Garden soup

My regular readers may remember me waxing lyrical about the Botanic Gardens in a previous post. We were there again last night, having a picnic and watching a film called Tortilla Soup. The open-air cinema experience was part of the Singapore Sun Festival - described as a "celebration of the art of living well". There's lots going on - music, arts, literature, food, wine - and film. The alfresco films are all food-themed, Eat Drink Man Woman and Big Night were the other two. If you've never seen them, make sure you put it right.

We got to the gardens early to make sure of a good seat, but there was barely any need. While any open-air event in London usually attracts hordes of people, last night it was all very relaxed, with lots of space. The film stars Hector Alizondo - whom you may remember as Barney Thompson, the hotel manager in Pretty Woman. He is a master chef, widower and father to three daughters who all get fixed up romantically during the course of the film - as does he, right at the end. Feelgood stuff.

We have a long weekend for Diwali (or Deepavali as it is known here in Singapore), the Hindu Festival of Lights. Little India is decorated with lights and flower garlands and absolutely milling with people. We were there yesterday, at one of Singapore's institutions - Mustafa's. Mustafa's, or Mustafa Centre to give it its full name, and an amazing place. Open 24/7, it sells everything from Italian leather briefcases and gold jewellery to electronics and groceries as well as most things in between. Not for the claustrophobic (think Oxford Street on the last Saturday before Christmas, throw in a few hundred more determined shoppers, and you begin to get the picture), Mustafa's is a far cry from most of Singapore's other shopping malls, but it's probably the best known. Apart from the Italian leather briefcase, we were in search of a small cool box for our picnic. I finally tracked it down - in the crockery department for some reason - only to discover that the ice packs to put inside it were to be found 4 levels down, in the sports department. Very odd.

Singapore continues to puzzle and to delight, in more or less equal measure, and I think we have barely scratched the surface. I'll do my best to keep digging and reporting back, so please do your bit and keep reading.