Day 6, and our first proper day off since arriving here in Singapore. We originally planned to head out to Universal Studios today, but as it's Labour Day over here, it means that loads of people have the day off work and school. Which obviously means that Universal Studios would be absolutely packed. So we decided to delay that a bit to next Friday.
Instead, we had originally planned a lazy day, followed by attending the JSSL end of season awards evening, at a big hotel in the centre of Singapore, called Swissotel. But this morning, while I was asleep, Dan had arranged a meeting with a female he had got chatting to on Tinder. Apparently she was bringing a friend along, so, naturally, he HAD to as well. After managing only about 5 hours of sleep, he woke me up to tell me to get up and ready cause we were meeting his "Tinderella". Fab. I had planned for a lazy day and sleeping in til late. But being the lovely chap I am, I got out of bed, got showered and ready so that I could accompany Dan to his Tinder-date. I won't go into too much detail as there really isn't much to say, but they seemed like friendly girls. The girl Dan was seeing, all I'll say is that she looked a fair bit different from her Tinder picture. Like I said, really friendly girl though, they bought us chicken satay's, so I was happy.
After Dan's date, we walked home, where we met a friendly busker called Steven, busking in an underpass on our way home. I recognized the song he was playing straight away, with thanks to Paula and Eleanor Howard, who would drive me to school last year every day, and torture me with these really old songs that I hated, and I gave in and sang along. Dan sang along a bit too, it was proper fun. When he was done, we asked him if he could play Hey Jude by the Beatles. Of course he could! He started playing, and Dan and I joined in. We ended up busking with him for the whole of Hey Jude. It was class. People were walking by smiling, obviously knowing we were foreigners. Who cares, though, it was really fun. After we finished, we had a brief chat with Steven, gave him some change, and headed home. We're planning to go back to Steven and sing a long with him to some more British classics.
When we got home, we relaxed for a bit, cooled down, got changed and then we headed out to the JSSL awards evening!
Now, when playing Sunday league, we used to have end of season awards at one of the players' houses, and we'd have a BBQ and it'll be a nice afternoon. This was something else. No expense was spared.
It started off in the ballroom at a really fancy hotel in central Singapore, where they had put about 50 big, circular tables around the hall, with a big stage at the end. Everyone met eachother, said hello, then sat down for the evening to start.
First up was a host to welcome everyone, before handing over to Harvey, the owner of the JSSL - Arsenal academy, who did a little speech.
Then, onto the entertainment. We had Thailand's number 1 football freestyler, and dance group who contested in Thailand's version of Britains Got Talent, and did quite well, and a magician, who was pretty good, to be fair.
After all that, we started the awards. There was loads of teams to go through, and loads of awards to give out, like Most Valuable Player, Most Committed Player and Most Outstanding Player from each team. There were a lot of teams, so this took a while.
We then had dinner, which was a big buffet, and desert, which was buffet style too. The waiters kept refilling our drinks, so me and Dan had countless glasses of coca-cola, which we knew wasn't good for us, but it was free so accepted it anyway. Then after we had cups of tea, they did the individual awards, such as Coach awards and Parent awards. All in all, it was a really good night.
We also found out that one of the guys we're working alongside, was the one and only Paul Parker, who played under Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United (around the time where the class of '92 were making themselves known), and got 19 caps for England, too. So we felt a bit stupid not recognising him earlier. Crazy.
Tomorrow, full on. We start at 9:30am, and don't finish until around 6/7pm. Its expected to be 37degrees tomorrow, too. So it's going to be a tough one.
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