The end of the line



Inside the art deco station building

Yesterday the last train left the Tanjong Pagar railway station in downtown Singapore.  From today, all trains will run from the Woodlands checkpoint, in the north of the island, the crossing point into Malaysia.  It was a seminal moment in the history of Singapore and a huge crowd came to mark the occasion.

I didn't go yesterday, not being a big fan of crowds, but I was there last week, buying a ticket on Wednesday for the 4.30 am train on Thursday, the only train I could get without having to queue for ages.  I'd never taken the train  to Malaysia before, as for some inexplicable reason the journey to Kuala Lumpur takes 6 hours, and no-one I know had spoken kindly of either the journey or the trains themselves.  Well, they were not wrong.  The station itself must have been a beautiful building in its youth, but it has become very tired and dilapidated and the train was just horrible.  I was glad that I was just taking a short ride over the causeway and into Malaysia, then turning round and coming back again.  Living in Singapore, you become used to clean, efficient public transport, so the condition of the rolling stock was a bit of a shock to the system.  The land on which the station sits, as well as the railway track, belonged to Malaysia until midnight last night, and I believe that the trains did too, which probably explains their condition.  If you've visited Singapore and used the MRT (underground railway system) you will know that it is kept in a pristine state, quite different from the overground trains.    


 I didn't know quite what to expect when I got to the station at Johor Bahru (locally known as "JB"), but it was a temple of modernity, more like an airport terminal building than what I was expecting, and a complete contrast to its mate at the Singapore end.  I just had time to buy a return ticket and a curry puff for breakfast, have a bit of a wander round, and then it was time to board the train for the return journey. 

You may be asking yourselves two things at this point.  1) Why on earth did I not buy a return ticket at the Singapore end? and 2) Are curry puffs really a breakfast food?  The answer to the second is a resounding "yes", of course.  As for the first, read on.......

I did try to buy a return ticket, but you can only buy a ticket from Singapore at the Singapore end; you have to buy the other half at the Malaysia end.  No problem, I thought.  I have plenty of ringgit among my foreign currency stash, I'll just take some of those.  Except I forgot.  In my defence, I got up at the unholy hour of 3.30 am that morning, and I did remember my name and passport, so two out of three isn't bad.  Since Singapore and Malaysia are so closely linked, I thought I would be able to pay for the return ticket in Sing dollars, but not so.  When I offered to pay with a credit card the ticket lady gawped at me in amazement.  Only then did I realise that, while I had paid the Singapore dollar equivalent of £6.50 for the outbound ticket, a respectable amount to put on a credit card, the return ticket cost 3 ringgit - about 70 pence.  Some cost of living difference!

The return journey was in daylight, which was a lovely bonus, and the departure from Malaysia was trouble free.  I had been a been a bit concerned following recent headlines about two Singaporean women who had not had their passports stamped on the way into Malaysia for dinner at JB and who were detained and required to strip and perform squats (see link for the full story) http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_679677.html. but I was wearing my lucky knickers and all went well.  I say all went well, but there was a bit of a delay when we got to the Singapore checkpoint just over the border.  Normally, you are able to re-board the train after a few minutes, but we had to wait for almost an hour.  I was a bit concerned when I saw the sniffer dogs come through, but there was no announcement and we boarded shortly afterwards.  As it transpired, my train trip coincided with a foiled attempt to smuggle a quantity of drugs from Malaysia into Singapore, concealed in the spare wheel of a car.  Singapore has a very tough approach to drug smuggling, so heaven knows what they were thinking.

The station facade

I'm conscious that movies have not featured recently in this blog, so let me make amends right away.  The film in question, The Wind Blows Round,  was part of the recent Italian festival in Singapore and it made me realise how very little I know about Italian films in general and their more recent cinema in particular.  This was a movie that moved. The plot is, in many ways, slight, and not a lot happens during the course of the film.  Philippe Heraud, a teacher turned goatherd from southern France, moves into a small northern Italian village with his family because a nuclear plant is being built near their home in the Pyrenees.  Initially they are welcomed by the villagers for breathing new life into the village, since this is a place where no young families live any more, except in the houses which are occupied during the summer months by people from Turin who keep them as holiday homes.  Things happen, some good, many not so good, and they move out.

The elderly inhabitants of the village speak Occitan, an almost extinct language and are steeped in the traditions of mountain village life.  Philippe is a free spirit, who does not choose to have his house blessed by the priest or show the "appropriate" respect for tradition.  He and his wife are very different from the villagers and it is soon clear that conflict is inevitable.  The film feels incredibly real, partly because none of the actors are professionals and much of the action centres on people's daily lives.  There were elements in the film that reminded me of Jean de Florette, but the characters in this film are more nuanced, less black and white. Only one character, the mayor, stands out as being a really noble individual; the others are a mixture of kindness and cruelty - just like people are.

