I wanted to talk about this pretty long ago, but there’s a couple of stuff I am afraid of. I fear I may offend the secret service people, the defense science personnels, the military police and perhaps even trigger a operation to arrest myself. I convinced myself of the fallacy that Discovery Centre is no way affiliated to the military and so decided to go ahead with this entry.
It sux, totally. Discovery Centre is like the kind of place where you get ripped off for absolutely nothing. It is worse than getting the $2.50 National Education brochure that says ‘Social Studies Textbook’ on its cover. It is no better than attending a school neighbourhood police talk that requires an admission fee of $5.00. It just the kind of place you want to go to after a long roller coaster ride that say, stretches all the way from Siberia to Alaska in the round-the-earth way, having tasted enough excitement of your life. I once told everyone that the ‘Admission Fee’ list outside Escape Theme Park has nothing but 2 words, ‘Rip Off’, but Discovery Centre seem worse. I don’t mean tourist shouldn’t go there though – that’s really one of the places to get the taste of Singapore.
Firstly, ‘Discovery Centre’ is kind of a misnomer because you go there to ‘discover’ that you already know all the stuff they tell you. It’s like being Steve Irwin and going to some crocodile farm listening to that pathetic sociology-trained park guide explaining the diet of the reptiles, except the part about getting stung by stingrays. They tell you stuff like ‘The Merlion…’ Oops, pardon me, I was dozing off before I can type anymore. I think you should get what I mean.
Little George wasn’t responding to my calls either – so much for some intelligent robot. That heap of metal has been abused by tonnes of children shouting at it in the past when it stood close to the entrance of the exhibits. They decided that he had enough and decided to place him as the last exhibit before you turn to your right to the souvenir shop. Exiting from the place was the greatest part; I said the first ‘wow’ when I entered the souvenir shop, not because of what they sell but because I realized I just finished a 15-minutes walk that cost me 15 bucks. Cool.
The souvenirs are alright, at least the prices are more reasonable and I would have gotten one of their polo T-shirts if I wasn’t a Singaporean. Fortunately, the visit wasn’t just that because I soon find myself sitting in a 350-seater auditorium dozing off from some 3D documentary about 3D movies. Yes, it was 3D, stuff come zooming at you from the screen and your eyes are strained because of that. But the storyline wasn’t like some dragon invading Singapore or going on some time machine roller coaster ride, it was a documentary, on 3D technologies used to help us perceive the 3D on screen – they call the video ‘Misadventures in 3D’. That was when I totally admit defeat and decided that I shouldn’t be wasting time extracting more value from that little ticket of mine – it was free for me anyway.
Perhaps you are feeling rich, or maybe you need to see the world before entering Woodbridge Hospital and be trapped there for the rest of your life, or if you had enough with everything sensible in the world and hope to do something absolutely irrational or probably to some extent, perverse – do visit the Singapore Discovery Centre. This paragraph is written solely to refer to Singaporeans, the insensibility lies on the fact that we all know the stuff they want us to ‘discover’. Tourists should definitely visit this ‘place of interest’ located in our great SAFTI Military Institute Campus, and ‘discover’ Singapore for yourself.