Company Ilotopie- "Water Fools"



went for the opening show of the Singapore Arts Festival 2008 by French street theater Company Ilotopie.. though i didn't have a great vantage point (wrong side of the river and lens too short) and couldn't make out what was going on most of the time (which i found was probably the norm from the hilarious running commentaries cum interpretations the people around me were making.. haha..).. nonetheless, it was quite spectacular and unusual.. the sort of stuff i like... :) go see it if you can. at boat quay. free. tomorrow and sunday i think..

Moon Photography


i'm not sure why it looks different every time i photograph it.. this time i can see the texture of the moon more clearly... hahaha.. if you're not a great fan of moon pictures that's just too bad!! :p i think the moon is just so darn fascinating!!

More Celestial Images!


pic of sun taken this morning at 7am - the sky wasn't exactly this dark (i.e. its because i 'spot metered' using the sun) but it was really so flaming red! wake up earlier tomorrw and take a look!!

and i took the moon again tonight.. not as clear and bright but i've captured the 'viewing platform'! :p

Full Moon


just took this 15 mins ago out of my apartment window.. the moon was so distractingly huge in the night sky on my drive back along the PIE that i almost had difficulty keeping my eyes on the road...

according to this moonmap from this website, you can see 2 craters (Crater Tycho & Crater Copernicus) and 2 mares (Maria means 'sea', namely Mare Nubium ("sea of clouds") and Mare Tranquillitatis ("sea of tranquillity") in my picture! can you spot them?? you need to sort of tilt my pic a bit cos i think the other pic was taken in North America or somewhere..


according to all astrological predictions i see online, tonight as a full moon night is quite something indeed...

"Full Moon in Scorpio Ritual - May 19 - 20, 2008 - This Full Moon in Scorpio is an excellent time to make an important choice...will you allow yourself to fall into the trap of external reality and find the mundane world and the wishes of others dominating your life, or will you step forward and decide that you are driving your own chariot? Will you accept responsibility for creating your own life and step firmly onto the path of personal evolution? Taking control of our own thoughts, deeds, and actions will infuse us with inner strength and creative power that can become the driving force behind living a joyful and enriching life. Now is the perfect time to choose your path and create your destiny."

nonetheless, when is it ever NOT a good time to take responsibility for our own thoughts, deeds and actions?? haha...

guess it's the same with new year's resolutions, we always need to have a "special time" to start making changes in our lives.. oh well...:)

News Report: Superstitious Chinese link earthquake to "unlucky" Olympic mascots



these are my Olympic mascot toys (bought from my school trip to Xi'an and Chengdu last Nov) sitting atop my desktop computer, prettily and patiently awaiting the start of the 2008 Olympic games.... unbeknownst to them, accusatory rumours swirl around cyberspace concerning their inauspiciousness... who is to say what is to be believed or not..? afterall, the facts are spookily coincidental...

Hong Kong - Superstitious bloggers have linked China's earthquake disaster and other recent misfortunes to the five Olympic mascots seen on posters across the nation, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Friday.

Gossip sites are full of speculation that four of the five cartoon mascots have fulfilled prophesies of doom with one more, connected to the mighty Yangtze River, ominously still to come, the South China Morning Post said.

The five Olympic mascots are Jinjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, Nini and Beibei - and Jingjing, a panda, the animal most closely associated with Sichuan province where the earthquake struck.

Huanhuan, a cartoon character with flame hair, is being linked by bloggers to the Olympic torch which has been dogged by fierce anti-China protests on its round-the-world tour.

Yingying, an antelope, is an animal confined to the borders of Tibet which has been the scene of riots and the cause of international protests against China, the bloggers point out.

Nini, represented by a kite, is being viewed as a reference to the 'kite city' of Weifang in Shandong where China saw a deadly train crash last month.

That leaves only Beibei, represented by a sturgeon fish, which online doomsayers suggest could indicate a looming disaster in the Yangtze River, the only place where Chinese sturgeon are found.

Peking University sociologist Xie Xueluan told the newspaper: 'Chinese see major calamities as divine intervention ... The absence of religion reinforces this trend.'

Battle at Kruger NP



in case you're not one of the 31 million people who have viewed this on youtube... Winner of the YouTube's Best Eyewitness Video.. and now apparently National Geographic has bought the rights to the video for a rather tidy sum... oooooh.... :) there's even a website..

"Our pandas are ok"



... so said my travel companion to Chengdu and Tibet last year, over msn to me just two days ago... and this was also confirmed by the AP news report i find online... that's a relief, at least.. so huge and yet gentle is how i remember these lovely bi-colored bamboo chewing herbivores.. and of cos there were the frisky red pandas too, with their thick striped tails...

and as i type this blog entry, i hear the news blaring out from the living room tv, giving updates on the latest death toll in the Sichuan province.. 15,000... and interviews with the people who survived.. so many disasters, one after another, natural, manmade.. i can barely bring myself to read the papers nowadays... After the crackdown in Lhasa, then all that hoo-ha with the olympic torch, and then the myanmar cyclone and now the 7.8 richter scale earthquake.. and if that wasn't enough, i just read a report on the series of bomb blasts in Jaipur, a fascinating city which i visited just a mere 4 years ago on my month and a half long trip to the colourful desert state of Rajasthan in India.....

its hard to be optimistic about the future... but we must try i guess...