Langkawi (during Ramadan)

For some reason we had not made it to Langkawi yet so when N and P mentioned an already organized trip, we lazily jumped on the occasion of a WE in Langkawi in good company!

It was the beginning of the rainy season but that did not affect us much as the weather was beautiful all WE, what we should have been more careful with was the fact that it was Ramadan and Ramadan in Malaysia is a serious business! That means that everything is closed during the day, so no breakfast after sunrise (and sunrise is early!), lots of equipment are on maintenance, some places were just closed and finding lunch was a mission! (Which we failed to complete, twice! It would have been Kids heaven (if we had any kids), lunch made of crisps and magnum ice cream...)

to summarize, I would say, not the best time to visit the place...

 

Anyway, after the first couple of days in a lovely resort where we didn't do much more than playing beach volley, drinking cocktails in the pool and moving from one bar to another depending where was happy hours, we moved back to langkawi island.

We had a hard day on the beach, annoying a crab and having fun on jet skis,

Followed by touring of the island on our muppets. Everything we wanted to do was pretty much closed but we did manage to see a few waterfalls, beautiful hotels for the rich and famous and deserted beaches.

And finally, we went island hoping to discover inhabited islands, fishermen and eagles.

Not too bad, but if you do plan to go to langkawi, do avoid Ramadan! It will make the trip a bi more interesting!

 

The little black jacket

First week of maternity leave and still no baby, so I'm making the most of the free time by going to exhibitions around town. Today was "the little black jacket", a free :-) show at the art science museum at Marina Bay Sands.

I had never been to this museum, it's in the Marina Bay Sands complex, actually in the lotus flower or the baseball glove depending how you look at it...

Here's for the building, now the exhibit! It's a serie of photos by Karl Lagerfield (himself!). Models are famous people wearing the iconic Chanel jacket.

It doesn't take long to see the photos (there are only 3 rooms) but it's interesting to see these very different people with very different style, both men, women and children, all wearing the same jacket.

I even got a free poster of an apparently very famous Korean actress!

 

Gillman Barracks

We have now been stuck in Singapore for a few WE, waiting for miss G to arrive so we are trying to occupy our time...

This Sunday afternoon was an artistic one, we made a trip to Gillman barracks, an old British military camp now occupied by art galleries. It was deserted! (Not just by the army, by viewers as well!) It's a bit in the middle of nowhere, close to some office towers, may be it gets busier during the week on evenings, who knows?

The buildings have some style and it's set in a nice green environment (excellent for mosquitoes proliferation as we were to discover later on at the bar!) and we found some interesting exhibitions.

First Edward Clydesdale Thomson and his distracted gardener

 

Then the weird Pilipino artist Riel Hilario who went to the big apple and got depressed as no one was into carving...

 

And Anthropos, a mix of 11 SE Asian artists.

We were allowed to walk bare feet on the little skulls!

 

The question remains about what they are trying to achieve; gallery owners did not seem to try selling anything, to advertise an artist would require a wider audience, I'm not sure really...

We were supposed to continue the visits and see a few more galleries but it took us too long to finish our glasses ;-)

Never mind, another day may be!

 

F1 2013, happy birthday to me!

A few months ago, R offered me some F1 tickets for my birthday. They took their time to arrive, but a couple of days before the Grand Prix, here they were!

I was not disappointed as I was treated to a different stand everyday!

Friday for practice, we started with a beautiful view of the Marina, Marina Bay Sands was even showing some F1 on its wall and a checked flag under the "boat" at the top. I discovered that despite being a night Grand Prix, there is a lot happening before dark: Porsches race, GP2; plenty of time to get roasted in the stand! (It is actually rather rare to stay outside in the sun in Sg, and that was a reminder why...)

I also discovered my noise limit, Porsches I can do without earplugs, GP2 can not lah! (as Singaporeans would say)

We gave a miss to the big concert that night (some Koreans bands) but caught a little bit of a British artist at dinner time at Esplanade.

Saturday for qualifying, we were in the posh zone: zone 1 where we got a free ride of the Singapore flyer (the big wheel) just ahead of GP2 race!

Then, it was time for Porsches qualifications, a bit more practice and finally F1 qualifications.

The seats were fantastic! Just outside of the pit lane looking over turn 1,2 and 3. I believe it's where the best photos are from.

At dinner, we saw Bob Geldof performing and post race, we went back to the Padang for a really cool concert of the Killers.

Sunday was race day for all categories, Porsches, GP2 and F1, this time we are on the Padang stand (ready for Rihanna's concert!)

We got to see the tour of the pilots on vintage cars, the safety car a few times, the thing is, we were so close to the track that it wasn't really good for the photos...

But we were indeed at the best location to watch Rihanna (not) singing and moving her bump (a lot)!

All together, a fantastic birthday present!