We have finally gotten around to exploring this part of Singapore; it’s where the old Malaysian rulers of Singapore used to live, next to the Sultan Mosque, below: There’s a network of streets with traditional shop houses on them (very long houses about half a block deep, that are/were shops or warehouses on the first […]
Who says pink clashes with red and orange? These are the decorations at our local giant mall, and I like them! In fact, I’m trying to design a house in which I’d have light fixtures like this in every room. Chinese New Year is a 15-day period in which you stage many family reunions and […]
This is an addendum to the previous post. Another way the government of Singapore has to influence the economy is through its more or less direct interference, for all Friedman’s claims that Singapore is a free market. The government has a company, Temasek, which owns a significant percentage of every large commercial concern on the […]
You may be wondering about my reaction to Tom Friedman’s opinion piece about Singapore in today’s New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/opinion/30friedman.html?src=me&ref=general ) It’s about educational and governmental seriousness in Singapore, and a plea for the U.S. to emulate it. His hook is the story of a primary school teacher conducting a DNA workshop with her […]
Monkey Forest Road in Ubud terminates at the Monkey Forest Reserve – well actually it doesn’t terminate, but joins Jalan Hanoman (the monkey hero of the Ramayana) and swings back into town. But at this southern end of the town you can enter the reserve, paying a modest price to do so, and with the […]
Ubud is a nice town. There are a few main drags, mostly named after characters in the Ramayana: Dewi Sita, Jalan Hanoman, and so forth. And if you walk along these streets and look up, or sideways, you can see all kinds of interesting things: Rice paddies behind a cafe, for instance, with tiny frogs […]
In Ubud, you can go to a different dance performance every night of the week. They’re given in the public spaces of the temples, and are sacred, but that doesn’t mean they object to selling tourists tickets. The dances seem to be generally concerned with retelling the Ramayana, or parts of it, so they’re intimately […]
There’s a lot of sculpture in Bali, especially in temples and palaces. There are a lot of wood and stone carvers, and the road between Ubud and the airport is lined with their shops and outlets for their wares, so on your way to the airport you pass armies in volcanic rock that rival the […]
After a few days at the beach we went to Ubud, which is supposed to be the cultural hub of Bali. There are temple dances of several flavors offered every night there, and extensive arts and crafts shopping. There are also art museums, but some in our party are generally opposed to them so we […]