SDS 1.1 – Hot and Cold

Beginning a story is always difficult.

Waking up early to begin mine was even more difficult especially when I spent the day before on a phone rescue mission that included going around abandoned HDB blocks (don’t ask).

On the first Saturday of January, I woke up at around 7 am so I could head to the National Museum of Singapore by noon. Of course, that included time to roll around in bed and wonder why the heck I was doing up.

Actually, I was there the day before too on phone rescue mission day. Considering it had been 1st January, it was free entry cause of the “I heart Museums” thingy or something. Anyway, waiting three hours to just enter the museum for free is totally not a thing I’d wanna do. So we left! Or rather, it wasn’t a thing I’d wanna do when I was going out with friends. The main attraction why I headed to the museum in the first place?

Yess, I was there to check out the Egyptian exhibit out! And from this picture you can note the major obvious difference between the number of people there compared to the previous day when it was free. Pretty quiet compared to new year’s day.

Guest starring, Arrch and Tiramisue.

Usually I would go to exhibits when it’s in the middle or near the end of the run, not in the beginning. This time we really needed to go to the museum because Arrch was going to leave Singapore the following day. Since it was the 2nd Jan, we didn’t get the option of following a guided tour since those only started on the 4th. I’ll probably go again since the run ends on the 4th April.

Tickets were actually $15 for adults but you get a 50% discount if you used Mastercard. It was free if you were a student. Blaaaaaaar. Nevermind, $8.50 was pretty okay… The price of a movie on a weekend but instead you get to go around and learn history and cultural things and stuff… Like origami, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Yes! And just for $8.50 (after Mastercard discount), you can be an immortal! Or rather, just head on the quest for immortality. Bwur hur. Who knew you’d have to queue to be an immortal. Other people would probably take a short cut and get bitten by vampires or something.

Scanned in our tickets and we faced a pyramid. Actually, the first section you see when you enter is a fun area where there’s puzzles, games and interactive things you can do.

Wooo… Origami! It is actually fun to do it. Okay, you need to really note that there’s nothing on the instructions except for, well, instructions (duh). Everyone was concentrating on making their paper pyramids (paper was provided including sticky tape) and so the three of us decided to try it too.

Mine is the artistic looking one on the right. Tiramisue’s on the left and Arrch’s on the back. Whateveeeeer. I’m not an origamist! Anyway, Arrch and Sue placed their pyramids in the middle in case anyone wanted to look at it for an example while I took mine and stuffed it into my bag.

We actually spent nearly an hour at the interactive bit of the museum because it was pretty fun. You could stamp hieroglyphics stuff onto a card that was to be a bookmark. The museum really stacked quite a bit of paper and special cards for us to do so there.

Here’s Arrch doing a rubbing with the crayons and paper provided there. It’s actually a riddle which you can solve after translating the hieroglyphs into letters. Of course it wouldn’t be in Egyptian but English. On the other side of the interactive area had a game where you could play with your friends. Anyway, after taking much pictures there, we headed inside.

The whole area was pretty dark but the artifacts were lit up just enough to see the details. The info about it were all written on the board/wall thing close to it so it was pretty easy to learn what was what.

Tiramisue alerted to me if I could see something wrong and GASP, she was right! If she didn’t pointed it out to me, I wouldn’t have noticed it. Check out the sign for number 18. Heh, apparently the Chinese translation was correct but the English was wrong so someone must have copy/pasted the wrong thing. Nonetheless, my friend who works at the designing bit for this exhibition saw the “sneaks” of this post and the pictures and told me she was going to inform the museum to change it. By the time I go to the museum in the middle/end of its run, it’ll probably be the correct text.

Even if it was morning-ish, there were lots of people at the exhibit. Thankfully not too much though since there was quite a lot of space to walk around.

There were few mummies at the exhibit but what I liked about the section was that it did have a warning to say that it might not be “suitable for children” and I wondered how they were gonna censor it for them. It was pretty smart!! The x-rays and stuff of “scary” bits were behind the walls of the mummies. You could go around it you see, so if you wanted to see the x-rays of what was inside the coffins, you just had to walk around closer to the wall. Still, it wasn’t that much mummies, more artifacts instead. We got to see the book of the dead though, unlike movies, it’s actually a really long scroll. Heh, movies are just movies anyway and it’s more dramatic to have a BOOK instead of a scroll.

Eventually we finished going around all the exhibit and headed out, before the exit, we decided to check out the interactive side once more and pretty much laughed insanely because the table thing was being covered with pyramids! It started with two and now ended up with a whole bunch! Arrch and Tiramisue added the crane and boats there so it could travel amongst the pyramids. With that, got out.

There was merchandise sold too and the badges were cute. $2 a piece so I only chose two instead of the whole set. Naturally, I took Bastet and another one called the Love Tank which was from another exhibit that wasn’t about Egypt (duuuuh). Hurray! Museum trip finally over, as we walked past the main entrance of the museum, we saw there was a huge line of people at the ticket counter so heh, that was good of us to get there early before the crowd came in.

Next stop, Kallang Ice World! Seriously, like we’d just spend half the day doing just the museum trip? Heck no, the day was young and Arrch was going off the next day. We were packing our adventures to the max. When we got there though, it was fifteen minutes before the ice smoothening session. The guy said if we bought tickets then, we’d be wasting our session time so we had to wait until then.

Pfffft, students get discounts. Since I didn’t have a student card, I had to pay $17.50 including skates. We brought our own gloves so we didn’t have to pay for that. Gloves are totally a requirement if you want to skate there by the way (and socks is compulsory). The line was freaking long since there was only one guy at the counter so that was quite a wait to pay for our tickets.

Finally we got in and tied the laces of the skates we got from the rental shop inside! Okay, the skates were pretty… Wet and ewwww. Good thing we had our own socks but still it was disgusting. I have to say that I’m such a crap skater. I’m not an ice girl. I BELONG TO THE LAND OF ETERNAL SUMMER. We avoided the kids. OH MAN, THE KIDS. The danger zone was when kids would leave their ice walker trainer things in the middle of the ring and we’d have to avoid it like heck. AAAAAARGH. Anyway, I got into the groove only when they played Britney over the speakers cause hey, it is a must to skate if “Hit Me Baby One More Time” was blaring away. That and the reason was I had to retie my skates.

The right side of my pair was killing my feet because it somehow wasn’t “balanced” unless I tied the laces really tight. It was fun… Until the ice got really choppy and there was a crowd entering after an hour or so causing the ring to be REALLY scary and hard to skate on. Add to the fact that children were bending down, trying to scoop up the “shaved” ice into snow balls.

Since our “session” was ending, we did a few more rounds and then finished up since we had to go have dinner elsewhere!

Damage report :

Elbows and knees including feet for Tiramisue, skinned toe for me and Arrch also had sore ankles with rubbed skin where the skates rubbed against his legs! Verdict? When skating, bring really long thick socks and an extra pair to change to because they’ll get disgustingly wet after you’re done.

If I ever go skating again, it’ll be a quiet day when there’s no children around so I don’t freak out too much. With that said, the three of us can skate away to escape on a frozen lake from Yetis or ice monsters faster than anyone who can’t skate. So too bad for you who can’t skate.

You’ll be eaten by the Yeti.