It is official. I am on a spiritual hiatus. An angry, raging one at that. I have been trying to stay Zen but apart from my morning meditation and sporadic drop in yoga classes I haven’t been doing much since I finished my Osho book and it’s all the Australian Governments fault.
Right now I am angrily typing while drinking Singha beer, eating Ruffles Cheddar Cheese & sour cream flavoured chips, and listening to the moodiest music I can find in my ITunes library: Archive. Yes, I’ve fallen off the wagon.
For the past month I have been convinced that I am supposed to go to this magical place called Byron Bay in Australia. We met these couch surfers who just came from there and they raved about this hippie town, where there’s tonnes of yoga, 5 rhythms dance classes, surfing and chill vibes. They recommended I join the Osho Yahoo group which is where they hooked up everything they needed. You name it: rent, yoga, community! They even offered to rent us their car because its sitting there doing nothing.
There were so many coincidences too. (I had friends mention in passing things here and there about OSHO . He’s the controversial guru, who believes in free love. He doesn’t believe in marriage which is atypical for India.)
My six degrees of OSHO.
1. I just finished reading The Search: Osho talks on the ten bulls of Zen which I found at the Free Market in Had Thien. The free market happened every Sunday at 2 PM on the beach, and everyone basically gifts the things they don’t want. There was a stack of good books laying there, but for some reason I picked up this mysteriously beat up black hard cover. I like to say the book “chose” me.
2. Two days after the free market, I met Sarah, a girl from London just laying next to me on the beach. Sarah had just come from India and had stayed at the OSHO ashram, and was telling me about how it was mandatory to take an HIV test just to get in.
3. I talk to Lily, the instructor of my yoga teacher training. And yes, she too had stayed at the Osho ashram in India except she stayed there for three months.
4. Needless to say, I have been intrigued by the Osho ashram. And then these girls from Texas tell me they are part of an Osho email group that has led them to all these opportunities in Byron Bay? It just seemed like life was pointing me in that direction.
5. A friend of mine wrote Byron Bay as the place I should go to in Australia when I was asking for recommendations of where to go on my facebook wall.
6. My best friend from Canada has a Byron Bay t-shirt given to her years ago that she still wears to sleep every night.
So I thought I would hit the ground running when I got to Oz, but after several phone calls and emails I am still not getting anywhere. And now our back up plan is to go to Hong Kong and skip out on Oz completely but I just finished a few hours of research into my HK I.D. which will take 6-8 weeks to process which means more time of not working.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Singapore but I am starting to feel that I need to get a move on. This is a pattern with me, I think that when I need to move, nothing happens fast enough for me. Every morning the first thing I do is check online with the Australian embassy, and as per usual it says health documents pending. And those x-rays were submitted over a week ago which sends me flying into frustration.
Okay, that’s the end of the poor me. The most ridiculous thing is that for the past few months I have been feeling very Zen, and had been honestly been believing that I had reached some kind of emotional enlightenment in being able to deal with things without getting upset.
Now I realize, that I didn’t really have any worries during that time, and that was before the boyfriend was travelling with me in the equation, and that was really my ego talking. I am totally a work in progress. A good friend of mine used to say to me that I am “embarrassingly human”.
Over the weekend, we had another friend from Vancouver come and visit. Steve G. from Intimate Productions. Steve is one of my favorite people to party with, and last weekend was no exception. He ended up getting us into Zouk to see Tocadisco on the guest list. Our couch surfing hosts loved him, and we did what we do best in Singapore – Eat! .It is truly a culinary experience living here, and even for Sebastien who has never really liked Chinese food in the past has grown to love it here. Oh yes, drinkers and non drinkers alike, everyone has been slaughtered by my travelling drinking game Slapjack.
We had such a blast with Steve – Steve is an awesome friend! He’s the kind of guy that wakes up, feeds you vitamins and without asking brings everyone coffee first thing in the morning, well a Chai Tea Latte for me which earns you double the points in a place like Singapore!
The funny thing about partying in Singapore, is that no one was wasted. Everyone was just having a really good time. Well I guess that’s no surprise when drinks are like $20 a pop. The place was packed but everyone stood a respectful distance from each other. I liked that they sprayed out dry ice from under you on the dance floor which helped cool everyone down. The club was beautiful, and when we spoke to the resident D.J. after, he said the owner had purposefully modelled it after Pacha, a club in Ibiza.
Highlights included:
- Meeting a crew of Taiwanese firefighters and enticing them to play Chinese drinking games with us
-Order Jagerbombs and having locals come up to us and asking us what the hell are those drinks?
-Meeting Asian girls from West Vancouver
-Meeting Tocadisco and taking pictures of him and his hot wife
-Overall shenanigans
Here’s us at the Sri Lankan Crab place. Hands down the best place we’ve eaten at so far! Everyone do their cute Chinese pose!
Indian food on Arab Street for breakfast! The next day we went to Sentosa beach and hung out at Cafe del Mar. This is where we met Penny, another local Singaporean. We bonded over Chanel! Well the book and the movie am way too much of a broke ass to be sporting anything expensive these days. Penny came out with us for dinner, and this weekend we have plans to go shopping and hit up Clark Quays. Yay! I love meeting locals.
Ahhhh! I feel better already. Thanks for listening.
