The truth is that I could easily post a blog every day/night about what I have been getting up to in Singapore, but half of the stuff really wouldn't be very interesting! I attempt to make sure that this is a good and riveting read for people (even if it isn't always that way!), but the last couple of days have been truly mundane and I thought I would spare all of you the details.
As you can imagine the weather is still extremely warm over in this part of Asia. We had a brief rainstorm yesterday where I actually thought the sky was going to fall in, but after about half an hour or so it calmed and went back to being balmy again.
There are signs in some of the locations that I have spent time in whilst being here that have warnings about thunder and lightning, but I think they need to amend the sign or make a new one that warns you about wearing flip flops when it has BEEN raining. I almost fell over about five/six times yesterday as I walked to the shop, pretty sure the locals, who were all wearing shoes of course, found it highly entertaining.
With school holidays still being in effect in Singapore, both Thursday and Friday were relatively quiet days. This morning though it was back to early starts, and setting my alarm clock at uncomfortable times.
One of our regular coaches was away today so I filled in for him at a location called Kembangen which runs four different sessions starting at 8am.
Most of the locations that we do coaching at, thankfully, have a place where we can store all our equipment, but two of them Pebble Bay and Kembangen, both have no storage space due to their 'open field' nature. This means that whenever we travel to either one of these places we have to use our lock-up facility to go and collect things from a storage unit and transport them to the location.
On Thursday's we can manage to squeeze both coaches and all the equipment in a taxi, but for today we had a bit of a strange system.
There were actually five coaches who were working at the sessions today, and three of the guys went straight there due to where they are living.
Me, and my room mate Abdul had to get up at 5am to get ready to head to the lock-up and then unload all the stuff into a taxi ready for transporting to the location at Kembangen.
As we were carrying so much, Abdul went in the taxi leaving me to re-board the train, and then go a few stops further to meet him and the rest of the coaches.
This morning we encountered a slight problem at the lock-up as we noticed that an extra padlock was attached to our storage space. We had the code for one and not the other, and after a quick consultation with James, Abdul found some packaging for three padlocks that had been attached to three different doors around the area.
This was either an elaborate wind-up or a horrendous case of mistaken identity by the owner of the padlocks, and it meant that we were required to deploy force (kicking the door down!) to get into our storage locker.
A few heavily placed kicks here and then eventually saw a panel of the door come off, and after some careful movement, we eventually managed to squeeze all the things we needed out of a small gap that we had made, and then went out separate ways to be re-united at Kembangen.
Compared with some of the other locations that I have coached during my two weeks in Singapore, Kembangen was a relatively straightforward field.
It's right next to the MRT and has a bit of a park next to it which allows the children to play on before or after their session.
I was designated as the 'organiser' of the session, so I basically went round doing the odd jobs like doing the registers, checking things were ok, hanging out trophies, water, sweets and generally being a dogsbody whilst everyone else coached!
It's not a role that I particularly minded doing to be honest, and things seemed to run smoothly, but with the heat, and having got up at an unholy time this morning, I have spent most of the rest of the day feeling pretty tired.
Today's session means I have visited all-bar-one of the soccer schools that we run, and it has been good to see a variety of locations across the island and throughout the age ranges.
Each group of children that you spend time coaching obviously requires a different set of skills, but overall I would have to say that the kids here seem to be well enough trained to listen, follow instructions and act on the things that you have told them.
Singapore seems to be relatively crazy about football, even if the S-League and National team don't live up to the standard of interest there is in the game, but I think there are certainly plenty of opportunities to develop the programs that ESS runs.
Myself personally I have just enjoyed getting back into coaching, and working around young people again. I have my complaints every now and then about the behaviour of the minority of kids I've ever come across in my life. But with football, if they were choosing to spend their Saturday morning's at lessons then they are obviously pretty interested in improving, and also having fun!
Tomorrow will unfortunately once again be an early morning, when I will be heading off to West Coast Park for my session with 5-6 year olds, but after that I am hoping to spend the day enjoying some freedom and perhaps getting out and doing some sightseeing.
Don't get me wrong. It's a dream vacation. I mean, I load up. I go into space. I get inside the maximum-security nuthouse. Save the President's daughter, if she's not dead already. Get past all the psychos who've just woken up. I'm thrilled that you would think of me.
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