Friday was like the day that time forgot, but all in a very satisfying way. Up at 6.45 and off to the golf to catch the early rounds and escape the sapping heat that accompanies the mid-morning and noon tee offs. We drank our first beer at the official time of 9.15 am, so it was all go from then on! We watched a few groups play through the 18th onto the final green as they finished off rounds from yesterday, then we decided to follow Australia’s own Adam Scott for a while. There are two championship courses on Sentosa and Adam was to play the unfamiliar (to us) alternative course back behind the main clubhouse. Grand opulence at every corner on the course, none more so than the main clubhouse with its sweeping stairs and vaulted ceilings nodding to the grand old days of the British empirical rule. As we followed the Scott group, he whittled down his score quite regularly hole by hole, hitting birdie after birdie. We were vocal in our support, and he acknowledged our Aussie comments with a good natured smile or wave every time we offered one. Josh, Lewy and Wal were all quite fascinated with my fascination. After all, I don’t play golf. There’s just something about seeing world class sportsmen weaving their craft. The perfect balance, the seemingly effortless power of the swing, the sound of the ball clinking onto the head of the driver and the surgical precision of their best shots: quite wondrous to behold.
After a long day in the heat, we decided to relax by the pool in Josh and Kristin’s complex for a few hours before heading off to the races. What a set up they have. The 50 plus metre pool is below the two smaller ones which are complete with fountains and spas. Poolside, a café serves beer, wine and meals while joggers pound an endless airconditioned road in the fully equipped gym glassed in overlooking the pool. We were there purely for the swim and the beer at this stage though! Josh had invited a swag of ex-TAS teachers along, and it was great that Peter and Melissa, Jamie and Todd all made the trip across to say g’day. Raj, the café owner, supplied us with a surfeit of jugs of beer till we eventually dragged ourselves away to make the trip to the track. Good times!
Kranji is a spectacular racecourse. It tends to make the track at Newcastle look very provincial and even the big city tracks in Australia pale in comparison. Everything there is grand and big, from the mounting yard parades to the sweeping sheet of glass that cocoons the masses from the Singapore heat. Chris R. came to meet us at the track with apologies from Robyn who was hosting a team party. He immediately upped the ante by collecting a good win from his first punting foray, much to our horror, as our careful study of the form had yielded nary a place! The other friend to join us at the races was the famous “Ginger Ninja” who we had met at Josh’s buck’s party in Singapore two years before. He is a classic character, very ocker with hilarious sayings and catch phrases, all contained in a short compact frame with a shock of fire red tight curls on top of his noggin! After the last race, our tails firmly between our legs, we traipsed to the taxi stand for the long ride back into town: next stop, the infamous Orchard Towers!
An unprepossessing building stolidly plonked in the centre of Singapore’s main shopping district, Orchard Towers almost defies description. Inside, it is not dissimilar to a department store, with wide white tiled lobbies and aisles, gleaming escalators silently transporting people endlessly up and down. Each floor of four houses an endless array of bars and nightclubs all blaring their own special attractions from touts fronting the doors or more subtle yet vaguely furtive men handing you a flier from the aisles exhorting you to just have “one drink” to check their establishment out. The huge number of venues might indicate that the place would be desperate for customers, but this didn’t seem to be an issue: every bar had a crowd that pulsed and swayed in a thick wave of torsos and limbs and we had to go single file to cut a swathe through the human jungle. We eventually found a place that not only had the obligatory writhing pole girls (who all seemed so uninterested and mechanical in their work as to render the whole show quite boring rather that sensual: which I’m sure is not the original intention!), but also housed what we found out later to be Singapore’s premier cover band. These guys really rocked the house and some of their Led Zeppelin covers had to be heard to be believed.
As you move up the floors, the bars become increasingly more exclusive and the very top ones seem to be exclusively for Singapore’s famous “lady boys”. They are quite open in telling you their original sexual orientation which is mostly quite shocking because, as we discovered last time, they are often by far the most beautiful women in the whole building! It’s always great to have a look in these top clubs as it’s certainly not an everyday experience. One thing is for sure and certain: Singapore is definitely not a cheap place to live and the upper echelons of Orchard Towers are probably dearer than most other places in Singapore…how does $84 for six beers sound?!
Saturday was a really lazy, late get up, fall in and out of the pool day for us. It gave us a chance to catch up with Josh and Kristin a bit more which was great. Kristin has just finished a stint singing La bohème and has this weekend just dipped her little toe into the waters of musical theatre which she reports she likes a lot. She sang on Friday night at a $1000 a head fundraising dinner and it went very successfully. Josh and Kristin are just such a perfectly suited couple: strangely in some ways as their interests seem poles apart, but it all seems to work quite wonderfully. Saturday night we all went to a great café run by an Aussie expat and met up with Lewy, Alison, Jay A. and Clarky and Melissa. The party of 9 had a fantastic fun night reminiscing about old times and discussing a few aspects of the Australian Diaspora and how we have different experiences depending where we are in the world. I’m sure Clarky was keen to paint the town red, but as we were up at 5 the next morning we wisely demurred.
We farewelled Josh before first light the next morning, taxied to the airport and crushed and folded ourselves into our Jetstar seats for the 5 hours back to Taipei. Tired but stoked, this trip is already getting inked into the calendar for next year! (By the way, Cass was quite happy to be left out of this report. She spent many extra hours sleeping and enjoying some quality time with the cats on the lounge on a dreary rainy Taipei weekend. I suspect she was quite happy to escape from my annoying presence for a little while!) Photos: Wal and Josh displaying the great range of food in a Singapore supermarket, the boys at the golf, Adam Scott, and a fascinating photo I snaffled from someone else's Facebook account: see the hot chick four from the left with the sunnies on? That is Cassy Williamson, circa 1978 at Dungog High with all the girls from her senior class!