Driving Missed Divots

It's 2007!

And being the third day of the New Year it's back to work in Singapore, which is a bit of a wrench to the system as we Antipodeans are used to long and balmy summer vacations.

Mind you, I never took a long holiday in New Zealand at this time preferring instead to escape the coldness of winter mid year.

I mentioned in my last entry that we had visited the Presidential residence, Istana. What I neglected to say (and what many Singaporeans are unaware of) is that the grounds of Istana have been very successfully converted into what appears to be a nine hole golf course. Undoubtedly this landscaping intervention happened in recent years as it's hard to image Queen Vic's representative putting a round in his plus fours!

An entry on the Istana web site indicates that the grounds became a public park in the 1960's but the provenance of the golf course itself is not stated.

The sloping nature of the fairways reminds me of an uphill New Guinean airstrip. Many of the latter had very steep inclines which made it necessary for planes to land uphill and take off downhill - to gather speed before a precipitous drop at the end of the runway.

Each Istana green was roped off and under the watchful eye of the local constabulary when we joined the Open Day multitudes. Given that Istana is only opened rarely to the public, one can only wonder who makes regular use of the links?

Most enthusaists would agree that golf is a game that should be given up at least twice a month!

Today we took possession of our new condominium. It's feels good to be a 'man of property' again although we won't move in until our rennovations have been completed. It looks as if we will be able occupy the apartment before Chinese New Year which is good news. The bad news may come tomorrow when we learn what the costs of the minor works is likely to be.