The Adventures of an Urban Kampung Girl

A Newbie Sets up a Website

2011-05-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Yes. For years I've been traversing across the internet doing things that most of us have come to accept as normal everyday life. Communicating by email, searching for info on Google, watching the Canucks beat the Sharks 4-2 on Youtube and talking to the family many of thousand of miles away on Skype.

Everyday, I am learning more about this inetrnet creature and and how to navigate my way through it.
Last winter I asked for more trouble (or learning experiences, as Money & You grads would say) than I really needed when I thought
"Hey. Wouldn't it be a great idea to build a website for the Artists & Crafters of Salt Spring where everyone was in one place, thus making it easy for people to find us?" Silly me when I answered "Why yes, it would." I called it Salt Spring Craft, because Salt Spring Artisans just didn't sound right. That was the easy part.Like so many of these great ideas, it took more time, more sweat and more tears than I had bargained for. Now, I'm not saying that I'm regretting having set up the site. In fact, it's blossoming slowly but blossoming just fine. I guess I'm saying that everytime I look at the website, I feel that I can do so much more and that I'd have to go on an intensive learning curve if I wanted to make it the way I see it in my head.

Because I have no web-building experience, I figured I'd build it on a Blogger platform as I'm already using it and have become accustomed to it's idiosyncrasies. This was great for organising posts into categories like weaving or ceramics to make it easier to find an artisan. All artisans can list for free. Click here for the form.

We now have over 40 listings and it is slowly growing. However, in the midst of all adding all the artisan pages to the website, it occurred to me that many Salt Spring artisans have no web presence. So how would people off-island see their work? Ergo, the Showcase Listing was added to give artisans up to 10 pictures for their page and stacks more options & room for describing their designs, work & process.
Then I tried to integrate the free google search box. Well, that didn't work. Apparently google's free search box is, err, not quite up to the standard of it's paid search feature. Thank goodness for blogger how-to & know-how pages. I found most of what I needed to customise the website from there.
Based on feedback from a great many helpful people, I've added a Salt Spring Events calendar which has dates and information on as many events, classes & workshops I could find trawling the pages & website of guilds, tours, b&b calendars and the indepensible Salt Spring Exchange.
Here's a place, if you're visiting or have freinds & family visiting, to go to to see what's happening on the island. And if you have a Art (this includes performing art) or craft event, workshop or class, click here to send me the info to list for free.

That was the other thing. I'm building this webiste for artisans and organisers to list for free and yet, even with a free blogging platform & free gadgets, there are costs. That's when I learnt how to use Ad Sense and that I needed to get some revenue to cover some of the marketing costs of getting Salt Spring Craft noticed by the world at large. So, ta-dah, down the right is a space for advertisers and a Donate Button. So please donate if you feel so inclined to help independent business in a workd of the mass produced.

And so was born a new little website that will, hopefully, grow up to be useful to all who come to it, inspirational to those who seek products and experiences that come from a slower pace of life and engaging to all who value that which is handmade, unique and speaks from the human spirit.

How do you prune an apple tree?

2011-02-16T22:51:00.000-08:00

When we bought the house last year, it came with two apple trees. I'd let them grow in their usual way all year so that I could see them as they were. And what they were was leafy, full of little branches that made it look like it was having a bad-hair day. But most frustratingly, in the autumn, when the tree was full of apples, the reddest and juiciest looking ones were at the end of the highest branches, and hopelessly out of reach.
This year is going to be different. I'd learnt some about gardening and most importantly had the expert help of friend Belinda, the super-duper master gardener. I had learnt that a shaggy tree full of skyward shooting branches was not the best thing for a tree; that where the bark was scarred and gueyly damp was where there was damage and infection and needed to amputated like a gangrenous limb; that a tree so laden with that multitude of apples had to work very, very hard to churn out the harvest, which also means that quality would be sacrificed for quantity. And if I'm brutally honest, last years apples was a bit lacking in, how can I put it? taste. This year, it's going to be different.
Armed with newly sharpened and freshly sanitised tools, plus two ladders, we were at it with vigor. Belinda giving me tips on which branch to cut (the ones that were too small to support the many spurs at its tip, where the apples would eventually form, any shoots growing downward or inward) and were was the best place to cut it. Three and a half frozen hours later, my initial hesitant nips at weedy shoots evolved into sawing off great chunk of branches and my previously afro-headed apple tree looked buzz-cut botak, and very sad.
Despite it's forlorn appearance, I know that it'll be healthier, will look better (in a couple of years I'm told), it'll bear better tasting fruit and most of all, I'll be able to reach the yummy apples.

But now that I think about it, so will the deer! Hurrumph!!

The Slipper Chair Project

2011-02-08T20:38:00.000-08:00

This is something I've been wanting to do since I came to Canada. Having spent countless hours watching HGTV during my first few months in this new land, I was swept away by the slew of shows out in cable TVland that would help you DIY just about anything. Sarah Richardson and the Designer Guys found old furniture and in five TV-minutes, covered, nailed and stained and voila! furniture completely redone, revived and reborn into a gorgeous must-have.

A couple of months ago, I was out indulging in my favourite new passion: thrift-shopping and stumbled upon the perfect candidate for my first real re-upholstery job. It was an orange slipper chair stacked on top of a jumble of other chairs in the Lion's Club Thrift Store in Duncan. There wasn't a price on it so I asked. "It's $10" the lady said, "but if you like, we'll sell it for $8." I said that I liked. And she said, "in that case, we'll carry it out to your car (and in this case, my friend Emma-Louise's stationwagon) for you." A bargain, I'd say.
I finally got my act together last month, in Victoria, and forked out $45 for a whole meter of thick upholstery fabric from Chintz & Co, being too much of a skinflint to buy a half meter more.
And, I know you must have guessed by now, I was half a meter short. Sigh.But I soldiered on with my recovering and the pictures show the result.
The process was pretty easy, using the existing covers as templates for cutting the new fabric. The original piping was in pretty good nick, so that was reused and this project gave me a good excuse to buy and learn how to make fabric covered buttons.

I'm not too happy with the temporary brown fabric covering the back of the chair, but the next time I see the right half meter, I am so buying it.

First Snowfall

2010-11-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

I'm never quite prepared when it snows. No matter how I anticipate it or mentally gear myself up for it, it always takes me by surprise.

The weather report said that there'd be snow mixed with rain for Friday, when I first check it. It was the day b & I were to make a run to Vancouver. Thinking that this would be the first snowfall of the season, it wouldn't amount to much. Right.
Out from the Long Harbour ferry and onto Vancouver, the meteorologist Russ Lecate on news 1130 gave us the bad news. The snowfall would be pretty serious (for the greater Vancouver region anyway), 5cm of snow coming late that evening. Crikey! We take the 10:20 ferry home then. Not having dealt with a real winter since that crazy one 2 years ago, I couldn't get my head around his 5cm prediction and didn't think much about it. Hmmm....
At 11 pm we were still in the line-up waiting to be called onto the ferry home. The wind was whipping up and the snowflakes were getting bigger and more abundant. By the time we got to Salt Spring, it was pass midnight and the 5cm of snow had beat us to the island. Living in the 'Canadian Reviera' we don't have very many snowploughs and so the main road was icy and slippery. It was so treacherous that we didn't quite make it home. Had to park the car o the main road and walk up the hill. In the moonlight and the snow, the scene glowed with the luminous that only a foot of snow can give.

Making Punpkin Faces

2010-11-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

I've never carved a pumpkin before. Enough episodes of Buffy & The Simpsons Halloween have convinced me that I wanted to at least make an attempt at one, even at this late juncture of my life. Not having grown up in a culture that celebrated Halloween, all this is new to me.

But, as with many things in my life right now, I learnt how to carve a pumpkin on YouTube. There were really elaborate designs of dragons and wizards and even Barbie, that you could download and print a template from. This, you could put on your pumpkin, trace out the design by pricking holes through the paper onto the pumpkin face and then start carving out the hollows with your sharp knife. After being thoroughly impressed and somewhat overwhelmed with all the choice, I chose the old way. I did what B did when he was a kid making pumpkin heads, I drew up a couple of faces on paper and then copied them with a Sharpie onto the big orange squash and I was ready to wield my chopper with the best of them.

First it was "OFF WITH THE Top of the HEAD!!!", then you scrape all the guts out. Seeds, juice and all. It was a great big messy affair and my weeks worth of newspapers couldn't contain the flinging, chopping and dripping pumpkin parts. Three days down the road, the house still smells of that squashy massacre.

I thought I'd have a practice pumpkin, a smaller one with easier lines.
As you can see, Munch would have been proud of my ode to his Scream. Of course I had to show my creation off.

All day on Halloween, my little screamie pumpkin head had his insides stuffed with dried Oak leaves and greeted the customers coming into the bookstore.

The next one was bigger and has a kind of sugar-high crazed vampire bat look to it. I mean, a pumpkin head had to be , at least, a little scary, right? I liked this too. The eye-balls were the trickiest to carve out.

Despite lighting both the heads and leaving the out on our deck on Halloween night, no trick-or-treaters came a- knocking. Good thing too. Because B & I couldn't resist and ate almost all the candy before nightfall....

My First Apple Harvest

2010-09-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Ok. There is no way to prepare a girl from Singapore for the sheer amazement of harvesting fruit from a tree in her own garden. I mean, with most Singaporeans living in flats, the best we can hope for is a few limes and a couple of chillies.
But here in Kampung Canada, on this little island called Salt Spring, I have two apple trees that I didn't plant or nurture that are bearing 40 to 50 apples just like that!
How fab is that? So, now I have to quickly brush up on all the apple-involved recipes I can find. Last week, I attempted an apple pie, and forgot to add the sugar to the dough till the last minute.
Suffice to say, the crust was, err, not very edible.

Still, there's always this week and some more apples to aid my journey to apple pie perfection. Fingers crossed.

Salt Spring is quite abundant with different types of apples which explains why we have a yearly Apple Festival on the island.
Looks to be a lovely country kampung sort of outing. Can't wait!

So we bought ourselves a bookshop

2009-10-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

So we bought ourselves a bookshop.

It was a sudden thing, this life-changing switching of cities and of lifestyles.

But, if you know anything of my history, most of the important things that have happened in my life have happened this way.

This paraphrase pops into mind, “when the time is right, all obstacles melt away.”

It was sometime in January that B & I made the decision that Vancouver wasn't the place for us anymore. Two weeks later, we're taking a fog-shrouded ride on a BC Ferries, er... ferry, to Long Harbour on Salt Spring Island to check out a charming Fine Used bookshop called Sabine's, which had come onto the market a couple of months ago.

Three weeks later, we've decluttered, staged and sold the condo for it's asking price, giving us the money to put in a offer for the bookshop. And, as these stories go, the offer was accepted. We moved to the island in April and officially took over in May. And what a ride it's been!

Sabine's Fine Used Books is in the main village of Ganges, in a charming little shopping area called Grace Point, where there are art galleries, bistros, a spa, a yoga studio and a great jewellery shop called Frankly Scarlet.

The bookshop itself has a marvellous olde worlde feel about it with lots of woods and carpets like you seen in the libraries of period BBC programmes. Bookshelves stretching themselves from floor to ceiling and hugging you as you walk between the aisles.

Hundreds of books filling all two floors of the shop with antiquarian books from the 1800's to brand new reads like 'The Book of Negroes'. The first estate sale we went to we bought a beautiful black, green & gold leather bound set of Shakespeare's works which we sold in the summer for $450. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to turn a profit. Kinda like what Lovejoy does, it does!

