I was about to complain about trying to install drivel on the Ubuntu computer. I shoulda read the documentation. I just typed one line into the terminal, and it downloaded drivel and installed it, and that’s what I’m blogging on now. It would be nice if you could add tags to your post, but otherwise, it’s great.
I am liking Ubuntu more and more.
I haven’t blogged much since I got back from Southeast Asia. I apologise.
The blister on my foot from Singapore turns out to not be infected. They gave me scads of antibiotics anyway. One good thing: at least they didn’t give me the one you can’t drink alcohol with. I asked the foot clinic for advice on how to prevent such blisters when I visit hot climates. They said that well-fitting lace-up shoes/trainers are probably best and that slip-ons like crocs may cause rubbing that can end up in a blister. Taking along a supply of antibiotics to take if I do get a blister is also a good idea. I go to the Diabetic Clinic at St. Thomas’s a week from tomorrow. I expect that some change in my medication will happen then.
I have not yet been able to connect my Skype Wireless Phone from Belkin to our router. This seriously pisses me off. I don’t know whether it’s the router, the phone, or a combination of both. When I try to update the firmware in the phone, the computer complains that the phone isn’t connected to it (by USB). Nothing I do gets it to connect. The firmware upgrade doesn’t work with Apple (I tried, believe me). I may try with Ubuntu (see later item).
I have not heard anything from work since I got back. People tell me that I shouldn’t worry, but should be pleased that I have nothing to do but get paid for it. This is quite scary, actually, as my job may at any time just be eliminated (me not having anything to do makes that more likely, in my view). I will be starting to study for my ISEB Practitioner’s exam (scheduled for Dec. 12) this week, so that, in a way, is work. We will be OK even if I lose my job, and I think I would be able to get contract work in training and consulting. But, no one wants to lose their job; more importantly, having something to do helps to keep one sane.
I have more than 500 pictures of the temples around Angkor Wat. I need seriously to get them categorised and put up on Flickr.
I have been bitching about Vista for quite a while. Thus, when someone suggested Ubuntu 8.10, I decided to give it a try, but on my older laptop. My immediate verdict is: apart from the fact that it wouldn’t partition the (60 GB) hard disk to dual boot with XP, everything else was a dream. Installation was easy (once I conceded that I would have to give up the hard disk entirely to Ubuntu–I didn’t keep any data on it anyway) and, more importantly, Ubuntu runs like greased lightning on this rather elderly (probably around 4 years old) laptop. It was a gaming laptop, so it’s got memory to spare, but I was surprised at how fast it was. For example, downloading this .pdf newsletter from St. Michael’s Church in Marblehead took about 6-7 seconds on Vista. The download on Ubuntu was almost unmeasurably fast.
Also to note is this fact: when this laptop was running XP, it was almost impossible to get the Netgear PCMCIA WiFi card to work correctly and connect up to our wireless router. Now that it’s running Ubuntu, not only did the installation not need a separate driver, but it connected up first try (with the WPA key and SSID) and has continued to connect up seamlessly ever since. While downloading the aforementioned newsletter, I was also listening to a Hearts of Space radio program, and doing both over the wireless connection, not Ethernet. There were no dropouts on the music, and the newsletters continued to download quickly.
I still haven’t tried all the features of Ubuntu, but I’m thinking that it might actually be a viable alternative to Vista and Windows generally. The price (free) is also right. The Register review was generally favourable. If you want to try it, the download site I used is here.
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…and thanks to Ashton Cruz for posting it.
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I am starting to get myself ready for changing broadband providers. O2 (thanks,
I have discovered that sometimes changing addresses on these lists is well-nigh impossible. I have had all manner of interactions with websites. Some allow an easy change, others allow it, but bury the menus needed to accomplish it so deeply that you end up establishing a new account and then unsubscribing from the old one. This is all most annoying.
It will take at least until the end of the month to be certain that I’ve changed all email addresses that I care about to the new one. Then I will monitor during December to ensure that I’ve gotten all of them. Only then will I try switching over.
…and many happy returns of the day. You share a birthday with the Prince of Wales…we were awoken to the National Anthem on BBC Radio 4 this morning in honour of his 60th birthday.
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MadPriest has it right, as usual: the US Roman Catholic Bishops seem to be discussing the wrong thing.
From MadPriest, and many thanks for giving me a laugh today…
One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”
The Marine looked at the man and said, “Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.”
