Christmas Lights 2009

This time of the year many Sydneysiders go to great extent in putting on Christmas lights.

They range from the basic . . . .

. . . to something quite elaborate . . . .

. . . where even their boats are decorated . . .


. . . their windows become a display of nic nacs . . .


. . . and house owners entertain children !

Christmas 2009 at Singapore's Orchard Road

Orchard Road is a sea of lights again. This year there is a new building - ION - above Orchard MRT station.

Regular lunch meeting with friends

Our regular lunches among some ex-Esso colleagues now include spouses. Here is one held back in winter, at our favourite Laksa place (To's) followed by coffee at a cafe.

Sculpture by the Sea

This event is held annually at Tamarama Beach near Bondi. The following a selection of this year's exhibits.

Email #9 - Singapore and a summary

My last travel email comes from the comfort of the SIA airport lounge of Changi Airport where we are staying before flying back early tomorrow morning. We have been here over the past few days and attended Dad's 90th birthday lunch earlier today.

There is not much that need to be said about Singapore, mainly because we have been here often. The achievements of this island state are well known and undeniable but not much need to be added to that. I have come to the conclusion that Singapore is actually quite unremarkable, not because it does things badly but because it never tries to do anything more than being better than competition even though it does that well indeed. The World Economic forum ranks it third in the world in competitiveness, after Switzerland and USA. But the drive to excel seems to be only above competition but not excel for excellence' sake.

It is interesting to compare Singapore against Denmark which we just visited. Denmark ranked a close fourth behind Singapore in the WE forum study and is a quite a different country. Singapore should study closely why a country such as Denmark, a high cost and high tax country can be competitive, quite contrary to the alarming warnings given by Singapore leaders about the dire consequences not following the policies being pursued.

Even the casual visitor will not fail to notice that Singapore competitiveness seems to come out of its drive to reduce costs through wages. The 5 million people in the city today has 1 million guest workers many serving in the low-wage service and building industries. The reason always given is that Singaporeans do not want to perform those jobs. Of course not, at those wages !

In the prominent example of the metro, Singapore MRT is efficient, well staffed and trains come often, about once every 3-7 minutes. It seems they come only often enough to clear the platforms, and it would be better if they come a bit more frequently to reduce the wait and the congestions in the carriages. In Copenhagen, trains come a bit more often; they are consequently less crowded. There were no ticket sellers, no ticket collectors, no ticket scanners and not even train drivers. That must be how efficiency is driven in that country. And of course they collect very high taxes in order to pay well, provide free education, medical services, good pensions and unemployment benefits. All of which made a more relaxed society; and interestingly the taxi drivers don't complain about their government for the high taxes.

And where does all that leave Australia ?

cheers,
Kin Mun

Email #8 - Copenhagen in Denmark

In Copenhagen we are staying at Nyhavn, a touristy waterside suburb with nice apartments and restaurants in converted warehouses. Yesterday and today we experienced the other end of town, the bottom end of society.

Just a short walk from the railway station, we came to a block of Chinese and Thai shops, something like a miniature Chinatown. Then, turning the corner, we came to a couple of men huddling around a lit cigarette lighter flame preparing for a heroin hit in the shelter of the entrance to a store that was closed for Sunday. Further on a few prostitutes paraded in as bare a clothing as they could bare in the wintry weather outside sex shops and rundown stores. This morning we took a walk around Christiana, a so called "freetown" community set up as an alternate society. The community was surprisingly large, about 1000 odd people living in untidy quarters covered with bold graffiti-like decorations. A range of drugs was openly on sale. This is the extreme end of free living I suppose, but it is hard to admire this so called freedom, and not surprising perhaps, they do not allow photographs and depend on tourists and welfare for survival.

It must be the end of the trip for us for we are getting a little tired of the monoculture cuisine wise. Where is the Chao Hor Fun and Yum Cha ? Around somewhere I am sure but one has to look hard for them.

Tomorrow we fly back to Singapore to catch up with more exotic foods and thaw out. It will be good not to have to pull on and peel off as we enter or leave a building.

cheers, Kin Mun
.

Waterfront houses
Obligatory photo of "The Little Mermaid"

Waterfront houses.

State Museum for Kunst and leftovers from a party.

