NDP 2010

its singapore's 45th birthday!
given a choice, i would have preferred to stay home with the boys to avoid the crazy crowd out there.
no matter how much i love to be out of the house too.

but, SIL booked a room at marina sands and we were asked to join them for the evening to see the NDP parade from the hotel room/skypark @ sands.
it would be lovely to have this opportunity to visit sands & its skypark.
on a normal day that is, but definitely not on national day!
from its website, hubbi and me noted that the parking fees is atrocious on public holiday - around $28 -$38 and sands is notorious for having its car park full.
so driving there is not an option.
public transport is also out as i cant imagine lugging big baby bag with possible cranky toddler or baby or both in tow!
as i said, given a choice i would have preferred to stay home.
but well, life works in such a way that compromise is very much a big thing at times. @_@

it just irks me at times that inconvenience for us never crosses the minds of some.
who needs to risk the massive crowd in the trains/cab queue after the parade? us.
who is concerned that my son has a wholesome dinner? us.
who cares about my baby turning super cranky at his bedtime of 830pm as we are stuck waiting to squeeze into the train/in the cab queue? us of cos.

in the end, the plan is to leave the place before the parade ends to avoid the crowd and to reach home early to settle the boys to sleep.
ok, we are good to go!

camwhoring as usual:

my 宝贝 acting pissed. think its due to us paying slightly more attention to didi... haha.


still pissed! wah, 狭小的心胸！


yz decided not to take photo with didi!!

slightly happier him..

yr knows the concept of "gai gai" recently.
he will kick his legs with joy and has this big toothless gummy smile plastered on his face! hehe.

anyway, the evening was kinda disastrous if you ask me.

the whole experience is definitely not worth the hefty price tag of nearly $600!

well, im not the one paying so i shant say much...

when we reached the hotel at 4+pm, they have yet to check in!

due to huge no. of people checking in for NDP, the rooms were not ready in time for check-in at 3pm.

what a joke.

and the carpark was full too including valet parking. cannot imagine.

we decided to walk around sands shopping strip in the meantime.

quite abit of shops are not opened yet... and sands has surprisingly very little restaurants!

rich people no need to eat one?!

i was getting worried about yz's dinner as the only few restaurants operating have long queus at 4+pm already!

in-laws finally checked in at 5+pm (can you imagine?!) and the room is situated on the 7th floor as opposed to the 33rd floor (horizon view rooms) that was previously reserved!

another joke.

SIL went to complain and after ding-dong here and there, finally they were relocated to another room on the 31st floor.

but its facing the wrong side so no NDP parade can be seen from this room.

gosh, what a screw-up.

the room is spacious and nice but i really dont see why its worth that kinda room rate.

especially with this kinda of screw-ups. public holiday aint an excuse as sands should be equipped to deal with influx of crowd from such days right?

tried calling room service for our dinner but no one picked up the call at all and i gave up after 10 mins of music.

yucks.

and the only decent chinese restaurant in the lobby is booked to the brim when we did our enquiry.

saw lots of people with ta-baoed food like chicken rice/nasi lemak as they sat in the lobby eating!!

very "world class" indeed.

hubbi and i decided to take a stroll at the skypark and leave after that.

turned out to be a wise choice indeed.

us at the skypark! the view is really really nice.

but not the crowd! nothing exclusive at all today. look at the hordes of people!

and most of them already "chopped" seats either by half-submerged in the pool ( i can imagine how wrinkly their skin will be at the end of the evening!) or perched themselves on the wooden seats lined along the skypark.

*gag*

hubbi and my moods were getting more and more irritated with all the people around us.

we have to queue up just to get into the lifts all this while, you know!

sooo many godamn people in sands! argh.

we were so glad to leave the place around 630pm and thank god there was a free cab just as we exited sands.

hopped into it and came back to good o' tiong bahru in 10mins time. :)

dinner @ coffee club was a peaceful event. goody good.

the evening was chaotic and not really enjoyable if you ask me.

but at least we managed to take a peek at how its like to be on top of sands.

oh well, life's a compromise i guess.