Maybank building!!!On this day, the gaming event known as EA Play 08 takes place. Singaporeans who are extremely free and have nothing better to do can come to this exclusive event for the chance to see:
...an ugly Cyborg-thing filling the screens of over 30 PC screens! Ahhh!Yes, Kane Wrath, the sequel to C&C 3 Tiberium Wars. Exclusively for us to preview a week before release. Fans of the game get up bright and early to preview this title hands on. After all, the previous year's EA Play had Tiberium Wars available for preview from as early as 9 am.
Early birds wanting to be among the first in the world to play arrive in the morning, unaware that prior to the Kane's Wrath hands on lies the finals of the Asia Pacific Crysis Tournament and the qualifiers of the Asia Pacific C&C 3 tournament, resulting in the game being only open for hands on preview at 6 pm in the evening!
Oh what to do till then? You can only watch the Crysis tournament for so long before you get bored of seeing people gun down each other over and over and over... Thankfully there is a convenient attraction lying around:
Tourists, prepare to lose your money! And the Integrated Resort isn't even up yet!
Ah, yes the Singapore Flyer. Completed not long ago before this blog entry. Initially proposed by the SAF as a surveillance structure disguised as a ferris wheel, the idea was scrapped after efforts to locate escaped JI detainee Mas Selamat bin Kastari by positioning SAF personnel on the top cabin scanning the country with binoculars met with staggering failure. Deemed totally useless for locating escaped terrorists with limps on their left legs, the Singapore Flyer became a full-fledged civilian tourist attraction. It even has escalators instead of staricases to give the impression of a shopping mall with ferris wheel.
But that's enough background information. To put it simply, if tourist attractions were weapons, the Singapore Flyer would classify as a WMD. The wheel itself is in the middle of a vaguely triangular-shaped structure with three levels all crammed with shops, restaurants and a bunch of other things that aren't even associated with ferris wheels. Wanna purchase sunglasses AND be within 30 meters of a ferris wheel? The Singapore Flyer's your kind of place.
And now on to the features of the Singapore Flyer.
Directly under the wheel is what looks like foliage they didn't clear away from the time when the area was still undeveloped land. It's disguised as a garden so you won't notice.
You can visit any of the shops or even the pseudo-garden under the wheel without paying for a ticket. However, everywhere you go there are advertisments about how totally awesome the Flyer is. Plus there's a ticket counter on level 1, eliminating the life-threatening necessity for some delicate tourists to ascend a few stories to buy a ticket. Their lives are only at risk when they have to ascend anyway to board the cabins of the Flyer.
Making it from level 1 to level 2 is an achievement worthy of taking a photograph as evidence of the glorious accomplishment.
Once you've purchased the ticket, you gain permission to enter the Flyer cabin that shall serve as your prison for the next 35 minutes. Now it's not a straight route up to the boarding area. First you must go through some metal detectors because they just love to make your life difficult.
Next you get to enter a model of the Flyer cabin with a green screen background. This is for photo taking and the green screen will become something like the first image in this blog entry.
After photo taking, you will be handed a black data storage drive containing the photo. When your ride is over, there will be a counter where you pass over the data storage drive for your photo to be developed and only then will they tell you it costs $25. This is a forewarning to all of you. If you do not wish to pay, then just run through the photo taking cabin. Don't stop even when the people there encourage you to take a photo. Bring your own goddamm camera.
The passageway to the boarding area is lined with LCD screens every 5 meters. The screens display stuff like 3D animations of people entering the Flyer cabins, with the 3D graphics resembling those of an Ocean Ou De Yang music video...
What you see when your cabin is departing. It's too late to escape you are already sealed in!
The Flyer rotates at an extremely slow speed. People standing as near as the grandstand of the Floating Platform Stage can easily think the Flyer broke down as the cabins don't seem to be moving. As your cabin goes up, you will see things like this:
Floating Platform... I remember the NDP days when I was there and the platform was blue...
The cabin is moving slowly... elevator music is playing... suddenly you feel bored and start wondering if the shitload of cash you spent on the ticket was worth it...
Behold this is your prison. Unlike Changi Prison these cells don't even have places to shit. And look at the door it says NO EXIT, that means you ain't going nowhere! Making things worse, everywhere you look you see the world of freedom outside your claustrophobic confinement.
At the top, when you look directly down you can see just how far you're gonna fall to your doom if the cabin detaches. Woot.
It may not look like it but that crap in the distance will become the Integrated Resort. Sucking even more tourist money. Man, Singapore's tourism industry rocks.
Anyway, after you reach the top, something incredible happens. You actually start to go down. Then, you glance at the door opposite the NO EXIT one and gasp in elation when the door says EXIT. So they weren't planning to keep you in there forever after all!
As the ground draws closer, you are filled with a sense of "okay, that's it?" And as the departure area looms closer, you are filled with relief that after 35 minutes "finally can go toilet".
A photo of a water hose. what you can't see the hose? It's at the bottom of the pic. Yeah my photographer skills suck. Buy me a better camera if you wanna do something about it.And that's it. The ride ends, the wheel has come full circle (literally). And like many before you, your wallet is $30 poorer. It's about to get $25 poorer if you decide to develop that picture from the data storage drive that you're still holding on to. You can attempt to leave the area with the data storage drive if you want. It'll make a nice, albeit useless souvenier.
For the eager gamer out there who has finished wasting 35 minutes of his life in a cabin with 2 LCD screens, a fire extinguisher and a ton of windows, it's back to Marina Sqaure to continue the agonizing wait for the Kane's Wrath hands on...
Randall
1 comment:
Woah. Randall. Too much money ah? You actually paid good money and wasted good time to spin around some capsule like a rat in wheel.
There's naught to see about the Singapore skyline anyway. Haha.
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