Interesting modern pieces among more traditional ones at Kunst.

Email #7 - St Petersburg and Copenhagen in Denmark

Cp Copenhagen city hall

Nyhavn restaurant strip.

We arrived in Copenhagen yesterday from St Petersburg. It was most interesting to contrast the two countries, one former socialist state in an euphoric embrace of capitalism while the other a near socialist utopia but not wanting to be called one.

Most of the time in Russia we have been pleasantly surprised by the friendliness. On the final day however, in fact on the final hour or two at the airport it seems Russia was determined to reveal its true self to us. There were a number of incidents, the first took place at the airport entry security checkpoint similar to those in many countries. After we got pass the X-ray, metal detector and patting down, we discovered one more piece of suitcase outside. The guard said I could retrieve the suitcase to be put through the X-ray machine, but another insisted that I go through the whole process of personal checks all over again and even insisted that I remove my belt which I was not required to minutes earlier. There have been many instances of inconsistencies in Russia, sometimes stringent rigidity at other times slackness - such as metal detectors ringing alarms but no one manning them to worry about why alarms had gone off. Later in the transit lounge, we found that waiters will not give us the bill unless we request it from the specific person who served us.

Then we boarded the SAS flight to Copenhagen and it was like a breath of fresh air. The steward spoke excellent English, was relaxed and joked with us. At the airport we were not required to fill in any forms, the immigration officer stamped our passport with hardly a glance at us.

The taxi driver told us that medical care and education are free and unemployment benefits generous. And the baby bonus goes on till the baby is 18 years old! For that, the Danes pay a minimum of 40 percent income tax plus 25 percent GST ! So most people are left with at most 30 percent of salary to live on. Everything is horrendously expensive but everyone seems to be spending as though there is no tomorrow. After all, why save when there is pension guaranteed for everyone.

Copenhagen city centre is quiet but beautiful and was crowded as it was Kulturnatten or Culture night when many things are open till past midnight - if you have the money to spend that is ! Today we visited the Rosenborg Castle and the viewed the crown jewels. They are poor cousins of the Czars by comparison. Well, as Kay said, that is why they are still here while the Czars are gone ! The guard said the royalties don't wear crowns anymore. Just "you are King and you are Queen, and that's all”.

cheers,
Kin Mun

Email #6 - St Petersburg

A few hours to go before we leave for the airport for the flight to Copenhagen. Yesterday we spent the morning at the Hermitage Museum again. We decided to go back again because there is so much to see there. I went back to the section on French impressionists - they have a good collection of Cezanne, Monet, Matisse,Degas, Van Gogh and also a couple of rooms of Picassos. Then I discovered yet another room full of impressionists from the same period downstairs which were not even mentioned in the guide!

Peter the Great Memorial Hall ("Small throne room")

A Van Gogh in the Hermitage's collection

An item from western China.

St George Hall and throne.

The Winter Palace - part of the Hermitage Museum - view from the hisoric Palace Square.

After that I wandered around and found myself in the Asian art section. They only have a small collection but what the items they have were historically interesting. A collection of Japanese antique items was marked "held in Berlin museum before 1945" - which is saying to me that they looted them when they got to Berlin on the last days of Hitler's war mania. Also there were some very old frescoes carved out of caves in western China dating back to the 5th and 6th century. When we were in Dunhuang in Gansu province we saw the site where the frescoes come from. They also have items from the Beziklik caves in Turpan in Xinjiang province that we also visited. When we were there we saw many frescoes with the faces defaced by invading Muslims because it was against their religion to depict human faces. Since the collection in Hermitage was in better conditions, I wonder if they were taken before the Muslims got in and therefore saved them, or did they take those that escaped the vandalism.

We went our separate ways. Yvonne stayed on at the Hermitage till they closed, Kay went to look the inside of a cathedral with the macabre name of Cathedral on Split Blood while I went to the Blockade museum at the edge of town near the entrance to the city from Moscow. During the second world war, the city then called Leningrad survived a lengthy German siege lasting over 900 days at the cost of more than a million lives. Given the scale of the suffering, it was a surprisingly simple memorial, a beautiful circular design with socialist statues above and just one room of items from the war below. Included among the exhibits were residents' letters, soldiers' guns and interestingly a violin and a fireman’s helmet belonging to the composer Shostokovich who stayed behind and composed his famous symphony while under enemy gunfire. There was a movie with no commentary, just scenes from the war, poignant in its silence.

Last night we celebrated our last night in Russia with dinner at a restaurant called 1913 recommended by friends who were in Russia not long ago. It had an elaborate menu; by now we are quite well versed in Cyrillic scripts to identify the groups of dishes. I had Tablaka, a kind of barbecued chicken pressed into the shape of a tobacco leaf, Kay had some lamb stew dish with ratatouille while Yvonne had an interesting eggplant vegetarian dish. Yvonne has given up attempting to be vegetarian most times in Russia; there is no soy products in sight anywhere (her source of proteins).

Getting to the restaurant was a challenge. We discovered the restaurant was some distance away from the metro and we had to find our directions and way to the restaurant through deserted streets in a rundown neighbourhood - a venture which all tourist guides warned against. After the dinner, for safe measures, we decided to ask the restaurant to book us a taxi to take us back to the comfort of Holiday Inn. Even though the taxi did not have a meter, the driver kindly charged us a reasonably ripped off price of 400 roubles or $16 AUD for a ten minute journey. He was happy and so were we !

The rest of our journey will probably be less interesting, certainly less challenging.

Cheers,
Kin Mun

Email #5 - St Petersburg

In my previous email I mentioned about the horrendous traffic in St Petersburg. With the arrival of capitalism the number of cars must have grown rapidly. Any time during the day many of the city streets were choked. Somehow many prefer this to the fast and frequent underground metro. Yesterday, after the Hermitage Museum, we were to go to the grand Peterhof Palace and Gardens about 40km outside of St Petersburg by coach. It took us a long time to get out of the CBD and then there were more bottlenecks outside the city. Then we found that the road that leads directly to the Palace was closed due to road works and an alternate route had to be taken. Eventually the tour guide abandoned the trip and refunded our money (it was an optional tour). It seems that capitalism has its pluses and minuses. During the Communist times there were only two private cars in the city, we were told. I guess it would be Siberia for those who closed roads without warning.

Prior to the trip we were worried about the warnings regarding the law and order in this country and especially at St Petersburg. Even the tourist brochure in the hotel room warned that Asians and Africans should take extra care because of incidents in the past. We are pleased to say that we have not come across anything but politeness so far, although, when a guard spotted me standing with our group of mainly Caucasian Aussies and Americans listening to the tour guide at the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, she came walked over and wanted to evict me; not forcefully but gently tugging at my arms. Fortunately the tour guide spotted it, came over, put her arms around me and told the guard that I was one of the group ! It was probably that the Russians are yet to be used to diversity. By and large we feel very relaxed and comfortable going around even by ourselves. In fact Yvonne has gone off on her own to make her way by metro to the Hermitage to have a second visit. There were lots of memorials to the Second World War; not surprising since they lost 20 plus millions people. We saw the limit of German advance outside Moscow and a huge memorial on the road into St Petersburg formerly Leningrad. Lots of statues of Lenin too, some looking like he was about to hail a cab.

More later !

Cathedral of Peter and Paul (but no Mary)

Bridges, canals and traffic in St Petersburg.

"The Aurora" - The boat that fired the shot that started a revolution.

Lenin "hailing a cab".

One of many small country dachas

Email #4 - Novgorod and St Petersburg

In reviewing my emails for this blog posts, I noticed a major error. With the rapidity we moved from one city to the next, I became so confused that I wrongly attributed my experience at the Cathedral of Peter and Paul as being in Novgorod when it should be St Petersburg !

Memorial to all famous Russians !

Bell Tower.

Cathedral of Holy Wishdom (St Sophia)

Here I am in the Hermitage Museum of St Petersburg. St Petersburg is a beautiful city but probably has the world’s worst location and climate. It had been freezing each time we stepped outside, due not to the temperatures (probably 2 deg this morning) but the wind chill. Traffic jams have been worse than Bangkok because roads have to traverse the many rivers, canals and islands on which the city was built by the arbitrary decision of Peter the Great.

