This week, I made a lot of content from previous events both as visibility markers and proof-of-concept for future corporate collaborations and donation requests. I was mostly again focused on fundraising this week, with a couple lessons here and there. Children's Day is coming up (October 2nd, in Singapore), and we want to make a big push for donations and collaborations in honor of that holiday. As such, I've been planning a read-a-thon proposal in conjunction with the National Library system (the Central library is mere steps away from our organization's offices).
I've also introduced the idea of partnering with local restaurants and setting up a "Food-for-a-Cause" programme, in a similar vein to the school spirit nights common in the U.S., on the basis that families are likely to take their kids out to eat on Children's Day as a form of celebration, and restaurants may be willing to partner with a community charity working with kids on that day.
I've been exploring Singapore as well—both by myself and with friends. I've finally gotten a little used to the heat and humidity here, and I've started taking nighttime walks.
I've tried almost every hawker dish: chicken rice, char siu pork, roast duck, roast pork, fried hokkien mee, lor mee, fishball noodles, nasi lemak, nasi padang, chili crab, fish congee, char kuey teow, rojak, beef rendang, satay, fried oyster omelettes, carrot cake, and kaya toast, to name a few. We had a new-teacher-welcome lunch that included many of these delicious dishes (we walked 15 minutes there and back in the heat and ate together in a classroom).
My coworkers are all lovely, but most of them have their own families and lives to get back to; often, I find myself on my days off wandering Singapore alone. The café scene in Singapore is great: the variety and creativity is nothing to sneer at. I visited Hanco Coffee in Orchard, and my coffee came with a poem:
Sitting in these coffeeshops by myself, I'm reminded of something that Mahmoud Darwish wrote in his collection, A River Dies of Thirst:
I linger over my coffee to preserve an acquired sense of companionship with my surroundings, for a stranger has no alternative but to construct some kind of intimacy with some random place, and I have chosen this corner of the bread shop to form a daily routine, as if I have an appointment with hardworking memories that rely on themselves to grow and evolve.
Although I've always been comfortable with exploring alone, I've had to make peace with it in Singapore more than anywhere else, because my solitude here is more created by necessity than volition. In New York, friends are just a text away—here, nobody is taking trans-Atlantic flights to join me for a coffee. But I've found real peace in my companionship with myself and my surroundings; I simply take a humble notebook with me and sit without fear or expectation. It's an old adage, I suppose, but true: alone doesn't have to mean lonely.