Free entry to National Heritage Board Museums

To celebrate National Day, all the National Heritage Board Museums will offer free admission to Singaporeans and Permanent Residents in August. The museums are:

Asian Civilisations Museum
Memories at Old Ford Factory
National Museum of Singapore
Peranakan Museum
Reflections at Bukit Chandu
Singapore Art Museum
Sam at 8Q
Singapore Philatelic Museum

I will definitely be checking out the Peranakan Museum as I’ve been wanting to visit for a while now, although I’d recommend the Asian Civilisations Museum too.

It’s a nice museum with a fairly good collection of interesting artefacts from different parts of Asia – South Asia, Southeast Asia (mainly Indonesia and Thailand), China (specifically Singapore-Chinese culture) and the Middle East.

       

From left: A Chinese bridal costume, Chinese demons/spirits from hell (I think), replica of an Indian wall.

Currently, the main attraction at the Asian Civilisations Museum are the terracotta warriors of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Unfortunately, this will still be ticketed as it’s a special exhibit, but will be free on National Day itself and Hari Raya Haji. I’d suggest going for the free guided tours as it’s most insightful, and non-iPhone users should try to visit with a iPhone-toting friend as there’re some cool effects that can be viewed with a specially created iPhone app*.

There aren’t many terracotta warriors on display, but it beats having to travel to Xi’an:

A general (above) and cavalry soldier (below).

The cavalry soldier with his horse behind him. Note how small the horse is – apparently the larger breed of horses from the Mongolian plains were only introduced to China after the Qin dynasty.

I also liked the art installation of terracotta cybermen – do check out the Terracotta Warriors exhibit!

 

*: As an Andriod-user, it annoys me greatly that such OS discrimination exists. The National Library Board is also guilty of this and they really should correct it immediately.

JET 2011 Farewell Dinner

The Japanese Embassy held its farewell dinner for this year’s JET participants. There are 25 ALTs and 1 CIR this year, and I was back there in the same room as three years ago in the Japanese Association – but as a member of the alumni.

It was surreal to be recognised by some of the new JETs as “the person with the blog” – but it was great to know that my blog on my time in Japan has been useful. Today was also definitely the closest I’ll ever come to feeling like an ‘internet celebrity’, and I have to admit that it never crossed my mind that I’ll one day meet some of the visitors to the blog in person. One said that she recalled me blogging that it’s difficult to find good and cheap shoes in Japan*, while another found my blog “objective”** as it didn’t present an all rosy and wonderful picture of Japan/JET. 

Like it was for my batch, there were quite a few JETs this year who will be going up to the same prefecture as another Singaporean – some are even in the same city. Once again, there are few fresh graduates among the participants (I’ll hazard that it’s again about 20% fresh grads) and quite a number of ex-teachers.

My memory is horrible, but I still recall bits of this bus ride out of Sagisu into Umeda. I love this picture because of all the movement in it.

It also only occurred to me today that I probably benefitted more from hanging out with the other (largely) Caucasian Osaka city JETs when in Japan than if I had interacted more with Japanese people.

Yes, I would probably have gone away having superb knowledge of Japan and command of the language, but our culture is a lot more similar to Japanese culture than it is to western culture - my initial culture shock came from the other JETs and not from Japan. My 2 Japanese studies modules and 5 Japanese language modules had also prepared me with adequate knowledge of Japanese culture, and we occupy this strange position between Japan and the west – what the other JETs found extremely bizarre I considered only mildly puzzling (if not at all!) and a result of simply being a different country. My English also improved***, and I think I gained more from learning about the practices, trends and customs from the 7 other countries the JETs hailed from than I would have from being with Japanese alone. Perhaps I’m actually trying to reassure myself that I didn’t miss out on too much, but I’m grateful for the breadth of experience that I’ve gained.

This was taken with the Osaka-city JETs (and some girlfriends of the year 2 JETs) less than a week after I arrived. For some reason – and I only just realised this - all the Asians/people of Asian descent are in the front row.

