Tourist in my own country for a day

Friends for life

Mimi and Min are two of my oldest friends in the world and we never fail to meet up whenever I am back.  Recent years also see Min bringing her little girl Charis along, who is growing up so fine, a Jesus-girl at heart :)  Despite being miles apart, and barely whatsapp'ing one another normally, each time we seem to be able to catch up from where we left of and our table is always full of laughter.  These are real kingdom friendships y'all. ;)  And oh yes, western food is pretty much "banned" in each of my meet ups, and so this was at a local zi-char place which Mimi suggested, on Keong Saik Road.

I was very thankful for Mimi who took a day off work just to accompany me and most importantly, our agenda of the day was to check out the new National Gallery (yay).  She knows the arty-farty side of me and I still remember us checking out art exhibitions and watching weird artsy movies which no one would watch with me hah.. those were the days.  So when I texted her, suggesting checking out the National Gallery together when I'm back, there was no hesitation; in fact she immediately suggested taking a day off and proceeded to book our tickets.

Before going to the National Gallery we checked out one of the newest (and coolest?) places - Capital Piazza.  The newly refurbished Capital Theatre looks so posh and even had a self service kachang putih kiosk.  We peered in and wondered if movie tickets are more pricey after the refurbishment.  There are also a couple of cool cafes and restaurants, one of which is the apparently popular Dazzling Cafe (from Taiwan) which I heard queues can take up to 45min.  After our artsy afternoon we needed a drink and so we went to Dazzling Cafe.  Of course this being a weekday at a weird hour, there was no queue when we arrived, thank God for that.  (I needed a seat badly then! lol)

Introducing the new Capital Theatre!

An SG50 exhibition

An interactive huge screen showing artists and their artworks

We tried to figure out this huge piece of calligraphy… #noteasy

I love artwork from the French Impressionism era and it was really interesting for me to see the same techniques applied to artwork depicting scenes of old Singapore.  It was east meets west and refreshing to see.  We were both amazed at how many local artists there were at that time.  I mean, most people at that time were living in hardship, building up the country and to be an artist at that time must be so difficult.  In fact, they would most likely have been frowned upon considering the typical Asian parents' mentality.  Did they have to paint secretly?  Did they have to paint with a flickering oil lamp late into the night, wearing a battered white singlet, perhaps with a pipe in one hand?  One could only imagine...

Below I took a few pics of artwork in the style of the European masters

Remember Mimi asking me to go near this painting and then retreat - "something is moving like an illusion!" she insisted.  I tried a few times before realising this lady beside me was looking at me like...

Majestic columns

And this white dome which I think looks into a library

Spot the… similarity?

This art was titled Banquet, with the structure made up of many many bowls, clearly depicting the size of a Chinese wedding banquet which no Westerner can understand the sheer size of it all...

Thank you Mimi for spending the day with me!

After that I met another dear friend Z for dinner (yes, a long day indeed) and we were walking from Fullerton Hotel to Esplanade for dinner when I had to gasp because it has been ages since I saw this night scene in front of my eyes and looking at all the lights that moment, I had to take a few touristy shots with him laughing at me.

This is the newly opened Jubilee Bridge

The world famous MBS hotel - everyone I meet here in London will, without fail, mention this building to me when I say I'm from Singapore

Isn't that stunning?