A Very Nice Day

This is way overdue... On 9 June, I met up with an old friend, Daniel, and spent almost an entire day with him. Come to think of it, in our 16 years of friendship, that was the only time we had spent a full day together, barring the time we travelled along Great Ocean Road together for 1.5 days...

We first met for lunch at the Pan Pacific Orchard. I kept confusing it with the building of Pan Pacific Service Apartments and it was only minutes before I left home did I finally realise that it's actually behind Orchard Hotel. What a muddle-head I was. And then only when I reached Orchard MRT station and rechecked the map, did I realise that it was where the old Hotel Negara - the one with the very famous restaurant "The Drake" - was! Gosh! I had not thought about that place for such a long time and my only memory of that place was a Christmas dinner with XY and JA there many many years ago, when we were still very young and going to restaurants was really a luxury. But anyway, I found the hotel quite easily, although we were walking under the blazing sun and in mind-numbing heat.

We had buffet lunch at 10 at Claymore. It was a nice setting. The tables were far enough from each other, so patrons could enjoy their meals and conversations without disturbing the others. The spread of food was very good. There was plenty of greens, various types of stew, some carbohydrate dishes, plenty of different varieties of fruits, including green apples, etc. The chocolate fondue fountain was quite big, but it was the array of accompanying foods that struck me. There were all kinds of dried fruits imagineable and the usual marshmallows, etc. But I didn't really pay any attention to the chocolate fondue because I was attracted to the several types of cakes and pastries on display. And I have to say... the tiramisho was absolutely fantastic. It was soaked with enough alcohol to taste wet but not soggy and it was so soft, it literally melted in my mouth. I could have eaten the entire cake by myself... And with Citibank's 1-for-1 deal, the buffet was really really really worth it. I liked the place so much, I wanted to go back again with SH & Reg, but the place was fully booked till end of the week! Damn! Thinking of the tiramisho is making me hungry already... :\

After lunch, we went to Asian Civilisations Museum to view "The Kangxi Emperor: Treasures from the Forbidden City" exhibit. We were joined by Saresha. For $8, we got the view the special exhibit for as long as we liked plus whatever else was in the ACM. The exhibition was really amazing. We joined a guided tour which lasted about an hour. The docent was very informative and knowledgeable. She led us through the exhibits and showed and explained to us several of the items. She was very thorough indeed. We got to see a scroll of painting that was actually 22m long (but only 10m was on display), Kangxi's battle outfit, his calligraphy (which I fell in love with at first sight, and almost tempted a heist to get my hands on them :p), several glazed porcelain pieces (not sure if it's the correct word), robes worn by the Manchus, paintings of the 3 top emperors of the Qing Dynasty & Xiao Zhuang Empress, replicas of imperial edicts, etc etc. The exhibition was fairly extensive and we spent about another 2 hours there, just relooking at the stuff after our guided tour. I was very amazed at the amount of details put into the painting and the level of expertise for the glazing of some of the bowls and cups. There's a set of 12 cups which was supposed to represent the 12 months of a year and on each was painted a different flower. What was so special about them was that they were eggshell thin and the words of a poem could be read from the other side of the cup.

The exhibition basically showed that Kangxi totally lived up to his reputation as one of China's greatest emperors. He was not only an astute king, he was also a warrior and he was also a keen scholar. Above all, he was a patron of the arts and sciences - to me, he was the ultimate patron of the arts. He not only commissioned many artworks but he also practised calligraphy religiously and he was also very keen to learn more about the sciences from the west. In fact, it was recorded that he did so many things in his life, I started to wonder where he found all that time! But the thing was, he also had a rather sad private life. He outlived 3 of his empresses and at least 20 of his children. In fact, he was so sad after the death of his 3rd empress, he never promoted another concubine again. The saddest part was to learn that his favourite son - the original crown prince - was so impatient to be the emperor, he actually conspired with some other officials against his own father, Kangxi. For all that Kangxi was worth and contributed for the country, his private life was beset with various tragedies indeed. The museum didn't allow us to take photos of the special exhibition but we were allowed to take these:

 

 

After we were done with the exhibition, we decided to walk to the Esplanade for a cup of coffee/water. Along the way, we took more photos. I was again reminded of how pretty this part of Singapore was - with all the colonial buildings and tall beautiful trees - and how much effort the government had put in to style this region into a heritage/cultural/arts site.

The Victoria Concert Hall: Where I had spent many a memorable day with my Chinese music friends

The Esplanade: The emblem of quality and success and the pride of the arts in S'pore

Raffles Place: Symbol of Wealth  

We cooled off at Haagen Dazs in Esplanade where Daniel showed me some of his photos. He's a really serious hobbyist photographer indeed! And I must say, he's got a pretty good eye. Some of the photos had really cool or interesting perspectives. It's really refreshing to see photos that are thoughtfully and artfully composed, rather than the whole slew of hundreds of photos of similar things which I always see people upload on FB, Flickr, etc. If he gives me permission, I'll post some of his photos up here for viewing. :)

We ended the day with a really good local dinner at Food Republic in Wisma, where JA joined us. We had chicken rice, laksa, char kway teow and hokkien mee. Yums! And we sat and chatted till the foodcourt was closing. Actually for the whole of the 1st half of 2009, I was so tied up at work, besides taking time off on the 3rd day of CNY, I didn't take any leave or time off at all. So, being able to enjoy a few days of rest, finally, and spending one of the days with some dear lifelong friends was a real precious treat indeed. Here's hoping there'd be more of such days in future.