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!

 

Where are you from?

It has been a while since I have written a "special note", one of my little philosophical discussion with myself... But a question I was recently asked 3 times in the laps of 3 days prompted it.

 

It is rather frequent when abroad that I am asked where I am from and I never really know what to say! If I'm in Thailand for the WE let's say, I would tend to say that I'm from Singapore (because after all, it's where I came from for that particular WE!) but then people look at me weirdly, apparently my eyes don't look Asian enough...

This time, the 3 questions were asked in Singapore and all of them within the boundaries of the F1 circuit. (Post on F1 coming, R is playing with the photos!)

First while ordering beer, someone heard us speaking French and asked where we were from (in French), he didn't seem very satisfied with the answer Singapore... Neither did he seem satisfied with France, what he was looking for was Lyon/Burgundy.

Then the next day, we were asked to fill a survey at the entrance gate and to the question where are you from we said France, again False! He was looking for Singapore as we live here and have employment pass, he had another question later on for nationality...

And finally, metal detector guy asked me where I was from and this time I got it right, I said France and he was happy!

As you can tell, France is my go-by answer because in Asia people can not tell from my accent! (British people please do not laugh too hard...) and then they are surprised that my accent is not horrendous! :-)

When I was in London, I couldn't answer France to the same question as most people already knew that from the way I speak!

May be to please everyone I should go with:

"I hold a French passport, was born and grew up in Lyon (to be replaced by "Lyon, France" if talking to US citizen, they like attaching state to city!), spent most of the last 10 years in and out of London and currently live in Singapore" but that seems rather extensive knowing that most of the time the person doesn't really care...

So I'm still looking for the perfect answer but may be, as my physics teacher would say: "tout depend du referentiel!" (my answer should be adjusted to the referential!)