Red hot in the red dot

On Wednesday, I had one of the most entertaining nights of my life. I'm not sure how many of you have heard of the Red Hot Chili Pipers - have a look for them on youtube - but if they come to a venue near you, buy a ticket and you're in for a treat. I've always found that the sound of bagpipes brings out intense feelings of Scottishness in me and by the end of Wednesday evening I was ready to buy a timeshare in Inverness and book in at the nearest tattoo parlour to have a thistle emblazoned (ever so tastefully) over my left bosom. Normally, of course, bagpipes play traditional music, but there's very little traditional about the RHCPs, apart from their musical skills. They are, in fact, damn good musicians. Their snare drummer is a world champion, and several band members are graduates of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. They call what they do "bagrock", but however you characterise it, it's a damn good time.

So why the "red dot" of the title, I hear my faithful readers ask? Well, it's like this. Singapore is affectionately known as the "little red dot" on the map of the world - in part a reference to its ability to seriously punch above its weight. There are may red dot references in Singapore - from brew houses to museums (see picture). The Red Dot Museum is Singapore's design museum, and it is housed in an old colonial style building that used to be the headquarters of the traffic police. It's a big space and the first time we went we were amazed by how empty it seemed. Actually, we felt pretty much the same when we went back again, so now we've decided to think of it as minimalist rather than appear rude and superior!

I mentioned the Red Dot Brewhouse a moment ago, which reminded me that I don't believe I've written much about Dempsey in my posts. Dempsey Hill used to be the site of the British army barracks, and is now what is known as a "lifestyle destination". It is a lush green paradise close to the centre of Singapore, and home to a variety of rather nice shops and restaurants, of which the Red Dot Brewhouse is one - not that I've ever been there. I have been to Samy's, however (curry served on banana leaves), The Karma Kettle - Indian restaurant with Scottish bar (and the site of the Red Hot Chili Pipers show as it happens) and Au Petit Salut, which is a wonderful French restaurant, better than many I've been to in France. Singapore has many fine eateries, as I've mentioned before. Last Saturday we went to 53, a new place, at 53 Armenian Street, which is home to a chef who used to work at the Fat Duck, and which bases some of its methodology on Heston Blumenthal's approach. There is no a la carte menu, so when you phone up to book, they ask if there is anything you don't like. Now, as you know, there are lots of things I don't like, but since Chris has no such foibles, I figured that he would eat whatever I didn't, so we'd be OK. And so it proved.

The restaurant was as minimalist as the Red Dot Museum, with probably only 20 covers in the downstairs (main) dining room. Scrubbed wood tables with no tablecloths, which I found it a bit iffy in a fine dining setup, but I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to napery. The food was a bit minimalist as well, so it was just as well that the bread was fabulous and kept coming. It came in a little sack with heated pebbles in the bottom which promised to keep the bread warm for 20 minutes, but it was so good that there was no way it was going to last for 20 minutes, quite frankly. So, what did we think? Here's a haiku restaurant review:

6 out of 10 for

the experience but we

wouldn't go again

Feng Shui and Black Swans

The feng shui master came to the office the other week. Feng shui (pronounced fung schway) is very important in the Chinese culture and for every one who thinks of it as a pseudo science, there are many others who truly believe.



Before spending time looking round the office, he sat with me (and one of my team, who acted as a translator, as he does not speak English) and , based on birth date and time, gave a sort of astrological reading on me and several members of the team. Very interesting.......


My office now features red and gold (mainly in the form of an abstract paining in a gold coloured frame), a small fountain and a permanent light. The running water produced by the little fountain is meant to enhance energy and keep my chi flowing round the office and light, being the most powerful manifestation of energy, should be present always.


Furthering the interests of my Chi, I spent time with a Tai Chi master last week. This was part of a management development programme that I was attending last week, which included an optional early morning Tai Chi class. The programme was held at a rather lovely resort and spa hotel on the island of Sentosa (more of which will feature in my next post about the "Integrated Resorts") and the Tai Chi class was held just after first light overlooking the bay (don't think golden sands, think parked oil tankers and container ships, but nonetheless....) and it was a lovely experience, even for one as uncoordinated as me. As many of you know, I'm sure, Tai Chi is described as a martial art, but I think of it more as a sort of moving yoga. Like yoga, it has set moves and series of moves, and getting it right depends a lot on breathing. While I only had a taste, I think that I could get to like it, and possibly even remember a couple of the moves after several hours of personal tuition.....


