Cruisin' Singapore Waters on a Speedboat: Spotted Your Own Wishing Spheres?

Guess what I’ll be doing today at this jetty?

Howdie Singapore!

I was at Esplanade the other day and I was awed by the sight of thousands of white balls floating in Marina Bay waters. That’s right. These aren’t just white balls bobbing in Singapore waters. These are our wishing spheres, representing our nation’s wishes and hopes for the new year.

Yes, I’m hopping into one of these…

Have you written yours? Unfortunately, the wishing stations are now closed. But you could still pen your wishes on the virtual Wishing sphere on Marina Bay Singapore Countdown website and post it on Twitter and Facebook.

If you’ve written yours, then maybe you should hop on down to Marina Bay and see if you could spot your own wishing sphere among the thousands of spheres. Open a bottle of champagne and toast to the new year if you’re so lucky to have spotted your own sphere by mere chance and fate!You know that year 2013’s gonna be a special year for you.

Well, I know it’s difficult to sieve out a needle from the haystack so here’s what I’ve done for you guys. I’ve hop on the speedboat with the guys working at Esplanade and blogger, Daddy M to capture some pictures of Singapore’s wishing spheres. From the big to small ones, I’ve tried by very best to capture a snapshot of it with my humble Canon 650D DSLR with a 18-55mm lens.My bad, I’m still too poor to invest in another better camera lens.

It’s quite an experience cruising on a speedboat. It felts like I’m in one of those James Bond’s action movies, sitting in the front of the boat, enjoying the breeze. Well, if only the boat could go a little faster…

In countries like Thailand and Taiwan, people write their wishes on sky lanterns and light them up during the night, allowing the lanterns to float high up in the sky. It must be so beautiful to witness this!

Photo Credit: tenniswood.co.uk

Instead of releasing the sky lanterns (airborne paper lanterns) into the sky, others set their wishing lanterns afloat on water. It’s been a tradition among some Asian cultures. The Thais believe that the lanterns symbolises the release of worries and bad memories into somewhere, far off from this universe. The good will come when the bad has gone.

Making wishes and resolutions for the new year has also slowly became part of our culture too. Every year, we all get a chance to pen down our wishes on the wishing sphere with a black marker. Hopefully, it will become part of our tradition and a Singaporean way to usher in the new year!

Photo Credit: keeplifefresh.blogspot.com

In Singapore, we had our wishes set afloat on calm waters, right in the heart of Marina Bay. The wishing spheres were installed with ropes anchoring to the grid system right underneath the waters so that the wishing spheres would not be washed off, entering Singapore river and in worse case scenarios, drifted off into the open sea.

I guess it would have been better if we are able to set our wishing sphere afloat in the waters on our own, just like how some of my friends had the opportunity to release their own sky lanterns into the air in Taiwan.

Scroll down and see if your wishing sphere is captured with my camera!