Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Cemeteries and Chickens in Lim Chu Kang

Sometimes the rain makes the colours look great in pictures! Anyway, we found the best zombie gun:
And my tomatoes are almost finished. I didn't quite have enough for preserving, since this is how large they grew.
It was time for us to go on an adventure in the countryside, so we went to Lim Chu Kang (not to be confused with Choa Chu Kang or Yio Chu Kang, Chu Kang originally meaning Clan Village).
Yes, despite being an island roughly 20km x 40km, there is countryside. With wildlife!
There are huge cemeteries, and I am a fan of cemeteries, especially when they're overgrown like this: 
Jacobe Low, born in China, died in Siam, lost his nose, sculpturally.
The graveyards were arranged by religion, and the Muslim cemetery has the prettiest colours.
The Chinese cemetery is in the process of being exhumed to expand the military training base, so now is the time to collect your relatives for cremation, which can be done in 9 simple steps
I learnt that exhumation occurs at night!
This grave has a large hole, so perhaps exhumation is unnecessary in this case?
We walked for 10km around these cemeteries. Since Singapore has convenience even in the countryside, there was a washroom, albeit with a decidedly outdated sign.
Then we walked some more, down this country road.
And found the chicken farm! Our 7-11 eggs come from these squished-up, airy barn-cages.

Friday, September 18, 2020

Kitten Therapy

 
Warning: the pictures you are about to see contain only kittens. If you do not like kittens, you should a) reevaluate your life priorities and b) stop reading. Please also note that kittens in Singapore and SE Asia often have no, or kinked tails. No kittens are harmed in this genetic situation, and they're the same as tailed kittens, so don't freak out. 
It's very hard to take pictures of kittens while they're awake, because it usually looks like this:
This one was fighting the cardboard until sleep overcame her (see bitemarks).
The kitten selfie is particularly hard.
One reason is my smile was ridiculously huge.
However, I was able to photograph the moment when Barry realized that he loves kittens and that they love him too!
2 kittens can easily be sustained on your lap.
With 3, you need more spooning.
I enjoyed all of the sleeping positions too.
Kitten therapy has been our happiest event of 2020, thanks to our friends Keri and Jeroen, who did the hard job of fostering these babies before they found happy homes!
If anyone needs more of this kitten therapy, let me know, because there are videos too!

Sunday, September 13, 2020

Pictures from a Pandemic/Quarantournament

Singapore, still beautiful. 
And fewer tourists in the pictures these days.
Here is a picture of a field hospital. It also has a strange beauty. Note offshore housing in floatels as well.
Here's another one. Although our case numbers are getting better, these are vast, and should remind us of how fortunate we are.
We saw a plane take off. The next one was scheduled for 45 minutes later...
Once again, we have friends in quarantine. (Reminder: In Singapore, this means you're locked in a hotel room.) First recommendation is to have a puzzle area.
Second recommendation, and you heard it here first, is a Quarantournament. This is an original Laura in Singapore invention, where you have 1 contest per day amongst the confined, leveraging what is available to you.
The Quarantournament was inspired by my near prophetic Hotel Hobbies post of 2011. Luckily, I sometimes glance back and awkwardly laugh at my own jokes.
The Quarantournament includes crafts, flower arranging, colouring, soap carving...
Cocktail making, skip rope, drama skits.
I was a disappointed with the creative food plating efforts, so I awarded negative points.
As for towel origami, there were elephants,
And then there was some kind of warthog?