On Saturday Serena and I walked from Mount Faber to Kent Ridge. According to her map app this walk was a 14 km round trip, which i found hard to believe on account of it feeling more like 5 km, but never mind. This is yet more evidence that Singapore is actually Gallifrey.
She is training to go on the Camino de Santiago later this year. I just needed the exercise. Most Singaporeans do not walk. I think this is an Asian thing. You do not walk if you do not have to. Indonesians have perfected this. they take motorbikes all over the place. I was the only person walking in Jambi last year. They thought i was mad.
Walking for pleasure is a thing which only crazy people do. Also there isn't very many places to walk around in. Well the Southern Ridges walk is one of the few places - but it is not exactly The Wild. It takes you through some really beautiful places... like this keramat...
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| A grave of a holy person |
There are keramats all oveer Singapore. These are gravesites of holy people, often saints. It is amazing how many of them there are. They will be in the most incongrous of places. Beside shopping centres. Jungles and forests. This one was beside the walking trail. From the youngest age we were taught to respect these places. Today Ghin kicked a squidgy dog toy and i told him, do not kick anything you see on the road. They might be offerings for spirits. But that was a dog's toy mom, he said. It may have been a offering to the dog's owner, you NEVER KNOW.
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| View of the Southern Islands |
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This one was of a carpark, i took it cos it is sort of what the landscape was like....
greenery and built upness |
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| Uniform of the Malay Regiment |
We visited the Bukit Chandu exhibition. I am going to places i have never been in Singapore this time round and appreciating the war history of the place actually. I recall the truly cruel and hedious nature of the Japanese Occupation. The desperation and the bravery of these men who died trying to hold out against them. Honestly the Japanese were completely nuts. A testimony to how deeply the wounds run was i told my dad about this exhibition and suddenly this Chineseness rose up in him.
China will NEVER allow the Japanese to do that to them again!! NEVER! Then he went on about Taiwan and China and how horrible the Japanese were and how China would never take that kind of shit from anyone again. And how no matter how many people tried to colonise China it was too big and the Chinese assimilated them.
Okay....
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The Offical Parade outfit, how wonderful is that?
And i am NOT a military person |
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I wonder where all that wood came from?
The broadwalk at Kent Ridge |
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| Expressway under us |
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| Laksa for breakfast!!! OK, it was lunch by the time we got here |
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Harbourgate...SCORES of taxis lining up to get people
Singaporeans always complain they can't get cabs...well
now we know where they all go to |
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| This is a typical Singaporean streets scene |
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| Jee Leong, David and myself at a poetry reading organised by Jee Leong |
Jee Leong, David and myself were in the same Humans Class in RJC, back in the day. 87 - 88. My JC days were the singularly most horrible days of my life. Yes, this includes last year. It was mostly to do with being a teenager, of course. It was also the first time ever i was in a co-oed environment. I actually, to all intents and purposes had everything. But it was still hell.
I have to say that it has been great catching up with people this time round though. Honestly, it has been so wonderful to touch base and to see what everyone has been up to. I can safely say that no one has had a boring life. David teaches in a Poly and is an illustrator of children's books. Jee Leong is ALSO a teacher in New York and is a published poet. I am a teacher and work in a Waldorf School. Its weird life eh?
The poetry reading was really cool. Three local poets reading three very different kinds of poetry. The arts scene in Singapore is heaving up oddly invisible. I do not understand this. Perhaps it is being drowned out by the Louis Vitton and Chanel department stores. But that is just a guess. There is just so much going on and affluence has enabled people who want to be artists to be artists. Filmmaking especially is great. There is a strata of extremely articulate Singaporeans, writing in every language. There is a quiet confidence in the scene. It is very heartening.
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| After the reading Jac and i went for paper dosai!!! |
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| Er yes, it IS that biiiig |
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Serangoon Road from the car...traffic jam, another
typical Singaporean scene |
Where my mother asked, are people getting the money to buy the cars from? They are sooo expensive. This leads Oisin and myself to another theory: that Singapore has been taken over by Transformers, which will explain the number of vehicles despite the prohibitively high cost of owning one. In Singapore you need a licence to own a car. This is bid for in an auction. To date to own like the smallest cc car costs you around $60K, or £30K, this is BEFORE you buy the car which is again, ridiculously expensive. This however has not stopped the number of cars on the road and most of the island is in gridlock all day long. Hence, Transformers.
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