This blog post is part of the Random Sampling Singapore project. The Project aims to sample 100 places on the island of Singapore over a one year period in order to gain an unbiased and holistic view of the city state.

End of September I met with Jane again. Jane was on vacation and my daughter Anna had HBL (Home Based Learning), so we decided to do a nice and easy coordinate. We chose a coordinate on Sentosa. It wasn’t exactly located on the “party island”, it was more floating along the coast in front of Siloso beach.

We entered the beach and scanned the QR code with the Trace Together app. We could smell the salty air through our face masks. I haven’t seen Jane since our last coordinates #25_SPIRIT and #81_KEEP CALM AND LOVE PENGUINS. We stepped out of our shoes and walked barefooted in the sand down to the water. Only a few other people were on this usual always overcrowded artificial beach. We walked and talked, suddenly we had to stop on a blue fence. I asked the nearby lifeguard whether the other part of the beach is closed and he told us that we would need to walk back all the way and enter from the street into the other segment. When we reached that entrance we scanned the next QR Code and walked down to the site where a small bridge connects the outer island. This would have been the closest point to our coordinate. Another lifeguard pointed with a sharp whistle out, that the small bridge is closed and we couldn’t enter the island. Exhausted from the heat and sun, pandemic restrictions, work and HBL we were sitting in the sand, watching the ships moving by at our far coordinate. We checked out the beach. Anna found a purple fish sand mold, Jane was collecting snow-white shells. I collected a sample of the yellow fine sand.

We started to build a sandcastle and found lots of algae, sticks and seeds to decorate. At the end it was totally overloaded and looked like a mountain surrounded by a green valley with an enchanted forest. We called it 许愿山 (Xu Yuan Shan), the wishing mountain. So we made a wish. The girls weren’t eager to tell me them] wish that day, maybe because they knew I would share it with you in the blog. For me, of all you could wish in this extraordinary times, the empty party island Sentosa made me realize that we are lacking one essential thing through this pandemic. That’s why I wished for a extra portion of Happiness.

ARTWORK

When I was looking through the samples that day, I was smiling when I read the label on the shells: Snow White

With that in mind I was looking through the photos and was realizing that I captured Snow White making her wish: