Little India, The Arab Quarter, and Peranakan

J went to take his exams. I eventually got myself ready, took Kona for a walk, then came back and walked to Little India. I'll give you a glimpse of my day. I can offer things only for your senses of sight and sound. You can't, unfortunately, smell the garlic or incence, or taste the cardamon tea, or the dosa. Or feel the near 100% humidity that turns the Singapore into a giant sauna.







A park bench. Two men talking. A great trea. Lillies in the pond.












Walking to Little India.












Through the wet market. They called them wet markets in Hong Kong too. It just means the local market, usually in a covered market area. More like things have always been done than a supermarket.

































Western Union, even in the age of internet, is still alive. Indian workers in Singapore use it to send money home to their families.










There were lots of jewelery stores in Little India.





A Hindu temple.





There were also lots of restaurants. This one was Veg Only, and looked air conditioned, so I went in. They had idli on the menu. This is a southern Indian dish we discovered in Kerala. I couldn't resist. It wasn't as good as I remembered.














And dosas too. The idly by themselves would have been enough, but flooded with happy memories, I ordered a dosa too. And some cardamamon tea. (Checking the spelling, I learned that the preferred spelling is with an 'm' at the end, but with an 'n' is an alternative. How come I never noticed before?) I couldn't finish the whole dosa, but it was good.
















I was going to go into the mall, just to see what was in there, and hoping it might be air conditioned, but you had to check your bags and I didn't feel like doing that.







I've been struggling to find some remnants of the Singapore I saw 40 years ago. The laundry is one. They don't do this in the fancy areas of private housing where J lives.













The Alsacoff Arab School. The building in the background shows up later.

























Sultan Mosque












This is the building that is in the background in the picture above of the Alsacoff Arab School.




























This just seemed an interesting culinary juxtaposition.













Peranakan is just going to have to wait for the next post. It's turned from April 29 to May 1 while I was doing this.

Sold Out, Anthony's Arm, Moving Conversation

J and Kona walked me down to the Alliance Francias where the movie was going to be. J stayed outside with the dog and pointed out Anthony, a classmate, to me. I introduced myself. And he pointed to the sign on the counter.

that said that Persepolis was sold out. When Judith came we decided to go to Orchard Road to get something to eat and to chat.

J and I were good with gelato. But Judith hadn't eaten so she and Anthony went upstairs to find some food while we waited downstairs. Kona does tend to attract attention. I wish I could just video the looks on people's faces as they see her.

This lady has a Maltese and couldn't resist stopping, stroking Kona, and talking about her dog.

Then we ate and talked. People were waiting for seats.
So we moved and continued to talk. But people were smoking near us so we moved our convesation once again.

And then we decided it was time to head home.


I want to say that while Anthony's tattoo is striking, I'm afraid the picture above makes too much of it. It's part of him, but as we talked, it's not who he is, and I'm afraid my picture makes the tattoo dominate who he is. So I'm adding this little extra note.

More Singapore Bird Park

I went to the bird park because they have a Southeast Asian Aviary. I really wanted to find out what some of the birds we saw were. I started off in the wrong direction and didn't get to the SE Asian birds till the way back.

First I saw birds that really shouldn't be here - snowy owls.


They were in cages in dark, air conditioned corridors. The picture is awful, but I want to stress how small the cages were and how bizarre it is to have these birds in tropical Singapore. You can see about 1/4 of the whole cage here. Maybe in a much larger cage, if there was some good reason to have live birds. They also had two bald eagles. It was pitiful in that cage. They sit on top of trees higher than their cage here.



While it was wonderful to see the kingfishers, you can see how small the cages are. And they weren't over any water.



The ibises and the cormorants were in larger cages, but still, these are birds that use lots of room in the wild.




The birds of paradise were in much better cages. They were full of lush green plants and spotting them was like spotting birds in the wild.


There were maybe 4 birds in this cage. It's much better than the kingfishers, but much less space than they would have in nature.


I stuck this picture in just because it was such an interesting bird. The aviary for the SE Asia birds was quite big, but it also had smaller cages all around the outer edge of the aviary. This peacock pheasant was loose in the big aviary.



I saw a number of birds we saw frequently in Chiang Mai - magpie robins, coucals (well, I didn't see it, but I was at it's cage and saw the picture), koels, bulbuls, white crowned laughing thrush, and this black naped oriole, that I only saw once in the distance. Here it was loose in the aviary.


The waterfall aviary was enormous. They say this is the highest manmade waterfall in the world - 30 meters, about 100 feet. But I thought it a little odd that they would have it full of African birds. Why take a chance on accidently releasing African birds into the tropical Singaporean environment?

