Film - The Hobbit.

Loads of spear/arrow-em-up-action, too much for my tastes.  And why do all the important people like Elves, Wizards and high ranking Dwarfs all speak with a single posh English accent , whilst the riffraff and bad guys all speak with different strong regional English accents?  Lancashire, Scottish,  Irish, Cockney,  all were in there.  Why not American and Australian as well, not to mention Singlish? If you don't speak posh, are you dumb?

OK, my little rant over.  Tolkien one step too far, me thinks.  Would have been much better if the director had had the courage to 'do' the Hobbit before the L o R.  2.5 on the door.  Not impressed.

Film - The Life of PI

Thank goodness the second story is not the subject of the film!!!  And indeed "so it goes with God".  OK,  you need to see the film, but be awake for the last 5 mins.  Only then will it make any sense, as opposed to being a cute story. 3 on the door. 

Perlis trip.

A drive up to west coast to  Kaula Perlis, opposite Langkawi.

A place to catch the sunset. This on day one.

 Mosque at dusk. 

 And sun setting on the second night.

The sun final disappears.

Polly was here.

 Up at Genting hill,

down in George Town 

Genting

The sun has moved southward in the sky and now sets behind the hill on the left of our view.

On with the zoom lens and dotted fishers.

Food.  lovely grub.  Polly is behind the camera.

Turning PISA into sPICE.

The plan is to make the area on the left of the site a temporary car park for the exhibition centre whilst the rest of the site is being 'piled'.  11.00 at night and they are still piling, from 8 in the morning.  Not much changed really from the last photo taken a couple of months ago.  Roll on 2015.

Night Garden

The Marina Sands.

This is still Planet Earth.

Flower Dome

Bottle trees and baobab trees, the inspiration for the super trees out side.

The weird and wonderful.

The enclosed space is huge.

A lattice of glass panels supported by external skeletal hoops.

An amazing structure that seems to defy gravity.

And Singapore is still out there.

Cloud Forest

This is where engineering meets art and horticulture.  A marriage of three that really works.

Take the lift to the very top and walk down.  Let gravity do the work.

The regular lattice work structure of the buildings skin contrasting with the irregular branching of the trees

And outside, Singapore.

The gardening is only a few months old.  Come back in a couple of years and the trees will be  over these elevated walkways.  It will be quite magical.

It is a cloud forest environment.  You could be forgiven for thinking you were in the south island of New Zealand.

Quite an amazing place.

Off to the gardens by the bay

Before the 'trek' into the garden you must get your energy fix at SweetSpot.  What to choose.

Dive underground to the infinity tunnel.  One wonders how many people the architect envisaged visiting the gardens.  So wide.

Mei Li and me with umbrellas drawn.  We two were the only brollites.  No sun, no rain, so why.  God only knows.

The Silver Garden, with the super glass houses behind.

I think the Sands looks even more impressive from the garden side.

Super trees, which are vertical gardens

Singapore Nov 2012

Always meet over a table of food.  But that is Singapore.  With the family Lim at City Hall.  A dumbling and noodle dinner.

Singapore Nov 2012

Dessert at Haagen Dazs with friends at Holland Village.  Paradise and a Banana Split.  Had to be done.  Thanks Mary-Ann and Choon Hong  for giving us a treat and your lovely company.

Book - A Voyage Round John Mortimer

Difficult to sort out where the fiction ends and the real Mortimer begins.  An over bearing read, I found.  So much navel gazing and yet influencing.  Learnt he defended Jeyaretnam twice in Singapore against accusations of wrong doing by Mr. Lee K Y.   Lost both times, intimately.  Too Rumpolian to my mind, if you ignore the women, of which there were a few.  The jury is out on his view of woman kind.  On the balance of the evidence provided, not sure it was all together healthy.  A user?

It is a workshop.

Basic house complete, upper floor boarded.  Tiles a plenty to make.  Keep running out of clay.  Harry brought me loads of timber on his recent visit for the Black and White house.  I haven't been able to do anything on the B & W for ages because of material shortages.

I have already started collecting 'art' pieces to display in the new gallery.  These weird looking birds are from China.  They are made from the shell of a nut.  Not sure which nut.   Their legs and tails move in the breeze.  Very strange. Angry birds? There are also miniature paintings we picked up in New Zealand as well as Gek the artist in residence's own work.

OK.  It's a mess!!!  But my only mess.  You can't get creative without getting down and dirty.

Sandie and Harry

 Another excuse to hire a lovely car.  Sandie and Harry are in town.

 Gek and me have been on the island for 2 years now and still there are new places to visit.  This is Ayer Atam dam, just south of Penang Hill.

 The reservoir is full to over flowing following the monsoon rains we have had recently.

And of course, old favorites to visit, Genting.  Their coconuts taste different. Very lush.

 The drive up is interesting,  but the drive down is quite scary.

This is really taking care of your fruit.  Durians hanging over the road, tied to strings to stop them falling when ripe.  Every durian on every tree next to the road was tied this way.  Must have taken days to do them all.  Must be love.

 Gek and brother Harry at Straits Quay.

sPICE - October 2012

 Most the piling done for the right side of the site's new buildings.  Still tidying up the left side.  Phase 1 - do up the indoor stadium, seen here as a landed 'space ship'.  Phase 2 - do up the aquatic centre and build shops on the right of the picture.  Phase 3 - New hotel and convention centre on the left of the picture.

Book - Alan Clarke Diarys 1982-1991

I recommend reading 'Alan's Diary' and the 'Life of Elizabeth 1' books at the same time.  Same same.  Men sulking went they don't get their own way.  500 years of zero progress.   What with Brown and now Mitchell running off at the mouth, our technology gets sharper but we humans remain completely wet!!!!

Book - Secrets of Leadership

Well not really,  A hurried romp through the 30 centuries of generals battles, with nothing new to reveal.  All a bit to obvious. Get your followers to love you.  More on tactics used to accomplish a strategic aim. 

Book - The Life of Liz No. 1

Earlier this month there was a rather large book fair in Times Square.  All English.  Amazing value and some really interesting buys, including this one about Liz.  At 550 pages it is heavy read, in more ways than one but well worth the trouble.  Liz was equal to the violent times she lived in.  Two things.   How could Europe have lost the road build technology developed by the Romans?  Lost for other 1000 years.  And these 'Christain' monarchs were not averse to chopped off their citizens appendages if one should offend 'one'.  Write a defamatory pamphlet,  off with his right hand!!!  All very Alice, if you ask me.

East Coast Trip

Kota Baru central market.  I don't usually do foodie blogs but.....

 

A mixture of deep fried everything.  Banana, sweet potatoes

All taken with freshly opened coconut.  Linden, Mei Li and Meow,  enjoy.