Knock Knock. Hi! Anyone in this bubble?

Some days I go shopping by myself and I can spend a whole afternoon walking down Orchard road, lost in my own thoughts, occasionally humming or cursing to myself.

Today I go down Orchard and I find that everyone wants to talk to me. Is it the planetary alignments? Is Mars in my moon ascendant or something like that, causing me to seem extra sociable to everyone else? Or am I giving out some strange hormones that draws people to me? [sure, that explains the lady in the comic book shop.... *shiver*]

First sign: I go down to Alaric's Comics down at Cineleisure looking for an edition of a Sandman trade paperback that was starting to be out of print. [when did they bring in the new editions?? Argh!!] They didn't have it, but the guy behind the counter offered to sell me his 2nd hand copy, at the retail price. I said I'd think about it, and they were nice enough to recommend some shops I could go to, in order to find the edition I wanted. "We don't have it, but try the one in the basement of ..... " Gee, how many shops direct you to their competitors when they don't have something you want? Even when I was making signs to get out of the shop, they were still recommending shops for me to go to. Finally a "Bye!" and out.

Second: I go down to a little ulu shop I know of down in the basement of Paradiz center. They had the edition [YeaH!] but sold it abt $10 more than Alaric's did [Ergh....]. The lady was rather nice, though. A smile and plea and I got $5 off the price of the book. Yeah! It's still a bit more ex than the shops outside, but if the book's out of print... I'm not complaining. So anyway, fork over the money, sigh, comment on price, comment on high price, talk about stupid govt raising prices and GST when they were the ones who screwed up in the first place all these guys in power so much money what do they care about the man in the street when it's the man in the street who suffers the most everytime one of them makes some stupid mistake...... just like that I spent 1 hour in her shop talking. To a woman whose name I didn't even know.

Third: By the time I come out of her shop, it's raining heavily. [wah...? where the heck did this come from???] I manage to run from Paradiz to as far as the Singapore Arts Museum. Then I realise that the way from the SAM to the next building is rather far. As I'm standing there contemplating, this cleaner comes up to me and goes, "Heavy hor?" I nod. "yah lor, how like that?" He starts talking about some jokers who apparently walked off with Tiger Beer umbrellas and never came back. I never really understood what he said, but I nod in a empathic manner. Then he suggests I try the bus stop at the previous building and I thank him and go off.

Walk to the other side of the building and the rain's even heavier! I stand there, contemplating whether I could make it across the road without getting too wet, and then Cleaner comes over and offers me an umbrella! "Na, for you." "Huh? If I take then how to return you?" [excuse the Singlish. I'm aiming for realism here.] "No need lah, give you." "HUH? Cannot lah! So pai say!" "No, give you. My house a lot of umbrella, sui sui one!" "You can go home or not like that? I scared you no umbrella to go home ah!" "Don't worry about me lah!" And just like that I got a free umbrella.

So strange to suddenly have all these strangers talking to me, like they've known me all along, but in reality only for a couple of minutes. Usually I drift by in my own little bubble when I'm out by myself, [sometimes I prefer it that day. Esp when it comes to pushy salespeople. Ugh!] but today there're a buncha people who were knocking on that bubble. Either my face looks especially friendly today or I look less antisocial than I think.

Or it could be pheromones, but if that's the case, I really wonder about the comic shop lady.