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.

EMI Oaklands

This is the EMI India office at Oaklands, Mussoorie. 

Above is the main entry in the warm afternoon sunlight. Below is a meeting table on the centre of the office where most get-togethers take place - morning reflections, brainstorming meetings, chai breaks, A1 drawings... almost everything! The building manager, Ratan, loves plants and so there are a lot of them around the office. It makes the place feels lush and alive. The large map of India on the right hand side is a constant reminder of how vast the Indian subcontinent really is. My desk is the one right at the cyan wall, under the cross. I volunteered during EMI's last season in Mussoorie, and the office since then moved to Delhi in February 2012.

Mussoorie Mornings

I have just arrived in Mussoorie and am awe-struck.
The view here is so, so beautiful...

Studioing @ Guwahati

I went to Guwahati as a part of an EMI team, to do a survey and master plan for Trinity College and Seminary. It was a hectic packed week; We visited the site, and stayed in town for a whole week to work on the design and made a presentation to the client at the end of the week. Above is the panoramic view of the 3-hectare site, which is located near the Guwahati airport.

Knee deep in cow-dung-ed mud field. This land was formerly a rice paddy field, and it gets inundated with water after the monsoon.

Our surveyor quickly drew up the site's topography, but we didn't have a printer, so we scaled and plotted the survey co-ordinates on grid paper manually by hand.

We had a BIG rainstorm, and thunder struck the power transformer of our building and we were in the dark for a while. Luckily, the mobile internet still works, and we were able to make a video Skype call to the client with the laptop on battery power! Watching the Jonathan on spotlight from the dark makes me feel like am in a radio studio or a drama theatre. This photo made it to the eMI South Asia newsletter, the Indian Thread.

Where's my Assam?

When it comes to black tea, unsugared Assam has always been my favorite hands down. It has a thick robust flavor (malty, they say), that is just perfect for sluggish mornings at work. And so, prior to signing up with EMI and coming to Assam, I've always pictured Assam as a mountainous land of endless tea plantation. But I was ignorant - of course there's more to Assam than teas! In fact, I stayed at the low-lands all the time I was there and did not see any tea plantation during my entire stay at Guwahati, Assam.



Guhawati is the capital of the province of Assam, and it is the largest city in north-eastern part of India. The area sits on a low-altitude wetland plains and has a tropical hot and humid weather. This means, they grow lots of rice! Betel nut palm (above) is also a popular crop in the area. Our visit was at the end of the rainy monsoon period, so there were beautiful seasonal lakes around. The one above was seen along the road, and the guy there is a passing motorcyclist who really should be facing forward!



Our host, Dr. Jacob & Zingi, in our turquoise blue guest apartment.

"Once there were some aliens named silly..."

We visited the Green School of Bali, and had an eye-opening afternoon of ooh-aahing their cutting-edge bamboo architecture. There has been numerous media coverage on the school and no shortage of information out there, including here, here and here, just to link a few! But I bet you wont find the amazing short story posted below!