White people can’t tolerate the heat

 Sorry I couldn’t treat you with 2 posts today, but it was a very long day. As I had mentioned in the previous couple posts, I got the gig for the corporate video and it was expected to be 10-12 hours of “work”. 

Today wasn’t too bad of a start; I needed to be at the Marina Bay area for 10am start time. A quick jump on the train and I am there in less than 30. We were told to meet at #11. Well folks, if you get told to find #11 good luck! There is no address signage for there because well we were actually in a big field overlooking downtown and the Marina Bay sands. After wandering around aimlessly for 5 or 10 minutes I found it. Actually very hard to miss, this was a much bigger production than I expected. Easily 50-60 extras, and 6 of us featured extras.

Shortly after my arrival, with carry on case full of close, I was assigned one of my long sleeve t-shirts and jeans to wear for the day. This entire shoot was to be done outside, in 30-degree weather, that’s the temperature before the humidity so closer to 50 today.

An Aussie woman and myself were to be a couple for some of the shooting. I can’t for the life of me remember her name, but she was wonderful to work with. Very easy for the two of us to chat, I was excited for her and her twin 9-month-old boys. Makes it very easy to smile when you think about that. We were the first set of people filming. The orders were very simple, walk up to the cooking counter, talk with the chef, point at a few things, and receive bowls and walk away smiling.  While doing that they needed extra’s just strolling in the fairgrounds around us. It took a while for the extra’s to look normal in the background so we had to do maybe 5 or 6 takes. A couple different positions for hand-offs etc. This wasn’t to bad, but waiting for things between takes was ridiculous. It was very hot and humid out so I was sweating like a mad man. They put some make up on my face so I wouldn’t be so shiny from sweat. At this point I was feeling like a prince. I had one assistant dabbing my forehead and neck of sweat, with another one waving a hand fan for me. 

 

After that we just hung out for a bit in the shade, while 2 other models filmed stuff with t-shirts. The following part was cool and I hope the pictures turned out. Waiting for them to develop. The goal was to make the big field look like a carnival, so we all had to walk around with balloons, check out the stands and have fun. This was easy as Geri; the girl from South Africa was also there today. Her and I and the Aussie just hung out and checked out things. After who knows how long of doing this, on a count of three we all released balloons. I thought this was interesting as littering in Singapore is a $1000 fine. I reconciled that it’s not littering until it hits the ground, likely miles away. We did a second shoot of the same thing again.

Next up were myself and my girlfriend for the day. I wonder about continuity of the shoot, she had her wedding ring on the entire time and me well, no ring for me. I don’t think they noticed though. Back on task. We were sitting down at a table just hanging out and eating food. Sorry no pic as this was working. The cuisine was delicious and looked incredible as well. Black rice with mixed vegetables and chili beef, or chicken dishes or pork dishes and tofu as well, all incredible.  It was funny too as we were expected to use our chopsticks. I am starting to get a handle on them. Another week or two and I will be snapping a fly out of the air. 

Shortly after finishing these shots, darkness set over the sky, one that would not lift for almost 4 hours. The Aussie and I hurried back to the tents and set up camp. It rained, and then rained some more, then it drizzled, then cats and dogs fell from the sky, you catch my drift. Geri and I chatted quite a bit, where she is living right now there are a lot of beautiful cars in the garage. This conversation was all sparked by our heads turning every time a Maserati, or Ferrari or Lambo zoomed by. Cooped up under the tent it was uncomfortable, sweaty and boring.  But we all survived.

While under the tent I received a text from my agent regarding tomorrow’s gig. We are meeting at a hotel restaurant at 8:45 sharp. Geri got the gig too, so we are meeting at the MRT station then rolling in together. Thankfully, the only thing I need to pack is my black shoes. So flip flops and shorts for tomorrow.

While waiting for the rain to stop, I took my time to chat with one of the women responsible for getting me the job. We had an awesome conversation about food. Singaporean’s love their food.  She recommended a few really good hawker stations and some dishes that are a must to try. My newton station experience the night before she said was nothing on what I can get at a few other places. She was surprised I like the hawker food, as most white people can’t tolerate the hot flavor. Another great conversation, people are so friendly here. As usual, networking. If they are looking for a Caucasian male for a role in something, I just might pop into mind.

Finally after the rain let up, we resume shooting. Only one more thing left, a movie theatre type thing. A big screen was set up, chairs were in place and extras were lined up. Well all except the 6 of us. We were assigned specific seats as couple’s all relatively close to each other. On the screen they put up a trailer for a Korean film, based on WW2. It was funny though that the actors were portraying Russians and they were Asian.  This whole scene took about an hour and a half maybe 2 hours. Many extras struggled to look normal when the camera was that much closer to them. There was one extra that did awesome at getting some of the others to loosen up which was great.

