Thursday, July 3, 2008

Ah, Singapore

Or: Is it possible for a city-state to be too sterile??

I'm writing on a really tiny keyboard so forgive the typing errors. Ian bought an "Eee PC" last time in Singapore, as a portable toy, and it's tough to type. I'll keep this short.
There's a 2.5 hour time difference from home, so we're just a little off, wanting to go to bed at 1 a.m. and sleeping in until 10 a.m. This morning we finally got out of the hotel at 11 and were off to Snow City. This city is so clean, so green, so fresh and so pleasant. It's just so right and has everything, it almost seems... boring? No, not boring, but there's something a little off about everything be right on.
But I digress.
Snow City is a room. A very cold room (-6.9C to be exact), where we donned boots, jackets, and gloves to go tubing down a frosty, icy hill. I went down once and got enough snow in my shoes, gloves and, um, pants, to stand on the sidelines and cheer for the rest of the time. An hour was too long for any of us though, and less than 40 minutes into it the kids were ready to thaw.
Snow City is next door to the Science Center, so after a quick lunch of fries and soda from McDs in the Kinetic Garden we watched Dinosaurs: Live! on Imax. We've saved our tickets for the rest of the Science Center for another day. We've got time.
Since today is Ian's birthday (35!!) we went to the Brewerks Restaurant at Riverside Point, a microbrewery on the river. The food was OK, the raspberry beer wasn't nearly as good as the good stuff in Brussels (but then, what could ever be as good?), and I do wish we'd sat along the riverside rather than inside. But when they heard it was Ian's bday, out came the complimentary piece of cake without any staff song. What could be better?
The weather was simply gorgeous. We took the half hour river cruise before heading over to the Funan IT Mall for odds and ends. I needed an SD card that doesn't have the first 11 photos corrupted, so some AA batteries and a thumb drive later, we started home. With an SD card too of course. And 2 new DS games. Who agrees with me that "Guitar Hero for DS" is the dumbest idea ever? We passed the beautiful St. Andrews Cathedral on the way to the MRT, our primary mode of transportation today. By 8:30 p.m. we made it back to our rooms.
And a birthday cake from the hotel was waiting in our room. Cool! It's good chocolate cake too, something you can't find in Chennai.
We're tired. The kids aren't sleeping well in their room. We have a makeshift bed out of armchairs for the boys to trade off, while the other 3 sleep sideways on the twins pushed together. Far from ideal, I know, but our other option is 3 hotel rooms and that's plain prohibitive. Not until the kids are bigger, please! But what this room situation really means is a lot of giggling intermixed with a lot of "She took all the covers!" and "He's out of bed and keeps hitting me!" Is it legal to let kids sleep in the hall? OK, how about just the bathtub?
I'm kidding, but I'm ready for the novelty to wear off.

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