One of the joys of living in Singapore might be coming to the East Coast park at day break and catching the sun rising over the South China Sea and Singapore Straits. Just as well, any one
might prefer the view out of their window where they are, or perhaps peering upwards from a coffeshop table or McDonald's outlet located in the heartland. But these days, one of my lifestyle perks is getting up before daybreak - a habit from my earliest working days after dropping a shift-lifestyle of irregular hours - and finding a great reason not to snooze and wake up three hours or more later. That one great draw for me used to be hitting the gym at the Hyatt. But recently renovated and re-branded as part of the international hotel chain's new Spa business, the fitness centre at Grand Hyatt Singapore is designed to meet the business traveller's needs and not those of an established base of life or period members. So, I dramatically lost the incentive to get up and get going. Instead, if I did not mind the mass-market madness or students, executives and muscle-Marys, the workout equipment available at California Fitness are ideal. It's a wildly different crowd of gym-bods and bodyworshippers which one will have to get comfortable with. Anyway, it failed to be a great reason to get me out of bed and going there.
But the one reason I could get out of bed for was catching the earliest light off Singapore's east coast, at the park which ran all along the south-east coastline. I would either cycle, inline skate, stroll, jog (seldom, as I dislike hardground to run on), or best - get my 16 oz cup of Starbucks brew and hook up on the free Internet wifi access point and update my blog, clear my emails and best of all, watch the crowd come in and go. Now, I could only do this as a jobless bloke in a highly employed Singapore society.
But the government has just revised the country's economic forecast downwards, with the GDP expected to be falling as well. So, I think I can expect more company for coffee hereafter, and safely consider that at least the sunrise remains sublimely glorious and always something to look forward to, even as I hog the same spot with my endless refills inside the coffeeshop while my computer struggles with catching up on my typing emails, blog updates and other literary triffle anyone might cared less for. Thus the only thing that forces me to wait these days are the
queues for coffee and my Internet Explorer 8 beta that constantly reports "Not Responding" when what it really means (as with all Vista O/S applications), "Please wait as your software application is being processed by your CPU." Thanks to some engineer who wrote the codes and alerts but is not a great communicator, Microsoft now has this silly alert tagged on all its applications that say "Not Responding", which is a misnomer. The CPU eventually catches up and the application will not hang. What should have been used is what was used before: "Please wait." or "Your application is now running..." or "Please let your computer complete the last processes." or somesuch. No wonder so many good folks running Vista think it sucks. The application may be slow, but the alert tag vocabulary may have been written by an alien...
might prefer the view out of their window where they are, or perhaps peering upwards from a coffeshop table or McDonald's outlet located in the heartland. But these days, one of my lifestyle perks is getting up before daybreak - a habit from my earliest working days after dropping a shift-lifestyle of irregular hours - and finding a great reason not to snooze and wake up three hours or more later. That one great draw for me used to be hitting the gym at the Hyatt. But recently renovated and re-branded as part of the international hotel chain's new Spa business, the fitness centre at Grand Hyatt Singapore is designed to meet the business traveller's needs and not those of an established base of life or period members. So, I dramatically lost the incentive to get up and get going. Instead, if I did not mind the mass-market madness or students, executives and muscle-Marys, the workout equipment available at California Fitness are ideal. It's a wildly different crowd of gym-bods and bodyworshippers which one will have to get comfortable with. Anyway, it failed to be a great reason to get me out of bed and going there.
But the one reason I could get out of bed for was catching the earliest light off Singapore's east coast, at the park which ran all along the south-east coastline. I would either cycle, inline skate, stroll, jog (seldom, as I dislike hardground to run on), or best - get my 16 oz cup of Starbucks brew and hook up on the free Internet wifi access point and update my blog, clear my emails and best of all, watch the crowd come in and go. Now, I could only do this as a jobless bloke in a highly employed Singapore society.
But the government has just revised the country's economic forecast downwards, with the GDP expected to be falling as well. So, I think I can expect more company for coffee hereafter, and safely consider that at least the sunrise remains sublimely glorious and always something to look forward to, even as I hog the same spot with my endless refills inside the coffeeshop while my computer struggles with catching up on my typing emails, blog updates and other literary triffle anyone might cared less for. Thus the only thing that forces me to wait these days are the 
queues for coffee and my Internet Explorer 8 beta that constantly reports "Not Responding" when what it really means (as with all Vista O/S applications), "Please wait as your software application is being processed by your CPU." Thanks to some engineer who wrote the codes and alerts but is not a great communicator, Microsoft now has this silly alert tagged on all its applications that say "Not Responding", which is a misnomer. The CPU eventually catches up and the application will not hang. What should have been used is what was used before: "Please wait." or "Your application is now running..." or "Please let your computer complete the last processes." or somesuch. No wonder so many good folks running Vista think it sucks. The application may be slow, but the alert tag vocabulary may have been written by an alien...
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