Singapore Grand Prix 2012: Friday Practice

The grandstand along the pit straight of the Marina Bay street circuit.

The Passengers were privileged to score tickets to the Formula One hullabaloo in Singapore last weekend. We only got the chance to see the Friday night practice sessions before Sebastian Vettel raced to victory on Sunday night. However, we did have a perch in the corporate hospitality Sky Suites along the pit straight.

Sebastian Vettel navigates the Marina Bay street circuit during Friday's first practice session.

Though not really relevant to Friday practice sessions our perch had a good look at the eventual finish line and podium. More interestingly, we sat directly opposite the garages for teams Red Bull, McLaren, and Scuderia Ferrari. We could watch the machinations of three of the best racing teams this year. We stayed late and did our best to soak up as much hospitality (read: alcohol) as we could.

Crew attend to Sebastian Vettel's car on Friday night.

Crew attend to Lewis Hamilton's car on Friday night.

 

 

Only the dedicated remain in the hospitality suite after the second Formula One practice session last Friday night in Singapore.

"National Night" in Singapore, says Mentos

It's a viral marketing video fabricated to entice bloggers and news services, but it is funny. Family warning: This video does explain how babies are made. 

In fact, making babies is the entire joke because Singapore, which turns 46 years-old on 9 August 2012, has very publicly been wringing its hands about low birthrates for a while now. Last year after learning that the total fertility rate for 2010 stood at only 1.16 – nowhere near the replacement level of 2.1 – Lee Kuan Yew (Prime Minister of Singapore for its first 25 years) famously warned that an aging Singapore would face Japanese-style stagnation after the burgeoning economic expansion that marked the country's history since independence. Mentos has given the nation's adults a new civic duty.

Update (8 Aug 2012): James Fallows one of our favorite American writers about China and East Asia has picked up on the ad sensation for the Atlantic. Hat tip: The Dish.

Easy on the Turkey

President Harry S Truman admiring a Thanksgiving turkey in 1950. Presidents have annually "pardoned" one of the delicious fowls since JFK. The Guardian has a slideshow of past presidents getting the bird.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The Passengers wish we could be close to our nearest and dearest Americans to enjoy the holiday. Instead it's a normal working day in Singapore. We do get the gift of a public holiday tomorrow but not because of any navigationally challenged religious dissidents. It's the time for pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims, Hari Raya Haji in Malay. The Passengers will do Thanksgiving with a number of expatriates and sympathetic Singaporeans on Sunday evening.

The Thanksgiving holiday in America provides a number of benefits. Firstly, the occasion is secular and can be enjoyed by anyone willing to participate. It seems especially fitting as a reminder of the immigrant beginnings of our national experiment. Along with the absence of creedal partisanship, Thanksgiving celebrations are hardly commercial, mostly an excuse to eat as much food as possible while spending time with family or friends. There is, of course, NFL football and a parade with marching bands to watch. Yes, Americans can only go so long without shopping. The day after Thanksgiving, also a public holiday, marks the opening of the Christmas shopping season ("Black Friday") with "doorbuster (link to this year's Wal-Mart circular)" offers to those who can wait in the cold for a big-box retailer to open at 5:00 AM. It's a rather crass coda to a national tradition, but Thanksgiving continues to play an important role in keeping the Christmas decorations and holiday jingles off the cultural landscape at least until December is a reasonable possibility. In Singapore the Christmas decorations went up before November, in part because of all the visiting dignitaries for the APEC Summit earlier this month.

Anniversary, Rottingdean

The town of Rottingdean lies in a valley where the South Downs meet the English Channel.

The Passengers have been married a whole year now, plus a few weeks spent getting around to finishing this post and loading the photos. For our paper anniversary we made a pilgrimage back to the south coast of England where we were married at St. Margaret's church in Rottingdean. We spent two nights in this postcard village where Rudyard Kipling (and H's grandmother) used to live. The day included a walk across the south downs overlooking the sea and a very relaxed dinner of fresh scallops and langoustines at Riddle & Finns in nearby Brighton. Here are some images to show what makes the village such a pleasant retreat.

St. Margaret's church in the center of the village. Parts of the building pre-date William the Conqueror. The house immediately in front of the church was Kipling's home, The Elms.

Overlooking the downs.

A Tudor-era (16th Century) cottage near the village green.

The Kipling Gardens were created in 1983 as a means to preserve part of the village's historic core.