If you have a fondness for cinema that makes you think and makes you feel, look out for this film.  If ever a movie deserved a haiku, this one does.  My thanks to Chris for composing it.

Pride and prejudice

defeat the idyllic life

in the Occitan.

Here comes summer

Yesterday was the longest day in the UK, a day I  used to look forward to with great excitement when I lived there.  When I lived in Aberdeen, in northern Scotland, the summer solstice was particularly special.  Aberdeen is further north than Moscow so the summer days are long (if not always warm!) and the favourite way to celebrate was to climb a local mountain, Bennachie, in time for sunset (some time after 10 pm) and party till sunrise, at about 4 am.  Why is it that staying up all night is the thing to do when you are young?  It was fun though, and much easier than staying up all night would be in Singapore, at any time of year, since we have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness throughout the year.  That said, I will be up jolly early tomorrow, as I am taking the train to Malaysia at 4.30 am. 


Now the 4.30 train was not my first choice, but these next few days are the last opportunity to take the train from the wonderful art deco railway station at Tanjong Pagar. Although the station is situated in Singapore, the land on which is sits is owned by the Malaysian railway operator and it was agreed last year that the station will cease to operate from the end of this month and train services will be transferred to the north of Singapore, near the checkpoint for the crossing into Malaysia.  Despite never having taken the train before (the journey to Kuala Lumpur takes about 6 hours, compared to one hour by air), I wanted to make sure I made a journey from the station before the close.  Alas, the whole of Singapore seems to be thinking the same thing, so I had to queue for a ticket and the only service not sold out for tomorrow was the 4.30 am.   


The station building will be preserved, and is in desperate need of some care and attention, but it is a real shame to see it go.  I'll add some pictures to the next post, if my iPhone delivers the goods.

Woo hoo!

The title of this post indicates a special double bill - the Wailers' gig last week and Lola's and my attendance at doggy training classes.  Woo hoo, or a rough approximation of same, is the noise Lola makes when she is excited about something, which happens a lot and it's pretty much the cry I found myself emitting last Saturday night to express my appreciation of the Wailers.  I was particularly appreciative of one of the two lead singers - the one in the picture on the left, who looks like a Jamaican Javier Bardem.  Yum! 


The venue was the Hard Rock Hotel on Sentosa, part of the  integrated resort/casino complex that opened there last year.  My regular readers may remember the description of our first trip there, in the post contributed by the lovely Chris entitled "Casino banal".   Suffice to say we were mightily disappointed.  However, this time was quite different, partly because I was above ground, but also because the place is really quite amazing.   I started the evening at the Palio restaurant which is part of the hotel Michael, one of six hotels in the complex. Each of the hotels has a different feel; the Michael is very much the hotel for art lovers.  Its name is a  tribute to Michael Graves, the American architect who designed Resorts World, and the Michael is probably the hotel I would choose to stay in if I went on a mini-break a la Bridget Jones.

Boy with dreadlocks on his hat

The Palio is an Italian restaurant - one of its many plus points.  In fact the only downside as far as I was concerned was that it was rather full, especially of noisy children, but then again, I'm all for introducing kids to the delights of Italian cuisine at an early age, so what can you do?  What I did was to sample their wonderful wood fired pizza, which came close to a 10 on the Doverty register of deliciousness and was the perfect pre-cursor to a night of leaping up and down in front of the Wailers.  And when I say in front, I mean it, as I managed to get a place in the second row from the stage.  This was a standing event and it's been a while since I did one of those, but it couldn't have been any other way.  The crowd was really into it, although one or two of the older members of the audience (not me obviously - I'm still 33 in my mind and can woo hoo with the best of them) looked a little uncomfortable, as if they didn't quite know how to get with the vibe.  The guy next to me was really into the whole Jamaican thing; he had on a red gold and green hat with little dreadlocks attached, which you can just see in the photo on the right. 

I could have done with that hat a couple of Sundays ago, which was Lola's first doggy obedience class.  It was also the day that the rain came down so hard that it flooded the Tanglin Mall (that's rain in the photo, not an indoor waterfall!).  The class itself was under cover, but it was almost impossible to get a taxi home, as TLC was in France and I did not want to drive there myself.  I'm a bit funny about driving in Singapore, but that's probably the subject of a whole post on its own, so I'm not going to go there.  The first class was theory, which Lola didn't really take to as her reading skills are not up to much, but last Sunday was the first practical class.  I would love to say that she excelled, but it would be a lie.  Frankly, the two words "Lola" and "obedience" do not often occur in the same sentence, as those of you who have met her can confirm, but I live in hope, inspired by one of the demonstration dogs - a beautiful Siberian husky.  He was a rescue dog who had suffered abuse for several years, but is now both incredibly obedient and affectionate.  TLC is worried that Lola will lose her joie de vivre if she becomes obedient to our commands, but she has so much of the stuff she could probably share hers with all the dogs in Singapore and still have plenty left over.  I'll keep you posted on progress (hopefully there will be some to report!).  

