2 lives

weekend aliens- photo by J here, de-faced by me

For various reasons, it was much harder to empty my mind of work this weekend. The thoughts lingered and festered stewed. The air laid its humid weight on the skin. And it was no surprise that the newspapers brought ill news of far larger scale.

So if, like me, you too need a powerful dose of distraction to empty and clear the mind before the start of a new week, I would recommend:

(1) A swim in a public pool, where the colliding bodies of old men/women doing the backstroke in circles and the schools of children at stage-1 buoyancy, will certainly chase out all other voices in your head. But there is something else very therapeutic, even hypnotic, about doing front-crawl/freestyle laps. The need to focus on each stroke and stretch, the thrill of overcoming resistance and those dancing lines of light on the tiled bottom of the pool, that play of light, medium and motion.

(2) A visit to the newly-opened Peranakan Museum by the Asian Civilisations Museum. . The materiality of the Peranakan culture makes it a perfect for a museum presentation, where there is little need for complex digital devices. Instead, the object that exists in time and space alone - its beauty, its physical witness - suffices.


birds and the bees on a Peranakan table cloth

The Peranakan Museum is the old Tao Nan School on Armenian Street off Stamford Rd, located right beside the Substation and across from the Singapore Management University. Take the train to Dhoby Gaut or City Hall. It's a 5-10minute walk from either station.