Free to good home ...

There are many things I love about Melbourne ... the fact that this can happily sit in a shop window without humour-deficient animal rights activists cracking the shits is just one of them :-)

Bad hair transcends all politics.

While watching TV last night I had the pleasure of watching an interview on a current affairs show 'Lateline'. The interview in itself was unremarkable - a 15 minute 'hard news' interview with Labeed Abbawi, Deputy Foreign Minister of Iraq - 15 minutes of tedious and predictable proportions.

What WAS impressive, however, was the combination of:

• A windy day
• A fabulous 'comb-over'
• Mr Abbawi's stoic refusal to acknowledge that he was in the midst of a hair crisis of monumental, nationwide, televised proportions.

Had me and the missus in hysterics for its duration.

Culinary highlights of Singapore.

While in Singapore I had lunch and went for a wander around the Bugis Street market with a mate/colleague of mine, the indomitable Mr Tezza who was teaching there at the same time as me. Mr Tezza is an ex-pat Singapore boy himself although he is similar to me, insofar as that he has been away long enough from his 'homeland' to lose track of which places are good to go to, what is 'so hot right now' etc etc.

One of the things he hasn't forgotten about, however, are the joys of a peculiarly Singaporean dish - one that he vividly remembers from his childhood, back in the days even before he had managed to misspend his youth.

It is a simple dish, involving two, equally healthy, ingredients (hunk of icecream + multicoloured bread). It costs around 80 cents Singaporean and can only be bought from little old men standing at mobile icecream stands. In the interests of cross-cultural understanding I of course had to try for myself...

My verdict?

It rocks.

It looks like this.



That is all.

The power of bun!

Back in Melbourne town now - settling back in and answering approximately 4.26 million emails per day from the lovely but occasionally confused students that I was teaching in Singapore.

Thought I'd post up another memento of my Singapore sojourn, this one from the food kiosk outside the Underwater World on Sentosa 'Island'. The Underwater World itself wasn't too bad but the sign below was what impressed me most - never underestimate the power of bun!

Useful signage.

Just a quickie, so to speak, for this post.

This is a picture snapped on Thursday while boarding the free bus that takes tourists around Sentosa 'Island'. Sentosa is a rather curious tourist trap, literally 300 metres away from Singapore, that includes a 'magical musical fountain' and large ugly statue of a MerLion (some sort of mythical concrete animal mostly sighted in its natural habitat of Singaporean corporate logos), resplendent with mobile phone receiver sticking from the top of its head.



Not sure if this sign is any relation to the nightclub concept of a 'door whore' but it made the bus trip, while crammed in with approximately 3.2 million pushy Indian tourists, that little bit more pleasant :-)