Youth Olympians...Welcome to Singapore

Saturday evening Singapore was host to the first ever Youth Olympic opening ceremonies.  It was a great program and I was surprised how fast five hours rolled by.  Yep, I was there waiting, watching and waiting again for a little over five hours, but would definitely do it again.  I will share more pics and comments later. Here are fireworks from the lighting of the torch (lighthouse) with the Singapore sky line in the background.

Tonight (Sunday) I have been watching highlights of competitions which started today.  The local cable has a few dedicated channels for broadcasts.  I was busy cleaning today and turned it on late tonight, but now I'm consumed! I'm regretting not getting more event tickets.  I might have to take some time off work this week and attend more events.

I don't know what it is about the Olympics, but I love them, the spirit of them, etc.  What's more amazing is I don't have USA-only coverage.  In fact, in the broadcast I've been watching, the U.S. has only turned up 4 times I think.  For a while I was like...hello, didn't we send anyone?? :)  No worries, we did. 

Some highlights for you so far:

• China blew away competition in women's weightlifting - scary looking young women.
• Taekwondo is fierce and I would have loved to see it.  The only U.S. appearance to make highlight reels was a young man who lost to Iran in a semi-final.
• The same Iranian was set to fight/kick/compete his Israeli counterpart in the gold medal match, but withdrew due to medical reasons giving Israel the gold.  (The word on the internet is that Iran regularly protests competitions with Israel as they do not recognize them as an independent nation.  Sad for the kid.)
• U.S. men and women are favored in basketball, which is a 3-on-3 competition with 4-man teams (i.e. one substitution).  Both won today - the women demolishing the Singapore ladies.
• One of the women's bball games was 6-6 at the half.  That must have been painful to watch!  I'm not sure how long the halves are, probably not too long considering it's only 3-on-3.
• U.S. women's swimmer won gold in the individual medley today and the women's triathlete is going home with a bronze!
• Other sports today - fencing, tennis, roman-greco wrestling, badminton, rowing.
• Winners are coming from all over! It's so great to not have a handful of countries dominating the podium.  Maybe I'm seeing too many prelims and semis, but I really love the variety of winners.

This may consume my life the next couple weeks ;). 

Happy 45th!

Today was Singapore's 45th birthday - I think I mentioned it in a previous post.  There is a parade and show that is put on.  The tickets are a hot item so I opted to enjoy the live televised version.  The parade portion was mainly all the military vehicles that I posted pics of before.  There are spectator stands put up downtown and the parade is really just in front of that area rather than what I would think of as a typical parade.  I had mentioned to someone earlier in the week about how early you had to camp out a spot and where you could go, which was when I realized it wasn't like sitting on the street curb waiting for the party to come by you.

The full military went by and they had announcers just like the Macy's or Rose Parade telling what each type of vehicle it was, war-time function and various military heads.  Different than what I was use to, but interesting to see it all. 

After dark, I heard a rumbling and the procession was continuing around the island and right by my condo.  But I mainly only saw lights.  Then more booms indicated the fireworks had started and I watched on TV.  This year, they set off fireworks from the top of several tall towers across downtown.

Here are a couple pictures and short video (ending with the President of Singapore) taken from the wonderful vantage point of my couch :).

The Haunting

Last night, well early this morning really, was weird.  I woke up to a big storm outside at like 5:30am.  I was still sleepy and took me a little while to figure out what was going on.  I could hear the rain and occasional thunder. 

As I was waking up, I rolled over to find my bedroom door wide open.  Not that big of a deal except I specifically closed it shut when I went to bed.  It's happened to me before, I wake up with the door ajar.  It doesn't always latch well.  So now I make sure it's completely shut/latched before heading to bed.  It's really just an air conditioning issue as I only want to cool my room during the night.  Anyway, it threw me off that now it was wide open.

Then I realize the sound of rain is all too real.  Did I have water leaking somewhere? What is going on? I finally get out of bed to find that one of my windows is open.  How in the world?!?  It wasn't wide open and there was no water coming in.....but it still freaked me out.

I had to get up, turn on all the lights, look in all the rooms, behind doors, etc.  It was creepy.  Front door was still locked.  Once all checked out fine, I went back to sleep.

Is my apartment haunted?? or just that shoddily made?