Hey, guess what we found outside the squash courts this morning! A rhinoceros beetle napping on its back! We brought it back in our sports equipment, and found that it likes to hold on to the strings of a racquet with its tiny, but incredibly strong claws. We put it in a tupperware container with […]
Why, you ask, would an island with two monsoon seasons and two pre-monsoon rainy seasons per year need to recycle its water? Because of a drought in 1967, or thereabouts, and the threat that it could always happen again. Singapore uses a lot of water for both chip manufacturing (silicon chips, not potato) and general […]
This picture doesn’t do it justice, but there’s at least one of these very elegant birds living quite happily nearby, in the trees and bushes between the hotel and the restaurant. It’s an elongated jet-black bird, mostly starling-shaped but with a longer beak and very slender black legs, and the only white on its body […]
There are some of these living near us, and there’s nothing quite like seeing this big bird’s silhouette during an early morning walk. They tend to sit quite still for a while, which keeps you from noticing them. When they do move, you can’t avoid seeing them; they’re so big that the branches bounce if […]
Is this a handsome bird, or what? There’s a pair of them living in some coconut trees in some housing nearby. They lurk high up, where the regular pigeons live, but when they fly around there’s a “fwoop-fwoop” sound from their wings, and a big, bright black-edged shape zipping through the air. I haven’t […]
Just a reminder that today is Saturday. Tune in to Channel 6 (ChannelnewsAsia) at 8:00 if you want to watch the Japanese tourism show, one of my favorites. See the middle-aged couple on the train! Behold the special hot bath ingredients at the traditional inn! Linger over the local specialties the couple eat after their […]
A few weeks ago, faithful readers may recall, I posted a few blog entries whose titles intertwined prurience and celebrities, wondering if that would create a spike in my audience. Tracing back the slight increase in hits, I found that two people found this site by googling Zhang Ziyi, and one via Stephen Chow. Celebrities, […]
Here’s the sign on our local bus telling us not to carry durians aboard. You can’t carry them on trains either. I guess you either have to eat them where you buy them, or take a taxi. Unless you own a car, in which case you’re welcome to stink out your own property.
The rain began about a week ago, and look what the trees produced! I imagine the mosquitoes will resume their reign very soon, but in the meantime it’s very lovely.
We don’t have cable so we get the six channels that are freely available on Singapore TV. There are two Mandarin language channels – their soap operas have subtitles, so I can follow along if I really want to know what that woman is doing with the sword, or why on earth that guy […]