Ouch!

I just received an electronic spank from the lovely Steve, long-term friend, gifted chef and author of blogfromthebarn and cookingfromthebarn.  As an ardent blogger himself, he has expressed disappointment at my recent lack of communication by sending me this cunning little graphic, lifted from my very own blog title. 

So, as I am not actually in Singapore, I will nevertheless woman up and produce some words of wisdom in the form of musings from southern France.  Let's start with the weather.

Not a black and white photo from the olden days,
 but a picture of modern Singapore under the haze
of June 2013.

I was very glad to be absent from Singapore during the recent haze, which was about the worst it's ever been, but it seems that it may be about to  make a re-appearance - due to hot spots in Sumatra - although in a much milder form than previously.  The June pollution caused a difficult political moment between Singapore and Indonesia, as the haze was allegedly caused by "slash and burn" farming techniques on palm oil plantations.  Cutting down rain forests and then burning it to clear land for the planting of palm oil trees is cheaper than using bulldozers and diggers.  The fact that it's illegal doesn't seem to stand in the way of the people doing the burning, despite the horrendous environmental effects.  I never use  palm oil in cooking or buy anything where it is listed as an ingredient, but it is very popular in the food industry because it is cheap and efficient.  If you'd like to know more about palm oil and take a view about whether or not to use it, have a look at what Greenpeace has to say at http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oil.

The weather here in France has been creating some problems too, particularly for grape growers and wine makers, as the months of May and June were unusually cold and damp, which has held up the maturation of the grape crop by a number of weeks.  Limoux is the centre of the Blanquette industry, Blanquette de Limoux being the very first fizzy wine ever to have been invented (by accident, by a local monk, as it happens) - some time before Champagne.  

The Merlot/Syrah blend was sold under
E & J Gallo's Red Bicyclette label.

Limoux was also the centre of  "Pinotgate" in 2010, when it was discovered that local distributors of Merlot and Syrah were passing off these grapes as Pinot Noir in the U.S.  Cue shock, horror, scare, probe!  as well as a great big dollop of schadenfreude on the part of those French - and Brits - who were laughing their socks off at the inability of the U.S. imbibers to tell the difference........

The scandal sent shock waves through the wine-making fraternity, but how does that scandal compare with the outcry over Miley Cyrus's energetic twerking (if you don't know what it is, Google it and get down with the kids) at the recent MTV VMA ceremony?  Have a look at this and judge for yourself......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31AhaWyY1y4

iPad envy

I never thought it would happen to me, but I have iPad envy.  It all started when I dropped the lovely C's iPad (the original version) on the ground when we were recently in Myanmar.  Sadly, although not surprisingly, the screen shattered.  To be fair - go Apple - it was still functioning even as tiny shards of glass continued to separate from the screen over a period of a week or so, but it was clear to me where my duty lay - going shopping at the iStore.

The lovely C is now the proud possessor of the latest iPad with retina display and it has changed my life.  Yes, that's what I said, it has changed my life.  He still uses this beautiful piece of kit to play Angry Birds and check his emails, but since I gave it to him, my own iPad (original version) has lain neglected in a corner somewhere and I sneak off to meet up with Chris's whenever they are not together.  It can't go on like this, so I have decided that my old iPad has to find a new home and I will be moving its replacement in as soon as possible. 

The iPad with retina display (why such a clunky name for something otherwise so streamlined and gorgeous?) is a thing of beauty.  I'm sure there is lots of fancy technology behind it, but as far as I'm concerned, it's light, slim, fast and has amazing resolution.  I'd like to tsay that describes me as well, but I'd be lying!

What the papers say

Yikes, dear readers, it's been a while.  Sorry about that - not sure where the time went or what I was doing, although doubtless, eating, drinking and going to the movies featured large.  Speaking of movies, have you seen Oblivion?  Personally, I'm not that big a fan of Tom Cruise, or sci-fi, but I did like this movie, largely because of the look of the thing (and I'm not talking about  Mr Cruise in a tight fitting, dove gray leather biker suit or Andrea Riseborough in the swimming pool in her birthday suit.)  The skytower house that Tom and Andrea inhabit in the movie is a thing of beauty - think Le Corbusier meets Apple to get the idea.  It is rather like a beautiful flying saucer on a curved stalk, with a see through swimming pool - just the sort of place I would want to live 60 years in the future (and it's all on one level, so I wouldn't need to worry about where to put the stairlift!).