Chinatown

Having just published my Laos post a couple of days ago, I thought I would wait a little before offering up this next one.  My mind was changed for me by a mosquito that decided to dive-bomb me in bed at 6 am on Saturday and the alternative to hunkering down under the sheet and toughing it out was to get up and do something.  It's a funny thing about mosquitoes.  I've been bitten many times and it's itchy and annoying, but no more than that really, so why is it that the high pitched-drone of a mosquito intent on its next meal at my expense should engender such horror?  I'd be happy to come to an arrangement whereby I stick out an arm, have it snack on that, rub on some anti-histamine ointment and get back to sleep, but oh no, that's not how Ms Mosquito works.  Small digression here: did you know that it's the females (bitches!) who do the bloodsucking?  Apparently the male mosquito typically feeds on nectar and plant juices, but the wifie mosquito needs a blood meal in order to produce eggs.  Perhaps the answer is to keep a stash of black pudding by the bed? 


Moving on to the original subject of this post, the lovely AnnMarie (my fish spa partner) and I hadn't seen each other for a while so we decided to meet up for lunch and fit in a walk beforehand.  Singapore is full of jungle walks, but we agreed on an urban adventure this time and headed for Chinatown.  The Chinatown of today has evolved from the area that was set up as part of Sir Stamford Raffles' master plan in the early 19th century and, although it is bounded on one side by the skyscrapers of the CBD, its character and appeal remain, as do the wonderful street names like Sago street, Pagoda street and Nankin street.  Chinatown is crazy busy and wonderfully decorated in the run-up to Lunar New Year as  Singaporeans  shop till they drop for all the New Year goodies, and strangely dead at the weekend.  Our outing was on a Friday, so it was quiet when we started out but busied up for the lunchtime rush.

Dried goji berries

We had no real master plan in mind, apart from looking up a couple of things in our guidebook, so it was a very pleasant wander that brought us first of all to a traditional Chinese medicine shop.  AnnMarie was in the market for some Goji berries, aka wolfberries, which are supposed to do wonders for - among other things - the liver and the eyes.  I'm always up for trying new alternative therapies in the quest for physical perfection (no giggling please), so I bought some too and off we trotted.  Our next stopping off point was the Yixing Xuan Teahouse, the first visit to a teahouse for both of us.  Of course I couldn't wait to sample the goji berries and thought they would go nicely with my lovely cup of white tea.  I sampled one, liked the initial sweet taste and offered one to my trusting companion.   Unfortunately, as she popped hers into her mouth, I got the aftertaste - not sweet at all, in fact very bitter.   It reminded me of the time I bit into an unripe persimmon, without peeling it (the first time I'd ever tried said fruit, so how was I to know?) To be fair, the persimmon incident was much worse - it dried up all my saliva and felt like I had eaten a mouthful of bitter-tasting, heavy duty underarm deodorant which stayed in my mouth and wouldn't go away.  Yukky.  So AnnMarie and I are sitting there, wondering how we are ever going to be able to eat these blessed things.  We're both Scottish, so perhaps the answer is to coat them in a nice sweet batter and deep fry them?  Maybe not.  All alternative ideas welcome.


Continuing with the food theme, our next stop was The Screening Room - "where food meets film".  Despite having lived in Singapore for almost 4 years, I have not visited here for either food or film, never mind the two in combination, but that's about to change.  The Screening Room is a great concept.  There are 5 separate floors, with a bistro on the bottom and a rooftop bar on the top and a malt vault, studio and film theatre in between.  Heaven!  

I tasted a bit of heaven earlier this week in The French Kitchen  restaurant.  If you live in Singapore, or come for a visit, this place is most definitely worth a try.  The set lunch is a steal, in my view - one of the best to be had in Singapore.  The room itself is beautiful and there is proper linen on the table and beautiful glassware.  The chef, the lovely Jean-Charles, came out to welcome me and we had a wee chat in French before my dining companion arrived.  We were served with home-made bread and salmon rillettes, then an amuse-bouche before the first course arrived.  We had both chosen the same dishes - fromage de chèvre chaud with spinach salad and walnut bread, confit de canard with truffled mash and marinated cherries and dark chocolate crème brûlée.     It was all delicious, although if I was being picky I would have liked the duck to be more willing to fall off the bone, rather than having to be persuaded to leave it behind.  

