This is Singapore

I saw a heartful sight when I hopped onto the bus for home from Changi Airport. 

An elderly auntie boarded the bus with me and took the seat in front of me. At the Terminal 2, an Indian family boarded the bus. The mother took the seat closer to the front door, with her son, and the father took the seat behind me with an infant. 

At the next stop, the father decided to take the inner empty seat nearer to the back door. As he moved in, the bus moved. He almost dropped the baby, but luckily the lady and the elderly auntie gave him a hand. All's fine, and he sat. I saw the mother turned around and gave the dad a smile. 

Well, the air-conditioning was comfortable, and the weather was nice, so I fell asleep. When I woke, I saw the mother had moved to the seat next to the father. I saw her son sitting behind them.  I fell asleep again. 

The next time, I woke up, I saw the son was asleep. In the arms of the elderly auntie. 

This is Singapore. 

Mayday

I am never much of a car fan. The first vehicle that I ever thought of owning was a Renualt Kangoo, a van that I could drive around comfortably with Jackie. 

I never did get around to buying one. Too much of a liability, and I have no excuse. Singapore has excellent public transport. 

Hence Singapore F1 Night Race did not really trigger much of my interest, but I am very proud of Singapore. 

That was until W got Walkabout tickets, wohoo! And Mayday was performing!

Truthfully, I am not exactly a 100% true blue Mayday fan, but I like their songs. I like bands in general. Like Wu Bai (伍佰) and China Blues. Yes, I know some would probably categorise them into the auntie, uncle category, but hey they are good! I used to like Beyond, Gun N' Roses and Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but that was really ages ago when I stayed up late in the night to watch the MTV. 

So yes, I like bands. 

I like bands because it is not solo effort, and especially when it centres around creativity. Having a couple of creative creatures coming together is hell of a tough task.

SO for the first time in many years, I left home at 930pm; in Singapore that is. Malaysia is a different story though it is not that frequent too. Well, I am getting older after all. 

Once I met W, things were FUN! 

I never knew the night race was organised in a fun-fair style. It was more than just hanging around the grand stand trying to catch a glimpse of the racing cars. I tried taking photos of the cars, but no luck, they were too fast, and I was too uninterested. 

The Padang where the concert was held was cool! Plenty of people sitting on the grass, chilling and relaxing with beers, food, and nothing. 

I wanted to squeeze right up to the front of the stage, but as what W said, we were no match to the true blue Mayday fans. 

I never take W as a concert goer; as in doing everything that the performer asks. Man, I was totally wrong! She is one fellow that I am keeping in the list for concerts! She was SO MUCH FUN!!!

I had a great time during the two hours! W was jumping, singing, shouting, waving, everything that I thought that she would not be doing, haha! It was great to have someone shout/sing with, somehow the stress that I was carrying the last couple of days before the concert kind of evaporated too :)

Mayday belted out numbers but they interacted too. I like performers who interact and not sing throughout the concert in their own world. Hmm... a CD would serve pretty much the same purpose in the comfort on my bed. True? No? 

There was this part when Mayday told everyone to activate the handphone's torchlight. It was beautiful from the giant screen, and I am sure it looked lovely from the stage. Well, Mayday said so :)

The concert and Mayday reminded me of my love for the language; Chinese in this instance. Nowadays, mostly due to work, English dominates as my choice of language. But I continue to use Mandarin in most of my social settings, except for a couple of friends whom I used English as the primary language. 

Somehow it saddens me ever so slightly when I see Chinese parents using English as their main mode of language with their kid(s). I am not judging. Every family has their reasons and rights to use whichever language they prefer. I just thought if we are Chinese, it would be good to keep the mother tongue going. It would be great if the kids can speak the parents' dialect too. 

During my time, when technology was so minimal in our life, we learnt Chinese by memorising and writing out the characters again and again. It was that simple and straight forward. Chinese was always the easiest subject. Our parents spoke to us in Chinese and dialect. I only started to speak actively in English from primary three. Believe it or not, and I do not think it was a deliberate choice made by the school, the entire school had Chinese students only, except for an Indian boy who spoke Chinese too. It was only when the school moved and became a government primary school that the race mixture was a lot more balance. I think my siblings and friends did not fare too badly in our mother tongue or English. We speak and write okay English? I think so. 

How did we get to today when Chinese become such a difficult language? Especially with the advancement in technology.

By the time, the concert ended, it was way past the usual public transport service time. But hey, it's Singapore - the trains and buses' services had been extended to cater for the event, and I was home in a jiff - 40 min!

Gardens by the Bay - Conservatories

I decided to be a better host when hubby came to Singapore. 

I usually starve him and we would do our rounds at the usual malls. Nothing interesting. Thereafter he would be on his way home. On the contrary, when we are in Batu, I would need to stop him from overfeeding me. Come to think of it, I am really a terrible wife. 

So we went to Gardens by the Bay (GB). 

We decided to visit the cool conservatories and the Supertree Grove, and give the rest a miss for this time round. 

