Shopping in Jiu Feng, Taiwan.

Originally uploaded by JohnLarkin

My wife Shao Ping and her sister Shao Chi shopping in Jiu Feng, Taiwan.

Arrived in Singapore last night. Woke up this morning. Did some work. Then caught a bus and train into Chinatown. When I took the escalators from the Outram Park MRT Station up to street level I was struck by a wonderful aroma ~ rain. It was raining so heavily. It was wonderful. The rain smelt so good.

Grabbed some lunch. I took a few photographs around Chinatown. I love to see the old and the new mixed up. The tropical lush attempting, yet struggling, to reclaim its territory. Note the building below which is being retrofitted with elevators that stop at each floor. Previously, I think, they stopped at every fourth floor judging by the landings. One would alight and than take stairs up or down to your specific floor.

I went across to Bugis and Sim lim Square looking for a QuikPod but  I had no luck.

Grabbed a drink and took a few snaps of people. In particular, the Singapore Malay couple below who were dressed for post Hari Raya celebrations. They both looked so resplendent.

Took the train back to Boon Lay MRT. Like to see the bike racks outside the station. Should be more of that back home.

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

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 

Arrived home yesterday afternoon.

The distance from Singapore to Sydney is 6300 kilometres. The flight took just under 7 hours. At various times during the flight the tail wind was approximately 140 kmh. That pushed us along a little faster than normal.

In comparison, the distance from Sydney to Wollongong is about 85 kilometres. I arrived in Wollongong 3 hours after arriving in Sydney. Long story, long wait and 3 coaches involved.

I was going to meet up with some teachers in Sydney that evening yet had decided against it a couple of days before due to the possible impact of the World Youth Day celebrations upon traffic. I was also simply exhausted.

This post was blogged via MarsEdit on the Mac. I am also trying out NetNewsWire as a feedreader as it integrates with Mars Edit. Shall see how it goes.