Ramadan

Continuing on the seasonal delicacies, not only are we enjoying what the mid-Autumn festival has to offer but the ramadan also is full on. On top of the moon cakes introduced yesterday there is a huge array of dates products. Imported from Iran come the rounds. Rounds can be found in different flavours added to the dates: nuts, almonds, etc... The round pictured above is made of dates and pistachios. And as advertised on the packaging: "Each bite is rewarding from its delicious beginning to its nutritious end. So tear one open and always finish satisfied".

Looking for the perfect Mooncake

It's mooncake season madness! Mooncakes are traditional Chinese pastries typically round with a crust filled with lotus seed paste and containing a full egg yolk in its center. They are mainly produced and eaten during the mid-autumn festival and it is right now pure madness everywhere. In the newspaper this morning there were maybe 30 different pages of adds full of moon cakes. Chinese colleagues in the office spend hours discussing new flavours and where to find the perfect mooncake. When asked about my tastes I was directed to Hong Kong's Peninsula Connoisseur' mini egg custards mooncake. I went to trace them at the big display in Takashimaya and my colleague was right! It is exactly the kind of pastry I like. They come in a big box of eight and the cakes themselves are pretty small which is a good thing since they are very rich. Price tag: 35 SGD.

Happy crowd

I am impressed by the happy atmosphere the Rainforest World Music Festival is bringing to that part of Sarawak. I do not have the figures but it surely attracts a lot of people. And as any good festival, even though the weather has been beautiful so far, the crowd is knee high in the mud. Tonight's performances included some local bands (Kani'd and Tuku Kame) as well as a Japanese drummer (Hiroshi Motofuji), some African grooves (Yakande), an Oud trio from Palestine (Adel Salameh), a Polish folk fusion band (Beltaine) and a final with Trinidad & Tobago jamoo (Sheldon Blackman & The Love Circle). A very good event with an excellent vibe in an amazing setting (the rainforest in the background just makes things amazing).

Singapore Food Festival 2008

The Singapore Food Festival started this week and finishes on the 27th of July. It is a great opportunity to taste the local food with lots of Chefs cooking for a bargain and promotions agogo in many food courts. Takashimaya also installed its own market in the basement which already proves to be hugely popular since the Singapore Shopping Festival is also still on and is attracting hordes of tourists and locals in the Orchard vicinity. It also gave me an opportunity to set foot on this shopping district since I rarely venture to that side of town which is far too crowded to my taste.

Voilà l'été!

As I had a good 9-hour sleep (I always do) in the plane I was up and ready to enjoy the absolutely gorgeous day ahead. If for me it was quite normal ad expected to have some nice weather at this time of the year, I believe the Parisians had suffered from a crappy month of June and were all happy and relieved to be under a sunny and 30ish degrees celcius day. And what a day! 21st of June. A Saturday, Summer day and 'La Fete de La Musique' (Music Day). Many reasons to celebrate. You could feel Paris filled with joy and happiness, crowded streets, groups of people dancing or singing, picnics in the parks, cafes and restaurants terraces overflowing. A perfect day. I could not have dreamt of a better day. And I fully kept it busy with two birthday parties, meeting old (and young) friends and an amazing Parillada at the 'El Palenque' Argentinian restaurant in Rue Montagne Sainte Geneviève.

(No better picture than the special public transport ticket issued for the occasion over the free CD handed out as I was too absorbed by the atmosphere to even consider taking my camera out - you should have seen the glowing beauty of the lights above the gathering crowds along the banks of the Seine!)

Awaking!

The Singapore Arts Festival is a strange thing... It is the kind of festival you would expect in the West. It is very experimental. So experimental indeed that I did not dare to see most of the performances. I am quite interested in Arts in general but it needs to talk to me and when it is a bit too off the way I have problems understanding it. Tonight's show was nothing to be scared of though. It was still a bit strange but not for being unfamiliar. The musical piece I saw, entitled Awaking, was actually more like three performances in one. Musicians from the Singapore Chinese Orchestra on one side, musicians of the British Globe theatre on the other and the Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre in the middle. The bards colliding with the Ming dynasty. Shakespeare confronted to the Kunqu Opera.

RWMF

Today I received my tickets for the Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching that is to take place at the Sarawak Cultural Village from the 11th to the 13th of July. The bill has not yet been fully unveiled but in addition to the local bands there is already quite a generous number of performers coming from places as diverse as Greece, Congo, Japan, India, Colombia, Palestine or Portugal. The picture above was taken during my last trip to Kuching a couple of weeks back. Incidentally, I also snapped a cheap return ticket on AirAsia for less than 70 Eur (except I will have to leave from Johor which is a bit of a hassle).

Brillante Mendoza

Philippine film director Brillante Mendoza is currently being talked about in France thanks to his interesting documentary called ‘John John’. In the same vein the film we saw today, showed as part of the Singapore Film Festival and entitled Tirador (Slingshot), deals with the hard reality of the daily lives of a Manila slum. It is more like a documentary than a fiction movie including in the way the whole thing is filmed in DV. Actually there is no better way to describe it than in his own words. He calls it ‘real-time.’ It is in the pace of real life. He shoots where is, as is. The border between documentary and fiction in this style is very thin. The only thing that divides the audience from real life is the screen, because we are watching life already. A very bleak but amazing movie.

