ampulets

Tokyo - that's all we'll be seeing this coming week! And that is plenty because it is going to be the week of the Tokyo Designers Week , 100% Design Tokyo , Design Tide at Midtown, the Emerging Directors' Art Fair , the Aosando Art Fair... But of course, J and I are just looking forward to walking in another city. We'll try and load up the photos here as we go along! Meanwhile design critic J is appalled and depressed by changi airport.

J decided to ditch flash and started all over again with plain ol' homemade vanilla html instead. So finally!

My brother E , good citizen him, has three kids. E1 is three, E2 is one and M3 is a month old. Each is their own person. It's been interesting just watching them grow and express their personality. E1 is gentle and agreeable ("You try. It's good. Try.") E2 is observant and a quick storm. M3 is a small parcel that sleeps and poops. So far. And it is easy to imagine the joy associated with parenthood. Brother E's is obvious. A typical conversation in the car as Brother E drives us home after dinner on Sundays goes like this:

click to view in flickr The description of Tuas on streetdirectory.com begins "Tuas is Singapore's version of Chernobyl." Comparing Tuas to Chernobyl is way too flippant, but to most of us islanders who don't work in a shipyard or any of the heavy, manufacturing or chemical industries, Tuas will seem somewhat surreal. There is really no distinctive architecture - just these monotone blocks, some of them windowless or clad in metal. There are no high rise buildings. Even the trees are low and overwhelmed by the concrete and steel. The streets are wide. Or perhaps they feel especially wide because the traffic is sparse, save for that roaring truck. There aren't many people hanging or walking about as you drive by. But although the place seems deserted, there is the knowledge that inside those concrete and metal blocks, there is almost non-stop activity. Man operating machines operating the economy operating man. Why were we in Tuas? To visit a bookbinder for one of...

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the calls of the wake-up bird . It has plagued me since. Not the calls per se, which I enjoy for the way they enter the HDB soundscape of bus stops, chittering mynas, chattering children and the incessant varied noises from the nearby taoist temple. But rather just identifying the bird itself. Not satisfied with mystery, I've since been searching online recordings of bird calls. But with no real clues, it got as desperate as googling "whoo-ooo bird call". At one point, we even thought it could be the frantic call of the monkey that has wandered from the pierce reservoir and spotted hanging around our street. But a monkey it is not.

Check out this book by tym and Mark Frost about the lives that made our favourite island in the tropics! From the previews so far, the book promises to be a great read. There are 4 things amps recommend that you do: (1) Read the previews/snippets from the book and the writers' posts here . (2) Buy your copy from the bookstores, or pre-order one. Of course, proceed to read it! (3) Attend one or all four of these events where the writers will talk and gamely sign your copy of the book. (4) Buy another copy for a friend.