Day 22 - Final Day

Today was my final day in Singapore for good! I'll get straight into today's activities before wrapping it all up at the end.

We started off the day with my last coaching session with JSSL at VJC. The plan was to get all the under 8's, and split them up into seperate groups, with each coach taking a group. This means that both Dan and I got our own group to coach for the whole session. Happy days!

The session plan sent to us for today was based around passing and receiving. I started off sticking to the plan, getting the kids passing to eachother in partners, but they didn't have the ability to progress the session beyond that, so after that I stopped sticking to the session plan. I stuck on with the same passing drill, and varied it a bit so the kids can try out different things. I then progressed it into a small dribbling session, where they had to dribble through a line of cones, and pass it back. They were a lot better at this, so I kept making it harder for them. We finished off on a match, where my group played against Dan's group. The final score was 2-2, which was fair in my opinion. I had the technically better players, while Dan had the bigger, more physical players. So it was a good game.

After that, my session was over. I got changed, said goodbye to all the coaches and staff, which was sad, and headed for home. Dan and I had a busy day planned so there was no time for hanging about!

After getting changed, we headed for Raffles hotel, to try a Singapore sling. This was recommended by my great uncle and aunty, who had been to Singapore years ago and had one, and said they were amazing. So expectations were high.

It was gorgeous. It's a cocktail with a mixture of Cherry, Pineapple and Lime flavourings, mixed with Gin and a few other ingredients. It was very nice indeed. It came at a cost, though. $30 (£15) it cost for the drink, which shocked me and Dan, as we didn't think it would be that much. But to say I've tasted it at Raffles Hotel, the original home of the Singapore Sling, it was worth the money.

Next up, we planned to go on this big wheel, very similar to the London Eye back home, just the Singapore version. However, when we got to it, it cost a lot more than we anticipated, so we skipped it and went for a Fish-Foot-Eating date instead. These fish were HUGE, and covered your feet. The feeling was a lot stranger than the first time, but oh my days, my feet felt so soft after. Was well worth it.

On our walk round, we saw a big building with a banana shaped roof. We decided that, instead of going up the big wheel, we'd go to the top of there instead. Great decision.

This building was the Marina Bay Hotel, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Apparently rooms START from £250 per 2 people per night, so we knew that this was a decent place to stay.

We bought our tickets, and got in the lift up. The views were absolutely incredible. Ridiculously incredible. You could pretty much see the whole of Singapore up here. It was beautiful. Those of you that have me on Facebook, my pictures are all up there, but words can't describe how amazing it was. The only thing that tops that, for me, was Table Mountain, in Cape Town. It's that good.

We stayed for a drink, before deciding it was too hot and headed home. We had a pretty chilled out evening, as I'm up early tomorrow, and don't want to be up late and miss my flight! Tomorrow, home.

That pretty much concludes my time in Singapore, as well as my time abroad representing Arsenal. It's been an absolutely incredible experience, both Singapore and South Africa, and I wouldn't change anything for the world. All of it has, hopefully, given me more experience, helped me develop as a coach, and changed me for the better. We'll see.

I'd just like to thank every one of you that's taken the time out to read either one of my blogs. It really means a lot how you guys are taking an interest in what I'm doing, and gone out of your way to see what I've been getting up to. The response on this has been amazing, and the amount of views I've had has been incredible. So thank you to you readers!

I'd also like to thank everyone I've worked with, and all the Arsenal in the Community guys back home. I can say as a guarantee that I wouldn't be where I am today without you guys, so thank you so much to all of you for helping me, and just being welcoming and friendly to me. It means a great deal.

Finally, I'd like to send out a huge thank you to all of my family, and my girlfriend too, for supporting me while I've been away. This year has seen me be away from home for longer than I've ever been, so to know that I've still got support back home and that everyone's proud of what I'm doing has made everything so much easier, so thank you guys so much.

Hope these blogs have been a half decent read for you guys. I'm off to wake Dan up and tell him goodbye, for now. That's a wrap folks, I'm outta here!

Day 21 - VJC

Today, I started my last weekend of work, and my last weekend out in Singapore. Crazy how I just have one more day to go until I leave for home.

We had our usual Saturday sessions at VJC, I was with Fook with his under 12's, before going onto Ross with his under 14's, then finishing with Daymon and his under 12 girls.

