Get Your Geek On!

I knew my plans were set when I saw the ad for the Gaming and Electronics Fair coming to Singapore this weekend. Deanna was stuck in statistics class all day, so I was free to fully get my geek on.



The Suntec Convention Center has 6 floors of exhibition and convention halls. The gaming fair was on the 6th floor. For any convention-planning readers who might value these things, it is the largest column-free meeting area in Asia.

Despite the large size and absence of internal columns, the fair still was packed - mostly with boys but also a few girls here and there - all kids about half my age.



Some were quietly playing collectable trading card games. The more aggressive of the crowd (again, mostly boys) were battling each other in the latest mass-networked computer games. I wanted to play too, but I’m not all up on the moves and secret codes required to compete in the newest games. In fact, I was actually hoping to find some older games on sale.

The newest games typically to require too much memory, computing power, or dedicated graphics processing chips to run on my 2 year-old laptop. But I can usually get older games to run okay, so long as they are not too graphic intensive.



I couldn’t find any old games I wanted enough to buy, but I did get to spend a lot of time watching these younger and geekier versions of myself playing the cool new games that I’ll never be able run on my computer.

I also got to spend some time checking out some of the latest gaming hardware.

Now that almost everyone has a high definition flat panel TV, it is pretty standard to have it all connected up to play your X-box, Playstation, and home theater sound system. Gaming now has become so mainstream that its taken over your typical middle-class living room.

You’re almost not a geek anymore: guys, you’re playing on the same setup your mum and dad use for watching American Idol!



Being that I’m probably as old as some of these kids’ mums and dads, it was time for me to move on.

On the way out of the gaming convention, I noticed that there was an early-childhood education convention going on directly below the gaming convention.

Their convention has a cheerful manga-eyed mascot to greet the kids. I didn’t initially realize this was a different convention. I thought it was just another computer character from some new Japanese game being promoted upstairs.



I also discovered a universal truth on my way out: even in an economic downturn precipitated by falling real estate prices, and even at a gaming convention populated mostly with 20-something boys, you can still find some guy pushing dodgy real estate investments.



Having satisfied my inner geek at the game fair, and skipping the chance to make 28.98% return in London real estate, I took the escalators down to the ground floor of the Suntec mall. There was another event in Suntec I needed to find - the Carrefour International Wine Fair.

We’ve lived in California all of our lives within a short drive to some of the world’s best wine regions: Napa Valley, Sonoma County, Mendocino County, Marin County, Monterey County, San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, etc. So we’ve come to expect great wine at reasonable prices. Once we moved to Singapore, however, we discovered neither.

Singaporeans are not big wine drinkers. And when they do, they don’t typically import their wine from California. They look for nearby regions like New Zealand or Australia. Or even France.



Not that you can’t find good wines from France. They’re just not as good as the ones from California. And when you add in the shipping costs and the Singapore import duties on alcoholic beverages, they’re never reasonably priced here.

Fortunately, the wine fair solved two problems. One: they had plenty of wines from all over the world. And two: they had free samples!

What more needs to be said. The wine fair was a hit! I accepted as many samples as they offered. And took liberal advantage of the sample stations set out for me to pour my own.



Alas, I couldn’t stay long enough to finish all the open bottles - I had to meet Deanna after she finished with her statistics class. Thank goodness for Singapore’s public transportation. A couple drinks in the US, and you’re stranded by blood-alcohol. In Singapore you just hop on the train, swipe your ez-link card, and you’re off to the next party.

But as I wobbled out of the wine fair, I thought about the real estate salesmen stuck upstairs in the gaming convention. They might have found a more receptive customer had they have pitched their booth in front of the wine fair instead.

Triathlon

According to Wikipedia, the first known swim/bike/run triathlon was held at Mission Bay, San Diego, California on September 25, 1974. It was invented by members of the San Diego Track Club, which sponsored the race. Only 46 participants competed in the race.

Last month, I completed my first triathlon in Singapore. It was sponsored by Tribob Singapore. Nearly 1,000 people entered, and 748 people finished. Technically, the race was classified as a “sprint” distance triathlon, which means it was half the distance of an Olympic triathlon.

The triathlon was the final of a three-race series. They gave me the bib number (374) for all three races:

Aquathlon
Swim: 750m
Run: 5km



Duathlon
Run: 3km
Bile: 15km
Run: 3km


Triathlon
Swim: 750m
Bike: 20km
Run: 5km


Total Combined Distance
Swim: 1.5K
Bike: 35K
Run: 16K

For people participating in all three races, their results are combined for a final overall score. My final position after all 3 races was 60th out of 229 finishers in my age category (men 40-49).

The thing about racing in Singapore is dealing with the heat and humidity. It is pretty much always 80 degrees in Singapore, day or night. And the humidity makes it feel about 5 to 10 degrees warmer still. Obviously this doesn’t much impact your swimming, but once you get out of the water and start biking or running, you really get hot.

A couple of our friends came out and met Deanna at the beach to cheer me on. I only got to see them for a couple of seconds each time I passed the race checkpoints. After the race, however, it was really great to have friends around to congratulate me and buy cold beers.