Basketball

How cool was this.

Gordon and Thes said guys if you're interested there is a basketball game between Philippines and Singapore at the indoor stadium, fancy coming to watch?

So so glad we did. For the royal sum of 19SGD a head, we end up about 5 rows from the court itself and had just the most wonderful time.

Very very exciting, that ended up with Philippines winning a very tight game. Here scoring a very crucial 3 points.

I would say approximately 1,000 people watching of which 50% had to be Filipino.

A great time for ALL family Kennett as you'll see from the faces here. Blow up things to bash together, some chips and a couple of beers and lots of cheering. Loved it, and will absolutely be going back for more!

We even got to meet with some of the Filipino players outside as we were eating dinner they came from the stadium to eat as well. Nice nice guys! Marlon (Mary's brother), would be jealous as he is a massive basketball player, and of course this is his National team.

One funny thing for me, to close on, was one of the Singapore Slingers who is about 6foot 8, a black guy I assume from USA. You will never guess what his name is? Yep it was Little! Go figure!

Views from "The Flier"

As I said in Marlon's blog, I have not done this for a while re showing some of the surrounding scenery, so be atop the flier is a perfect way to do that!

Here's a pretty artsy, filtered snap from the 1st floor, we're about to "board" our pod and start the hour long revolution of the world's largest viewing platform big wheel type thing.

My plan is to walk you through each picture and give some back ground/history/future. Singapore is an amazing place for this type of development, it is constantly re-inventing itself. Just check the skyline for cranes.

I keep asking my brother to come here as he is a Civil Engineer, much needed in Singapore! I guarantee if I do this again in a year and take photos at the same timings of the 360 revolution you won't recognise a thing as so much will have changed/adapted/been added.

Picture #1 above is looking immediately below at the Singapore F1 pit lane, and therefore race start and finish points. Just beyond it you can see a large road on stilts going over the river, that is the ECP that comes from airport to city centre, the main road. And right in the middle, peaking above the bridge part of the ECP is our condo, condo Kennett or Costa Rhu. Like little orange mushrooms.

Picture #2, is a close up of the same. Bottom right you'll start to see some of the F1 stands along the start and home straight, the red seats. These are primo locations, reaching about 1500 SGD per seat when the race is on. Look across the river and you'll see how close our condo is to this action, and during the race weekend the noise is just amazing. Because Costa Rhu is a circle of building with pools and the like in the middle it acts like an amphitheatre echoing the noise around. Believe me it is LOUD!

Picture #3 is showing you our new development where you have seen the kids on bikes and scooters racing each other. This literally used to be jungle, and when they cut the jungle down we had all sorts in the condo as we are 5 minutes from this. When I say all sorts, I mean monkeys and snakes, dear me. This is called Gardens on the Bay, and is a series of beautiful landscaped gardens to walk through, picnic etc. It's really beautiful, and if there and you look back across the river you get amazing views of the city landscape as well.

Also can you see bottom right the little craft that looks like a boat? That is actually an amphibious vehicle that does tours of the city and the literally drives in to the water and cruises around various tourist spots. Pretty cool, although I have never done this. Mum has and says it was really good although very noisy and smelly as the engine is on the deck. It's affectionately called "Duck Tours".

We hear eventually that from the Gardens on the Bay we will be able to get boat taxis in to the city, which will be ace. Take a look at the next picture.

Picture #4 show much more of the F1 seating gantries and the actual track, plus across the river see the 4 gang-planks near the bridge and near out condo. Yep they are the taxi ramps, on and off. So you can see now, we literally walk from condo, jump on river taxi and 5-10 minutes later we're in the city with no need to use roads. Cool!

Also we have the new sports stadium being erected behind our condo, that includes marinas and all that for the water sports. All sounds amazing doesn't it. I am also expecting an "amazing" rental bill for the condo once all completed, we shall see!

Picture #5 is the other side of the river now. So here you can see the Marina Bay Gardens, again a brand new development. Also this is cool fact, ALL this is reclaimed land. The dome type things are flower gardens that also act as a desalination plant.

The taller building is quite famous now and is the Marina Bay Sands Hotel & Casino. The hotel design is pretty funky, although I refuse to enter the place due to the first experience we had of it. Service was shocking, so sorry I am embargoing it! But architecture is that the three towers are packs of cards being shuffled/ruffled, you can just make that out. The boat thing on top signifies that historically it was illegal to gamble here in Singapore, so you had to catch a ferry to Indonesia, catch another ferry to a converted cruise liner sat in international waters, that was the casino. We hear the Singaporean government realised how much tax they were losing through not have gambling and hey presto it became "legal", ha ha! Now we have two casinos, and locals/PR's have to pay 100SGD to just walk in the place before they have even put a dollar on a table. Marina Bay Sands is reputed now to be the most profitable casino Globally. So sorry the boat on top is to remind people how they used to have to go to gamble before the hotel was built! Nice one Singapore.

Next will be big nappies on toilet blocks to remind you how used to go before??

