Today I was having lunch with Chirag (it can hardly be considered lunch, since it was 5pm. It's only 'lunch' because it was my second meal of the day.) after our protein practical and then this Japanese guy (his name is Hide. Well, actually Hidenori Miyamoto, and I only knew that after he gave us his namecard) came to ask if he could ask us a couple of questions. I was in the "I want to talk to people mood, especially foreigners", so I was like yeah yeah sure come, sit down! His command of english wasn't very good, but he managed to communicate (actually more to chirag, and then to me via chirag hahaha. dam i'm bad at understanding english through thick accent) that he's traveling around the world (wtf right? more on this later though) and because he felt that Japanese youth/students lacked aspirations, he's traveling around the world asking youth from each country to write down their dreams to encourage/inspire the japanese back home. So yeah, it was fun talking to him when he asked some preliminary questions like what we felt about singapore and about japan. And then he asked us to write down our dream in this sketchbook of his, after which we had to take a picture with it! and then in another smaller book we had to write 1. what we think of singapore. 2. something to encourage the japanese youth. 3. a catchphrase we like. 4. things that we think are most important to us.

and those were going up on the website for the project. Hmm yeah check that often enough and one day me holding what I wrote as my dream will be there. so then we started to ask him questions instead. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? WHERE ARE YOU GOING NEXT? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN SINGAPORE? and of course, WHERE DID YOU GET THE MONEY TO TRAVEL SO MUCH?!! ok haha the first few questions he answered pretty easily. he went china, korea, vietnam, thailand, and erm there's this map thing on the website you can find out there too. and in all he's going to 28 countries in 6 months!!! omgomgomg. heck i should have written traveling around the world (28 countries in 6 months) as my dream instead. when we tried to ask where he got the money to travel so much, ok nvm shall try to rewrite the conversation (it's pretty funny):

me: where did you get the money to travel?
guy: my name?
me: no, no, money.
guy: Money?!?!? Nonononono..... Me (sthsthsthsth).

anw he Nonononono cos he thought we were asking him for money after being interviewed by him! oman. but he still couldn't get what we were trying to ask, and somehow chirag asked if he had a business (so that maybe we know where he might be getting the money from) and he said yes, 2, if i'm not wrong. haha but in the end we didn't really get the answer. Hmm but anw from the website it seems there are quite a few sponsors and supporters so i guess that's how he gets to TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD WHEN HE'S JUST 23!

okok.

and when he was done and we wished him luck and said bye he asked if our friends were nearby (we were in sci canteen) so he could ask them too, but sadly no one i knew was around. and then he went off.

and i headed to the lib to mug, feeling happy about the encounter cos it was a refreshing encounter to break the monotony of the day, and feeling JEALOUS THAT I'M NOT TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD IN 28 DAYS EVEN AFTER I TURN 23. or maybe i will.

man.... if only i had the time and money. actually, would i dare do it alone? haha. he's going calcutta (or kolkata, but i like calcutta cos of the CALCUTTA I AM A TAXI DRIVER IN CALCUTTA song.) next.

ok i dunno why i'm so hyped up by this traveling around the world thing. i guess we keep hearing pple say they wanna travel around the world but this is really the first time i met someone who's in the midst of doing it. i mean when pple go on sep and all, the best was to travel around europe. HAH. big deal. LOL.