Birthday Serenade

When I woke up this morning did I expect to have a teenage Malaysian boy on his knee before me, serenading me with a sweet little ditty called 'Bad Love' by the band 'My Chemical Romance'? No.
Did a birthday miracle make this happen? Yes.
This morning Nathan suggested visiting the torture museum, but I vetoed that on my day of celebration. Instead we spent a few minutes exploring the Melaka History, and weird life-size creepy mannequin museum. On our way out the door a gaggle of 8 teens came running up to us, begging us to buy some pickled fruits. Background: these pickled fruits are atrocious. They combine the very worst of pickle flavor with crunchy green fruits.
My first reaction to these frenzied pleas was to throw my hands up and calmly but forcefully ask, "Who are you all working for..and why do you want us to buy these terrible snacks so badly?"
This silenced them for a moment. Then a mousy girl in the back whispered, "Please buy them."
I couldn't help myself. "Listen, I'm going to be honest. We HATE these (pointing to the goods), but you all seem really intent on selling them. What's going on?"

We learned then that these kids were in some kind of competition to complete a list of tasks while running around the city looking for clues and asking for help from strangers. Nathan thinks the task in question might have been to sell something to a tourist for a 500% markup because they were asking for three dollars.
Desperation is a funny thing. Nathan thinks I may have gone too far..but kids these days need to learn proper negotiating strategy. Never show how motivated you are to buy or sell! I did the group a service. First, I negotiated down the price to two dollars. Then, I requested that one of the boys get down on one knee to serenade me. This probably wouldn't have been nearly as humiliating had it not been in a public market area. People stopped to take photos, all curious to know what was happening. When I felt this young man had earned his two dollars (it certainly wasn't the pickled snacks we were negotiating for) I shook his hand and told him the money was well earned. Nathan paid him more than our agreed price out of pity. Everyone was thrilled, and the boy seemed genuinely giddy to have completed his team's task in such an unexpected way.

Nathan took me to dinner..a lovely Portuguese restaurant where we ordered an entire fish. Delicious! On the walk back to our hotel we passed a woman doing henna body art, so I got myself a tattoo while eating ice-cream sold in the shape of an egg. Great day to turn thirty.