A while ago I promised to write about the Singapore press, since although the newspapers here report on what is going on in the rest of the world, you don't hear much about what is going on in Singapore in other nations' media. 

First off,  most all of the available dailies and weeklies are published by a single group - Singapore Press Holdings.  The main exception is Today, a freesheet, which is also available online - here is today's Today for you to browse: http://www.todayonline.com/. 
So what are the hot stories in the Straits Times (the quality broadsheet) and Today, the other paper that I read on a regular basis?  First up, the sex for grades scandal. This is all about a law professor named Tey Tsun Hang,who has been accused of corruption for allegedly "obtaining gratification in the form of gifts and sex from a former student" in return for giving her better grades.  This story first appeared several months ago, but continues to run and run, partly because the trial has been adjourned a couple of times, and partly because people love to read about other people's sexual misfortune, I guess. 

Another theme that keeps coming up is the gay rights debate.  While countries around the world are legalising gay marriage, in Singapore, sex between men is still a criminal act.  While prosecutions happen rarely, there seems to be no desire on the part of the government to make any legislative change.  Just a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, gave a strong indication that the status quo will remain.  That said, there is much more open discussion about gay rights that when we first came here 6 years ago.  The landscape is definitely changing, as this clip from the BBC shows:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22259012.  Watch this space.

Housing is another topic that takes up a lot of column inches and this subject has many different strands, from the affordability of public housing, to the recently introduced "cooling measures" and Singapore's most expensive house, ever. The house in question is on the market for 300 million Singapore dollars, about 240 million US.  Now it's a nice house, in a great location near the Botanic Gardens, but  all the same, 300 million dollars?????  Apparently Singapore is Asia's second most expensive housing market after Hong Kong, which is probably one of the reasons that the government is trying to cool things down.  It has recently imposed new taxes for buyers, making it more expensive for several groups to buy  - Singapore citizens who already own a property, Permanent Residents and "foreigners" i.e. any non-Singaporean who is not a PR.  Foreigners must pay a 15% tax on top of the stamp duty, so an extra 18% in total on top of the already hefty purchase price.  

The whole foreigner thing is another recurring theme in the press and I confess to feeling less welcome in Singapore than I did when we came here.  My regular readers will know that the lovely C and I have always admired Singapore's ability to punch above its weight.  For a tiny island, with no real natural resources, it has managed to create and sustain a level of economic growth and prosperity that is the envy of much of the world.  The government recently launched a white paper entitled ‘A Sustainable Population for a Dynamic Singapore’, which outlined their plans to continue that growth.  It would be a serious understatement to say that it was not well received.  The main focus of dissent concerned the projected population figure - 6.9 million people by the year 2030.  Personally, I can't see where the increase of 30% is going to come from, given the low birth rate (1.2 children average) and the fact that it is getting harder for foreigners to get a work permit or permanent residence.  But that is not what is concerning the locals.  They are worried about the ability of the infrastructure to support this growth.  Having lived and worked in London for many years, the odd train breakdown doesn't bother me, but Singaporeans are used to a public transport system that runs efficiently all the time, so the odd train breakdown gets really bad press here.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Sticking with the theme of the written word, I wish to lodge a complaint.  I do lots of my reading via e-books on my iPhone, many of which I download for free.  The problem is - and I think I have to blame the authors of the Twilight and Fifty Shades trilogies for this - that way too many of the books are about vampires or sex, and sometimes about vampires AND sex.  I have nothing against sex - quite the opposite in fact :-), but if these books are to be believed, all women are having mind blowing, multiple orgasm sex, several times a day, EVERY DAY. By my reckoning, I am several thousand climaxes short of the national average, hence my complaint.  If any of my readers are in the same boat, I hope that they will write to their MPs and the newspapers or take to the streets in protest.  

