As the uncharacteristic rains continue to pour in mid-January, the plants take on this wonderful water-laden sheen, droplets and moisture, amidst the mildest of a mid-day sun, as nature takes a break from its industry, to savor a retinue from the sky, that has come to pay homage to the Creator’s subtle work of beauty.…
In the stillness of the late afternoon, as rain continues to drizzle relentlessly in the wettest January in recent memory, the flora in our narrow west garden sparkles even as the day dims. Nature bestows her life-giving water, beauty, and continually sustain the earth. I have come that they may have life, and have it…
“Walking through one of the buildings where I hadn’t been before, I came across a reproduction of Hazard Durfee’s beautiful flute player with the text by Henry David Thoreau: ‘Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps…
The island of Pulau Ubin, off the northern coast of Singapore, has been featured here over the past few months – one of the last few refuge for a green and laid-back lung. Relatively inaccessible except by motorized boat (10 mins ride; S$3 each way), we revisited it on an ‘off-day’ in its weekly cycle,…
The Yet Con restaurant (established 1940) at 25 Purvis Street, Singapore has been serving its chicken rice, roast pork, and steamboat menu since we first visited in the mid 1980’s. Historic Purvis Street is a stone’s throw from the Raffles Hotel, Beach Road, the Bras Basah Book Complex (literary), and the new National Library,…
The city of Lijiang in Yunnan, China was reborn out of a 6.6M earthquake that devastated the city in 1996. When we visited the city in 2009, we had witnessed the rebuilding of a city that was perhaps more than ever oriented towards its original past and its future in tourism than to the reconstruction…
The Agape Village at Toa Payoh Lorong 6 is the social services center that hosts the Singapore Catholic Church’s social services. Occasionally the halls and meeting rooms are used for Christ-centered activities that underpin the motivation and spirituality that is the driving behind the social services that is offered to all those in need, regardless…
As we leave behind us the mid-day siestas of the drivers and their vehicles at the massive complexes of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, we travel to spend 30 minutes in the quiet ruins of Ta Nei, a late 12th century Bayon-style temple which lies deep in the forest north of Ta Keo, and west…
The quiet route that leads from Balestier Road to the big hospital on top of the hill at Jalan Tan Tock Seng, traverses a myriad of roads and streets thematically named, since the 1960s, after Burmese cities. This unusual legacy and lattice of evocative names (e.g., Moulmein, Mandalay, Martaban, Irrawaddy, Pegu, Bassein, Shan, Akyab,) lends…
