January is popular month for religious/cultural holidays in Singapore. Coming hot off the heels of Christmas and New Years, there is the Hindu festival of Thaipusam (celebrating Parvati's vanquishing of the evil demon Soorapadman), and Chinese New Year (the most important festivity in the Chinese Lunar Calendar). It's wonderful really, because there are colourful decorations everywhere and a bit of a buzz in the air...
We finally did a proper visit to the National Museum, which uses an advanced audioguide system. It all works rather well, except there is far too much audio for the amount of content on display. In order to hear everything, you need to stand in front of any given object for 5 or 10 minutes, which quickly becomes unworkable. And because of the reliance on the audioguide, there is otherwise very little writing or identification of objects, which is frustrating when you decide to move at your own pace!
Still, it was interesting to follow the history of Singapore, and they have done an excellent job of recreating the feel of the original housing, the opium dens, and so on. They also evoke the war era very well, and I enjoyed the examples of Japanese propaganda that were dropped on the city, urging the British to abandon the war to make love to their wives back home instead.
We also bought tickets for the touring Pompeii exhibition, which had excellent mosaic displays and some stunning artefacts. In truth, nothing we hadn't already encountered in Italy itself, but we still gleaned a few new bits of information - plus one doesn't turn down the rare opportunity to see this kind of stuff in our neck of the woods.
Home-made Gladiator mask:
The following weekend we caught the touring New Zealand performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Esplanade Theatre. As always, its the first half that's more captivating, with more memorable songs. Still, it was a blast, and the guy sitting next to us certainly seemed to be having a good time - dorky dancing in the aisle and everything.
During the week we hopped on the MRT to Little India to see some of the Thaipusam activities. To show the sincerity of their faith, or to fulfil vows, devotees were making the 4km pilgrimage from Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple (Serangoon Road) to Sri Thandayuthapani Temple (Tank Road). This is difficult enough given the burning hot weather on the day, but many of these had also pierced their cheeks, tongue, face or other body parts with sharp objects. Particularly hardy participants carried a kavadi, a cage-like structure that is 'worn' over the body. Adorned with peacock feathers and bright art work carved in aluminium, it also features dozens of sharp spikes criss-crossing its lower section. By virtue of these spikes, the some 15kg of its weight is thus secured on the devotees body! Grisly indeed, but it could have been moreso had the Singapore government not banned the carrying of milkpots on hooks at this year's festival...
This Sunday just passed, we had an exciting expedition to IKEA, to investigate storage and furniture options for our new house back home. IKEA is a wonderland of cool homewares - even I love it! I just wish we they had a store in New Zealand. We're looking into our shipping options now :)
Afterwards we went for a big walk around the newly-energised pre-Chinese New Year Chinatown! All the usual pap has been swapped-out for holiday themed pap. There are red decorations as far as the eye can see, and plenty of ornamental rabbits (this year is Year of the Rabbit). We bought a small hanging to decorate our front door. I then spent an hour queuing at the insanely busy Maxwell Rd food centre to get a fish porridge I had been thinking about all week...
Flowers and mandarin trees for sale...
Red paper decorations for sale...
From a series of artworks on display outside Chinatown Square, cut from red paper. This one shows the Singapore river. Very beautiful!
They love to sell masses of a single fruit. Makes for wonderful visual imagery!
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