The Dancing Queen

 Hi readers! Another non-sensical post coming up (I'll trymy best to make it sensible).

I'm not very sure where to start. I guess we can start from the information that I've been seeing a therapist/counsellor/psychologist/whatever other names these people have. I started going around April or May I think, and have been going about once a month for 3 times before a hiatus due to a business trip to the US (that's another story all together that I don't think I'll write about here anytime soon, tough luck :p), and have just started going again this month. The story happened on the second time I went this month, which was yesterday.

The counsellor's office/meet-up place is in the Clarke Quay area. After my session ended at around 5.30pm, I was deciding where and what to eat for dinner. As I was deliberating, I walked towards the MRT, and decided to check out the river area, because what could be a better place for someone who just finished a therapy session for their loneliness other than the place where couple hangs out on Saturday night, right? Less sarcastically, I was just, well, curious. It's been a while since the last time I was in the area around the time of the week for obvious reasons. Also, I was going to counselling not because of loneliness (though it may have contributed a bit).

To my pleasant surprise, I find the area along the river on the Central side's bank to be not very crowded. There are couples around, but for some reason there are some people just chilling solo as well, I guess giving me the sense of not being the odd one out. I think it was still a bit early for the bulk of the crowd; the sun was still up, though it's on its way to the horizon. I decided to sit on the riverbank, trying to think again what and where I should have my dinner.

After a few more minutes of mulling over a few options, I kinda decided to eat some Thai food in Holland Village (not the one you're thinking of but not that it matters), but thinking of burning some time there first and go for a slightly late dinner because if I leave too early, I would arrive with the bulk of the crowd in HV which I wanted to avoid, so I just continue sitting there, just kinda taking the whole scenery. The boats ferrying tourists up and down the Singapore river, the malls along the riverbanks, the hooters sign on the shophouse just across where I was sitting, and then the fish swimming around in the river. I saw a catfish, and I heard from some videos I watched that catfish eats *anything* and can grow to a very large size due to its resilience in surviving even in the harshest water environment. Seeing how it interacts with other fish in the river, and how it always inspects things floating on the water surface (possibly assessing whether the thing is edible or not) gave me a little bit of shiver.

I think it was about 6.30 or so when I decided to get up and move on. On the way to the MRT, I noticed a busker right in front of the Central's main lobby facing the river (where the buskers usually are, if you've been there you'll know) performing Baby Shark. Can't help but to smile, but I quickly realized that the kid who was singing not actually the main performer. True enough, after the kid finished singing, their parent picked them up and the guitar player (who as it turned out, was the only one busking) do a quick intro of who he is (buskerjames.com for people who are curious). To be really honest, he isn't really the best musician out there, but I see that he's not really using his guitar skill as his main attraction, but instead his interaction with the audience: he would encourage the audience who requests a song to sing it with him! That was a real challenge to do in the very shy and reserved Singapore!

And it was very evident. Between the few poor pre-school kids whose parents just kinda make them sing, there wasn't really that many adults who would come up and sing with/for him. There was one entertaining interaction with audience: some young French dude trying to make him wear some bootleg sombrero hat, shouting sheeeesshhhh and just repeating the word "James" at different pitches when singing. Not sure if that dude was drunk or what. There were also some gems among the crowd, like a dude who sang Ed Sheeran's Perfect for his fiance, some random Indian lady who sang Zombie from The Cranberries (if you know you're old :p but so am I :( ). In between, the busker would just pick a random song and sing by himself.

Most audience member who came with family or friends may attempt to sing the song they request, but mostly they won't be able to perform it well. Among all these randoms, one stood out to me. There was this girl in grey jacket and some long narrow-ish navy-colored skirt (sorry for the terrible description of the clothes, I don't have a girlfriend) who performed Dancing Queen. Not very sure if the busker convinced her to sing it with him or she just wanted to do it on her own, but I could tell from her voice that she wasn't actually very confident in herself - she sang it at a pitch that was way too low, volume that was way too soft, and she didn't know how to sing some middle/later parts of the song. She got some claps from the audience at the end, though I guess it was kinda like a pity clap, or maybe a clap for respecting her courage to sing in front of an audience. I did clap for the latter. As she found her way back to the audience sitting on the stairs, I found that she was just sitting by herself. I wanted to approach her, just to say that I admire her bravery, and just wanted to know what inspired her to do that, because I sure do need some inspiration to be taking more risks like that to live more fully (that's a topic of another post). However, of course I was too scared to do that. What if she actually has a boyfriend who's just away for the moment? What if she thinks I'm hitting on her? What if she's much younger than me and started asking me about life questions that people my age should know the answer to? (this really came up to my mind - crazy how my mind works sometimes) So I decided to defer my decision and turned my attention back to the busker. Not long after, she left the scene, carrying what seems to be 3-4 fully stuffed Don Don Donki grocery bags towards the basement. I thought of following her, out of curiosity, but maybe also secretly hoping that I would've gathered the courage to ask the questions I wanted to ask, but I decided that would be too weird so I just stayed with the busker for a few more minutes until I realized it was already 7.30+ and I really should get a dinner. Since it would've been too late if I stick to my original plan to have my dinner at HV, I decided to have dinner at the Don Don Donki food court instead, and had a really unique and amazingly flavorful maze soba (https://g.page/kanda-soba-singapore). All in all a very enjoyable day.

Wanted to write more but it's late and tomorrow is Monday, work calls. But anyway just wanted to write that I see someone who might've been the same girl today in the Bugis MRT, on my way to a friend's birthday dinner. She had the same short ponytail, same/similar grey jacket (at least I think so, the grey jacket was very non-descript, or I'm just not good at discerning people's fashion), and.... same bulky grocery bags on both hands... So I might just be imagining things, and anyway it's not like I could do anything about it. Going up to her and bringing up the fact that I noticed her from Clarke Quay the evening before would be even weirder than me following her down the basement just to ask her those questions, not to mention if it turns out to be a different person LOL. So I guess I should let it be. Though imagine the drama plot potential if it were her and I actually went up to her tho lol.

Not gonna lie, a part of me do wish it was all true, and that same part of me also wished that I actually went up to her and say those words just to see how crazy things can also come true. But of course realistically, it would either be 1) weird/creepy if it's the same person 2) embarrassing if it's a different person. So I guess I did the right thing.

Anyway, all the best in your life's endeavours! And please wish me the best in mine!