December 2011 – jenmonje

Writing a City: A Singapore Diary

December 30, 2011

It rained everyday in mid-October in Singapore, a kind of “surreptitious” rain, first cloaking the city in the middle of a sunshiny day with a mantle of grey, and within minutes, dark, porous clouds heavy with rain dump its wetness in a great downpour, with a loud SWOOOSH, and washes everything, even the slick on … More Writing a City: A Singapore Diary

Bruce Howard Newfield, a eulogy

December 17, 2011

(This is a re-post from my other blog of a eulogy I wrote on 19 December 2010 for my brother-in-law when he passed on last year.) And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is … More Bruce Howard Newfield, a eulogy

Tour of Museums: National Museum of Singapore (A Photo Essay)

December 11, 2011

IF there is one cultural landmark you owe yourself to see in Singapore, make it the National Museum of Singapore (NMS). Originally called the Raffles Museum, named after the first governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the NMS, an impressive architectural sprawl in cream built in the neo-Palladian tradition, gained its present name … More Tour of Museums: National Museum of Singapore (A Photo Essay)

A Review of A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal

December 5, 2011

Fresh from a literary coup with the publication of The Bookseller of Kabul in 2002 (for which she gained a big following and a bigger lawsuit), Åsne Seierstad returns to characteristic edge-of-the-seat reporting when she goes to Iraq to report on a country on the brink of disaster. Baghdad in the run up to the invasion by … More A Review of A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal