Wednesday in Singapore
In the hotel, to save energy and money, they sa they will only change the towels when you want them to, but they change all towels, used or not, everyday. Today I found out why. The instructions say, "hanging the towels on the towel rack would be a good indication to us that you want to reuse them." Now in the US this could logically be followed by, "but we will replace them anyway." this being my first time outside the US I am enjoying the subtle, and not so subtle differences in Englishes. I get to hear 'whilst' and 'spoilt', conjugations we don't have in American English. My mom and I went to The National Museum of Singapore. We went on a docent lead tour of the history portion of the museum. The docent was very good and I really got a good grasp of Singaporean history, which I had known nothing about.
This is looking up at the rotunda entrance of the museum, each of the stained glass windows havea different meaning.
I guess this didn't turn out as easy to see as I hoped. From the ceiling you can see some reddish things hanging from the ceiling in a curve shape. They are actually chandeliers, with the crystals attached so they don't move, which swing back and "perform" one of 90 different "dances" every 15 minutes.
Another view of the chandeliers
This is a sculpture that represents the diversity of Singaporeans coming together. It is made so that the separate pipes could be taken apart and reassembled in a different configuration. We decided it wouldn't be a good idea to try.
This is an intricately carved funeral cart and embroidered coffin cover for a wealthy Indian Resident of Singapore. This was an example that there were some wealthy non-british during colonial times.
This is David Marshall, although he was born in Singapore, his parents were Iranian Jews.He was the first Singaporean that was elected, by popular vote, to a position that had been created by the british in hopes of staving off calls for independence.
Wednesday evening we all were invited, by Dr. Chou (a doctor from Singapore, who is a good friend of Dr. Lee's, and part of the wearable Kidney team) to a very fancy dinner with specially chosen wines from his vast collection. Following Max's example I took a picture of each course. Each dish was elaborately plated and very delicious. There were 5 different wines served. As most of you know I don't drink, because I don't think alcohol tastes good. It's too bad I didn't read Layah's wine tasting articles. The champagne wasn't too bad. The white wine was ok, but of the 3 reds, each was worse than the one before.( I hope Dr. Chou doesn't find out. I'm sure real wine connoisseurs would have appreciated each of them). In the past for these elegant dinners, they had made special dishes for my father who doesn't eat pork , shellfish, or non-kosher fish. This time none of the dishes had pork or shellfish.
This was the first dish. A steamed mushroom stuffed thing, foie gras, and a deep fried cute vegetable thing. Notice the heart shaped soy sauce dish.
This was fish in broth. It had what I thought were green onions slivered on top, but they had a kind of gingery flavor.
These were two fried cakes which were made of fish and other things.
.
I think this was the most artful dish. It was string beans and eggs and other stuff on a shaped lettuce leaf. The little thing was extremely thinly sliced cucumber fanned out. It looked like a spider to me.
This was a tastey combination of lamb and maybe edamame beans.
A cute little grilled squab? very tasty.
This was made of fried noodles that you sprinkled with sugar and a dark vinegar.
Dessert was assorted local melons, papaya, which doesn't look or taste like papayas that I have had in the US, watermelon, and something that was similar to honeydew melon.
There were about 12 people there for dinner. The conversation was lively and ranged from talk about the AWAK( www.awaktech.com ) to life's passions, history of the artificial kidney field and how different people and organizations got involved in the field, jokes, and more. We different get back to the hotel until after 11, but the good thing about that was I could send texts to Dave at work at 8 in the morning.
Whew! Finished for now. Good night