First session. Fook. He had to take the under 10's that are going to the Bangkok and Gothia tournaments, so he left me, and another coach in charge of his under 12's. Now, I would've been absolutely fine with this, if he just told me what topic to do and I could make up a session on that topic, but he gave me his already planned session, and pretty much said "do this". It wasn't a bad session, it's just there are other sessions that I would've done. Back at Arsenal we were taught to avoid lining the kids up in queues wherever possible. The session I was told to do was basically queuing, and taking it in turns to dribble through some cones, which wasn't my style of session. It went well, just I personally didn't enjoy it as much because it wasn't my session. Oh well.

Over to Ross. My last time coaching with him. I enjoyed his session much more. We had a group of 20 under 14's, and he'd organised a passing session, progressing to a shooting session. I was involved, helped coach, and even played a bit too. It was quality. Plus, there were no queues! Happy days! His session was a really good one, that finished on 3v3 games, which I got involved in as there was a spare 2. My team got slaughtered, we lost every game, and I was our only goalscorer. So it wasn't a successful game. Oh well.

Finally, Daymondo's girls team. Quite a few of his younger girls were playing in the team for the Gothia and Bangkok tournaments, so Daymon wanted them to play against the older girls, as they'd be playing against older boys in the tournament, and wanted his team to have some idea of playing against a bigger opposition. He split them into teams. Gothia/Bangkok and non Gothia/Bangkok. Obviously I took the girls not going, and we did about half an hour of training. Straight from that, we went into the match. My girls won 1-0, which was a good result. Daymons girls really played well against a bigger, more physical opposition, and was so close to scoring on a few occasions. So I wish them all the best in their tournaments.

After that, the day was done. Me and Dan headed for home, via Subway. Going to be a long day tomorrow, as we have training in the morning, followed by a visit to Raffles Hotel! Should be good!

Day 20 - Final Day Off

Today was my final day off work before heading back to England, and it started off pretty dull. After a fairly late night we managed to sleep in until around 2pm, so by the time we got up half the day was gone.

We decided to go out for some lunch, so we got changed and headed off. We didn't know where to go so we searched around the Parkway Parade Mall to find ourselves somewhere to go. After nothing really appealed to us, we headed to KFC. Big mistake. The food was rank, and a complete waste of money, nothing like KFC back home, which left us annoyed as we left the fast food joint.

One of the things we were thinking of doing while we were together out here was renting out a bike and cycling around East Coast Park. East Coast Park was a huge stretch of greenery and paving, where people can walk along the whole East Coast of Singapore on. It takes forever to get from one side to the other. As we had loads of the day left to kill, we headed down there and checked out the prices. $30 (£15) for 2 hours renting a 2 person bike, which looked a bit like a golf cart, or peddle boat with wheels,  wasn't too bad so we decided to go ahead and pay for it.

It was so fun. A lot more fun than I expected. As we looked ridiculous in this pinkish/red bike-cart, we really didn't have a care in the world, so we were saying hello to everyone walking by and just dossing around while breezing down East Coast Park. One of the highlights of it was how we managed to convice a group of 5 boys (around 15/16), that our "cart" had ran out of petrol, and we needed a push to get it started again. Amazingly, they bought that awful story and they hopped off their bikes and pushed as a bit before we said our thank yous and cycled off. Sounds harsh, but we never expected it to actually work! The boys we did it too weirdly treated us like heros, and pretty much followed us around the park, as we saw them about 6 times after that incident.

We then thought we'd try it with older targets, so as we parked up at a bar to grab a drink, we pointed our cart towards the sea, meaning we'd have to simply move it backwards to get out and cycle off. Amazingly, we managed to convince a waitor and some other guy the same thing, and we needed a push start to get it started. We were well impressed. Saying thank you, we cycled off amazed at our acting skills. Was hilarious. Obviously we had a laugh around with the boys and the older guys after so there was nothing malicious there, just a bit of fun tricking them while we were out and about.

Tired from cycling for almost 2 hours, we managed to get the bike back to the rental place, and headed home, via grabbing a coke float (sprite float for Dan) from Burger King. Float drinks are amazing. For my coke float, they basically did have a big cup of coke, with ice, then topped it with vanilla ice cream. All for 75p. It tasted beautiful. Gutted we don't really see them in the UK as it tastes brilliant. Oh well.

Early start tomorrow. Final weekend in Singapore so it's going to be final sessions with each of the coaches I'm with, which'll be sad, but I'm definitely ready to come home for good now.

