Taken on October 31, 2016 in Singapore
DAILY PHOTO: Singapore Flyer
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Tag Archives: travel
DAILY PHOTO: Children’s Day, Cubbon Park
POEM: Sounds of India
The whisper of two hands sweeping
A pre-dawn impatient auto beeping
Early morning bicycle horn
Its character croaked, old and worn
The tout calls, raspy and rhythmic
Some birds sing, and others mimic
Relentless, the screeching squirrel
Rattling the battling cats so feral
TING-TING, spatula on kadai
The sizzled speech of things that fry
Twenty talks held in ten tongues
The bounce of distant bongo drums
Puttering auto struggles for speed
The angry whine of steel wheeled steeds
Meanwhile Ladakh’s Martian soundscapes
The silent swish of saris draped
Snapping crackers and mortar booms
The thumping of neon nightclub tunes
Clacking high heels against sidewalk
Bantering bands of drunks cross-talk
Rolling shutters and clicking locks
The beep of setting cellphone clocks
Then nothing but the croak of frogs
And howls of nighttime alpha dogs
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DAILY PHOTO: Sights at the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple
Front Entrance; Taken on October 30, 2016 in Singapore
Giant Prayer Wheel
Guardian: Even if you’ve got a 6 pack, you’re an 18 pack shy of this guy.
A Madame Tussaud’s of noteworthy modern-day Buddhists (Bodhisattvas)
The lantern keeper
Rooftop Garden and the Giant Prayer Wheel
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DAILY PHOTO: Thian Hock Keng
Confucius; Taken on October 29, 2016 in Singapore
This Chinese temple sits in the heart of Singapore’s Chinatown. It’s said to be the oldest Hokkien or Hoklo temple (i.e. Han Chinese) in Singapore. It’s a temple related to Han Chinese culture generally, rather than to a particular sect or religion. While the main deity is Mazu (a.k.a. Ma Cho Po,) a maritime goddess from Chinese folklore that is sometimes associated with Taoism, there is also a Confucian shrine as well as homages to several Buddhist Bodhisattvas (a Bodhisattva is one who has achieved enlightenment but sticks around to help others out of compassion.)
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DAILY PHOTO: Port of Singapore
Taken on November 1, 2016 in Singapore
I’ve been posting pics of Singapore’s tourist haunts, but it’s time for a glimpse into work-a-day Singapore.
The Port of Singapore is the world’s busiest transshipment port. Transshipment refers to a port that is neither the origin nor the destination of goods, but rather where they get shuffled between ships. And 20% of the world’s containers and half of the world’s crude oil travel through this port. It’s the second busiest port in the world by tonnage (FYI- Shanghai is #1, but at least in 2005 Singapore beat out Shanghai.)
I don’t have the best pics of this important aspect of the city because they were shots of opportunity. One shot that I didn’t even get a poor picture of was the ship-strewn seas viewed on descent into the airport. I’ve never seen such a high density of ships at anchor. Phenomenal.
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DAILY PHOTO: Singapore by Night
BOOK REVIEW: The World’s Best Street Food by Lonely Planet
The World’s Best Street Food: Where to find it and how to make it by Lonely Planet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a combination guide to street food and cookbook. Each of the 100 entries consists of two pages. The first describes the food, how it’s eaten [that’s not always as self-evident to outsiders as one might think], its origins, where one can find a quintessential or famous example of the food, and whether there are any variants on the recipe. The second page is the cookbook entry, which lists the ingredients and describes the process by which they are combined to create the dish in question.
The foods are divided into broad categories of savory and sweet. The savory category is the larger by far, comprising 80 of the dishes—leaving 20 sweets. The dishes represent about 50 different countries of origin. A lot of these countries are well-known street food cultures such as Thailand, Vietnam, India, Mexico, and the US, but there are also a number of locales with which readers may be less familiar– such as Ghana, Malta, and French Polynesia. The dishes include a number of my favorites, such as Vietnamese Banh Mi, US Breakfast Burrito, Indian Masala Dosa, Thai Pad Thai, Hungarian Langos, and Singaporean Hainanese Chicken Rice. However, I also learned of new dishes that I’m eager to try, such as Croatian Cevapcici, Burmese Mohinga, and Chilean Sopaipilla.
WARNING: While I didn’t deduct stars for it, I will warn readers that this isn’t a good book to get as an e-book—at least unless you have a high-end tablet. It was a bit of a pain to read on my Kindle Touch, and the graphics (which I assume are beautiful in the print edition) were largely useless on my device. One could blow up the text easily enough (within limits, at least,) but the pages got grainy if one blew them up too much—and some of the text remained small when expanded.
There are photos. As I mentioned, on my device they were largely useless (grainy black-and-white) but your results may vary.
I found this book to be interesting and informative. While I wish the e-book had been easier to read, it was well-organized and offered a broad selection of dishes from a large number of countries.
I’d recommend this book for street food lovers and foodies.
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DAILY PHOTO: Japanese Bridge, Singapore
Taken in the Japanese Garden in Singapore on October 30, 2016
Tiger Riding for Beginners 