Today I planned to get a long run in, but drinking two beers and two large gin and tonics last night put paid to that idea: we crawled out of bed at 8:30, and took La Serpiente Aquatica Negra to the Botanic Gardens to shout at pigeons.
There are two good times to visit the Botanic Gardens: early morning before it’s too hot, and in the evenings after a rainstorm, when you can hear the sound of hundreds of frogs humping like mad under all the drain covers. Since our daughter isn’t allowed out late at night, she misses out on the latter of these two fun things, but she got to run around, attempt to climb inside an enormous plastic sculpture of a flower, and then spend about two glorious hours sprinting around the water area of the children’s garden, while we chatted to one of my work friends.
After that it was still only midday, and La Serpiente was not in the mood for sleep, so we took her to a shopping mall where we bought Tofurkey, and then to a Canadian burger joint in the ground floor of Orchard Towers, Singapore’s most famous multicultural knocking shop ("the four floors of whores", as mentioned by every stand up comedian and "edgy" tourist guide to this republic). I had a vegetarian burger, nothing salacious occurred, our daughter fell asleep, and we went home.
Meanwhile, my nose has been dripping like a busted tap. When I spent most of yesterday sneezing I thought it might be an allergy, but the copious amounts of revolting green phlegm I’ve produced today suggest I may have a proper cold. In the tropics. This makes no sense whatsoever. I continue to eat fruit and drink foul tasting vitamin powders dissolved in water, in the hope that it eliminates the infection. So far, wife and child remain healthy, but they have hardy Canadian constitutions, whereas I have the frail body of an Englishman. Pretty sure there was something written about this by Shakespeare, with respect to Julius Caesar and all that bunch.
We finished the weekend by watching more motorcycle races: finally we’re all caught up, and today’s races, from Phillip Island in Australia, were some of the best, even if the final race was marred with crashes all the way to the end, cruelly robbing the riders I was supporting of podium finishes. Two races to the end of the season…