pumpkins grown in singapore

visited this farm featured in seenthisscenethat's blog. the farm - kin yan agrotech - located at 220 neo tiew crescent is not at the road level; that may explain why i have missed it all this time that i have been touring the kranji area. the farm is open every day of the week, from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

after viewing the wheat grass and the different types of mushrooms in the special enclosure, i went to look at the plants that were outside. the aloe vera did not really interest me because i had seen similar ones at kok fah. the mexican cactus was also not something i was seeing for the first time. on seeing the pumpkin vine on the ground, that perked me up.

the pumpkin plant has male and female flowers. the second picture shows a male flower and the one below it shows a female flower. the female flower can be identified by the bulge at its base.

these days, with fewer bees and other pollinators around, humans can play a supporting role. when the birds and the bees do not do it, then man must come in and play his part. to hand pollinate, pick a male flower, remove its petals and then dab the pollens on the stigma of the female flower. the pollens have to be mature. you can tell if the pollens are mature when they readily come off the stamen and onto your finger.

i talked to one of the helpers on another farm and he was telling me that this has been the way - hand pollination - when they were growing pumpkins in the 70s.

graffiti - is it a form of art?

i was walking alongside the canal behind chestnut avenue when i saw some graffiti on the walls of the canal. they look like the work of some youths who had too much time on their hands. this reminds me of the graffiti that i came across when i travelled by train in melbourne.

my initial impression of graffiti was that it was some scribblings by gang members who were out to mark their territory or some rebellious youths' way of self-expression. i think graffiti started as a form of vandalism - unsolicited marking of a private or public property. in fact, they first started appearing on the trains in new york city.


a piece of graffiti art from melbourne

however, after viewing some of the pieces in melbourne, my perception of it has changed. i would say that graffiti has evolved into a form of art. i am not referring to the graffiti that you find in some of our public and coffee shop toilets. those telephone numbers and crude and suggestive drawings cannot qualify as art.

the complexity and size of some of the graffiti on the walls of buildings near the railway stations suggest that these pieces were not the work of one individual but more like the combined effort of a group of graffiti artists.

there appears to be a standard way in which the graffiti artists form the letters, though sometimes reading the calligraphy may need a bit of deciphering. the mutlicolour works which they produce exhibit creativity and vibrancy and have an aesthetic appeal of their own.

sentul, santol or lolly fruit

some tropical fruits like the sentul, abiu, egg fruit and butterfruit which do not originate from malaysia or singapore are sometimes cast aside by singaporeans as being inedible or avoided because we do not know much about the fruit as we have not tasted or eaten them. however, some of these fruits that we side-step are actually sought after in their country of origin and in some of our neighbouring countries.

if you have been to qian hu fish farm you will have seen the egg fruit on some of the trees lining the road that leads to the farm. nobody seems to be interested in the fruit as the ripe fruits are strewn on the ground near the tree. along the same stretch you can also find the sentul fruit tree. again, because we know next to nothing about this fruit, the ripe fruits are left to rot. if you turn into jalan semangka, you will find many of the surinam cherry trees fruiting. the over-ripe cherries are all over the ground.

today, i took a drive to track 14 and jalan lekar as i wanted to check out the place mentioned in chun see's blog. it was at the junction of the two roads that i came across the sentul trees.

the sentul, which is known by the name 'santol' in the philippines, is a fruit popular with the filipinos. in indonesia, the same fruit is called kechapi. another name for it is the lolly fruit because you have to suck it to get the flavour. the seeds of the sentul are not edible.

the fruit looks like an over-sized duku. one variety has fruit as big as a softball. some filipinos eat the santol with rock salt. they also made the pulp into a jam, after removing the seeds.

脸青青 face green green (teochew song)

sent to me by nah. i had come across it on youtube before he sent it to me.

hoppy herbal duck in johor bahru

i first tasted hoppy restaurant's herbal duck when my ex-colleague shin huat took us to this coffee-shop along jalan wang ah fook. he being a former malaysian from the state of johor, i would trust him to know some of the better eating places in johor bahru. the dongguai duck that we had tasted better than any we have eaten in singapore, and it was comparatively cheap.

i went back to the shop one more time on my own. subsequently, when i went to the place at jalan wang ah fook, i found the shutters down. it was after another visit that i learnt that they had moved out of the place.

one day when i took the bus into johor bahru with my regular walking and makan kaki victor samuel i mentioned how i missed the herbal duck at jalan wang ah fook. he then took me to the main branch which was along jalan harimau, much closer to the causeway.

hoppy restaurant sells a whole range of herbal ducks which include shi chuan, pi par, ginseng, dongguai, ming lor and hong kong style. basically, the ducks are roasted in the same way; it is the herbal gravy that gives it the special flavour. so, if you buy a ginseng herbal duck, you will get a roast duck which has been doused with ginseng gravy.

a takeaway herbal duck costs rm$38, which works out to less than s$20. each time i go to the shop to buy 'takeaway', while i am waiting, they will serve me a complimentary drink. they do that for all their 'takeaway' customers.