The old man said, “Okay”, and walked away.
The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”
The Marine again told the man, “Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.”
The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”
The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I’ve told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don’t you understand?”
The old man looked at the Marine and said, “Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it.”
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, “See you tomorrow, Sir.”
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You often hear stories of people who borrowed a book from a library and forgot about it making amends and paying their fines decades later. This story, about a gentleman who restored something he stole many years ago, makes me feel good about being human. The money is going to a drugs charity.
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I see from
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In the United Kingdom the Sunday closest to November 11th is kept as Remembrance Sunday, like Memorial Day in the United States. We remember those who have served in the Armed Forces, those who died and those who survived. It is my privilege to preach at St. John’s tomorrow on this day. I will put my sermon behind a cut.
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 am.
Readings: II Sam 1:17-27; Ps 23; Rev 21:1-8; Mt 5:1-12
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
November 9th, 1938 as much as December 7th, 1941, is a day that will live ina infamy. For on that day, 70 years ago today, the most evil action of the twentieth century began: the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe.
Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, turned the persecution of the Jews from a merely legal and social one to a physical persecution that resulted in the deaths of 6 million Jews and, in total, the death of 34 million soldiers and sailors and 16 million civilians during World War Two.
Many of you will vividly remember World War II. My father and my uncles fought in that war. My father volunteered for the United States Navy and served in the South Pacific as an airplane mechanic on the aircraft carrier USS John Hancock. He came under fire at the battle of Guadalcanal. My uncles served in the Army and the Navy in various places, including England, where my great-uncle met and married my great-aunt, who was from Birmingham.
Southwark suffered quite a bit during the war. There is a plaque on the side of the library on the Walworth Road commemmorating those who died in the bombardment of the borough. You, or your parents or grandparents, will have been part of the civilian populace here who had to take shelter in bomb shelters night after night, trying to escape the bombs that rained down from the skies.
War has been part of human history for as long as we are aware of human history. Strong men struggled for control of resources and people removed from their own spheres of influence. In the reading from Second Samuel, we hear David lamenting over King Saul and his son Jonathan, both slain in battle. In the verses just before the reading we have heard, we hear that David
When I was a mere undergraduate at Columbia, I regularly attended St. John the Divine Cathedral on Sundays. The most thrilling part of the service, to me, was when the ceremonial trumpets of the pipe organ sounded at the Offertory.
The organ was seriously damaged by the fire in December 2001 that gutted the transept. Well, the building is almost restored, and so is the pipe organ. If you have a chance, and you’re in New York on a Sunday, do go to St. John the Divine to hear the instrument that so thrilled me in 1972.
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As someone who votes in California but who is not able to vote on state offices or questions, I wasn’t able to vote against Proposition 8. However, I feel its passage keenly. My friends in California have had a right granted by their Constitution removed from them, and have become, yet again, separate but equal. I cannot tell you how this makes me feel. As you might imagine, this move is profoundly un-American, mean spirited, bigoted, and just plain wrong.
While this battle has been lost, I hope to live to see the day where every person, everywhere, has the right to marry whomever they love deeply. Our own Civil Partnership should be a marriage, is called a marriage by most people, and IS a marriage, as far as I am concerned. HWMBO and I are very lucky indeed. Every person, no matter their sexuality, should be so lucky.
I truly believe that this vote will come to be seen as shameful and wrong by a majority of Californians, and I look forward to the day when Prop 8 is repealed.
I do hope that some effect on the tax-exempt status of churches that agitated for Prop. 8 might occur.
I think I had seen this somewhere, but had forgotten it. Senator Obama is a fellow alumnus of Columbia College, class of 1983. He is the first Columbia alumnus (of any school) to be elected President of the United States. The Roosevelts (Theodore and Franklin Delano) attended Columbia Law School but never graduated. And, of course, before he was President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of Columbia University.
As President Bollinger says in the press release, Columbiua alumni signed the Declaration of Independence, and have served as Mayors of New York and Governors of New York (as well as many other cities and states). But, this one is special.
I am still horribly jet-lagged, and yesterday lay down at 6:30pm and slept until 9:30pm. Then was wide awake until 11:30pm, and went to bed again, joining a very sleepy HWMBO.
At 1:30am, the inner doorbell rang. We have two: one at the front door of the block of flats to let people in, and one next to the door of our flat, to tell us that someone is ready to be let in. That inner doorbell is very raucous. I started up from a deep sleep, and then not only was the doorbell going, but someone was pounding on the door.
