Games Day


Today was Games Day, so instead of going to the office we trooped down to the beach in Sentosa Island. Unfortunately, the haze was blowing in. When I got up this morning, there was a strong smell of burning in the house but the air quality reading was just 60, so I assumed it was overenthusiastic immolations for the Hungry Ghost Festival that was producing the smell. By midday today it was at 230 (above 100 you should stay indoors and avoid strenuous exertions) so at least we know my feeling ropey for the past few days isn’t because I’m down with a disease. It’s just Singapore that’s killing me. But still, we had Games Day.

The evil geniuses of the event company had hired a bouncy castle and brought a foam machine with them, then corralled us into the bouncy castle and made us climb out. Cue hilarity as people tried to clamber over one another, getting soaked and squashed. I ended up boosting lots of other people over the wall but being too weak to escape myself. A metaphor?

After that everyone was exhausted, and so it wasn’t for another hour that they inflicted further sports on us: a 4-way tug of war, 15 minutes of captain ball (netball with a person instead of a net, a supposedly non-contact sport where I got slammed off the pitch by a man twice my size) and all the time the merciless sun beat down upon us.

But there was limitless ice cream, water and 100 Plus so I have nothing to complain about, even though I’m burnt salmon pink and feeling groggy after a couple of beers. Now that there’s hundreds of us in the company in Singapore, you need events like this to get to know people and bond through the shared trauma of a bad tempered man yelling at you through a megaphone. Our last task was to jerry rig a raft out of inner tubes and bamboo and then float it across the swimming pool, with hilariously inept results. And then we all got corporate branded towels. This was some of the better mandatory fun in my life.

I went home to find the kids berserk from being cooped up inside all afternoon. The boggling continued all evening until La Serpiente crashed out.

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