Sight to Insight

What is the human spirit? A question that begs a thousand answers indeed! Suffice to say, one can interpret it the way one desires. In this article, it is simply the human creating a sculpture that brings smile to me and many others who went to this exhibition. Clay sculptures of people smiling and being happy are shown at the Soka Association in Tampines St 81 in Singapore. These eye catching pieces are brougnt in by my ex-colleague, Ravinder Singh whom I have written about in another previous article. The sculptor was shown next to Ravinder, as he shook hand with the President of the Soka Association, with the presentation of a specially sculptured piece of Dr. Ikeda, the founder of this buddhism practice. The sculpture gave a demonstration on the technique on making the sculpture, and if any insight can be drawn is really that it can be learnt! He has several students under his charge, and indeed, many of the pieces were done by them in this exhibition. I will place more photograp...

It was a hectic Saturday on enriching our sight to provide some insight. Instead of a "Saturday Night Fever" (starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John); it was our "Saturday Day Fever", gallivanting around the "art zone" in Singapore. We parked at the Peranakan Museum, as our first stop to and have our "sight" on FOOD! This program was organized by the Hungrygowhere (http://www.hungrygowhere.com/) food portal group to raise money for charity. This is also sponsored by the National Heritage Board (http://www.nhb.gov.sg/WWW/). The food fair and flea market took place at the Peranakan Museum, located at Armenian Road. It has just been reopened after being closed for renovation for a couple of years. Food represents the culture of the community. The cooking style, as evidenced by Peranakan, Malaya, Cantonese, Hokkien, or Indian represent the community's value. Malay and Peranakan food is spicy; while Cantonese cannot go without soup. There ...

Singapore does have a safari, and it is next to the zoo in Mandai Road. So, the advertisement caught me off guard, as I thought it was an event at the Night Safari. I thought it will be good to have the family there to taste food which we may not normally eat. We had paella, which is Spanish dish, with its rice cooked with oil, instead of water with an assortment of meat. We had briani rice and tom yam (Thai spicy soup). Of course, Claudine had her ice cream from New Zealand (or purported to be). The idea is to have a good family time together, and what better than eating in the Food Safari!

What could bring lawyer and scientist together? Appreciation of art and art as an investment. We have been colleagues for over a decade in Singapore. He decided to follow his passion into art, and I decided to learn "art" from my "scientific" thinking. I asked myself a few questions before investing in art: 1. Do I like the piece? 2. Am I willing to pay for what I like? 3. Is there any possible investment value over the longer term (>5 years)? Above all, getting a third party opinion from my lawyer always help. Here is a happy moment of home cooked dinner at my friend's house where family members can eat and laugh together. It is a simple but often neglected habit. Yes, it is a simple habit to deepen the bond of friendship.

Getting out of the house in Singapore is a must to destress and refill the oxygen in my lungs. With the economic crisis like a meteorite striking a big hole in my pocket, I discovered good events happening in Singapore which are free. This Sunday, November 9, 2008 has the West Winds performing at the Esplanade for free! The family arrived just in time to get into the Gallery of Esplanade, which is behind the band. I have no idea before this event and I am glad we went. It was a 60 minutes spectacular performance by a group of mostly young people; playing Indiana Jones and Out of Africa; just to name a few. http://www.esplanade.com/whats_on/programme_info/big_screen_hits/index.jsp The hall was filled with people from all walks of life. The young folks were absolutely thrilled by the encore, which was from High School Musical, which is the current hot movie. My kid, Claudine knows the tune well, and so do I, because I am hearing it so often from her handphone. http://wasbe.com/conference...

My latest gadget is the Samsung Omnia i900, powered by Window Mobile 6.1 operating system. I have replaced my good old Nokia N73 which uses Symbian. The N73 has served me well for the last two years which is able to synchronize with my Outlook calendar, task and notes. It has the cool feature of Nokia Life Blog, which pulls down the messages, photos and videos into the PC. This feature I do miss in the Omnia. The Omnia acts very much like the HP Jornada 560, which I gave away in the SgFreeCycle (in one of my previous articles); which attracted so many emails. It was a fully functional iPaq with charger, software, manuals and even an external keyboard! The Omnia's feature which I like is the wi-fi feature, allowing me to log into the internet to synchronize my emails in Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. With the number of hotspots in Singapore growing, it is becoming a very good feature, although the connecting time with logging in period is a great deterrent. The 5MP camera is not...

Singapore is a small island with an incredibly efficient infrastructure. By choosing to leave home early for work, I took only 15~20 minutes to reach office which is about 20 km away. A two way trip is less than 60 minutes. During my stay in Kuala Lumpur, it took me three hours for these two trips. This happened only if I leave office late to avoid the horrendous traffic jam. This is a saving of two hours per day which is ten hours a week! This is an awfully lots of hours to spend for personal leisure, family and friends. Another good time saver is bill payment by a system called GIRO, where invoice is automatically deducted from my accounts and payment by internet. Both are easy and accurate. Imagine lining up in a queue to pay your bill either at the post office; government office or a bank. Each time I have to spend an hour just to do this chore. Good bye to these non value added chores; thanks to the electronic payment system! Each of us have only 24 hours a day, and time saved mea...