Youth Olympics 2010

Singapore is hosting the very first Youth Olympics ever and it is truly amazing. It must be the fact that they have already hosted the Adult Olympics previously so this ain't their first rodeo, if you know what I mean. They have gone all out and Alex and I had the pleasure and joy to experience a part of the hype, as we went to 2 female football games this evening...Iran v Turkey and Trinidad and Tobago v Chile. What a wonderful and clean/well organized event...everyone was so proud and excited to be a part of the inaugural Youth Olympics ever! The first match was very interesting, as the team from Iran have been in the local papers due to some controversy surrounding wearing their hijabs during the game...eventually it was resolved and they were allowed to wear hijab head caps along with long sleeves and tights to cover all their flesh...please also remember that it is Ramadan so they were all fasting and it is very hot (a moist heat) so bless those poor young athletes! They played a tough game, but lost to Turkey 4-2. The second game was just boring...yawn. Trinidad and Tobago are brutal though, so that was cool and there were many injuries unlike the first game. The only goal came at the final 3 seconds of the game, but the half time show was a real treat with an 8 member dance troupe doing some moves for the 26 fans that came to watch these matches...well, it was more like 1000 people. We spent the beginning of the day sorting out money and booking our ferry tickets to Sumatra, as we leave Singapore tomorrow morning for Indonesia...we are also millionaires at the moment, as we are carrying over 1,000,000 Indonesian Rupiah and it feels awesome. We are so posh and important...people are bowing at our feet...well not really, as 100,000 Rupiah is about 7 pounds, but whose counting. Yes, we ate sushi again and yes we walked around all the posh shopping centres again as well. We have promised each other that when we return to Singapore for the last two days of October, we will actually do some touristy things like Sentosa Island and the Orchid Garden at the Botanical Gardens, but this time around, we just needed a break...a very expensive posh break. Now, I sit in the Hive (a very special hostel) emailing and blogging while Alex searches the internet for various 10k and half marathon races around the world...G-d help me through. She has signed us up for something called the Vertical Marathon in Thailand (Bangkok) and it consists of 1,093 steps and the finishing point is on the 61st floor of some tall building and the fastest recorded time is 6 minutes and 43 seconds completed by a Thai elite runner. We will be doing this on the 3rd of October so pray for us, well me really.