And finally, a movie review of London Boulevard, which  I saw at the weekend.  This is not a film that the lovely Chris would have wanted to see, so I took advantage of his temporary absence to go on my own.  The film stars Keira Knightley as a reclusive film star and Colin Farrell as a recently released  criminal.  Colin plays a blinder, and David Thewlis is fantastic as Keira's manager.  It's not for the squeamish, especially in the final scenes, and I did have to put my fingers in my ears a couple of times, so be warned.  Here the haiku:


London gangsters tale
No good deed goes unpunished
Colin Farrell rocks

Lovely Laos

The lovely Chris and I have recently returned from a short visit to Laos, a first for both of us.  I had meant to write this post from there, but quite frankly, we were too wrapped up in pursuit of hedonistic pleasure.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

Unfortunately there are no direct flights from Singapore to Laos, so we went via Bangkok, a pretty smooth journey which featured a most extraordinary incident on the travellator on the way to baggage reclaim.  There was a group of Eastern European guys just in front of us, built like front row forwards for the Vladivostok Vandals who suddenly started howling out loud and then jumped over the hand rail, off the moving carpet and set off in hot, still howling pursuit of a couple of blonde air hostesses on their way to board their plane.  Weird!

On arrival in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, we realized we had to get (by 'get' I mean purchase, for the bargain price of USD 36 dollars each) an entry visa.  Only greenbacks would do, no other currency and no credit cards.  Well, it's one way of guaranteeing a steady stream of hard currency I suppose.  The cost of the visa would have been a mere 35 dollars, but we had no photograph.  Fortunately, this serious security issue could be overcome by the payment of one more US dollar.  At one level I can understand the desire of the government to attract dollars, but Chris and I were amazed at how little resentment there seems to be on the part of the people of Laos of what the Americans did to their country during the years of the Vietnam war, the legacy of which remains in thousands of unexploded cluster bombs in the countryside (what monster allowed the manufacture of this abomination?) which are still claiming the lives and limbs of innocent people.  If you visit Vientiane, I urge you to spend some time, and some money at COPE - the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise.  While clearly not your normal tourist venue, this visit is eye-opening and intensely humbling.  You can read more about it on tripadvisor; just follow the link below:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293950-d1092459-Reviews-Cooperative_Orthotic_and_Prosthetic_Enterprise_COPE-Vientiane.html

The Laotian currency is the charmingly named Kip, of which there are 12,000 to the pound.  Just for fun, we bought a million, and you can see TLC posing with them above.  We took dozens of photos, but even my most faithful readers are bound to have a limited tolerance for pictures of temples so I have sprinkled in a few other views throughout this particular post.  


We stayed in Vientiane first, the capital, which was nice, but not a patch  on Luang Prabang, which was where we spent most of the time - in the most gorgeous boutique hotel which had been recently converted from its previous use as a detention centre.  As we commented in the visotors' book before leaving, we plan to re-offend in the very near future!  The hotel had just 23 rooms and we were the sole occupants most of the time, as we went during the low season .  We never had to share the pool, the bar or the spa, which was not great news for the hotel, but rather lovely for us.  And talking of the spa.........
Stoned 

The pool at the Settha Palace

My regular readers will have shared what I call my "nook and    cranny" experiences since moving to Asia, where the normal observation of the client's modesty that prevails in the UK during massage therapy does not seem to apply here.  I had already decided that I was going to try and work my way through the entire menu of spa offerings over a couple of days ( and I managed all but one - pretty, good, huh?).  The lovely Chris was persuaded to join me for some of the treatments (our joint favourite over the two days was the hot stone massage) and so we padded off on our first morning to meet our therapists, who turned out to be a young man, for Chris, and a young woman for me.  All very fine, apart from the fact that the sessions took place in the same room.  Now, beautiful and light and airy as this room was, the massage beds were side by side, separated by no more than eighteen inches and all we were wearing was a pair of knicks.  No matter how deft my lassie's holding up of the sheet as I was lying down and turning round,  it all felt a little exposed, but hey, it's just one more for the nooks and crannies list.   Slightly more worrying was my therapist's declaration of love for me on the first afternoon.  Charming as she was, not to mention married with two children, I did not feel able to reciprocate.  

One of the many Buddhas we
saw in Vientiane

I'm conscious that I have been writing for some time and have not yet mentioned food - not at all like me - and there is plenty to write about Laotian cuisine.  Our favourite meals were probably the simplest, most notable of which was the lettuce wraps we ate on our first night in Luang Prabang.  I'm really tempted to try to replicate them with a different twist for one of my upcoming dinners with friends.  I'll keep you posted on the results. 

