Can't feel my arms anymore.

Well, okay, that was more like a figure of speech; I do feel them. They're making their presence and existence and attachment to my body very painfully known, thank you very much.

Yesterday, I did a tour guide job; Ian's lobang: bring Japanese students who are here on a field trip around Singapore. Basically, they tell you where they wanna go and you bring them there. And maybe chat with them a little. I don't know any Japanese though.

But apparently, the guides aren't really supposed to know Japanese, since the kids are supposed to be improving their English anyway, but most of the people whom the Jap Studies Soc get to do these arubaitos (as they're called) know Japanese. Makes it a lot easier to communicate with them, after all.

The group I had yesterday were six girls, all 17 years old, from Aichi prefecture. I only know four of their names though; Nodoka and Masuya seemed the most enthusiastic (so to speak), almost always walking in the front of the group, and hence the ones I spoke to (or attempted to communicate with) the most often. But Masuya and Iyumi were the only ones who actually ever started conversation with me. And Yoshie, the quietest girl of the bunch, never said a thing the whole time. Even when I asked her name, she just held up the lanyards that they were all wearing and showed me her name and smiled. Jinshen (the guy whom I think is in charge) later commented that they weren't from a very good school, so their English wasn't very good either.

My group did have electronic dictionaries, though. Haha.

Anyway, when we left the hotel yesterday, many groups wanted to go to Merlion Park. That threw a lot of the guides for a loop. Jinshen had briefed a few of the first-timers earlier, saying that usually, they'd want to go to Chinatown or Little India first, and anyway, at 9.30 am, nothing else is open. So when quite a few of them said that they wanted to see Merlion Park... yeah. And it didn't help that quite a few of us also had no idea where the place is.

I saw the lady from the tour agency (JTB) who was one of the go-betweens for the school and the agency as we came down to the lobby of the hotel, and I asked her where Merlion Park was. And the woman's immediate response was to stare at me and ask if I was Singaporean.

Well, no, I'm not, but that's not the point, woman! How many Singaporeans can actually be bothered with Merlion Park, anyway? Who cares to find out where the hell it is, unless they have kids who want to see the friggin' fish-lion-hybrid-monstrosity? Singaporeans are just all so jaded with the Merlion already; and the fact that I'm not the only one of the guides who didn't know where it is just proves it.

Worked it out in the end, though; caught up with some of the groups who'd already left the hotel, bumped into Jinshen's group at the first traffic light, opposite Raffles City, and found out that his group was going to Merlion Park as well. He said that he had no idea where it was either and that he'd never been there before, but he had a rough idea now of its location. So he told me to tag along. Which I very gratefully did.

Turns out the place is behind One Fullerton (if I remember right). Daft, I tell you. Should never have moved the Merlion in the first place; it looked much better and so much more visible where it was.

After that, Chinatown, where they spent a good amount of time, about one and a half hours; when we took the MRT, they were fascinated by how all they had to do was tap the card, and they were even more amazed when a dollar was refunded when they returned the standard ticket. As we came up the escalator, they started to get really excited as the shophouses came into view. They started to buy a lot of stuff from the "3 for $10" shops, and when we bumped into Jinshen's group again later, he suggested to me that I take them to Bugis if they wanted to have lunch, and told me to wait for a double-decker bus coz they'd have never been on one before.

But when we crossed the Garden Bridge, it turn out that they saw the Q Bread bakery and bought some stuff from there instead. Then, wanting to go back to the Orchard area, we crossed the bridge back, where they then wanted to stop and sit in the shade of a few of the trees up there to eat. And they got fascinated all over again when they saw that a crew were shooting an Indian movie on the bridge.

In the end, I brought them back to the hotel at 3.15 (we were supposed to be back by 3.30 pm coz they had an early evening flight); Ian's group bought him a pair of white Havaianas, man.

Awkward moment of the day was when we were on the bus and we passed the Civilian War Memorial; you know, the one which consists of four pillars, each of which is supposed to represent one of the four races in Singapore which suffered and died during the Japanese Occupation years. As it happened, the Memorial caught Iyumi's eye and she then turned to me and asked in hesitant English what it was.

First thought: "Oh shit."

In the end, with the help of one of their electronic dictionaries, I just told them that it was a war memorial and hoped that they wouldn't ask any further. They didn't. Good thing.

So why do my arms hurt, you may ask?

Well, yesterday, I figured that I might go to school after the tour was over and do a bit of reading, and as a lack of foresight on my part, I hadn't left my course pack in my locker but had brought it home instead. So yesterday, I carried my bag everywhere for about six and a half hours; I hardly sat down at all, and my shoulders became very sore. And today, archery training. After about a week of non-practice.

It all adds up. And it hurts.

At least today I've thought to leave my course pack in school, so if I want to do reading after tomorrow's tour, I won't have to lug it everywhere with me.

Oh, and did I mention that for the six and a half hours' work, I got paid $94.50? ;D