Monday, January 05, 2009

January 4, 2009 - Singapore

We spent the morning and evening working on getting Mata'irea back in passage mode. While I stowed all of our new to us secondhand books, which we collected from friends and family as we traveled around the States (thanks everyone!), Sten spliced a new snap shackle onto the staysail halyard. By midday, we both needed a break from the heat and humidity and headed to the mall.
Singaporeans love to do two things: shop and eat. Hey! We also love to shop and eat. No wonder we like this place so much. I picked up some new flipflops and Sten found a new backup pair of polarized shades. We also spent an hour in the new National Geographic store at the Vivo Center. The store is hosting an exhibition of iconographic photos by four of the magazine's contributing photographers. Viewing these photos made us both want to take better pictures.
While we were home for the holidays the Volvo Ocean Race boats arrived at our marina. The race village doesn't officially open until after we leave, so we had to take advantage of the race simulator being parked at the mall. We, along with 10 Singaporeans, climbed into the pod. The door shut and a race highlights reel began as the pod started to tilt and shake. Then water began to mist down on us from the ceiling. The idea is to give riders a sense of what is like to be on a race boat as it crashes into waves. It was fun, but not terribly realistic. There was a lot of side to side motion, but none of the acceleration one feels sliding down a wave or any of the jarring motion of a full stop at the bottom of a trough.

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