The other notable food moments were pizza for breakfast overlooking the Mekong and morning alms, both on our last day in Laos.  We  had heard good things about the Saffron cafe and were keen to spend some time by the river, which is particularly beautiful at that point.  Since I had been up since 5.30 in order to participate in the morning alms procession, I felt that pizza could be, on this occasion, a breakfast food.  TLC was more circumspect and had a banana muffin (and very yummy it was too).  The Saffron sells some of the best coffee I have ever tasted and the story of the coffee is fascinating.  Its genesis is the outlawing of opium cultivation by the Lao government which meant that the hill tribes whose livelihood depended on the opium crop were forced to engage in slash-and-burn agriculture in order to survive. This meant that entire mountainsides were cleared of vegetation and burned off.  The fields were planted for one season and then abandoned as a new mountainside was cleared - clearly not a sustainable solution for the farmers and barely enough to solve the short-term problem of feeding their families.  Enter David Dale, an American living in Laos, who discovered that Arabica coffee would  grow on the hillsides and Saffron Coffee was born.  He partnered with local tribes and created a coffee tree nursery, sending the little wee coffee trees to over 300 mountain farmers in more than ten different villages with the right land for planting coffee and purchasing all their coffee when it is harvested.  Talk about a virtuous circle!

Morning alms in Luang Prabang

I felt quite virtuous myself at the morning alms ceremony.  Shortly after dawn, hundreds of Buddhist monks leave their temples and walk along the main street to collect their morning alms - mainly sticky rice, supplemented by biscuits and fruit.  I had arranged with the hotel to join in, and it was another pretty humbling experience, but also a joyful one.  

Let me leave you with a view of the marvellous Mekong river and an exhortation to visit the beauties of Laos if you find yourself in this part of the world.  We will most definitely be going again, to see Luang Prabang and to explore new places.  My next post features the lovely AnnMarie, my fish spa chum, and  takes us back to Singapore, so watch out for "Chinatown", coming to your PC soon.  

The end of an era?

I do not normally comment on politics in this blog, but a recent, watershed event in Singapore's history most definitely merits an exception.


This weekend, Lee Kuan Yew, founding father of Singapore and its prime minister for over 30 years, resigned from the cabinet after his party, the PAP (People's Action Party) experienced its worst election result since independence in 1965.  From my perspective as a UK citizen, an election result that nets the opposition 6 seats out of a total of 87 looks like a serious victory, but the PAP's share of the vote dropped to 60% from 67% in the last election and both Lee Kuan Yew, whose official title is Minister Mentor, and Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong decided to step down to make room for a younger generation to take Singapore forward into the next phase.  I have commented before in this blog that Singapore is a country that punches well above its weight and  Lee Kuan Yew's vision has been a significant enabler of this ability.  


Among the many accolades that have been printed, this is my favourite:  "There are many tall trees in Cabinet, but he is the last redwood". 

The Lynx effect

Those of you who are keen followers of this blog may already have seen my Italian post and watched the Lynx "Even angels will fall" advert, contributed by my good friend Steve.  Here in Singapore we do not get the Lynx ads, but seeing this one tempted me to YouTube where I spent several enjoyable hours surfing through dozens of Lynx ads.  When Chris left his study to find out the cause of the raucous laughter, I shared a few of my findings with him and he suggested that I blog some.  As I have already posted today, this is just a quickie to make you laugh.  I have included the angels ad for those of you who who have not already seen it, as well as a few of my personal favourites.  Laughter is good for the soul.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ib-7Dwhmnc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfeVEAZkJqM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeRZUjgLlIw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYSnLIys9o0

Nirvana

After almost four years in Singapore I still come across things that surprise me.  One such featured in yesterday's free sheet, the Today newspaper, over a two page advertising spread.  I consider myself pretty well read, but I have never before come across the term "Columbarium" (from the Latin for a nesting box for doves, for those of you who are interested).  If you don't already know, a columbarium is basically a facility for holding cremated remains and the Nirvana Memorial Garden, which was the subject of yesterday's ad, is a state of the art example.  Described as "Asia’s largest 6-star columbarium", Nirvana is the first privatized memorial park in Singapore and features "full air conditioning, lush carpeting and breathtaking art pieces" as well as lounge sofas scattered throughout the complex, a laser lights and sounds display that you can include as part of the memorial ceremony and a swipe card system to give access to the niches containing the ashes of your loved one.  Perhaps the part of the description that took me most by surprise was the assertion that "Nirvana Memorial Garden is positioned to be a landmark tourist attraction".   

When I think of visiting the last resting place of a loved one, I must confess that I don't think in terms of hotel style lobbies, comfy sofas or tourist attractions, but hey, each to their own.  

