The Fog

Thankfully there was no early morning coaching going on today, so I was able to get myself a bit of a lie in.

Yesterday evening I was so shattered after the last two early mornings. No matter what time I seem to go to bed, it never seems to make me feel any less tired when I have to get up anytime between 5am and 7am!

Although I still woke up about 9am this morning, I didn't surface out of bed until 10:30 as I was doing my best to rest and recuperate after a busy weekend. I swear I've spent more time travelling and working than I have in bed over these last couple of weeks.

I came across a newspaper this morning which had the number '32' in a large font in the top right corner of the front page. Pretty intrigued by this I read on to discover that this is a new thing that the paper are required to produce due to worries about air pollution in Singapore.

Searching on the Internet I discovered that there had been some talk about forest fires in Indonesia blowing smoke in this direction. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I have barely seen the sun since coming here, and the level of smog in the air had something to do with it. 

Further investigation led me to the PSI reading website which indicates the ambient air quality in the country on behalf of the National Environment Agency. It seems from their readings that these readings are higher in the morning, and they say this is due to "an escalation of hotspot activities in Sumatra and Borneo can be expected during extended periods of dry weather."
This can lead to an occurance of smoke haze in the region, and its dependant on factors such as the proximity of fires, and the strength and direction of prevailing winds.

Although there has been a few days of hazy weather, the score of 32 I saw on the newspaper this morning is still in the region of 0-50 which is classed as good. Anything above 300 and we're in trouble!

Today I was tasked with heading to a new school, or one that I'd never visited before at least. It's a Jewish school based in the centre of Singapore, and we were due there to coach ten kids at an after school club.

First I had to drop our new coach, Will, off in the right place so that he could go to his session. He arrived on Saturday evening, and was preparing to coach for the first time since arriving from Singapore. Unfortunately his sleeping pattern has gone somewhat awry since getting here, and when it came time to depart to catch the MRT he was in a thoroughly deep sleep! 

I eventually managed to wake him up and after throwing on some clothes we eventually got him to Orchard where he needed to go to meet the rest of the coaches for this afternoon's session.
I carried on one further stop to a place called Somerset where I met one of our other coaches who took me on a short walk down the road to our Jewish School.

Now, I'd consider myself to be a pretty open-minded person, and I have found some of the venues that I have been coaching in since coming to Singapore pretty original.
Today's was definitely under the category of 'original' but not quite what I was expecting.

The other coach I was working with, Matt, explained about the kids we would be coaching, and then explained he was going to fetch them. Bear in mind at this point we are stood in the middle of a car park, little did I know that's where we would be taking today's session!

We managed to get through the session without no injuries, but it was a little worrying that we had to stop the session on a couple of occasions so that teachers could reverse out of their parking bays and through the middle of our pitch so they could depart school for the day.

I finally managed to get home at about 6:00pm before getting fed and watered for the evening and then getting another early night ahead of another coaching filled day tomorrow!

You tell your pal, when he thaws out he better have a damn good story.