Confirmed Beach: Swim at your own risk

So I "explored" the idea of the beach nearby yesterday. I thought it would be a bit of a walk, or maybe I would get lost. Turns out if you go down our street, you literally hit the beach in about 7 or so minutes (just two intersections away!). At first that made me really excited. I loved the idea of romantic walks on the beach, picnic dinner on the beach, swimming, running along the path in the morning, etc. Once I got closer, though, I saw HUNDREDS of ships in the distance. When I say distance, I mean not so far away - you can totally see the ships, and there are really hundreds. Apparently Singapore is the second busiest port in the world (next to Hong Kong), and I think that every ship must have to go by the East Coast Park beach...The ships cut out the idea beautiful views in our walks and picnics.

When I looked at the water, it sort of had an iridescent glow. That cuts out swimming. The entire beach was super manicured. There are barb-q pits where you can pay to use it, there are picnic benches, planted trees, grass, and other planned "natural" things. There was also a place to rent bikes and rollerblades - think the path along the lake in Chicago. Near our house as well there is a food centre. This has about 40 stalls of food/drink. There is basically any food you would ever want (here), including prawns and noodles, which seems to be very popular, lots of different soups, Malaysian food, chili crabs, which I think is the national food here, and also there are drink stands where they make fresh fruit juice right in front of you. In New York that costs you about $4, and here $1 (remember, I'm cheap - I love $1 drinks!).

I walked down the path a bit and even saw a reservoir area where they have wake boarding, but it's not from a boat - it's from a cable that goes in a circle above the skiiers - kind of like a chair lift. Cool idea! The beach is definitely a good place to read, people watch or just relax. If we could only get rid of all of those boats...

Matt and I went to a dinner for the Economic Society of Singapore. The President of the NY Fed (where Matt worked before we moved here) spoke. He spoke about the Asian economies ten years after the financial crises. He spoke in words that even I could understand, and we both enjoyed it. It was a Chinese banquet, and there were about 15 different courses. All in all it was a good night, with really nice/funny people at our table and even intellectual stimulation.

While I had my exciting day at the beach, Matt was finishing a piece that will be published in a JP Morgan periodical. Hurray for finishing!!

For your viewing pleasure: the beach (check out all of the ships!), the food court on the beach, the wake boarding pool, downtown Singapore from the beach.