Black Swans also featured on the programme, but unlike Tai Chi, this was a completely new concept to me. A Black Swan is basically an unpredicted and undirected event that has major consequences. Think 9/11 and the rise of the Internet. A bloke called Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a book about this - The Black Swan - in 2007 and although I had not heard of his book until last week, I have seen articles that he has written about the financial crisis (a rather large Black Swan). Interestingly, and most bizarrely, much of the world seems already to have forgotten just how major the consequences of that particular big bird were and are are talking about not just recovery, but mega bonuses. I have worked in financial services for 22 years, and this business never ceases to amaze me.

Seoul mates

Dear readers, it's been a while. I'm not sure whether the reason I haven't been posting is because there is too much happening, or not enough. For this post I've picked out a couple of themes - updating you on the lovely Lola's goings on and sharing with you the highlights of my recent trip to Korea.

Lola is our miniature Schnauzer puppy, now 8 months old. She has given us many hours of joy (especially once the house training bit was over) and out and out hysterical laughter as she races around the house in pursuit of one or other of her squeaky toys or just because she is so full of energy she has to let it out. Because Chris is away and our housekeeper has gone back to the Philippines for an extended holiday, we had to put Lola into kennels. She was a weekly boarder there with a sort of doggie exeat at weekends. When she got back last weekend, she was very sick. I won't go into the details for fear of offending the more squeamish amongst you, but it entailed an urgent visit to the vet, X rays, antibiotic injection and much squealing from an anguished puppy. Not for the first time, I wished that we could each understand what the other was saying.

She is better now, and back to her normal, slightly crazy self, although she does seem to have developed a taste for poached chicken breast, which was all I could tempt her with when she was feeling so low last weekend. As it happens, I had occasion to go to the doctor here this week, and my bill for consultation, X rays and medication (the same treatment as Lola, albeit for a different condition) was exactly half of what I paid for her! I am definitely coming back as a Singaporean vet in my next life.....

Once I was sure that Lola was on the mend, I was much happier about taking my planned business trip to Korea. It was my second ever visit to Seoul, and I managed to pack in a great deal, including experiencing several important aspects of Korean culture, by which I mean eating, drinking and karaoke.

Before any of you get excited, let me say right away that I did not try (nor was I invited to) bosintang - dog meat soup. Bosintang is not an everyday dish - perhaps a bit like guinea pig in Peru - but it is one of the traditional elements of Korean cuisine. It seems that bosintang came to Korea from China hundreds of years ago, at a time when the posh folks ate far more meat than the lower classes. Dog was apparently one of the few "meats" available to all classes of ancient Korean society. In modern South Korea, the sensitivities around eating dog have led a number of restaurants to use lamb or goat as a substitute, although you can still find the real thing also.

Those of you who know my eating preferences will understand why I would have been delighted with another aspect of Korean cuisine - something called banchan. Banchan is a sort of Korean antipasto, lots of small dishes that are served at the beginning of a traditional Korean meal, and when I say lots, I do mean lots and lots (see picture above for examples of banchan). There must have been at least 25 banchan dishes at the lunch I was treated to, mainly vegetable, fish and tofu based. My favourite was the "Korean pizza" - which was only like pizza in that it was round and flat. It was actually made of some sort of shredded green vegetable and was absolutely delicious. I also loved the tofu, fermented sesame leaves and all the different sorts of kimchi. With banchan, ingredients and dishes vary by province but a constant is kimchi - a fermented vegetable dish usually featuring cabbage, but it is also made with radish, cucumber or spring onions - and lots of chili.

Kimchi also featured at the dinner the Korean team took me to. This was a Korean barbecue, where the meat is cooked in front of you on a on a gas grill in the middle of the table. The dinner was accompanied by soju, a sort of Korean sake, which tastes a bit like vodka, but sweeter. Our evening was pretty restrained, by Korean standards, but it did still feature a round of "bomb shots" when we went off to the karaoke rooms. For those of you who don't know about bomb shots, they consist of a shot glass of some spirit or other dropped into a glass of beer. The spirit in Korea is often soju, but in our case it was whisky. I knew I hadn't a hope of downing this in one, the required bomb shot etiquette, and so I asked for a "white knight" to help me. A white knight is a member of the group who will do the drinking for you; they are happy to be asked, so honour is satisfied all round!

There was no chance of my asking anyone to take my turn at karaoke however - I love karaoke, and I get so few chances to have a go, since none of my friends or rellies seem to feel the same way about it that I do. I was first up, with a poignant (at least I thought so) rendition of Angel of the Morning by Juice Newton that seemed to go down well. That said, there were a couple of really great singers in the team and I was completely outclassed, which didn't stop me going up again, and again, and again........

