20/04/2015

Today I went to Changi Airport in the morning for a CAAS interview.

It was a long train ride which mostly consisted of me trying not to step on people in my court shoes, and me admiring a tourist's jumpsuit that had drawings of jaguars on it (the big cat, not the car)

I got to Changi and immediately appreciated the i-am-going-on-a-holiday smell tht airports engender. It gave me serious England pangs which for a minute  really exciting (i think my heart may have sped up) and then for the next minute were not even funny they were so real.

The assessment centre was deathly quiet when I got in and also really cold and I cursed myself for not bringing a cardigan. I sat next to two guys, one was was really quiet and the other who kept talking to the boys on his left about army.

I wondered if no one was talking to me because I have a pimple on my nose.

We were split into three groups after that, and I moved so I was sitting next a girl and could finally talk.

A lady in very stylish flared pants read out the rules of the exercise to us and the schedule for the day, and asked if we had any questions. I raised my hand,

"If you have special dietary requirements, for lunch, should we tell you now?"

As Ben said,

'Oh miri'

'Good first impressions every time huh'

The rest of the day was rather uneventful. A girl called candace who wore a red dress like candace in Phineas and Ferb let me borrow her jacket so I didn't become an icicle, which was such a blessing. Although it didn't stop me from shivering before my presentation.

On the train ride home, I saw a lovely little boy sitting on the lap of his maid. He held a red and yellow dinosaur in either hand and he looked just like Joanna Goddard's Toby.

I also saw a man, half his face red from what looked like burns. He neither looked at his phone nor read a book, but stared with an expression that was a mixture of defiant pride and sadness. I felt silly for feeling so self-conscious over one little pimple when it would be so difficult to face the stares of people every day for a colour that is not your fault.

I stood next to a foreign worker who was thumbing through his passport, tracing the illustrations of the landmarks of his home country on the pages.

At commonwealth station, there was a book sale, one of those three for $10 book fairs, and so I bought 'The Help', 'Mister Pip' and 'The secret life of bees'. There is something immensely comforting in the act of buying books. It's like a promise to yourself, a whispered promise - I will take an adventure some day soon and enter this world which I now hold in my hands between the browned pages of this book.