I've not written about movies for a while, but one of the two we saw this week has strong links to the mortality theme of this post, and would, in any circumstances, deserve a mention.  The film is Biutiful and stars Javier Bardem as Uxbal, a single father who struggles to reconcile the many conflicts in his life as he lives out his last weeks, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  It was a strange combination of bleak and uplifting and so gripping that when Chris and I talked about it, we could not remember whether it was in Spanish or English.  (It was in Spanish, with subtitles and Bardem received an Oscar nomination for his performance, the first entirely Spanish language performance to be nominated for Best Actor.)  Biutiful is set in Barcelona, but not the Barcelona of Gaudi, smart hotels and long lunches in fancy restaurants.  It takes place in Barcelona's underbelly, a world the tourists never see.  I find myself wanting to tell the whole story in this post, but that would spoil things for those of you who will see it, so I will hold back and leave you with the haiku review contributed by the lovely Chris.

Find intense beauty

not in the city squalour; 

in humanity. 

Ah, L'Italia!

Just got back a couple of days ago from a holiday in Europe, to the sweltering heat of Singapore and a rapturous welcome from Lola.  I think her little tail would have fallen off it she had wagged it any harder.  While I'm sure her enthusiasm was largely due to her being delighted to see me again after an absence of almost 3 weeks, she may also have been influenced by the fact that I was wearing perfume named after her.  Yes indeed.  It seems that Lola has caught the attention of Marc Jacobs the fashion designer, who has created a perfume in her honour.  For those of you who have not yet smelt Lola (the Marc Jacobs version, not the real thing), here is a description for you from Perfume Lover's website:


This warm floral bouquet conveys the free spirit of today’s sexy, modern girl – she is playful, cool, and flirtatious…The long-lasting, day-and-night scent opens with pink peppercorn, pear, and ruby red grapefruit. Blooming midnotes of rose, fuschia peony, and geranium make a feminine statement. Layers of vanilla, warm tonka bean, and creamy musk create a sensous drydown. 

You may have noticed the complete absence of "essence de chien" in this description, but what can I say?  While the real Lola smells pretty gorgeous just after her bath, she does get distinctly doggy towards the end of the week, so I think Mr Jacobs wins this one hands down.  As my regular readers will know, I aim to educate as well as amuse through this blog and if, like me, you have not previously encountered a tonka bean or the expression "drydown", then look no further. 


The tonka bean is the fruit of a  tropical South American tree (Dipteryx odorata for you botanists out there) with egg-shaped, one-seeded pods and fragrant seeds.  It is used as a substitute for vanilla apparently, so I'm not quite sure what the difference in smell is, but Perfume Lover seems to be able to detect it.  "Drydown" is a perfumery term used to describe the last stage in the evolution of a fragrance. After the top notes have faded and the middle and base notes have formed the body of the scent, what comes next is the drydown, or the end notes of the fragrance. And there you have it.


The perfume recommendation came from my niece, the lovely Claudia, sister of the equally lovely Hannah, who introduced me to the singing sensation that is Adele and to dancing around in your underwear.  (You had to be there for the underwear bit).  "There" was Italy - Venice, Florence and Rome to be precise - and my sister and I, along with TLH and TLC ate, shopped and photographed our way round the country, stopping only for the occasional coffee and to laugh out loud at the teeny weeny cars and buses that seem to fill the streets of Italian cities these days.  Stopping for coffee also entailed a fair amount of laughing out loud, this time on the part of the waiters when we asked for a cappuccino in the middle of the afternoon - several hours after 11 am, the latest acceptable point in the day for drinking any coffee other than espresso.  But hey, that's how we roll.


Venice was the favourite part of the trip.  We were staying in Cannaregio, in the north of the island, in a lovely little apartment from where we walked everywhere - well, not everywhere, of course, as that would have required the ability to walk on water, but you know what I mean.  The thing I love most about Venice is that it is such an improbable place; it shouldn't really exist, and yet it manages to survive and thrive year after year, century after century.  We all thought that Cannaregio is probably the part of Venice that we would choose to live in if live in if we were to buy an apartment there, although we might need sell everything we have for the down payment - Venice is one expensive city!  Some of the best moments had nothing to do with the history or the sights, for example our dinner in the worst run restaurant in the world - bizarrely, also one of the busiest restaurants that we came across, perhaps because they were so disorganised that most of the diners could probably have eaten for free since the sole waitress seemed never to write anything down or be able to report back to the man at the till what anyone had ordered, and   in any case spent half the time moving the furniture around or sitting down for a ciggie break with her chums.  


Our favourite restaurant of the trip was the strangely named Le Caveau, (strangely named for an Italian restaurant, that is) which was a mere 30 paces from our apartment.  We know that it was 30 paces because my sister measured it when it became clear that this was becoming our "local" and in fact we ate there every day of the stay in Rome.  The only thing that let them down was running out of milk on Sunday afternoon, a bit of an issue if you fancy a cappuccino, but not something that would bother most of their patrons I guess. 


