10 Nov 2010 – More Voices from the Past

Pui Ah REYNOLDS/Canada and LOH Yoke Seong/Ireland are back visiting their families. Pui Ah is a family friend from the 1950s. Seong & Pui Ah are friends and classmates from CHIJ. Met Seong in Dublin during our boarding schools days. She attended The Hall while I was at Alex. At present she has an organic farm in Ireland. The network connections can be complicated, thus will not go into details, but it is always fun to catch up and yackety-yak with people one does not regularly get to see. Appreciations to SY CHONG for a nice lunch at the Grand Mercure Roxy Hotel***and thanks for sister Jo’s company.

Today the Christmas package to the grandchildren was mailed by surface mail. Was told that it would take 6-8 weeks. So let’s hope that it will be 6 weeks. Tried to have dinner with Pui Ah at the Banana Leaf in Little India, but unfortunately it was still closed due to the Deepavali celebrations. The lovely lights are still lit and will probably remain so until the Christmas lights at Orchard Road are switched on.

Japanese movie Flowers** Rin is worried about her arranged marriage in which her parents setup in the 1930s. Eventually, Rin has three daughters: Kaoru – who tragically loses her husband in a car accident, Midori – a career woman who becomes shaken by a marriage proposal, and Sato who dies after giving birth to Yoshi. In the 1960s Sato gives birth to Kanna and Yoshi. In the present day, Kanna is now worried about becoming a single mother. A story about 3 generations of Japanese women… slow and confusing at times.

So organic farming practices are something that, to me, are interlinked with the idea of using biodiesel – Daryl Hannah

7 Nov 2010 – Gastronomical Weekend

5 Nov 2010 – Happy Deepavali/Diwali

This morning I was woken with much commotion outside my flat, my first thought was that they are starting the Deepavali celebrations. No, but the muslim neighbour will be going to Mecca on her Hajj and having 100 people for lunch to announce her pilgrimage. Today is a day of all kinds of celebration including a lunch hosted by Les. To Hindu friends & their families and the Indian Community, Happy Diwali. This is what I really like about SIN, the celebrations of all the races & religions’ special days.

My brother, Dato Dr Leslie LAM one Asia’s most renowned cardiologists appeared in the latest This Quarterly and it was funny to have the magazines staring at me at the bookshop when I was Christmas shopping. Another strange thing is this box with the word MORMOR, had to find out what it is all about as mormor in Norwegian=mothermother=grandmother on the maternal side. That is how all my grandchildren address me! Turns out to be a piece of material which is so diversified and can be worn in countless ways… quite a good way to portray a grandmother 🙂

Playing tourist guide to Jan SOSA’s friend Linda STEWART from Toronto/Canada but ended up seeing new buildings and skylines for the first time and older skylines in another angle! It was nice to see young people having clean fun with a sack-race by the new Fullerton Bay Hotel*****

The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival… because when you are unhappy, you also throw unhappiness all around – Diwali Quotes

4 Nov 2010 – The Accidental Billionaires

Paul took off back to L’don after his two days conference and Linda flew off via China back to LAX. Hope that she will get a chance to see the LAM ancestral hall in Jiangmen when she is in Guangzhon. Catching up with movies and starting with Christmas shopping, just hate the thought of fighting with the crowd when the time gets nearer!

The Accidental Billionaires: The founding of Facebook, a tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal is a 2009 book by Ben MEZRICH about the founding of Facebook. Co-founder Eduardo SAVERIN served as MEZRICH’s main consultant. Mark ZUCKERBERY declined speaking with Ben while the book was being researched and after Mark and Eduardo settled their lawsuit, Eduardo broke off contact with Ben.

The movie The Social Network*** is based on the above book. 2hrs long with good acting but will anyone (besides those who are involved in it) ever know the true facts behind the startup of the sensational website/Facebook that grip the world? As Mark’s creation grows bigger by the day, politics, backstabbing, legal suits, differences in opinions creep in, ultimately, costing him to loose his only friend and partner in the company. A sad life of the corporate world!

