Secret mechanic's diary: student life in Singapore

So after a number of planes, trains and automobiles, I finally made it home from Singapore on Tuesday.

It's always a decent trip that one, a bit different to the norm with it being a night race and Singapore itself is a great place to be. People are friendly, the streets are clean, the weather's good... there's generally not much to complain about at all.

By now, however, you'll have come to realise that not one of these little diary inserts passes without me having a little grumble about something, so here it is.

Two main issues arose for me on this year's visit. One was the taxi driver who sped off with my iPhone on the back seat of his car on Friday, despite me shouting and banging on his window to stop when I realised it had slipped out of my pocket.

To that guy, if you're reading this, I will be back in 12 months. There may be thousands of bright blue cabs on the streets of Singapore and my iPhone 4 may well be so out of date by then it's rendered insignificant, but in the words of Liam Neeson, I will hunt you, I will find you...!

Obviously that's a fairly specific complaint and not in any way a reflection on the country, city or race weekend.

The other thing I thought we could do better for this event, though I'm not sure Bernie Ecclestone will go for it, is taking the whole, microcosm of Formula 1 staying in its own little European timezone bubble a step further.

Singapore looks stunning, but you can be left hungry when you finish work © XPB

It's pretty cool finishing work and heading out on the town for a night, knowing that we can stay out until 6am, go back to the hotel and sleep until lunchtime, before leisurely heading back to work for around 2pm. It reminds me of my student days, although back then it was heavily frowned upon by the 'grown-ups' of the world.

The hotel's great, they give us our own floor which is kept quiet until the afternoon, no maids hoovering outside the door or bursting in to fold a point onto the end of the toilet roll at 10am. The rooms all have total blackout curtains and they provide a full breakfast service, just for us, at 1pm. We couldn't really ask for more from them.

At the circuit, the timetable works well, we avoid working in the very hottest part of the day and the floodlit track makes a wonderful spectacle for fans and TV viewers.

On a purely selfish level, I'm just a little upset that at 3am in Singapore, when I fancy some dinner and a few beers, my options are severely limited. On one night I was even forced to have McDonalds as it was all that was open. No one should be made to suffer that. Enjoy McDonalds through choice, by all means, but not out of necessity.

Obviously I know the whole world doesn't revolve around Formula 1, but my world unfortunately does and I can't help feel there's a wasted opportunity here. There are a few places to go until the sun comes up, but very few and not always the kind of place I'm after. Some of the lads took young Dave, one of our newest mechanics, for a night out to a multi-storey venue downtown, known simply as Four Floors of Whores. No idea what they serve there?

I'd like to propose a new area of the paddock, sectioned off to house a selection of bars and restaurants, run by the F1 catering staff that were jettisoned at the last European round along with their 'motorhomes', that cater for our crazy timezone over the week. Dear Mr Ecclestone...

As for the race, well it felt a bit like watching five-year-olds in their school egg-and-spoon race, when one kid has his egg in a fishing net rather than a spoon.

We've all got to take our hats off to Mr Vettel and his gang, they've done an incredible job and, although I know lots of people are getting bored or angry that he keeps winning, we'd all be pretty happy if it was our driver or team doing it with such dominance.

Spanners' HiFlex F1 team had no answer to Vettel's incredible pace © XPB

Work wise, the week went OK for us. No upgrades, other than a new sponsor for the event and believe it or not, we didn't even have to get involved with popping the little new stickers onto the cars.

I've no idea how much the local telecommunications company had given us for the privilege, but judging by the minute size of the decals on the front wing and our radio headsets, not very much. Almost certainly it wasn't enough to justify us flying someone halfway around the world from our factory to bring out the little packet of logos and stick them on, but nevertheless, that's exactly what we did.

As Red Bull waited impatiently for their last team member to arrive in the country on Friday, carrying around 15 large boxes of crucial delayed car parts frantically to the track, our own counterpart, Sue from 'marketing', casually strolled off the plane with just a small Jiffy bag of stickers. Who says we're not still pushing in 2013?

Unfortunately, the days of mechanics choosing whether to go home in between flyaway races, or stay out on holiday for a week, seem to be long gone. Only four years ago, I managed to get a cheap flight across to Cambodia from Singapore and enjoyed a lovely relaxing break before heading on to Japan or wherever it was we were going next. Today, I'm back in the UK, despite our equipment not being here, so that I can take part in our pitstop-crew training sessions. Unbelievable.

I told Dick, our team manager, that I'd promise to do some press-ups and eat healthily, if he let me go on holiday, but he wasn't having any of it. So on Thursday, instead of working flat out on my tan on a beach in Thailand, I'll be working out and running around the woods of Northamptonshire with 20 other miserable sods, like a school cross-country session in the cold and rain. Seriously, it's not the army we're in here, we're playing with racing cars for God's sake.

Anyway, on a more positive note, we'll be off to Korea in a few days... oh for crying out loud...

Korea's not one of my favourites, if I'm really honest. The truth is I'm not sure it's in anyone's top 19 races on the calendar, so when I hear all this talk about not being able to squeeze in new races like New York or Mexico, I don't understand it, seems a no-brainer to me. Dear Mr Ecclestone...

Right, I'd better go and get myself into the right mental zone for Thursday's PE lesson. I'll be spending the evening watching re-runs of Mo Farah's 10,000m successes, drinking smoothies and wearing a headband. Yeah right, I'm off to the pub. See ya.

- Spanners (@F1Spanners)