Arts...Travels...Writing

Chinatown is one of the key heritage areas in Singapore, along with Little India and Kampong Glam. I love visiting these areas and discovering new things each time. Today I had the opportunity to visit Chinatown more leisurely so I took more snaps than normal :-)  I started from the corner of Temple Street and walked straight along South Bridge Road, host to these sights: Lunar New Year buntings along South Bridge Road. The oldest Hindu temple in the country happens to be at the corner of Temple Street in Chinatown... more of the temple later One of the streets, Smith Street, is dedicated to all that we love - Food! I remember having tasted the chilliest crab in town in one of the hawker stalls here After a few minutes of walking, I stopped at the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple at the corner of South Bridge and Sago Lane. This was where I spent most of my two-hour "immersion"... I was quite contented simply soaking in the opulence of the place, listeni...

I am a museum person, to the consternation of my husband and daughter. I make it a point to check out a museum exhibit whenever I visit a new place, and naturally I would drag my family with me when we travel together :-) In terms of richness and expansiveness of collection, The Met, MOMA, Rijks, Musee d'Orsay, and the Vatican/Sistine are at the top of my list; the Louvre too, but to a lesser extent - it was too crowded when we got there, and the pushing and rushing probably clouded my impression that I don't remember my visit with so much fondness. In terms of location, feel and the atmosphere of laid-backness though, I do like the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, Miro in Barcelona, and the Getty in LA. Long before I became a resident of Singapore, I would go to the Singapore Art Museum and the Asian Civilisation Museum whenever I came to visit - I remember seeing my first Rodin exhibit at SAM. For some reason though, I had never stopped by the National Museum, until recently. ...

We were at East Coast Park today, the Big Splash side, for Metta's Annual Charity Run. While we frequent ECP, we hardly come to this side, which I realise is less crowded, and therefore ideal for activities like charity runs/marathons: Runners for the 5km marathon A group of drummers signals flag-off Parent-Child Marathon The park is also popular among cyclists Koi Pond near Polliwogs #Singapore #yoursingapore #ECP #EastCoastPark

Illumination in its varying degrees have always fascinated me, and natural lights are an even bigger source of wonder. I’ve been wanting to see the Northern Lights, which I missed because I turned off the lights too early on my last night in Reykyavik! (Apparently the ever-elusive Aurora Borealis chose to appear when I was already fast asleep! It's almost like winning lotto and losing it all on the same day). In visual arts, a subject is able to evoke the intended mood only under the right amount of light. And light is most crucial in photography; balance is most difficult to achieve in natural light, and most especially challenging at night.  Some two weeks back, I went to a couple of locations in Singapore for a photography session on night shots. It was a humid day when we set up our tripods near the Merlion, across Marina Bay Sands. I shouldn't be talking about humidity as it won't show in photographs anyways. On the other hand, too much humidity is never conduci...