When We Walked On Water (2)

No, we didn't have another big flood. It's only that I participated in the New Paper Big Walk On Water today. In fact, the Marina Barrage (the end-point of the Big Walk) acts as a tidal and flood control barrier. It would help in some way to alleviate floods in low-lying areas.


This was the first time that I participated in the Big Walk. I went with my wife and my younger son. Big Walk was first started by the New Nation in 1984. The New Paper, which was introduced later, started its first Big Walk on 16 June 1991.


Flag-off was at the Fountain of Wealth at Suntec City at 7.30 am.

There were several wacky characters who contributed to the carnival atmosphere of the event:


The "Amara man" (looked more like a fruit tree to me).


The "creative green duo".


And an enterprising "phonecard seller".



Even what appeared to be a faceless dog walked along. I had a hard time telling whether it was moving forward or backward because its both ends looked so similar. :p


Some 20,000 of us trudged along the 5-km route in the hot sun - a scene that reminded me of the annual visit to the Chinese cemeteries in Peck San Theng during the Qing Ming Festival.

Luckily, there were some interesting sights along the way to break the monotony and the dreariness of the long walk.


We caught a glimpse of the "Ayers Rock of Singapore".


A not-so-common and not-so-shy dragonfly posing for our cameras.


At some point, it even looked like the great exodus.


Almost 3 hours later, we finally saw signs of the oasis Marina Barrage.



We saw big droplets of water everywhere but it was only a mirage barrage. ;)


This was one "f" word which we were most happy to see.

And no wonder why there were so many "danger" signs on the water. Can you spot the cannon? Hmm... could it possibly be for the purpose of protecting the barrage?


But to me, the real danger you face when participating in a Big Walk is when you wear inferior footwear, just like what some people found out, too late:

Some Unusual Sights At East Coast Park (3)

Those of you who happened to be at Tiong Bahru Market on 7 May 2008 (Wed) morning would have feasted your eyes on Joanne Peh and other young pretty MediaCorp actresses doing some marketing in their bikinis. (The "marketing" that they were doing was the buying of items like live frogs and squids and had absolutely nothing to do with Joanne Peh's so called "newly grown" assets and their attractive bodies.)


Well, I certainly missed out on that tantalizing display of assets by the bevy of young beauties. All I saw was the rather mild and disappointing photos in the New Paper report the next day. I said "disappointing" because as you probably know, everything looks flat on paper, even Mount Fuji.

So when I saw what looked like someone flying her oversized bra at East Coast Park last Saturday, I thought to myself, "Ah, every dog has its day".


I did a quick scan of the surroundings to see if there was any top-heavy woman gone topless. But all I saw was this dark-complexion man:


He was flying his Revolution kite (Revo). And if you think he's called a "kite flyer", go fly a kite - pardon the language but he's called a pilot, ok?

A Revo is a very maneuverable sport kite that is controlled by a four-line system. With movements of your thumbs forward and backward, it gives you the ability to fly the kite forward, backward, sideways, speed up or slow down, even come to a complete stop i.e. hovering in mid-air like a helicopter. You can even spin the kite like a propeller - you choose whether to spin it clockwise or anti-clockwise - the control is at your finger-tips, literally.

Utilizing these unique characteristics, pilots can fly just about anywhere, whether individually or in formation flying with other fliers. They can even pit their skills against other fliers in a competition.

Watch the Revo kite-flying video here:


(Sorry, as you can see from the video, the kite was so fast that I had trouble keeping it framed all the time. As this is my first YouTube upload for my blog, please be more forgiving.)

Believe it or not, the Revo was invented way back in 1989! (Hmm..., how come I only know about it now?) You can read about the history of the Revo here.

But get this - if you are interested in flying the Revo, be prepared to have US$269 (S$365) fly away first (sorry for the pun). That amount of money will only buy you a basic Revo, complete with lines. So better start saving S$1 every day for one whole year if you plan to fly the Revo a year from now. That is certainly a far cry from the 5 or 10 cents I used to pay the Ah Neh of the mama stall for my paper kite in the 1960s. And if I made my own kite, it was even free. But then again, my kite was not so fun to play with... and it also didn't look like a pair of bra.

FURTHER READING

Read about the many different types of kites here.

Earlier Posts In This Series:

1. Some Unusual Sights At East Coast Park (1)

2. Some Unusual Sights At East Coast Park (2)

Breakfast In Singapore's First New Town

According to this website, Toa Payoh is Singapore's first New Town but second satellite town (after Queenstown) built by HDB in the 1960s.

Don't ask me what's the difference between a satellite town and a New Town. This is all I can say - a satellite town is a town away from the main town. The meaning of New Town is quite obvious so I don't have to explain it. However, more than 40 years on, I am not sure if is still appropriate to call Toa Payoh a New Town. This is despite of the fact that in last decade or so, Toa Payoh has undergone a lot of renewal.

Yet, if you bother to look around, there are still many pockets of old Toa Payoh that remained largely unchanged since the town was built. On Saturday 29 Sep 2007, I had breakfast at Blk 210, Lorong 8, Toa Payoh.


