Malacca revisited (quite literally)

As some of you will know, last weekend we headed off to Malacca. This was my third trip, and I never get bored of the town. It’s what the guidebooks might call rustic, but it certainly has loads of charm. The architecture is interesting (although I think I have covered that in a previous post), and the food is tops.

We went to Malacca primarily for Elena to choose her Kabaya (she covers this in her post on the topic), but it’s always a nice getaway for the weekend. It’s a three-four hour drive depending on the road conditions and other drivers, and I slept through all of the drive. I tried the old “resting my eyes” excuse that always worked for Granddad, but I guess I don’t have his honest look – no-one believed me. Perhaps the snoring gave it away…

Anyway, once there we dealt with the business at hand – we ate. I think I mentioned before that the Wan Tan Mee in Malacca is the best around, and we stopped off there again. It didn’t disappoint, and I was left split between sharing another bowl, and making the most of the other food on offer in the town. I got the better of my greed, and we wondered of to deal with Elena’s Kebaya (on a separate note, one day I’ll perhaps compile a list of the best Wan Tan Mee stalls in Singapore. It might include the Mei Ling food court, the one in Toa Payoh, the one at Cambridge Road….hey, I’m a researcher – what can I say!)

Something else we had that day was Chendol(left), a desert that includes a lot of brown sugar, coconut milk, and ice. On a hot day, there’s nothing like it. The brown sugar is the Gula Malacca I mentioned before (although it was in beer in a previous post), but here it was in its pomp, holding together ice. The secret is not to mix the ice, milk, and sugar together too much – if you do that, you get a sweet goo. If you leave it fairly unmixed, you can appreciate the finer flavours of the desert in their own right…!

We headed into the night market later that evening. Interestingly (and I only just found this out, the same way you did if you cliked on the link I kindly provided), Pasar is a Malay word derived from Bazaar in Persian. So now you now. Anyway, you’ll see from the pic on the left that the night market is usually along one street, with stalls either side selling all manner of things. Usually toys and trinkets, they are quite fun, and they sell a lot of stuff to tourists. They call out to people as you pass by, enticing you to buy anything from a platsic gun, to a barking toy dog, and so on. The streets are usually quite busy but it makes for a great atmosphere, and certainly something that everyone should see when they are in this part of the world.

We stopped off at a shop along the road to take a look at some of their paper-cutting art. This isn’t as odd as it sounds, and is a traditional art form in China. Using just paper, scissors, and perhaps a knife, some artists are able to create incredibly intricate pictures or landscapes. We were amazed by a TV show in China about a very old women who did this for a living. She was around 80 years old, but was fantastically talented. Anyway, we fell in love with the technique then, and were lucky enough to find a paper-cutting of the Chinese symbol for double happiness, a traditional feature of Chinese weddings.

What the also sell is food. Street markets in Asia usually sell loads of food at small stalls, often cooked up in front of you, and usually inexpensive. This was the case in china and Thailand, and is the case in Singapore and Malaysia. I love eating this kind of food, and can’t resist trying a few things. Something that caught my eye was deep-fried ice-cream. Take a slice of bread, wrap it around a ball of ice-cream, and then drop in super hot oil for about 15 seconds. The bread is crispy and fried, and the ice-cream is still frozen. And all for only 499 calories. But it is great, and I’d recommend it to anyone. I also ate a curry puff and a char siew puff. Fantastic. However, I was quite full the next day, and still am rather full today (Tuesday).

What else? Well, the next day we headed down to Tesco. Malacca has an enormous Tesco shop, and we often stop in on the way back to Singapore to pick up some groceries. It’s a little cheaper than Singapore, and Singapore doesn’t have Tesco. Here’s a pic of me outside Tesco, just to prove it. It’s always exciting to go into a shop like this abroad; we used to have the same experience going to Carrefour in China last year. The Tesco was hugely busy, and there must much coming together of trolleys. In the end, we didn’t stay for long, although I bought some cereal (note: the Handbag belongs to Elena's mother; not me. Mine is in the car).

Whilst we were there, however, I had time to inspect at first hand a car "built in a jungle clearing by people who go to work in shoes made from leaves", according to Jeremy Clarkson. The Malaysians were (understandably) unhappy about his comments. However. he was referring to the Perodua Kelisa, whereas I got to sit in the Perodua Myvi. And actually, it wasn’t half bad. It was small, but it looked kind of fun, and was only around £4,000. It reminded of the Mitsubishi Colt, which can’t really be a bad thing. There were loads of them on the highways in Malaysia, and I actually quite liked it.