The other Celt in the group - a Welshman, whose rendition of Delilah is something everyone should hear at least once in their lifetime - asked for an a capella version of Flower of Scotland. Of course I obliged, and then threw in the Corries version of "Will ye go, lassie go" for good measure. If only my friend Eddie had been there, we could have tackled the entire Corries oeuvre and a couple of Runrig songs for good measure. Perhaps the next time.......

Tweet tweet

I had lunch with my friend Steve yesterday. My regular readers will be familiar with Steve - he of the cheffing skills, technology know-how and haiku film reviews, and the one who turned me on to blogging. So there I was, bursting with pride about being a Spotify user, which Steve has ovbiously been for some time, probably several weeks before it was invented, so techno savvy is he, when he started to talk about twittering. Now twittering has reached the periphery of my consciousness, but no more. For those of you who do not know about Twitter, it is a free social networking service that enables its users to send and read other users' short messages about what they are doing on a minute by minute basis. These updates are known as tweets, and I was trying hard, but have been unable to hold myself back from wondering if the users are called twits. Whose life could possibly be interesting enough that people want to follow it so closely? Well, Britney Spears for one, it would appear; she is the most "followed" celebrity on Twitter.

As always, my mission on this blog is to educate and entertain, so here is the Wikipedia link for those of you who'd like to know more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

I love Spotify!

The cyber savvy amongst you will already be turned on to Spotify, I'm sure, but for those of you who have yet to discover it, I have just 3 words - download it now. Spotify describes itself as "A world of music. Instant, simple and free" which describes it pretty accurately in my view. I'm sitting here listening to John Waite's " Missing you" having spent the last hour or so roaming through the music of my teens and twenties - Steeleye Span is up next, followed by James Taylor singing "Close your eyes", which will take me right back to my university days.

I am forever amazed by the power of music to transport me to another time and place. The picture on the left shows Kings College in old Aberdeen, where I spent a good part of the seventies learning all sorts of stuff which I never used again and subsequently forgot all about. We had some amazing parties though. I can still remember cooking curry for 40 in the small kitchen of the flat I shared with my sister, not to mention inviting the French navy for - extremely chaste - coffee (I am not making this up) with my friend Lins after a reception on a French warship in Aberdeen harbour.

My memory of those parties is that we actually spent very little money but the return - perhaps I should express it in terms of units of fun per pound - was huge. Perhaps my personal response to the world economic crisis should be to produce a recession cookbook, although Nigella is probably on the case already, working out how to add dollops of budget gorgeousness to chili with a smattering of carne.

Whenever I do the nostalgia thing I ask myself what I would do if I could have that time over again. The answer is almost always "more". More live music, more travel, more wild adventures and crazy experiences - oh yes, and definitely more boyfriends...........

Horses for courses

Singapore never ceases to surprise us. It's a small island, but we keep discovering parts of it that we had no idea existed - little enclaves that charm and delight. We discovered one of these yesterday, when we went to have breakfast with some friends. Going out for Sunday breakfast is a tradition in Singapore, and I've written before about the many brunch offerings, but this was a bit different. We went to Picotin, (http://www.picotin.com.sg/index.html) a lovely French bistro complete with boules pitch in a part of Singapore that we had not been to before. As we often find with places that are new to us, it wasn't very far from our normal flight path, but has eluded us till now. Picotin is in "Horse City", which used to house the stables for the old racecourse and is now a sort of equestrian centre with extras - extras that include a yoga centre, spa, child care and pet care facilities, as well as Picotin. One of the best things about Picotin is that they welcome dogs, so Lola came too, and very much enjoyed her first taste of bacon.

While we were there, we had a look at the pet care centre - cleverly named K9 Kampus - and we were mightily impressed. No mere boarding kennel , K9 provides the opportunity for single dogs to become pack animals - in the lap of doggy luxury. The facilities include a swimming pool (I'm not making this up), exercise yard, obstacle course, obedience training, grooming and a cafe (this last one for the owners, I'm pretty sure!). We had Lola assessed (did I just move to the upper East side of Manhattan without realising it? I have had my puppy "assessed" for entry to a day care facility) while we were there, so she starts day care this week. If she is happy there, we will be able to board her from time to time, a prospect which filled me with dread until we discovered K9.

As luck would have it, one of our favourite wine shops was having a sale, just a few hundred yards from Picotin, and we were able to pick up a few of our favourites at a bargain price, so this truly was the perfect Sunday.

Doggie delight

Lola, our miniature Schnauzer puppy, is now 6 months old. Our lives changed from the moment we bought her, on the weekend of Chinese New Year, and we are still besotted. Unfortunately, she does not sit still for long enough to have her picture taken, so this is the best I can do. This photo was taken yesterday morning, when she was feeling pretty sorry for herself, having been spayed the day before. I am glad to say that she is now back to her bouncy self, and I mean that literally - she does actually bounce her way across the room when she is excited, a bit like Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout, for those of you who remember.