Again, it's possible that one could justify this sort of show where people buy S$1 for a plastic cup full of worms to feed the birds. These are a type of starling Dianne. Not all starlings are bad.




Before leaving I sat in on the 3pm show in the amphiteater. I have to say it was breathtaking to have a great hornbill fly from near the stage to the top of the seats, just barely a foot over the heads of the audience. And back down. The back up again. Then toucans did the same, only here they stopped on an audience member's arms. There was some pro-environmental propaganda in the patter. But nothing that was terribly persuasive. Is that enough to justify doing shows like this? On the other hand, who knows if these birds are happy or not?


On another note, the park had great bathrooms. There's actually a small waterfall coming down from the eaves of the roof. Great way to pee.

Cranes For Zaki

Dennis Zaki has some sandhill cranes he photographed on the Alaska Report. I'm jealous, but hoping they'll stick around a week or two so I can go out to the Matsu Valley and see them for myself. In the meantime, I indulged at the Singapore Bird Park today.

I'm ambivalent about putting birds in cages. Not really. I don't think we should put birds in cages, though I accept that if it's done very well, the educational value and the survival value of some endangered species may balance the evil done by capturing and locking up birds. The Singapore Bird Park, in it's large aviaries, does it reasonably well, though the smaller cages, while nicely landscaped, are still small cages. And pictures you take of caged birds certainly don't count as wild bird pictures. The first one is a black necked crane. I couldn't find the name of the second one. Here are the cranes and I'll do another post later, but now I have to go off with J to meet some of his friends and see Persepolis.

Singapore Graffiti

For Independent Alaskan who thought the pictures of Singapore looked 'so neat': Here's some graffiti I saw this morning on the way to the bird park
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"Biofuel by Decree: Unmasking Burma's bio-energy fiasco"

I haven't posted much about Burma - except the border runs - because what I did hear from people working with Burmese organizations in Thailand wasn't sharable. Thai officials can look away if nothing is explicitly out in the open, but if it is in their face they have to take action. That doesn't mean the new government isn't making nice to the Burmese government, but they also aren't fanatic about dealing with Burmese refugees in Thailand. Though I did hear stories about police having quotas for how many illegal Burmese they had to round up per day in one town. All this is word of mouth from people I don't know all that well. But I heard similar stories from different people.

But this was emailed to me and so it is a little more official, though I note that the location will be announced at the last minute. I don't think it's because they haven't found a place. I don't know if I'm being overly cautious, but I left out the name, phone numbers, and email as well.


INVITATION

Date: April 29, 2008

Dear Sir or Madam,

A warm greeting from ECDF

Ethnic Community Development Forum is cordially invite you to join us on the special event of launching our report "Biofuel by Decree: Unmasking Burma's bio-energy fiasco" on May 1 at (10:00) am to (12:00) am. For the conference place we will informing you on (30 April 2008).

Why we are launching the report on Labor Day, May first because in the implementation of SPDC Jet Suu plantation project is using forced labor, land confiscation and other human rights abuses,

During launching the report we will have some VIDEO show about SPDC forced to the people and including the video clips of interviewing from who are refugees by SPDC Jet Suu project.

However ECDF would like you to join our press conference and if you have any question, you can contact with the spokesperson as below address please.

XXXXXXXXXX

Phone: XXXXXXXX (Thailand call)

+XXXXXXX (International call)

Email:XXXXXXXXXXXX

Note: we will send the press release as soon as

With best regards,

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ethnic Community Development Forum of Burma

Visit to NUS

Monday, April 28, 2008 almost midnight: J gave me great instructions how to get to the National University of Singapore. J's exam wasn't 2pm and he needed to stay home so he could walk the dog before going to the exam. So I walked down the street to the bus stop.



So far, all the neighborhoods I've seen - and mostly I've been in the private housing areas apparently - have been lush and garden like.



This sign at the bus stop was a little disturbing. No, the need to be on top and the promotion of that way of thinking is a big problem for people. On the other hand, hierarchy is found all over the animal kingdom, so I suspect it is a genetic inheritance and fighting the notion can sound quixotic. I wonder how many of the those who believe in life being about getting to the top don't believe in evolution...


On the other side of the sign were these girls in their student uniforms, or so I assumed.
You get on the bus and touch your card to the pad and move on to your seat. The bus stops are all numbered and I knew the University stop was 21. All very easy. The man sitting next to me was reading a newspaper in a script that looked a lot like what was on the sign yesterday for Sir Thomas Raffles, so I asked him what language it was. Tamil, one of the southern Indian languages.