The Good Husband...

Time for another joke....


Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after attending his company's Christmas Party. Jack is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all.

He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.

Jack had to force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose! Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed.

He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.

Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick:

"Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to get groceries to make you your favourite dinner tonight. I love you, darling! Love, Jillian"

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast, steaming hot coffee and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating.

Jack asks, "Son...what happened last night?"

"Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door.

Confused, he asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me??"

His son replies, "Oh THAT!... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed,

"Leave me alone, I'm married!!"

Broken Coffee Table $239.99
Hot Breakfast $4.20
Two Aspirins $.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time . . PRICELESS!!!

Read all about it....

There’s been a lot of inactivity on this blog for a while (if there can ever be a lot of nothing), so I thought I’d take this chance to update you all on what we’ve been up to. The answer: not much, really. We’ve been out and about, and taken advantage of the nice weather to stroll around town. The pic on the left was taken the day I signed up for Mandarin lessons, something I’ve been meaning to day for q while now. I wanted to go for the basic option, but the teacher tested e on the Mandarin, and signed me for intermediate. Intermediate!. She obviously hadn’t herd me speak at length, because my mandarin is not only lousy, it is also worse that it used to be in China!! Ho hum. At least they didn’t sign me up for the beginners course (which admittedly was rather basic), and just take another few hundred dollars from me for no reason.

One of the fun things that we have done is go to the newly opened Café del Mar in Singapore (on Sentosa). Café del Mar is a famous chill-out café/bar in Ibiza, and the opening of an Asian branch was much heralded. It’s part of a big development of the night-life scene in Singapore that’s seen Ministry of Sound and such like open here over the past year or so. Café del Mar is actually quite nice, and although you don’t really get to see the sun go down late at night here (roughly 7pm every day) as you might in Ibiza, the bar was cool, and included a pool outside. The day that e went (a spur of the moment decision), it happened that Pete Tong (yes, it’s all gone Pete Tong for Singapore) was spinning his wheels of steel, so it was pretty packed. The place was on the beach, which begged the questions that you must be able to walk along the beach and listen to the music without paying?

This brings me onto a thought that’s been bugging me – I really am a southerner. Although I love gravy (ooh, Northern boys love gravy), I am also a bit tight when it comes to things like this. I am always reminded of the joke about Northerners and Southerners going on holiday. The Northern goes away with £100 and comes back and exclaims “I went away with £100 and come back with nothing. I spent it all – brilliant!”; The Southerner goes away with £100 and comes back and exclaims “I went away with £100 and come back with £45. I spent hardly anything at all – brilliant!”.

I digress….

We’ve done some research on where we may want to take wedding photos, including arduous research trips to the Irish pub that is my new favourite watering hole. Real bar food, and real shabby walls, and real Irish men (no, really), make for a decent atmosphere. We wandered in a few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon to take a butcher’s, and liked it so much we stayed to watch the football 4 hours later. The bangers and mash were decent enough, but the Guinness was the best in Singapore so far. That doesn’t mean that I won’t stop looking, of course…

Preparations for the wedding seem to be progressing well. Everyone seems to be very concerned with preparations in general, and seem surprised when we are relaxed and say that we haven’t had any problems so far, which we haven’t Apparently, wedding planning is supposed to be a complete nightmare, only to be rescued by last-minute dashes to florists and so on. And maybe we will have that. But so far, everything has fallen into place quite nicely. Perhaps that is because we started planning almost a year ago. We have still to nail down our cup cakes (although following our testing yesterday we are a little closer), and decide on a few other things. But on the whole, we are more relaxed than we should be, or so it seems!!

You can see our testing of cup-cakes at the Raffles on our wedding blog. You can also see my new pair of wedding shoes on our wedding blog. Don’t we provide a good service?

What else has been happening on this fair isle?

Singapore has decided to build itself a version of the London Eye, so that’s what they have done. We watched this wheel – the Singapore Flyer – go up with amazing speed in only a month or two. It’s quite big, and the views promise to be spectacular. As the nice people at Wikipedia tell us, the wheel itself has a 150 metre diameter, and is built over a three-storey terminal building, giving a total height of around 165 metres. The London Eye comes in at 135 metres, so the Singapore Flyer has one over the Eye on that count!

It’s right next to where the casino will be, so the night views will be impressive, I’m sure. I’m doubtful that it will be open by the time the family come and visit (early 2008, apparently), but you should certainly be able to see it, and probably as you fly in! Perhaps we can arrange a day trip for the family the next time you all visit.






