padi growing in singapore?

now, you do not have to travel across the causeway to see padi being grown. it is not just a few sample plants grown on a small plot of land like the one at fort canning park but a big field of it which has attracted lots of birds to feed on the stalks of maturing padi.

i did a self-conducted tour of d'kranji farm resort at neo tiew lane 2. what i like about most farms in the kranji/lim chu kang area is that most of the owners welcome visitors and they let you explore the farm on your own, unhindered. they do not follow you around or restrict you from venturing into certain sections so long as you do not intrude into their living space.

the 5-hectare d'kranji farm resort means that you have a lot of room to move around. apart from a seafood restaurant, beer garden, spa and some retail outlets, the main attraction to me is the 21 plots of farming land. there are the usual fruit and vegetable crops like dragon fruit, guava, kedongdong, soursop, mango, banana, jack fruit, sweet potato, sugar-cane, soya bean and many others.

however, i was particularly attracted to a section where lots of corn are grown. as i was approaching that area, a very big flock of small birds took off and flew around before settling on some stalk-like plants. as i got nearer, i found that the field was actually flooded; that was when i realised that it was a field of padi plants. the birds were attracted by the ripening padi.

i also found out that d'kranji farm resort has 19 farm-stay villas and two 1000 sq m fields, one set aside for growing corn and the other, for padi.

work is still being carried out to add more facilities and attractions to the place. when it is fully completed, it should be attracting more people to the kranji countryside.

(look like they are burung pipit but i am not sure. like i said earlier i am not serious bird watcher, much less an ornithologist.)

this small patch of padi at fort canning park's spice garden

54 waterloo street

this is not a quiz.

this cluster of three charming pre-war shophouses - only the corner one (no:54) and part of the second one are shown - is occupied by the young musician's society (yms) ltd, the umbrella body of singapore youth choir and the singapore youth chinese orchestra.

i have a lasting memory of this place because i used to parked myself outside it in the late 1990s on every wednesday night while waiting for my elder daughter to finish her practice or rehearsal with the singapore youth choir. the day following, usually, both of us had to report to schools, she for her studies and i for my work. my daughter joined when she was in secondary three; she was one of the youngest members of the choir. the choir conductor then was ms jennifer tham. i think she is still conducting the choir.

there were a few occasions when i had to wait till close to midnight, and one occasion when i had to go and pick her at 2.00 a.m. because they had a recording session. some of the recording sessions were held at victoria concert hall. those sessions also went into the early hours of the morning.

yms arts centre has an auditorium and three music studios. my younger daughter also had an opportunity to perform with a group at the same auditorium. she was then learning the violin and her violin teacher, dr choo, booked the place, together with her mother, for a joint performance by her violin students and her mother's voice training (singing) students. my elder girl also sang at the same concert because she was taking vocal lessons from mrs lilian choo.

the last time i was in the vicinity of this place, i met mr david lim, the man who started the singapore youth orchestra. he was having indian rojak at sajis.

formula one - a non-event

as far as i was concerned, the much hyped first formula 1 night race in the world was a non-event. believe it or not, i did not even watch the live telecast of it. millions of people all over the world watched it.

however, some good did come out of it - i received some nice pictures of singapore city scene at night.

this morning, i walked past city hall and saw that some of the barriers were still around. almost two weeks after the event and they have not completed dismantling everything. it gave me a chance to find out how these instant barriers were installed. they had these huge and very heavy blocks of concrete with holes and grips for the metal poles that held up the fence. the structure was solid and stable.

where have all these schools gone?

i was going to use this picture for a quiz when i discovered that chun see has a picture of the same building in his blog.

it then set me wondering how many a school has changed its location but there is no mention of its history and previous location in the school's present web-page.

these days, not only have many schools disappeared from the map of singapore but there are quite a number of schools that bear the name of a certain locality but have been relocated to somewhere else and this can be misleading if you based the location of a school on its name.

for example: commonwealth secondary is not at commonweath avenue but at jurong east. some other schools which are no longer at the places where their names were derived include dunearn, now at bukit batok west; river valley at west coast (temporarily at malan road); swiss cottage, now at bukit batok; tanglin secondary, now at west coast; and whitley secondary, now at bishan.

some schools have moved more than once. victoria school moved from tyrwhitt road to geylang bahru and thence to its present address at 2 siglap link. raffles institution moved out of bras basah road in the 70s to grange road and then to bishan.

some schools do change their names when they were relocated. thomson secondary is now known as north vista secondary. greenridge secondary in bukit panjang started in 1964 as dunearn secondary technical school. bukit batok east and bukit batok west were amalgated and resited and they became bukit timah primary school.

some of the secondary schools which do not exist anymore include bukit ho swee secondary, chip bee secondary, hwi yoh secondary, jalan lama secondary, kim seng technical, maju secondary, monk's hill secondary, pasir panjang secondary, rangoon road secondary, serangoon garden technical, tiong bahru secondary, upper aljunied technical, upper serangoon technical and willow avenue secondary.

some of the the primary schools that have disappeared from the scene include ama keng, anthony road girls', aroozoo, balestier boys', balestier girls', balestier mixed, batu berlayar, belvedere, birkhall, braddell rise, cairnhill, cambridge, cantonment, dorset, duchess, elling north, elling south, fowlie, geylang english, jalan daud, jalan kayu, jubilee, kwong avenue, lee kuo chuan, may north, may south, newton boys', owen, pearl bank, pearl's hill, permaisura, playfair, rayman, seraya, strathmore, sungei kadut, telok paku and tanglin tinggi.

i have not heard of some of these schools before, especially the vernacular schools. these include malay schools like kampong gelam, kota raja, padang terbakar and wessex estate; chinese schools like bin sin, chin hua, dji cheng, hua kiau and nong chong; and tamil schools like vallular, kalaimagal ang vivekananda .

so, where is the present princess elizabeth primary school?

singapore day in melbourne

my two daughters and her friends were among the 11 000 who gathered at the sidney myer music bowl to celebrate singapore day. the sidney myer music bowl is in kings domain gardens, a short walk from flinder street train station.

they were there as early as 10 a.m. to queue for the food - char kway teow, chicken rice, chilli crab, bak chor mee, bah kut teh, roti prata and ice kachang. i think they skipped some of the food because the wait was too long. the most popular had to be the char kway teow where the queueing time for one plate was one hour.