Singapore Garden Festival 2016

So I thought I wouldn't have anything interesting to write in July, turns out I had. As the title indicated, it's about Singapore Garden Festival which I went to yesterday. Yesterday was the social activity thing that I mentioned in the last post. It started very embarrassingly for me. I got into the wrong station because I never read the email properly. I ended up 30 minutes late. I was seriously beyond embarrassed. Perhaps now it makes sense to you when I often wrote how I'm directionally challenged and got lost a lot in all of my travels, it's simply because I don't read things properly. Anyway, so yesterday mom asked if it's fun. I told her I was just relieved when it's over. It was not bad. I guess I had some fun. I tried bowling for the first time ever and every time you get to try something for the first time in your life, it's always a good feeling, at least for me. I would say I still don't know how to bowl. I took many steps before I rolled the ball and I didn't even bother to learn how the scoring works. I managed to knock down some pins and in the group I played in, I didn't do badly, though there were times when my ball went to the gutter. The competitive me got annoyed. Overall it's pretty fun and I seriously do want to learn how to do this properly, but I don't think I'll have the chance. I don't see me doing this often. This place we went to was far for me.

So Singapore Garden Festival, I was kinda in a dilemma about going actually. I wasn't blown away by the previous festivals. In fact I think I wrote I may not give it a go again, but since social engagement finished not so late and it was a sunny day yesterday (compared to the heavy rainy and cloudy days we've been having in the previous days), I thought I should make full use of the rest of the day. Mom asked if it was good. I think it wasn't bad. Maybe because I came in with so little expectation, I didn't get disappointed much. It wasn't mind blowing, but I did see some things that I like. It helped that I paid the local residents rate, which is half of what the tourist would pay. I thought a lot about Chelsea Flower Show as I walked around the area which is very very big. It was a hot day yesterday, people were walking with umbrella. Here in the tropics, you need umbrella all the time, rain or shine. There were people, but it wasn't full or overcrowded like Chelsea Flower Show, so that's a plus. There were more crowd though in Gardens by the Bay's Flower Dome which host the winning orchid winners and this did make the visit to be not as comfortable. By the way, since I was still on the fence about going that day, I only brought my ixus instead of my dlsr. I struggled in getting good photos, but I thought I should use this as a challenge. As expected many of the pictures weren't great, but I did surprise myself when I saw decent pictures.

Back to comparing this to Chelsea Flower Show. Singapore Garden Festival actually perhaps has more things to offer. It has the outdoor garden landscape designs, the usual rooms or balcony garden designs, the window of the world (which looks more like installation arts with flowers), the fantasy garden designs (though I feel the number of entries kinda decreased), a good portion of bonsai exhibits, other flower arrangements designs and competitions, learning garden portion where you can see the plants that give us food here in Asia, orchid sections (which again I feel kinda decreased in size compared to previous festivals), and there's also talks and demonstration about gardening (which I didn't watch). The festival even has a bigger market place area for food and stuff, which by the way, this year they don't seem to have the stalls with people selling gardening or flower related stuff. Maybe because of the poor reception in previous festivals, the sellers didn't feel like coming back. Anyways, what the Singapore Garden Festival is lacking compared to Chelsea Flower Show is perhaps the many different kind of flowers that you see in Chelsea Flower Show. I think I wrote this before, it somewhat cannot be helped. We live in the tropics, some flowers, beautiful delicate ones just cannot survive here. In Chelsea Flower Show, I think the flower exhibitors sell out seeds. Here in Singapore, I didn't seem to find any. I guess if you attend any of the demo or talk, you can get some advice and buy something. I don't know if my perception of this is wrong because I didn't go and explored everything in details. It's just I think in the first Garden Festival, they dedicated a whole floor for community gardening and there's a lot of people so willing to talk to you about how to start gardening in your flat and stuff. This time around, I didn't feel so. Anyways, here are pictures, lots of them.

My first stop was the terrariums showcase. There were many interesting terrariums with very cute figurines inside them. The room is dark though, so many photos were just blurry.

This is a picture of some sculpture near this dome like structure they built. I don't know if it's permanent, but it looked pretty nice.

In the community garden sections, there were some harvest in competition. There were not many of them, I saw like 2 tables of this below. Still it's quite impressive that people took time to grew these.

The pictures below are from the Floral Windows to the World Exhibition. As written above, this feels to me more like installation arts with flowers, always unique, strange, whimsical. There were 2 displays that I really like this year. One of them is the one exactly below here with Japanese origami like structures. The other one is the second picture, because I love curves and the flowers choices were just great with the white wall.





This one below is from one of the bonsai from the Penjing and Artistic Stone Exhibition and Competition. I seriously had to google just now to learn what Penjing is. I just called these as bonsai and I like those with little figurines like this one below. I guess if they add figurines into it, it becomes Penjing, not just a bonsai? Anyways, there was one which was really amazing because it looks like a whole mountain.