We reached GB slightly before 6pm; after taking into consideration that Garden Rhapsody @ Supertree Grove happens at 745pm and 845pm. 

We parked at Meadow car park. Bad choice given our intention was the conservatories. 

We had no idea it would take at least 10 min to get to the ticketing area and conservatories by parking here. 

Walking out at the end of the visit was kind of eerie given most visitors parked at the basement parking that was a lot closer to the conservatories. We were practically alone when we walked back to the car. 

But we saw a bit more when we walked from this parking lot. Giant baby. Marina Bay Sands. 

Tickets first - we bought two tickets to the cooled conservatories - Cloud Forest and Flower Dome. My passion card gotten me an additional discount, not much, but pretty happy about it since I did not expect it. This card is serving me pretty well; especially when I am at the library. Instead of the usual 8 books, I can borrow up to 10 books! 

First stop - Flower Dome. 

The theme is desert. Plenty of succulents, cactus. 

The display gave us some inspirations on how we should do up our garden next. Minimal care and water needed, it seems... We were pretty surprised that groups of succulents put together could look so cool!

I like the glass / metal structure. Minimalist, plus lot of views through the glass. Iconic structure like Singapore Flyer complimented the dome well. 

The level below had lot of pretty flowers, but it was kind of dark already. We were kind of surprise the place was not really well lit. Was it meant to be such? 

While walking down to the next level, we simply took in the gardens without taking much photo since it was already dark. 

Next stop - Cloud Forest. 

It was completely dark when we visited the Cloud Forest. With the conservatory already pretty cool, the giant waterfall at the entrance made a chilling entrance. Hubby loved it; I was only interested to take a proper photo of the water fall and to move away from the chilliness. 

After some exploring, we went all the way up to the highest level - level 6, and started from there. A sight of cloud / mist greeted us. Plenty of it as we walked our way down the metal bridge. Besides the flowers and greenery, it would make sense to admire the beautiful night scenes outside of the dome. 

We caught the Garden Rhapsody at 845pm and the light display accompanied with the music was spectacular. The performance was named "Rainforest Orchestra - Australasia and Oceania". I like the fact that the performance is not limited to ticket holder only. Anyone can sit around and enjoy the performance. 

My camera lens blurred once we were out of the conservatories. I had wanted to video the rhapsody...the condensation did not clear until we were about to leave. In the end, I had to made do with iPhone photo. Boohoo...

When I was sorting out the photos, I was pretty surprised with the little flower photos I took. It was more of an experience this round. Our next visit, it would make sense to be there earlier, about 4pm or so. So that we can experience the conservatories in light. 

The next time hubby is in town, I know where we could go too - Night Safari! I heard he had some adventures at Singapore Zoological Gardens many years ago. Wondering if anything interesting would happen this time ;)

Itaewon @ Singapore

Hubby braved the traffic and came to Singapore over the Hari Raya and Singapore National Day long weekend. We made plans with friends to go over to Bintan for a short getaway a couple of months ago. However, some stuff happened and I needed to pull the trip. Felt really bad about that, especially towards the two friends who were looking forward to the trip (and of course, we too). However, sometimes in life when we could not duplicate ourselves, family really needs to come first.

Any case, this lead to me becoming the local guide when hubby was here.

And I am really a bad guide. I am not one to party, not one very into food, not one very into shopping, basically not one very into getting out of home.  I blame that on internet; I can virtually be almost anywhere, anytime with the click of the button.

So I decided he would just go where I wanted to go! We made a trip to Kinokuniya before we made our way to Albert Centre Market & Food Centre; I wanted hubby to try Singapore's version of Rojak. I am always telling him how different it is from Malaysia's version. And bohoo! Forgotten totally about it the minute we stepped in the food court. Thereafter, we shopped in Bugis Village briefly before we made our way to Arab Street and Haji Lane area. My intention was to check out the fabric shops, and we were so surprised to find "Itaewon"!

Street art lines plenty of the wall and it made the entire street lively and colorful. Some of the areas are the back alley of shop houses. With the art decorating the wall, the area practically becomes a gallery. There are a lot of cafés, especially middle east themed cafés. People were enjoying their drinks and chatting within the groups in the lazy afternoon.

As we strolled down, another pleasing sight greeted us.

Further down the lane, there were plenty of shops for browsing and buying. Some were selling accessories, some were selling clothes, one was even selling bicycles from Japan!

Frankly, the shops were not selling stuff that are extremely interesting or very different from what we would find from shops in the malls. But what really differentiated them was the way they themed their shop, and their attention to details. Their efforts made the shopping a lot more visually pleasant and when almost every shop along the lane did their part, the entire experience was totally different.

Besides the middle east themed cafés, there are of course alternatives available.

The uniqueness and the atmosphere reminded us totally of Itaewon in Seoul. The randomness, the shop houses, the attention to details, the pacing, except for the weather, haha! 

But of course, this is right in the city of Singapore!