Remember those Wishing Spheres that di-di & I has a part in collecting wishes from a group of elderly folks a few weeks back?
They have now joined the rest of the Wishing Spheres at the Marina Bay, bopping along in anticipation for the last day of 2011 - where they will all come together a form a fantastic spectacle at the Marina Bay Singapore Countdown 2012!
Di-di & I have always wondered how come the spheres are never washed away by the currents, and what actually goes on behind the scenes to make all these spheres stay afloat. Well, we asked Daddy but he was stumped too.
Luckily, we monkies were given an exclusive access to the work that is being done behind the scenes to maintain the Wishing Spheres.
It's certainly not everytime where one can defy 'No-entry' signs. Hee.
We met up with the man, Uncle Nicholas, who is in charge of the maintenance all these Wishing Spheres - all 20,000 of them in fact - and that is definitely a lot of babies to look after!
The initial plan was just to interview Uncle Nicholas, and ask him questions regarding the maintenance of the spheres. But he was extremely kind enough to let us hop onto a boat and bring us round the perimeter of the Wishing Spheres area so that we could have a closer view of those white babies.
Naturally, di-di & I were over the moon!
Uncle Nicholas (that's the man in yellow) made us co-captains of the boat and asked us to make us everyone else onboard was sitting still. Hmmm... I think he was afraid we would be the ones jumping up and down on the boat instead. :P
Anyway, we would definitely listen to him because he has been in charge of the Wishing Spheres ever since it was first introduced in 2005. And to think there were only 2,500 of them then and he was a one-man show at that time. Now, these spheres have multiplied to 20,000 and Uncle Nicholas has 4 other people with 4 additional boats.
Together with 2 ground staff who help to tie the spheres together beforehand, all of them have painstakingly tied and anchored the Wishing Spheres at the Marina Bay area.
See the ropes that are just beneath the water surface?
The spheres are tied together with a net-like rope structure under the water and are tied according to sectors. Uncle Nicholas said this is because when the nearby Marina Barrage raises its gates after a heavy downpour, strong currents will be generated and this may cause ALL the spheres to be swept away if they are tied together with only one giant rope structure.
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| See - we sure paid close attention to what Uncle Nicholas was saying! :D |
Along the way, di-di & I spotted a few spheres that were deflated... like this poor fella on the bottom left corner in the photo below.
Uncle Nicholas said that these deflated ones would be replaced in a 4-day period over the Christmas weekend and hopefully, they will all stay afloat til New Year's Eve.
Definitely not an easy job to be maintaining those spheres I feel... and now, we monkies have a greater understanding of the work that goes on in the Wishing Spheres project.
Well, the fun boat ride did pretty much thrill us too. :P
Now, we have only one last question.
How would Uncle Nicholas keep this sphere afloat?
Just kidding! Hahaha...
For more information about the Marina Bay Singapore Countdown 2012, visit http://www.marinabaycountdown.sg/ or 'like' Marina Bay's Fanpage at https://www.facebook.com/marinabaysg.
*All photos were taken using a Nikon Coolpix P7100.
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