Monday, January 16, 2012

Hey, I am Zach from Canada



Friday was an interesting day. As I mentioned Corey and I grabbed some Thai food that was awesome.  Accompanied by another trip to Ikea, I have been become an Ikea fiend, although I still dislike it. It’s kind of interesting now that there are tons of bamboo plants and red/gold pillows in heart of the holiday season. 

Thankfully Friday was a scheduled rest day from Rushfit. Although I did go for a half hour run. The humidity is something I will never get used to. After getting all cleaned up I headed to Sque. Sque is a restaurant/bar in Clarke Quay where this months Internations gathering was to happen. Meeting up with Zora, David and eventually Clemens we all set out to meet new people.

The first event I was a little nervous as to what to expect, this time was different. Immediately I met 3 or 4 people from France, shortly followed by an American woman. It still feels weird to tell people that I am here to model, but oh well. I always feel like preconceived notions about models will judge me before anyone begins to have a conversation with me. Thankfully I am good enough at communicating that anyone sharing a few words with me realizes I am not like most models. 

While chatting with a few women from Germany, I discovered one works in Crop Protection for BASF. Now this doesn’t mean much to many of you but I found this interesting as my father works in crop protection as well, direct competition. Well not quite as he specializes in Canadian crops, wheat, canola, barley, etc. while this woman deals mostly with rice. 

The environment felt so much more inviting than the first event I attended. On many occasions I felt a tap on the shoulder to turn around and see an outstretched hand. I met many people from the UK, saw Barbara (my squash partner) from a distance, a few people I met the previous event (including Qian who I will be going bowling with and some of her friends), and you got it CANADIANS. Since I arrived I have only briefly bumped into 1 Canadian. This wasn’t the case tonight.

While talking with the Germans, they mentioned they saw a few Canadians, and then tap tap, turn around nothing. Look down, ah there she is. A very outgoing Asian woman from Toronto. She was hilarious, fun and loved chatting about hockey. While discussing snow and snowboarding, another woman from Toronto appeared, then Montreal. While chatting another one walked by and I grabbed her, she was from Winnipeg. Before you knew it we were in Canada central and more were gravitating our direction. No other Calgarians, but every province was represented except Saskatchewan, NL and NB. It was a pleasure to get a taste of home, even if it was just in conversation.


I love to people watch, and as things calmed down I began to do such a thing. A Singaporean joined me for this, we laughed because of the entire pick up lines guys tried to use on her that night.  The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but what were your intentions of coming tonight.  For me it was obvious to meet new friends, and tonight had been quite successful. But as I looked around it became evident that some people were there for networking, others to get drunk, and some to find a companion. Interesting concept. We continued joking about the book “the Game” by Neil Strauss, which is basically about how to pick up women. A few guys blatantly said things directly from that book. Which is fine most the time as most people haven’t read it or even heard about it. But it’s A) Lazy B) makes you look like an absolute fool if its not congruent with your personality.  Anyone looking for tips to meet women, be confident, and be you. The same holds true for friends, be you, be confident and most importantly have fun.

Mel showed up a little bit later, introduced me to more people and I did the same for her. Then Mel, Zora and I went for a bite to eat. This is a common thing to eat later at night in Singapore. We had some dry fried beans, and some fried rick noodles with seafood.  I intentionally spelled it as rick noodles as that’s what the menu said; I assure you they were not made of rick, but of rice. 

No comments:

Post a Comment