Number Seventeen Singapore Flyer

27 July 2014

Looking at my notes, I seem to have left out a few items between Christmas and the trip to Penang. (Also, the date is correct -- it took me a over a year to finish Number Sixteen.)

Jennifer Widom and family had a long layover in Singapore on a trip they took during holiday break. I met them at Marina Bay Sands, and after lunch there, we headed over to Gardens by the Bay. (The food court in the shopping mall there is actually quite decent. They seem to have recruited stall operators based on quality and having a wide variety of the local dishes available. The prices don't seem that different from other indoor food courts.) We visited the Conservatory Domes, which I've described before. There was a different display in the central area of the Flower Dome -- Christmas themed, not surprisingly. I also noticed that the restaurant on the main level in that dome was gone. We had fun watching a couple having wedding pictures taken. Afterwards, we headed over the Helix foot bridge across Marina Bay to get some photo ops looking back at MBS and the ArtScience Museum in front of it, which resembles a giant water lily. Jennifer's son Tim had a bunch of top-end camera equipment borrowed from another faculty member back home (very generous of you, Hector).

Kaye took our friends Clay and Erika to the Telok Ayer area. The name means "bay water" in Malay, and is another example of a road that was formerly on the waterfront and is now well inland because of reclamation. There are a lot of temples in the area, including the oldest Hokkien temple in Singapore, Thian Hock Kung. It is dedicated to the goddess Matsu, who is the protector of seaman. People arriving in Singapore by boat would thank her for the safe journey. I met up with them for dinner at a Hokkien restaurant in the area. Dinner included fish maw soup, crispy oyster omelet (yum) and braised pork belly that you stuffed into little rolls.

Some odds and ends:

- I figured out that Ah Long (literally, "wolf") is what we would call a loan shark. There are lots of warnings about not borrowing money from them. They use young people both as runners (who collect money and take it to ATMs) and for harassment (throwing paint on doors, setting cars on fire).

- During the holiday break, I saw a game of laser tag taking place on campus. I tried to imagine what would transpire back home if a dozen people with pistols and flak jackets suddenly showed up on campus.

- I've encountered several nutmeg-based products I hadn't seen before: Nutmeg oil (purportedly a good mosquito repellent), shredded nutmeg fruit, nutmeg drink. I think these all come from the rind around the seed I usually think of as a nutmeg. Surprisingly, I haven't run into mace much (the filigree between the rind and the seed).

Kaye and I paid a visit to the Singapore Art Museum. Most of the museum is in what used to be St. Joseph's Institution -- a Catholic boys' school completed in 1867. SAM mainly features modern art from Southeast Asia. The 8Q annex (for 8 Queen Street) features contemporary art and installations (in a former Catholic primary school). The exhibit that most stuck in my mind was a series of videos, each of which spliced together similar scenes from multiple motion pictures. For example, one video featured art being destroyed.

We had thought about heading down to Marina Bay for New Year's Eve to see the fireworks, but it rained steadily all day, and we weren't up to getting drenched for an extend period in order to see them. Instead, we took glasses of champagne up to the roof of our apartment building, where we encountered other folks doing the same. We couldn't really make out the fireworks at Marina Bay, but all along West Coast Park people were firing emergency flares. Individual purchase of fireworks is mostly banned in Singapore, but of course people with boats need distress flares.

The main NUS Campus is built astride Kent Ridge, which is part of a series of hills and ridges along the south shore of the island. Kent Ridge used to be called Pasir Panjang Ridge, but was renamed after a visit by the Duchess (mom) and Duke (son) of Kent in 1952. There is a heritage trail that runs through campus and into adjacent Kent Ridge Park (where Reflections at Bukit Chandu is, which I reported on earlier). Kaye and I followed the part of the trail on campus, which runs along the top of the ridge. A lot of it is fairly dense second-growth forest, in areas that used to be agricultural, such as rubber plantations. I believe the land where campus and the park are now were used by the British military until they departed. Some of the buildings along the ridge road look like they might have been officers quarters at one point. The ridge is quite steep in places, and we could see a large hillside-stabilization project going on below us at one point.

Just around the end of December, McDonald's started advertising their "Prosperity Meal", presumably for Chinese New Year:

- Prosperity Beef Burger (looks like it was formed in a McRib mold)

- Prosperity Twirly Fries

- Prosperity McFizz (OJ and Sprite)

- Prosperity Pie (pineapple)

The drink and the pie flavors were likely chosen to be "gold" colored.