We saw some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles down Orchard Road last month – I think that they were promoting their new film. I remember that when they were out in the UK they weren’t allowed to be called Ninja – they were “Hero Turtles”. Not sure if that still applies. It was certainly an odd sight, but given the large volumes of tourists/shoppers you always get on Orchard, a couple of Ninjas to fight the ladies out of the way should come in quite useful…

We also found some really rather good Chinese food – just like we had in China ast year (or was it the year before?). Bei Fang Feng Wei, at 18 Smith Street had all manner of Northern food, including – as you can see form the pic – some Harbin Beer. One of the best things about China was the diversity of beers there. Hundreds of littler breweries, with each province (roughly country-size, usually), having its own beer. There are quite strict laws on moving beer between provinces, which mans that ordinarily you can’t get Beijing beer in Shanghais, and so on. Which meant that travelling around the country was fun inasmuch as you got to see what the next provinces beer was. Would it be more than 2% proof? Was it a former German concession? (Incidentally, history is important here, and you learn a lot about the various treaties and so on. In essence, if it was a German town previously, the beer would be good – take Qingdao beer, for example). Back to the restaurant, and we had shredded chilli potatoes, some Zha Jiang Mian (a specialty of northern China), and some Xioa Long Bao again. You may be realising that this is a favourite of mine!

Phew. That’s it for now, and you’re up to date with my movements (and food). More exciting tales next time, so stay tuned…….

Carnies? Here? In Singapore?

We were walking through town the other day when I felt something that tingled all along the back of my neck. Yes, we'd come across some travelling Carnival folk, here in Singapore. We assured ourselves they were harmless (they were Belgian after all), but for a few minutes we though that the week-long crime-wave had made its way to Singapore, and that Singapore's reputation as crime-free had been taken as a challenge.

Happily, they were Belgian (no beer on offer, tho), and there were no dogs randomly tied up or cars burning. They were in town for the Chinese New Year Celebrations, and had freighted all of their rides from the low-lands of Belgium for our entertainment. In the end, it was kind of a shame that we missed the fair - some candy floss would have been very nice thank you very much, although perhaps the Belgian versions of fairs don't have candy-floss? Anyway, it marked pretty much the end of the Chinese New Year festivities for us here, with the last day last Sunday. We had dinner at home on Sunday, and then steamboat (see post a few weeks ago for more on steamboat), so that's the celebrations over and done with for another year.

Finally, we watched the football on Saturday night at an open air bar area, full of Man Utd fans. This was the first time I'd watched football in Singapore with such a big crowd (perhaps 200-300 people), and I had no idea that people would cheer and boo so loudly, it was rather fun. Until the 90th minute. I was a little under the weather all evening (I have had flu since Thursday), and I couldn’t really cheer, or boo for that matter. Well, only a little cheer, when Paul Scholes tried to punch Alonso. I’m still smiling at that one…

On a happier note, we watched the football this morning as well, through to the last 8 and more glorious days thanks to Rafa.

Adios.

Did the ground move for you, too?

Well, I’ve done it all now. I’ve survived not one, but two earthquakes. Not real ones, of course, but the ones that are safely several hundred miles away. Years ago I felt one at University in Wales, and this morning we felt some tremors in Singapore following a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Indonesia that was felt here in Singapore. Apparently, the quake originated around 30 miles from Padang, a city on the western coast of Sumatra (430 miles from Singapore).

As I said in my earlier post, I am suffering from flu these days and am usually a bit dizzy as a result, so originally I thought nothing of it. But once my water started to ripple (just like on Jurassic Park), and my bag straps started to sway, I realised my inner ear hadn’t been playing silly beggars and that this was the real deal. We’ve been getting a few aftershocks this afternoon, so it could be fun!

General updates from the orient

I’m feeling decidedly under the weather today – I seem to have come down with a dose of the ‘flu again. I seem to be quite susceptible to flu these days, and I spent most of last night either very hot or very cold. I’m at work now, and I seem to be feeling a bit better, although there is still a leprechaun with a flamethrower sitting on my head giving me cold-sweats. I had a banana for breakfast, which seems to have worked. What I’d really like, though, is a nice English fried breakfast…..bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, fried toast…..

I’m reading Darryn’s blog at the moment, which is making me crave a lot of the yummy food we used to eat in China, like xiao long bao.

