Flying~Soaring through Dreams: July 2009

Been 2 months in Singapore, so far i have been doing irrelevant jobs, attending induction courses or any ground courses you can think of. Just a few weeks ago, i have been given the opportunity to visit SIA Engineering hangar and later, the more interesting one; SATS Kitchen where the airlines catered food is prepared. It was pretty enlightening to see how various mouth-watering food were being cooked, how food sanitation were kept, be it an economy class food, the business class or the first class food. The last event was to visit a mock-up cabin where cabin crews are *obviously* being trained to serve the food and to manage the passengers. Unfortunately, it's only expected that no photography were allowed in these area so i could not provide you guys with any pictures of those. Sorry!

Last Saturday itself, i've been to the Night Safari , and although we came as early as we could (the safari opens at 7.30pm daily), we ended up starting our actual journey at around 8.30pm due dinner and owing to a huge amount of visitors, delaying our ticket purchase and eventually the tram ride itself. Overall, it was a fun and entertaining experience especially the "Creatures of the Night" performance but personally i felt that the night duration was too short to truly enjoy the entire collection of animals in the safari. Although the safari's official closing time is at 12midnight, i felt that our walk were kinda rushed and we found that many walking path were already blocked off by 11.30pm and we were told to return to the entrance due to the approaching closing hour and therefore not risking ourselves getting locked inside and spend the night over with the lions and hyenas :P. As for the photos, there aren't many being taken because most of the scenes are very dark and our camera were of very limited use, but i'll post them when i get them soon. If you are interested to visit the night safari, i would suggest visiting it during the weekdays as you will get more out of your visit. You can click here for more information as well.

Finally, it has come to my attention that i have left out my OBS journey at Day 11 and that i should finish whatever i began, no matter how long it takes :P Again, i'll provide you with the link to all my previous OBS entries in case you felt lost after reading Day 12.

Day : I | II | III | IV | V | VI| VII | VIII| IX| X & XI

Day 12 (Sailing expedition - Day 3)

Yesterday's night was horrible. We were told to sleep on the boat there were 15 of us, as opposed to the ship capacity of 10 people. Of course, it was nice to be able to watch the stars all night but trust me, the sleeping experience was nothing close to it. It was so cramped and i could only sleep on a narrow bench with no space to roll or rest my arm. I folded my arm to sleep and found out it was tangled the next morning. It was so much pain just trying to stretch and straighten my arm again. Boat was rocky like hell and i thought we were hit by a tsunami in a few occasion, where i felt like i was about to be thrown overboard. Almost everyone had a bad sleep that night including myself. One couldn't even sleep at all. I felt sorry for him. Body aching all over, stupid sea breeze that was so damn cold and yet you get a very damp and sticky sensation after you were hit by it. Fking uncomfortable if you get what i mean.

I have never wished the time to move anymore slower than this since the beginning of this course but the time really seemed to h ave halted on this boat. Just this boat. It's an agony to wait just for the morning to arrive.

Ahhhh...morning came! I'm saved!

To add salt to the wound, today was even worse than yesterday. It was totally windless for the whole day. In the end we rowed all the way back under the scorching sun for 4 hours. I think i had a first-degree burnt myself.

Rowing the sailboat again...sigh..

Reached the campground at around 1pm and by the time we finished washing the equipments/rapes and the boats, it was already 3pm. So no lunch for us, everyone was so damn hungry yet we were only left with the spare ration we had for the expedition yesterday. Well, crappy lunch is better than nothing at all.

Back home finally!

Cleaning up !

and best of all a FRESH shower!!!

To add even more salt to the wound, we had to run again in the evening, 5.5km. I gave up, and i walked almost half of the distance and only slowly jog for the rest. In my mind, i was thinking about 3 things:

1. Dinner
2. Dinner and;
3. Dinner

briefing for the next 2 days activity; solo camp!

Dinner came and again it was great as usual. I ate so much that i got bloated soon after. There were a briefing later that night about our next expedition starting tomorrow which is the solo camp! Woohooo! 3 days 2 nights again!