My second day in dotesgee and things are just great. And I do mean that in a good way.

Landed at Changi airport about 30 minutes behind schedule. Of course UL (aka Usually Late (aka SriLankan Airlines and not Satellite)) told everyone that it was caused by "another airline".. WTF??

Sorry dad, but so far I haven't been hassled by anyone since I got here, there are a lot of long-haireds here too.. Oh well, it's only been two days. In fact dotesgee is really nothing like I imagined it would be. From my very (very) long-ago memories i thought it would be wall to wall buildings. Kind of like NYC with more Asian faces. But it is surprisingly green, lots of trees and shrubs and things. parks and boulevards on every block. It's pretty damned clean too. Cleaner than any place I have EVER been. And speaking of parks, they've got a new one there. Its called East Coast Park because, well, beacause it's park on the East Coast of the island.

I got there because YT was looking for a pair of blades. As in inline skates you violent idiots. So off I go looking for the two skate shops I saw online, Skateline and SkateSports. Well ok, I admit, I was looking for Skateline, Skatesports was just the first in my way. getting there was a killer. Landed at 0630, made my way out of the airport by 0730, and took a subway (they call them MRTs here) to the hotel. Had to walk another kilometer or so holding a 15kg bag, but it was cool. The people in dotesgee are friendly. They are willing to help an obvious stranger find the way to a hotel. And one lady even called the hotel to get proper directions

Checked in to the Oxford Hotel Singapore and fell asleep for the next two hours. With the one hour I managed to get on the plane and these hours, that brought my number of total hours sleep to a whopping three. Woke up at noon, groggily made my way out the door of the hotel and headed out into an absolutely gorgeous day.

Luckily it was a great day for woalking. Nicely cool and sunny. It was good to walk because I wasn't just looking for a place to buy blades., but also to find a wifi node so I could get online. Hit a Starbucks and had no luck, hit a McD, still no luck. But luckily some of the guys at the Starbucks were bladers, and a woman I spoke to on the street had a son who was into blading, so they told me to head off to Suntec City Mall.

SCM is fucken huge. And I DO mean HUGE!!! I'm still not sure I managed to see all of it. Something tells me that I didn't. But I managed to hit the Toys R Us, and the Carrefour. Both of whom didn't carry any decent blades. So I went looking some more, and found that the two skate shops I wanted were in a place called East Coast Park. This entailed a bus ride which dropped me off at the nearest point to the park. Just my luck, I step out of the bus just as it starts to hammer down with rain. Take a few runs from shade to shade and make it to a McD where I hold out until the rain ceases.

One more walk gets me to close to the western end of ECP and walk a little way east to find Skatesports. There I met a young trainer/salesman called Brandon who was extremely enthusiastic. He was good to talk to and taught me a few things that I wanted to learn. After that, I walked to Skateline at the eastern end of ECP. There were some guys there, but they were not as enthused about skating as the guys at Skatesports, so I walked all the way back and bought a pair of Roces S101 skates. So I guess if you want to sell, then you should show at least SOME level of enthusiasm about what you sell. The Skatesports guys are very enthusiastic and I recommend them to anyone who wants a set of inlines

Walk back to the hotel, and stop by to get a bite to eat. I must have walked almost 20 km that day, and I was bushed. There was a hawker bazaar kind of place near the hotel and I have no idea what I ate. I could have been dog balls for all I know, but they tasted good.

On the whole, it was a great day. There are many things to see here, and I saw some interesting places already. The IMF is meeting here this week, so there is a lot of security. They are planning a rollout of Singapore-wide wifi by the end of 2007, and they have a few hotspots running that I managed to use to get online. During the week I have to go for the AOSS Master Trainer Seminar, but will be writing more as I go along