We’re still absolutely obsessed with watching Silent Witness, which I had never given a chance in the UK but is actually really very good. We can catch that on BBC Entertainment, and it is usually followed by the Cathy Tait show, something else I’d never seen before coming here, but has had us crying with laughter.

I received confirmation in the post yesterday of my Viva pass, along with the official comments, which was good. I’d waited a few weeks for it, and when the envelope arrived it looked as though someone had been dragging it through mud. It arrived in a plastic bag apologising – which was nice. The long and short of it is that I have 3 month to make some reasonably minor corrections, including chapter structure and the inclusion of some tables. All being well, we I should be able to get that done fairly soon, and send it off to the UK. It seems to have take a long time (actually, it has – 5 years almost, including employment gaps), but it is only now that it is starting to sink in that it is almost over.

Changi Chapel Museum

Yesterday we took advantage of my day off - due to Chinese New Year - to take a mini tour with some Singaporean friends from Nottingham who are here for a few months. There were a few places that we wanted to go, and that we wanted to scout out for operation 777, so first up was the Changi Chapel. We had intended to visit the Istana - the presidential palace - but the queues were eye watering, so we went ahead with plan B - Changi Chapel.

The museum and chapel is tucked away next to the main Changi Prison, still used as a penitentiary today. The museum was very well put together, with a lot of eyewitness accounts of the PoW camps and the events surrounding the fall of Singapore. What was most interesting was that there were plaques donated by the various battalions that served in Singapore, and the one that you can see to the left is that of the 5th Beds & Herts. It's sideways now, but I'll try and put it the right way round soon! What amazed me was the sheer diversity of regiments (India, USA, Australia, Malaya and so on), and the age of the men who were fighting. Many were younger than me, and that is something that hits home when you go to something like this.

The museum also includes a lot of information on the Burma/Thailand railway, and loads of artefacts, including a lot of things that were made by the men who worked on the railway. What astonished me is that in the Changi PoW camp, within 3 weeks they were putting on plays, and after a while were giving lectures at the "Changi University", on anything from Maths to Egyptology.

Chinese New Year Steamboat

One of the traditions of Chinese New Year is the reunion dinner, when the whole family gets together. Having had one for the maternal side of the family previously, last Saturday the paternal side of the family came over to our place for steamboat. Steamboat is often referred to as Chinese fondue, and that's about as accurate a description as I can think of. Generally, a pot of soup/stock is placed in the middle of the table, and surrounded by plates of meat, seafood, tofu, vegetables and s0 on, and you dip them in the soup to cook them. The bonus being that at the end of the evening you get a delicious soup to drink! As you can see, we had two tables up, and loads of food - with the highlights being a type of fishball that has other meat inside, and a chilli sauce that was fantastic!

Chinese New Year

This time of year Singapore (and a lot of Asia) is alight with festivities, as people get ready to welcome in the New Year - the year of the pig. Last year we were here for CNY, and had seen the heart of Chinatown clogged with people on New Year's Eve, so this year we went and had a look a week early.

You can see from the picture on the left that it was still packed with people doing some last minute shopping, much like we would do for Christmas. Visiting relatives is an important part of Chinese New Year, and people buy snacks that they can offer to people when they receive visitors. Much of the preparations are very similar to what we do for Christmas, with everyone dashing out at the last minute to stock up, and shops shutting on Chinese New Year's day itself, and the day after.

Some of the most interesting stores are the dried meat stores, that have all kinds of Chinese sausages, chicken, and other meats hanging up to be eaten during the holidays. Peanuts, sweets, barbequed pork, and other such things are crammed into shopping bags, ready to be distributed to guests. Apart from food and snacks, people buy decorations to hang around the house, fake firecrackers (real ones are banned), and generally come to walk around and enjoy the atmosphere.

Something else that people do is stock up on flowers at home, and we went down to the garden centre on Sunday night to do some stocking up ourselves. Unfortunately, so had everyone else. Here’s me with a tree - related to the kumquat tree, I think. These type of trees are very common at Chinese New Year, and businesses put them up in the lobbies and so on. The oranges signify luck, which we can all use from time to time! One thing that was pretty cool (forgive the pun) was a cold room that had roses and other flowers (lilies, tulips, eustomas, gladiolia, etc) that need a cooler climate. The room itself was a cold enough to give brass monkeys a shock, but the flowers were nice and it was almost like going round a garden centre back home.

Who's been a naughty boy...

Here's me coming out of the cake shop after more testing - more info on our wedding blog. See you there!

KL

My blog is starting to take on a Dr Who type of feel – I whizz around in time when I come across photos to post. Now, let me take you back to last year in my TARDIS…whoosh….

