Here are some pictures my spouse took at the student-run event with his new camera. Better than last year’s! This is an over view from the top of the steps that lead to Yunnan Garden. The marquee to the left is where you could pick up your free little lantern. The stage is to the […]
It’s the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, and you know what that means – Moon Cakes! Buy them for your friends and family! Spend $50 in a single receipt and get this free Mooncake Thumb Drive! Or at least that was the come-on at our local mall. We’re only 2 weeks into mooncake season, and alas, […]
It’s a strange thing, but the longer I live in Singapore the less interest I have in Chinese food. Or Indian food. Or Malaysian, Thai or Vietnamese food. Maybe it’s advanced homesickness (certainly possible) or maybe it’s that there’s so much of this food all over the place – availability breeds contempt? Anyway, by chance […]
Look what’s outside our window these days! I’ve seen both male and female of this species. This is not my own picture: our local male has a darker yellow on his casque. The female has a smaller casque and her bill/casque ensemble is whiter. But both are LARGE birds; I only notice them when they […]
Over the weekend we explored the upper levels of ION, a new shopping center on Orchard Road. Almost all the stores there are designer boutiques. But there’s an art gallery called Opera that we went into, to see what’s available. Most of what is available is really BIG, designed to fill up that 2×3 metre […]
This is the seventh lunar month, according to the Chinese calendar. It’s the time of year when the ghosts are out of hell on furlough. If you’re a Buddhist, this month is devoted to filial piety; you honor your parents and ancestors, pray that they are in a better reincarnation, if they didn’t manage […]
A Singaporean friend of mine has to travel to Pakistan and Bangladesh a lot for business. It’s dangerous these days, what with suicide bombers and fundamentalist Islam in the ascendant. Karachi is especially perilous, apparently. So here’s his strategy in dialogue form, as he reports it, featuring that most Singaporean obsession, food: “Hi. I’m your […]
When Lee Kwan Yu took over the government of Singapore 45-odd years ago, the Chinese population here was composed of three main groups: Hokkien, Cantonese, and Teochew. The Hokkien were locally known as “pigs,” because if they came to Singapore and did well, they tended to settle down, have eight children and plant firm roots. […]
I saw this bird flying overhead on my walk this morning. It perched high in a tree, so I mostly saw a dark shape against the sky, of a medium-sized black bird with two long tail wires hanging down and black tear-shaped appendages at the end of the tail wires.