Confessions of a Shopaholic

With another enjoyable day in Singapore behind me, it's time for some reflection on events in the last 24 hours.

Despite being faced with the task of getting up extremely early in the morning for today's session, I was looking forward to working in a different venue, with a bunch of fresh faces and differing needs. When my alarm went off at 6am, the only bonus was that the other two coaches that stayed here last night had to be up and out of the house by 5am. 

Obviously without too much schadenfreude we headed out towards a school I would later discover was in a place called Bukit Batok at a venue on the grounds of an international school. Once again it required an MRT (subway) and bus combination which is becoming much easier thanks to the purchasing of a travel card I purchased yesterday morninng.

It's a bit like a Singaporean Oyster card, though I imagine the fairs are slightly cheaper here than in London. It looks something like this ------> 

Anyway, this makes it much easier to get on an off the subway and bus without having to by a ticket each time and significantly reduces the fare. The average journey seems to cost about $2.00 on the MRT and about $0.80 on the bus which is pretty good. It cost me $12.00 but came with $7.00 loaded on (which lasted all of about two days!)

In today's session we coached two different sessions. One for kids under six, and the second one for kids under nine. What's good is that most of the parents tend to stick around and watch this child's session, and often they get to join in with some of the games that we play. Each kid is given a kit and a football by English soccer school and then they bring it with them each week. Thankfully each child has their name on the back of their shirt, so it's relatively easy to work out who is who! Name retention is one of my strengths and this certainly aids it.

After putting everything away, I planned to have some dinner and then head out, but unfortunately the weather had other ideas. We were about due a bit of rain anyway as it hasn't poured down since the day after I arrived, but just as I stepped in the shower and turned on the tap, the Man up there did exactly the same thing. 

Rain showers in the summer are common. They don't last very long and it increases the humidity somewhat as it is still warm whilst its raining.

It comes down a fair bit so you don't quite get steaming pavements, but it doesn't change the climate too much.

The rain lasted about twenty minutes so after shower number two of the day, I headed out to get some dinner and then James suggested I hop on a bus into the city.

I had been looking forward to getting my tourist on ever since arriving and today presented an ideal opportunity with us finishing relatively early. Fully prepared with camera and guidebook at the ready I stepped onto a bus and into the great abyss. I didn't have a grand plan of what to do, but I did just generally want to walk about and see a few of the major sights.

Singapore isn't blessed with wonderful monuments, tremendous architecture or sun-kissed beaches, but it does have some interesting places to go.

I decided to concentrate my journey in the south-east of the island, and after a 45 minute or so, bus ride I got off at Orchard - the shoppers paradise, before setting out in the direction of Marina Bay which is well known as it hosts the Singapore Grand Prix.

It still baffles me how much English signage is around, and how many people here can actually speak English. Most of the voices I hear seem to be of Chinese or Malay descent, but there's also plenty of the Queen's language being spoken too. It's also not uncommon to see a western person strolling around on the metro or when your walking down the street.

As I have mentioned previously, Singapore's big past time is shopping which means that malls or centres to practice such an activity are plentiful. Walking away from the Orchard area of the city, I found little in the way of intriguing features and mainly just came across lines and lines of traffic. Along the way I did manage to find another couple of the subway stations further along the line before eventually I came to a set of skyscrapers to the East which make up part of the booming business district in this country.

Heading in their direction I also came across another building which was familiar to me which was the Esplanades or concert hall. It's a big shimmery building that kind of looks like a honeycomb from the outside. 

It's hard to capture exactly how good it looks from street level, but from up above and also in dark it looks pretty impressive - as does the rest of Singapore's skyline.

I carried on walking towards the Esplanade and found myself located on the waterfront exactly opposite the skyscrapers that I had previously seen. There was a great view from almost sea level from there, and it is a stereotypical scene you'd expect to see in a city like Hong Kong or Shanghai.

 The rather snazzy looking building on the right hand side is Marina Bay casino where all the high rollers of the city like to spend their time. The picture on the left is of the skyscrapers on display with a 'duck tour' boat in the foreground. If you enlarge the picture you can see the Mer-lion fountain which is one of Singapore's more bizarre pieces of art!

From there I headed back towards Marina Square which is a huge shopping centre with wall-to-wall shops. It is staggering the amount of shops in the place to be honest. Four floors of lengthy corridors of shops and restaurant that would frighten a few people I know with an aversion to shopping.

Pretty much everything you need could be found under one roof, and I decided to do a bit of browsing before heading back home. On my way I found a couple of interesting little outlets..... one is my idea of hell, and apparently located next door is my idea of heaven.

I managed to escape from the corridors of either for the time being  before heading back towards Sembawang for the evening.

I had an extremely enjoyable day out in Singapore, and hope to be able to do more exploring in the near future.

This country seems like it still has so much to offer, and I held back on my sightseeing due to the fact that I have further scheduling to see other things in mind in the near future!

Graham Bloomwood: Life is like a swap meet. You never know when great riches... are going to turn up unexpectedly.