(Left: Me in Dunkin Donuts in KL.)

Some of you may remember that, last December, our friend from Nottingham came and visited us. Mona’s in China now, and popped over to Singapore for some warm weather and a quick break. We had tried to visit another country whilst she was here, but the looming Christmas holiday meant that everywhere was fully booked. It seems as though everyone in Singapore had the same idea – to make the most of the holidays that were next to weekends, and get away from a long break. KL it was, then.

There are three ways of getting to KL. You can take a bus, drive, or you can fly. The flight is around 45 mins, but can be quite expensive. The coach trip itself is not too bad, taking around 5 hours to get there. There is a stop along the way (much like a trip to Malacca), and the scenery can be quite stunning. The hotel we stayed at did a reasonable cooked breakfast buffet in the morning, including some rather tasty waffles.

(Left: the Petronas Towers.)

One of the best things about Malaysia is the food and, like true tourists, we spent most of our time eating. We sampled some Dunkin Donuts and KFC, the former of which you can’t get in Singapore anymore. It was a tough assingnment, but one we carried out purely in the name of research. Result? Yes, they were good.

We visited the Petronas Towers (alas, no Catherine or Sean), and spent some considerable time on the shopping centre underneath. Right now, there’s a guy sitting in a spa in KL rubbing his hands with disbelief that we all entered his shop. He’s retired since, and lives the life of a king.

We also took some time to go see the Merdeka Square in central KL, where independence from the Brits was proclaimed. There is a couple of notable buildings on the square, one of which is the Sultan Abdul Samad Building. Built at the tail end of the 19th Century, and originally known as "The New Government Offices", it now houses the Commercial Division of the High Court of Malaya.

KL is a very pretty town, and one of the key attractions is just walking around, and taking in the architecture. It can take a while (and requires a decent map), but is well worth the trip.

Gold! Always believe in your soul, you've got the power to know, you're indestructable...

As I have just posted, we've just retuned from Blighty. The land of fish & chips, gravy & chips (ooooh gravy), and online petitions to the PM.

The Prime Minster’s Open Petitions website has some commendable petitions (ensure that inheritance tax is scrapped in this year's Budget, for example), but others must be questioned. Tim Ireland and David Kitchen prove that the internet is truly a force for democratic good. More so, Tim Ireland’s signatories include "God, Creator of Worlds", which proves that broad-band access is really quite good these days.

I thought that the petition on parachute training was a joke as well, but apparently it's not. Which makes the cut in parachute training for the parachute regiment quite a joke, if it's true.

I'm feeling empowered today. Together, we might be able to change Britain. The question remains, tough; how many signatures do you need before Blair does what’s asked? 5000? 10,000? I challenge everyone who reads this to register at least one petition. Just let us know, and someone will sign it (perhaps). It could be for anything; scrap Arsenal and merge them with Spurs, for example. Let’s see if we can make Blighty a better place.

Back (again)...

So we’re back in Singapore now. After a short week (i.e. 6 days) back in Blighty, it was time to leave. Emirates did their best to delay us again, though. An hour on the runway on the way to the UK was bested by an hour and a half on the runway on the return leg; apparently there was a passenger who had not made the onwards sector of his flight, and his luggage was off-loaded, meaning we lost our slot for take-off. We finally got under way, and reached Singapore at around 9:30pm last night (Sunday).

The food was good, though, and the Thai Chicken Red Curry was well worth the trip. The in-flight entertainment system is working much better now on Emirates, and they are currently rolling out the ICE product. This is similar to that which Singapore Air has, where you can choose you movie from a catalogue and start, stop, and pause as you wish. It’s not on all aircraft yet, but will be soon.

For those interested in that kind of thing, we watched The Queen (excellent), Things to Do Before You're 30 (Dougray Scott, Brit-flick, also excellent), Stormbreaker (Ewan McGregor, fun), and I watched Wall Street (Sheen team, classic).

New header

I've put up a new header for the blog. It's not taken by me (picture courtesy: J Smith Holiday Images), but it is at least of Singapore. This is the view of Boat Quay in Singapore, with the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles standing at what is believed to be his landing spot on the Singapore river. The pubs weren't thereat the time, of course, but this area has become a favourite landing spot of tourists and bankers in the business district. Across the water s the Penny Black pub, where we bought t-shirts and drank beer at midnight.

