Tag: marina barrage

Exploring Marina Barrage

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With the current global COVID-19 situation, we have been unable to travel since all Singaporeans should defer all non-essential travel. And so, bearing in mind social distancing as responsible citizens that we are, the mister and I brought our two furkids out to Marina Barrage on his birthday. A weekday no less, with almost no one in sight when we arrived, save for a mother and her child attempting to fly a kite.

And exactly for the same reason why we chose to visit on a weekday, workers were maintaining the grass on the roof. We were requested to step off the half of the grass patch with the best view of Singapore’s skyline. Hastily, I took a snapshot of the three important figures in my life before we proceeded to the other half of the grass patch.

The birthday boy taking a quick picture with the two furkids.

Since we didn’t want the girls to disturb the workers trying to maintain grass on the other side, they were not given much freedom to frolic and roam about, unlike the last time we brought Paris and Belle. Not that they needed a lot of space; theses two furkids are a lot less adventurous than the other two we had and wouldn’t take many steps away from us, especially Cassie.

It wasn’t long before the girls stopped wanting to explore the area anyway. Without any shade in sight, Belle and Cassie went in search of their water bowl often.

The girls were panting hard from the heat and didn’t want to leave the water bowl to go play despite repeated coaxing. Indication that it was time for us to leave.

In comparison to their daddy, Belle and Cassie spend considerably more time with me since I work shorter hours these days due to a slower market. That doesn’t stop them from wanting to be around the mister more, especially on walks and occasional excursions to parks around Singapore. I reckon my slower walking pace and obsession with taking pictures didn’t quite suite their desire to dash ahead. 😕

TRIVIAL: Marina Barrage is a 350m-wide dam built across Marina Channel to keep out seawater. In essence it acts as Singapore’s 15th reservoir with a vast catchment area of 10,000ha. It was the vision of our late Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew to build this largest freshwater reservoir located in the heart of the city in order to reduce our reliance on the import of water.

In addition to its role as a reservoir, Marina Barrage is also a flood control scheme to alleviate flooding woes in the low-lying areas in the city. Since the water level in the barrage is kept constant all the time, it is ideal for certain water activities including canoeing, kayaking and dragon-boating. And last but not the least, the grass-covered roof of the building structure called the Green Roof has become a popular place of congregation for families to have a picnic or fly kites, especially during the weekends or major festivals like National Day when fireworks can be viewed clearly from the roof. On such occasions, families can go to the Marina Barrage as early as 12 hours before the event to reserve a spot for the family.

Reservoir in the Heart of the City

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* While we love travelling, in particular to Europe and Japan, our beloved home country has much to offer too. This is the first of a series of posts we’re intending to share on this space to document our cancer-striken golden retriever’s adventures in Singapore the garden city as we countdown to her last days with gratitude.

It was a gorgeous day on my birthday, the day we both decided to take leave from work in order to bring our two golden retrievers out for a day of fun. This day was also perfect in many other ways: it was a weekday, and a non-school holiday! Singapore in general, is not dog-unfriendly. However, ignorance is still rampant so there are laws in place to address that (or vice-versa), for example dogs must be leashed at all times outdoors and certain strong breeds even have to be muzzled. I have golden retrievers, which are truly the epitome of friendly, yet we’ve had numerous strangers asking us why they were not being muzzled as required by the law when we walked them outside. This ignorance and many others, do get to us at times. We’ve resorted to bringing them out to places where we think there will not be people milling about. Which brings us back to this day. Given that it was truly a normal weekday, we had the Marina Barrage Grass Roof almost exclusively to ourselves.

But the weather was definitely too hot for a sit-down picnic that I had envisioned while packing all the necessities for one. What was I thinking! 😆 While Paris and Belle were overjoyed to have the large grass patch to roam without a single care, they were also fast heating up. Good thing that we prepared sufficient chilled water for them.

The mister watched them closely, especially Paris now that she does not have a spleen (and has cancer) – it means that she will tire out a lot more easily but as a dog, she does not know to pace herself. I was behind camera lenses almost the whole time trying to capture the beautiful moments of our furkids having fun.

A lot of coaxing was involved to get them to finally settle down and sit for the mandatory shot with a panoramic view of Marina Bay and Singapore’s city landscape as the backdrop. They were not very keen to sit for long since they would much prefer to be sniffing around. I am so glad they at least cooperated for some good pictures.

After a short respite in the shade that involved some cake-eating on our part, we decided to bring the girls to Gardens by the Bay. Weather was still gorgeous, but since it was nearing noon, the sun was also upon us mercilessly. Despite that, Paris and Belle were nice enough to let me capture the above shot. Well… Paris obviously had ran out of patience and was in the process of standing up and moving away but Belle our little sweetheart was still sitting prettily till we released her.

We tried to stick to shady areas for the rest of our walk in Gardens by the Bay. It was very hot, yes, but the heat also ensured that the group of tourists who were sneakily taking selfies while trying to fit our dogs in their pictures left quickly as soon as they came. I’m really fine with strangers wanting to take pictures with our photogenic dogs but asking us for permission would be nice.

Towards the end of the trip, Paris was back to her uncooperative self where photo taking is concerned; she repeatedly refused to look into the camera no matter how we called out to her or coaxed. I think it was indication that she has had enough and we should call it a day, which we promptly did.

Paris was exhausted when we brought her home. We realised even the 3-hour short excursion tired her out. Good thing that she recovered soon, after a long nap in the air-conditioned room. Future outings, we have to keep it to less than 2 hours.