Picture #6 shows the old post office, which is now the Fullerton Hotel, very nice place! Lovely brunches, great bar call Post Bar etc etc. Plus right behind it you can see the red roof tops of Boat Quay the tourist and popular ex-pat area for after work drinkies - never been there myself (cough cough!) Interesting is that everything this was from Fullerton is reclaimed, that literally was the coastline of Singapore originally. Fullerton have been branching out now as well, if you go left you can see Fullerton Bay which is lovely - see Sam's 40th photos for a view of that.

Also in this shot you can Altitude Bar, the tallest building rising up in the middle. Uber cool bar at top, with just breath-taking views of Singapore 360degrees. Again see Sam's 40th atop that.

Picture #7 is a more detailed close up of Marina Bay Gardens. This is also cool. See those mushroom looking things, well apparently they will be trees with canopies. You get a lift in the trunk, up to the canopy which are flower gardens. Amazing right! We drove past this recently and I have NEVER seen so many trees, plants, flowers awaiting planting, there were thousands upon thousands in row after row awaiting planting in to the gardens. Can't wait to see it - Mum/Nan/Yuko you'd love it!

Picture #8 - OK already explained, but a bit closer view for you. See what I mean about a pack of cards from the side being riffled/shuffled.

Picture #9, we right at the top here of the turning circle of the Flyer. Pretty high up and amazing scenery.

Picture #10 and the final one for this trip, is the city sky line. It's a very pretty city, especially at night. Lots of development of late down on the water front with Customs House, Fullerton Bay, Kinki's etc really nice place to visit and sit and stare, if later in evening looking back to Marina Bay Sands to watch the lazer show.

Well done Singapore! Ever changing, but ever changing for the better!

Marlon's trip

Mary's brother lives about 2 hours flight away in Brunei, sort of "in" Malaysia and one of the world's richest countries. He took some leave and came to stay with us.

Despite leaving him at the airport for an hour on his own walking around (Mary got the times of the arrival wrong!) he was still in high spirits to be in SIngapore for time #1 and to see his sister of course.

Usual style of sharing with Ollie, with Marlon on the bottom of the bunk bed, and Ollie on top.

We did some nice site seeing;

We took him day #1 to see the Flyer and of course get a great view of Singapore, where we live etc. See separate blog for that, as it's been a while and a lot has changed so I will do an update for you.

We found a shop after the Flyer that had a dark room to show off the fluorescent stuff, so there was a curtain to block the light. But of course Amy has other ideas in that "it looks like hair Daddy!" And here she is.

We fed the Koi Carp.

Also whilst at the Flyer, we took him for a Fish Foot Spa, something a little different for him.

We went for walks along the river. This is literally 5 minutes walk from our condo to "Gardens on the Bay", a lovely place to chill with the kids, take the bikes/scooters - here we were having bike races, these two re are Cyclopaths!

We were invited to a birthday/wedding anniversary at our friends condo.

BUT I think the highlight for Marlon was a trip to Universal Studios. A virgin on roller coasters and of course with Ollie and I a couple of loonies that will go on rides time and time again! Poor guy, he did eventually give up after one go on Battlestar Galactica.

We even got him to come of the Madagascar Merry-go-Round with the kids.

Return of the Mummy, I think Marlon really liked this one. It's in the dark so a real giggle as you have no idea what is coming next - up/down/left/right - no idea!

Mary doing some moonlighting holding up the architecture - "lending some support?"

As you see from behind us, Battlestar Galactica is quite an awesome looking site, two rides - Cylon and Human that come very close to each other. Supposed to be like space ships fighting each other. Phewy! You really do get wobbly legs after this ride!

Some arty shots, where literally I am laying on the floor taking pictures up to get everyone in the photo. Beautiful shots, and you get the whole castle in the background this way. Mary got the hang of this too, as you'll see from the ones I am in. This is Far Far Away, so Shrek and all that. Not sure where Ollie was this time though??

However we did do one more ride after that, that we had saved our Express pass for - Transformers. OH MY GOD! You simply have to come to Singapore and go on this ride, it's like a 4D experience, you are IN the Transformers film, just incredible! It really is worth entrance fee just to come for this, but get Express pass as the queue is like 2 hours if not!

And goodbye's to Universal for Marlon's first trip.

Of course saying goodbye to a grown person wearing a female cartoon woodpecker suit may seem strange to most, but only in Universal Studios do you feel "comfortable" doing that in front of many many people! Well Mary and Amy do, ha ha!

Thanks for coming Marlon, it was a pleasure to have you here with us and really good fun. We all hope you could do it again some time in the near future.

A few of Amy

Hi every one, here is a couple of random snaps of Amy here, both related to her new school.

So #1 is a new hat she had to make at school with her name on it, and as you can see she was very proud of this one. So much so she was even wearing it on her favorite scooter.

#2 is Chinese New Year at her school, where they had a little "private" assembly of singing and dancing in Chinese costume - of course has to be red. But how cute does she look here! We were not allowed to go to the assembly as the staff were worried that the parent sitting there would distract the kids when performing, that's shame!

I love the buns in her hair - she looks like that female fighter on Street Fighter the video game. For those my age probably best to ask your kids who this is. But here is Amy and an action figure of Chun Li - what do you think? Who's who?