Turandot

We went for the opening night of Puccini's Turandot at Esplanade yesterday night.

Organized by the Singapore Lyric Opera, Turandot is Puccini's final opera. It is a story about a cold and merciless Chinese princess Turandot who demands princes who seeks her hand to answer three questions. If they cannot answer these three questions, they will be beheaded at moonrise. And from the singings, looks like all the princes far and wide were beheaded, none succeeded in answering correctly.

Then came the exiled Prince Calaf, who was smittened by Turandot's beauty and despite the many pleads from the various characters, adamantly took on Turandot's challenge.

The three riddles were (summarized):
"What likes in the morning but is reborn at night?"
"What is hot but not a flame and grows cold when dead?"
"What ice can set you on fire?"

Prince Calaf was able to answer these with 'hope', 'blood' and 'Turandot'. Of course, the ending was those "happily ever after".

I know, some of you are going to exclaim, "Jean, opera?". Just like Desmond's reaction when I told him during lunch time. The thing is, I do attend operas if I have the time and I know abit about the story. I am always so amazed how the casts are able to stretch their voices and sing in various languages that is not their mother tongue. Of course, the entertaining value of operas can be lesser than musicals. But still, its quite worth it to attend especially there is a good story.

I really enjoyed this opera especailly after the our "pleasant" experience in Paris last year where we and two other frenchmen fell asleep in the box because it was so boring and we didn't understand a single word they were singing. Turandot is sung in italian and luckily, there were English and Chinese subtitles available. So everyone is able to understand what the sopranos and tenors are singing. For those going, I find that the Chinese subtitles were better written & concise than the English ones.

Those who are thinking of going to go and watch this, do go! This opera had a few familiar tunes that the audience can identify with, like Moli-hua and Nessun Dorma. And also, the last act had a very touching and emotional scene where the characters sang beautifully. So much so, I cried like a baby. There are definitely some entertainment values where you'll cry and laugh. Do go!

Our next "arty-farty" item to attend is "The Rainbow Fish". We'll be bringing Ning to watch this play and I hope she will be able to understand the story! Will update you on this then!

How we spend Saturdays - Downtown East

We try to bring the kids out for fun and play as much as possible during Saturdays. It is always a good strategy. Because after they've exhausted themselves in the morning, they take long and sound naps in the afternoon which is a good time for us parents to recharge.

And after they had taken their naps, they'll go for a swim, if weather and parent's energy level permits. This ensures the kids will be so hungry at dinner time that they chomp down their dinners without us nagging and coaxing them.

I've tried to take as many pictures as possible. And this post features our outing to the new Downtown East and eXploraKids.

Food in the US

Obesity is a sore issue in the current US society. Many of the people are overweight to the state of being extremely unhealthy. And I can truly understand why. Their food portions are huge and the method of cooking are limited. Most of their food are either fried or grilled (unlike Europe where there is a varied style of cooking).

The people in NYC, men and women, are seen having burgers and fries for lunch, even at famous steak houses. That is their staples. Burgers and fries everywhere, plus coke as beverage. How to fight obesity with such food?

Here are some "evidences" I took of the food I OVERate there:

I can only say, because they have limited style of cooking, we didn't find fantastic food even at some highly recommended restaurants. My only interesting experience was having bouillabaisse for lunch at The Oyster Bar & Restaurant inside Grand Central Terminal.

I've heard much about this dish and how it is a speciality of Marseille. So I decided to order this fishy soup for lunch. WF was asking if I'm on diet again since I'm only having soup. He didn't know this soup is enough to last the entire afternoon with its huge bowl of seafood.

I was first asked to wear the plastic bib to prevent any food stains later while devouring the shellfishes. Wearing the bib alone attracted a lot of attention from other diners. And finally the soup came. Full of mussels, clams, fish meats and half a lobster. Yummy... makes me go hungry in this rainy weather. But of course, this is not the authentic French version, but American style. Still... good enough for my tummy.

Is Our Society Pro-family?

Just yesterday morning, I was pushing Zhi in the stroller and buying groceries at the Marine Parade Central. We were walking along the shops aisle and the stroller accidently hit an old lady's foot. What I didn't expect from this 60 year old auntie is she kicked my stroller back even though I had apologize TWICE! I think this kind of action is something uncalled for. And why kicked the stroller with my son sitting inside?

I can assure you I wasn't cruising the stoller at 10km/hr kind of speed but just a moderate speed because the aisles are crowded with people and the shop's wares. If I had a choice, I wouldn't want to venture to this crowded area. But too bad, I really had to get something from the provision shop. And this is the kind of reaction I get from someone who was probably a mum too!

PM Lee talked about how we need to be more refined and well-mannered as a nation. Does kicking the stroller back defines us as a "refined society"?

Papers and TV news are raging about the new tax incentives, childcare reliefs and other improved maternity benefits for parents dished out by the govt during the PM Lee's national day speech.

Personally, I am quite skeptical on how these benefits is going to boost our national birthrate because in my own opinion, when the couple decided to embark on having children, they don't usually consider these tax reliefs nor childcare reliefs as one of their top decision factors.

I feel Singapore is not ready to embrace a pro-family society. A lot of people have negative mentality of kids and/or having kids. And that is one of the reasons why people are marrying but delaying having children. It has become a culture issue.