The funny thing about Sabine's is the coincidence of the bookshop's name and that Nick Bantock, the author of the Griffin & Sabine books, came to live on the island. So it made all sorts of sense that Sabine, the original owner of the bookshop, joined up with Nick to create the Griffin Room. A special place on the upper floor for a great many things Nick Bantock. All his titles are here, including most of Nick's out-of-print pop-up books as well as his original prints and the drawers of strange & curious ephemera (like Indian court documents and old stamps).

Now, it's the autumn and 6 months since the move. Although the flood of summer tourists have eased up, the enthusiasm and optimism for this move to be islanders and bookshop owners hasn't abated. Wish us luck!

2011 Update| And now we have a Facebook Page. Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/blacksheepbookssaltspring

There are Wild Things in the Garden

2009-05-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

For a city girl like me, living in a little cottage in the wood is a very novel thing. I'm not used to not having rows of street lamps leading me home, or not having a gate, a fence or a buzz code that separates my little world from the the rest of the world outside. Or indeed, to have to burn wood for heat instead of just turning the thermostat knob for an instant gas fire to pop to into life. But the thing that really bowls me over, every minute, is the nearness of nature. Just next to the house, not 10m away is the woods.
There's a walking trail that is so overgrown I wouldn't have recognised it if my neighbour & landlady, Penny, hadn't pointed it out. Everywhere I look are trees. The straight & upfight Fir, the over green & over abundant Pine and the picturesquely scarggly Arbutus.
And then there's the quiet. Quiet enough to hear the wind caressing trees, the bees buzzing and the somewhat oddly regular crunching of leaves?

A curious sound that I just had to investigate.

Looking into the trees
I saw the most wonderful sight.

A couple of deer had wandered into
the garden below our deck
and without so much as a by your leave,
were grazing on the grass & shrubs.

I snuck across the deck to its edge to have a closer look, taking the greatest care to make as little noise as possible so as not to scare them. It was the closest I've come to a creature of the wild (unless you count Minke the demon cat, who is, by the way, getting more feral, if that were possible). It was magic! Then, I heard the loud Putt Putt puttering of a car coming down the road and was afraid the deer would run away and hide and my magic moment would come to an end. But no. Those deer continued with their veggie & daffodil buffet unperturbed (so much for the Ford Escape Hybrid commercials).
What's more they, made themsleves at quite home and plonked their ample tushes down under the dappled shade of a large Fir tree then proceeded with their after lunch nap.

I guess this city girl still has a lot to learn about the country kampung life.

Moving to Salt Spring Island

2009-05-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

When I was a little girl, moving houses was always looked forward to. It was something rare & exciting. It was a welcomed change in routine, exploring new rooms and a new neighourhood. It was looking out new windows and seeing the world in a whole new light.
I guess moving houses then you're an adult isn't that much different. Except for the mountains of stuff you have to pack, ship & then unpack. You tend to amass stuff as you go down the road of life. I do at least. These days, I am learning to buy less and reuse more these. Not so much because I'm trying to be green (which I do try, and now living on Salt Spring has forced me to) but more so that I'll have less to lug around when the next move comes along.

So, in early April, we did the BIG move to from Burnaby, in the Metro Vancouver area, to Salt Spring Island. For those scratching their heads trying to figure out just where this Pulau Air Asin is, let me enlighten. It's part of the Southern Gulf Island group which is sandwiched between Vancouver Island & mainland North America. And because the move involved catching two ferries and travelling over 150km (slightly further than Mersing is from Singapore), we had to do it over two days.
Day one was to pack the huge 5 tonne Budget truck, which our friend Milan heroically drove. After we crammed our possessions into the truck, I could see that we were in serious trouble. We had more stuff than we had space. Which simply meant that all that couldn't be stuffed in the cars had to be left behind or thrown away.That's when I resolved to learn to live with less because of the nail-pullingly painful decisions on what we had to leave behind.

The next day started bleary-eyed at 4am to travel from the skypad we has sold to catch the first ferry on the first leg of our move. Horseshoe Bay in West vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver island. Then the hour drive to Crofton to catch the local ferry to Vesuvius Bay on Salt Spring. Everything went without a hitch. Even Minke, the demon cat behaved. Not a single peep, or sound or crumpling of the steel door of her transport box.
We were lucky, as we have been since coming to the island. The sun was out and nothing got wet. Only a few bumps & scrapes on the furniture.
Evening saw many familiar boxes & furniture jumbled about in an unfamiliar wooden house. Our new home is a cottage in the woods in a place called Trincomali heights. And we are settled. At least for this year.

Skypad SOLD

2009-02-13T20:53:00.000-08:00

It's done! The skypad sold in under a week.

After four years of living 18 floors above the Burnaby skyline, with truly spectacular views of the winding Fraser River, Vancouver Island,
the North Shore mountains, the city and Mt Baker, I'm trading it all for island living.
But that's for a later story.

It took a month's hard graft to get the flat into shape.

There was the painting of rooms, skirting and doors; fixing all the little bits that needed fixing and changing the gawd awful brass fitting the previous owners had installed in the bathrooms & replacing them with nifty, less fussy brushed nickel ones.

And cleaning like I've never cleaned before.
Who knew there were special cleaners for every surface imaginable?
The wood surfaces needed lemon oil, the kitchen counters had to have a strong but fresh orange smelling cleaner, the stove top need a ceramic cleaner, the windors & mirrors had Windex and the floors required some evil smelling anti-bacterial glunk.

Thank goodness the spring flowers were already in the garden centres!
The cheapskate in me reasoned that daffodils, primroses & pansies would last longer than cut flowers when we had our open house. so we just had to have them.
Especially if we had to have several open houses over the next couple of weeks with the property market being so depressed and all.

The colourful spring flowers really do add cheer and life to both the winter battered balconies.

But, it looked like we didn't need the daffodils to last that long after all. In fact, they only needed to last a few days. Because Jeff Harrison, our super realtor worked a miracle.

It chuffes me to say that we got multiple offers the next day after the open house.
And less than a week later, today as it happens, there was confirmation that the apartment has been sold. At the asking price.
In a word...
YIPPPEEEEEE !!!!!

Looks like my years of hard slog as a journalist and stylist at Home & Decor Magazine wasn't wasted.
All in all, I'd say that it paid off. In spades!

Have a look and tell me what you think.

Journey to the East

2008-10-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

Ok.
So most Canadians wouldn't consider Ontario & Quebec the East of Canada since the Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island are more eastern.
But for a girl who's lived over four years in Vancouver (in a very western province) anything beyond the Rockies seems kinda east to me.
Anyhow, this year we start the Canadian education of the Kampung Girl. Which is why a trip was taken. Toronto, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston & the very touristy Niagara Falls.

And I must say, that if you plan to visit these cities, the autumn is undoubtedly the very best time to go.
Never seen so many variations of golds, reds, yellows & browns.
Never seen trees so dressed in their best.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

The cities were kinda fun too.

Toronto had hard-to-keep-a-straight-face
art in the most unexpected places.

And their ROM (no, not the Registry of marriages, rather their Royal Ontario Museum) looks like a jagged spaceship of steel & glass landed onto a centuries old cathedral. And no, the people in front of it are not running away from an imminent alien invasion. I believe it was a charity run thru the city.

Ottawa was pretty impressive with it's oldy worldy parlimentary buildings perched on a high river bank.
What's amazing is the countless rivers, riverlets, canals and lakes that are found within that area. Apparently in the winter, Ottawa's canals freeze over and it's citizens go skating on it. How marvellous!
And another bit of fascinating trivia, did you know that Canada has more lakes than all the lakes in the world put together?
As we travelled through this land of lakes & locks, rivers & canals, I can't say that I'm surprised.

We went to a place called Peterborough and saw an amazing lift lock. It's kinda like a lift for boats to get from one level of a river to a higher or lower level. It uses huge pumps to raise & lower the water-filled lift.

Quebec City was quaint and the most like Europe. With its sensibilities too. Like, the painted bicycles fastooned onto building walls and huge brightly painted flower pots remind me more of quirky colourful Amsterdam.

But the native Inushuk in front of the Provincial parliment house and the railway type architecture of the Hotel Frontanec feels very Canadian to me.

We ended the trip to the touristy Niagara falls. What to do?
We were so close to it and it seemed a shame not to visit this place that's I've know from American TV shows since I was little. B got us a room facing the falls and boy was it worth it! The view was gob- smackingly gorgeous.

Here's to
four good years
of the married life!

Bags of Fun

2008-02-16T22:42:00.000-08:00

I can't stop! It's like the gears in a perpetual motion machine always working,whirring and engaging. Always searching for a new way to attach a pocket or a handle. Sketching out in my mind, kinda like a butcher, how best to cut a coat. Which pieces to become what part. For instance, could the lapel really be the edge of the cover flap of a bag? Wouldn't it be too asymmetrical? Too rad? Apparently not. Little Emma, The Recycled Suits Tall Messenger bag was snapped up hours after it was listed on Etsy. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

Ok... I'm getting ahead of myself. Last weekend after the frenzied making of suited iPod cozies, I had some time to start cutting lovely coat I got at the Sally Ann. It took some intimate getting-to-know, during this process to find out how the coat was made in the first place before I could deconstruct it. And it was fun! It was like learning to read in another language. Someone else had written her design and her work in this coat and the story was spelt out in the stitching.

Well, it looked like these 2 designs won out when it came to making my bags.

The first was Emily, a messenger bag and then came Emma, her sister and a vertical messenger.

Both their outer pockets were reworked from the coat's pockets and their straps were made from the coat's front button holes. This was so that I could make both bags adjustable for different body sizes and purposes.

The buttons also came from the old coat and I felt it gave a sense of integrity to the bags. As did reusing the inner dusky rose lining.

Since I have no talent for painting pictures, I guess making bags will just have to do.

It Suites Me Just Fine.

2008-02-09T10:30:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed how really well made men's suits are? Good suits have the best fabric and the stitching is sturdy & for the most part hidden. Ergo, this new line of cozies & bags I've affectionately dubbed
The Recycled Suits.

In the total other extreme of my pendulum swing from femminine, lush, shiny & silky taffetas, I've fallen for rough, muted, understated and stiff woolens & linens with the drama of a avalanche falling into a still lake.

What I love about this range is that it reinvents & reuses 2nd hand but thoroughly cleaned jackets that might have otherwise have gone to a landfill where it'll take up space to degrade over tens of years.
So not only will they be well made, but the bags & cozies will also be eco-friendly.
The thought of which always warms the cockles of my heart.

And, for my first offering - cool & dapper iPod cozies. The first three have just been listed on Etsy and have names befitting the type of jacket they were made from. There's urbane Mortimer, outdoorsy Fitzwillie and hunky Ken. The guys started out life as part of dishy double breasted suits. The left cuff of which morphed into the snug little cozies. In the spirit of reusing, I try to keep their original buttons and lining. They've been made tight and will snuggle most generations of iPods and many mobile phones, but was made specifically for the classic video iPod.

There are so many ideas fighting for attention in my brain right now for bag designs, I cannot begin to tell you. All are exciting and I cannot wait to get them out of my mind and into my hands...... Stay tuned to see which ones win.

What's a Girl to Do?

2008-01-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

Shopping is a woman's prerogative. Shopping and shoes. And hats too. And these days, interestingly enough also cars, the fuel cell or electric cars, especially the new and utterly delicious Tesla Roadster.....Have I left anything out? My point, perhaps. But I can get so easily distracted nowadays.

