10th august batch of interns

Sze, Natalie (me) and E-lynn.

it's been a while since the last entry, and since then the previous batch of interns have left; Sze, E-lynn and I are the current interns— holding the posts of the guardians of the Singapore Pavilion. the weather here is hot—but not humid, thank god—we slip out of the apartment in the morning and begin sweating almost immediately. Venice is beautiful, is everything i imagined it to be.

we've slowly been getting used to life here, memorizing our way back to the apartment, the small lanes around San Marco, found ourselves a lunch routine. at night, we cook our own meals, sink back into the couch with our laptops and prepare for the next day.

set-up in the morning consists of: turning on the computer, turning on the main switch, making sure the smoke machines are filled up with the liquid chemicals, fluff up the bean bags. we run a specific programme for test-runs, and make sure all the lights, speakers, and subs work fine. after that, we take turns sitting upstairs on the second level and downstairs, answering any question a visitor might have.

most common questions are:

do we have to pay to enter?
but what does this ALL mean?
is there a toilet here i can use?
where is the mexican pavilion?

the viewership at the Singapore Pavilion averages 150 on a good day, and sometimes i stay upstairs watching the smoke machines spit out the cloud. i like watching the reaction or response of the visitors, especially after the last screening of the day and the cloud drifts slowly in suspension towards the windows. a canadian man with his two children said, it was a spiritual experience. we get that a lot. an otherworldly exhibit, that's what we have.

yesterday was our first day off together, as the previous monday was the day of an Italian Festival and the Biennale stayed open. we traveled to Verona to visit the statue of Juliet, and the balcony of 'but soft, what light through yonder window breaks' fame. Juliet's right breast has eroded fantastically through the constant clutching of tourists, 'for good luck'. it looks rather unhygienic too, so we didn't fancy a grope. after days of pasta, pizza, risotto, repeat, we finally found a Macdonalds along our way back to the train station to have nuggets and fries at. capitalization, we truly thank you.

it's been almost three weeks since we first arrived, and E-Lynn is leaving tomorrow.
Steph (Teo) will be flying in from the US to take over.

Natalie x