Yesterday felt like two different days in one.
It started like any other Sunday should. Slow morning, brunch at the food court (which is really a hawker center) and some vacuum cleaning after that. In the afternoon, out of nowhere, the fire alarm started blaring outside the door. Well, fire alarms usually start out of nowhere, but it felt like we missed the information about a fire drill. John went out to the corridor and checked what the neighbours were doing - which turned out to be the same as him, walking around looking confused and trying to figure out if we should go outside.
While he did that I unpacked the carrier for dogs (because our cat will be huge eventually so we bought a large carrier for the future) and put an equally confused Ymir in there. John came back telling me that he had no idea what was going on and neither did the neighbours, or so it seemed. Said that we probably should go out in case there truly was a fire.
With cat in carrier we took sixteen stairs down to the ground floor and found more confused residents from the building looking up at the balconies. John did the same but found neither smoke nor fire. We followed the others to the front and gathered around the little shops to awkwardly hang out. I sat down in a staircase with Ymir and John went to management to ask what was going on. While he was gone I had a mother and a little girl spectating the carrier and the calm cat inside.
John came back and told us that the management office was closed. Talked a bit to the others who stood there, asking if they knew anything and the mother said that her husband had been to security where they had told him that it was a signal problem. My question was "is there a signal problem because of a fire?" to which they had no answer. John called two different numbers, both being occupied by probably more confused residents. He went to the security office while I stayed where I sat.
Two kids came up to the carrier after consulting with their parents if it was a good idea. I told them the cats name and let them stick their hands down the hole to pet him. The five year old girl told me she moved here when she was two, from Ukraine, her mother would not let her have a cat and she liked it here in Singapore. The little boy repeated that he liked cats and that Ymir had liked his hand. I am not an expert with children... actually I am rather awkward with them, so I just let them talk and pet and then John came back.
No fire, just a signal problem. We went back home, using the elevator this time, but in the apartment it was not peace and quiet. The alarm was still going off. After just a short while we changed into bikini and the new expensive trunks and headed back down to the pool. Ymir did not seem to mind the sound so we did not feel so bad leaving him there. Hung out by the pool listening to the alarm go on and on, for two short moments it was off and then on again. After five hours of this it finally stopped and we could stay indoors without getting headaches.
Seven o'clock we got visitors. Kawei and Bryan, one of which John have been talking to from the moment we arrived in Singapore. I had never met them before, John had. Great guys, really fun getting to know them. We ordered pizza and started the evening with Citadels in Swedish. It is an easy game and as long as you remember the characters you really do not need to understand Swedish to play it. We translated what was needed and still got beaten by Kawei. The pizza arrived during the game and we ate while playing.
Then, when the pizza was gone and the game was over, we opened the newly bought Ticket To Ride. Easy to understand and fun to play. It was slow and yet hectic. So much fun! In the end it was between John and Kawei; Bryan and I being so far behind that it did not matter how many points we had. John won with all of his destination cards (I had no idea that you could take more if you had not yet completed the ones you already had).
Then we talked for a while, getting to know each other more and they left around half past eleven. It was a pleasant ending of the day.
End of Weekend!
