Singapore Writers Festival 2018 : nine days of unplanned but full-on immersion. You buy a Festival Pass, collect a Programme (150 pages or so) and go whither whim dictates.
Some events are free; the Pass gets you admission into others and a few are ticketed. Continue reading SWF 2018 : the experience of …
‘Writing about Indonesia’ predicates a knowledge of the country, and the panel discussion hosted by Books Actually on March 22nd presented interesting viewpoints from Singapore-based author Shivaji Das (also humanitarian, photographer and management consultant) and award-winning Indonesian author Okky Madasari, currently writer-in-residence at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa. One a visitor and traveler, one a resident and citizen. While both panelists spoke of … Continue reading Writing about Indonesia
Baristas and cafes of Singapore came together for a weekend in August, in the expanse of the Marina Bay Cruise Center; two levels of artisanal coffee, tea and bites. It was about conscious consumption, choices, grounded pleasures, wildlife friendly beans, a barter market and an aeropress championship among other things … with balmy winds off both decks and a deep sunset slanting colour through the … Continue reading The Singapore Coffee Festival 2017
Imagine life without alcohol. Civilization would drive us mad. We’re only human, after all. – Michael Hoffman The Japan Prestige Sake Association organised an evening of free-flow saké tasting to introduce various breweries and their premium products to Singapore. (There are over 1500 saké breweries in Japan, with 40,000 to 50,000 different brands). So, at the Fairmont Hotel, there was enough saké to satisfy the … Continue reading Everything I needed to know about Saké
A part of a project that began over 15 years ago visits Singapore on its global tour. An exuberant and vivid celebration of women and womanhood, these are Ms Leibovitz’s portraits of women, many influential and recognizable, some not; and include past work from the original series as well as some unpublished photographs. The venue is an art deco building, a national monument and a … Continue reading ‘WOMEN: New Portraits’ by Annie Leibovitz
The Arts House More Than Words : A Visual Playground of Chinese Characters A serendipitous visit and a delightful room of eye-popping art. The Hanzi characters of the Chinese language, square block and originally derived from signs and pictures, now find expression in kaleidoscope-like motifs … reminiscent of geometric abstraction. Millenia-old logograms (signs or characters representing a word or phrase, such as those used in … Continue reading The Arts House, Singapore
The MAD side of life, a private museum that is both an art space and a modular event venue. The MAD Museum of Art & Design is worth a visit for the quirky, curious and revelatory pieces tastefully curated and exhibited on two levels; paintings, graffiti, sculptures, furniture and the odd this and that. It is more than just a gallery of contemporary art, featuring … Continue reading MAD Museum of Art & Design, Singapore
Pan Asian in ITC Grand Chola, Chennai exemplifies a culinary wanderlust, which, if you pause to think about it, is a perfect embodiment of the spirit of adventure you would associate with avid bikers – which is what the restaurant’s Chef and Sous Chef are. Chef Vikramjit Roy and Sous Chef Lambert Chiang, ride captain and ride lieutenant (to borrow biker jargon) of this gastronomic … Continue reading Bikers in the Kitchen
Surrealist Salvador Dali (1904 to 1989) ‘channeled the unconscious to unlock the power of the imagination’. His Paranoid-Critical method (the basis for most of his artworks) went further – creating art from a state of self-induced paranoia, putting the artist in touch with his subconscious and ‘systematic irrational thought’ in order to escape conventional understanding of reality and the world. Which is a brief and … Continue reading Salvador Dali : Twice in Singapore
London is many things to many people. The ‘retail’ experience is as much the art that goes into seducing customers, as the products themselves. Behind the glass, a city’s edge and imagination comes to play with whimsy and fantasy. The ideas are brilliantly inventive, over and over again, the juxtapositions are quirky and the mis-en-scenes suggest that the unorthodox is as much a part of … Continue reading Window Dressings
A ‘mega’ hotel that recently opened in Chennai, India, the ITC Grand Chola (the third largest hotel in India), is an architectural paean to the Chola Dynasty, one of the longest ruling empires of southern India. The hotel is contemporary Dravidian temple design a la Chola : four entrances (as found in temples in south India), soaring spaces, tall pillars (462), grand columns, sweeping staircases, … Continue reading Five Star dining with your Fingers
The main allure of a Fringe Festival is the opportunity it affords to broaden one’s thinking : the chance to engage with new art forms, stumble upon new ideas, marvel at new uses and depart with a new appreciation for passion, technique and creativity. So it was at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Exhibition, which concludes this 31st of August. In the category of visual art, … Continue reading Luminecse : Art in Glass and Light
Social capital, passion for conservation, art to provoke, technology to please and ease … issues that have remained relevant over the years. Zero Dark Thirty is being screened in theatres. It is a gripping, nail-biting experience; gut wrenching because it is of the now and you know it happened, or most of it did. It stays in the mind. It reminded me of an exhibition … Continue reading Then and Now