1. Sunday Times ran a feature on parents going out with strollers/prams just last month. It wrote about the ugly side of us parents using strollers to barge our way in or banging into people unnecessarily. Projecting parents in a negative light. If the national paper can write such negativities about parents and their kids, it tells you something about the pro-family mentality of Singaporeans.

2. Have you read how those people interviewed by Sunday Times commented about us? They said really nasty things. This shows the distaste of the people have for kids or family with kids. Where are the tolerance and understanding of these people? And the old lady incident is just one of the rude reactions I get from fellow Singaporeans. I have been on the receiving end of some nasty and un-refined behaviours of people. Pro-family mentality of Singaporeans? Duh!

3. When we come across a parent with three or more children, we don't give comments like "wow, that's great" or "that's nice". Instead we said,"wah, doing your national duty ah." Embracing pro-family culture?

There are simply too many points I can write about our not-so pro-family culture like work, infrastructure etc. But I just want to share that my feel about our society is that, the birthrate will still be below 2.0 even after all the financial packages the govt dished out.

US Trip - Last Leg in NYC

After Princeton, we took the train back to NYC and stayed there for a final 3 days before returning to SIN.

And this time, we discover more extensively in the upper part of the city as compared to our first leg, which we focus more on the lower end.

We went up the Empire State Buidling and visited Times Square to see the famous neon displays along the avenues. This place is really crowded with some big stores like M&M and Hershey's Chocolates. Most amazing was the wide variety of M&Ms to choose from.

The various theatres of Broadway is situated in Times Square and since we've heard much about Broadway musical while in Omaha especially the musical "Hairspray" that we went to queue up for the tickets. Mind you, the queue is long and extremely messy. Do prepare enough/exact cash to purchase the tickets or face getting shouted at.

I am not sure what is the rave about watching a Broadway show. Because I don't think "Hairspray" was a fantastic show like everybody had said. In fact, I thought the casts didn't do a good job at dancing in coordination nor singing in sync with one another. The "quality" of this musical isn't impressive as compared to the ones I've seen in SIN and London (minus the Paris one because it was an opera). And if "Hairspray" had gotten good reviews, that means, the other musicals are no better. Both me and WF concluded, their quality of musicals are like their food and people: Not as refined as the Europeans.

Even their famous Metropolitan Museum of Art New York was disappointing. There were so many artifacts that were replicas from other museum in Europe. We saw many familiar sculptures that reminded us of du Louvre. And we were right, the labels wrote that these displays were actually duplicates of the ones back in those European museums. And I wonder how come this museum is so crowded with so many Europeans when they can get to see "the real thing" back at home?

And remember to go early to this Met museum if you intend to. Because it closes at 5pm. But at 4.30pm, the security officers start to shout at visitors to leave ASAP. Don't these officers know that noise and echos can create "stress" to artwork? Like I said, this country is not as refined as their European counterparts. They should learn a thing or two from du Louvre. It is absolute silence in certain parts of the museum and the staff will walk over and indicate so if you talk too loudly.

It is no wonder when WF told me he'll stopover on the west coast instead of NYC in future if he were to attend the Omaha Berkshire Meeting again. Think he had a pretty bad impression of this place.

US Trip - Princeton

Pretty busy with work lately and I thought this week is a lot lighter in my workload, I might as well quickly finished the US trip write up. Yes, its taking too long a time to finish. I'll be brief.

After our stop in Omaha, we flew over to Princeton to visit WF's youngest brother there. He's residing in Princeton University to study for his PhD. And since Princeton is about pretty near to NYC (2 hours train ride), we might as well take this opportunity to visit the famous Ivy League campus.

Princeton had produced many well-known scholars and scientists. One of them is John Nash. The guy featured in the movie "A Beautiful Mind". He's still in Princeton, according to my brother-in-law.

I must say, this is a very beautiful university with those traditional buildings. They're famous for its high ratio of teaching staff to students. It is 1:7. So their tutorial classes are really small. Not more than 7 students at any one time. This gives the tutor and students a lot of personal sharing time.

And another amazing part is, there is a guided tour offered in the campus. And the guides are all student volunteers. There are zero incentives whatsoever for doing such a social work for the school. They volunteered to bring visitors and potential applicants around for a more than an hour's tour, to share and explain the school architecture and academic structures. They're so proud of their school that they're willing to put aside a few hours per week to do such volunteer work.

Enough said, here are some photos of the university to share.

Dragon Boat Training

There was a heavy downpour yesterday and to my surprise, the dragon boat people are still having rigorous training in this weather. Maybe there is a competition coming up because they were shouting and rowing in sync.

Tough ECA to join...

More "Cool" Pix

I said I will put up photos of Ning with the sunglasses on since I had posted Zhi's. So here they are.

I was saying the kids wear their sunglasses when the sun gets into their eye while on the road. This one is taken in the car before I sent her to school.


And this one is taken when she's 1 year old. We picked this pair up somewhere in Ngee Ann city, probably dropped by a careless kid. And it fitted her well. So, finder's keepers. I thought she looked like some junior mafia boss.







Now this pair is passed on to her brother. And here's how he looks like (wearing it in the car).