We all live in our comfortable little worlds, following our comfortable little routines. Once in a while, however, we get on a train that takes us to a different world that has been existing all this while - a world with its own denizens, its own rules, its own ways and its own accoutrements - without our knowledge.
I got this feeling yesterday, when C and I visited Raffles Marina for a "nautical exhibition" and second-hand boat sale. Booths had been set up by the nice folk in the world of boating and yachting; out on the water, there were half a dozen pre-owned pleasure craft seeking new owners.
In the air-conditioned comfort of the marina, one guy was selling kayaks that could be broken up into more manageable pieces. Another was selling gyroscopes (Seakeeper) that reduce the amount of "roll" on a boat (so that those prone to sea-sickness won't feel like throwing up). Yet another was selling break-proof glass-ware, so that you can wine and dine on the high seas with "propahhh" crockery that won't break each time your boat leaps and lurches on the high seas. Another retailer was selling a mini desalination plant for your boat - a keyboard-sized gadget that converts sea water into fresh, drinkable water (Rainman Desalination). Yet other booths were selling dry bags and mutant-sized cooler boxes.
Not that these doo-dads come cheap. Six of those break-proof wine glasses - frankly, they looked like plastic to me - cost S$96. But that would be a bargain compared to the gyroscope to minimise sea-sickness. That sphere slightly bigger than a football cost - get this - S$29,000. And while you are at it, throw in another S$10,000 to install it somewhere in the bowels of your boat. That's nearly S$40,000.
As R put it, it's far cheaper to barf into a plastic bag.
I call these strange, interest-driven places parallel universes. I get the same feeling when I go to Funan Centre (the temple for tech toys), Sim Lim Square (another temple for tech toys, but with thuggish sales people included in the price), Adelphi mall (for audiophiles) and Peace Centre (for musical instruments and LPs). I just feel displaced, unschooled in such places.
Out on the water, we met SGBoating's Eric, who was overseeing the sale of second-hand boats. For S$15,000 more than what we paid for Little Wanderer, brand new, we could have bought a much larger boat with inboard motor and below-deck bed, stove and sink. Oh, and air-conditioning below-deck too. But these pre-owned boats were anywhere between four and six years old. (And here, I have memories of our previous [very!] pre-owned boats, which on occasion refused to start. Those were the weekends we were left feeling frustrated on the dock, with our cooler boxes of food and drink, but with nowhere to go.)
Eric told us that he had looked at the GPS on our boat and seen where we were trying to go on our last trip out (see previous post). He said he had checked this website and found that on Aug 22, the waters had been rough. Winds had been blowing south to north, which explained why our trip back to the marina had taken a much shorter time than our outbound trip, and that currents had been pushing south too. In short, the waters we were traversing were like a maelstrom.
It figures. May Little Wanderer find calmer waters.
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