 

Going for gold

I'm sure I have written about the Gold Class movie experience in a previous post, but yesterday's film experience deserves a post of its own.  For those of you who have not yet done the gold  thing in Singapore or elsewhere, think of the difference between flying business class and economy and apply that to your local cinema.  It really is the ultimate in movie going.

The cinema we went to seats 30 people -  in three rows 2 seats across, so you can cuddle up to your loved one - or a stranger I suppose if you are so inclined.   The seats are wide, super comfortable and recline to almost flat.  There is a table side waiter service; all you have to do is press a button and someone comes to take your order.  

So far so good, you are thinking, but why does this merit a post all of its own?  Well, it's because we had the whole place to ourselves.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't book all 30 seats just so we could talk out loud and giggle like teenagers without anyone shushing us, (although we did all of that and more).  It's just that at 4p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, no-one else in Singapore wanted to watch Hitchcock at the GV Grand cinema.   It was sheer bliss, made even blissier by a couple of servings of Haagen Dazs and a glass of Chardonnay.

So, if you fancy the business class experience but don't fancy going anywhere in particular, pop along to your local gold class cinema on a weekday afternoon.  If you were flying BA business class to New York it would take almost 8 hours, during which you would be able to watch three movies.  You would get free champagne and OK food.  Your movie watching would be constantly interrupted by announcements from the flight deck and having to get up to go to the loo because of all the champagne you've been drinking.  For the bargain price of 45 pounds, you could watch three gold class movies.  If you add in the cost of champagne and food, it's maybe two hundred pounds compared to at least two thousand pounds for a one-way ticket to the big apple.  As my friend Steve would say, "Je reste ma valise."

The Year of the Snake and the Bougainvillea

The year of the snake has arrived, with much less fanfare than last year's dragon, it must be said.  I'm a little sad about this, as I was born in the year of the snake, so I did a quick search for all the good things that the Chinese zodiac says about the serpent.  Apparently the snake symbol is associated with intelligence, charm, balance and elegance.  Yay!  Go snakes!  There may have been some other stuff about egotism and sneakiness, but I didn't like the sound of that so much, so I've chosen to ignore it.

For 2013, according to Chinese astrology, my lucky colours are yellow and red, my lucky numbers are 2,4,7 and 9, my lucky day of the week is Monday and my lucky directions (lucky directions???) are southwest and northeast.  I think that means that trips to Vietnam and China are on the cards this year, which is jolly lucky really, as we had intended to go there anyway.

Many people choose to leave Singapore during Chinese New Year but the lovely C and I tend to stay here and enjoy the atmosphere and nowhere is more atmospheric for the fortnight of CNY than Chinatown.  If you are reading this in Singapore and haven't been to Chinatown recently, drop whatever you are going and go there now.  If you fancy a spot of lunch, visit Smith Street.  This unusually (for Chinatown) named street runs through the heart of Chinatown and is named after Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, a High Commissioner at the end of the 19th century.  He was clearly very well thought of, as there is also a Cecil Street and a Clementi Street - the trifecta.

So what can you get up to in Chinatown apart from eating?  Well, shopping obviously - for more or less anything.  If you're feeling under the weather, you could visit the wonderful Thye Shan medical hall to consult with a Chinese physician, have a massage or buy some horrible (oops, herbal) tea.  If you fancy a spot of out of season mooncake to go with your tea you can find that too, or if Chinese opera is your thing, pop along to the Chinese Opera Teahouse in Smith street on a Friday evening.  For the bargain price of 35 sing dollars, you get dinner, a pot of tea and an opera performance.  

If you plan to spend time shopping in the stalls that line the streets of Chinatown, I would strongly recommend either developing an addiction to "Gangnam Style" or else buying a set of earplugs - the song is playing non-stop on a loop the length and breadth of Trengganu street.  I'm a big fan of his Psyness, but 30 minutes was enough for me.  I predict mass suicide among the shop assistants of Chinatown if it goes on much longer.