Day 19 - UWCSEA

Day 19, and my last ever session at UWCSEA! Getting all too real that in 4 days, my whole gap year programme will be over. Crazy. It's been a quality year, and I'm so happy that I've done it. Hopefully it can help me onto even better things in the future.

Onto today! We only had an evening session scheduled at UWCSEA, so after having a nice lay in, we got up and decided to go out for some lunch. Dan had a fancying for pasta, so we headed to this place called Pasta Mania, at the top of Parkway Parade mall.

From the outside, it looked like a decent place to go. However, very soon after we entered, we realised we'd made a mistake. The service was absolutely terrible. The staff were grumpy and obviously didn't want to be there. The food was expensive and horrible, and it was just generally poor. It's ridiculous how businesses can get that bad, and how some managers/owners just don't know how to motivate staff and create a friendly atmosphere. Ridiculous. Oh well. Never going there again.

After we ate, we had a look around the mall. We tried loads of free samples, used massage chairs, and dossed about inside a fitness shop, on all the equipment they had. It was quite fun, actually, and killed time before we had to get on the bus to our session. After dossing around for a bit, we grabbed a frozen yogurt each, and headed for the bus stop.

When we arrived at UWCSEA we had a bit of free time, so Dan, Ross and I spent a while just playing long balls to each other which was fun. Didn't take long for me and Dan to start sweating though, despite we did next to no running around at all. Humidity is horrible.

I was with Yaz for my session. He was busy at Tanglin school, as they had a match. So I started off with the under 14 girls, got them warmed up for his session, which focused on passing and receiving. It was a decent session, and I was actually allowed to get involved which was alright. Ended it on a shooting practice, as we only had a small section of a pitch, so couldn't do a match. It worked, though, which was a relief.

After the session was over, we headed home, via grabbing some food at a local Hawker with Daymondo.

Before I wrap this up, I'll just explain what a hawker is, for anyone that doesn't know. A Hawker is basically a small group of different food stalls, all operating in the same section. It's unbelievable common out here, as there is a Hawker every few roads apart. It's a cheap, tasty meal out, and lets you taste some of the Singapore food, which I love.

My last day off tomorrow, Dan's low on cash, until we get paid on Sunday so not much may happen. May use the day to pack most of my stuff for when I leave, as Saturday we have a full day of coaching, and Sunday Ross is planning to take us out somewhere before I go, which should be good!

Day 18 - Dulwich & UWCSEA

Today I had my last ever session at Dulwich College! Sessions at Dulwich are the easiest and shortest we do out here, so I won't miss it too much, as I didn't really have time to get to know anyone over here. Oh well, life goes on.

We started with a fairly easy warm up with the kids, where they dribbled around, and we would walk around and try to tackle them. They really enjoyed it so we carried that in for a while. Then, just before we went to progress, the lightening alarm went off, so everyone evacuated down to the gyms, as we didn't have time to wait around for the lightening warning to go off.

We only had a small space in the gyms, so played some tag-style games, at the request of the kids. That was fun, and they enjoyed that too. Soon enough, though, the session was over and we left for UWCSEA.

At UWCSEA, I was out with Fook again. There wasn't that many kids so I didn't exactly get the opportunity to coach which I wasn't thrilled about, but seems to be the story out here. Oh well, I had a laugh with the kids we were coaching, and played in the match too so that wasn't too bad. 

After UWCSEA, Daymon, Simon, Dan and I went out for beers and wings at a local place Daymon knew, as it was the last opportunity to properly hang out with Daymon before I leave. It was a really good night, I really enjoyed it. We just sat outside, eating wings and chips, drinking Tyger beers and just chatting about anything and everything. It was a quality night.

After we finished talking, and realised how late it actually was, we headed home. Going for a long lie in tomorrow, as we only have an evening session to do tomorrow!

Day 17 - UWCSEA

After getting back quite late last night, we were quite thankful that our only session today was a rather late one, starting at 6.

We managed to wake ourselves up at about 2 and, as we had a couple of hours before we had to get the bus, we decided to head to Parkway Parade (the shopping centre closest to us) to have some lunch before going to our session. We'd been on the ground floor of the centre a few times because that's the closest Subway fast food franchise to us, and Dan loves Subway so we've headed there a couple of times, but we've never really explored the centre. Today was the day we did it.