Okay, back to shopping. In these western cities, an amazing and indubitably exhilarating ritual exists. The day after Christmas, most of the stock in stores goes on sale. The wonderous and exciting event called the Boxing Day Sale. And they are real sales, not like the ones we have in Singapore, where items usually go for 50% -75% off the retail price. A concept that warms the cockles of my value-for-money Asian heart.

Anyway, I took time off and wandered the fabric stores to hunt for fabric, beads and tassels for the new 2008 range. $800 plus later, I have the pleasure to showing off the treasures plucked from the hands of other boxing day warriors.

There's the gorgeous tassel beads in a dozen dazzling colours.

Also found some brilliantly tactile flocked fabrics. The thinner ones are gonna be great for summer scarves and the nice thick ones for the flap covers of the new bags that'll be probably starting next week.

Then there's the sturdy, earthy upholstery grade fabrics, which are destined for lumbar pillows and the inside of bags that I can't wait to make.

And of course interspersed with all the goodies are the beautifully smooth and shimmery taffetas. The mainstay of Rumah Kampung's range of scarves. In soothing blue, cool titanium and juicy black plum.

Fab as these fabrics are, I'm sure that I'll not be able to restrain myself as I see other designs in the shops throughout the year. So I guess this cannot be said to be the all encompassing variety for this enterprising year of the Earth Rat. Which is the first sign of the Chinese zodiac and is said to be an industrious bringer of prosperity, luck and new beginnings.

Making Your Own Paper

2008-01-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

The Materials

* Deckle (or any square frame with a wire/plastic mesh stretched across it)
*Mould ( another square frame of the same size of the sieve)
* A pair of stiff boards slightly larger than the sieve
* Smooth drying cloths slightly larger than the sieve
* A sponge
* A blender
* A tub or basin large enough to fit the sieve
* 50g or so of waste paper

The Method
1. Shred the waste paper and soak for at least 4 hours. Soak overnight if you plan to make paper the next morning.

2. Place a handful of shredded paper into the blender and fill with water to make up 1 litre.

3. Blend for about 15 seconds or until the pulp looks like wet cotton wool. Pour the pulp into the tub. Repeat until all the paper is used up. Add 2 more litres of water into the tub.

4. Place the mould over the deckle with the netting in between them. Dip the furthest end of the frame into the pulp mix. Level into a horizontal position. Make sure the frames are deep enough for the mould to be just covered with pulp.

5. Lift the frames from the mix keeping it level. The remove the mould and let the excess water drain.

6. Place a drying cloth over the pulp. Flip the deckle onto one of the stiff boards with the cloth beneath the pulp.

7. Use the sponge to draw out the excess water from the pulp. Gently knock the deckle netting to dislodge the pulp as you slowly lift up the sieve.

8. Repeat steps 4-7. Pile each finished sheet, separated by a drying cloth,on top of each other until you've used up all the pulp.

9. Place the second board on top of the finished pile. Place any heavy object on the top board to squeeze the excess water out. You could try standing on the pile if you want to feel more involved in the process :)

Paper Pointers

Some ideas to help make your new found skill more colourful, varied and fun

* Before you throw away the bottle with that last bit of perfume, add some water into the bottle and then pour the solution into your pulp. This nicely scents your paper.

* Stale potpourri, shredded and pulped with the paper will not only add scent but colour and texture to your papers.

* Should you want to be able to use markers or fountain pens on your paper remember that you first have to size the dried paper. This is easily done by lightly painting or spraying each sheet with gelatin or starch and then letting the sheet dry. Ballpoint pens, however, are fine on unsized paper.

Goin Green bananas

2008-01-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

As part of my new year resolution to consolidate my blogs, for the first post of 2008, I present here a little story of how a crazy kid went green bananas... enjoy!

Funny how life moves in cycles. About 15 years ago I started a little eco company in Singapore called Green Bananas that made a paper making kit for people to recycle their own paper at home. Green because I wanted people to know it's environmental bent but more likely because I was totally green to the cutthroat world of business and Bananas because everyone thought I was crazy to give up a good and stable job for what? An unlikely little paper making kit that may not even have a market.

We did sell about 1,000 kits during the 2 or so years the little Green Bananas was out there doing paper making demos; giving magazine, TV & paper interviews encouraging people to start recycling paper in their own homes (in those days, Singapore had no recycling system for anything.

Things have changed now though) and even holding a handmade paper art exhibition called, you guess it, Paper * People * Planet.
Back then I had quit my well-paying
job as a writer for a Interior design magazine and put all my meagre savings into designing, manufacturing and marketing a simple paper making kit that made A4 paper.

It had everything you needed to make paper (apart from the blender) and packaged, quite charmingly in a jute bag.

How I managed to wrangle my friends & family to help out in it's publicity and sales I have no idea. I just stand in grateful awe that they did. We had quite a ride with it. I am willing to bet that at least 50 friends and family still remember how to make their own paper today. And if they've forgotten and would like to teach their children, the next post will help them along their way.

And this is was the purposely unintimadating instruction leaflet that came with the kit.

And now, here I sit years later, writing a blog on the beautiful diversity of handmade & recycled paper. On how people can use this humble medium of paper to help make this planet a bit better, by art & by recycling, for those who live in it now. And also for the children who will come after.

Greening the earth seemed so possible then.

And so it still is. It must be.

Because if not now, then WHEN?

And if not me, then WHO?

This CHRISTMAS

2007-12-22T15:49:00.001-08:00

Oh so many years ago, a good friend sent me this for Christmas.
In the intervening years, life pulled us down separate and diverging paths.
Into different countries, vocations and beliefs. Still, this anonymous poem stayed with me. Accompanying me through the dark anguish and the giddying highs.
I guess maybe the meaning that Christmas held for us when we were young still holds as we move into the second half of our lives.

This one's for Adrian and for all who look for a little meaning beneath the glitter, the commercialisation and those ghastly repeating pop carols.

A Very Merry Christmas One and All.

The Road Traveled

2007-12-11T21:15:00.000-08:00

I had wanted to do this last year. Filled out the application forms and all. But knowing how way leads onto way, I purposely got distracted with all the other happenings in life and did not apply to participate. I decided not only not to take the road less traveled. I decided not to travel down any road at all.

But this year, this year was different. A path seemed to be leading down toward the building (rather than playing at) of an actual business revolving around making things with gorgeous fabrics. For the time being , the gorgeousness covers mostly scarves & bags.

So I applied to take part in a Christmas Craft Market. The Creative Finds Market to be exact. I had been so impressed by the organisation and marketing zip of a fab crafter called Nicci Battilana who's in charge of the Craft Market that when she asked if I'd wanted in, I said "Yes" before I had time to consult with my doubts. A good thing too. Because I sold stuff and, more importantly, I followed my sister's advice and actually had fun. And for the first time since I'd come to Vancouver, I felt more in touch with the person I'd left in Singapore. And that's a wonderful thing.

It also helps to have friends. Especially girl friends. They support you through your craziness and your joy. They let you rant your frustrations and roar your successes. And, they also accompany you when you have to man a stall for 8 hours at a Christmas Craft Fair (how else would you take a loo break?) . Thank god for girl friends. Thank god for Olian. Who not only helped bring the extension cords I forgot, but also flaunted the fact that she was one of my first happy scarf customers to my new scarf customers. That endorsement really helped sell. Besides, she knows how to dress. Which only made the scarves look better.

And I guess it's true then. This belief that the spirit or the intent behind which something is done communicates, somehow, unseen to people, strangers. And they react to it. Which is probably why, the scarves got sold, women, and some men left smiling and chuffed, and we won the stall holders prize for best display, packaging & product. Which was all the more satisfying because it was never expected.

A Little Note: I have to apologise for the incredibly blurry pics at the Craft Market. It was cold that day, snow up to your ankle (and for a girl from the tropics, that's alot especially when you have to drive in it), and I had only 4 hours of sleep the night before, worrying, preparing, worrying, planning,worrying, packing and did I mention worrying?

3 Weeks in Portugal

2007-11-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

Been away, as I'm sure you can tell. To a country I've always wanted to go but never had the chance, Portugal. It was always, somehow, just too inconvenient to get to, being at the edge of Europe and all. And every previous trip to Europe centered around London, Nice & Vienna.

But to a girl from Singapore, growing up propped at the tip of the Straits of Malacca, you hear stories of the Portuguese. Of Afonso de Albuquerque who captured Malacca, of how the seafaring Portuguese ruled Malacca as a trading port & emporium back in the 16th century and you'd also have many Eurasian friends descended from those early colonialist with surnames like De Souza, Thesiera, D' Almeda. Although Portugal was thousand of clicks away, it still felt unexpectedly familiar.

b & I only had 3 weeks for the land of the Lusitanians so we decided to concentrate on just the south: Alentejo, the Algarve and around Lisbon. No point mad-dashing through a host of towns spending only a day there with not much time t o soak up the atmosphere. No, we'd take a fairly relaxed route. Moving out from Lisbon eastward toward the medieval town of Marvao, perched on a high outcrop overlooking the dry plains of western Spain; then working our way southwards to Evora, with it's romantic Roman ruins, to Mertola where a languid river runs, then to the Algarve . Staring with a charming town called Tavira, staying in a converted Tuna factory, working westward toward the end of the world to a place called Sagres, then travelling up northward to coastal Alentejo and back to Lisbon having circled the south in 2 weeks.

But to spare you from a long-drawn tale of travel, I'll be splitting up the story into 3 parts.

This one will be about Lisbon, the place where there's so much to tell.

I'll do the next post on the inland Alentejo pit-stops. Especially morbid was the Chapelle Dos Ossos, The Chapel of Bones, which was built with 5000 skeletons....freaky.

The final post should cover the meandering through coastal towns in the Algarve, Alentejo & around Lisbon.

It's been a couple of years since I've been back to Europe and so it was Lisbon's Euro-ness that struck me. I couldn't keep my eyes off all the architectural intricacies, the millennia of history seeping out between the cobbled streets and the oh-so stylish cars zipping about the roads.

Lisbon was all but demolished in the great earthquake of 1755, one of the worst earthquakes in history. The city was rebuilt by the then Prime Minister, the Marquis of Pomba l, who was one of the first to build a city based on a grid road system. The buildings constructed during his rule were made earthquake proof. And this is in the 16th century! This was just one example of his futuristic thinking. He also built extra wide 3-laned roads in the time of horse & carriage. When someone asked him why, he said that someday these roads would be small. And while drinking potent cafe pingado on a street side cafe and looking at the choc-a-bloc stream of cars chugging down Avenida Liberdade, I'd say Pombal must have had a crystal ball.

The city spreads over several hills and in the course of exploring the sights, there were tons of puffing up steep gradients.

Lisbon's ingenious solution to taking the pant out of hill climbing was to build elevators and trams, otheriwse known as funinculars, that ply slopes. Although most of the city folk don't use them anymore. More for the tourists like this girl.

And like tourists we also took the other wooden tram to explore an area called Alfama. It was one of the precious parts of Lisbon not destroyed by the earthquake.

In the 700;s when the Moors wrestled parts of southern Portugal away from the Visigoths and other Germanic tribes, Alfama made up the entire city of Lisbon.

Today, though, it is a labyrinth of narrow & twisting streets. And that wooden tram ride through it is not for those of you with weak stomachs.

On top of one of her hills is Castelo Sao Jorge. An expansive fortress castle with a commanding lookout over the river Tagus. It gave us one of our first overviews of the city. The replica of the Golden Gate bridge, the other hill Barrio Alto with it's destroyed Cammerlite church & lace steel street elevator, the large squares with statues and it's many green parks.

I think that one of the enjoyment of travelling is the unexpected that greets you when you turn around an unfamiliar corner. On the Thursday before we were to come back to Vancouver, on our way to lunch, we turned the corner that linked our hotel to Avenida Libradade. Sprinkled among the streams of people were many wearing garments of a particular green.
As we walked toward the Rossio we started seeing more and more of these greenlings. How odd! Then rounding another corner we came face to face with an entire square of leprechaun green Celtic Football club supporters come to Lisbon for a game with Benfica, one of Lisbon's teams. It was such a happy festive atmosphere buzzing the city that day. Of anticipation and pride. So taken by the vibe were we that we actually made it to street cafe to watch the game. It was like world cup all over again! Magic!!

Sadly for the Celts, they lost. Suffice to say, there were many dark & depressed-looking fans in green the next day at breakfast lamenting the game.

The other thrilling unexpected find was the little known & extremely vicious Attack Butterflies of Lisbon. So dangerous are they that they are locked up behind heavy steel doors in Lisbon's Natural History museum. A must see for all brave souls.

Well, that's the bit for Lisbon. Will be posting the rest when I gather up enough steam.

Reaching the Inner Princess

2007-08-09T17:11:00.000-07:00

Our friends Thom, Pauline & their little daughter, Georgia, were leaving Vancouver after more than 15 years living here (well not Georgia, she's only been around 2 years or so). They were driving across the breadth of Canada, to Ontario, to make a new home there. For those of you who are used to Singaporean or European distances, it's like driving from Singapore, up peninsular Malaysia, through Thailand & Cambodia, up the length of Vietnam, pass Yunnan and southern China to Beijing. Or from London to Tehran. But this is beside the point.

The point is. I didn't get to say goodbye to Georgia, not that she'd remember me, her being a wee girl and all. But I felt that I wanted to give her something to remember Vancouver by. Reaching into the depths of my own inner Princess (which I knew EVERY girl must have inside her) I dredged up long forgotten memories of what someone shorter than 3 feet would find fab & fun. Then I put together the design for 3 little girl purses. All were made of glow-in-the-dark fabrics which will give children loads to fun with after the sun sets.

Inspired by another princess from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away, Princess Neon Cheesecake came into being. She's was a twin of the one that went to Georgia. Pink, yellow with headphone-like handles resembling the clenched fists of a power puff girl. She was bought the moment I'd put her online.

Then came Princess Lime Sherbet to keep Cheesecake company.

Princess Lemon Lollipop completes the trio of royalty. Each with a colour & a character of her very own. Kinda like every little princess exploring in every girl. Or sleeping in every woman.

We've Struck Oil !!!

2007-07-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

Never thought I get a first-hand taste of living in the Middle East till last Tuesday.

I was visiting Hazra's place in North Burnaby, near the Burrard Inlet. And we were having a fun time with her teaching me how to make a proper Malay Mee goreng. After filling out tummies & just before dessert, I noticed a young fireman walking up her garden path. All my thoughts of how cute he looked in his sleeveless overalls were truncated when he calmly informed us we had to be evacuated from the house. Pronto. There was some sort of oil or gas leak a couple of doors down and all the residents were to be moved to a little pub about 1km away.

The video will give you a better idea of what happened.

The oil spill closed the Barnet highway for 2 days ( a major route from Port Moody to the City) and the environmental damage to the wildlife of the Burrard Inlet is yet to be determined. Apparently a city road crew punctured the pipe and for a while, it looked like the oil strike from the Beverly Hillbillies.

Almost a week later and the pipe's been repaired. The highway's been cleaned up, the homes & gardens covered with the crude oil will probably not restored.
And the funny thing is, for me, the flavour of Nasi Goreng will forever be laced with the pungent & headache-inducing aroma of dark crude oil fumes.

Every Girl Needs a Little Fountain

2007-07-22T21:58:00.000-07:00

The sound of flowing water, especially when you live in a busy, bustling,noisy city can give surprising comfort. Maybe it's something to do with the feng shui of having energy made moving by the trickling water. Maybe it's a gentle reminder of the visceral simplicity of being in nature where the body just knows how to relax.

I worked in a wonderful tropical spa on the beautiful island of Bintan for quite a few years before I came to live in BC. In and around this spa were many places where water flowed. From tilted jars made of volcanic rock to large jars overflowing in a symphony of trickles and splashes. It made the plants look lush and helped the over-wrought people who came to the spa chill and thoroughly relax.

Methinks, I was gonna have me one of them water features.

If I were back in Singapore, I'd know where to get one. The Nature Company was the place where the spa used to get all her water features. They have all sorts. From the rustic to the modern to the air-spritzing kind. In fact, for the cost-conscious, they even have simple DIY instructions where all you need to do is to buy the components to build your own little water feature.

But since I'm now living in DIY country. I had to make one on my own. Also, to get someone else to do it would cost an arm & a leg. And then how could I go on crafting? Nothing for it then but to scope out the rock suppliers and garden shops.

My main problem was where would I get the reservoir big enough to hold the water? Since my water feature was on above ground on a balcony I couldn't dig and in ground reservoir. Custom fiberglass containers were priced ridiculously out of range, and most rectangular containers had sides that were too high. Finally, the demon cat came to the rescue. Her litter tray was, why, it was just the perfect size. Ok, I'm not that gross to use her litter tray as my reservoir, but the pet shop down the road had one just like it.

Next step was to choose something from which the water would spout. An object d'art as my favourite City Gardener, Matt James says at least twice an episode. And I'd the perfect thing. An old clay urn I'd found in a deserted fisher hut on the east coast of Malaysia, which I'd lugged home to Singapore and subsequently brought to Canada.

Drilling a hole in its bottom was a heart attack and a half. I'd never done any delicate drilling before! What if I drilled and then cracked it? Breath held tight, heart beating at full gallop, I proceeded. The gods must have been in a good mood that afternoon because it was a hole in one.

Hoses fixed to a pump & into the urn. Bricks around the reservoir, plants placed to soften the hard edges and river rock in the urn to moderate the fountain. And there you have it. Some flowing shui to go with the whipping feng in this wild west coast .

But more than that. It gives me a small sense of being able to make a thought, and idea, a feeling see the light of day.

And that is a good feeling.

One BILLION Trees

2007-07-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

I turned on the radio in the middle of a BBC interview a couple of months ago. Owen Bennett-Jones was on with his programme called The Interview. Had no idea who he was talking to or what it was about until I heard "Plant a Billion Trees". Now that caught my imagination. It turned out to be an interview with Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and environmental activist whom I'd never heard of (shows you the depth of my general knowledge!). There was something down-to-earth and compelling about the way she spoke. I listened on and was happy. Following is the BBC's website's write up on that interview. Click on the link is you want to read some more about her.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3726024.stm

"Dig a hole and plant a tree!"

Wangari Maathai is an environmental activist, a Kenyan government minister, a Nobel peace prize winner. Her despair at the chronic deforestation evident in her home country, when she returned after 15 years abroad, led to a simple act: she began to plant trees.
To date she has helped local women plant over 35 million trees in Kenya and she is challenging the global community to plant a billion trees by the end of this year.

The connections she has made between deforestation, hunger and political unrest have brought her powerful enemies as well as international acclaim; of Daniel Arap Moy, the former Kenyan President, she says: "He sure didn't like me much, did he!"

I've always believed that one of the simplest thing a person could do to help the planet remove the CO2 in the atmosphere and lower global temperatures was as easy as to plant a tree. And if you only have a balcony or a window, then plant flowers, herbs or shrubs. Just plant something. Anything.

I guess I'm not the only one who thinks that way. “The symbolism – and the substantive significance – of planting a tree has universal power in every culture and every society on Earth, and it is a way for individual men, women and children to participate in creating solutions for the environmental crisis.” Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

Much of the inspiration comes, I'm sure, from the book (and later Oscar winning animation) titled The Man Who Planted Trees. The story about a shepherd who revives a desolate ecosystem of a secluded valley by single-handedly planting a forest over a thirty year period. And what did he do?....why he planted 100 acorns a day.

Wangari Maathai has an organisation called the Green Belt Movement working in conjunction with UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Programme to get people all over the world to pledge and then plant at least one billion trees in 2007.

If you'd like to get involved, go to the UNEP's Plant a Billion Tree website by clicking on this link http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/index.asp There is a space on the on the top right hand corner that tells you the target, how many people have pledged to plant and how many have already planted trees. Currently the tally stands at 1,819,898,686 pledged and 1,008,033,579 trees planted. Looks like we've hit the mark. But several million more can only help rather than hurt. It's a really comprehensive site with links to organisations around the world involved in tree planting and even has technical instructions on how to successfully plant your own tree.

"If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree." Chinese poet, 500 BC

"The best friend on Earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the Earth."

Frank Lloyd Wright

"They are beautiful in their peace; they are wise in their silence. They will stand after we are dust. They teach us, and we tend them."

Galeain ip Altiem MacDunelmor

"Though a tree grows so high, the falling leaves return to the root. "

Malay proverb

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

Greek proverb

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." Martin Luther

"The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'"

John F. Kennedy

"Trees are poems that Earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness."

Kahlil Gibran

"A tree is our most intimate contact with nature."

George Nakashima, woodworker

"A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great. ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree."

Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao

"Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books. " A. Whitney Brown

"To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals." Mikhail Gorbachev

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. "

John Muir

"The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life and activity; it affords protection to all beings."

Buddhist Sutra

"People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world which cannot sustain people. "

Bryce Nelson

"Reforesting the earth is possible, given a human touch."

Sandra Postel and Lori Heise, Worldwatch Institute

Face Forward

2007-07-07T17:35:00.000-07:00

I had bought an A5 hardback journal for my craft ideas because of its plain white pages. So good for sketching and non linear (read: messy) writing. It was the right size to fit the handbag too, with the hardback protecting its pages.

But the journal was faceless, nondescript and worst of all , grey! Looking as if it should contain spreadsheets or engineering schematics instead of wild, saturated, unrelated ideas fit for gestalt.

Since journals are such personal things, they really should have something on their faces to say who they are and where they are going. Thus inspired, I'm doing a range of Face Forward Journals.

So I decided to jazz up these plain Jane journals with all manner of fabrics to fit all sorts of moods and all types of people.

Using the last bit of a ancient 70's vintage fabric given to me by my mum, I made a pretty zen tile for the cover of one.

Then there's the understated sage & gold tile for another.

And the third is one that ties shut for privacy using a fab golden brocade ribbon taken from the decorated ends of a lime green sari.

There will be more to come. As ideas never stop flowing, we'll always been needing pretty places in which to keep them safe.

Fat Flower's Got A Sister

2007-07-01T23:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's Fat Flower's sister bag. everyone.

Been fun making it and this bag's got some spunk. Never had as many pin pricks or cuts as I've had making this bag. But at the end of it all, it's been worth it.

She's a bit longer than That Fat Flower Bag, so she can actually take a small folded umbrella. Ermmm...not that I carry umbrellas.
And she's got Labradorite & Shells as ring details on her shoulder straps.

She also has a sly pair of hidden magnets that close the inner pockets. The new owner of the bag won't know why the pockets just seem to want to stay close. I love gadgets.

And I hope someone loves this bag enough to buy it.

It's on Etsy should you know some one looking for another Fat Flower Bag.

The conversion of a coffee drinker

2007-06-27T23:12:00.000-07:00

From all that I've been reading about this new health wonder known as Rooibos Tea, I'm thinking that it would do my body good to be drinking it. But the funny things is as soon as I know that it is good for me I automatically think that it should taste like vomit warmed over.
This can probably be attributed to my upbringing. As a Chinese girl living in an examination-oriented Asian city, my mother would cook me some traditional Chinese brew or other soup from the Sinseh down the street (traditional Chinese herbalist) that would be good for me. Make me strong and help me concentrate on my studies. And, inevitably taste like gunky, murky, bitter sludge. The dried sea-horses bobbing up & down the brew didn't help make it more appetising.

So now as I read about all the health benefits of Rooibos (pronounces ROY-bus) tea, my taste buds,uncannily, start to taste sea-horse.

But working part-time in a tea shop soon dissolved my unreasonable preconception that rooibos would taste disgusting. Because in this same tea shop, I found that rooibos could be blended with Moroccan mint & rose petals, with mango, with vanilla, berries, almond & macadamians and, the top of my list, with creme caramel. Yummy & good for you. What could be better?

Apparently, rooibos tea contains no colours, additives or preservatives, making it a natural beverage. It also has no caffeine (because it is not from the official Tea plant, Camellia sinensis), which makes it great for kids and as a late night substitute for tea.
And according to studies conducted in

South Africa

and Japan, Rooibos has been shown to aid in health problems such as insomnia, irritability, headaches, nervous tension, and hypertension.

From an article on http://www.herbalgram.org

" Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis ) has anti-carcinogenic and antimutagenic effects. Rooibos tea is used for its anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic properties. Consumption of rooibos tea may relief fever, asthma, insomnia, colic in infants and skin disorders. Rooibos extracts are used in ointments against eczema. In South Africa it is very common to give rooibos tea to babies who suffer from stomach cramps (colic).

Rooibos is the only known source of the phytochemical aspalathin. In vitro and animal studies have indicated that quercetin and luteolin help to prevent cardiovascular disease, some cancers and stroke. Rutin has been associated with the maintenance of blood vessels walls."

Like I said, yummy & good for you....what could better?

The Fat Flower Bag

2007-06-22T19:30:00.001-07:00

I know. It's not exactly the most poetic name for a bag. But it fits, it's fun and it's plum luscious. Yummy!

Hit by the muse of It's-so-totally-fab,-I-just-gotta-make-it, I stayed up the wee hours of last night to get Fat Flower finished (now try saying that quickly). With the company of Minke the terror cat, the girl managed to transform the reversible upholstery grade Chenille into the cutest little bag.

The idea for Fat Flower actually came from an ad in Sunset Magazine for some flooring system. There was the floor and, perched delectably above it, was this gorgeous mustard leather handbag. Inspiration, truly, can be found just about anywhere.

Fat Flower is a lighter cheerful take on that classy leather version.Call me biased, but I just love florals. So I'm making 2 for sale on Etsy and keeping 2 for meself. Sometimes I'm not too sure on the profitability of a business model where you keep one of everything you sell.
But, life is short, and it's a good feeling to like the things you make.

Low Tech Fun

2007-06-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know I have an eco blog called Paper * People * Planet run separately from this one.

It's been a tad too finicky to do both so I'm slowly consolidating them both with the last post from Paper * People * Planet here for your reading pleasure.

In the future all my eco & paper posts will be found here.

Enjoy!

" One of the stumbling blocks for those of you wanting to recycle your paper trash is the inconvenience or the expense of getting a mould & deckle. You either have to buy a kit which would set you back by at least US$20 or make your own kit with 2 identical sized wooden frames from an art shop or framers, then staple gunning the mesh to one of them to make your mould.

Well, while I was still waiting for my box of leftover-in-Singapore stuff together with
my Green Bananas Paper Maker that my wonderful sis is shipping to me, I thought I'd try out a simple contraption.

Having read about it on a leaflet at the local library, I figured I'd give it a try seeing that most of what I needed was either in the house or can be got at the neighbourhood hardware store. The leaflet teaches you how to make basic paper without using the traditional mould & deckle. All it takes is some stiff metal wire, as the support and finer plastic mesh (the same ones for screen doors) as a sieve.

You tightly wrap the plastic mesh around the metal wire and then duct tape (fantastically waterproof stuff) the edges to hold both in place.

And bob's your uncle, you're all set!

For my first batch of paper, I harvested from the carpet of cherry blossoms in the garden to add as inclusions into my paper. And I used magazine pages to be blended for the paper pulp.

Blended a handful of shredded paper and added it to the vat. After 2 blender-full of pulp, I sprinkled in the previously dried cherry blossoms, and gave the mixture a good stir. Now was the moment of truth.

Would it work or wouldn't it?

Pulling the first sheet was tenuous. There was no deckle to hold the pulp mixture on the mould while the water drained. Liquid was flowing all over the place. The first sheet was uneven but complete. Phew! Pulling subsequent sheets got easier as I began to get a feel of the Meckle (a name I affectionately call this hybrid of Deckle & Mould).

Couching the paper was a cinch. And the meckle lifted without a problem and, without any serious tearing of the wet paper. Hurrah!!!

When I completed my post of papers, it was out to the balcony for something heavy to squeeze the water from the wet paper. And since I didn't feel like standing on the post throughout the night (yes, I'd put on weight since coming to Canada), the paving stone would have to do. And it worked quite well too. Nothing like using things around the house to complete a project.

The paper dried to a an off-white with brown inclusions. Not the most Scarlett O'Hara of papers but it had a salt-of-the-earth rocky quality about it.

I've made envelopes with it and together with yesterday's batch of basically white paper with Lover's Rose Elixir Tea paper I made yesterday, I've put together a neato notepaper & envelope wallet set. It goes on Etsy tomorrow. Yippee for low tech!!!

When Cousins Come to Stay

2007-06-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

The good thing when family comes to visit is not just familiar faces bringing stories from home, and this trip in particular, cousin Diana schlepping in 4 kg of kopi Cap Karpal Tanker (ooohhhh yummie), but that I actually get a chance to visit the sights of Vancouver again.

After living here almost 3 years, I've gotten cynical about this city and have been gradually only concentrating on it's negatives. Like, the crazy road system, with it's wonky inbuilt frustrations every km or so and bleeding heart liberals insisting that hard earned tax-payers money is used to provide safe injection sites for the continuing of illegal drug addiction instead of finding a way to help them kick the habit. Coming from a smoothly run and fairly drug free Singapore, little things like this really began to grate.

So having the cousins visit compelled me to look for places of beauty & fun in and around Vancouver. Places that celebrated the energy & specialness of this city that butted between the foot of the Coastal Mountain range and the Straits of Georgia. And, once I relaxed my prejuidices and looked, these places weren't too difficult to find.

The Van Dusen Gardens for one is my favourite. It 's in Vancouver West and has large grounds divided into plants from different regions, lakes laced with pretty Japanese maples, a funky hedge maze and gorgeous temperate gardens. The garden is in the middle of the city yet, when you sit on the benches by the small lake,under the dappled shade of the willows, you hardly notice the city.

The trip up to Burnaby Mountain help give the girls a view of the city. From mountain to river, from the deep fjiords to the open ocean. Also there were the funky totems donated to the city of Vancouver by a sister city in Japan.

The problem with being a tour guide is that although you can control the itineiry, you can't really control the weather. So, for most of the time the cousins were here, we had the wet & grey Vancouver is fairly famous for. Still, that didn't stop us tough & intrepid sight-seers who picked the wettest day for a hike up Lynn Canyon somewhere in between some of the North Shore Mountains.
The suspension bridge alone was well worth the visit, and that's not counting the spectacular waterfall you get to see while standing in the middle of the bridge. The 20 minute hike to Rice Lake was, however, a disappointment (for me at least). BC hydro was working on a big water treatment plant there and the trail led past it.

Still, by the time we got to the smallish deserted lake, the sky had dried up , at least for a bit, and the view of the lake that unfolded before us was quite magical.

Not too bad for a city of over two million, to be able to feel like you are alone in the wilderness by taking juts a 20 minute hike.

Roadtrip to the Dinosaurs

2007-05-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

I always knew that Canada was a big country. Big enough to once have had dinosaurs roaming it's land. Now that's pretty impressive.
The hubby, the station wagon & I just returned from a week long road trip to Calgary & Drumheller (where the dinosaurs are) in Alberta. Took us a good 12 hours to drive there from Vancouver and was somewhat tough on the behind, if you get my drift. Still, the scenery was quite worthwhile. To transverse from the wet & rocky coast of BC to the dry flat plains of Alberta was a lesson in real time as to how wide & diverse Canada really is.

Ok, back to the dinosaurs.

Drumheller is a little town in the valley of the same name. It's about an hour from Calgary if you gun it. You're driving through rolling fields which suddenly give way to steep, dry coulees (or badlands) ridged with the strata of hundreds of years of erosion by time, wind and the Red Deer River.

The cool thing is that there is a dinosaur called the Albertasuarus that was a tyrannosaurid. The same family as the famous T. Rex. and according to wikipedia " Albertosaurus was a bipedal predator with a massive head, jaws lined with dozens of large teeth and tiny, two-fingered 'hands'. It may have been at the top of the food chain in its local ecosystem. Although relatively large for a theropod, Albertosaurus was much smaller than its more famous relative Tyrannosaurus, probably weighing only as much as a modern black rhinoceros."

The Royal Tyrrell museum where I spent the best $10 in a some months was filled with tonnes of exhibits of full scale dino skeletons all hooked up in their larger-than-life glory.
Info on what the planet was like those 70+ million years ago when the dinosaurs ruled was clear and written magazine-like, which greatly appealed to my MTV mind.
Kids must love this place, because when we were there, there were hordes roaming the exhibition galleries. They had magical timing too. Just when you're about to take a photo, they'll step right into your shot. Well, at least I got these that I put here on the blog.

And when we got back to Calgary and went for dinner at a lovely steak place called Saltlik, I got chance to get a picture of another skeleton,. It's my favourite. I think I'll call it DinoHorsey.

Paradise Nearby

2007-05-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

How much better can life get?

If you need a place to go to for quiet relaxing off-the-beaten-track getaway. Or a safe place for your kids to romp around getting to know nature. It's much cheaper than the over S$150 a night rooms in most places and definitely more bang for your buck. Because for about S$40 per night, you get to spend lazy afternoons under a dappled sky on an idyllic river, run with Toby (the sometimes guard dog but alltime fun dog, even during sleepy time) round the coconut grove & jump into the blue South China Sea and muck around on a powder white sandy beach.

And, you can have all this breezy coastal space to your own sweet self. No need for sharing and rushing with other guests because most of the times (especially on weekdays) you'd be the only guest in the laid back Mutiara guesthouse set in 8 hectares of beach front on the East coast of Bintan Island.

For those not familiar to Bintan Island, it's about 45 minutes by ferry from Singapore. And Mutiara is about an hour from the Bintan Resort's ferry terminal.

I visited my friend Marc on my last trip back to Singapore. He's the guy responsible for turning this little piece of paradise into a place where city folk can take wander back into the simpler, peaceful & charming kampung days.
Since February, he's added two more fun rustic bungalows to the existing guesthouse. The PONDOK, is built like a traditional fisherman's hut with attap & wood and can accommodate 4 people. It has a generous covered porch in front facing the sea and the most marvelous place for you to hang up your hammock for the afternoon snooze. The day rate if S$80 for 2 persons and this includes 3 meals.

The other addition is just brill. Called The KELONG, it's a unique floating eco-bungalow. Kelongs are traditionally used by Bintan fishermen for extended fishing stays out at sea. They raise anchor & paddle to move to the next fishing spot. This one has been modified to house 4 guests who want the novel experience of sleeping with colourful marine life dancing about under them. I'm told that the sunrises & sunsets are spectacular here. The day rate for the Kelong is also S$80 for 2 people. Since the Kelong is in the water, it's only available during the non-monsoon season from April to October.

If you'd like more info on these hidden gems so nearby Singapore, send Marc an email. He can be reached at dreams@mutiarabintan.com

Singaporean lah...

2007-05-08T12:20:00.001-07:00

I had a previous post on an insight to the Canadian psyche a couple of days ago.
Now I find a counter balance to give my non-Singaporean friends a closer look into the Singaporean we all know & love.... with help from Hossan Leong & YOUTUBE.

I saw the clip with Hossan from a Mr Brown post some time ago. But this one's now got graphics. Really attractive to my MTV sensibilities.

Creating this post also forced me to learning how to embed YOUTUBE videos into my blog with which I am very well chuffed. Gonna be doin some more of it.

Enjoy!

Gorgeous Taffeta Summer Scarves

2007-05-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Ok. I couldn't help it. I saw the Eggshell blue one first. But it was what was waiting behind that bale of embroidered blue that truly frightened me.
There were seven other bales all of different colours! Mustard yellow, burnt orange, midnight blue.... Yikes! All feeling so smooth and silky and rich. How is a girl to decide? So many choices, so little space!
Having recently seen "Neat", a de-cluttering show on Home & Garden TV, I just couldn't buy them all. So I did the next best thing. I bought 4 colours. AND, only 2 metres of each. I have been a good girl!
And now, I'm happily sewing and turning them into gorgeous scarves.

This pretty eggshell blue scarf/shawl was finished yesterday. Imagine this under a tough black leather jacket. Rocking or what?

Tonight, I'll making another with both sides of different colours. The blue with the orange. So it's reversible and slightly more interesting methinks.

More will be on sale on Etsy. Enjoy!

If anyone has suggestions on other things to make with this fab material, leave ma a comment.

The Other Canadian

2007-04-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was emailed this brilliant insight to the Canadian psyche. And, I love it.

It was written by Rick Mercer a presenter/comedian who does a show that is called "The Mercer Report". It has scathingly funny skits & commentaries on Canada & the world in general. Suffice to say that if we had a Singapore version of Rick (Mr Brown comes the closest), he'd probably not be living in Singapore.

"On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to
offer an apology to the United States of America.

We haven't been getting along very well
recently and for that, I am truly sorry.

I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron.
He is a moron but, it wasn't nice of us to point it out.
If it's any consolation, the fact that he'sa moron
shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America.
After all it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber.
Just because we have more trees than you
doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's
cheaper and better than your own.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey.
In our defence I guess our excuse would be that
our team was much, much, much, much better
than yours.

I'm sorry we burnt down your White House
during the war of 1812. I notice you've rebuilt it!
It's Very Nice.

I'm sorry about your beer. I know we had
nothing to do with your beer but, we Feel your Pain.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq.
I mean, when you're going up against a crazed
dictator, you wanna have your friends by your side.
I realize it took more than two years before you
guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different.
Everyone knew he had weapons.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians,
I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing
for things in a passive-aggressive way, which is
really a thinly veiled criticism.

I sincerely hope that you're not
upset over this.

We've seen what you do to countries you
get upset with.

Thank you."

R. Mercer

Go Canucks GO!!!!!!! Going Native on Hockey

2007-04-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

From a girl who comes from the humid tropics, the appeal of the rough sport of ice-hockey is hard to understand. In Singapore, we had no ice on which to skate let alone shoot a puck. So, you can imagine my gob-smacked surprise when I discovered myself cheering and yelling like a banshee when the Vancouver Canucks Hockey team scores a goal (they call ice-hockey hockey in North America, and what the rest of the world calls Hockey, they call Field-hockey. Go figure!). All of a sudden I'm logging on to websites called NHL.com( National Hockey League) and Canucks.com to find out who's injured and who's not; what the stories were behind no. 44, Tod Bertuzzi (thank god he no longer plays for us) being boo-ed at games and how the Swedish Sedin (interestingly nos, 22 & 33) twins came to be in the Canucks team. What was happening to me?
I was being swept up by the very game that I've thought too violent. Too many guys getting viciously banged against the boards.Broken teeth and broken sticks. Argh. I might do just as well watching wrestling. But wrestling's never made my blood pulse as hockey does, nor blacken my disposition so when the Canucks loose a game. There was something more to this.
The last time I felt this quickening was during the Malaysia Cup when the Singapore football team beat some Malaysian state's team in the finals after which they summarily kicked us out of the cup. And thus was born our sad little S-league. T'was the same feeling with the Canucks, there was something to cheer for. A little pride in the home team. Or in my case the team in which I've made my home. It's a way to say "neh, neh-neh, neh, neh . We are better then you-oo!", without having to go to war ala George Bush. No one really dies, just your heart if your team doesn't make it.

For me, going through an entire hockey season's really helped me bond to this, my adopted city. Joining a hockey pool, being sent emails of crazy, funny Canuck videos, seeing cars all over town with little Canuck's flags flying from their windscreens reflecting the pride & support for 20 men on the ice. The same 20 give or take ( as I've learnt from mid season trades) I've come to know and vigorously support. This game has given me something of great value: a common history & touch point with the native Vancouverites. Which any new immigrant will tell you is precious. And best of all, the Canucks have given me something that, sad to say, even Singapore can't, a chance to world class sporting team out there fighting for fame & glory.

For those of you who want to know and have had truncated communications with me on MSN , skype or yahoo because of hockey, the Vancouver made it to the playoffs where the 16 best teams out of a 32-ish team league battle for the Stanley Cup. Yesterday we beat the Dallas Stars to go into the semis. Where we will meet the Anaheim Ducks.
And with so many Chinese in Vancouver, I'm sure will be able to come up with a good recipe to roast Californian duck.

Joy of the Unexpected

2007-04-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wished I made jewelery. Like my Etsy friend Marsha has on her blog, the makings of a stunning red (OOAK) necklace. From start to finish. Pictures of every step looks as delicious as the next. All sparkly red & silver.
But instead, I'm making paper these days. Now that the weather is getting warmer, there is little demand for warm, funky scarves which is what I usually make.

The making of paper, especially from recycled paper, cannot be called a pretty or accurate process. What you put in isn't necessarily what you get out. A polite way to describe the somewhat messy process is that it's.....well...hmmmm...... organic? You're never quite sure of what you'll end up with when everything dries. While this makes things interesting, it is does leave the house scattered with stacks of 'experimental' papers.
For instance, I was recycling yellow pages the other day and had expected the finished paper to come out at least a tiny bit yellow, or olive green at least.
But no. I harvested sheets of stony bile grey. Sigh, not something you'd be writing your love letters on I'm afraid.

I do persevere, however. Yesterday I used basically white used printer paper blended with Lover's Rose Elixir tea (I work part-time in a tea shop & can get my hands on all sorts of exotic teas) that has rose petals, hibiscus and lime leaves. The mushy pulp smelt ambrosial (another benefit of making paper, the scent spa your nose gets) and the inclusions (technical term for the tea I added) gave such a cheerful pinky, purplish sprinkle to the mix.
And today, as I peel the newly dried papers from their couching sheets, I'm a happy girl!
The finished paper is in a couple of shades off white, which I guess the best you can expect without the use of bleach. And the inclusions are speckled snowflakes in the white.
All that's left now is to convert these sheets into note cards, envelopes & decorative paper for scrap-booking & other crafty projects. All of which will be sold sooner or later in Rumah Kampung, my Etsy store.

More Than Just Haircut

2007-04-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

More than Just A Haircut

People who Inspire

You know, there are times when you meet the most unusual people in the most unlikely of places. I met Joo Hock in a hairdressing salon a dozen or so years ago in Centerpoint, I think that's where it was.
It's a funny thing about life, that she throws your way gems and jewels when you least expect it. My hairdresser Joo Hock must count as one of these.

Quite apart from the buzz I get from my neat & streaky gold coiffures, I get oodles of new ideas and perspectives from my talks while in the chair. Joo Hock is an avid fan of the teachings of R. Buckminister Fuller. For those of you who haven't heard of the man. Bucky was a philosopher, thinker, visionary, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet, cosmologist.

Probably one of the first futurists and global thinkers,

it was he that coined the term
"Spaceship Earth". The creator of the geodesic dome , his work inspired and paved the way for many who came after him. In fact Spaceship Earth is an attraction at Epcot, a theme park at Disney World in Florida, USA.

The building was designed with the help of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.

The sphere itself and the attraction's name was inspired by the work of Bucky, but he was not given credit.

And, apparently I'm not the only one who gets more than a cut & wash at Joo Hock's. Another customer, Jek Kian Jin, an IT expert who use to write for The Straits Times, wrote this in an article that was published in April 2000 entitled

"NEXT BEST THING AFTER THE NET? A HAIRCUT"

"Instead I went to get a haircut. My hairstylist Joo Hock is an enthusiastic promoter of the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, who, although best known for the invention of the geodesic dome, was also one of the truly original thinkers of the 20th century.

Not only will I get a good haircut, I didn't mind having my head expanded as well."

I was going to tell you Joo Hock's story but no. ...he tells it better. So here goes.

" In 1993 I attended this seminar called Money & You, which featured the principles uncovered by Bucky. The facilitator was touting Bucky's book entitled "Critical Path" which had the awesome reputation of being a pretty challenging book to read. It was said that you have to have another book beside it to read it, called the dictionary. True to its reputation many, after the first 2 pages usually gave up on it. (**Kampung Girl comments... I has exhausted after 4 paragraphs.)

Browsing through the pages, I have to admit it did look intimidating. I passed it up.

However another fellow participant came to me and offered it to me. "Hey Joo Hock, you want to read Critical Path? Here take it. When I need it, then return it." True to who I am, I never refuse a good offer. Nothing to lose after all.

Strangely though, (Bucky's one sentences: a ten to twelve line paragraph) I seem to be able to make out what Bucky was saying.

As I checked out his Self-disciplines of Buckminster Fuller, I was awestruck when he shared about his direct experiential evidence of God. I felt that here was someone, who is in my opinion,was a first rate scientist. Someone very meticulous in how he described things, and this guy was saying he had direct experiential evidence of God. Wow!!

Quite uncharacteristic of me, (normally I shy away from talking about God) I went around telling my friends about this. Look, what this guy Bucky is saying. I've not come across any scientist who has come upfront to say so.
Since some of my friends were also keen to read Critical Path, we kinda got to reading it as a group. In fact to read his "Critical Path" what is really needed, is a group, not the dictionary.

As I read further, I began to share the content of his book to anybody who would listen. Though I cannot say I got it all correctly immediately. I just went back to his book, ever so often, to clarify my learning and understanding of his book.

Hah! I always had a captive audience, my customers, as I worked on their hair. I give them not just a haircut, I gave them what I called "metaphysical therapy" heh heh!

Fortunately, nobody challenged my audacity to talk about and explain Bucky.

It was very encouraging.

In June 1994, while preparing ourselves to go for Business School (a Money & You Boot Camp), my friends and I began to go to MacRitchie Reservoir to run/jog. We decided to combined the two, jogging together with the reading and discussing Bucky's Critical Path. We have been doing so, ever since then.

We seemed to have found the formula that worked for us. We not only enjoyed the fresh morning air of MacRitchie, we had the physical exercise, plus the mental gymnastics of figuring out Bucky's writings. And of course, good natured teasing and ribbing each other. There was lots of laughter, which as they say, is the best medicine.

We've been at it since then, even through the blizzard-like rainstorms here in Singapore!! Yup, a very committed bunch. Who would be crazy enough to turn up in this kind of inclement weather? Members of the PSBC Bucky Group Singapore!!!

PSBC? Pak See Buay Chau!!
Perhaps, we're an idealistic balance for the seemingly materialistic Singapore. Surely there is more to life then chasing the what? 3Cs? Car Cash, Condo.

We dared to reach out for the sublime, to spiritualize, to philosophize... and decide what we are about..... life makes more sense this way.....then the crass materialism.... no regrets then on the day I lie in the box."

Joo Hock has just started his own blog with more relections, stories and inspirations from bucky. Congrats Joo Hock!

It may be found at www.joohock.blogspot.com

Seredipity by the River

2007-04-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Be careful, very careful when taking new ways home. You never know what will happen when you do.
Two Sunday's ago, a suggestion to go home by a way we'd never tried before, took us well into the depths of Ladner and onto the south bank of the mighty Fraser river (you know, where the Salmon go to spawn?). Ladner is still in the Greater Vancouver area and stuffed in a none-too-clear area in the Corporation of Delta just above Tsawwassen ( where you take the ferry to Vancouver Island). Yeah, I'm still having problems finding where things are. But then, that's the part of the adventure in living in a new place, isn't it?
We decided to drive toward the river and then along it to find a place on the bank where we could go look out and maybe take pictures. After passing, substantial dikes on which were an amazing collection of dilapidated fishing huts and shops, a surprisingly modern pod of floating homes with a marina and the S&M industries building (it's not what you think. S&M in this case, stands for Seafood & Meats). We come up on a modest little park. And that's where we saw it!
At first, I was just interested in the lovey-dovey pair of seagulls nestled on top of a pile. Then, as Bogart said to Kate on The African Queen, you learn to read the river. Where there is whitewater are rapids, where the water's surface is disturbed, is not surprising, something underneath. Out by the pier, just below the nesting gulls, the water was indeed not as smooth as it should have been. Odd, I thought to myself, waves usually swell and then fall. But this wave just continued to bob higher and higher. Then it hit me! Silly girl! It wasn't a wave, it was a head! A wet black, smooth & shiny head. Then this thing crawled out of the dark water and flopped onto the wooden deck like a jelly giant slug. Heaved itself tall and looked like it was right chuffed with itself. Never having seen a seal, or was it a sea lion(?) real life & up close before I was spell bound by this lumbering flippered creature sun-tanning on the deck. I must have taken 50 digitals, until my batteries went dead. Ten minutes later, when we left the park, our Californian Sea Lion (I checked up when I came home), was still lounging in the sun as bold as brass.
Amazing to a tropical girl like me, the working Fraser River is a ecosystem teeming with life of all sorts, not only fish. Tourists come from all over to visit Steveston, at the mouth of the river to see the Californian & Steller Sea Lions congregate & frolic. But only the males. It seems that all the females are back in the breeding ground looking after the pups. Sound familiar?

This from a tourism write-up I found online

"In the waters around Vancouver other marine mammals can be seen. Many of them follow the migrations of eulachons, herring and salmon, particularly around river mouths. Harbor seals are very common and can be recognized by their spotted coats, large eyes and earless heads. While there are two species of sea lions, the giant Steller sea lions are rare as compared with the California sea lions. Tour boats take tourists out to observe sea lions from the Steveston docks near the mouth of the Fraser River

Every year during April and May, when the Fraser River estuary is teaming with spawning eulachons, thousands of sea lions migrate into the area to feast on these herring-sized members of the Smelt family.

California Sea Lions (Zalophus californianus) come all the way from Mexico and the large Steller Sea Lions (Eumetopias jubatus) travel South from the Arctic.

Only male sea lions travel here. Females and calves stay behind. Because they have no rookeries to protect, they are playful and non-territorial."

Cherry Blossom Sky

2007-04-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

Every start of spring in Vancouver, much of the city is covered by a blanket of wafty, delicate profusion of every shade of pink. This is my third spring here and even though I've seen it before, the sight of entire roads lined with fluffy, puffy pink trees takes my breath away. Every time.

I'd always associated cherry blossoms to Japan but there are an incredible 130,000 cherry blossom trees planted in the parks, roads and boulevards throughout Greater Vancouver and in most recent years a Cherry Blossom Festival runs from around mid March to April. This comprehensive website gives a map of where the different cherry species can be found. It also organises events that have a somewhat Pacific Zen feel about it. Like trolley tours , Cherry Jam Concerts and Haiku competitions. This won the 2007 Canadian Haiku award

street hockey
young boys shoot cherry petals
into the net

Terry Ann Carter
Ottawa, Ontario

The story of Vancouver's Cherry trees starts way back in the early 1930s. The mayors of both Kobe and Yokohama presented the Vancouver Park Board with 500 Japanese cherry trees for planting at the Japanese cenotaph in Stanley Park. These were to honour Japanese Canadians who had served in WWI. By the mid 1900s, the park board started to replace the older and much larger elm, maple and plane trees that were traditionally planted with cherry trees. Because the roots of the larger trees were breaking up pavements & roads.

And now for a fleeting 2-3 weeks, the sunlight is made gentle with the frosty glow of pinks and plums of the Cherry Blossom. Life is good!

And in celebration of Spring ( altho it did snow a bit not an hour ago), I've entered this picture of a Cherry Blossom Sky to the Fuel My Blog photo competition, called "Outside My Window".

Risky Living

2007-03-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

Talk about arhitecture going out on a limb! Singapore, you leave it for a couple of years, and look what happens!

Apparently Far East Organisation is building this standing-on-one-foot structure at the end of Cairnhill Rd where it meets Scotts Rd.

The building is designed with four individual apartment towers that vertically offset from each other and are all securely (one hopes) suspended from a central core tower. This is what makes it appear as if they’re floating.

I must say the 153m, 36 storey condo will cut an oddly interesting, if not limping, silhouette on the skyline. But what must the people who will live in the 68 high-end condos be feeling with nothing but air beneath them?

For more technical info about the building, you can go to World Architecture News . Com

Transformation of a Cushion

2007-03-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

This is what I've found since coming to live in Canada. Independence. Those of you who know me and have grown up with me will be arching your eyebrows in in surprise asking "What the heck is she talking about?". I've always been the most independent of spirits, following the trail of my own goofy little star and have mostly done things for myself. But not like this though. Not like here in Canada.
Here, I've had to learn to cook my own meals (no cheap, delish & convienient Tiong Bahru hawker centre nearby), plant my own herbs and make my own cushions, slip covers, scarves and curtains. Unlike Asia, where retail is cheap, variety is, well, various and GST is abysmally low (so stop complaining), Canada has a retail sector that has seen it's heyday (like 20 years ago) and GST is made up of provincial & federal taxes, which together comes up to 14%. The cheapo Singaporean in me couldn't bear to pay out so much, especially for taxes, especially when she knew how much things really cost in Asia. Ergo the girl is now DIY mad.

Forgive me as I indulge and run thru my latest project with you.

Once upon a time, my loving sister, Veron decided that I was in dire need of the jangle of beading and flashes of hot pink in my life. She, from her deep generosity, proceeded to buy me the most darling square cushion from Delhi, where she was living at that time.

Unfortunately, The Spawn of Demon, who also answers to the name of Minke, decided that it was her dominion and proclaimed for her own. Well, that was in Singapore, where the cooling satin fabric of the cushion and the bling of the pink was all good & appropriate. But since coming to live in the land of cold & rain, she's favoured wool & tweed instead. And the poor pink beaded cushion was then only used for the Minkster to practice her own special brand of feline manicure.

Enough already! Said her cheapo DIY mistress and rescued the rare (in Vancouver at least) & highly reusable kapok (cotton wadding I think it's called in English) from the tattered cushion's insides. The following documents the cushion's road to recovery.

Paper * People * Planet

2007-03-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

Looks like I've gone blog wild!

I've started another blog. It's called Paper * People * Planet
www.paperpeopleplanet.blogspot.com
And it's to do with all sorts of paper and paper projects, recycling, inspirational people, the environment and anything green. Yes, I guess you could include Kermit too.

Some of you might remember a little eco company called Green Bananas that I started in Singapore which was WAY before it's time.

Well, I had picked up so much info & wisdom while doing it, it's nice to be able to air it out and see if it can be of use again.

So for those of you , and I know that there are many, who want to know how to make/recycle your own paper, just click on this link.

Enjoy!

Enter the BLOGOSPHERE

2007-03-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

It's incredible to believe that I started blogging only 10 days ago. Not even 2 weeks and yet it seems a life time. Still loads to learn and I've already learnt so much. It's rather like sinking into a whole new layer of world floating just below the one I currently swim in.

My first post was about going back to Singapore after 2 year of being away. That blog was meant to be a test piece so that I could figure out how to work inside a blog. You know, like placing pictures and changing fonts and making categories to place things like favourite seller. Fun and frivolous stuff like that. And to my surprise, seeing something personal like that out for the whole world (well, at least teeny portion of the world) to see & read was an unexpectedly cathartic experience.

In a couple of days I was trawling through other peoples' blogs to see what they had on theirs and how I could improve mine. In the meantime I set about another Etsy treasury featuring Etsy carfters & artists who blog. The treasury still has 13 hours to go...
http://www.etsy.com/treasury.php?id=1174435528381U94376

Here are some really cool Etsyians with interesting blogs

http://www.marshatoh.blogspot.com/
http://rightoutloudhandmades.blogspot.com/
http://toybreaker.net/blog/
http://www.crystaljsilk.blogspot.com/
http://msessions.blogspot.com/
http://www.tsunamibeads.blogspot.com/

Do you know how many blogs there are out there in the bulging blogosphere? Too many for this girl to blog-hop with a single beer! I needed to focus. Which I did.....on shopping sites, what else? Well that was the most obvious! Besides, so many Etsy sellers were on them. Made sense to have a look.
These I've listed aren't blogs per se but they do have cool widgets to ad to your own blog to make it look better and, well, hipper.

www.etsy.com has a etsy mini widget to show off stuff from the shop,

then there's www.wists.com
& www.stylefeeder.com

that let you compile things you like online and do yourself a wishlist that is open for public viewing and that you can put on your won blog too. Unfortunately the idiot-proof instructions for both those sites left me tearing me hair out because they never told me if my picks were confirmed or not and so I've left those for a while.

Technorati is apparently something no blogger can do without. It's a blog search engine, or so I believe. No wait, it's more than that. It ploughs though blogs and tags like a baleen whale and counts up links and ranks these to tell you in an Internet second which are the most popular. And if your blog is ranked high, the more likely you are to be picked up on a search and it follows from there that more traffic will come to your site. It really doesn't matter to those of us who have personal blogs but if you want to start making money from your blogs, then it MATTERS.

More about making money from your blog in the next couple of posts or so. I've only made close to $5 so far in the past 4 days, so I'm no expert. Mostly from Google adsense. The way I look at it, it's better than a kick in the head.

Moonlight & Magic

2007-03-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

This is the most fav treasury I put up on Esty yet. It's called
MOONLIGHT & MAGIC

As ephemeral as is the moonlight, so are etsy treasuries. They have a lifespan of only 2 days and as I type, Magic & moonlight has only 15 hours left to it's existence.

Sorry about the resolution of the picture. I still don't know how to save a screenshot yet. So I took a pix from the screen itself. Learning about technology all the time.

For a better view go to the site to take a look.