Not so delightful is the dog in the apartment above, which seems to live its life on the balcony and is constantly barking to get attention. Now, while I would probably end up barking too if I had to spend my life on a balcony, ignoring the barking should help the dog understand that this is not the way to get attention (you see how well I have mastered the basic precepts of dog training?), so something is clearly not working.

I do wonder about these new neighbours actually, since the barking is not the only noise emanating from their flat. Early in the morning, late at night and at random times during the day, they appear to move heavy pieces of furniture across the floor. Either one of them is extremely indecisive and keeps changing their mind about the best spot for the dining table, or they are running part-time training programmes in "moving large items of furniture without the need to lift".

Must remember to ask if I see them in the lift.......

Dentistry de luxe

In my view, going to the dentist can never be a pleasure. I was brought up in Scotland and my first experience was with the school dentist, who operated from a portacabin in the playground, never used numbing injections, and seemed to have trained at the Marquis de Sade school of dentistry. The place we go to in Singapore could not be further from a portacabin; it is located in the penthouse suite of one of Singapore's most prestigious office buildings/shopping malls - Ngee Ann City - in the heart of the main shopping area.

When you walk into the reception area, you'd think you were in a swanky boutique hotel in the West End: reproduction Wassily chairs, gleaming granite reception desks and a huge roof terrace. There is a refreshments room off reception, with cream leather sofas and a bean to cup coffee machine that delivers free espresso while you browse through a huge selection of fancy (new, and clean, not 18 months old, dog-eared and with half the pages missing) magazines, art books and travel guides.

There is another big difference between Singaporean tooth doctors and the UK variety: there are no dental hygienists here, so the dentists do it themselves (if they charge dentist's hourly rates, I guess it explains the cream leather sofas).

So there you have it, another deep insight into the Asian economy. My next post will feature Lola, so if you are already a member of her fan club, keep reading.....

Out and about in Singapore

It seems like a while since I wrote about our social life here in Singapore, probably because puppies are not welcome at the theatre or the cinema! That said, we have been out and about a bit lately and I would like to encourage my movie going readers to check out these films, if you have not already done so. First up, Slumdog Millionaire - a well deserving Oscar winner in my view, even though I do not always agree with the Academy's choices in these matters. It was amazing - touching, gripping and enthralling all the way through. Those of you who are regular readers will be familiar with my occasional penchant for haiku reviews of films I have seen. On this occasion, I have quite frankly stolen (with permission) the haiku review of my friend Steve. His view of Slumdog Millionaire follows:

From rags to riches ?
a tale told, so very well
I'm lost, for once, for ....

Unfortunately he has not written a review of The Reader, so I will have to do my best:

Young man loves older
woman not what she seems but
less and so much more

We also went to see Menopause the Musical, which I thoroughly recommend if it comes to a theatre near you. Chris came along with me, and he wrote the haiku review for this one:

So, four hot ladies
with spring in step and on song;
each flushed with success

Here's the link, in case you fancy reading some more about it:

http://www.menopausethemusical.com/main.php?page=about

The tissue issue

The title of this post refers to the common Singaporean practice of "chope-ing" - reserving a seat in a hawker centre or food court by means of leaving a packet of tissues on the table.


At lunchtimes in the central business district (CBD) and elsewhere you will see packets of tissues on all of the tables. The message carried by the tissue packet is: "This seat is taken". You may ask yourself why anyone would respond to this informal "reserved" sign but people do. Sometimes, of course, a visitor or new resident will not understand the significance of the paper hankies and take the place regardless, but this is relatively unusual.

That said, the practice does not meet with universal approval in the minds of Singaporeans. In fact, a group of undergraduates has taken on the mission of this informal reservation system. A month or so ago seven students doled out thousands of packets of tissues in a Chinatown food centre. They were scrawled with the words: 'This seat is not taken, it's yours!' The students are hoping to encourage patrons to tell others that the seat is occupied, rather than have diners face the tissues. There is a letter in the paper today entitled "The chope-ing vigilante", written by one Rick Lim Say Kiong who has taken the decision to remove and throw away any packs of tissues that he finds at hawker stalls. The wonderfully named Singapore Kindness Movement (check out their website at http://www.singaporekindness.org.sg/), which aims to encourage Singaporeans to make a positive commitment to gracious living through simple acts of kindness in their daily lives has also thrown its weight behind the campaign, so who knows - one day we may see an end to this nefarious practice!