But enough about Chinatown and the year of the snake; what about the bougainvillea of the title?   Well, I have the lovely C to thank for that.  I had been feeling pretty down about something that had happened and when Chris realised, he went shopping.  And what did he come home with?  A bunch of flowers or a box of Dairy Milk?  Mais non!  He came home with two delivery men and four trees.  I didn't get to keep the men of course,  but the trees - my favourites are the bougainvillea and the water jasmine - have taken up residence on the balcony and look absolutely beautiful.  They make me smile - not quite as much as Lola does, but then again, they smell better.  

A quickie

The Impossible

Behave!   Not that sort of quickie, but a brief review of a couple of movies we have seen since the Les Miserables post.  I'm glad to say that the lovely C and I are back on track as movie lovers and that Singapore continues to offer up a menu of delights.  The first course on that menu is French and features the amazing Juliette Binoche.  I have to confess (as often happens with French films) that I'm not sure I fully understood it.  This has nothing to do with the film being in French (with English subtitles), it's much more to do with the subject matter.  I say subject matter rather than "plot" as, in my experience, many French films do not have what most people would recognise as a plot.  Instead, they attempt to draw you in to what the main protagonists are experiencing as the film progresses and, since these are seldom feelings of joy and happiness with their lot, it is often a pretty depressing experience for the audience.  That said, I absolutely love French cinema.  I love the challenge of trying to connect with the characters and think myself into their motivation and their behaviours, which is quite a tough gig for someone with my Scottish Calvinist background.  For goodness sake, my mother was brought up in the Wee Wee Frees.  Enough said.  The lovely Juliette gave her usual excellent performance in "Elles", in which she plays a journalist interviewing student prostitutes for an article.  When I say "student prostitutes" I mean young girls who are funding their university studies by means of prostitution, rather than those who have signed up for a diploma course in the subject.  Wouldn't that be interesting?  Imagine the timetable:

Monday:  A.M. History (well, it is the oldest profession)
                          Oral skills - theory and practice. BYOB (Bring your own banana)

                 P.M. Languages - talking dirty and giving good phone
                          Field trip - making out in the outdoors

But I digress.  As Juliette begins to engage with the prostitutes she becomes more and more critical of her own life and comes to believe that she too, has sold out, although her comfortable, bourgeois life is very different from those of her interviewees.  If Elles comes to a cinema near you, give it a go.  It's not an easy film, and Hugh Jackman does not get his kit off, but it is, nevertheless, a worthwhile experience.

Next up - The Impossible, which is based on a true story of the 2004 tsunami.  Although the real family concerned was Spanish, they have become Brits in the film -  I guess because Ewan McGregor was more bankable internationally than Antonio Banderas?  In any case, it's a goodie.  Lots of action and emotion, and a happy ending for some.  

Finally, The Tree, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, famous for their duet "Je t'aime moi non plus".    My older readers will remember this song and the accompanying outrage from the British establishment, but if you have not heard it, have a listen to this.  Personally, I think it's a great song even though the lyrics are a load of rubbish, and you couldn't wish for a better soundtrack to that quickie :-).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Fa4lOQfbA.  

But on to the film, which we saw at the Alliance Francaise, who run a cine club on Tuesday evenings.  I don't want to share too much, because it was truly extraordinary.  Moving, without being sentimental and deeply sad, yet optimistic and life-affirming in the end.  It was the closing film at the 2010 Cannes film festival and deservedly so, in my view.  It's in English and set in Australia, so have no worries about subtitles getting in the way of the experience.















                 

Pure dead brilliant!

One of the larger graves

Sometimes it helps to be Scottish when reading this blog.  Today is one of those times, as otherwise the title of this post may confuse you.  Not to worry - that's what Google is for.

A sense of the wilderness that the cemetery has become

Even though I've lived here for almost 6 years, I still come across parts of Singapore that surprise me.  The latest is Bukit Brown cemetery, which - bizarrely - ranks in the top 10 of TripAdvisor's list of Singapore attractions.  The first I heard of it was last year, when proposals to build a road through the cemetery were published, much to the dismay of conservationists.
Well, I say " a road", but the proposal is actually for an eight-lane highway, in order to relieve congestion on existing roads nearby and to prepare for future housing development.  It looks as if the road building will go ahead, despite the public protestations, so if you live in Singapore and haven't yet visited Bukit Brown, go now before it's too late.