I got my shirt on and my glasses on, and went downstairs, peered through the peephole, and asked, “Who is it?”
“Police!” came the reply.
I opened the door and the officer said, “Sorry to bother you, but we’ve had a call that someone in this flat has slit their wrists.”
By this time, HWMBO was downstairs too and we showed him our wrists. “It’s not us.” I pointed out that there were people with mental health issues in this block and suggested that they might want to pound on a few more doors, but they declined and left, with a cheery, “Sorry to have woken you up; goodnight.”
I hope this is not someone’s idea of a prank, akin to ordering a pizza (or pizzas!) to go to another address.
I had trouble sleeping after that. Up now at 5:30am, somewhat woozy but unable to sleep or stay in bed any longer. I do hope that no one else in the block slit their wrists and the police got the flat number wrong.
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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Here is the text of President-elect Barack Obama
Senator Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States. My happiness knows no bounds.
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I should start packing shortly for the trip back to London. Every time I am about to leave Singapore, I always feel very sad. I do not feel sad when leaving Marblehead, for some reason or other. But I really like Singapore, and I treasure all my friends here. The thought that I’ll be 8 time zones away from them for another year or so (unless some visit London, which of course would fill me with joy) makes me very sad indeed.
I hope that all my Singaporean live journal friends do well in the coming year, and I hope that I can visit again next year and stay a while.
I will blog about the last day in Cambodia and the last full day in Singapore when I get back to London, I think. I’m really tired now and don’t have the energy so to do. I will say that I enjoyed coffee with
I will be incognito starting late tomorrow morning (Monday). Tuesday I’ll be at a diocesan meeting at noon and them napping so that I can stay up and watch the US presidential election results. Hopefully my man Obama will make history on Tuesday.
Be good while I’m away. Farewell, Singapore and all my Live Journal friends here. Oh, and
If in a restaurant where the menu is translated from a foreign language, make sure you ask what it is you’re ordering. this woman didn’t, and got a surprise.
And, yet again, you are the same age as me for one week.
I enjoy this immensely.
If you need to use a public convenience, you at least should be assured of a clean and dry place to sit. Well, this particular guy wasn’t, and was very embarrassed when he didn’t look before he sat.
I am currently posting from the cafe at Palm Village, Siem Reap, Cambodia. It’s been interesting so far. Unfortunately, the connection is slow enough so that uploading pictures is impractical. However, it’s great that there is internet connectivity at all.
Getting into Siem Reap was quite interesting. Silk Air did feed us, even though we’d had an execrable meal at Swensons in Changi Airport. The Silk Air meal was even worse, if you can imagine it. “Chicken” was actually some kind of chicken roll in pastry. ‘Nuff said about that.
The e-visa I got online worked perfectly. The immigration officer, when he saw the paper, delightedly exclaimed “E-visa!” and I was processed and through long before my Singaporean friends, who do not need visas here, had gotten through. The immigration officer showed me his computer screen with the picture that matched my e-visa on it as well. I congratulated him and Cambodia on their forward-looking visa policies.
The food and service at Palm Village is wonderful. We really are enjoying it. Full pictures will come a bit later. The male staff are very cute indeed.
The first thing you will notice is the welcoming committee in front of every temple. Young girls, mostly, selling everything from jews’ harps and flutes, to bangles and books. They are the same at every temple, only the faces change. The children are all very short and look to be around 9 years old. The guide asked them their ages and most of them were 12 or 13 years old. Life expectancy here is 53 for men and 56 for women. Grinding poverty and subsistence farming are evident everywhere.
Cambodia, to a Western eye, is very untidy. There are house lots that have nothing in them, only a fence around them. The houses have been taken by the elements years ago. Oil drums with a clear gas tank above them serve for a filling station out in the countryside. Traffic is mostly motorbikes and bicycles, with as many people as you can fit on the motorbike riding on it. Few of the roads are paved, and on the ones that are, drainage is abysmal, so you wonder whether taking a boat would have been more effective than a van.
The temples are old. Very old. The oldest ones are 200 years older than Westminster Abbey, and the youngest ones are about contemporary with it. None are in what one could say was good shape. The climate and the jungle have taken care of that. Trees with enormous roots stand on top of walls, with the roots looking like nagas (snakes) or elephants’ trunks. As in England during the Reformation, many heads of statues have been removed or defaced. The original religion in which many of the temples were dedicated was Hinduism. Buddhism then became the majority religion of Cambodia, but there was a period in which the two religions vied forr superiority. So there are few Buddha’s heads remaining undefaced. By the time Buddhism had won, the temples were lost in the jungle, only to be rediscovered in the 1800’s and 1900’s.
