The island of Samosa

Monday was designated beach day and we headed out to Sentosa island – which I kept calling Samosa - confusing the taxi drivers somewhat. This is a small island just next to the southern part of Singapore and connected by a bridge and train line (as well as a cable car for the panoramic approach, albeit at an astronomic price). Driving over the bridge we could see more of the economic expansion of Singapore in the huge building works being undertaken near to Sentosa, which will become shortly a hotel, leisure and casino complex. Also visible from the bridge was concrete evidence of one of the drivers of Singapore’s economic engine, its huge port. Singapore in fact is the largest commercial port in the world. Over 140,000 ships dock here per year in one of the 600 shipping lanes seconds or to put it more graphically one ship is unloaded every 3 minutes. Singapore’s prosperity is clearly based on more than just its financial sector ( see UK ).

Sentosa with its lovely beaches, chilled out bars and varied activities is in a sense another example of the country’s success and capabilities. All of the facilities have been created in recent years including the beaches. Looking at Sentosa today, it's hard to imagine the island was once a fishing village known as Pulau Blakang Mati (not catchy). It later became a British military fortress until 1967 (Fort Siloso still stands) and was handed back to the newly independent Singapore Government. In 1968, the Government decided to develop the island into a holiday resort for local visitors and tourists. The public was invited to suggest names for the island and "Sentosa" – meaning peace & tranquillity in Malay - was eventually chosen for the island resort. A huge effort was then made and billions invested to transform the island into a holiday resort, and the result is very impressive, if not exactly calm and peaceful. The only thing they could not design out was the view, which is a slightly surreal panorama of huge cargo ships approaching and leaving the bustling dockyards.

Later, after a few hours n the beach, I had the dubious pleasure of joining Rachael and Dominic in a visit to their gym. It had been noticeable on arrival that they were both looking fit and toned, and it turned out the reason for this was their workouts at the gym with “personal trainers” ( I thought people who you paid money to make you suffer pain were called Dominatrixes – but there you go). Following a few days of indulgence I felt the need to do a little exercise myself and talked myself into joining them. This had probably been encouraged by my chat to a Kiwi expat called Paul at a picnic the previous evening. Paul played rugby, and I could not help noticing that although we were the same height and weight, Paul’s kilos seemed to be arranged in quite different places on his physique from on mine – often not even in the same postal area in fact. On arrival at the gym Rach and Dom disappeared to have pain and suffering inflicted on their bodies, and I decided to do a little jogging on the running machines. This proved interesting. At home I go to a gym where running is essential to avoid dying of acute hypothermia within 10 minutes. Here, despite the best efforts of the air conditioning I could not help noticing it was a tad warmer. After 15 minutes of gentle jogging (I don’t have another speed in case you were wondering) I noticed it seemed to be raining. In fact it was sweat running down my forehead – I seemed to be developing my own personal weather system – and I decided to slow down a bit to recover (good excuse). It was all worthwhile though. At the end of the session Dominic remarked that his trainer had been impressed by my effort, which if nothing else I felt justified another gourmet session that evening!