2013 sounds promising, especially as the end of the world did not happen, and as always, a fresh start prompts introspection and reflection. End of another year and it is stock-taking time everywhere. The media is awash with articles, opinions, columns and blogs offering much pause for thought. A couple of years ago, I came across a stream of commentaries, almost in succession, that … Continue reading Thoughts for a new Year
As people all over the world – secular and religious – observe this most celebrated of festivals; the reality that we are more similar than we are different (and especially at Christmastime) is reinforced by our geographies and cultures. The post-Hallowe’en November-long anticipation has yielded to Yuletide celebrations and menu planning, Christmas parties and Christmas spruces, pines and firs, taller, higher, brighter, twinkling away (faux … Continue reading Christmas
To visit Bali frequently is to rejuvenate the soul, to escape the glass and steel of metropolitan living to a world governed by exquisite harmony and balance. Possibly, the most easily accessed ‘instant nirvana’ in this part of the world, Bali is undisputedly the Island of the Gods; almost other-worldly in both geography and spirit. Its spectacular grey-black volcanic sand beaches along the northern coastlines … Continue reading A Frangipani in my Cappuccino : Three days in Bali
John Gay declared ‘whether we can afford it or no, we must have superfluities’ … and so it is on Sentosa; visit and discover your nirvana. Capella, ah Capella ! Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with its necessities, goes the well-quoted quote and after a weekend (or more) at the Capella Singapore (+65 6377 8888), you begin to comprehend how … Continue reading Luxe and beyond, in Singapore, in Sentosa.
On the night of the thinnest divide between this life and the afterlife, when apparitions and spirits freely slink, skulk, stalk and sneak about, bring out the costumes to scare off the demons and carve your pumpkins and light them with candles and make your taffy apple treats. Two thousand or more years ago, the Celts (in today’s UK, Ireland and northern France) had an … Continue reading The Night of the Orange and Black
Paris 2009 – with friends – a holiday of the senses, an effervescence of food, an exploration of haute cuisine, gastro-tourism, Michelin stars, Michelin guides and just plain ordinary eating. Read on, if you plan to visit Paris, or if you are interested in food. The compact, businesslike (soon to be rated Michelin discovery) Le Gaigne in the Marais quarter (third arrondissement) makes a persuasive … Continue reading Bon Appetit
I was taken to a slum in Delhi, a slum of 1,500 families of artists and artisans. As I stepped out of the car, they began singing, children on rooftops, men in doorways, in lanes, everywhere, singing with the hope that their songs would take them out of their extreme poverty; singing, laughing and crying, their art, craft and helplessness contained in one impassioned offering … Continue reading The Manganiyars Seduce
Paris perspectives, Paris then and now; history laid out in a straight geographic line … and yet another kind of Paris indulgence. On a visit to Paris in 2009, Senator Yves Dauge, Sénateur d’Indre-et-Loire, extended an invitation to visit the Upper House of the French Senate in the Palais du Luxembourg. It was a fascinating couple of hours, the tracing of the past into the … Continue reading Paris of the Axe Historique and the Hammam
Delivering an unbearable lightness of being – or non-being – with an apocalyptic end (in a maelstrom of green), Wind Shadow was less dance and more a fusion of installation art and kinetics; a visually stunning spectacle sans emotion, sans words, sans context, sans an anchor of any kind. A collaboration between Lin Hwai-min, (Founder and Artistic Director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan … Continue reading Remembering Wind Shadow
A Bollywood wedding is the ultimate pageant, and a Bollywood wedding on a Bali beach is the ultimate fusion of culture and stagecraft. They came from all over the world, the guests, from Mozambique and Mumbai, Boston and Birmingham; from Washington, Texas, Singapore, Calcutta, Jakarta and elsewhere to celebrate a wedding in Sanur, Bali, on the beach, as the sun dipped and the wind soughed … Continue reading Snapshots of a Destination Wedding
Natural stone, when used as building material in a home – walls, accents, counters, floors – not only reflect the vitality of nature, but also contribute to general health and wellbeing. The preoccupation of purchasing a home and the putting down of roots (serious commitments, these) dominated our dinner table debates till the decisions were made and the home was ready. Over pasta, pizza and … Continue reading The Metaphysics of Stone
Singapore is becoming a centre for art in the region, with monetary, historic, sentimental and artistic interests paralleling the explosion of art galleries, exhibitions, festivals, fairs, auctions, retrospectives, biennales and personal and institutional art collections. Collecting art has become de rigeur, but what happens after the purchase ? Is mounting, framing and displaying the end of the process ? At 1º north of the Equator, … Continue reading Art Doctors : Restorers & Conservationists
Sayang Singapore 