Tiong Bahru is an area of Singapore that I had not explored before. I had been to the shopping plaza adjacent to the MRT station but I had not explored some of the older areas of the town. I had often traveled past streets that I wished to wander around and during my last trip to Singapore I took the chance to pay a visit to Tiong Bahru.

I took a number of photographs as I walked around the estate. I walked along the following roads: Tiong Poh Road, Kim Cheng Street, Lim Liak Street and Tiong Bahru Road. It is one of the oldest housing estates in Singapore. Some of the buildings date back to the 1930s and feature a mix of art deco and Straits Settlements design. I quite like the estate. There are a few estates, like Tiong Bahru, that are like little ‘islands’ that are cut off from the hustle and bustle of Singapore. They include Bukit Purmei and the Eng Kong estate.

Go to Google Maps

A couple of weeks ago I had breakfast over at the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve in Singapore during my last visit. The reserve is a nice place to take a rest and recharge one’s batteries. I went for a walk around parts of the reserve, took some photographs, and observed that the reserve is making use of QR Codes. I have blogged about QR Codes previously here and there.

The staff have established a wireless learning trail at the reserve. Devices are made available to students so that they can access location specific multimedia data while walking the mangrove boardwalk. The portable reading device is rented to the students at $3.00SGD per student. I wonder if mobile phones equipped with QR Code reading software can also access the content?

Back in 2001 my wife Shao Ping and I went for a walk from our flat in Chua Chu Kang to the Uttamayanmuni Buddhist Temple. It is located in Chua Chu Kang at the end of Hong San Terrace. I took a number of photographs of the temple.

There is a patch of bare ground near the temple. I sometimes wonder what was located on this ground. It is surrounded by HDB blocks, the temple and a condominium. The yellow spot on the map marks the location.

Go to Google Map

Curoiusly enough the two statues depicted in the photograph above were located on the eastern side of this bare patch of ground. Perhaps they were once situated at the entrance to another structure. Are they still there? This photograph was taken in 2001. It has been seven years. Can anyone shed any light on this at all?

Earlier this week I sorted through the photographs I had taken during my recent trip to Singapore. Ten new galleries were set up and I have just uploaded each.

I processed the images using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I resized each to a width of 650 pixels as well as adjusting the light and colour in some instances. Finally I used the Create Web Photo Gallery command in Photoshop Elements to create the web galleries. I had taken one of the gallery templates supplied with Elements and modified it to fit in with my existing web site. All of the links are taken care of and I simply drop the folder that is created on to my server. I also add some text to the index.html file for each gallery.

Click on one of ten thumbnails below or any of the links listed beneath the image to view the gallery.

The galleries created are as follows:

St Joseph’s Institution (Primary) Workshop
Nanyang Technological University Workshops
Mac Meetup
Tiong Bahru
Kranji
Queenstown
NTU Campus
Tai Pei Eating House
Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
Various points around Singapore 

If you have read my previous three posts you will realise that I am presently working in Singapore. Conducting a number of workshops. Yesterday I conducted a workshop that was organised by Keith See from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

Read~write web workshop, Singapore, July 11th 2008.

I had received an email from Keith in early April of this year inquiring about Web 2.0 workshops. I assumed that Keith may have attended my presentation at the Good To Great Teaching Seminar here in Singapore last February and found out about my work as a result of that.

Yesterday, being curious, I asked Keith how did he track me down. Keith replied that he had found me via a Google search on Web 2.0 related topics (workshops, Singapore) and it was my del.icio.us bookmarking site that had first caught his eye and then my site. I was amazed to hear that. Good old del.icio.us bookmarks. Social bookmarking works for me!

St Joseph’s Institution, Singapore.

Yesterday. My first full day in Singapore on this trip. Did not sleep much the first night. Too much on my mind. Getting past the first workshop or presentation is always a bit of a hurdle. Not sure why. Anxiety, probably. Those stage-fright tensions. Always feel it even though I have been doing this sort of thing since 1994. Once the curtain is raised I feel fine.

I conducted the first workshop at St Joseph’s Institution Junior School [wikipedia entry]. The campus is located on the site of the former St Michael’s School in Novena. It is a primary school. The workshop consisted of presentation and a hands-on component. There were teachers from a variety of schools across Singapore. About 30 teachers in all.

St Joseph’s Institution Junior School. Condominiums in the background.

Time was at a premium and I attempted to make the most of it. I created a presentation ppt yet that is more for the benefit of the participants as they make notes on the hard copy as I usually flick across to a browser and show them examples of the tools at work.

The teachers were quite reserved which is not unusual and I always look for ways to break the ice like singing a song in mandarin, sharing some anecdotes about history and so on.

Once the questions begin and then things begin to bubble along and the workshop thrives. I am always grateful for that first question. I think all of the other participants are too. We looked at eduBlogs, Twitter, QR Codes, QR Codes generators, Flickr, Compfight, Posterous and Plurk among others. I shared some of the wikis made by my Year Eleven students and blogs written by my Year Nine students. The participants also received Twitter greetings from acroamatic, janelowe, isaakkwok, skytrystsjoy, syamsul and catspyjamasnz. More materials and downloads can be found here.

