Travel Virus

In Singapore the is always a reason to celebrate!

It can be buddha’s birthday, national day, christmas, chinese lovers’ day…

For taoists this month has been special because Hungry Ghosts are coming out, so they burn incense sticks and offer food on little altars, so that the ghosts go away. Probably some resemblance to our Christian’s day of the dead on November 2nd.

Now it’s the Muslim celebrate Ramadan and the Malay areas of Singapore are all equipped with colorful lights, bazaars, street food and street shops!

Just behind the muslim festival there was a christian gospel rally: it was quite surprising for me to see the very entertaining style of “seeing God’s love” – as a friend told me. There was music and the pastor asked all the people to stand and clap at the rhythm of the music, then there was a capella performance, quite funny. It remind me of the giornata dei giovani i attended in Verona a few times, but it seems that here it’s happening more than once a year and it’s not only for teenagers!

The the pastor told a very long story, translated on the fly in Mandarin by a Chinese speaking pastor, it seemed a TV show, quite entertaining!

The intercultural weekend finished with a cooking class, held by Jennifer – a real Singaporean – teaching me, a Taiwanese and an American couchsurfer how to cook (and eat!) Japanese Takoyaki

Believe it or not, this is also Singapore!
For me it’s the most exotic side of Singapore, where the traditional Indian culture is still real and not cleaned off by western emulation.
See anything strange?

Today I visited the highest peak of Singapore, Bukit Timah: 164 meters above the sea level – yes, it’s not a typo, just above a hundred meters!
Nevertheless it’s a good place where to spend the day away from the typical city life of Singapore, immerse in equatorial nature with giant trees, huge leaves and incredible humidity (for European standards).
The wildlife is also interesting: beside some huge (scary) ants we met several monkeys jumping and climbing trees. Three monkeys even had babies, so cute… well honestly quite ugly, but very expressive. The children were hugging their monkey-mamas almost like humans would do.
An unusual corner of Singapore.

Sunday August 9th Singapore celebrated its 44th birthday, as they say here. I think that’s a funny and more understandable way to rephrase national day. Events took place all around the city and a scenic parade in Marina Bay. At night they had some fireworks for five minutes (well… i need to invite them to the Notte d’incanto in Italy to show them some good ones…)
Singaporeans seem to be very proud of their nation and recent achievements (unlike Italians) and take national day very seriously! Monday was again a national holiday, and I visited St. Andrews Cathedral, right in the center of the city and above City Hall metro station, which seems to be very convenient to get the people go to mass
I was surprised to find a very modern church, despite being build 150 years ago: a considerable array of LCD widescreen TVs are hanging down everywhere in the church, to make you see the preist from close, i suppose. The garden features an entertaining fish pond, amphitheater, modern museum in a glass-covered building and a big gazebo with several tables and chairs. A peculiar oasis in the middle of a very crowded city.

Last weekend I had the pleasure to be invited to a local malay wedding, by my friend Jennifer, who’s colleague Maslinda was getting married. The wedding was organized at the ground floor of the condominium where they live, with buffet spicy dinner, wonderful decorations and live music. There was also an entertainer, that you can see in the picture: I had to come all the way to Asia to see a globalized wedding: Malay couple, getting married in Singapore in American style!

I’m back to good old Europe for a conference, the IV09 (Information Visualization) where I presented my work this morning.
Luckily the conference is in one of my absolute favorite cities… Barcelona!
The Sagrada Familia is still there, still beautiful, still unfinished, so it gives us a reason to go back again and again to see Gaudì’s masterpiece.

I love Singapore East Coast park every day more and more!
They just opened the “Xtreme SkatePark” a facility with ramps for so called extreme skate and bicycle performances.
Today it was already quite crowded, also with several western teenagers… maybe I’m too old for this kind of stuff…