It was very interesting to be there. Somehow it felt like nothing had changed, although it’s been a whole three years since I last stood there and a world of experience in between. It’s not the first time I’ve felt that being back in Singapore – in the place where I’ve always been besides those two years in Japan (and four months in London) – has that effect on people: the effect of making everything else besides the here and now and all things Singaporean seem far away like a dream.

Bon voyage, 2011 JET participants! May you have a fulfilling and fruitful JET experience :)

*  *  *  *  *

*: I’d forgotten all about shoes. The reason being that the season for shoes – rather than boots – isn’t long, and since I was wearing indoor shoes most of the time I eventually didn’t get too concerned about outdoor footwear.

**: “Objective” being a diplomatic turn of phrase, she admitted. Not surprising, given that parts of my time on JET were difficult to get through and blogging was a form of expression and release!

***: I also discovered little things like the fact that ‘pail’ is considered an old-fashioned word in the UK and people say ‘bucket’ instead. By the way, the reaction I evoked by saying ‘pail’ was fairly large – for starters, the person had no idea what the hell I was referring to. The elaboration of “a thing you use to collect and store water” helped a little.

Beijing Trip

This trip of mine was the shortest ever trip, but had to be the most eventful.

We were in Beijing for less than 24 hours, and were basically there for one meeting. Yet, the time of the meeting was only confirmed 16 hours before we were due to fly, and I must have made at least 4 changes to our return flight because we didn’t know what time the meeting was.

The day before we left was spent on the phone the entire day, trying to fix our return flight. Flights were full, and after one long day at work I thought I had things fixed, only to have to change them back to the original flights that we had.

While in Beijing, we saw a man who had been arrested. There was a huge crowd in front of the building that we were going into, and this man was lying flat on the ground. I kept wondering if he was dead or had fainted, and it was only till he was hauled upright that I saw the handcuffs and that his t-shirt had been pulled over his head.

Then, there was a group of silent protestors sitting in front of the hotel we were staying at. They were protesting against the owner of the building across the street for inadequate resettlement compensation, and the hotel had the misfortune to be 5% owned by that person. Why they were protesting here, and not across the road, is a mystery. Most interesting, however, was that these protestors weren’t even those affected by resettlement. They were actually paid to protest, much like professional mourners are hired to mourn. There were even children there; perhaps their inclusion results in a higher salary.

We were on Beijing soil for about 16 hours for this trip. Our outbound flight was delayed at Changi Airport, and rather bad turbulence at some part of the journey – apparently because of a bad storm - meant that we landed more than half an hour behind schedule. On the way out, we ended up sitting for 4 hours in the plane before we could take off, as the air space was closed due to bad weather south of Beijing. I don’t usually watch that many things on planes, but on this trip alone I saw:

• Eric Khoo’s My Magic
• Royston Tan’s 15
• The Secret of Moonacre – not great but quite entertaining and had some famous actors too.
• A German film Lila, Lila – it was kinda interesting. For some reason so-so European films tend to be more enjoyable than so-so American ones.
• Future Cities: Helsinki – it’s the only city to have a masterplan for underground development, and is a great example of ingenious use of subterranean space.
• Future Cities: Rome – there’s an unspoken rule that buildings in Rome cannot be taller than Saint Peter’s Basilica
• A documentary on kimono – silk kimono are hand-painted, and there’re those silk woven ones where patterns are woven into the fabric in a very pain-staking process.
• A documentary on China – about how it hires university graduates to serve as village cadres for three years in the countryside in an attempt to improve living conditions in rural areas.

Many have complained about the inflight entertainment choices for this month, but I was quite happy. I think that I don’t watch many movies helps, as there’s always some Hollywood movie I can catch when flying, as well as a range of European films that I never get to see in Singapore. I really do think that SIA has a good selection of TV programmes on a range of topics (drama, comedy, lifestyle, luxury, travel, documentaries, etc) – I enjoy those more than movies actually. 

I also found out that I’ve attained KrisFlyer Elite SIlver status (although Gold is out of reach), and even managed to sit, very briefly, in First Class (spacious with a nice big telly).

