YOG

The inaugural Youth Olympic Games that was held in Singapore just came to a close. I know the organising committee has gotten a lot of flack for the poor turnout at events, availability or rather unavailability of tickets, bad quality of food for volunteers etc. But overall we had a very good experience.

I had only myself to blame for booking tickets at the last minute so needless to say, by the time I checked all the popular events like gymnastics, badminton & swimming were sold out. My one suggestion is that they should have a way of letting you know which tickets were still available on a summary level instead of having to click into each sport & each date to find out if the event was sold out or not. Anyway I did manage to secure tickets for handball which I figured The Girl would find interesting as well.

Oh & each ticket for the Games came with a transit link card for 4 free rides on the MRT which I thought was quite cool.

Handball was one of 3 sports held at Suntec Convention Centre. Just before we entered the venue, we were given a little brochure explaining the rules of the game, which I thought was a very nice touch. I've never been to a sports event where they did that - they always kind of assume that you already know what you will be watching. I wonder if they do that for the Olympics as well.

What makes every sporting event interesting are the fans. There's nothing quite like sports to bring out the patriotic spirit in us. We didn't get to catch the Singapore team in action & when I asked The Girl which team she wanted to support, she said "Of course yellow, their clothes (I guess she meant jerseys) look nice" - you can't argue with that logic.

We caught 2 games - the first Angola 27 vs Brazil 30. It was an exciting game. Both teams were quite closely matched & the yellow team (Brazil) won. The second was between Australia & Kazakhstan with the latter being clearly a much stronger team. In case you are wondering, Denmark's the champion for Women's Handball.

I was quite impressed with the half time performances. They had MCs to get the crowd riled up, threw prizes into the stands & gave our students opportunities to perform.

Not exactly the Cheerios but they put up a very credible show

Maybe because it was Suntec, just outside the halls there were lots of activities

Art exhibition

Games

Performances

Not bad for $10. Where else can you get all these entertainment at that price ?