Finally, what I had been waiting to hear all day. IT’S A WRAP. The day was over.

As I rolled out I made sure to thank everyone that had helped along the way. If I remotely had contact with anyone I wanted to express my gratitude. There was an American fellow who was directing people what to do. He was awesome with the food shots earlier and funny with the popcorn/theatre thing. I chatted with him for a little bit about football, we are going to go grab beers before my time is up here. He also expressed that they were very happy with my performance and attitude and that if another role comes up he would give me a shout. Thumbs up!

It was now 8pm I was tired and a little hungry. Lunch was provided and Geri shared her chicken with me so I could have a “man’s portion” and she didn’t like the chicken (rightfully so, it was very almost wet). I had a few granola bars packed with me and drank a ton of water. Ah that reminds me I forgot my 1.5 L bottle there, it was empty and I bet it got recycled (don’t worry it was just a normal bottled water bottle). I stopped by a place called Asian kitchen and splurged on dinner, full service sit down kind of dinner. I ordered this beef (the menu mentioned frank Sinatra in it) and rice and paid $9. It was awesome, another epic meal. Do I have low standards or is the food really that good here. North American food can be so plain and boring, here they are so adventurous with spices and everything is hot. Not unbearable hot but Zach loves kind of hot. 

I finally made it home shortly before 9, exactly 12 hours after I left in the morning. My first stop was to my room to grab my swimsuit and then half hour in the pool. Tonight I did a few laps, did some of the P90x stuff in the water and added something new. Wide claps under water, this just killed my chest. The harder you push the greater the resistance, it was awesome.

Good night everyone, another long day is ahead tomorrow. 

And look another Gecko. Same Place again today. 

When In Rome

 Today was another relaxed day; I started the day off with a hour long workout, half hour in the pool and half an hour poolside reading my book. As many know the Asian culture likes white skin. This isn’t the case for men, so for all that work this summer I did to hide from the sun, I am to embrace her rays and become a subtle bronze. 

I spent a lot of the day in front of camera. Not the camera I am supposed to be here in front of but on Skype. I had the opportunity to catch up with Dad, Brenna, Suzie and Mom all on in the span of 3 hours. Needless to say I was all skyped out. I am acutally skyping again as I type this. I have received a lot of positive feedback from people and its quite motivating.

More details came in about my schedule for this week. As previously mentioned it will be hectic from Wednesday on.  Tomorrow I have the shooting for the corporate video. I am excited to try this out as it will involve some acting. The day is supposed to be a long day, likely 10-12 hours. On Thursday I have shooting for the Condo development, again this will be a long day. After I finish, it sounds like I have to run somewhere else to do fitting for the fashion show Friday. Busy busy busy, I think this may cut into much of my pool/gym time. Tough life sometimes. I really feel fortunate to have these opportunities.

After catching up on Dexter, I headed out to have dinner with one of the locals.  Through Melissa I was introduced to Debbie, a very outgoing, confident, and fun PR professional from Singapore. We met up at Newton station and jumped straight into conversation. Dinner tonight was at a Hawker Centre, my kind of grub. Debbie and I sat down to Ice cold, I mean ICE cold Tigers. They were so cold that they would turn to ice upon being poured, then melt because it was so warm out.

For dinner the menu was spicy chili crab and a stingray dish. Both were incredible, hands down this is the best food I have had since arriving, mind blowing delight.

 I would really like to write more everyone, but I am sorry, I am tired, melatonin is kicking in and I have a full day tomorrow. Night.

O and I spotted a gecko. 

A Tiger is waiting in the freezer

Today was a very slow day work wise for me. Jet lag is starting to clear from its ugly path. Although I was still significantly tired this morning. I jumped out of it with a morning Skype session, followed by the pool and the gym. I need to put on about 1 inch in my chest measurement, so that means bigger chest and bigger back.  My back is getting well taken care of with swimming, because face it I don’t swim that often and I can feel it pretty much every day. So today was a day to pump my Arnold sized chest into action. I cooled off and achieved some cardio in the pool afterwards.