There wasn't too much to it really, there were mostly food shops, with a few sports shops and clothes shops thrown in aswell, so we didn't spend long looking round it as it wasn't really that interesting. We found a nice place to grab some food, though, so we sat down, ordered and waited for our food to come. 

Now, Dan's allergic to tomatoes, so when ordering our meal, we made this clear to the waitress that he couldn't eat any tomatoes of any sort, so to make sure that none of it is on his burger. The clever clogs they are, the removed the tomato from the burger, but drowned it in tomato sauce. Took it back to get another one as Dan couldn't eat it, came back, the tomato sauce had been [poorly] scraped off, with it still being very visible on the burger and bun. Back it went, came out again. They seemed to just wash the burger and bacon, given it a new bun and thought "done". When it came back out tomato sauce was still on the lettuce. So a now unhappy Dan, ditched the leaves and reluctantly ate the burger. It was a nice burger, though. Thankfully, they made up for it with their dessert. We had a delicious chocolate cake for dessert that was gorgeous. So I was happy, and Dan had cheered up a bit too.

Headed to the bus and we were on our way to our coaching session. I had been scheduled to coach with Fook, while Dan was with Norm, doing under 14's and under 10's respectively. However, that all changed. Dan was meant to be helping Norm with the group that we're going to a tournament in Gothia, Sweden. However, as Norm was leaving JSSL, he was now no longer coaching the group going to the tournament, so Norm and Fook did the under 10's, while I helped Ross out with his under 9's, and Dan help Cai with his group too. Complicated stuff.

Our session was really good. Ross is a nice guy and a good coach so it's cool coaching with him as we're on the same wavelength. We started with a passing exercise, and progressed it onto a possession game, which the kids enjoyed. After the possession game, they went onto a full on match, which the kids did really well in. For 9 year olds, their ability is really good, however they lack that tactical and positional awareness that all kids that age lack. So when the ball is in play, everyone swarms it. They're getting better and better though which is good.

After being out for so long yesterday, we're both exhausted so aim to stay in for the evening. Starting to decide what to do on my last couple of days in Singapore. We've go some good ideas though so it should be a good ending to my time out here!

Day 16 - Tanglin & Night Safari

Here we go! Final week of work out here in Singapore. It started with my last session at Tanglin Private School.

I was put with the under 3's again, which I didn't mind as they were really fun last time. Unlike the under 5's, I enjoyed my second session just as much as the first, so I was a happy man! The good thing about the under 3's is that they just love to chat and play with you, which was really fun. So I had a good session. Dan was with the under 6's, which he said "went alright".

After those sessions finished, me and Dan helped coaches Fook and Cai with their after school session, which was fun and easy too. It wasn't heavy as it was a hot day, plus Dan and I got involved in the match at the end too, which was fun, but so much hard work because of the weather.

After we finished at Tanglin, we got on the train to Harbour front. After our massage on Friday, we noticed that the same place does the fish-foot treatment, where you put your feet into a pool of "Dr. Fish", and they eat away at dead and hard skin on your feet, leaving them nice and smooth. So we decided to do that after Tanglin, as it was only a few stops on the tube. 

Oh my days. It's such a weird sensation. You put your feet in and the fish immediately come and have a nibble. But it doesn't feel like biting at all, it's more like vibrations on your feet. It was so weird. After about 5 minutes your finally get used to it though, and it starts to feel really nice. The guy who runs the shop let us have an extra 10 minutes for free too, so we were well happy.

After the fish treatment we grabbed a KFC before heading over to Singapore Zoo for the Night Safari, which has been heavily recommended by a few people out here. Tonight was the night we planned to do it.

It was incredible. We walked in and was treated to some guys doing a fire breathing show, which was amazing. We then walked to this amphitheater, where we watched a "creatures of the night" show, where they brought out snakes, raccoons, otters and loads of other animals on stage. That was really cool.

After that, we started to go on the trail around the park. This took us around all the different animal zones, while the tour guide gave us all these interesting facts about the animals. Like did you know that Flamingo's are born grey, yet they turn a pinkish colour because of their diet of shrimps?! Crazy!

The tour lasted about an hour, and was really interesting and cool to go through. It lived up to the hype, definitely!

Tomorrow we have an evening session, after such a late finish today, I'm planning to have a tasty lay in before we have to leave at around 4:30!