Sadly, while we loved both Venice and Florence, Rome was a disappointment.  I have visited several times before and have really enjoyed it and Chris has always maintained that it is his favourite European city (personally, I think that both Barcelona and Paris kick Rome into touch, but he can't be expected to agree with me on everything - just most things :-)).   So why did Rome disappoint?  Well, it was really dirty, for a start.  Living in Singapore, I have high standards for cleanliness, especially in public places, but the girls were equally grossed out by the rubbish on the streets, the filthy underground stations, the ever-present graffiti and the generally grubby feeling pretty much everywhere.  Of course, the city that gave birth to the Colosseum, the Trevi fountain and the Sistine chapel, not to mention Penne all'Arrabbiatta, can't be all bad, and we did have fun, just not as much as in Florence and Venice.  The highlights of the Florence trip were haggling for leather goods and being first in the queue to see Michelangelo's David so that our view of him was unimpeded by anything or anyone.   Interesting fact coming up: Commentators have noted David's apparently uncircumcised penis, which is at odds with Judaic practice, but is considered consistent with the conventions of Renaissance art.  


Since I'm not sure I can follow that, I'll sign off for now, with thanks to my friend Steve for sending me this link featuring Florence, but not the usual tourist sights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfeVEAZkJqM

Friends and Amis

Dear readers, I'd like to issue an advance warning to those of you who may think I have been devoting too much of this blog recently to writing about food - I'm about to do it again.  This post centres on a delicious lunch at Les Amis, arguably Singapore's best French restaurant.  Why do people say "arguably" in this context, I wonder?  Is it because there are usually several competitors for the title, or because there is bound to be someone out there who would argue about it, just for the hell of it?  I digress, so let me get back to my sheep, as the French would say.  ("Revenons a nos moutons" is what they would actually say, a phrase which apparently has its origins in a fifteenth century French farce in which a woollen draper accuses a shepherd of cruelty to his sheep).  I digress again, so it's time for a photo.  This one is of my main course - halibut cooked sous vide and served, as you can see, in a lovely white bowl, on top of a delicious mushroom ragout.  The halibut was meltingly soft (sous vide will do that; it could probably tenderise a rubber ball) and the mushroom thingy was deliciously mushroomy.  

I was lunching with three of my dearest, and soon to be ex, colleagues, so this was by way of a pre-departure lunch.  The ladies in question have looked after me in ways too numerous to mention over the last few years and this lunch was a small token of my appreciation and affection, not to mention an excuse to have lunch in a restaurant that I have always wanted to visit, as it is arguably the best etc. etc.


The lunch began with an amuse bouche of citrus marinated salmon served on a little wooden paddle, garnished with some tiny, frilly herby thing and some chopped chives.  The presentation throughout was fabulous - and a bit quirky, especially when it came to the desserts, as you will see further down.  Between the four of us, we sampled much of the lunch menu - the signature appetizer of eel served under (bizarrely) , rather than on,  a sliver of pork terrine- infused crispy ciabatta was the favoured starter of two of my dining companions, while I chose the foie gras served on a perfectly circular ring of soft caramelised apple, accompanied by some gorgeously buttery toasted brioche and served on a plate drizzled with three spots of a lightly truffled syrup.  The lovely Jennifer started with the ciabatta wrapped crispy egg, with Iberico ham and spinach on top of a ham ragout.  I forgot to take a picture of this, sadly, for it was a thing of beauty.

Moving on to mains, TLJ chose egg once more, this time as part of the char-grilled octopus on mushroom risotto, with lettuce and confit egg - see piccie above.  Joanna and I both had the halibut, and Tricia chose another of the signature dishes, the roast suckling pig served with cabbage, speck potatoes and caraway.  The servings were just enough to leave room for dessert, and the pastry chef is obviously a modern artist manque, as you can see from his pudding presentation, left.  This was my dessert of choice - rhubarb with tarragon ice cream - and the other choices were similarly wonkily picturesque. 


All in all, we had a really lovely time, as did my friend and fellow trencherperson the lovely Andrew, when he went off to try out Waku Ghin, one of the new celebrity restaurants in the Marina Bay Sands casino.  He had invited TLC and me to join him and his wife, the lovely Megan, but as Waku Ghin is one of those restaurants that serves slippy food (my regular readers - and probably anyone who has ever eaten a meal with me quite frankly - will know of my aversion to all things slippy, I declined).  Andrew's review of the restaurant follows:


We arrived at the second floor of the casino building to suddenly
realise that smoking is allowed on the pit floor (and I believe drinking
isn't--somewhat bizarre for a casino)...so the second floor balcony
where you enter the "celebrity chef" restaurants is very smokey.  Could
have been an interesting diversion peering over the balcony to see all
the people losing their money before entering the restaurant, but the
smoke was thick and a fair amount was getting in to Waku Ghin.

