Posts from ‘September, 2007’

Tim Egan in writing for the BBC describes the need for the “wilderness as a yin to the urban yang”. Well what we have in Singapore is not quite the ‘wilderness’, but our natural reserves are as close as you can get. I need to get out to revitalise. Yesterday was good – little kids [...]

I saw a number of Burmese Lascars at SBWR today. Not the Mangrove Sunbeams, which are sometimes mistaken for the lascar, but the real Burmese Lascars. I was tailing one of them, trying to get a good, clean shot. It landed near a Peaceful Dove (and an extremely tame one at that) before fluttering off [...]

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. For decades the Burmese regime has fought off pressure–imprisoning elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy activists, wiping out thousands of villages, imposing forced labour, creating refugees.
But last Tuesday Buddhist monks and nuns, revered in Burma, began marching and [...]

I attended the Interdisciplinary Forum on Global Warming and Climate Change at the National University of Singapore (NUS) yesterday. A turn-up of about 150 people, tertiary students mostly, and a few representatives from NGOs and other research and academic institutions.
A break-down of the talks and topics covered:

‘Climate Change – Living in the Anthropocene’
Associate [...]

Little were Xiao and I prepared for the feast of the senses when we decided to explore Little India. It was a wholly exotic experience. Little India was colourful, full of scents – of incense, spices, of the flowers jasmine, marigold, or champaka, of fresh vegetable and meat produce – and teeming with culture.
After [...]

What are we, really? Singapore, I mean. As a society. As a country. As a supposedly first world nation. Without going into the details… I’ve had chats with friends and we’ve been talking about the laws in Singapore, human rights, women’s rights, foreign workers, the media, and the government, and such. Just today a friend [...]

Sungei Buloh today…

Shield bugs

A vespid wasp

Spiderlings!

We trotted about, donning the tourist look, cameras in hand, with a permanent expression of amusement of our faces… as we laughed at ‘Singapore is a Fine City’ T-shirts and browsed the stands for scenic postcards. It was my first time just walking about Chinatown, or anywhere in Singapore, for that matter, for the sole [...]