Singapore River Safari Part 2 - Pandas

The highlight of our visit to Singapore River Safari must be the Pandas Exhibit.

Kai Kai (凯凯) and Jia Jia (嘉嘉) are housed in a specially constructed climate-controlled enclosure which change throughout the four seasons emulating their original environment. The zoo grows its own 8,000-square-metre (86,000 sq ft) plantation of special bamboo specially for the feeding of the giant pandas. These pandas are a sign of the twentieth anniversary of friendly Sino-Singapore relations. The names of the two pandas were selected from entries of a public naming competition organised in 2010. The pandas, which arrived in September 2012, are on a ten-year loan from China.

Read more from Wikipedia.

Meals of Kai Kai

Meals of Jia Jia

Kai Kai is so adorable and easy to take photo of him cause he is so active.

Meanwhile Jia Jia is sleeping so soundly.

Video of the Pandas Exhibit.

Singapore River Safari Part 1 - Fishes

Recently, my son brought me to Singapore River Safari. Not a good time to visit cause of the haze blown over from Indonesia Fire Forest. But as we already bought the tickets online, decided to go ahead with the visit but did not choose to take the boat ride cause of the hazy condition.

Even the staff were wearing masks. Every where I looked is so blur and hazy but luckily most of the exhibits were indoor and were shaded from all the huge vast trees.

Many such riddles along the walk through the exhibits.

Enjoyed looking at all the different species of the fishes, looked out for more exhibits in Part 2 in next post.

Mid Autumn Festival 2015 - Hazy Moon

Today is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, where most Chinese celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival. This year the moon looked so red and hazy cause of the haze blown over from Indonesia Forest Fire. The haze is really bad , choking us, all my siblings are coughing and visited the doctors.

I looked out of the window and saw the moon so red and hazy, decided to zoom on the moon. My camera is Panasonic Lumix and could zoom 20X, it looked as if the craters on the moon could be seen or is it the haze. I am not sure but definitely is not the cloud cause I did not see any clouds passing by the moon when I took the photo.

Haze is back

The haze is back in Singapore. It was due to burning of plantation in Indonesia. The companies involved were so irreponsible for polluting the air. Affecting neighbouring countries like Singapore and Malaysia and the worse affected were their own citizen in Indonesia. Kalimantan having PSI like 2000, scary figure. Here our PSI are above 250, already many falling sick with cough and eyes irritation.

There's government subsidy for medical fees for haze related illness, for those earning below $1800 or senior citizen, children and low income groups. For more information, view haze subsidy.

Mid Autumn Festival Decoration 2015

Times passes fast, it's going to be Mid Autumn Festival soon. It falls on 15th day of the 8th lunar month (i.e. 27th September 2015). Streets of Chinatown in Singapore were decorated with beautiful lanterns.

I know my grandnephew will like this PSY lantern. He loves to dance to the music of Gangnam Style.

Spotted this beautiful mid autumn festival decoration at one of the supermarket.

SG50 - a new range of S$50 and S$10 notes - with an eye both on past and future

A set of commemorative currency notes to celebrate SG50 - consists of one piece S$50 and five pieces of S$10. We can change at the bank for these new notes at face value.

The notes’ designs drew inspiration from significant milestones and achievements in Singapore's history, the multiracialism that defines Singapore as a nation and the values and aspirations that underpin Singapore's progress.

For example, the S$50 note highlights Singapore's history, transformation and future. It shows the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew shouting 'Merdeka!' - the rallying cry of Singapore's independence struggle. See source from here.

The set is beautiful. Love that it comes with the red box and folder. I managed to change 2 sets by queueing for only 30 minutes. Some banks saw longer queues. We can change only 5 sets by the first only the first two sets comes with boxes and folders.

Singapore National Day 50th Birthday (SG50 - 2015) - Planes viewed from my window

Wow I had a field day video all the planes passing by my window after they had performed their stunts for the Singapore National Day 2015. I counted about 15 of them but a total of 50 aircrafts were used for the performance including one Singapore Airlines Plane.

There were even helicopters, Apache, Chinook, etc but these did not fly past my window.

I video them in short intervals but edited them to join them in one video.

For the real performance you can view the official videos below from You Tube.

The performance were great and I am really proud.

Singapore 50th Birthday - SG50 (2015) - Mobile Column

It so happening right now, all preparing for the big party in an hour or so. Mobile Column getting ready for the big march to the venue. So proud of today and very happy. Hoping the weather will be kind.

Very long row of mobile column, had to split the video otherwise the video will be too long.

For more details on the mobile column, please view NDP.ORG

Happy 50th Birthday Singapore - SG50 (2015)

Happy 50th Birthday Singapore, in a few hours, the big party will be held at Padang, Cityhall. As this is the Jubilee Celebration we had extra holiday in addition to the national day (9th August 2015, falls on Sunday so public holiday replaced on Monday), the extra holiday was on 7th August 2015. So we made a visit to the padang on 7th August, before the actual party started today.

So happy to be able to stroll to the padang and met with these delightful lighted props to be used on national day. These props are very uniquely Singaporean.

Singa the Courtesy Lion , mascot for courtesy campaign.

Teamy Bee for the National Productivity Movement.

Water Wally for the Save Water Campaign

I think this is the national flower - Vanda Miss Joaquim

Blur like sotong - is Singlish (Singapore slang) - sotong means squid as squid squirts ink in water to make it blur but actually means clueless

Lah - another Singlish Slang - comes after each sentence eg. OK lah

Changi Airport Control Tower

Singapore Public Housing Flat (apartment) and it does not comes cheap even though it is public, at least 6 figures sum in Singapore Dollars

Singapore Signature Dish - Chilli Crab - invented by Singaporean Housewife (Read story from source

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Ice Kachang - Local dessert- was originally ice ball but evolved to ice kachang. I remember during my primary school in the 60s it costs only 10 cents for ice ball and i share with my friend so we need foot only 5 cents each and the ice vendor will use a mini saw to saw the ice ball into half (inside the ice ball are some red beans ingredients. Fond memories :)

King of fruits - Durian

The beautiful stage for tonight celebration.

A celebration of our heritage - Lightshow by The Fullerton Hotel Singapore - SG 50 (2015)

Last night was at One Fullerton viewing a very beautiful lightshow by The Fullerton Hotel Singapore in celebrating Singapore 50th birthday. Was lucky to get a good spot to video the beautiful show.

Nightly from 1 to 9 August 2015 at 8.00pm, 9.00pm and 10.00pm Additional screening on Saturdays and Sundays at 11.00pm

More information from The Fullertonbay Hotel.