Archive for May, 2009

Dragonfruit

 This is dragonfruit, a which grows on cacti in Thailand, or so I’m told.  And it does look like cactus fruit in its scaly rind.  The inside comes in two colors: basic white, and amazing killer pink.  The pink has a more acidic and interesting flavor, and makes any smoothie it’s blended into a lurid […]

Mount Faber Walk: White-crested laughing thrush

Last weekend we went walking up and around Mount Faber. This is a centrally located park in south central Singapore.  You can take a taxi there, or you could go to the Harbourfront MRT station and take the cable car (gondola) that connects that station both to the top of Mount Faber and down to […]

The Singapore library system

The library system in Singapore is good, but not free.  Foreigners pay $57/year for membership, and locals pay $24 (I think).  You can reserve books, but it costs $1.55 per book.  Late fees are fifty cents a day.  You may not borrow more than 8 books at any time, or borrow more books if you […]

Singapore Transit: an introduction

Some pictures are embedded in the post below. One thing you may have noticed about these postings is that I get a lot of my information about Singapore from cab drivers.  No, I am not made of money, that I take cabs around all the time.  We live in the far west of the island […]

Swine Flu Update again

The epidemic alert level has been lowered from orange to yellow.  This means, in practice, that all those people taking the temperatures of everyone going into work buildings have disappeared.  Now only vendors and visitors have to register, and nobody bothers about their temps. My spouse’s department has many thermometers ready to hand out, in […]

Singapore River Walk Tour

This is something we did over the weekend.  Late one afternoon we got off the MRT at Raffles Place and headed towards the river.  From there you can look across at the Asian Civilizations Museum (yellow building on the right), the Stamford Raffles Landing Place (white statue) and some other stuff.  We didn’t cross over, […]

Pottery Jungle

This place is surprisingly near the university, within walking distance, in fact. There are sculptures made of pots at the entrance.  I don’t know if they make these pots here, but they’re cool sculptures anyway. There are lots of trees and tree-houselike structures to climb around in, with views of more and more greenery and […]

Coffee update

Alas, Jack Yu has left the coffee distribution business and gone into currency exchange!  So how to get my wonderful Vietnamese coffee?  Once I’d started to run low, drastic steps were required. I went downtown, to the Liang Court Mall, on the river walk near Clark Quay (east side of the river).  On the second […]

Swine Flu II

Now anyone who goes in the main entrance of a university building, or a school, is greeted by an official in a filtration mask, who takes your temperature aurally, writes down the date and temp on a sticker, and hands the sticker to you.  You’re supposed to take your temp twice a day.  You have […]