The Javanese massage parlours however, seem to be exactly what they say the are, so we get ourselves a lifetime membership card and now we get 20% discount for ourselves and our guests for the rest of our lives…

Saturday 6.30pm: We go grocery shopping at Cold Storage, the local supermarket and get some ingredients to make a “Western” salad. Balsamic vinegar, bacon bits, lettuce, cucumber… A healthy light salad is just what we feel like after the massage! I hang up a few more picture frames throughout the house and we watch a nice romantic comedy on VCD (like DVD, same same but different). The day is at its end again.

Sunday 12.15pm: We wake up, stretch, yawn, have brunch (mangosteens and grapes) and we relax & read some more on the sofa while enjoying the breeze coming through our patio door. Gosh, now I really can’t stop reading Tai-Pan so I take the book to the pool, Timmo is almost done with The Undutchables (Thanks T&M!), I hear him giggling every 3 pages and we do a bit of bubbling and sunbathing…

Sunday 6pm: It’s dinner time! This time we pick a Chinese Seafood restaurant and have some steamed fish and crispy roasted chicken. I loved the fish, but it’s not Timmo’s thing… too many bones… :-) luckily, there is plenty of other choice around! We walk around a bit more (each time we venture into another side street) and then it’s back onto the sofa with my book. Page 530 and 200 more to go… Timmo’s is now into “Culture Shock”, a very useful book with tips & tricks for foreigners in Singapore (Thanks H&R!). Some etiquette you just have to know (perhaps they’ll mention that you shouldn’t put your empty glass on somebody else’s table... if not, I’ll send a note to the editor for the next edition)!

Sunday 11.30pm: Off to bed! It feels like we had a short holiday… I reminisce the busy weekends in Amsterdam, running around, parties, drinks… Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite… (not a lot of bugs in the house so far, a couple of mosquito’s perhaps). Tomorrow I'll finish off Tai-Pan...