Christmas blue

Blue is my most favorite color, it is cool, but sometime can be a bit sad, right?

Anyway I am sharing some of my favorites "Blue" here with Midweek Blues here, continued from my previous post: Christmas month 2010 at Orchard road. Wishing all of  you have a very happy Christmas Month of December.

Christmas month 2010 at Orchard road

Christmas decoration at Orchard road...

I don’t really enjoy walking along Orchard Road, except during Christmas time. This time around- there are many big and elaborate Christmas decorations along the Orchard Road, as usual it is still a bit overwhelming by too many designer stores and tons of people. It is quite funny to see many local Singaporean wearing flip-flops and sundresses walking past snowmen and reindeer, taking photograph under the fake Christmas tree. A Christmas without the real Christmas trees, without the snow and without the Christmas mood, Christmas here is shopping, shopping and still shopping. Sigh.
The pictures posted here are just a few of the many pictures I took while walking along the street…

The modern building ION Orchard on the right. At night, the whole front of the building lights up in all different colors, a big Christmas tree in front of the building.

The theme for this year's Christmas light-up is "Starlit Christmas" with the decorations revolving around the star representing love, peace and joy.

Orchard Road has been divided into three colour segments - pink representing peace, blue representing joy and purple representing love.

And I love the big teddy bear in front of Takashimaya, "Live, Laught, Love"-yeah, my own wish for the coming new year 2011.

My World Tuesday

Hungry Ghost Festival

What is Hungry Ghost Festival ? Just like Halloween, but the ‘Hungry Ghost festival’ is for the Chinese. The festival that falls on the 7th month of the lunar New Year so called 7th Month Hungry Ghost Festival too.

In Chinese tradition, it is believed that during this month, the gates of hell are opened to free the hungry ghosts who then wander to seek food on Earth. A lot of people will celebrate this festival to remember their dead family members and pay tribute to them. So they bring a lot of food to display at the road side, but I never seen any ghost finished all the food, but there are a lot of birds having party with the food left over at the road side. Of course there are many “hell money” and other rubbish seen everywhere too, because the ghost is not afraid of those fine issued by Singapore government.

I am blogging this not because to complain the ashes posed a problem to our environment or the burning of “Hell Money” creates potential of danger…In fact there are some fun activities come along with this Ghost Festival, I was thinking want to take some photos of those fun activities during the month, but I was too busy to do so.

Personally, I don’t believe in any form of paying respect to those dead family members, do they really can come out from so called hell to eat the food, drink the water? Lol. Why can’t we treat those who are alive well and no need to wait until they left from this world. Be good to our parents, spend more time with them, listen to their nagging, pay attention to their loneliness, try our best to make them happy when they alive, treasure the time with the family, treasure the people around us, isn’t it more important than offering food, burning incense when they are dead?

Well, some post about the Ghost Festival  here and here…Just to share the Singapore Chinese culture with my blog friends from Tuesday My World. I hope I never offend anyone.

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Night views from the Singapore Flyer

Should I say it is night views? Actually pictures below were token in the morning about 6am, a special trip organized by church to Singapore flyer.

…some aerial views of Marina Bay and esplanade from the Singapore Flyer,

 

…it's a wonderful sensation. Standing at a stunning 165m from the ground, enjoy the breathtaking, panoramic views of the Marina Bay, our island city and beyond.

It was unfortunate that my camera is not good enough to capture the wonderful scenery.

This is my world-Singapore!

…and this is my favorite one to use for the post One single impress: pensive.

Looking at the sky: Singapore National Day

       

Sepia Scenes: Sky.Home.Singapore

I am still looking for the feeling of being a Singaporean after almost 16 years here…   

Home is the place where,
when you have to go there,
they have to take you
~Robert Frost 

 Sepia Scenes!

Looking at the sky behind the temple

Looking at the sky behind a temple…

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve-My World Tuesday

Location: 177 Hindhede Drive Singapore 589333 Tel :(65) 6468 5736 Getting There Take the MRT to Newton Station (NS21), then take SMRT Bus 171

Bukit Timah hill is the highest hill in Singapore, with an official height of 164 meters or 538 feet this is the highest point in the country. It is located in the centre-west of Singapore, a very good place for tracking and enjoy the nature. I went there for a walk last Friday. It was so relaxing to look at the sky through the trees.

