in this is hope: SG day in london

heh against my better judgement i volunteered for this thingy (on the 25th)... and had to go down one day before to be briefed (the day with cloudless sky and camera-less me. ohwell.) anyhow it was held at hampton court palace - it shouldn't be called 'in london' haha. it's in surrey - and 'london' is normally used to refer to central london. not to mention you need to take a train there =P

but the suburbs are really pretty

i didn't get to go into the castle even with the sg day security pass =(

but it's real pretty from the outside - the kind you dream of when you're a kid and wanting to be a princess =)

the event was held in this far corner of the palace grounds - huuge empty space... probably for equestarian stuff since there's a paddock next to it. on briefing day we actually took the shortcut in and had to avoid A LOT of horse shit.

i think the coolest part of volunteering is being able to see how things are run... and to be on the inside when things start. heh. but no perks for volunteering: we still had to queue for the free food. although er. being rather despo we actually went ard asking the aunties & uncles if they had food on the briefing day.. heh.

on the day itself we got in before the 'doors' were open to public and tried to wrangle some food before we needed to queue. got stopped by a couple of marshalls though - "we're not serving till 1015 queue up later!". but yum. got my quota of food w/o having to queue =) it was really weird though... speaking to the hawkers in singlish - in london no less. seriously. reverse culture shock. esp on briefing day... being briefed in english with hokkien/ canto/ malay phrases thrown in as exclamations... chatting up the aunties & uncles for food. lol.

road signs sprouted up overnight

so did the road tax haha

singaporean national past-time: queueing up for free things

calm before the storm

before:

after: (this is actually quite empty cos i took the photo in the first 10 min of the event)

the MOE booth was a walk-through thing... but was quite a hit with the kids.. i spent the first part of the day hiding behind the display in the 'storeroom' and mugging. (heh. RJ kid la) then i spent the next part of the day in my shift thrusting balloons into people's hands and counting every single person that crossed the boundary into the booth. ohwell. but it was super fun... shoving balloons at people and going 'you're never too old to have one!' haha. and they adults all look uber amused and actually take it!

some of the more funky stuff at the booth was this art & craft thing... and an old-school classroom (angus... got your wooden table and chairs and chalkboard) with old-school games. thay also had this area for chapteh and zero-point. lol i had various ang-moh's coming up to me and asking whether they could find chapteh in london.couldn't get into the palace but managed to walk around the grounds a bit - beautiful... esp since it's spring and the flowers are out =) i got to see tulips though i didn't manage to go to amsterdam this reading week heh.