Thursday 9 July

Two days to go!

Tina wakes at 11.30 and orders room service.
Light out 1.30am.
Light back on 1.48am as I can't sleep. Read another chapter of my book.
Light out 2.08am! SLEEP
Alarms wakes me (first time in two days that I have heard it) at 7am.

I go on a trip around the island:
1. First stop is Tiger Balm Gardens with the 10 Courts of Hell (Haw Par Villa). The tiger balm owners made their fortune and built a palatial home with strange gardens/statues. Their home was bombed by the Japanese and it was regarded as bad luck to live in it again so they built elsewhere and donated the gardens to the Singapore Government. As they travelled the world they had statues made of things they saw. An interesting collection! The Courts of Hell are the scary punishments awaiting you if you do bad things such as not eating all the food on your plate! Or pay your taxes. All the punishments involve painful death and I wished they were an option when Helen was small and would not eat her mashed spuds!

2. Next is Kranji with its dam, Straits of Johor and 2km to the Malaysian city of Johor Bru (to give it its modern spelling - Johore Bahru is the old spelling I learnt at school) and the invasion beach. The main stop here was the CWGC cemetery which was, as usual, immaculate.

3. Nice lunch at Sembawang Park.

4. Bright Hill Buddhist Temple - huge and outstanding. Every child should be brought here to see how they should lovingly treat their parents! Oh I wish!

5. Last stop, and the main reason I went on this trip was the Changi Prison Museum and replica chapel. Very moving. Got some great quotes for teaching. Had a bad fall and staff and tour guide wanted to call an ambulance but I had been waiting 9 years to see this place (I didn't visit in 2000) so hobbled on.

Saw replica of Johor battery.

Heavy downpour which lasted minutes and cleared up.

Bus going along road and forced to stop behind a car which had just stopped. The driver of the car was being nice because an Iguana was crossing the road. We all sat there. Coming in the opposite direction was a police car and it ran the Iguana over!!! The man in the car was furious. He got out and wrote the police car's number down and he went to help the Iguana which wasn't dead. We moved on.

I SAW A PIECE OF LITTER!!!! It was blowing across the road. No doubt the police will get the piece of paper, look for a name on it or look for fingerprints on it!!!

Tina had a good day. Interestingly the only session she told me about was the last session, "Thinking About Retirement"!!! That's supposed to be my plan!!!

It's cliche time as we go to Raffles Hotel and Tina has a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar. The amazing thing about this place is that on every table and on the bar are huge boxes of peanuts in shells and people just shell them and throw the shell on the floor. The floor is a real mess but certainly adds character. Tina, being well brought up, is reluctant to drop her first shell but once her inhibition is overcome she drops with the best of them.

We then go for dinner in the Long Bar Steakhouse. We sit at our table and Tina does what every woman everywhere does - she places her bag on the floor. No, no, no - a small chair is brought and her bag has its own chair!

Here are some appetizers from the menu:
Tomato Soup flavoured with Gin (!!!)
Live Canadian lobster - $S98 - yes, for an appetizer!
Spring lobster - $S102

Most expensive main is Australian Wagyu grain fed with marbling of 8 Tenderloin 180grams at $S148!

We have Australian Black Angus grain fed marbling 0-2 Rib Eye, 250g at $S60!

The house red is a Cabernet from France!

My entre of shrimps came with eyes and feelers - I got them to take them away and shell them for me.

Total bill = $S305. Hey, it's our last meal.

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From today's Singapore paper:

A 37 year old Malaysian man who made headlines 3 years ago when he married a 106 year old woman has been arrested on drugs charges. Madam Wook said that her husband took her money, sold her jewellery and he car without her permission to buy heroin. The anti-drugs agency said they had received complaints from members of the public who say Muhammad beating the elderly woman. Their marriage in 2006 was her 21st and his first. At the time her said it was "God's will" that they got married and "Through her I can deepen my knowledge of religion"