Capybaras

I apologise to anyone who has seen this more than once, but I absolutely have to share what I think is an awfully cute animal – the capybara.

(picture from here)

Capybaras are native to South America and are the largest living rodents in the world. They’re also very popular in Japan - a cartoon version of it can be found adorning stationery while a stuffed animal version fills up UFO machines.

(pictures from here and here)

It was also in Japan – perhaps only in Japan – where the boy got me my adorable Baby Capybara (yes, I call a spade a spade, although my colleague is meant to help think of a name):

At the hands of my cheeky colleagues, Baby Capybara was turned into a My Little Pony, or perhaps a punk rocker mohawk wannabe. He still looks incredibly adorable though, so I’m leaving the tassels on (from a keychain) for the time being.

I’d tweeted his transformation, and it was retweeted by GaribaldiRous who has a blog where you can find tonnes and tonnes of capybara photos. Note that the blog comes with a cuteness overload warning!

For more capybara cuteness, check out this Japanese video which I’d first seen on Japan Probe:

Singapore - from a foreigner’s perspective

A friend whom I’d met on JET is in town, and it has been great having a familiar face visit. Since he arrived on Thursday afternoon, he has been telling me time and again how peaceful, civilised and quiet Singapore seems to be.

I’m pretty sure that’s because he has been in China for too long. Prior to this, he’d spent 6 weeks in Shanghai, and had come to Singapore straight from a few days in Hong Kong.

When walking around, he kept noting how Singapore is less dense than Hong Kong and that the buildings are built further apart. He finds Singapore quieter, as people don’t talk at the top of their voices and there’s the absence of horns blaring. He thought that Singapore’s drivers are civilised, as cars don’t cut lanes and scooters don’t try to drive past you on the pavements with just a hair’s breath between. He also feels that Singapore lacks the frenzied, fast-paced, stressful feel of Hong Kong and China, as it gets noticeably quieter at night, there aren’t people rushing around this way and that, and no one tries to cut between the two inches between us as we walk around. Oh – apparently Singapore isn’t as hot as Hong Kong either.

haha.

It’s crazy that he’s saying all these, as I’m sure he’ll be singing the opposite tune if he’d come straight from the US, for example. China and Hong Kong are quite hard to beat in terms of population and land density. I suppose, however, that Singapore does have really nice places like the Singapore River and the Marina Bay waterfront that are rather relaxing with their wide, open spaces.

We went to see the Merlion, and walking there had a glimpse of the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) and the Art Science Museum:

As well as the Esplanade Theatres and the Singapore Flyer:

We then reached the Merlion – the boy had missed out on the Merlion as it coincided with the construction of the Merlion Hotel as part of the Singapore Biennale, so I took some pictures on my phone to send to him too.

I like the small Merlion better than its larger cousin, while my friend felt that the Merlion is a strange creature, although he doesn’t dislike it – I’m not surprised:

I think the Art Science Museum looks very striking next to MBS – I think like it or hate it, there’s no denying that they both rather iconic structures:

We went walking along the Marina Bay waterfront. It was my first time doing so since it was developed, and was surprised to discover that the Fullerton Bay Hotel exists – and is way more posh than the Fullerton Hotel. There were also other nice buildings, and people shooting a commercial for Double A paper:

Customs House, which was indeed as its name suggests:

There’s also the Marina Bay City Gallery – set up to showcase and explain to visitors the new developments in the area. It’s actually very informative and rather slick – my friend found the miniature model of the area’s buildings as well as the displays and videos rather cool.

It was very nice walking beneath the Sail and seeing the buildings at Raffles Place all lit up. I feel like I need to go back, take more photos and enjoy the view – hopefully with a better camera next time:

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Someone posted one of SMBC’s comics on Facebook, and it’s proven to be extremely entertaining :)

Retro camera app

I just downloaded this new app for my phone, and accidentally took what I think – if I may say so myself – a really good shot! Notice how there’s some reflection in my headphones? :)

This app is pretty nice, although I wish there was greater variety for the borders: