last week

the last few days have been a bit slow sightseeing-wise, but i did go to a few museums which were really interesting. and the beach of course. i was also curious about the gayscene over here and got on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit, a metro but also a monorail, the best way to travel here) to chinatown (aka 'gaytown') where the most gaybars are located. as in most cities, Singapore doesn't have much to offer to lesbians, so most bars and clubs are for the men only. there are a couple of lesbian bars and although i was enjoying myself, they weren't really my kind of bars. so if you have seen my profile you'll know that music is my thing. it flows trough my veins and makes my heart go boom boom. so whenever i go out (unless i'm with really cool people) the music has to be awesome. unfortunately what chicks find awesome here is karaoke. chinese loveballad karaoke. when i came in i was laughing my ass off and sipping on my first singapore sling (nice) but after a while i was like ok, when does the normal music start. it didn't. but like i said, i was having a good time anyway, talking to some people and explaining everything about drugs, because that's all you know when you're from holland *rolls eyes*. the other bar i went to was kinda the same, so i asked around and ended up in a club. the music was ok, but there were way more men inside and apparently girlsnight is on thursday, so i'm going back tomorrow night (which is thursday). it's so weird to not be able to light up a smoke inside, but with the weather being so nice it's ok to smoke outside and most bars have couches or chairs in front of them. i wonder what it will be like back home in the winter...
my dad went to dallas this week to work and he'll be back on saturday. before he left we talked about his treefarm and all the stuff he went trough so far and how it works when you want to set up a company in the philipines. it's so interesting and i'm really exited about it all. i'm trying to make a sort of database for all the trees (their locations, names, prices, dates, personnel etc etc) in excel and access, so i've been doing these online tutorials *nerd* to hopefully learn some new stuff and make something awesome. if you have any ideas how i could make a nice looking map of the whole area, with like the trees and then if you click on a tree you'd see the name, location, client who bought it, date planted, all that stuff, that would be so cool. i know that it's possible to make something like that in access, but it will probably take me 500 years to build it and i'm not really looking forward to that (plus access is ugly). it also has to be not to hard to work with and it would be perfect if it's compatible with excel...anyway, if you'd like some more information about the company, check out the website, which you can find by clicking on 'the treefarms' under my links. maybe you'll learn some new stuff and also get inspired!

now time for some pics:
i went to the Asian Civilization Museum (there are two locations, i went to the most recent one in the Empress Place building). this museum shows examples of porcelain, textiles, lacquer ware, costumes and huge traditional procession statues from several parts of Asia. it's really a nice way to learn about the large number of different cultures and the rooms are divided by location (for example South-Asia, West-Asia, Southeast Asia and so on) so it's clear where different religions, rituals and art forms came from and how they spread around trough history and came to Singapore. i didn't take much pictures inside, because the lighting was bad and i had to much stuff to see. but on the way to the museum i saw this statue:
it's located near the Singapore river on the opposite side of the museum and here's the explanation:
'This sculpture shows Scotsman, Alexander Laurie Johnston, a prominent merchant of early Singapore mediating between a Chinese Trader and a Malay Chief, whilst Indian and Chinese coolies load sacks onto a bullock cart - a common sight around the river as trade expanded. Johnston was a highly respected businessman and introduced the 'five foot way' (pedestrian walkways indented into the ground floor of a building from the road, so that the overhanging upper floors (which have residential accommodation) can provide a cover to shield pedestrians from the sun and rain) which came to characterise traditional shop house architecture (shop below and house above), unique to urban Southeast Asia'.

below are a couple of skyscrapers and the Cavanagh Bridge, which is one of the first steel bridges in Singapore and designed to carry horse carriage traffic across (you cross the bridge to get to the museum).


my second favorite area in Singapore is definitely the Arab Quarter, the muslim centre of the city. think water pipes (known here as sheesha smoking), carpets, lots of tiny restaurants and cafes, narrow alleys, cute little shophouses, galleries and alternative clothing and record stores. not that much tourists, so it's not that crowded.
i found an awesome sixties/seventies store with really cool stuff and i took way to many pictures, but to give you an idea:




these next pics were taken in a punk record store. above the entrance the following quote was sprayed:
'it is our world, it is ours and it has been stolen from us. we set out to demand it back, only this time they didn't call us "hippies", they called us "punks". - Penny Rimbaud'



carpets!!
i asked the guy in the picture if it was ok if i took a picture and he said: 'five dollah', so i said 'nevermind', then he said 'noh, noh, i joke, you tay piture is ok'
(i love hearing people talk english here, even though most of the time they need to repeat it several times before i know what the hell they're saying)


below you see the Sultan Mosque, the biggest mosque in Singapore. it was originally built in 1825 with the help of Raffles and the East India Company, as a result of Raffles' agreement with the Sultan Johor that allowed him to keep the control of the area. in 1928 the original mosque was replaced by the present building, designed by an architect from Ireland who works for the same company that designed the Raffles Hotel (in case you're wondering who this Raffles guy might be: he arrived to Singapore in 1819 and was officially declared Singapore's founder in 1970, to settle the rivalry between local Malay and Chinese)


here some random stuff:

water pipes, a typical street in this neighborhood and a cat chilling with a guy in the background drawing

today was another museum day, the Singapore science centre. it was awesome. i really like sciency stuff, so i felt right at home. of course when i go to a museum i need to read and do everything there is and with this museum it's mostly do-it-yourself, so i didn't even see every section! but i'll go back another time and finish my journey. it's very good for kids (that's what made me feel at home obviously), because different types of scientific subjects are explained by simple and amazing experiments which can be seen with just the push of a button. it starts with really cool optical illusion stuff:

you'll probably need to click on the first one to see it larger, the second one is a kaleidoscope, the middle cube in the circle is the only one that's really there

a vortex and lightning (which made a really loud noise)

a bunch of snail houses, cuuute star!! some fairytale-like water plants

how f*cking beautiful is this!! i'll explain what you are looking at: 'Icy Bodies: intricate shrouds of spinning mist trail fragments of dry ice as they skim across the surface of a dark blue basin. remeniscent of comets, the ice shards sublimate large amounts of gas that propel them in unexpected directions. the resulting patterns are mesmerizing and unique to each cycle. it is both a pensive artwork and a means of exploring cometary behavior through direct observations'

this was at a section i didn't have enough time for, so the thing on the right is probably something fascinating, but i have no idea what, it just looked cool. i'll explain it when i figure out what it's supposed to be. the other picture was a game on the floor. it's kinda hard to say how it works, but i'll give it a try anyway. there's this green ball on the right and a star in the upperleft corner, which the nice indian lady is standing in front of. the goal is to navigate the ball to the star without letting it fall in the black holes. here's the tricky thing. the gameboard is virtual and you play by moving, so your weight moves the board and the balance point is in the middle. but nothing really moves. it's really cool to do, but i haven't finished it yet, nooooo!!!