The Heritage Museum will take us weeks to properly cover, and we only had 2 hours to quickly look through the impressive palace of Catherine the Great and the huge collection of art and treasures. Free day tomorrow, we will come back on our own .

We arrived at St Petersburg yesterday after a stopover at Novgorod, the old capital, another beautiful city with the many magnificent buildings within the historic fortress, the Nizhni Kremlin.

In the afternoon in St Petersburg, we visited the Cathedral of Peter and Paul – and where’s Mary, some asked – to view the tombs of past royalties including Catherine the Great, Peter the Great as well as the Romanovs killed after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Unfortunately I have only have 20 min here in the Hermitage Coffee Shop before catching the bus to another palace, so more later.
cheers,
Kin Mun

Email #3 - Moscow

Our last day in Moscow, the first of our tour. It was very cold in the morning, mainly due to the wind chill, when we got up to Sparrow Hill (previously called Stalin Hill), the tallest point of Moscow district at the Moscow University, to get a panoramic view of Moscow.

After that we had our proper tour of the Kremlin - saw the Armory and the cathedrals. The armory also has collection of artifacts belonging to past czars, such as wedding dresses, while the cathedral square was stunning with the very striking domes or “onion tops” of the orthodox churches. Unfortunately without the use of my laptop I could not post photos while travelling; it was too difficult to make use of the internet cafes and too expensive to use the hotel facilities. Just have to wait until I get back to civilization !

We were at Red Square again today. Interesting sight - at the war memorial there were many Asian weddings. The bride and groom walked through the barricades to lay flowers at the eternal flame. Some the couples were Vietnamese. It seemed they came all the way to Moscow to get married like the Japanese do in Australia.

Tomorrow we move on to Novgorod and then the day after St Petersburg.

Cheers, Kin Mun

Moscow University

Yvonne well-chilled.

Moscow (previously Lenin) Stadium

Email #2 Moscow

On our third day in Moscow, we did our duty to the great socialist cause - visited Lenin at his mausoleum. We were surprised by the long queue but it moved reasonably quickly. Weather was cool, close to zero probably but not too much wind chill fortunately. We went through security and walked past heroes of the Soviet Union before going down to the basement of the mausoleum when he lie. Just like Mao (Kay told me) he had a warm reddish light shining on him making him glow with life; unlike Mao, his hands were visible. We were not allowed to stop, just file past, in and then out just as quickly. Outside we passed other leaders such as Chenienko, Andropov and Stalin himself (he used to lie next to Lenin but was buried by Khruschev).

We then visited the Diamond Fund, a collection of the finest treasures of past including the Romanovs. Once one viewed the large range of diamonds and other precious stones then one can appreciate the Revolution; the diamond studded crown made the Queen’s looked paltry.

It being a Saturday, Red Square was a hive of activities. We saw a dozen weddings and lots of local and foreign tourists. The biggest organised tour groups were the Chinese, guided by Russian guides speaking in Mandarin.

So far we have been quite impressed with the new Russian society, even though we should not judge Russia by central Moscow. We have had bad reports but we found a rather civil society – minimal push and impatience in the crowded road traffic, underground trains, and long queues. We found helpfulness even though the communication barrier is always there. As a sign of our relaxed state - the three of us are in different places right now: I headed for the Internet cafe, Kay went back to hotel while Yvonne went by herself to a Russian art gallery.

For us from Sydney, the metro has been a highlight of Moscow. The statistics say they carry 9 million a day, more than NY and London combined. Trains are old and very noisy but they arrive so frequently that they sometimes have to wait for the preceding train to vacate the station. We buy a combined ticket of 10 costing 200 R or 8 AUD which we could share; the fare is a flat rate of 20 R per trip regardless of distance. The transfers between lines can be complicated because the different stations have different names even when they are linked together. Of course we are slow in reading the Cyrillic script but it was fun. Yesterday we visited a couple of stations famous for its Socialist art decorations, complete with Lenin's bust, hammer and sickle insignias, memorials to socialist struggles, and mozaics of Lenin addressing crowds. Probably because those were tourist attractions, there were some young loutish characters hanging around watched by a few serious looking policemen.