The internet’s not written in pencil Mark, it’s written in ink. And you published that Erica Albright was a bitch right before you made some ignorant crack about my family’s name, my bra size, and then rated women based on their hotness – from the movie The Social Network

It’s a Wonderful Afterlife** this Bollywood comedy uses satirical and Ealing-style humour to depict life among the Indian community in the London suburb of Southall. Mrs Sethi is a widow who wishes to marry off her only daughter Roopi who is a little chubby and opinionated. Mrs Sethi finds that all her matchmaking efforts to find a suitor for Roopi are rudely rejected. She avenges her by killing off the failed dates using her culinary skills. A police hunt begins for a serial murderer using a killer curry.

Mrs S feels no guilt until the spirits of her victims come back to haunt her. They are unable to be reincarnated until their murderer dies. Mrs S must kill herself to free the spirits, but vows to get her daughter married off before this. Entertaining with some good laughs. The moral, don’t mess with daughters who have revengeful mothers 🙂

2 Nov 2010 – Quit or Retire!

Sharing some scenes of the progress in SIN. Whenever I return from a long trip, the skyline changes and so has one of my bus route. 16 bus which normally takes me to the stadium (now under construction, thus barricaded) is now re-routed and I had to go nearly all the way to town to reconnect with the new Circle MRT line/Yellow line into Stadium Station! Time to buy a new Bus Guide book! It is certainly impressive with all these progress; wish that the people here can also progress as impressively with their courtesy & smile campaigns!

Now if anyone can tell me how many containers plus the tonnage can fit onto the container ship in the picture, I will surely appreciate it!

Nov special dates:

5 Happy Deepavali to the Indian community

11 Happy Bday Audrey MOH

13 Happy Bday LEUNG Yee Fun

17 Selemat Hari Raya Hagi to the Muslim community

19 Happy Bday Yulis ADAM TEO

25 Happy Thanksgiving

27 Happy Bday Daisy CHIA

29 Happy 4th Bday to my only grandson John Whitham HALL

30 Happy Bday LAM Kwok Chai

Thanks to my Norwegian friend Mette BACKER, the picture made my day 🙂

Perhaps it is time to quit and retire?
Skjønner dere hvorfor det var på tide å pensjonere seg kanskje?

31 Oct 2010 – Trick or Treat

Pictures of Linn & May‘s 1987 Halloween in Long Beach, CA/USA. 1985 the 1st Halloween in USA, May was even afraid to go Trick or Treating until she discovered that people gave her candies! Those were the days when parents had to check through all the candies as there were some psychopaths lacing candies with drugs etc then. Will not bother to go into the origins etc of Halloween. Just let the kids enjoy the Trick of Treating without bringing religion into it. The ancient Celtic times, this celebration is to observe the end of the harvest season and that is a perfectly good enough reason for me. Thus Happy Pumpkin Day!

A pleasant surprise treat yesterday: Linda (TANG Pui Chung) & Alfred TAY called to say that they are in SIN for a wedding. Linda‘s mother is my father’s first cousin (our parents’ father, ie our grandfathers LAM Ji Chiew & LAM Song Kee were brothers). When our mothers played mahjong in the 1950s, Linda and I would be running around playing@5Temenggong Rd. Her brothers played with Les who has not seen Linda or her brothers over 40yrs! The TANGS immigrated to CA in the early 1960s. Appreciations to Linda & Alfred who kindly and graciously helped me to settle in when I moved to CA in 1985.

Thank you to Les & Ivy for hosting dinner@Sentosa Golf Club and for a lovely weekend@Sentosa Cove. Managed to enjoy a good walk and swim yesterday morning. Les just got his tonsils out on Fri as they discovered some stones, very unusual but was informed that nothing too serious. Hope this will stop his throat irritations. According to Ivy, he must be one of the world’s eldest tonsillectomy patient 🙂

Next week is going to be one hectic week. Auntie Winnie arrived from HI on Fri, Paul arrived from L’don tonight (another treat!) and some Canadian friend of friend arrives tomorrow!

A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween –
Erma Bombeck

28 Oct 2010 – Frontiers of Science…

Held at the Matrix Building on Biopolis St, an area completely new to me but had no difficulty finding it… over an hour on the bus from one end of the island to the other end. Sight-seeing on bus 196 is a good way to see all the new changes. And believe me, SIN does change very quickly.