Taking my own advice, a can of diet Coke and my weekend walking companion, the lovely Ann Marie, I tootled off there for a Sunday morning wander and discovered the most wonderful place  - in the middle of the city but part of another world.  The lovely AM brought her camera and all the photos on this post are down to her.  First of all, it's huge - over 200 acres in all.  AM and I had both read up a little before the outing, but we were amazed by the size of the place.  It ceased to be a working cemetery (is that the correct term?) 50 years ago and it shows, but in a good way.  This place bears no resemblance to the serried ranks of graves you see in cemeteries in the UK; it's much more like a tropical forest, with gravestones of all shapes and sizes scattered about the place, many of them almost impossible to access as the forest floor has grown around them.  We were lucky enough to meet a volunteer guide on our walk, who pointed out a couple of the tombs we particularly wanted to see and gave us a brief history lesson.

A small section of the wonder that is Bukit Brown

Apparently there are over 100,000 graves, some very humble and others on a grand scale - like the 600m2 memorial to the 19th century business tycoon Ong Sam Leong, definitely worth a visit.  Many famous Singaporeans are buried here, including some who have given their names to areas of the city or street names, like Boon Lay and Kheam Hock.  It seems to me that the decision to build a road here (involving the exhumation of more than 3000 graves), and the ensuing opposition, is a metaphor for Singapore today.  Bukit Brown is a treasured part of Singapore's history and heritage, but it performs no "useful" function other than as a haven for wildlife and a place to enjoy life away from the stresses and strains of the city.  As a country, Singapore is nothing if not pragmatic and so the bulldozers will shortly cut a swathe through the tranquil paradise of Bukit Brown in order to welcome the roads and enable the building development that is necessary for Singapore to continue growing, as a nation and as an economic power.  The whole subject of Singapore's growth has been a recurring feature in the local press recently, more of which in the next post when I'll share with you some of Singapore's top stories, as I'm guessing the majority of my readers do not have a subscription to The Straits Times.


If you'd like to know more about Bukit Brown have a look at bukitbrown.org or the TripAdvisor reviews.  It is quite simply, in the words of the title, pure dead brilliant!

Les Miserables? Surely that was the audience.

Those of you who know me will be aware that I love the movies.  I can't remember the last time I walked out of the cinema before the end of a film - actually yes, I can, it was the truly terrible Gigli starring Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.   The film is described as "The violent story of how a criminal lesbian, a tough-guy hit-man with a heart of gold, and a retarded man came to be best friends through a hostage."   With a plot line so thrilling I'm amazed it wasn't nominated for an Oscar, but there you go.  Anyway, the lovely C and I suffered approximately 30 minutes of Gigli and then snuck into the cinema next door to watch something better.  Frankly, watching paint dry would have been better, but I digress, as the subject of this post is Les Miserables.

You may have gathered from the title that I didn't love it.  To be fair, I didn't watch very much of it, but what I did see I absolutely hated.  I'm not a great fan of musicals, but I loved Blood Brothers, Mamma Mia, Buddy and Jersey Boys, so I went to the film expecting to at least quite like it, especially since there was a strong likelihood of Hugh Jackman's bare torso making an appearance.  Oh dear.  Quite frankly, Hugh would have to have been totally naked, sitting in the seat beside me and whispering in my ear some of the saucy bits out of Fifty Shades of Grey by way of foreplay before I could have been persuaded to stay put.  The lovely C and I exchanged a glance within the first 5 minutes and 15 minutes after that  we were out of there.  The problem is that, unlike the musicals I mentioned above, which have proper dialogue to move the story along accompanied by songs at appropriate moments, Les Mis was what they call sung through i.e. all the dialogue is sung also.  Well, I say "sung", but what I actually experienced was a lot of tuneless, shouty stuff that was probably words, but it was so dreary that it was hard to tell. To add insult to injury Hugh didn't even get his top off once in the first twenty minutes - a poor show indeed.  If I were to review it in Haiku form it would look something like this:

Miserable? Yes,
definitely. Victor would
not have liked it much.