Question: who's that in the picture with me? Hint: he was looking for chicken wings.....

boats and cars

This weekend saw us head off to Vivocity for a gentle stroll around the madness that is shopping. We had heard that a tall shop had docked in Singapore following a journey from Sweden, so we were intrigued. Could a tall ship make it this far? Of course, they did it in the spice trade days…could a tall ship make it to Singapore now, in the middle of busy shipping lanes and the South China Sea? Apparently so.

We were amazed when we turned a corner at Vivocity to be greeted by the suitably majestic Swedish Ship Götheborg. It was quite an impressive sight, and had been docked in Singapore since New Year’s Eve, when they arrived. Inside Vivocity there was a small exhibition on Sweden and famous Swedes (no mentioned of Graham Taylor, funnily enough, although I guess technically he was a turnip), and some nice pictures of Götheborg in days of yore.

Later that day we headed over the Bugis to test out some carrot cake (we devised a whole series of criteria, actually – all very scientific – and the results are on Elena’s blog). Whilst we were there we saw a few cars for sale. Cars in Singapore are traditionally very expensive (the New Mini goes for around $120,000), so when I saw that the Chevrolet was on sale for $21,000 I had to sit in it and check it out! Quite a nice car, and ideal for a small country like Singapore. However, I would fear for anyone over 5’6”, as I was in the back when I put the seat back far enough to be comfortable (listen to me; I’ve come over all Jeremy Clarkson).

Rain...again

It’s raining in Singapore again. It seems as though the rainy season is well and truly upon us, and there have been flash floods in quite a few places around the island. To be honest, I have never seen rain like it; I waited in the office for the rain to subside before I took my lunch today, and dashed out when it stopped. However, it started again after about 2 minutes, and I am wet to my knees now!!

Incidentally, the Korean superstar Jung Ji Hoon (aka 'Rain') is coming to Singapore to perform, amongst other Asian countries. Korean Air have agreed to sponsor the trip, and a plane with 'Rain's Coming' painted on the side will ferry him around. That’s all we need: a plane advertising the monsoon season flying around…

Thos who are interested in these kind of things will be delighted to know that I had bak chor mee for lunch today.

Some of you may recall that last autumn saw Singapore host the World Bank/IMF meetings. The level of security around the island was immense, and we al felt very safe as we went about our business. Here's a picture of me taken around that time, in front of some solid-looking crash barriers. Off-picture are several Ghurkhas, and a whole platoon of policemen.

Christmas turkey...

We had our postponed Christmas dinner on New Year ’s Eve here. Elena and I (and you will know who the emphasis is on) cooked up a treat in the kitchen, having scoured the island for turkey (we brought a pre-cooked one t hint end, for a third of the price), stuffing mix, potatoes, bread sauce (cooked from scratch),and so on. We even produced a puff-pastry apple pie for pudds (that’s us on the left watching the pie cook in the oven).

Again, thanks to all who sent us cards, and a happy new year to all.

Far left: Dinner; near left: pie

Malacca

I've finally gotten around to uploading the pictures I have taken over the last few months, hence the the prodigious level of posts. Now, time to turn attention to our trip to Malacca at the end of November. Malacca is a pretty, interesting town about half-way up Malaysia, one of those towns that various colonial powers have fought over in the past couple of centuries. Some of you may remember that the last time I went to Malacca I was sick for a few days, so this was a chance to see the town and actually take in sights other than public conveniences. The journey itself is a 5-6 hour drive along Malaysian roads, although there is always a stop for some fantastic food at the equivalent of our petrol stops along the motorway. (Number one being the Ramlee Burger.The scenery along the way is great, and always serves as a reminder of how rich Malaysia actually is in natural resources, with Palm Oil plantations all along the road.

As a result of its strategic position in the eponymously titled-Straits, Malacca was home to the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the Brits. Places like the red church are a testament to this, and have left an interesting tapestry of architecture.

The food in Malacca is also pretty interesting, and again reflects the history of the town. Ice Kacang s perhaps one of the more famous, although the wonton mee is also tip-top. Another thing that you will see (and hear) in Malacca is the army of cycle rickshaws that pedal around the town, ferrying tourists to and fro. A recent addition to these traditional bikes is a loud-speaker stereo, so you can hear them coming a mile off! They're also pretty heavily decorated, covered in colourful garlands and other eye catching dangly things.

Is it a bird, is it a plane, or even a moth?

Here's a picture of the moth that we found on the wall a few months ago (yes, it took a while to post). It was about 12 inches across, and just seemed to sit there for a while.

We're not sure if it is a moth, or a butterfly, so any suggestions greatly welcomed.