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.