12 Aug 2021: And A Season For Every Activity – National Day 2021

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were ― Marcel Proust

Fri: working on my emotions so as not to allow them to overwhelm me.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them ― Leo Tolstoy

Sat: made a big pot of seafood (crabmeat, prawns, squids) creamy cheese, mushroom herbal sauce for this weekend Sat dinner&tomorrow’s lunch. Tkx for this Oximeter, have to now figure out how to use it!

Sun: nice to have Helen&Calvin’s company over Sunday’s pasta lunch. Appreciations for drinks, durians, strawberries and lovely sunflowers to cheer me.

Seafood pasta+salad were appreciated with good appetite and durians are always welcome, thank you. Pix credits to Helen.

Mon: Majulah Singapura – this year’s NationalDay will be a quiet day to gather some energy for a busy week ahead. Managed to find my flags to get them out in time for SIN 56Bday with left-overs strawberry breakfast. The pre-school kids downstairs have also done a good job with their creations!

SIN was blessed with a perfect morning in this beautiful clear blue sky to have a parade – pix credits to EmeritusSeniorMinister Goh ChokTong and ST.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/watch-live-ndp-ceremonial-parade-marina-bay-float-2097226

Tue: followed-up app@SGH, all is well, next app in Oct/Nov. Today is also when dinning out is possible again, Vietnamese dinner@GreatWorldCity FoodJunction – could hardly recognize the shops, etc in this revamped mall where I took ‘dinning out’ literally and it was a lovely evening outside the enclosed AC-area to ourselves. Clement did not quite like the alfresco idea, but being an obliging nephew as he is, accompanied me for dessert outside!

This place brings me back memories of the old TheGreatWorldAmusementPark (closed 1964) with the GhostTrain rides! 1978 it became GreatWorldCity, a mall with residential&office and now soon with a new GreatWorldMRT station, targeted for completion in 2022. Pix downloaded.

Wed: appreciations to Theresa&ChengJun for yummy steak dinner.

Thu: introducing KK to my favourite CheeCheongFun@MarineTerrace – glad that he too liked it.

https://www.misstamchiak.com/yong-huat-delight/

Looking forward to viewing the completion of this painting by Yip Yew Chong. The amazing details of daily life from the 60s-80s in Chinatown give an idea of a bygone era.

But I guess every bygone era takes on a shade of myth — Karen Thompson Walker

Now, you can see the people are actually watching an Opera show set up in the middle of the street. As I haven’t painted the actors and actresses on the stage yet, the crowd seemed like they are in an anticipatory mood Some mobile food vendors have also gathered. There is a bird nest drink stall, an ice-cream stall, a roasted chestnut stall and a Kacang Putih stall. All are real except for the bird nest, which is made of jelly!

In this inaugural section, I’ve painted a cross-section interior of a three-storey shophouse in Chinatown. The ground floor shows a coffee shop. The second and third floor are residential, where multiple families or coolie tenants 苦力房 lived. Usually, an anchor tenant would rent a whole floor from the landlord, and then partitioned and sub-tenanted the cubicles to smaller families and singles. You can see how people lived. That was how my family lived; that’s why I am able to paint the scene from memory and imagination.