I set up a meeting with the wonderful ladies at the agency to pick up my allowance and chat a little bit. We talked about my cat allergy and they all suggested Zyrtec from the pharmacy, its apparently not to expensive and works like a charm. My cat allergy hasn’t been bugging me that much. But I am very cautious to close my door any time I enter or leave my room. I spend very little time in the common area as a result. Only slightly off topic. During our discussion we talked about the new Pics from Luke Elijah and how we were quite pleased with them. We also discussed about building my book by doing other test shoots. The trouble is actually find a time that works for both a photographer and me. Good news of course! My schedule will be quite busy for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The details haven’t all been confirmed yet, but I got the corporate video gig, also the condo development one and I have another fashion show for Friday. If I were a little more androgynous I would likely let or a squeal or some crazy prepubescent Justin Bieber excitement sound. Instead, I am super stoked.  The video is a 12-hour day, which is kind of crazy. I think it should be fun too. Good experience…adventure.

After leaving OMM I was somewhere between Chinatown and Little India. I went back to the hawker centre that Pat took me to last week. I went straight to the same place to get an Avocado juice. So awesome. Lunch hour was tapering off when I was there it was close to 2:30, so many places were sold out and closed. I found that kind of interesting that many signs have an opening time say 11:00am and close when they run out of food. I found a soup place, to try something different. I wanted this pork rib soup but they were sold out. So I asked the guy, what the other 10 people in line had ordered. Majority ruled and I asked for Buddha Jumped over the Wall with some rice. I swear I took a picture, but it’s not on my phone for some reason. L . Anyway this soup had everything, oyster, squid, pork, chicken, celery, carrot, some sort of root vegetable, mushrooms, probably more that I can’t remember. He also gave me this little disc with a sauce in it. I dipped my finger in the sauce and it almost knocked me over, so salty. It was hot too which I love, but I didn’t use it.  The verdict, way to much food. It was decent I would probably give a 6.5 out of 10. The roasted duck the other day was an 8. Worth the experience for sure.

I saw 4 of these police special command vehicles today. This was outside a bank.

I wanted to continue my adventure so I Crip walked my way over to Dhoby Ghaut station and searched out the printer guy to get my new pics for my book. Curious the whole way I walked into 3 or 4 malls, just to see what they had. There are stores here where you go to play your FPS video games, pretty cool, although I have better things to do. I also darted in and out of the malls, as it felt more humid today than any other day, probably because it rained most of the afternoon.  

Melissa also got back to me and introduced me to a friend closer to my age here in Singapore and also a very experienced woman in Hong Kong with modelling. 

I came home for a bit, watched an episode of Dexter. After much effort I finally found a site that streamed video here in Singapore. If anyone has suggestions they would be greatly appreciated. Then the gurgle of my stomach called me to go grab dinner. Here it is:

I stopped by fair price picked up a few snacks, nature valley bars and some more nuts. And because I haven’t in a while and I have been craving. I spotted this and thought of Dad. He calls the bums that ask for money downtown this. 

And finally I bring you the title of my post:

I titled the post this so I wouldn't forget that my beer is sitting there. This will be my first beer in Singapore.

 PS. Thanks guys I cracked a thousand hits sometime over the last day or two. 10 countries are represented. 

Marching down streets

 When I left you I didn’t have much to report about my day. I was about to head to my call back for the corporate video casting. The dress code was casual smart. This means usually jeans, a collared shirt and dress shoes. Since my one dress shirt is well useless with wine stains and liquor stains, I was down to my purple dress shirt I had brought. I wore this for the first casting so it wasn’t my prime choice.

Leaving the apartment a little early I went on a hunt for a new polo. I easily found a decent one very quickly. Grabbed the medium then strolled on my way. Big mistake, medium here way smaller. I am going to try and take it back, but doubt I will have any luck. I couldn’t get the shirt on, probably could have used an extra large. I really hope I didn’t just burn $20 bucks, rookie mistake.

So I showed up to the casting wearing the purple dress shirt, I packed it with me as a back up, glad I did. Today’s call back casting was much busier than the same one the other day. Children were there and at least another 6 models. Today didn’t involve any talking, just big smiles and a few little acting things. I had to watch a movie and enjoy a cup of coffee (  I was watching the godfather drinking a cup of my pumpkin chai tea from davids tea mmm). It took very little time for me, which is generally a good thing because they got what they were looking for right away.

After that it was about 4:30, dinner time and I was only 15 minutes away from Tjong Bahru Market, from the Layover video. Laser sights and gps guided me there. It was Sunday evening so a large amount of the hawkers were closed. I found a rice porridge place with a line up so I enjoyed that with pork and crispy fried scallions.

In my never ending curiosity I walked around the next mall I saw, Tanglin Plaza. While there I found a department store called John Little. It was much more reasonably priced than the stores on Orchard Road or Marina Bay Sands, and had name brands like Arrow and Jockey. There I picked up a couple more pairs of underwear and a collared shirt. The 3 of those cost about $40. Much better.

