Betchie Bye Golly Wow

She’s out of my life…
She’s out of my life…
And I don’t know whether to laugh or cry
I don’t know whether to live or die
And it cuts like a knife…
She’s out of my life…

Okay, so maybe that song is a tad exaggerrated. It is true that my friend Betchie is out of my (Singapore) life, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry because I’m sad I’m losing her but I’m happy that she is finally doing something she should have done a long time ago, but I probably wouldn’t go so far as to say that I don’t know whether to live or die about this. LOL.

Yes, another one of my friends has left Singapore. She is from a different set of friends, and we had a “last supper” of pizza, pasta, and cake at her place last Monday.

She flew to Abu Dhabi last Friday. I will miss her but I really wish her a fantastic new life over there!

Meanwhile, here are some of my most memorable moments with her, with links to the blogs about them and excerpts from those blogs. It has been a fun four years, girl. Thank you for all the good times!

The place I was referring to is actually a small Italian restaurant in UE Square called Spizzico. The reason why we called it such is because there is one Italian waiter there who is so aligaga (loosely translated means over eager) when he serves us, acting as though there is a customer service exam that he has to ace. On our first visit, he insisted on changing our plates after each course even though we said he didn’t need to, explaining that “This is not a fast food restaurant.”

During our previous food trip,, we came up with a slew of activities that Yves wanted to do before her impending year-long assignment in a yet-to-be-determined other country. “Let’s go do them all, then. Tomorrow, you want?” I joked. “Sure, we can even go abroad if you like,” Arlyn rode on my joke. “Of course we can go abroad! You mean JB, right?” I replied. We all burst out laughing then. JB pertains to Johor Bahru, Malaysia, which is right next to Singapore. It’s so near that you can take a bus and get there in an hour or less, depending on the traffic. Yves liked the idea so much and planned the itinerary. That’s where we went yesterday.

Betchie’s birthday celebration was held in Azzura Beach Bar. We had so much fun dancing in the sand in our floral dresses. The night (or early morning) ended with Zen and the birthday girl jumping into the pool with all their clothes on. LOL. Fun times!

We hit the bar called One Altitude, the world’s highest al-fresco gastro-bar. It’s so high that we had to ride two elevators, then climb a set of stairs just to get there. The place is beautiful, uniquely unlike any other bar I’ve been to perhaps because it has trees on the dance floor, giving it a more “chill” vibe. Then there’s the breathtaking 360-degrees view of the Singapore skyline from 62 floors up through clear glass.

I have a favorite bar game I like to call “name that doppelganger” which entails spotting bar patrons and naming the celebrity that they look like. I saw David Beckham’s doppelganger approach the bar. After a while, he was joined by an horde of his friends, all of them good-looking (or maybe it was just the cheerleader effect*), where I also spotted Shia LaBeouf and Taylor Swift. They danced the night away on the wooden floorboards under the trees and so did we, and we all stayed until the last song faded away, at around 4:30 am.

While drinking, we asked each other how things were going with our own lives and we all had nothing to share. How boring, right? So I suggested, “How about this to liven things up. We will pretend that it is five years from now, and we will talk about our lives as we want it to be then. Go!”

Betchie started it with a genuine wish, something about her spending last week in Greece with her son and her hubby. Then Yves followed, and that was when everything went crazy, because she refused to be serious, and the next thing you know we were pretending that we all led scandalous lives. Haha. The most abused line of the night – “One thing led to another.” Too late we realized that the people from the nearby tables could actually hear us and might think that we really are immoral people. Oops.

We bought groupons for a cupcake-caking class conducted by Oriton Culinary School and found ourselves in the Employment and Employability Institute one fine Saturday morning when we normally would have still been in bed. It was worth it, though. I’ve baked a chocolate cake once before, but this was my first time to make cupcakes.

It was a lovely night of catching up, and I loved the conversation and not just the food. We discussed all sorts of things. The prevalent topic was somehow… women who get married to men who turned out to be the devil. Okay, not the devil exactly, but, you know, a wife beater… or a werewolf.

We realized then that we were the kind of people who had no trouble discussing reality and fantasy as though they were all quite real. I suggested that to prevent this, maybe one could write up surveys before getting married, you know, handing out surveys to one’s friends asking them for anonymous input regarding what they really think of one’s husband-to-be, to speak now or forever hold their peace, since people in love can be quite blinded to their loved one’s faults. Or how about signing a contract with one’s friends, giving them the right to knock you on the head when one is doing stupid things in one’s lovelorn state? Battered wives often do that.

We were in the mood to drink and “chill,” so we looked for a place to do just that and walked along the streets until we found a place where the bars had tables right in the middle of the street. It had such a chill, laid-back vibe, exactly what we were looking for!

We really enjoyed hanging out at that place, sipping our delicious cocktails out in the open air in the middle of the street, talking about all sorts of things and people-watching. It was just the perfect spot to people-watch, there were all sorts dropping by – a gang of teenage Australians, a bunch of dressed up Middle Easterners, locals in their best garb, a couple of Caucasian models (I think so, anyway, with their height and build and looks). It reminded me that Singapore is a melting pot of races.