Going East I – Singapore

Apologies to all readers for not posting recently, but I was away most of July and the first two weeks in August and then I was catching up with some work. Undergraduate students are not around, but the work does not stop...

On the 2nd of July, a day after the Events Management exam board, I took off to ‘the other side of the world’ to attend the Event Research Conference in Australia. I went with three colleagues (Caroline Jackson, Dorothy Fox and Debbie Sadd). Travelling to Australia involves a very long flight. Two years ago, when I went to the same conference (in Melbourne), I flew to Australia directly and closer to the conference. This was a mistake... I struggled to be fully awake at the conference due to the jet leg! I can barely remember my presentation of two years ago as I was so sleepy. This time I did not do the same mistake. We flew a couple of days earlier, to have enough time to acclimatise and get used to the different time.

Instead of travelling directly to Australia, we decided to stop in Singapore (there are only 2 hours difference between Singapore and Queensland). For the first time I flew with Singapore Airlines and the flight from London to Singapore was on the… A380! Beautiful plane, very comfortable seat, outstanding entertainment system, excellent service and delicious food! I guess by now you have realised that I loved flying with SingaporeAir. From now on, I will fly with them if I can – having a good airline when flying long haul makes a difference.

The A380

We took this opportunity to visit Singapore and to make some contacts with local educational institutions. We visited Temasek Poytechnic and a private further education institute. We were very well received by Sandra, our host at Temasek Poly. The Poly offers culinary arts courses and the students work on some of the cafes and restaurants with their premises. We had a ‘comfort stop’ at one of these and the food was simply delicious. Look at the picture below! Mouth watering indeed.

Delicious food. OK, a third of the table contains my food! Greedy Miguel! Just could not resist trying the food. I had the soup on the left, the japanese style food next to it and the yellow cake at the bottom of the picture.

Starting on my right: Caroline, Sandra, Dorothy and Debbie

Needless to say that we also used our free time to visit some of the hotspots in Singapore. The Youth Asian Games were on and on Saturday we went to Sentosa Island to attend the Beach Voleyball tournament.

Sentosa Island, with the event taking place in the background

On the only night we spent in Singapore we did the famous ‘night safari’. It was an interesting experience. Basically it is a zoo, with the animals spread over a large area (unlike city zoos), but you have the chance to see the animals at night.

At the night safari

Just before resuming our journey to Australia, we had time to taste one of the symbols of Singapore – the Singapore Sling Cocktail. Of course, we did it where it should be: at the Raffles Hotel. The cocktail was invented by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon between 1910 and 1915. It is very tasty but you should not drink too many… the recipe includes Gin, Cherry Brandy, Cointreau and Dom Benedictine. We had only one as we were a few hours away from flying to Brisbane...

Cheers! Enjoying the Singapore Sling Cocktail at the Raffles Hotel