This hawker centre is as old as the town itself but probably has been upgraded a few times along the way. Fishball mee is still available at $2. However, if you have a big appetite, I would recommend that you order a $3 bowl.


As with many hawker centres in Singapore, the market is just next to it.


It is little wonder that this courtyard looks uncannily like the one that used to be in Commonwealth Avenue, Queenstown since Toa Payoh and Queenstown were developed within a few years of each other. Hmm... could the two towns be designed by the same team of architects or was it simply more economical to mass produce?


This part of Toa Payoh has a very laid-back feel to it. You have time to stop and smell the flowers along the way.


You see people having leisurely breakfasts with their dogs.


Oh my, you even see a free-roaming rooster! You don't often get to see one in many places in Singapore anymore. As you probably know, most fowls are now kept by people as pets or are raised for the dinner table.


This rooster was seen busy chasing some Javan Mynas around.

When there were no more mynas to chase, it perched on its favourite roost, crowing away.

The loud crowing roused a cat from its sleep. It was clearly annoyed at being so rudely awakened.


And as if that was not enough, the rooster proceeded to strut around the cat, as if to taunt him further.


I was waiting eagerly with camera in hand to catch an exciting cock-cat fight when all of a sudden, a woman appeared with some food. A nasty confrontation was thus averted.


As they say, food soothes a savage beast. I had my breakfast and the woman left the scene safely. And so ended my leisurely breakfast in an old town.

First Time On A Cruise Ship (2)

At check-in, each passenger was issued with a personal access card. It was used as a "passport", room key and credit card, all rolled into one.


Our room was on the port (left) side. The carpet and doors in the long corridor leading to our room were red.


In contrast, the carpet and doors in the corridor on the starboard side were blue. Hence you were unlikely to make a wrong turn even when your were returning to your room drunk like a sailor.


Our room was not very spacious. Yet there were 4 single beds in it - 2 were along the walls opposite each other, 1 was mounted on the wall (can be folded against the wall), another was a sofa bed. I slept on the sofa bed which was not very comfortable. Had we taken a room with balcony, it would have been much more luxurious. However, there was no such option for us.


The toilet-cum-bathroom was only slightly bigger than those you see in an aircraft.


In fact, the feeling on board was quite like flying on an aircraft. Why, they even had a route map on one of the TV channels!


And just like on an aircraft, safety procedure was demonstrated separately by pretty crew members in different parts of the ships.


Dinner was served not long after boarding. We had a choice of 3 "inclusive" (meaning we didn't have to pay anything extra) restaurants - Pavilion Room (Chinese), Mediterranean Buffet (International) and Bella Vista (Chinese/Western). We had our first dinner at Bella Vista. It was a sumptuous 6-course meal - braised sea cucumber, steamed prawns, half-a-fish, kai lan vegetable, roasted pork with jellyfish and soup. (Since it was not a whole fish, we flipped it over and indeed the ship didn't capsize.)



The restaurants had very good ambience. You could get a seat by the window from where you could get a good view of the sea.


And if that is not romantic enough for you and you don't mind paying a little extra, you can even have serenading musicians to set the dining mood just right.


The ship set sail at about 9 pm. We were having supper at the Mediterranean Buffet on Deck 12 when we felt some tremor-like vibrations when the ship started sailing. We could see ripples in our glasses of water. However, we couldn't hear any engine noise. Other than the slight vibrations, the ship was very steady - we didn't feel any rolling of the ship in the waves at all. Even the vibrations went away after a while. We knew we were in the good hands of the captain and his crew.


A few hours after sailing, our handphones were no longer connected to our usual service providers. Sometimes, we were connected to Indonesian service providers while at other times, we got connected to Malaysian service providers.


At one point, we even thought that we had reached Great Britain!


Most of the time, we were connected to Navitas 1 network. (Navitas is a subsidiary brand of UK's Jersey Telecom Group Limited. That probably explains the "Welcome to G Britain" sms. Read this document about the installation of Navitas GSM-based services on board the SuperStar Virgo.) However, communication on the Navitas 1 network was not cheap. I made a 1-minute call to Singapore and was charged $2.39 while each outgoing SMS cost me $0.96.


We saw some celebrities on board the ship. Moses Lim was probably on board to review some of the restaurants' food.


You Ya (尤雅), the Taiwanese songstress who was as famous as the late Teresa Teng (邓丽君 or Deng Li Jun) in the late 70s and the 80s, performed two 45-minute concerts in the Lido auditorium. My wife and I watched the show. At $40 per head for the cheapest seats, the tickets were quite reasonably priced. Anyway, my wife I saved us some money by not watching the topless show which was priced at $20-$25 per ticket. Hmm... it's good that You Ya's concert was still worth more than the topless show. And she didn't have to show anything more than her voice which was still as good as ever.


The facilities on board the SuperStar Virgo were indeed very comprehensive. If the ship was a star in the Asian movie industry instead of the Asian cruise business, it would definitely have won multiple Golden Horse awards.


My third and final entry on the cruise will cover the facilities on board the ship.

(To be continued.)