During my walk, curiosity continued. It rained for about 15 minutes, I was prepared this time though, umbrella in hand.  The humidty was ridiculous by this point, I stopped at a place called Mr. Bean. Turns out the 900 other Mr. Beans I had seen before I should have checked out. They sell soy and almond milk and soy ice cream. So I picked up one of those, sans cone of course. 

To kill time in the evening, I went for another walk down Orchard Road. I have a feeling I could walk down this street a hundred times and see something new everytime. For example there was this weird guy hopped up on something. I wish you could have seen the look on my face, so puzzled as to what the hell was going on. I spotted this fruit, not exactly sure what it is. Figs? 

As I hopped onto the train for the route back I received a facebook message from one of my best friends during university Jenn. I am not sure what has gone on over the past year and a half but we have really struggled to connect. So we planned to have a skype conversation. It was awesome, so much has gone on for Jenn, she is studying audiology and keeping busy. She loves snowboarding now too. Mad props for her on that J. 

And that about brings me to the end of my day. It bugs me to know that football is starting in just over an hour. And the Sunday night game will be just starting as I wake up. But that is just life. Go Vikings! Hopefully Mr. Peterson will be in shape to play. Running backs sure have taken a beating this year all around. 

The Layover

After a very late night last night I had a much slower start to the day today, I woke up at 10. It’s close to 11:30 and I have only had breakfast and read my book a little bit. That will be the plan for the next little while as well. Its decent out so I will likely lay by the pool catch some sun and read my book. And just when I start to feel like its too warm, approximately an hour and a half ago when I first got up, I will jump in the pool and swim for maybe half an hour.  I will have to be careful about all the swimming though as my back can grow quite quickly and I don’t want to look like a monkey hopped up on hair gel.  

After waking I took Canmoreorless’s advice from beyond.ca about watching a show about Singapore. After searching high and low for a torrent and painfully waiting for it to download. I found it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. I think this video does wonders for showing the culture of food here. It is Anthony Bourdain’s The Layover: Singapore. Enjoy! I know I did! I haven’t been to the Tijong Bahru hawker centre, but it is only a 15 minute walk from my place so may go there for breakfast tomorrow.  

Beauty within the Beast

 So far today, I napped, showered, got vaccinated, had lunch, swam and worked out. I kept myself busy enough for a Saturday, but the evening was rolling around and I needed some entertainment. So I planned to go down to Orchard road, try to redeem that $100 certificate from 7 for all mankind as well as pick up a pair of underwear. The guys weren’t up to anything tonight  so I gave Alex a shout. I think she will be a good friend while I am here very genuine and wants to make it with modeling in an honest way. 

First stop was Dhoby Ghaut station to meet up. There are so many incredible Christmas trees around town, check this one out.

The malls here are incredibly big and confusing. With limited space horizontally many malls have 5 floors above ground and 4 floors below. Its rather incredible how intricately designed these places are with stores directly below road and everything. Eventually after a significant amount of wandering we found 7 for all mankind. Browsing through the clothes I didn’t see anything that jumped out at me. I then decided to ask the staff exactly about the voucher. You knew it was coming, the catch. It has to be on Denim and only regular priced denim. $450 dollar jeans, no thanks not today. Clothes are ridiculously overpriced here. I was looking on the 7 for all mankind website and the exact same jeans are $170 USD, the SGD isn’t that weak.

Conveniently CK was next door, so I picked up a pair of boxers. This time I remembered to buy white. Model tip: Always have a variety of colours of light and dark for everything (jeans, shirts, socks, and yes even underwear). 

After finishing that we headed to the foodcourt, I was hungry and hadn’t had dinner. After a bit of scoping out I followed the line again and had Indonesian curry chicken and guess what, rice.  It was quite delicious, but as usual way to much rice.  

A search for the Singapore Botanical gardens was on my list of adventure for the day. It is all incredible in there, so many plants I have never seen. The humidity was likely 100% while in the gardens, you could literally see the water in the air. I spotted a few geckos (can never seem to snap a pic, they are so fast), some bats and a snail. 

In my latest night yet, I walked into the apartment around 12:30. Thirsty and needing some sugar from all the walking, I decided to go back down to the courtyard vending machine and buy an A&W rootbeer. With my 1.10 I popped it into the machine and pressed the button. Just my luck, the machine didn’t register the change. Probably a good thing, letting me know that I should continue my spell away from pop.