48 Hours in Singapore

The last few days have flown by and I’ve been slacking; I was able to quickly write a short blog on my health while in Changi Airport, but that’s it. I got kicked off the computer in the middle of my blog. Fortunately, I was able to get back on and finish before jumping on the plane. Let’s see…

Monday

I had a late night Sunday IM’ing, so I slept in a little bit on Monday. I find it harder to wake up each morning. My energy level is definitely not where it was at the beginning of the trip. We’ll see if adding Mackenzie to the mix will change things. She should be landing in the next few hours (hopefully, she’s not a wreck; that trans-Pacific flight sucks—15 hours…ugh). Maybe she’ll bring some energy with her b/c I only recharge to about 75% on a given day.

I was supposed to return to the tailor by 11:00 am for a jacket fitting…yeah, that kinda got pushed back to 12:30 pm. The man wasn’t happy with me. He was like, “11:00 am means 11:00 am. The tailor might have gone back to his workshop.” Oh great, the tailor’s only around for a few minutes each day and I’m supposed to pick up this suit on Tuesday at 2:00 pm; fortunately, the tailor was still in the area. I guess he does work for a few of the stores in the area. After getting that taken care of, it was Yale’s turn to do things he liked. He humored me by going along shopping and it was my turn to go along. (j/k) We went to Fort Canning Park and walked around for a bit before taking a tour of the Battle Box (which I wanted to see, too). Our tour guide was interesting…he thought he had to explain to us what a phone switch operator was and how “back in the day” people actually fought in wars. According to him, all we do is push buttons and war happens. I guess he has a point, but that doesn’t really explain the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enough “political” mumbo jumbo—that’s not why I’m writing; If you want a good Poli-Sci blog, go read On Life and Lybberty by my good friend, Jake.

After a few hours learning about Singapore’s WWII history, we went back to the resort to change. We then traveled back across town to meet Yale’s friend (somebody he taught/baptized on his mish) for tennis. I was quite impressed with Janson’s apartment. It is in a new area of town, had a huge pool in the middle of all the towers, tennis courts on the rooftop, etc. He’s about 20 minutes from downtown and it only costs him S$2,000 a month for rent. A pretty good deal, if you ask me. I think his 2-bedroom apartment about is ~800 square feet.

So, tennis…well, it was interesting. There were only three of us, so we played 1 on 2 the whole night and we rotated every game. Needless to say, I sucked. While I might be a pro at Wii Tennis, virtual tennis skills don’t transfer to reality. I’m not sure if I’d say it was as bad as bowling, but it wasn’t pretty. “Fortunately,” Janson was pretty bad, too. That left Yale to play with two pathetic tennis players. What made the night so funny is that even though my heartbeat never rose, I was dripping in sweat. I looked like Federer after a match, but I played like Joe Schmo. To make it better, there was this Ukrainian fellow who stepped onto our court and watched the three of us hit back and forth for about 20 minutes. Janson asked him if he had reserved the court or if he wanted to join; initially, he said “no.” After a bit of watching us, he asked if he could play with us. While he was dressed for tennis, his ability was less than mine (which is saying a lot). We played a few more games before calling it quits. Still, it was fun to play tennis and do something different.

Tuesday

I had another late night (on the phone this time), so I wanted to sleep in, but I was expecting an important business email and possible phone call, so I woke up around 7:00 am. The email never came…I did receive word that the answer I was looking for would be delayed a couple more days. Anyway, Yale and I were going to hit up this amusement park at Downtown East, but we soon found out that it was only open on the weekends…and the water park was closed on Tuesdays…which is too bad because we were looking forward to going to one of those. So, I just grabbed some lunch at Burger King (they only had American fast food by our resort) and then went downtown to pick up my suit. I was nervous when I arrived because the guy seemed like he had no idea where the suit was. His store had various suits/shirts lying around and I was hoping that he had my stuff; there was little room for error since I was leaving for Hong Kong in the morning.

He eventually found everything but the jacket, which was delayed to about one a half hours. The suit pants looked fine as did the shirts. I was a little annoyed that he forgot to put my initials on the cuffs of the shirts. I also feel that the arm length is a tad short, but I don’t really know since I haven’t tried it on with a suit. To kill the time, I went shopping. On Sunday, I had found some Diesel shoes that I liked, so I went back to check them out. I wanted to use my AMEX gift card to pay for half, but it didn’t work (stupid GC—what’s the point if I can’t use it everywhere AMEX is accepted). Anyway, I still liked the shoes, so I bought them. After running a few more errands, I went back to see if my jacket was ready.

The same thing occurred…The man couldn’t find the jacket. However, it was actually in the store this time. I quickly put it on and it looked fine. I didn’t try it on with the pants and shirts b/c I was super sweaty and he had already wrapped everything up. Remember, Singapore’s only 80 miles north of the equator and it’s been in the high 80’s (with humidity) ever since we got to Malaysia. I’ve just gotten used to the fact that I’m always wet and sweaty. There’s no getting around it as a tourist. You’re out on the streets.

I met up with Yale at City Hall (he stayed back at the resort while I ran my errands). We walked around downtown and got a feel for the business district. Since I still had my suit, shoes, and other stuff, I headed back home to drop it off while Yale went off to a museum. We met back up for the Night Safari.

The Night Safari was one of the coolest activities we have done on the trip. It was located at the Singapore Zoo about 1 hour via subway/train. We missed the Creatures of the Night show by a few minutes, which was a little disappointing. However, I thought the 45-min tram ride through the park was great. We got to see all sorts of animals like lions, tigers, and bears (OK, no bears), oh my. I’m really, really tired, so I’m gonna call it a night.