This one below is from the Fantasy Gardens. The bench and gazebo is up side down. The gazebo is actually only half, there's a mirror reflecting it to make it whole. The exhibition area here is very dark that I couldn't enjoy some of the exhibits much, also photos coming from here are not amazing.

Outside, there were some strange things, like this one from the musical flower field.

Lastly, I went to the Flower Dome. The ticket includes this. I didn't realize that the flower dome has this cool dragon. Super cool and I so want to have one myself.

So by this time, the camera's battery was dying and with the so many people jostling to see the orchids, I couldn't really take many pictures. The orchids were okay I guess, I didn't see anything that was particularly stunning.

I spent around 2 hours there. It was hot and I was quite tired. I'm kinda glad I went, it wasn't bad. For more pictures, please go here.

:) eKa @ 5:02:00 PM • 0 comments

Surviving July

Hey peeps, how has your July been? I had a bad flu when the month started. So bad I had to visit the doctor twice because after one round completing the medication the doctor gave me, I wasn't getting better. I had quite a few rest days, but then since I was really sick I couldn't enjoy it. Then there's also some annoying things that happened. I still can't get over one of it. It's something that makes me feel like I had been lied to and betrayed. Seriously if I can, I really don't want to talk to the people involved anymore. In fact if it's been any other people, I would most probably not talk to them anymore. However in this case, it seems I just have to pretend all is cool when it's so not. It's a very ass move that they did. So pissed I am that I do hope bad things would befall them. To add to all these sad things was that because I was sick at that time, I couldn't just eat all the sorrow away. I couldn't eat junk food and I couldn't have ice cream when I really really wanted or perhaps needed too. I'm okay now and I have had my ice cream and comfort food, but I still feel I haven't been having enough ice cream.

Today as usual I had Japanese class. We're in Pre-Advanced now and today is lesson 3. Since lesson 1, I have been feeling like I'm drowning even more and everyone is so far ahead. There are more kanji. The classmates can guess the meaning and understand sentences faster and I always have to search what something means. Then also when my sensei starts writing Kanji without the hiragana, I'll be lost. In the toilet this morning I met one of my classmate, who's the motherly one because she is a mother. She remarked of how the class is getting difficult and I concurred. I said something like I felt so behind. I forget the exact word she used, but she said not to be discouraged and work hard. After every lesson where I felt like I have been smacked by a tornado, I did feel if I should just stop because it's not working for me. Today hearing my classmate said that, it felt good, comforting. Maybe I should hang in there, maybe I'll get through this okay. I wonder if things would be so much different for me if I were in a class where everyone don't have any Chinese knowledge and be as blind as me regarding the kanji. The kanji itself is not the only problem. Everyone seems to be speaking Japanese and I'm not like that. It takes me longer time to compose sentences so I wonder what happened, why is it I'm this behind. Truly, I am so demoralized.

I really don't have any interesting thing to say people. This coming Wednesday I have to participate in a social activity. I'm really not looking forward for it. I think it's because I don't see me having fun in it. So I'm hoping something will pop up which will stop me from participating. I don't write about the things I do day to day, but the fact that I hope something would come up so that I end up doing the same boring thing instead of doing something that could possibly be fun is rather sad. I know it is so unhealthy. I haven't been doing any social thing since perhaps my dinner with la Gioia almost 2 months ago. I should surround myself with people, but all I want is for people to get off me, let me be alone :(

Talking about sadness and isolation, there's this old uncle living in the same block as me. He uses a walker to walk and he walks really really slow. I usually see him on Sundays when I go to the other block to get food. There was one time I saw him sitting at the stair case looking really tired. It's worrying that the mean and evil me think he should just stay at home and not go out. I think it's a mean thought because just because he's old doesn't mean he shouldn't be seen in public. Then I also started to feel sad and heartbroken seeing him because one Sunday when I was getting my food in which I think it only took me 10 minutes or so, he only moved like 2-3 m. The other day I saw him trying to get into the lift and I wondered if he managed to make it. The evil me didn't make sure he could get in. It seems he has the strength to lift his walker, but he couldn't really lift his feet much that he drags them. These days when I see him, aside for the sadness, I start to think it's good for him for still be trying. I couldn't imagine how long he takes walking from this block to the other block where there are shops around. Does the 5 minutes I take mean 1 hour for him with many stops along the way? You may start to wonder if it's worth it. Worth it or not, he's doing it and so I begin to see him as being tenacious. I still get really sad when I see him, but at least now it's tempered with admiration for his persistence and I do hope God will take care of him and let him be alright.

Well that's about it peeps. I really have nothing interesting to write. Hope your days are great.

:) eKa @ 5:09:00 PM • 0 comments

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