Reed in Asia - Asian diary - Asia15 The weekend at home

Reed in Asia

The weekend at home

Saturday morning I woke up relatively late, at about 09:30, I got up, went downstairs and made a pot of tea. It was a little strange for me, this was the first time that I had woken up in our new house and had not been rushing to get ready and go to work, so I just relaxed on the sofa sipping my tea, looking around the living room and trying to think what we could do to make it nicer and more liveable. The one thing that I was really missing though was music, I am a bit of a music nut, I always have been and I like good music playing in the background constantly, Still looking around, I thought that the walls could definitely do with a little artwork, a painting or two would look nice on them, these things were all floating around in my head when Myra came downstairs, I made her a cup of tea and then we started talking about what we should buy for the house that day.

After a while, we both had a shower, got dressed and set off on our shopping expedition. We took a taxi to Orchard road, got out at the corner of Scotts road and went into the Shaw Centre. I headed straight for the stereo shops and I soon found exactly what I wanted, I asked the person in the shop to pack everything for me and said that I would be back later in the afternoon to pick my purchases up. I then found Myra looking around in a local arts and crafts shop, she had already found a couple of paintings that she liked and she asked my opinion of them, I thought that they were very good, they were paintings on black silk of typical Oriental people in traditional dress in a countryside setting, the colours were wonderful and would be very eyecatching on our walls, so I agreed with her choice and we bought them. We spent about two hours wandering around the shops finding many things that we liked and then we both started feeling a little peckish, so I suggested going for a pizza to the place where we had one last time, on the mezanine floor. The pizza was very good again and we were soon feeling quite full, we just sat there for a while talking about what we had bought and what else we needed and then I told her about the shopping centre in Chinatown that someone at work had mentioned and we agreed to go there next and check it out.

So after lunch we got in a taxi on Scotts road and asked him to take us to People's Park, which he did. We both really enjoyed walking around People's Park, it was very Oriental and the goods for sale in the shops were mainly from China, even in the large department store there. They had lots of interesting items there and the prices were very good, I am not usually a shopping type of person, but I could have spent a very long time in there and later during our stay in Singapore we went there many times, usually each weekend we would spend some time in People's Park just walking around looking at the goods.

By the time we had finished wandering around that day and had bought many knick knacks for the house, it was late afternoon and I wanted a beer, so I told Myra about the beer garden on Orchard road and we took a taxi there. Sitting in the beer garden, even Myra enjoyed it and she was not a drinking type of person, she just enjoyed sitting there drinking orange juice and soda, looking through the bags at the things that we had bought that day and watching all of the people on Orchard road. When we had finished at the beer garden, we took a slow walk up Orchard road to Scotts road, because I had to go back to the Shaw centre and pick up my stereo and things. At the Shaw Centre, the shopkeeper helped us down to the road with the stereo equipment and we got a taxi back home quickly, it wasn't far anyway, only about two kilometres to our house. The taxi driver helped us to unload at the house and soon our living room was quite full of bags and boxes.

John and Pauline came around then, John had brought me a beer and he was watching me unpack the new stereo equipment. The one and only table that we had in the room was soon full of my stereo stuff and when I had finally got everything connected and switched on, I then took out one of the new music albums that I had bought and played it. I had bought the latest album by the Carpenters and soon the song 'We've only just begun' was resounding around the room and I thought to myself "what a very appropriate song to play for us". I had bought two other albums that day too, one by Perry Como that we both liked and an album by Tony Christie who was a friend of mine from the past. I then borrowed some tools from John and started hanging the paintings and putting some of the chinese wood crafts that we had bought on the walls. The room was looking very good soon and with the music too, for me it was beginning to feel like a real home then.

We all spent the evening in our house that night just chatting, drinking and listening to music, I really enjoyed it, I had never had a place of my own before that I could invite and entertain people in, it was another new experience and a first for me.

Starting married life in Singapore