Ming Liang, Keith, Chan Chuan and Feliz (l to r)

The workshop was organised by Keith See from the Infocom Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). His colleagues, Chan Chuan and Feliz were also in attendance. The IDA is working in tandem with the Ministry of Education on a number of innovative projects including the Edvantage Programme, Future Schools@Singapore and iAccess~Interactive Learning Trails. There are many more projects. Singapore is an island state. Its main resource are the children of Singapore. As well as my presentation there was a demonstration by Ng Ming Liang of G Element Pte Ltd of Earth@SG and several impressive geographic visualisation tools being developed for use in teaching and learning.

The day concluded about 5.30PM or thereabouts and I congratulated the teachers for their attentiveness on a late Friday afternoon. The likelihood of that happening with teachers in Australia is not as high. Once that Australian school bell rings at 3.30PM there is a stampede, with the teachers leading the charge, and the school is empty by 3.35PM, with the dust barely settled.

Chinatown

I chatted with some of the teachers after that and we then began to make tracks for our respective digs. Jumped on the MRT and alighted at Outram Park. I eventually ended up in Chinatown and had dinner at my favourite haunt. I have been eating in this ‘coffee shop’ for about nine years now. I used to work just around the corner. Ate the usual and slowly consumed a nice drop of Tiger beer with the owner of the coffee shop.

Tiger Beer

Then, unwinding. I sat for a while, thought about the day, watched the world go by, finished the beer, cooled down and then caught a train and bus back to the NTU campus.

Grabbed a quick video as I strolled from the Boon Lay MRT to the adjacent bus interchange. It was about 10:00PM and life was happening. I was on my way back to NTU after having dinner at my favourite haunt in Chinatown.

Arrived in Singapore last night for a week of workshops. I am staying at Nanyang Technological University.

Scenery at Nanyang Technological University

Today I shall be going across to St Joseph’s Institution [wikipedia entry] to share some ideas with a number of teachers regarding blogging and other read~write tools. It will be a busy workshop. Too much to do but I am sure we will all get there. I have uploaded some resources for the participants here.

Sungei Buloh Wetlands, Singapore. Malaysia in the distance.

The other day my good friend Siva tweeted that since I felt liberated after renaming my blog I should post a few items about my life in Singapore. Well, this is my first post in that series. I have lifted much of the text for this post from a page created about this event. Just noticed that I typed in the wrong date! It was January 3rd and not January 1st, 2003.

As many of you have figured out my wife Shao Ping and I spent a number of years in Singapore. During that time one of the things I was partially involved in was the creation of a CD-ROM about mangroves and the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve in Singapore. That was how I met Siva. He was one of our subject matter experts. Incidentally, Siva was blogging before most of us were born. All his and his students’ blogs can be found here.  Siva and I have been the best of friends ever since we met.

I went to Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve on the 3rd January, 2003. It was late in the afternoon and the weather was closing in somewhat. It was a good thing to go however. I was taking time off work from the eLearning job. I had worked over Christmas and the New Year and life was closing in. I needed a break otherwise I felt I would surely break.

Sungei Buloh is a great place to go in order to unwind. Especially on week days if you can make it. You can recharge your batteries, so to speak. It would be neat to work there, I think. I have formed good friendships at Buloh.

Have you ever seen the rain?

Anyway, during that afternoon the heavens opened up and I watched the downpour from the boardwalk. It was actually quite cool, at least for Singapore. I took a lot of photographs. The rain fell down and the mud lazily danced as each drop met its maker. The greys painted the world in Sungei Buloh that afternoon.

Thank God I was there to witness it. Infinitely better than slaving away in an office where working 60 or more hours a week was considered admirable and critically essential for a pay rise or promotion. I was there for another three more months after that. I then relaxed for about three months. Did a few odd consultations and was lecturing part time at the NIE. Spent a few weeks in Australia. That was a long time ~ 3 months. Recharged my life. I then moved on to the CED at NTU. That was a good move. I will be back at NTU later this week. I cannot keep away.

In my previous post regarding clotheslines I referrred to the high rise residential buildings in Singapore. This reminded me of a little video I had created that captures these buildings.

I am specifically referring to the public housing that is built by the Housing Development Board of Singapore. They are referred to by Singaporeans as HDB flats. Several years back I sat at the front of a Light Rail Transit vehicle with my little video camera and captured the journey around half of the circuit. I used Apple’s iMovie to create a simple Quicktime movie of the project. I increased the speed of the movie. I reduced a 20 minute journey to about 30 seconds.

The movie provides a perspective of Singapore’s new towns. Shao Ping and I lived in Choa Chu Kang for a while. We lived within walking distance of both the Hai Inn Temple and the Uttamayanmuni Buddhist Temple.

Whenever visitors came up from Australia or elsewhere we always took them on the LRT. The vehicles are driverless. We never mentioned that to our visitors until they asked the inevitable question, “Where is the driver?” I remember taking a ride on the LRT the day it was opened.

The vehicles pass close to some of the buildings and in order to maintain the privacy of the residents the windows of the LRT vehicle frost over as you pass by the building. You will see in the video the imposing avenues of the HDB blocks and it almost feels like flying an aircraft down a man-made canyon.

The population density of Singapore is 6489 people per square kilometre. You never get the impression that it is crowded however. It feels different to other cities such as Hong Kong. Sure, some peak hour trains are packed, but not like a tin of sardines. Some shopping centres can get a little crowded on Sunday afternoon.

Links:
Singapore’s Rail Network
Mass Rapid Transit in Singapore
Light Rail Transport in Singapore
Flickr tag: hdb