Kurdish Mountains

How can such an uncomfortable subject be turned into such an exquisite movie? The Singapore Film Festival is still on until next week-end and it is a shame I do not have more time to enjoy what’s on offer. Today’s choice ‘Dol – The Valley of Tambourines’ just took me by surprise. It explores the lives, culture and circumstances of the Kurdish people (post-Saddam) in that no man’s land that is at the crossroad of Turkey, Iran and Iraq. It is a good reminder of how people get attached to these hostile and barren lands. It reminded me of the tribal Khyber pass areas (encompassing Afghanistan and Pakistan regions) I had the opportunity to experience some years back. People who have been told to belong to a country they have nothing in common with.

Lady Chatterley

This movie is not new in the sense that it was out in France nearly a couple of years ago but it is definitely something of an event for a place like Singapore. It surely was rated 21 so the audiences should have known but I believe it is difficult for many Singaporeans to bear some of the frontal nudity that was on display in this otherwise excellent rendition of the Lady Chatterley book. The way Pascale ferran has succeeded in filming all the sexual and love emotions that slowly build up in a relationship is stunning. You could nearly feel all the sexual tension surrounding us. It was definitely very far from the usual American blockbusters the theatre goers are used to in this city state and I believe some of the few people who left before the end did so not really because they felt offended by the sexual content but more because of the art house filming technics bare of any hollywood special effects.

Fujiya & Miyagi

The Mosaic Festival is nearly getting to an end and the choice of Artists on the program has just been quite surprising for Singapore. The Bird & The Bee, Broken Social Scene, Múm played during the week and tonight Fujiya & Miyagi came all the way from Brighton to give us 90 minutes of pure pleasure. As they mention to those who might not know they are neither a duo nor Japanese. But they play exactly the kind of music that strikes all my right body chords. Their electronica is funky and sexy yet phat and dirty. They take you through pure moments of trance not too far from atmospheres previously achieved by bands like the Spacemen 3. They sound 80s yet futuristic. They sound mellow yet psychedelic.

The Past - the Forgotten Time

The Past – The Forgotten Time is an exhibition that was part of the Fringe festival and that is finishing in 10 days time. It features the works of 7 Indonesian artists that deal with the reinterpretation of historical facts, specifically of the Suharto regime where historical texts were used by the ruling regime to reinforce its authority. I don't necessarily understand the link between some of the pieces and the theme of the exhibition but it remains an interesting small display.

Lion Head

Lion Head for a Lion Dance in the Lion City.

I missed nealry all of the Chingay festival ceremonies as they were from 8 to 10 in the evening and during the grand parade yesterday I was at the A-yue concert but when I came out I had the chance to see the tail of the parade with lots of beautifully decorated trailers and thousands of brilliantly dressed participants. I will try not to miss it next year and I will book my tickets early. I believe it definitely is the highlight of all the Chinese New Year ceremonies.

Lion Dance

If in Brazil you have the Samba schools training all year for the Carnival, here you have tons of Lion Dance schools. You can see them moving in their trucks all around the city. But these past weeks you really feel their presence drastically intensified. There are also a few preview parades and everyone is getting ready for the BIG one starting tonight for the Chingay festival dubbed Asia's grandest street & floats parade, officially the biggest New Year's event celebrated to welcome the arrival of Spring. Spring? What is spring in Singapore? Is there really any such season as spring?

ThaiPusam Day

I made my way to Serangoon Road after work and reached Little India shortly after 7pm. The march had already been going on for over an hour but when I left after 9pm it was far from being finished. That means that the number of participants was incredibly high. It was very impressive to see all these devotees carrying all the weight of their 'Kavadis' without any apparent pain. Apart from the common tongue, mouth and cheeks skewer piercings many were also pierced on the whole body by numerous spikes. It was like being in India really, even though I am sure the festival is 1000 times more crazy there!

Fringe Festival

This evening I arrived at the Esplanade by 7pm and got a bit scared by the crowds. But I quickly discovered most of the people were here for the Suzanne Vega gig in the main Concert Hall. The concert I was here for was a much more intimate affair and was taking place at the Recital Studio. It was nevertheless a full house. Colleen opened the show with her lovely music and pleased the crowds with her multi instruments cleverly played simultaneously after being looped, Sylvain Chauveau sent the public a bit sleepy with a repertoire that was much more quiet than what I know from him but the good surprise came with the only non-French Hauschka who intrigued everyone with his prepared piano works. Brilliant!

Eclipse

The Fringe Festival started this evening. Even though I spent the day in Batam, Indonesia, I made it on time for the asian premiere of Eclipse, a play about a Singaporean going to Pakistan to dispose of the ashes of his father. It was a touching one-man show with the main actor also playing the role of his father and grandfather. It was also directly in line with this year festival's theme: Art and History. A good insight of the romantisation of one's roots and a personal view about the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Highly recommended.

Pongal

Today is Pongal festival. It is the only Hindu festival that follows a solar calendar and usually falls on the 14th or 15th of January. It signals the end of the traditional farming season in South India. As a result I made my way to Little India after work and headed to Campbell Road to see the cows and to taste the pongal (sweetrice) which also is one of my favourite indian food. I wanted to find a restaurant to enjoy the treat but there was actually a free street distribution. I therefore seized this opportunity to have my share!