Monday Morning Therapy

Home Garden

Left: Shaggy is easily the most adorable plant of the lot. He was adopted from an abandoned green-wall mock up at Orchard Road.  It is an easygoing fern that likes looking at the sun from the shady balcony. 

Far Left: Mr. Anderson is a maroon-stemmed Philodendron, the latest addition to our family. In the local landscaping industry call this type of philodendron 'Anderson's Red', hence his name.

Corner Top Left: Green Rabbit is a new addition to the family, and she came from the same shop as Mr. Anderson.

Top: Blue Butterfly Seedling is grown from a double-petaled Clitoria ternatea seed that I picked up from a cooking course in Chiang Mai back in August 2013. Because of the house renovation, it took me a while to get it sown, and out of 20 or so seeds, only this one germinated

Centre ‘Baby’ is the star of this small garden. Baby was sown on this balcony pot from a seed collected from one of my work site. We had to cut down its mum because she has basal root rot. Age: 4 months. It is a seedling of a fast-growing tree species that has the  potential to grow into a large (10-15 meter) tree in about 10 years or so.

Top Right Corner: Grey Vanda is an orchid that I picked up from the Singapore Garden Festival. It has a plain-looking but sweet-smelling grey-yellow-purplish flower.

Right: Diehard is a Ficus twig that I picked up from the garden downstairs. I had it put on a vase of water for a few months in the kitchen where it grow lots of roots. It probably does not like it, but since it is a strong plant, it did not die, and as reward for its perseverance, I recently got a pot to put it in.

Far Right: White Spider is a gift from my friend Sadaf!

Bottom Right: Mini Shaggy is a pot of newly split Nephrolepis fern.

Mt. Aso, Kyushu

Morning Cat

This is the resident restaurant cat at the Siglap canal.  I saw it on my way to work this morning and just can't help but feel jealous. I wish I can do that too! It slept so well that I can take the photo of its happy face close up. 

... and yeah, I missed the bus to work and was late because of this.

Luwuk, Sulawesi

Clear sea waters of the Luwuk coastline Km 5. As seen on the photos, the sea has clear colour bandings that is caused by its characteristic sea topography that starts from its sandy beach as a shallow shelf where corals can grow (the turquoise-colored waters), and it then has a sudden drop into the deep (the darker lazuli blue water) - that creates an steep vertical sea wall.

Cocoa is a locally grown on the cooler hills of Luwuk. Here we see a farmer drying out his cocoa seedpods by the sea...

More pictures coming soon... sooner than last time... I hope

Hospital in a Garden, Garden in a Hospital

It has been a long time since I saw anything that trully impresses me. I guess that's just a natural part of getting old and being jaded... but, I sure was floored by what I saw this weekend at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital!

Surgery Room in the Garden?

Community-maintained urban farming garden at the rooftop of the KTP Hospital

Rooftop-grown Watermelon

Compost bins next to the Syzygium aqueum "Jambu Air" Tree

A Countryside Break

I went for a break to Chiang Mai and Pai in Thailand a while back in early August with my sisters. We had a cute and petite cottage in the Pai countryside. The view should be nice... but we hardly see anything as it is cloudy and rainy most of the time. We spent a lot of times indoor, and had a good time just lazing about in the cottage with our stash of tea and books from home.

Happy Sia~

Sukabumi Holiday

Good Times!!!

What makes Singapore livable...

East Coast Park + Bicycle!

Nurseries of Lembang

Travel has really wound down since I settled down with a job in Singapore. I only get out and around the region once in a while, and I went to Lembang this past long weekend. Lembang is actually quite a convenient place to reach from Singapore, because the nearest airport at Bandung is small and strategically located in the middle of town. The drive between Bandung to Lembang is about 40-80 minutes long (depending on traffic, as always). The chilly fresh mountain air is the first great feel about arriving in Lembang. There was stalls of garden nurseries on the way up to the mountain resorts, and here are pictures from the stop.

The nurseries on one side of the road sits at the verge of a steep slope and they have a sweeping view of the agrarian hills beyond. There were garden nursery stocks, strawberries, and rice paddies being grown on the hill. There I caught myself thinking "Wow… Singaporean property developers could really make a kill out of land with this kind of view!"

The bouganvilleas look nicer up close here as compared to when they are planted en masse in Singapore's pedestrian bridges.

As if your life is that hard, fat cat.