 

I took about 45 minutes to walk around in this ancient forest and I didn’t have enough time to explore some interesting facts in nature, I am sure I will go there again. Here are some photos were taken in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

You can find quite a lot of long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis) in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. They are often seen jumping from car to car in the car park, resting on the roof top of the office  building, or swinging from the tree to tree. 

 

One of the enjoyable things to walk in the forest is the pleasant and tranquil feeling. The only sounds we hear were cicadas chirping away and some other insects buzzing away.

 

The sounds of nature are the most beautiful music for you to enjoy in the quiet forest. I was trying to look for cicada but couldn’t get to see any one.  The Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is a typical tropical rainforest, you can find a lot of interesting trees here. The tropical rainforest is similar to the human world in some aspects. Those capable of getting the sunlight would grow up tall and strong. Whichever that can't get the enough sunlight, would be growing at the bottom as a shorter tree or a shrub.

Some trees like those people in the office, step on other people’s shoulder to climb to the top, take other people’s hard work as their own credit. They are like Lianas in the rainforest. Lianas are woody climbers. Climbing from tree to tree, growing up to the top to get more sunlight.    

Long-tailed Macaque-Six Words Saturday #10

“My parents are kissing , I'm behind .”

The three long-tailed Macaque gave me a lot of fun this weekend. I guess they are father, mother, and of course, behind the little one is baby long-tailed Macaque. Six words Saturday is a very interesting meme. All that's necessary to participate is to post your own six words, add a linkto the blog hosted by Cate and visit all other participations. This week I would like to share with you this photo of lovely long-tailed Macaque. I were so close to them when the photo was taken. Well, I will tell you where I took this photo and some more other interesting photos will be posted next week.

What is the baby long-tailed Macaque looking for?

Camera Critters, this meme is all about photos of animals/critters. Hope you like these three lovely long-tailed Macaque and visit Camera Critters for more fun.

ION Orchard Singapore

I visited the new shopping plaza, Orchard ION on last weekend.

Orchard Road is well known worldwide as a high class shopping area in Singapore. You can find most of the branded shops in the shopping complexes like Takashimaya, Wisma Atria, The Heeren, Centrepoint, Plaza Singapura plus a whole lot more. Now it has a hottest addition – ION Orchard, which is designed by leading architecture firm Benoy. Located at 2 Orchard Turn, it is besides Wisma Atria, opposite Wheelock Place in addition to being opposite Tangs Plaza (different facing). The nearby MRT station is Orchard MRT station.

 

 
ION Orchard promises to bring together the world’s top brands for their stores, all in one shopping compound. It has a total of eight levels of shopping space, four above ground level, and four below, bringing a total of 66,000 square meters of retail space. I was told there are over 300 retail, food and beverage and entertainment outlets can be found there. I am not that kind of crazy in shopping lady, so I just walk around in this huge shopping plaza aimlessly, just like the few other people I saw. The shopping mall was more or less empty although it was in the weekend. All the high end shops were there but also quite a few 'coming soon' shops.

 

The people like me do window shopping more than the people who are really buying something. I ended up to spend an hour time in Zara, and bought two jeans there. However, there are a few of the photos of ION at night which I would like to share with you here at TUESDAY My World.

Singaporean?

What is your reaction? If you saw this in a crowded MRT train with a lot of standing passengers? My friend said make his blood boll.

I sometime experience such situation, for one Sunday, saw one man with the son were sitting in the MRT like this, and there is a old lady beside them, quite old lady standing beside them, I quietly told the father, “could you please give the seat to this aunty? ” Guess what he said?

He answered me: “Is she your grandmother? Why you bring her out sign she is so old liao, take taxi lar. “ I was just about to say back something, but the son, who is about 10-11 years old, stood up and gave his seat to the old lady…The father was staring at me…

Singaporean? This is ugly Scenic Sunday in my life.