Let's Go Lego in Singapore!

Legos can make powerful art!

    If people have have kids, they might opt to take them to a theme park called "LegoLand."  I've been to one myself and it was pretty impressive.  But I hadn't realized it was possible to express oneself deeply and emotionally using something as ordinary as those little plastic blocks.

   Then I heard about the artistic works of one Nathan Sawaya, a New York artist who renders huge sculptures using Legos, some deeply meaningful, some quirky and some quizzical.  We'd already planned our little excursion to Singapore, but when I saw that 52 of Sawaya's works would be on display at the Marina Bay Sands ArtSciene Museum while we were there. . . . . well, wild horses couldn't have stopped me from going!

Singapore's very cool ArtScience Museum

   The museum itself is really worth seeing, plopped there like a giant lotus flower opening to the sun.  But what's inside is pretty hot, too.   At least it was for this show, called "The Art of the Brick."  There were some very interesting, very provocative pieces, often showing human characters in various stages of angst.  For example, there was this one, which was called "Artist's Nightmare."  I guess if you create things with your hands by gluing thousands of little blocks together, losing your hands would, indeed, be a living nightmare.

"Artist's Nightmare" (losing one's hands)

  Sawaya does whimsical pieces, too, like giant pencils and a self-portrait in Legos juxtaposed with the actual artist himself.  

  

Nathan Sawaya in the flesh & in Legos

Life-size Pencil & Man!

One cool thing was the fact that Sawaya has entitled and explained his works and has posted the EXACT number of Legos he used in each one.  The giant Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton took tens of thousands of Legos and months of labor to create!

  














Another cool thing was all the very personal tidbits of information and commentary posted on the walls of the museum that explained Sawaya's mindset or method of creation.  For example, there were these:

The artist at work in his studio  (from TV display)

I think I'll stop writing now and let these artworks (for that is what they are!) speak for themselves.  But let me just say that if you ever have a chance to see these wonderful things, don't miss it!

Thinker rendered in plastic

Growing Old Together . . . .

Conspicuous Consumption Singapore Style

"Singapore Girls"

My friend now

    I just got back from a lovely weekend away in Singapore, being shown around by a friend who grew up there and who was actually one of the "Singapore Airline Girls" of yore.  Even now she takes care of herself in a most admirable way.

   So she arranged for us to stay in the Mandarin Orchard Road Hotel, which is a pretty fancy-dancy place to spend a couple of nights, believe me!  There are often top-level cars parked outside upscale hotels just to set the tone.  But this hotel had real Singaporeans' fancy vehicles parked in front for real.  There were Porches, Ferraris and this white Maserati, to mention but a few.  I didn't even bother to take pictures of the lowly BMWs and Mercedes Benzes.  But to tell the truth, if I were the owner of one of those drop-dead-valuable cars, I really wouldn't want it parked right there with all the taxis pulling up, excursion vans loading and unloading, and ordinary folk milling around with their luggage.  

Maserati at our hotel

      Anyway, strings were pulled and we got upgraded to the Executive Suite, which was just the frosting on the cake.  Orchard Road is the epitome of high-class shopping in Singapore, or it was until the even more hoity-toity Marina Bay Sands complex opened recently.   

A very expensive mountain of brand-name bags!

    When we checked in, we got our first glimpse of Singaporean conspicuous consumption at a one-day hotel conference room sale of really high-end bags and shoes.  There were all the brand names I know, like Jimmy Choo, the shoe designer who put Malaysia on the fashion map.  In the picture up there my friend is holding a Christian Louboutin shoe -- the ones that always have a red sole.  I'm tossing around these names as though they were actually familiar to me, but I know what I know about them thanks to "Sex and the City," truth be told.  There were literally MOUNTAINS of designer bags and walls of brand-name shoes.  Those things had price tags in the thousands of dollars, Singaporean or US.  We scurried out of there empty-handed -- no surprise there!

      Of course we eventually made our way to Marina Bay Sands since it's all the rage nowadays (and because there was an art show I wanted to see at the ArtScience Museum there.)  My two traveling companions wanted to hit the casino for a bit of "recreational gaming" after having had an "adult beverage" or two.  I didn't want to do that, so I said I'd browse around "The Shops at Marina Bay."  Well, silly me!  There was nothing, and I mean nothing but brand-goods stores.  I wasn't dressed well enough to even set foot in those places and risk the derision of the staff inside.  There were NO "ordinary mortal" shops in the part of the complex we first visited. The place looked like the fanciest Las Vegas shopping areas multiplied a thousand times over.  In all fairness, later we did find the stores where you might actually find something to buy, but I still didn't leave any of my money behind there. 

A water feature at Marina Bay Sands

    I won't put in any pictures of "The Shops at Marina Bay Sands" because one set of brand goods stores looks like another, if you ask me.  Rather, I'll attach a picture of "The Toilet," which is a center-court water feature there at the shopping mall.  I've seen many a water feature in my life, but this one is the ugliest I've ever laid eyes on.  It acts just like a toilet, with water swirling inside a big bowl before it all washes out into the pool below.  You can't help but think of a commode when you see the water flushing out of it.  Whoever designed it clearly had a gap between the conception and the final realization of the design plan.
   Well, I plan to post again soon about this little Singapore excursion and next time I'll be more positive, I promise!



