Cart’s last day in SG : The engagement

Without realising it, it was already his final day in Singapore. Where did all the time go?

After the pizza outing and that everyone has left, I started to feel my emotional turmoil again and the floodgates opened. All the other times I’ve always felt sad when we had to say our goodbyes, but this time round, the feeling of sadness was more intense than ever, that it caught me by surprise. My eyes hurt and felt swollen as I went on my journey home.

Friday, 4 Jan 2008

After I left work for the day, I parked my scooter in the car-park near the bed and Breakfast. When I arrived, Cart took out the last pack of pasta that my aunt has kindly made for him and asked me to join him for a late lunch. I was surprised as I would have been too hungry to wait for anyone. He said that he preferred to eat with me than eating alone. I thought that that was kind of sweet 🙂

It may not look good, but it tastes absolutely delicious!

After our lunch we decided to take the scooter and head to Sim Lim Square. We proceeded to the carpark and I was just about to rummage in my handbang to find my keys when my eyes scanned the scooter box. And my eyes went completely opened wide. My keys were in the scooter box!

How could I have left it in there! Someone could have just taken the keys and rode away with my beloved scooter! I must have been extremely stressed out. It was disconcerting. Cartcart tried to calm me down and I realised how lucky I was that the scooter wasn’t stolen.

At length with Cart safely behind me, we first stopped by to have coffee at ‘Geek Terminal’. It was open! We were finally here! I told Cartcart that Geek Terminal was the place where I believe serves very good coffee.

I didnt drink all that, this were what my friends had the last time we were at Geek Terminal

Here was what Cartcart had to say :

After our coffee, we then continued our journey and rode past Tekka Market and I parked my scooter in an area somewhere near Chinatown and in a short time, we had a leisurely walk to Sim Lim Square.

Sim Lim Square is a famous center for electronic gadgets. It was interesting seeing Cartcart there. As we both loved electronic gadgets, we were going about different stores peering and examining anything that caught our eye.

Eventually, after comparing the prices, Cart decided to get the Creative Zen. He looked quite pleased at himself after finding out that it was duty free. 🙂

The gadget was spiffy. I’ve been enamored over it after seeing the guys over at Tech 65 do a review over it. I tried getting Cartcart to buy one for me too but he said no. Instead he said, “I’m getting you something else.” I stared quizzedly at him and he continued, “Where is the nearest jeweller here? I want to buy you a ring”

OOH!!!

I was most excited that my mind couldn’t compute momentarily. I called up my good friends Geri and Juli to ask them if they knew of any jeweller in the vicinity.

Geri adviced us to head to Parco Bugis Junction as there were a number of Jewellers there. So we walked around and sure enough, there were about 5 jewellers side by side.

We walked into one of them. It definitely was an interesting experience being with Cartcart in a jewellery shop. I asked gingerly about their engagement rings. Already in my mind I knew that I wanted. A simple but classic solitaire set in yellow gold.

And the man at the counter showed us a collection of beautiful and exquisite rings. But I didn’t want any of them, they were all white gold.

So we tried going to the other jewellers, Goldheart, Lee Hwa, Soo Kee, Meyson, Citigems. And it was all the same. None of them carried yellow gold with them.

One of the goldsmith helpfully adviced us to go back to Chinatown to see if there were any jewellers there.

So we headed back to Chinatown. By then, there were a number of street buskers around. It was fascinating to see them. One of the performers were doing a beautiful piece of calligraphy using his mouth.

That was when we stumbled upon a jeweller as we passed by and I noticed yellow gold in their display case!

But when looked at their designs, I did not really liked it. The designs looked much too garish and what made it worse was that they were all very tight! Suddenly I felt very self conscious of my body type.

After a while, I found one that could fit me. Vehemently, not wanting white gold and with little time left, I looked at Cartcart and said, “I think I could learn to like this one.” Cart looked at me and asked, “Are you sure?” I just nodded my head and he proceeded to take out his card.

That was when the goldsmith shook his head and said, “Cash only please”. We were crestfallen. Eventually, the both of us left the shop quite dejectedly.

cart : I still would like to give you a ring

rinaz : Lets go back to parco, I dont really like white gold, but I can live with it

cart : Ok. lets go

We decided to walk by the other street as we both did not want to walk in Bugis Street where it would definitely be crowded by this time. That was when suddenly, out of nowhere, pops out a man out of a jewelery shop. It was Taka Jewellery. I wasn’t very optimistic as I was sure that it would be the same as the others.

Man : Hello! Would you like to come in?

Cart : Do you have yellow gold?

Man : Oh yes we do!

And just like that, I saw the ring that I wanted. A simple solitaire set in yellow gold. It was perfect! We were both pleasantly surprised at our find.

Later on Cartcart took the ring and slipped it to my finger, and proposed. Of course I said yes! 🙂

We had a quick vegetarian dinner at one of the hawker center where I had the yummiest spring roll ever. For a vegetarian one, I was impressed at how flavourful it was that I went back for seconds, even though I wasnt hungry.

We went back to the scooter where I found out that my cashcard was stolen! I had forgotten to take it out of the IU-unit and someone swooped in to steal it. That was twice the blunder that I did today. I was in extreme stress that I could not even think properly.

I was so upset with myself.

We rushed back to the bnb to grab his luggage before grabbing a cab to the airport. The cabbie was cheerfully chit chatting with us and when we almost reached the airport, both of us were amazed by the long queue of taxis at the airport. The taxi driver said that he had to wait about 3 hours once while waiting in line for a passenger.

As soon as we reached there, I began to feel very sad. I didn’t think we spent enough time together. I really didn’t want Cartcart to go.

But in what seems to be no time at all, he was in the ticketing queue and then I reluctantly let him go and waved while he disappeared off in the boarding hall. My heart just shattered. In front of everyone, I started to have tears rolling down my cheeks. I just couldn’t help myself.

Aftermath

Its been about 3 weeks now that he’s left. Of course I do miss him a lot. But life goes on. I guess I’m very lucky in that we both want to make this relationship work.

So for the moment, I’ll just try to keep being positive and hang on in there. We’ll be planning our wedding this coming December. But as much as just thinking of the expenditures and the planning makes me stressed out, I can’t wait to become Mrs Cartcart 🙂

Cartcart, I love you very much. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for being the way you are. Thank you for loving me 🙂

In this series :

• Part 1 : His arrival
• Part 2 : Of first lessons and I am legend
• Part 3 : Of science center and yummy spagetti too
• Part 4 : Gorgeous sounds of the handbells
• Part 5 : Meeting the aunt
• Part 6 : My classmate 10th year reunion
• Part 7 : Not enough time at the Singapore Zoo!
• Part 8 : Cart’s big day
• Part 9 : Of heavenly chocolate and earthly pizza