yowkee essential

My wife went to Singapore to join the Half-A-Million-Ringgit-Race Treasure Hunt. It’s organized by Singapore Tourism Board, as one of the series event/activities to promote Singapore’s tourism — the slogan for the programme is Visit Singapore, Learning about Singapore.

She has been there for one week and I missed her a lot. So on last Friday night I took bus to go to Singapore too, with the hope we might be lucky in Race 3 — well, the race 3 started on last Saturday (19/Nov).

We arrived at the starting point of the race early Saturday morning, register and have the first riddle: (you got to re-register even if you have joined the previous races)

Sitting along the quiet path,
This is hardly nature’s wrath.
If you strain your sights hard enough,
You might glimpse a fruit that’s just so tough.

Well, we got a car this round (from my sister-in-law), and this riddle seem extremely easy! Initially her sister suggested it could be the orchard at Bukit Timah, but come to really think of it — this is a game promoting to know Singapore, then obviously the answer is the Esplanade !

So and so, with smile on our face and confidence, we started the searching along all possible quiet path we could find around the Esplanade. Guess what? A few hours later, we are exhausted, on our feet we have been though a big big round surrounding the Esplanade — because we thought it’s obviously some quiet place where you could glimpse the roof of Esplanade. That’s the look of a durian obviously isn’t it?! All Singaporean knew that. Further more, lots of the participants have the same thought and been the same place, we met and said hello, and having the same misery face. It’s such a easy guess and yet we are out of stream…

We finally gave up around 3:30pm at the afternoon, decided to go back to my sister-in-law’s house and do our homework on Internet. That end up with a good sleep and through to the night.

Frusted, feeling hopeless to the game, we wake up the second day (20/Nov) and had some good news! With friends’ help and we’ve been thinking it could be the long under-pass linking among a few shopping mall in that area — CityLink, which allows you to walk to Marine Square, Suntec City, MRT without a shine of sun. That could be a place be the first checkpoint! We went with excitement. Again, few hours later we are down, having a delicious Ramen and, hopeless again. The last hope, well, it could actually be the orchard at Bukit Timah. My sister-in-law had the never-say-never attitude, she went all by herself to Bukit Timah to have a search.

Errhem.…today, Nov/21, I am at my home at KL, typing for this blog post. End of the story, end of my 2-days journey at Singapore for the Race 3 of the treasure hunt. Of course, we didn’t find it. My wife was so close at the Race 2 and yet Race 3 game seem so far… May be I was the one bringing the bad luck to her. Well, the organizer might be happy, I am one of the trourist well spending in that 2 days for over 500 ringgit —- think about if they could attract a couple hundred of Malaysian for the race.