The karma that I faced for the weekend that just passed, I was laughing at F1, who on earth wants to go to the town during F1 period. As you might have guessed, I did. Although I’m not as stupid as those who are going on the Sunday, the peak of the race. Hihi….
So this is the first Grand Prix that Singapore hosts, and the first night race. They erect barriers and lights along where the track would be, for few months to a year we saw the progress. Actually, just last week, we still circling around the circuit in friend’s car and took the opportunity to boast that we had been driving around the track also. It had been lighted up and it was so called three times brighter than day light, reason being to eliminate the shadow of the road as it could be dangerous for the drivers. Even so, last week, everything looked not so ready to take off last Friday. Earlier last week then they started the roadblock, and it creates ho ha and multiple jams.
Well, in here, previously, Grand Prix is not welcome excitedly by many of Singaporeans. It was maybe just a bit of shock that the government suddenly took extreme change in tourism. What used to be loathed, like when they announced about opening up casinos, and about two years ago, they announced about Grand Prix. It felt much more that they are trying to become Macau before other country in the region. Another reason is that, there were not so many fans of F1 in Singapore. Hell, I hardly ever seen racing program in TV, or never. All they are crazy about is English football, Manchester, Chelsea, Liverpool, others sports like NBA don’t have a lot of chances. Since the news was announced that Singapore was going to host F1, the excitement was only so-so, except for those diehard fans. Up to few weeks before the event, there are up and downs of rumors in the market. One rumor says that F1 was picking up, ticket bought earlier were sold wit handsome profit and the price was still climbing up. Another rumor was ticket was going down, there are still many hotels along the F1 stretch that had a lot of vacancy.
The first road block also didn’t come in favorable, it created jams and flows of complaints in newspaper. But then again, to be fair, Singaporean complaints about almost everything.
For us, we didn’t try to get involved because partly we were not aware about what can we do, the other ore valid reason is of course, the cost of the ticket can easily give us a weekend of diving or more, Bottom line, we skipped. Anyway, hubby got a free Friday ticket from a friend, so he went down to catch the practice round. He came back with surprising news, that it was not as crowded as we expected, even the train back home was quite empty, and there was a stretch of street near the ticketing booth where people can actually watch without having to get into inside the paying area.
On Saturday, we had the paintball appointment with his colleagues. But because of unclear info, we went to the wrong paintball site, then we decided to cancel the paintball and head for town for me to catch a glimpse of F1.
This time they are smart and stingy. Everywhere along the track was covered with those opaque dark cloth, even the one exposed the day before. We found a spot where we could see through a transparent sheet. Even though I agree that it’s much more clearer to watch in TV, the feeling of actually being there was completely different. The sound was so deafening, so loud and exciting, stood there for ten minutes I felt almost nauseous, for a longer period of time, earplug is highly significant for the health. I had never seen anything move as fast as the car, literally, it disappear within an eye blink, well, I actually tested that.
ON the race day itself on Sunday, we watched through TV and it was a final full of twists and turns. Ferrari mishap, and Alonso turn of luck.
Ah well, I guess I have just gain a new interest.
Hubby's Pics:
