SINGAPORE BAT-SONG

 

This was my favourite among the paintings we saw at the National Gallery of Singapore on Saturday. There is always a balance to be struck between the representation of a subject and the abstract qualities of the paint.

In this case both are on offer in lavish servings. Your imagination can run riot over the bustling activity of a far Eastern port in times gone by.

But equally there is the rich impasto of paint laid on in buckets. Glorious dollops of the stuff, and yet, as you step back the mind sees distinctive human characters, busy with their work.

I strive to paint like this. But with less success 🙄😂

 

 

Definitely back in Dubai. A dry, desert-wasteland kind of beauty 🤣🤣🤣 Snapshots from my first early morning walk since sleeping off the travel.

Here in International City there's definitely plenty of "move fast and break things" but at a low-tech level. It's not the most conventionally beautiful of suburbs, but it provides opportunies for people of many nationalities to climb those first few rungs on the ladder of success.

For me, ladder climbing was never much of a thing, but this place has allowed me to slide off sideways and avoid the snakes that threaten to plunge us down again in old age.

I enjoy the serenity of my 5th floor apartment, with the chaos and energy all around at my feet. So dry compared to Singapore, and still pleasantly cool in the mornings.

Good to be home.

 

Flashback post.

A pre-birthday dinner for me at Marina One, followed by a bit of a walk through Downtown at night. I'm going to miss this place. But what a refreshing break it's been while still managing a fair bit of remote work, thanks to #bim360 or whatever it's called these days 🤣🤣🤣

Dubai and Singapore, compare and contrast. I'm not interested in arguments about which is better, let's just say there are lots of parallels but also significant differences : climate, culture... 

 

 

Bound to be something I reflect upon over the next few weeks. I first visited Singapore about six years before I moved to Dubai, and this visit is about six after my previous (3rd) one. It's felt a bit like one of those movies with multiple flashbacks.

Memory seems to be a dense web of connections. Reentry at any point triggers a whole series of associations in multiple domains. There must be an evolutionary story to tell there.

 

 

Is it a butterfly, is it a bat?... No it's an air vent 🤣🤣🤣

My sources go with the bat symbology. Be that as it may, I found a couple of hours to have a go this afternoon with my BIM pencil. All part of my Singapore shophouse explorations.

 

I thought I might have to make it fixed size, or manually resizable. But I ran a quick trial on a detail component and figured out a pretty stable version with three parameters.

From there it was quite easy to roll out a basic vent with a projecting border, as a wall-hosted family. Placed it into my model and tweaked the size. Next step will be burglar bars.

Of course there are all kinds of variations on the theme. One step at a time.

 

Quite cool this morning with the sun hiding behind low clouds. Perfect for a walk

The abandoned building site is next door but one and has been like that for at least a dozen years. I don't quite remember when the building work stopped) I view this as part of the "move fast & break things" culture here. Not to be misread as decline.

It would be quite nice to see the land utilised I suppose, but from a purely selfish point of view I see it as a romantic ruin (in the tradition of John Soane) that punctuates my morning walk.

The wide sky in the lower view displays more conventional beauty perhaps. But it's a much bigger disappointment to me that the promised park in this area has not materialised. There is no dead forest of half-built columns here, just hoardings and wasteland.

One big public space would make such a difference to this densely populated suburb. Opportunity squandered in my view.