I got out at 21 and there was the entrance to the University. Actually, this is not the main campus.



WX and I had lunch with another faculty member I knew - JJ. I asked JJ, who had been with the Asian Development Bank when I first met him, about good sources on land reform in Thailand. Which got WX to think about another faculty member he introduced me to after lunch. Dr. O, a Thai with a PhD from Syracuse. We ended up talking a long time and I never got to walk through the botanical gardens and the orchid garden as planned. J showed up after his exam and took me around to meet other professors and classmates. The students above were in a little lounge called the Thinking Corner.

And chocolate is the international thinking fuel of choice.

I met a whole group of students from all over - Burma, India, Thailand, Italy, Pakistan, Singapore, Philippines, Japan, China - and we went for dinner together at the same Indian resstaurant just off campus. So the pictures I forgot to take at lunch, I could take now.

The Singaporean in the orange shirt below went home with us. We picked up Kona and then walked down to this building to pick up his girlfriend. He works for HDB, Singapore's public housing department, so I learned a little more about the issues raised in the article I linked to earlier today.




The Public Utilities Board is in an environmentally prize winning building.

Sentosa Island Songs of the Sea and Vivo

What can I say about Sentosa Island? It's a "tourist attraction." Here's me along with all the other video cameras. We're sitting on benches looking at toward the beach. There are live performers singing and dancing on the beach. Out across the water a short ways is a mock fishing village up on stilts.



Then we took the train one stop to Vivo City and had a snack.



Vivo City is one of the giant shopping malls with all the expensive international brand names. The food court was cutesy new, but made to look old food stalls. I tried Laksa, a Malay coconut curry with noodles dish.






I learned a little more about taxis. On the top of the cabs it says "For Hire," "On Call," or "Hired." If the queue is long, as it was here, and there aren't many taxis, you can call one. You pay an extra S$2.50 to $4. You get the taxi number. It shows up with "On Call" in the little taxi sign on the roof, and the taxi number flsshing. So when it arrives people know you aren't jumping ahead of them in the line and you know which cab is yours. They dropped me off and went home.

Meeting WX's Parents and Sons

Monday morning, April 28, 2008 Singapore.

After lunch yesterday, WX and I got a cab to his flat at the National University of Singapore where he's a professor. We originally met in 1990 in Beijing (I think) where he was a lecturer at People's University and I was visiting with a group of students from Hong Kong where I was teaching for a year. Eventually, he made it to Anchorage to get his MPA at UAA and then he went on to the University of North Carolina to get his PhD. Then he got a job in Singapore.


He and his wife XR, who also studied in Anchorage, now have two sons. Most exciting was finally getting to meet WX's parents who are living with them here in Singapore.




He and his wife XR, who also studied in Anchorage, now have two sons. Most exciting was finally getting to meet WX's parents who are living with them here in Singapore. We took a group picture, but I think all the squirming and fussing before hand makes for a better picture.
Then XR and WX and I went to Sentosa Island, an artificial island that is now a tourist attraction, with beaches, a water and light show, cable cars, golf courses, private residential plots, etc. We had a snack at one of the beach restaurants and then went to the water and light show. Kind of touristy, but it was nice to sit and talk in the evening along the water.


I got to swim this morning before breakfast and now I'm headed for lunch with WX and some other faculty at the University. J has his exam at 2, then later we'll have dinner with some of his classmates.

Sending Death Certificates to the Election Commission

I noted recently that it appeared there were more registered voters than voting age people in Anchorage. Here's a short piece in today's Straits Times from the The Star/Asia News Network:

Kuala Lumpur: The Election Commission has appealed to family members of registered voters who have died to submit death certificates of their deceased kin to help in the "clean up" of the electoral roll.
The commission said that the updating of the roll was a continuous and ongoing exercise, which required assistance from the public.

This is also an issue in Alaska. Given that everything is electronic these days, and much of it online, it would seem the computer folks at the State of Alaska should be able to figure a way to check the death certificates against the voter roles and purge them without asking people to notify them.

Also in the paper was a piece on how people try to get public housing in areas they most desire in Singapore. You have to register with the Straits Times to read it, but you can also read it here.

I realize that in these days of the geographically challenged, not everyone knows where Kuala Lumpur is. So, if you know what country KL is the capital of, please post it in a comment. Your prize will be knowing that you helped others gain knowledge. (The Straits Times is a Singapore Newspaper)