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Imagine the sense of adventure for you and your siblings would have pushed out memories of being cramped. Plus I am guessing you would have been a bit smaller at that point.

I’m really enjoying learning to sail- after being asked to come here then sacked I’ve been trying to find things that make sense to do here, or are in some ways better than back home. Falling in the water here is definitely less objectionable than back in the Solent, so it makes the list.

Ideally I want to get my licence so I can sail on my own, head out to some of the bays with clear water and reefs and go snorkelling.

Yes, everything costs more than you think and there are always additional costs for things.

Here in the tropics cleaning the bottom of the boat is an every couple of weeks type deal, which I don’t think it is in the UK.

The i550 is hauled out onto the hard stand at the moment and will be put in the water and taken out again when required- so marine growth less of an issue.

The current owner is apparently happy to keep paying for it to stay there if I fix the mast.

Changi Sailing Club is second cheapest here- Singapore Armed Services Sailing Club is the number one I believe. But cheap in the context of boats is not cheap.

I would like to be able to sail to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to explore, rather than flying (the normal method), ultimately. Maybe further afield depending on how much time I have - Australia in one direction, Sri Lanka the other, for example.

But the i550 is not the boat for that unless trying to set some sort of record.

There is a chap selling a Contessa 26 which looks to be in good condition but he wants double what I think it is worth, so I’m going to see if he adjusts his price next year (if he still has it of course).

Ok, it seems that when you start learning to sail you get offered “free” boats quite regularly - and from observation what happens to the boats that are offered for free, if they are not taken on by anyone, is a very high incidence of sinking mysteriously. This obviously can’t be anything to do with yachts having a very high disposal cost.

There’s a Marieholm produced International Folkboat that I’ve been offered, but the owner is so at odds with the storage yard that it’s been in (for the last 15 years) that they won’t do any work on it.

It has to have work done so it can be registered, so the only way that boat is leaving is under tow, or on a truck. That then still leaves the “where to take it?” Question, so (again) I think it’s a free boat that would end up costing a lot, with a lot of unanswered questions attached to how to even go about it currently.

Which brings me onto the i550 - a self built boat by a friend of a friend, who parked it when the mast bent when he had a lot of sail up (it’s an 18’ yacht that will do 16 knots).

Looks like a fresh mast extrusion would be around $500 from NZ, and other than that it’s drilling some holes and swapping the rigging.

Not exactly a cruiser, but - it’s the closest to free of the free boats, and it looks like fun to sail around the coast.

Holds the bed in, the clear plastic tube goes underneath the bed so you have to pull it out to clear a broken bit of filament.

I've ended up leaving the screws that hold the AMS spools to the bed of the AMS box out as the filament breaks inside the tubes so regularly, and you need to take it apart to get to the break to clear it.

I guess tastes vary, I find chicken rice to be the blander than porridge.

It will be something to take peoples minds of climate change, at least.

A post-America NATO is going to be interesting

Again, glass half full - it's making me glad I didn't move to America when my work asked me to.

Glass half full- maybe a world where the US is a splintered collection of feudal countries would be good for mediaeval tourism?

On the positive side a friend of a friend has asked if I want to borrow his i550.

The domestic helper/maid is a big thing for families and single mothers/elderly people. Childless couples and single people it’s not relevant.

Tax is low- but everything else is very expensive, the government has externalised the costs of things like education. If you had two kids then you have the advantage of the helper at ~$20,000 per year, but balance that with $100,000 on school fees, then $90,000 on housing, $40,000- $60,000 on leasing fees per car, food that is three times as expensive as the UK and so on.

It's a funny one on the food front - a lot of people really rave about it, but my question is where are they eating? I agree on the low crime.

Not to my knowledge. It's an anonymous phone call and completely optional. I just can't see statistically significant numbers of Trump voters agreeing to take part in the poll then lying to avoid some faceless caller thinking they're a bit of a twat. That might be the case for a few, of course, but it seems to me genuinely unlikely that's what a large number of respondents do.

I wonder about this in households, particularly one in which the man of the house is Trumpy - if the women of the household pick up the phone are they going to say "Harris" in earshot of Mr MAGA?

I really hope that Trumps campaign against women is what undoes him in the polling booth.

There are no car related positives, sorry to tell this thread.

Road cycling over on the Riau Islands is meant to be good, they have some bike parks there too (45 minute ferry ride), Thailand has some good enduro trails around Chiang Mai, but it’s either on fire or monsoon for large chunks of the year.

Japan has lift served bike parks on ski slopes as do Korea, and New Zealand’s world class DH tracks are 14 or so hours away. TBH given the length of the flight (time of year dependant) I’d rather go to the Alps but NZ was quite fun.

I’m learning to sail on a friends boat at the moment and the water is 28 degrees when you fall in. Once I know what I’m doing we can sail to Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia- if we get overtaken with ambition, Australia.

It’s pretty boring here- but, that’s actually a very privileged thing to say is a negative. Try being a woman from an ethnic minority in Malaysia- being able to simple go about your life in Singapore without the risks of being back home is life changing.

Japan and Korea are 6 hours away, Australia is between 4 and 7.

It’s not somewhere that I think I’m going to be for the rest of my life, but for now it’s quite interesting.

I hadn’t thought of this but it’s a great idea.

He does R&D here and Singapore has provided him with a lot of engineers that he requested- quite literally trained them at the university for him, he’d get a big bill for their investment in him if he tried to leave.

ARF or Additional Registration Fee, combined with COE or Certificate Of Entitlement will be maybe $240,000 of the cost of the $300,000 golf.

The government limits cars to 1M by issuing a fixed number of licences (the COE), so the price rises or falls according to the number of cars being scrapped.

Yes- a grey market import K car is $155,000, and you have to either pay a further $100,000 after ten years have passed or scrap it.

Yep, XL.

The left hook is the Singapore motorists favourite move because otherwise it would mean waiting for a cyclist- who basically hasn’t paid for their place on the road- whilst second favourite is just running into them because the general lack of situational awareness is very significant here.

I regret to inform you that cycling is not amazing- bear in mind that a VW Golf costs $300,000 here and then imagine how motorists see cyclists, especially when Kiasu runs fiercely in their veins.

He would be fucked if be tried to move it again- Singapore would not let him leave without significant payback.