Spring                                                        Wedding Moon

A lot of our visit to Singapore has revolved around eating. Yesterday morning we met Anita.  Anita offered prayers at her temple for me during my prostate surgery last year, is a long time colleague of Mary’s. She’s writing a book about her community, Indians from Kerala but living for a long time in Singapore. We had breakfast at Relish, a restaurant close to Mary’s apartment.

Lunch was Mary, Kate and I at Miyabi, a Japanese restaurant on the second floor of the Raffles Town Club. Excellent food. Authentic Japanese decor and seating. One side room I noticed was named Fu Yu. Not shorthand, I’m sure, as it would be in English.

In the evening a friend of Mary’s treated us to a pub meal in the Tanglin Club, the oldest such club in Singapore, founded in 1865. The Tavern and Fireplace, where we ate, replicates an English pub. I had fish and chips with vinegar on the fries. Just right. These clubs began as old style English gentlemen’s clubs, a bit of home in the tropics. The Tanglin apparently was started for English rubber plantation owners and their colleagues.

We learned about Hash hiking from Mary’s friend. This partial headline from the Guardian gives you the central point: “…a club that takes drinking as seriously as running.” Here are two websites: the guardian article and one from expat go. Though it started in Malaysia among expats concerned about staying trim while drinking plenty of beer, it’s quirky style has given it an international presence.

Including, I discovered easily, several Colorado clubs.

Spring                                                   Wedding Moon

Ate last night at the Dining Room, the Raffles Town Club’s award winning “Western” restaurant. I asked Kate what she imagined made the restaurant “Western.” “Everything’s cooked.” Kate’s not a fan of raw anything.

I’m going to add more pictures from Nirvana (hey, you can take photographs in Nirvana!), but they’ll have to wait until I get back to Adobe Photoshop. The WordPress image manipulator seems confounded by their metaphysics. Or something.

A random thought. I read an interesting short article last month (which I will post at some point) about a transition one analyst saw as well underway. He pointed out that just as the authority of the church declined dramatically after the rise of nation states so now the authority of the nation states is declining dramatically as global corporations become more and more powerful. Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore are strong examples of his point: chaebols like Samsung and Hyundai impact Korean life, Hong Kong capitalists are holding off the powerful Central Committee of China and Singapore unabashedly runs itself for business interests. There’s a lot to chew on in this idea.

Have I mentioned that it’s hot here? Kate and I walked through the Botanic Gardens, very beautiful and close to my sister Mary’s apartment, to get to a tour bus stop. By the time we got to the right place we had soaked our t-shirts. The heat + high humidity is a challenge for both of us. And, today was cooler.

We stopped at the Botanic Gardens outdoor cafe and had cool drinks, sat under a fan. That helped. So did shopping at the excellent, and air conditioned, gift shop.

The hop-on bus tour took a couple of hours but it allowed us to see the highlights of Singapore. The bus had personalized ducts for its air conditioning. A good thing for both of us. We went down Orchard Road which is a main retail shop with vertical malls selling the same kind of luxury goods I mentioned as available in the Incheon and Hong Kong airports.

The architecture is cutting edge modern with lots of angles, odd shapes, glass, polished metal and cut stone. Mary says a constant theme here is upgrading: buildings, civil engineering, education, business. The Marina Park development, which contains many whimsical modern buildings, is an example. The Singapore Flyer, a huge ferris wheel, a park set high above the street on three building towers, structures shaped like a lotus flower, a hedgehog, and an inverted whale skeleton all draw the eye.

At the same time there is the historic part of Singapore which includes the grand Raffles Hotel, the Museum of Asian Art, China Town, the Botanic Gardens and the Peranakan neighborhood. This last reflects the particular architecture of the folks who were in Singapore the earliest. They have a beautiful ceramic tradition.

Back at the Raffles Town Club Kate and I left our things in our room and walked around the curved hallways on our floor to the Chinese restaurant. Dim sum and almond coated crispy chicken. Quite tasty.

This evening we’re going to a restaurant (picture above) that features cuisine of the Peranakan culture. Mary says the chef, Violet Oon (great name), is a local celebrity.