Singapore Day 1
So, Bridget just told me that she wasn't going to blog about the whole time in Singapore, she was just going to write about what she did while I was busy with the SSB fellows. So, I'm like 3 days behind now... Oh well.
So, day 1. We got up and had our standard breakfast of toast and instant coffee. The instant coffee package comes with the coffee, creamer, and sugar all in one, so there's no "black" option. Oh well. After breakfast, we walked down to Orchard Road, which I guess is a premier shopping area. We actually made it before alot of stores opened, so we didn't get to go to into all of them. But alot of the clothes just looked weird anyway. I didn't think we were missing much other than overpriced clothes that I would never wear. So, on we walked. Once we made it to the end of Orchard Rd, we walked to the Singapore Botanical gardens, which was converted from an abandoned plantation to the gardens in 1859 (I think). It was really nice. There was an orchid garden that was suppposedly free according to our guide book, but it wasn't free in reality. So, we just walked around other parts of the gardens.
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| The gardens |
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| Cool Flowers |
After walking around the gardens, we caught a taxi to meet up with the SSB fellows for lunch at Ghim Moh Market, a popular hawker center. Three of the four fellows made it, so we got to meet all of them and hang out for lunch. I got a duck rice dish and Bridget got a chicken noodle dish. It was really good, as always. :) Fiona, one of the fellows, let me have a bit of her food which was also good. It was a soup with fish and wide rice noodles. It kind of looked like dumplings, but it was definitely good. After lunch, Bridget headed back to the hostel to take a nap and I went with the fellows to a talk at a conference on medical device regulation in Singapore. I pretty much followed Fiona around so I at least looked semi-legit. I was probably one of five non-Asian people there. :) No bother - pretty much used to it by now. After the talk, one of the directors of the SSB program grabbed me to ride in a taxi with him and Dr. Fogarty to the next talk at the National University Hospital (NUH). So, that was totally cool. The next talk was also interesting. Dr. Fogarty talked about his experience as a medical innovator and a surgeon. But I won't bore you with more details... :)
During the talk, Bridget caught a bus to meet me at the NUH where we met up with another person I was introduced to. Dan, one of my good friends at the University of Michigan introduced me to his friend, SQ, who lives in Singapore. So, SQ and his girlfriend, Sarah, picked us up from the NUH and we hung out for the evening. We had initially planned on going out for dinner right away, but they asked us if we would want to go up on the skydeck of the casino! They have a friend who works up there and he could get us up there! So, of couse we said yes! And about 25 minutes later, we were walking around on the skydeck! Needless to say, the view was spectacular! Here are a few pics we took up there.
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| Skyline |
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| The city and the marina area (with a really cool accidental effect Bridget's camera did...) |
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| Us! |
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| Sarah, SQ, me, and Bridget |
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| A view along the pool that runs nearly the whole length of the "boat" |
After our skydeck tour, we went and did get some food (Bridget was getting really hungry). We got a big pile of Satay, the meat on skewers that we had in KL. It was so good! We got chicken, beef, mutton, and duck. And four big dishes of peanut sauce (so good!). We ate right next to where the old market was way back in the day. :) SQ taught us quite a bit about some of the history of the area. Since Singapore is an island (if you didn't know that already, you do now! :) ), it has to "reclaim" land by dredging sand from the ocean and piling it up to make the island bigger. In fact, part of the airport and the whole Bay Sands Resort is built on reclaimed land. Anyway, I won't go into another history lesson like back in Penang. :) Over dinner, we learned that Sarah works at the Singapore Zoo, which Bridget and I were considering doing on our last day there. She works in the reptile area, which is really cool, in my opinion. :) We decided to try to meet up with her if we make it to the zoo. After dinner, SQ dropped us off at our hostel. We were all getting a little tired and I had to be up early the next morning, so we parted ways. :)
And day 1 came to an end... :)
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