Thursday in Little India

Today was a pretty mellow day at work. There weren't really any meetings planned so I spent my time teaching some people individually. I started the day feeling like the newness of Singapore was starting to wear off. I was getting pretty comfortable with all the different things on the island.

This feeling didn't last long. It started out when I went into the bathrooms at work and noticed that one of the stalls was a little different than the others. This stall had a little squat style toilet. I guess these are pretty common in some Asian countries. I find it a little strange and I wasn't about to try it out.

At lunch time we all went for a little walk to go to a restaurant that was in another building in the business park. We came upon a big fairly generic looking office building. It's name was written in Chinese (I think). What was interesting about this building was it had some sort of religious shrine right out in the parking lot. It suspect it was a Buddhist shrine because it had a Buddha in the middle and it was surrounded by candles and incense. When I approached it to take a picture a man who worked there came out to refresh the incense. He seemed to say a little prayer on all 4 sides of the shrine. I talked to him briefly and he told me it was ok to take a picture.

After work we decided to go to a section of town called little India for dinner. It was quite an experience. We went to a great Indian restaurant where you order all the food family style. One of the local specialties is something called fish head curry soup. We have been told that the eyeballs are delicious. We decided that we must give a it try and it really wasn't as bad as it sounds. I expected some soup with a bunch of little fish heads but it actually came with one really big fish head. The head actually had lots of meat on it. Nobody was brave enough to eat the eyeballs.

After dinner we went for a walk down the streets of little India. The Indian New Year is in November and it is called Depa Valli (sp?), the festival of lights. So all he streets were decorated with these bright lights in preparation for the celebration. There were big, lighted banners that went across the streets overhead. There were probably more than 100 of them. There was a certain energy to the place that you might call frenetic. There were lots of people and stores packed to gills with very cheap and low quality stuff. We ended up passing this temple that was maybe Hindu or something like that. We noticed a tent in the back with an older gentleman with a long beard sitting on the floor with people sitting around him. He must have been some sort of spiritual holy man. We decided to go into the temple and it was quite an experience. We had to take off our shoes and socks and go in barefoot. Insise it was packed with decorations all over the walls. There were several large statues that must have represented various gods. Some of them had people praying in front of them. It wasn't like most churches I have been to because it had loud music being played by a small band and people were moving around everywhere. There were a number of men without shirts wearing a white sort of dress that appeared to be priests. They allowed me take pictures and we walked through the temples. One Indian lady stopped me and offered me some sort of sweet yellow bread. She told me it was her birthday. I really felt like the temple had a kind of energy to it that I had never experienced before. It had a very lively atmosphere and I really enjoyed being there. For me it was one of the best nights that we have had here. After seeing little India I have a feeling that big India is going to be quite an experience.