The Irish Graduates Association of SIN/IGAS in conjunction with the A*STAR Post Doc Society hosted an interesting symposium with five excellent speakers last night. Sir David LANE discussed about the pharmaceutical aspects, Edison LIU/Genome, Adeline/Biofuels, Jacob/Infectious diseases, Suzy from Dublin/Nanotechnology. The tag-line Ethical Challenges intrigued me, also being an IGAS member and to meet the SIN Irish new Ambassador Joe HAYES were the reasons to be there but it turned out to be one of the most educational experiences. All the speakers did an impressive job with not being too technical but gave a general outlook of their fields and even I who is considered to be an artsy-fartsy 🙂 understood what they were talking about!

Yesterday evening was quite an eye-opener. Thanks to IGAS president Brian MOONEY and to Minister Conor LENIHAN/Minister for Science Technology & Innovation (Ireland) for their presence. There were no regrets to choose this function to forego the other two musical functions.

At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn’t mean that you can’t think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places – Peter Singer

25 Oct 2010 – A Malay Wedding

Living in HDB/public housing can be colourful and interesting. Yesterday there was a Malay wedding in the public multi-purpose hall (common area) by my block which does not have a void deck as the ground floor is the PAP Community Foundation and Marine Parade Education Centres (Kindergarten). A void deck is typically found under HDB flats and occupies the ground level, while flats are usually on the second floor onwards. This space can be rented inexpensively for private weddings, social or religious functions including funeral wakes. Anyone can stand outside the functions to watch or to take pictures.

There are many advantages living in public housing and one of them is that after 2200hrs, noise is not acceptable. If the police has to issue a warning more than twice, the noisy owners or tenants can be asked to vacate their flat. Bought my flat 10yrs ago and had made only one complain to the police regarding loud music at 0100hrs. The police issued a warning and that was the end of the matter.

Was glad that I was lunching with Les & Ivy yesterday, otherwise would have gone to the library. Weddings should be lively, merry and noisy occasions. Took some pictures before the guests and took more pictures towards the end of the party when I got back.  The wedding day is the Bersanding, literally means the ‘sitting together of the bride and bridegroom on the bridal couch’. Known as the Pelamin, the couch (not sure why there are chairs in this case) is the centrepiece of the whole ceremony. The most exciting part for me is when the groom is escorted in a procession with a hadrah or kompang band (male music group) to his bride’s house. Not sure if this happened at this wedding as I left before the ceremony. Was disappointed that the bride and groom did not wear their beautiful Malay traditional attire in this wedding.

26Dec 2015 -edited

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O young people! Whoever among you can support a wife should marry, for that is more modest for the gaze and safer for your private parts – Prophet Muhammad

23 Oct 2010 – Pressure-Cooker!

After killing 26 people, damaged homes and crops in the Philippines, Megi continued to the NE of Taiwan killing 9 people and many more missing. HKG & southern Guangdong can breath a sigh of relief for now as Megi changed her course to the Fujian provinces.

Why is it that whenever I step into SIN, I have this claustrophobia feeling? 5mil people on an area of 7,022/sqkm or 17,275.7/sq mi (these figures never fail to fascinate me when I see how fast the pop increases) on top of the heat & humidity might be the main reasons. In a small island city like SIN, people seemed to be under a pressure-cooker and one never knows what it takes or when they need to vent, eg the nightmare with a taxi-driver/20 Apr posting. Glad to arrive in SIN when the buses are still running and my senior citizen fare to my HDB flat in Marine Parade cost less than S$1 🙂

Looking forward to catching up with family & friends. Being patriot is not on top of my list when I am here. That feeling of pride for my country is only when I am away and people comment on how clean and safe it is here!

Stepped into SIN on the day where the haze was reported to be the worst ever, over 100 PSI/Pollution Standards Index. A reading of 0 to 50 is considered good, while 51 to 100 is moderate. A figure above 100 is unhealthy. My family tells me to rest, Henry tells me to drink a lot of water and I have intentions to listen to all of that. News stated that SIN Foreign Minister George YEO met will Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty NATALEGAWA to discuss the situation who has claimed that Indonesia has been succeeding to reduce haze caused by forest fires. The PSI reading today is over 60!

For two years living in a neutral country
I have been able to see through the haze of propaganda
to reach something which my conscience tells me is the truth –
John Amery