Luckily I had my camera last weekend when we happened to stroll past the river and run in to the Singapore national dragon boating competition. We knew dragon boat racing was a big deal in Singapore, but really hadn't seen any of it in action. I have to admit, it was pretty cool!
There are a lot of people in this little boat.
OK- looks like hard work.
I think I'd like this job.
All lined up for the "national championship" race- whatever that means in Singapore.
Putting the dragon in dragon boating.
The racing was actually very cool to watch. The cox (skinny girl sitting up front) keeps the rowers moving together with the drum. Its unclear how you are supposed to hear your drum when there are 6 boats racing and drumming at the same time, but it must work out ok. So as soon as they take off the noise of grunting, cheering and drumming is almost deafening and it was pretty exciting to try to guess who would win. We had our money on a rather bulky group of Germans, but we are pretty sure a boat of skinny Asians won instead. It really does look like hard work though- but most of the participants had enviably sculpted arms, so maybe it is something we should give more thought to....
Here is a little video of the action.
Not a bad backdrop for a race.
Looks like a photo finish to me. We didn't have the best vantage point for the dramatic end.
After watching a few races, we ended up in Dave's office so he could do some very important tree killing printing of 10000 pages, and I stopped to take a picture of the view from the conference room at his offices.
Pretty lovely view of Boat Quay on a cloudy day.
All-in-all it was a rather more exciting weekend that usual with getting to see both ASEAN basketball in action and some dragon boating! We are concerned though that Singapore used up all its fun in one weekend and we are in for a dry spell =)
Only a little over a month till we are homeward bound!
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