Here's to not being attached and enjoying the moment.

http://www.etsy.com/treasury.php

Just Letting Life happen...

2007-03-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

People who Inspire

I guess to be an artist, a sculptor, a crafter or any sort of creator you need to have a certain amount of trust, a bit of reckless faith and perhaps a somewhat Buddhist perspective on things. That something can come out of nothing and that everything will eventually go to nothing. That things are transcient and art is but putting temporal flesh on the every-changing flow of the spirit.
That's why when someone manages to capture the pose of a soul on canvas, film or clay, it delights your own soul and in an odd way comforts you. As if you belonged somewhere, where you don't have to explain yourself, prove your worth, fight for your rights. A very nice place.
Everytime I look at my pieces by a most generous & kind sculptor, Christa, I am transported into that marvelous place. Many have an old world feel about them and all have a certain weight that gives yo a feeling that they all know exactly where their place is in the world.
If you shake the pieces you will hear a little ringing. It is a small piece of clay that Christa leaves in each of them. A melodic reminder that all art keeps some spirit within it.
I'll let you see for yourselves. And if Christa feels so inclined, I hope she will add some comments on these pieces.

The Secret of Great Rendang

2007-03-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

Every Singaporean will eventually come to this somewhere in their blogs. Especially an overseas one. FOOD....sorry, I meant Super Shiok FOOD.

Having settled so many thousands of miles from any decent Nasi Padang Stall I had to come up with my own version of the comfort food (yes, Nasi Padang is naturally on top of this girl's list).

Couldn't have managed it without this surprising cookbook. Written by an ang moh no less called Wendy Hutton. The title of it is Wendy Hutton's Singapore Food - A spicy journey through the history and wizardry of Singapore cooking. Published in 1979, it's probably out of print by now. But because it was written that many years ago, she captured accurately the flavours of Singaporean favourites, like acar, loh mee, ikan assam pedas and beef rendang. I've tried it and to my taste-buds' gobsmacked surprise, it smelled & tasted frighteningly authentic.

It is an educational and amusing read. Especially because it was written by someone trying to be culturally sensitive in an age so politically incorrect. Still it is written with a real desire to help keep real bits of the Singaporean heritage, and for that, Wendy Hutton my stomach & I will be eternally grateful

And so I put this yummie recipe for Beef Rendang up for your salivating perusal. Especially for my friends at The Urban Tea Merchant in West Vancouver who were subjected to my culinary experiments those many winter months.

RENDANG DAGING
~ Beef in Spicy Coconut Gravy ~

Ingredients
500g (1lb) topside beef
6-8 shallots or 1 medium red onion
3 slices lengkuas (or galangal)
2.5cm (1in) fresh ginger
16-20 dried chillis, soaked
2 stalks lemongrass
1 clove garlic
6 tbsp freshly grated coconut or
4 tbsp desiccated coconut
2.5 tbsp oil
2.5 cups coconut milk
1 fresh tumeric leaf shredded (optional)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Method
1. Cut beef into pieces about 5c m (2 in) square and 1 cm (0.5 in) thick.
2. Grind the shallots, lengkuas, ginger, chillies, lemongrass and garlic together until fine.
3 Gently fry the grated coconut in a dry pan, stirring constantly, until golden brown.
4. Allow to cool slightly then pound to a paste.
5. Heat oil in a wok and gently fry the ground shallot mixture for 4-5 minutes.
6. Add pounded coconut and fry for another minute, then put in beef and sit-fry till it changes colour.
7. Add all other ingredients and stir, lifting the coconut milk and pouring it back into the wok until it come to a boil.
8. Reduce heat & simmer, uncovered until the meat is tender. If the sauce threatens to dry out before the meat is cooked, add a little hot water.
9. The sauce should finally reduce so that all that remains is a very thick coating on the meat. The oil will come out of the coconut milk and the meat will start to fry in it.

But the secret.......the real secret to making good rendang really great rendang is something called Hacks cough drops. HUH? You can't mean that black sweet wrapped in orange paper! But yes I do indeedie.

During my trip to Penyengat, Bintan to visit Ibu Raja Zainab, she came out with it. Her secret ingredient for the shiokest rendang I've EVER tasted, her rendang.... Black Hacks cough drops. Yes, just substitute 2 sweets per 1 tsp of sugar and you have the secret to great rendang.

Enjoy!

Where the River Flows, a White Giant sits

2007-03-13T14:18:00.000-07:00

Bintan Island is a very old place. Before the west came a-conquering, it was a place saturated with magic, sultanates, pirates, the spices-trade, nature spirits and most of all, stories. I had spent many hours sitting on a wooden floor in a house on stilts, listening to Pak Rajah Hamza recounting the tales of old.
Very sadly however, Pak Raja is no longer with us. Neither are the pirates, the ruling Rajas, the spice-trade and much of the magic. But the stories, they still live strong. They are told and retold around the kerosene lamps in most fisher folk huts in Bintan.

When my friend Marc bought the piece of land by the ocean, with a river winding amid the coconut trees & lallang, he already knew some of the stories. He had lived in Indonesia for a long time and was sensitive to the beliefs of the local folk.

He was also concerned about the future of his fisher neighbours. Bintan was quickly industrialising and also becoming a tourist destination. With Singaporeans & the better heeled Indonesians flocking to her beaches & golf courses by the ferry & Kijang load.

So, in a very Marc fashion, he started a rustic River Spa on stilts over his river- Bintan's Only Floating Spa. To complement his newly launched guest house; to employ & train the local villagers and to provide this fast modernising island with a casual & relaxed place to just enjoy nature in her quiet, simple beauty.

The journey toward completing the spa becomes a story in itself. During the construction, workers began having vivid nightmares, equipment broke down, plans hiccupped themselves breathless and for the first time in 18 years in Indonesia, Marc caught malaria, the brain burning kind. In Bintan, when so many things go wrong all at once, you know that you've probably stepped on something's toes. Something unseen. And in this case, the toes belonged to the sandaled foot of the Lady Spirit of the river and her protective white giant.

If you don't believe in spirits, and most city folk don't, think about it this way. Nature needs to to be honoured and respected (or at least consulted) when we choose to disturb her with our building and constructing. Especially in a place where the belief of magic & spirits is strong. So Marc, when he got well enough, engaged a translator to talk to the river spirit.

In Indonesia, he is called a Dukun or shaman. And was told that in building of the spa, many ancient parts of the river were disturbed and have allowed others to come into Her Lady Spirit's area. This was causing things to go awry. And as any Dukun worth his salt, he gave Marc instructions on how to appease the spirits. A stone was placed over the entrance from which the other spirits came and Her Lady Spirit was given a shady spot of honour. Under a ketapang tree by the river where she and her white giant sit at watch and in peace. And she once again protects the river and the land around it and keeps it in harmony.

After hearing Marc's story I must admit I was a bit nervous about having a massage in this oddly controversial spa. But my massage-denied body talked me into it. And it was WONDERFUL. There is a certain bliss of having well-trained fingers teasing the knots from your tight body while listening to the birds chirp, the waves lap and the leaves rustle. Looking through the windows of this wooden spa villa on stilts. The sleepy river moves languidly toward the nearby sea and the trees dapple sunlight over the water, making you believe in magic. At least for a little while.

If you'd like to ask Marc for more stories to book a day at his marvelous River Spa, email dreams@mutiarabintan.com

A little Piece of Paradise

2007-03-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

How could I visit Bintan without a little stay-over at my best Bintan bud's place at Trikora, on the eastern side of the island facing unimpeded out into the South China sea? Marc has a wonderfully rustic piece of land there fleshed out with coconut groves, quiet idyllic beaches & a sacred river running through it.
He's built a humble but comfortable guest house with a relaxed wooden deck out front & the kampung mandis I remember seeing when I was little in old Singapore.

It's great for city people wanting to take a short trip to get the frantic rush out of their system. Because the guest house is the only abode here, the acre or so of beach side groves and the stretch of sandy white beach itself becomes your private place.

It was brilliant being there away from the maddening pace of Singapore taking my time to just be. And selfishly not having to share this piece of paradise with any other visitor on the island.

Marc lets out his guest house to visitors....so I'll let him tell you more about it.
Looking for a real getaway? Here is Bintan’s best kept secret…

Mutiara Beach Guesthouse

Home Stay and River Spa Package

Full board accommodation, including:

* Breakfast with Coffee/tea

* Fisherman’s lunch with fresh coconut

* Supper with tea/coffee

* Discount 20% on all Aroma River Spa treatments, 10% on Boutique merchandise

* Local handicrafts workshop (baskets, ketupat)

Price per person: S$35.- per day (twin share, weekday & weekend)

Canned beverages and snacks are available at list price - Vegetarian meals option

Transportation to/from the ferry terminal is not included, but can be arranged at cost

Current room capacity: 3 rooms @ 2 beds each – Children 3-12 yrs only S$25.-

Bookings by e-mail: dreams@mutiarabintan.com

Not too bad a price for a bit of paradise I think. Go on...send him an email.

Bintan Bound for Batiks

2007-03-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

The way it seems to me, my fate will always somehow be intertwined with that of Bintan & Penyengat ( a little island village off the big island of Bintan). It's been that way for over 15 years now, and it's been good. Good and very interesting.

After all, it was in Bintan that we built the Beautiful Asmara Tropical Spas. And it was there I spent those uneasy nights during the year 2000 riots; met Frankie the poser of a biawak (monitor lizard); saw girls get possessed by spirits; had magical moonlight walks on the soft white sands of the Mayang Sari bay; dealt with dukuns (shamans); ate the BEST ever lamb chops; explored the Riaus on a wooden sailboat called Windsong; went for my first rave & caught malaria.

And it is also there that I made some very dear friends.

I'm currently working with Ibu Zainab, Ella & Chup on making Batik Prada wall-hangings & runners. After leaving Asmara, the gang in Penyengat had little to no orders from the spa and this is my way to help them with some income generation.

All the items are sold on an online shop I started which can be found at www.rumahkampung.etsy.com

Here is some of what we came up with....

Home & Back again

2007-03-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since the girl's been back to Singapore since moving to Canada.
And she was a bit apprehensive.

With all the news I'd read on the Channel News Asia website (one no longer reads The Straits Times Online since they started charging. As if SPH hadn't made enough dosh selling their Times House site to Condo developers. They have to wring out what's left of an overseas Singaporean's pitiful non-taxed income to subscribe to their site).
I digress. From the stories of how quickly Singapore had changed in the past two years; with Vivo city coming up, the new developments in Marina South and the like, this girl was afraid that she'd not recognise her city anymore.

So it was gratifying that some things had remained where she had left them some 2 years ago. Thank god the good people at Hair Fair remained at The Adelphi and thank god Joo Hock still gave the best hair cut. The MRT still worked with economy & efficiency. There were no workers strike to impede a persons daily life. Everything chugged along at a pretty good clip. I pace I understood.

Also it was good that the 3Fs still remained, more or less how I'd left them. The Family were safe,healthy & busily happy (despite their complaints), the Friends were mainly still in S'pore and were all grappling with their learnings, their plans & their new additions....and the final F, so dear to a S'porean's soul, the Food still tasted the same. The quality of Tiong Bahru's Kampung Chai Tow Kueh was spot on. Altho I noticed that the size of their portions had shrunk. Must be the higher rent in the swanky, new, escalatored hawker centre.

I was really impressed with what was happening with Clarke Quay tho. It's a tiny step toward the "Singapore-Under-The- Climatically-Controlled-Dome" idea which I'm sure many sweltering S'poreans have proposed over kopi at the corner coffee shop. Very Star Trek.