Tonight we joined the tour proper. We will have a full day of guided tours tomorrow before proceeding to Novgorad and then St Petersburg.
More to come in the next few days.
Cheers,
Kin Mun

Email #1 Moscow

This is one of a series of posts which are edited versions of my emails sent during our trip.

Our overnight flight from Singapore to Moscow yesterday was uneventful but comfortable on a relatively new 777-300 series. The plane was quite surprisingly full as we thought we would be the only ones foolish enough to go to Russia in cool October; then we discovered that there were many Americans as well as the plane goes on to Houston. The 10-hour flight allowed us to rest well. At the Russian immigration all of us received a very thorough stare by the officer even though we had “invitations” to enter the country, a “must” condition for a visa. Eventually we were judged acceptable; Kay had to smile to match her photo. The transfer to the Moscow Marriott hotel in downtown Tverskaya St was as arranged and flawless, but the drive (in a Mercedes van) took nearly 2 hours in bad peak hour traffic. We were to learn that traffic jams are very much part of life for the average Muscovite. The hotel was good but expensive, especially for the first two nights we were on our own and did not enjoy the group discount rates. With all the alarming warnings, we did not want to venture on our own to a cheaper place.

Tried to use the internet facilities at Marriott but the Russian lady told me it was going to cost me 286 rubles (or A$12) for 15 min; she added kindly, “it’s very expensive, do you really want to use it?” Needless to say, we passed on that.

We gave ourselves the first nearly 3 days on our own. On the first day we walked down Tverskaya St, equivalent to Sydney’s George St, down to the Red Square and had our first look at the iconic Square, St Basil’s and Lenin’s mausoleum. Lenin’s mausoleum was closed by the time we got there but we could get into St basil and had a look inside. St Basil’s was smaller than I expected and since it is made up of several churches (more like chapels) each church was really tiny. We learnt about the iconostasis, apparently the Russian Orthodox churches have the same set up everywhere.

After the visit to St basil we went to the Gym (pronounced Gum) shopping centre, a giant version of Queen Victoria building, full of expensive shops. We then walked back, it was then we realised how far we had walked and we were exhausted. We went back to the hotel to have a rest before going out to an Italian place for dinner. No sign of real Russian food !

The second morning we mastered the Moscow Metro, a real feat. Apart from the fact that we could hardly read the Cyrillic script and there were 9 million of Muscovites travelling each day, we managed to find our way to the Pushkin Fine Arts museum. It was one of the best museum to visit, a fine collection of impressionist artists of the 19th and 20th century including Cezanne, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Picasso. I never knew they had such a good collection.
Getting around is not easy without a good grasp of Cyrillic script. We struggled to remember that P=R, H=N, N=I, C= S etc and there are a few Russian characters not used in Latin alphabet. Apart from remembering that PECTOPAH is RESTORAN, we had to pause and decipher each time. Luckily the trains come every 1 min or so, we were not rushed to catch the train. Because we could not understand the announcements and there were no signs to read from within the trains, we had to count the stations to get off.

After the many warnings about Russia we had before we left for the trip, we were more pleasantly surprised from the first few days; nearly all Muscovites we encountered were very friendly. The younger sets are very fashionable, make us feel drab in our tourist clothes. The trains are efficient but very, very noisy. Next time, I will bring ear plugs.

In a small way we got on to a bad start. On the first day I dropped my Nokia N95 and smashed the screen. Though it still works, I could not read the screen. Luckily I had a second 3G phone to switch the SIM card to so I could still make and receive calls. I also found that the charger to my laptop was missing - could have been left behind in Sydney or perhaps in Singapore during the stopover . Without that we had to rely on Internet cafes. We first have to find out the Russian scripts are for the internet, and then locate them!

Till the next time, as Kay said, here is all of us
From Russia with Love

Kin Mun

Ah . . . Spring !

Close ups of flowers in the garden at this time of the year.

. . . Prunuses . . .

. . . roses . . .

. . . Pot-wine magnolias . . .

. . . Bougainvilleas . . .

. . . Green Goddesses (Zantedeschia) . . .

. . . "I-can't-remember-its-name" . . .

. . . Clivias . . .

. . . Deutzias (I think) . . .

. . . Another Zantedeschias . . .

and probably the most spectacular,
. . . Bird of Paradise . . .