We got to the door and were immediately ushered in, although our table
wasn't ready so we waited at the bar area, which also happened to be one
of the five dining areas (more on that later). It took them too long to
realise we were thirsty and too long to get us the table and the "door
staff" were unimpressive generally...off to a shaky start.

Tetsuya was given a large floor plan for the restaurant...probably
bigger than he would have normally gone for, but he's made good use of
the space. It is split in to five different dining areas/separate rooms,
plus an extra area you withdraw to for desserts.  Each dining area is a
teppanyaki  style table, ie 4-6 diners all on one side of a very
expensive BBQ.  The good part of being in five separate areas is you
have a good chance of being away from the smoke...we were fine...but
you'd want to ensure you didn't have the table at the bar/front door.
The downside of the rooms was 1) small private dining areas means the
place isn't as vibrant (need to think about what kind of atmosphere
you're looking for), 2) if there's only two of you, you'll be at a table
with two other couples you don't know.  We were fine with this, but it
tends to mean that everyone is slightly quieter than they'd normally be.
Overall, a reserved and 'serious food' ambience.

The food was superb.  First three courses were raw.  Prawns to start (a
special kind from Japan...I didn't catch the name), then the signature
dish of sea urchin/prawns/caviar, then a confit of ocean trout (a play
on his Sydney restaurant's signature dish).  First two were fantastic.
I'm not normally drawn in to menu items that include the word "urchin",
but this was a winner. I knew that Waku Ghin tended to use the most
expensive ingredients available, and I was a bit concerned that they
were doing this to appease a certain clientele that likes expensive
things for the sake of being expensive...but the food created here
worked.  It just happened to be expensive.  The ocean trout was nice,
but the bitterness of the witlof came through a little too strongly for
my liking...stick with the Tetsuya's version.

Then they fired up the Beefmaster 8000 and the chefs started to work
their magic in front of us.  First up was lobster.  Couldn't fault it,
one of the standouts of the evening to me.  Then, unfortunately came the
bamboo.  Yes, bamboo. And this was the course that didn't really work
for either of us.  Luckily the next course made up for it big time:
potato mashed with truffle (and of course the potatoes were some kind of
rare exotic breed), with a hen's egg and more shaved truffle on top,
plus a good dollop of caviar.  I've asked that Rhoda start preparing
this for us at least once a week at home.

Wagyu, heavily marbled and cut/beaten into extremly thin slices and
then rolled on top of each other (a bit like how samurai swords are
made), was put to the flame and we were in heaven.  I think it was the
best beef I've ever had. Period.  Then they cooked up some more and we
wolfed that down too.

Flounder served in a broth with rice was last up and worked really well
(seemingly odd to have fish after beef, but it worked).

A green tea made from the young leaves of the plant, plucked by the hand
of virgins, gently brewed to 40 degrees Celsius, that used to be
reserved only for the Emporer was the palate cleanser before heading to
the dessert room.

There were two desserts: a play on strawberry shortcake (pretty sure
it's the same that they do in Tetsuya's in Sydney), and then a chocolate
mousse.  Both were great.

Overall, the food was perfect.  Great produce cooked to perfection.  The
courses were very well balanced and complemented each other and left you
feeling full but not bloated.  The only downside was the bamboo, and it
wasn't a problem, just not that special.

The wine list was extensive and not ridiculously priced (well, not by
Singapore standards at least), and there were options from $100 right
through to $20k.  With such a degustation, however, we wanted a range of
wines.  Happy to report they did a wine pairing which was very good --
better wines than used by Tetsuya's similar offering. And at $180 pp, it
was reasonable value.

Service, minus the initial welcome afforded by the staff at the door,
was excellent.  A good example was me ordering bread...I was starving
when we arrived and really needed something fast.  I asked for some
bread and they said they don't normally have bread, but he "was sure
they could arrange something".  They baked me up a batch pronto.  You
expect this in any other country, at this level of restaurant, but
Singapore finds this difficult.  Tetsuya was on deck himself and we got
the impression that a large number of staff were expatriated from Sydney
or elsewhere.  It will be interesting to see how the service holds up if
this changes.
Waku Ghin excited me like Tetsuya's used to when we first went there.
More recently Tetsuya's had become somewhere where you can get an
excellent meal, but you're unlikely to be 'thrilled' or 'surprised' by
anything.  I think he's gone a long way to reclaiming that appeal.

I rated Waku Ghin 18/20 which puts it in my top ten (behind El Bulli,
but on a par...for VERY different reasons, to the Fat Duck, etc).  The
staff at the front door, smokiness, wait for the table and bamboo left
Megan with no choice but to mark them down to 17/20.

Andrew is not yet a devotee of the haiku, so I shall use editorial privilege and provide one on his behalf:
Delicious food - if
somewhat slippy for my taste.
But beef to die for.