A gold class movie experience

Last night, we went to see The Incredible Hulk. Definitely a movie, rather than "cinema", but a fun experience nevertheless. Much of the fun came from the fact that we went to one of Singapore's Gold Class cinemas to watch the big green man in action. I'm not sure if these exist in UK multiplexes, but they are definitely the way to go for the ultimate movie experience unless, like my friend Eddie, you have your own cinema in the basement of your house, of course.


The tickets are about 3 times the price of a normal ticket in Singapore (therefore about the same as an ordinary ticket in London). For that, you get entry to the Gold Class lounge, where you can have something to eat or drink, or order it to be served at your table in the cinema while you are watching the movie. The cinema seats are in pairs, with a little table in between, and the seats recline almost fully, like really good business class seats in an aircraft. You are provided with a blanket, in case the air con is too much for you (or if you just fancy a ziz I suppose).


If I were to review the movie in the Haiku style I would say the following:

Lovely Liv Tyler
excels as always. Edward
Norton good and green.

Musings on a Sunday morning

There is no particular subject for this post, it's just a collection of reflections on life in this part of the world. Like having to keep almost everything in the fridge because of the heat. In Singapore keeping bananas in the fridge (normally a big no-no) means they spoil less quickly than if you keep them on the work surface. I learned this from my sister Alison - one of my regular readers - who lives in Oz, where fruit faces similar climactic challenges. Thanks, Ali.

Staying with the fruit theme, we are now in durian season. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the delights (or horrors, depending on your point of view) of the durian. I found this great piece written by a Singapore expat, in which he describes his love affair with the durian. http://web.singnet.com.sg/~tonym/durian.html. I do not share his enthusiasm, I'm afraid, having so far been put off by the smell. The durian is banned from all forms of public transport, for good reason. My Singapore friends keep encouraging me to try it in dessert or cake form, but I'm still not convinced.

Last night we went out to eat at Halia, one of the restaurants in the Botanic Gardens. It is set quite far inside the gardens, and the walk from the entrance is full of atmosphere and romance. It is up a wide path, bordered by trees and beautifully lit. There is a picture of the restaurant at the top of the post.

Unfortunately, the food was not as great as the place. The first course of black pepper soft shell crab was delicious (although the black pepper was a bit subtle for my palate, which is used to fierce amounts of chilli), but the lobster and mushroom risotto was really disappointing. There was no depth of flavour; it tasted as if the rice and stock had not spent all their life in the same pan, growing together and gradually becoming one, but more as if they had been introduced to each other halfway through the process. If that sounds a bit poncy I apologise, but those of you who cook will know what I am talking about. The restaurant made the mistake of leaving one of those happy sheets with the bill, the little card that asks for your comments on the meal. Wrong table to choose!

That said, as we walked back through the gardens to the car, we sat down on one of the wooden benches overlooking the lake and reflected again on how fortunate we are to be living here. This thought strikes me every day that I spend here, for one reason or another, but never more so than when I am travelling in other parts of Asia. People say that Singapore is "Asia 101" - the Asian experience for beginners. It is clean and prosperous, everything works, there is very little crime and none of its citizens seem (to me at least) to be living in poverty. The same cannot be said of much of the rest of the continent, and travelling in India, for example, really brings home to me the lottery that is the accident of birth. If the cost of rice goes up a few percent, it is still a very inexpensive commodity to us, but it becomes an unaffordable staple for some.

When I last wrote about India, the post featured a piece on mangoes. I have recently learned that mangoes are considered a "heatie" food, in the context of traditional Chinese medicine. Heatie (yang) foods, like ginger, red and green peppers, chicken, cherries, coconut, coffee, eel (yes, eel), garlic and of course mangoes, are said to create "hot" energy in the body, while "cooling" (yin) foods, like bananas, crab, grapefruit, lettuce, watermelon, cucumber, pears, radishes and yoghurt create cold energy. As with so much of life, it's all about balance, and eating the right balance of yin and yang foods for your own particular circumstances - taking into account metabolism and lifestyle for example - is apparently the thing to do. I wonder whether pizza is yin or yang..........

An apple a day

Strange as it may seem to my gadget loving friends - Eddie and Steve, you know who you are - I have never owned an MP3 player, until a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure why, when I think about it, but there it is. So I decided to open the door and now I can't believe what I was missing. Now the proud possessor of a mint green iPod nano, I listen to it all the time and have to remember not to sing out loud and dance along when I'm in public places - or at work early in the morning. Then again, what the hell!

Chris is not an MP3 sort of a guy, but he has been seduced by the MacBook Air (http://www.apple.com/macbookair/) - Apple's latest laptop which is as thin as a New York socialite, and just possibly slightly lighter at under 1.5 kilos.


As it happens, I am writing this post listening to music on my PC - another revelation! Current favourite is Duffy. I had forgotten what a powerful influence music is on mood, and on memory. Listening to some songs brings back the moments that I associate with them so strongly that I feel as if I am right back there in the moment. I can't listen to Paul Simon singing "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes", Roberta Flack singing "The first time ever I saw your face" or Everything but the girl singing "Tougher than the rest" without being transported back in time. Magic.

Other favourites: anything from the dance scenes in Dirty Dancing, Peter Gabriel "The book of love", the Corries and the Proclaimers. You can take the girl out of Scotland...........................................

Why not share your favourites? All you have to do is leave a comment.

Mercifully, I took the iPod with me to Malacca last weekend. I say "mercifully" because the trip - all of 290 km - took almost 6 hours each way. Almost half the time was spent in the queue for border controls - out of Singapore and into Malaysia. So, was it worth it? Just about. Malacca is both a town and a state - one of the oldest in Malaysia. It was originally a sultanate (as some of the Malaysian states still are) and a very prosperous trading port. Malacca was ruled by the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries and many of the public buildings were built during this time. We stayed in a small hotel in the historic heart, close to Chinatown, which had been converted from an original Peranakan house. Regular readers may remember previous references to the Peranakan culture in the blog - Peranakans are the descendants of the very early Chinese immigrants to Malaysia. At the time, it was illegal for Chinese women to leave China which meant that male emigrants had to marry non-Chinese women and so Peranakans were born.

Another connection to a previous post (the one about mangoes) is Alfonso de Albuquerque, who was there in the early 16th century. Malacca seems to have spent much of its past being occupied by one European nation or another; we were a greedy lot in those days, weren't we?

This weekend we are resting up, catching up and - in my case - listening to music. Have a good one.