Most temples have moats, or the remnants of moats. There are causeways up to the door of the temple, guarded by the Hindu equivalents of angels and demons on either side.
We saw more temples than you could shake a stick at. To go there, you need a temple pass, which has to be shown at every temple. The guidebooks say that you must bring two passport photos for the temple pass, but they are behind the times: your picture is taken at the gate and printed on the pass.
The main sensory impression I got from the temple areas was auditory. Cicadas are everywhere, and their high-pitched whine vies with the cries of “Wanna buy a book mister, fi’ dollas…buy a book?” There are parrots too, which you cannot see in the tops of the trees without binoculars but whose raucous cries fill the air when they are settling down.
Tourists are, of course, everywhere. People asked me how they could help Cambodians. My answer is: come to Cambodia and spend money. There is no industry here because there are no efficient transport networks to get raw materials in and finished products out. Education is spotty, although most go through primary school many do not continue on to secondary school and few go to university. Leaving your money here is most effective in helping the country feed itself and eventually develop the infrastructure necessary to move from a subsistence economy to a production economy. They do export rice, I gather, which is interesting in that most countries in this area that produce rice save it for their domestic markets.
The currency of choice is the US dollar. There is a local currency, but it is worth something like 4000 to the dollar. Everyone takes dollars, all the menus have prices in dollars. The children selling things ask for dollars.
One child yesterday was selling postcards. I had already bought some from another child two days ago, but this girl was counting in English how many postcards she was selling: “One, two, three…” and so on. Then she counted in French “Un, deux, tres, quatre, cinq…dix” and in Spanish “uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco…” So I said (as a joke) “What about Chinese? She immediately said “yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi.” I said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” and bought a postcard set from her. As I left I said “goodbye” in Chinese and she immediately replied, “Zaijian!” Now this girl, who was probably 13, should be in school learning languages, and how to be a tourguide. Instead she’s running barefoot in front of a temple selling postcards for “one dolla, meester!” It is heartbreaking.
Today we were supposed to go to Angkor Wat in the morning, then to the carving school in the afternoon. It was pouring rain. Bucketsfull of water were coming out of the heavens and flooding the land. One of our number was not feeling well (intestinal) and was very rocky. In addition, when we got to Angkor, the rain made it a very unfortunate pool with some carved stones within it. We decided to go to the carving school (also flooded) and see what that was about. It trains people to make the items that tourists buy all over the area. They especially train deaf and speechless people in these arts. Pots of gold leaf were carelessly scattered about the place. I bought four rush placemats, four rush coasters, some soap, and a Cambodian CD. Tonight we are going to Siem Reap for dinner and to go to the one gay bar in town.
I must also mention the very beautiful young man who waited on us when we had lunch Tuesday and Wednesday. The tour guide brought us to a restaurant which I thought quite good, and the most beautiful young man, obviously very swishy and camp, was our waiter. His name is Touch (pronounced like “toot”) and he is a 24 year old orphan who works in the restaurant 7 days a week, studies English at night, and lives in a temple with monks. He earns $15 a month for 7-days-a-week work. I gave him a $20 bill as a tip and a picture was taken which I will upload presently.
The food here is something like Thai, but a bit less spicy. They use less shellfish and more fish. Amok is a kind of thick curry served in a banana leaf bowl–chicken, pork, or fish. I had the chicken variety and it reminded me of That green curry without the sauce and the baby aubergines. There are many kinds of soup and curry, as well as spring rolls that are Vietnamese-like (white paper wrapping and fresh, not deep fried). Coconut is in almost everything. There is less Chinese-influenced cuisine here than in other parts of Southeast Asia. Fork and spoon are used, although visiting Chinese can have chopsticks if they want them. The local beer is, of course, Angkor Beer (not to be confused with Anchor) and is quite good, kind of fruity light and not too hoppy. A very good lager.
I realise that this has gone on much too long, but as I’ve been away since Monday morning I felt the need to get it all down before the WiFi conks out. I hope you’ve all enjoyed it and will try to get to Cambodia someday.
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I would ask everyone to send good thoughts my way…I’m off to Cambodia and will be there until Saturday. I am concerned about my feet, as there will be much walking, and I suspect that I will not be doing as much as I would have liked to do. I will need all the good thoughts (and prayers, if you’re into that) as I can get.
When I get back to London, I will really have to ride herd on the diabetic foot clinic to get me proper shoes and trainers that are cushioned enough so that I don’t get blisters or abrasions on my feet. I asked them about going private (as I could afford it), but they said that they would refer me to their orthotics clinic and that they didn’t trust outside suppliers. However, had I gone ahead, I would have had proper orthotic shoes that I could use now. They haven’t as yet referred me. I have an appointment second week of November and I will bring it up again then.
I also think that if this can’t be remedied, I may have to reconsider coming to hot climates. I am unutterably sad at this, but if the doctors can’t or won’t help me, I’m left with no alternative. I pray that this isn’t the case, and that something can be done. I can’t believe that the NHS can’t help me with this.
Thanks for reading this; I will keep in touch via Live Journal and Twitter (@chrishansenhome) as I am able.
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Friday
Friday was an interesting day. First, I had to go to meet Marvin, one of the guys I’m going to Cambodia with. We had coffee in The Coffee Bean shop at Junction 8 and got some stuff settled. I have to buy a flashlight (torch). mosquito repellant and sunscreen, and a towel. Then, I went downtown to Funan to get a cable lock and a portable DVD drive for the Asus Eee. Got a Sony that needs a wall wart but it’s relatively fast. Will need it to install some software. Came back to Bishan to drop it off, and had a packet of peanut chips for lunch.
In the early afternoon I went downtown to meet HWMBO, as we wanted to go to the National Museum to see a couple of the exhibits. While the museum space is lovely, we found that most of the exhibitions were, well, somewhat lacking. The one we liked was called “Doubleness: Photography of Chang Chien-Chi”. It was very powerful and it’s a shame that it probably won’t make it to the UK or the US.
The other exhibit (a small one) that we saw was called “Weapons of Mass Desier”, which is about consumerism after the Second World War. It was not very good and we didn’t think much of it, although the old Vespa at the entrance was interesting. WMBO gave it 4 or 5 out of 10.
Then we went up to Fort Canning Park, where we sat and rested for a while. A road tunnel has been built underneath it, so it is quite still and cool under the trees. Some cute joggers went by, and I discovered among the grave markets set in the walls (when the colonial graveyard was moved) one for Brother William Temperton with a very faded Square and Compasses on top.
Chris at Fort Canning (there’s an escalator that goes up to the park):
HWMBO at Fort Canning (we’d gone up the escalator):
Bro. William Temperton’s gravestone
We spent half an hour in the Chinese Herbal Garden, then walked down the road, stopping for a short while in the Singapore Philatelic Museum, and then passing by Freemasons Hall. I have pictures of all these, and am uploading them now. We saw a lovely orchid while walking down the hill:
Plaque on Freemasons’ Hall
We then spent a happy hour or so in Delice de France, in Funan Centre, sipping coffee and eating a very small pastry apiece. HWMBO was very agitated about a gentleman sitting in a very empty area of the restaurant, not eating or drinking, but talking on his mobile phone. I should have gotten a picture.
Over to City Hall station control area, where we waited for my brother-in-law, Petrus, and Roy Tan, our old friend with whom we had a lovely dinner the last time we were in Singapore. Roy is now an activist, it seems, and will be leading an event in a few months in Hong Lim Park. We then walked for what seemed like ages until we got to Marina Centre, and this Japanese pasta restaurant that Petrus swore was great.
I took pictures of the food, but will spare you them here. However, I couldn’t help but take one of Roy waiting for his dinner:
HWMBO and Petrus seem to have a biological similarity: they blink when pictures are taken. So to see them both with their eyes open, you’ll need to see two pictures:
HWMBO closed his eyes for that one. Now the other one:
in which Petrus closed his eyes. Would Photoshop it but don’t have Photoshop here.
After pasta Roy generously offered to drive us to DYMK, where we went upstairs to be greeted by 
Dillon, who is an absolute gem and a great host. I had a Manhattan, HWMBO had a fruit punch, Roy had a glass of wine, and Petrus had a Cosmopolitan (how SITC that is). There was a bed in the corner for us to sprawl out on (no seats available, unfortunately) and we drank our drinks and chatted until almost the wee hours. Roy got us back to the MRT, and I got back to Bishan around midnight.
Saturday
Saturday was a great day. I met
I did not remember how tall and physically imposing Fonsus is (we met once by accident the last time I was in Singapore). After a short stopover in Bishan, I went to Woodlands station to meet Kevin for dinner. We had a choice of three restaurants, and I chose Crystal Jade, which had a nice selection of foods. We had Hokkien Fried Rice, Roast Pork, Cantonese Moneybags (wrapper filled with pork and deep fried), and Prawn Ho Fun, with limitless tea. It was quite nice. I didn’t take any pictures of the food, but in the coffeeshop afterwards for coffee took a picture of the impish one himself, and of what we shared:
Kevin
He looks really impish, doesn’t he? And then our waffle:
We walked around looking at shops, then went home our separate ways. A lovely two days.
If someone were to flash me, I would more likely laugh at the size or shape of his penis. However, a young girl in Singapore who was flashed couldn’t react in that way, and the story of what happened next is interesting. The sad thing is, I would probably, like the sleeping Hokkien man, have been impatient that the bus wasn’t moving.
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People get arrested all the time for murder, and people get murdered all the time. But this is the first case I’ve heard of where a person was arrested for murdering someone who doean’t actually exist.
I think that I’m over my jet lag now; I’m sleeping fairly well, and getting up at a “normal” time (7:30 am local time). So, I can concentrate on enjoying myself.
I decided that yesterday would be downtown mall day, after lunch with Alex and before dinner with Mak. So, first I met up with Alex Au. Alex is one of the very few people I know and the only one I could call a friend who is in Wikipedia. We have known each other for about 11 years now and I try to have a meal with him whenever I’m here.
We ended up going to Lao Beijing in Novena Square, the same restaurant we couldn’t eat in earlier this week. It specialises in northern Chinese food (“Lao Beijing” means “Old Beijing”). We had Ma Po beancurd, which was different from what I have had in the UK but absolutely delicious: small cubes of beancurd in something that was close to a tomato sauce, but with chunks of vegetables and tomatoes; grilled dumplings, which were delicious and a bit better than The Well’s version (don’t tell Vincent…); and a pork dish where the pork strips were cooked, served with small square pancakes and slivered spring onions. Wonderful stuff. We talked over politics, world affairs, people we know, lots of good stuff. The staff seemed a bit lackadaisical, in that we asked for the check three times without response. We then continued to a Japanese coffee shop for pastry and coffee, and continued talking most of the afternoon.
I then had about 4 hours to kill until 7:30, when I was to meet
While I was walking around, I got a call from Kit, who is the wonderful guy behind asianxhibit, a blog about his life, illustrated by great artistic pictures of Kit, suitably masked to protect his identity. We talked for a very long time, and I really enjoyed the conversation. I hope that someday I’ll get to where Kit is so that I can chat with him in person.
I didn’t find anything else interesting at Suntec City, so I travelled to Marina Centre, where I (again) walked around, found some slides I liked in my size and bought them, had a coffee and read my book while waiting to get to Orchard Rd. for dinner.
So, at 7:30 I was at Orchard, and, after a few minutes’ delay,
Gado-gado is a kind of Indonesian salad, with lots of bean sprouts, tofu, and peanut sauce, with peanut chips. I liked the chips, and enquired what they were. Mak kindly asked whether we could buy some bags of chips so I ended up with 5 small bags of peanut chips. Thanks, Mak! You’re a sweetheart.
Beef rendang is a kind of curried beef–very oily so stay clear of the sauce.
Nasi goreng, a kind of fried rice with stuff in it…closest I can get to what it is.
And, finally, something I’ve never tried before and the name of which escapes me. A kind of wall of tofu conceals in interior of sauce and vegetables.
Then, we got in touch with
They were having dinner after gym at California Gym next door. But, you can tell that their appetites are very youthful:
This is Hong Kong French Toast, a very large cube of bread, French-toasted on all 6 sides and covered with butter and syrup. OMG!
Here’s Dillon and me, enjoying lots of light-hearted banter. He is thinking of teaching English as a foreign language, and we talked about opportunities to take courses in teaching that in London.
Isn’t that a devilish look in his eyes? You will note that half my shirt seems to be wet. I gallantly shared my umbrella with the umbrella-less Mak coming over from Orchard. As has become usual this week, a bucketing thunderstorm swept over the island last night and we were caught in it. Mak was on my right, as you can see from the shirt…
Dillon offered to buy me that drink, and I chose something that intrigued me: Iced dinosaur Milo. Milo is like Nestle’s Quik (for you USans) but is kind of malty as well as chocolatey. I asked what “dinosaur” Milo was, and was told it had extra Milo powder. I was not prepared for what arrived:
They float the powder on top! I can’t say it was awful, but you got a little capsule of powder with every straw-full. There is an iced Godzilla Milo too, which adds whipped cream on top of the floated powder.
Here are Dillon’s friends, Ian is on the right, and the lovely gentleman on the left, I’m sorry, but your name escapes me.
Then, off to the MRT and home to bed.
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Wednesday started out a bit lazy and turned fraught at night. I decided to go to Mosburger at Junction 8 for lunch, and then went downtown to meet HWMBO to tour the Art Museum.
Mosburgers are Japanese, and thus have a distinctly Japanese flavour to them and to the restaurants. The one at Junction 8 is apparently favoured by the students of the nearby secondary schools, as on each table was a little handmade cardboard sign that said, “No Studying”. I ordered a “Spicy Mos Cheeseburger”, french fries, and a peach tea. You get a number, and go sit at a table. The Mosburger, when it came, had a spicy relish (including jalapenos), and a white sauce that was probably some sort of cheese but more like Cheez Whiz, I suspect. It tasted good and hit all the right buttons, but probably most bad for me.
Then downtown to meet up with HWMBO and go to the Singapore Art Museum. First we went to the Modern Art branch, called “8Q sam”, which had some disjointed exhibits but is primarily known for being HWMBO’s former primary school. Liked the exhibit on the ground floor, which was a tarted up jeep, and the paintings on the top floor were also very good (Masriadi: Black is my Last Weapon). HWMBO wasn’t very impressed.
Here he is with the sign in front.
Then we went down the street, where we saw evidence that the Circle Line (map) is going to at least partially open soon.
This entrance is right in front of the other building of the Art Museum, devoted to “classic” art, mostly Asian subjects and artists. It was formerly a secondary school. It seems that all the schools in this area have been taken over for other purposes, and the schools moved away to outlying areas. Here’s a picture of the school^Wmuseum front.
The interior is pretty but the exhibition is kind of flat, with only a few pieces interesting to me. HWMBO had seen it all before, so we didn’t spend long in the galleries. They have an auditorium, which is the former chapel. Here are two pictures, the first of the chapel/auditorium itself, and the second a closeup of the window.
Window
The restorers have even preserved the niches in the doorframes where the holy water stoups were.
We went to a kopitiam to have coffee (me) or a snack) HWMBO, and then walked to Bugis Junction where we parted after buying some shirts.
My next stop was my friends’ George and Chen’s place. I got directions from George, and they started by going to Harbourfront Station, and taking the bus down to “Manhill Restaurant”, (very apt name, that), and crossing the street. They live on a cul de sac, next house to the end. Easy to find, right?
Well, I couldn’t find the correct bus stop. After running around Harbourfront Station and Velocity Shopping Mall for about 1/2 hour, I finally got into a cab and gave the cab driver the directions. He couldn’t figure out where I needed to go either. After some conversation with the dispatcher, and a false end, I finally got to their place, and had a lovely dinner and conversation. I needed a beer to calm my nerves when I got there, though–it was really harrowing. (Of course, I’d left George’s phone number in my other phone and didn’t have it with me…)
George and Chen are going to California at the end of the week to get married–so I wished them good luck on that. George is one of my longest-standing friends in Singapore: I’ve known him for about 13 years now.
I did end up being able to get the bus home after dinner, and crashed into bed relatively late. A lovely day, overall.
A feature of a recent soc.motss .con was the ceremonial Riding of the Segways. Well, there is someone else who might attend a future .con if the event is repeated.
We often think that the concept of global warming is a relatively new one, perhaps conceived only in the last 10 to 15 years. But, the Bell Telephone Hour was talking about it in 1958! (Director: Frank Capra of movie fame) Why didn’t we do something about it then? Perhaps the advertising revenues the petroleum industry contributed to the economy had something to do with it. Thanks to BoingBoing for the tipoff.
Singapore has in the past had a reputation of being a “fine” place, as the T-shirts say. “No chewing gum: $500 fine” and so on and so forth. But, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has a different vision for Singapore.
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