    

A Philosophical Post on Sad Things

    It's a new year and hopefully a good (or better one) for each and every one of us.  Mine will be full of changes and so will yours, no doubt.  Buddhism reminds us that "nothing is eternally permanent and everlasting."  

   Are you feeling positive about what lies ahead?  I'm trying to be, but some things have made me sad recently.  They're not related and some aren't important enough to even be considered "sad."  Actually, "irritating" is more like it.  On the other hand, one was utterly tragic. 

    First, the irritating. I'll admit that I'm somewhat naive and trusting when it comes to the Internet.  I'm no fool, mind you.  I've never tried to help people move millions of dollars in misplaced money by supplying my bank information.  But I've been basically trusting -- until now.  But recently this poor little inconsequential blog got hijacked by a bad person (or persons) or perhaps some kind of cyber-robot hacker thing. 

     After the hijacking, there were dozens -- no, hundreds of hits from someone or something in France.  No matter how badly I want to believe it, I know this blog doesn't have 491 followers in that country.  But  that's how many hits this blog got last month and the comments left on some posts were really nothing but badly-translated gibberish.  I had to take down that post, but now that they've given up on me, I'll repost it one of these days, perhaps even an improved version!  But now I see that some cyber-bot in Germany has taken over this poor little blog of mine. How sad and frustrating that is! 

     Another sad thing is a report in the news recently saying that the duly-elected US  Congress is disrespected, even despised by we Americans who, in theory, elected its members.  A survey of 830 Americans indicated that we actually like the following things better than our own Congress:  traffic jams, Donald Trump, lice, cockroaches, France, and used car dealers, to name but a few.  

    What a sad state of affairs that is!  And why is it, I wonder?  I don't know the answer to that, but I tend to agree with those who are disgusted with our legislators as a group, though not necessarily individually.  How can our elected officials be so polarized and divided that they're unable to even govern any more?  Maybe it's because we Americans ourselves have become so polarized that we can't agree on anything.  It's so distressing!

   But these things are trivial, even laughable, when you consider the real tragedies that happen in the world on a daily basis.  I've never experienced a full-scale disaster on the level of the mass killings that happen so often in America nowadays.  That's heart-break on a large-scale.  But just yesterday I saw a tragedy on the local level, or its aftermath, anyway.  It was a horrific traffic accident that happened just a block or so from our own dwelling.  

     At four in the morning a young couple in a new Porsche evidently skidded across the boulevard and crashed into a tree.  It was a horrific accident in which two young people died, or soon thereafter.  Just looking at the scene of the crash was painful and deeply distressing.  I can't imagine the emotional pain those families must be experiencing now, and the physical pain of the survivors until they finally succumbed to their injuries.

   I'll never be able to pass that particular spot in the road again without experiencing sadness and hoping that the friends and family members of these young people are somehow healing from this tragedy.

     I hope that 2013 will be a year in which some, hopefully many, of the other, more absurd sad aspects of life get resolved somehow.  And I'll try to console myself about things that make me sad, things I cannot change, with this fundamental concept from Buddhism:

   "The true nature of the universe is that its essence is forever changing, without stopping, without resting for (even) one moment."   According to the teachings, " . . . before he passed away, Buddha said (to one of his followers) . . . all that lives will eventually die.  Therefore, do not suffer because . . . . things do not last forever."  (Taken and adapted from Sayings of Buddha by Tsai Chih Chung.)

Ch-ch-ch-chocolate!

Just a few of the chocolate offerings at the G Hotel

    I am a woman, ergo I love chocolate.  I like cheap chocolate and expensive stuff.  I like almost all chocolate except the dark chocolate that's actually supposed to be good for you.  One of the things on my "bucket list" is to visit Hershey, Pennsylvania, where I hear the sweet aroma of chocolate literally permeates the air of the whole town.

       In the meantime, though, the Chocolate Dessert Buffet presented at the G Hotel here in Penang will do quite nicely, thank you!  It's the largest collection of edible sin I've ever seen outside of the shelves of any supermarket in America, and much more elegantly presented! 

      My husband and I go whenever there's any special event or even an imaginary special occasion in our lives.  (For a guy, he's remarkably interested in the sweet stuff.)  We often see dating couples there, since it runs from 8:00 to midnight on alternate Saturdays.  But the last time we went, there was a nice variety of folks there. 

         I spoke with a Chinese couple from Hong Kong, who declared that the atmosphere was nice and the price quite reasonable.  It's RM 45++ (or about  US $17, about ten pounds or about 1,500 yen.)  And it's even 20% less than that if you have a G4U card that anyone can get for free just by asking the hotel.  The couple said it would cost double that in Hong Kong and that the time would be shorter and probably limited.

6-week-old Yu Bin at his first Choc. Buffet

  This little fellow, named Yu Bin, was probably getting addicted to chocolate via his mother, since he is only six weeks old. The baby's aunt, a young Chinese gal, was treating the proud new parents to the buffet to celebrate the fat that this was the first baby born into the family.  Yu Bin had no comment, but his parents said they thought the buffet was very enjoyable. 

       So did a pair of Australian fellows visiting for the holidays.  They seemed particularly entranced with the praline candies, and they pointed out that the price was right compared to their country, where a single truffle can evidently cost two Australian dollars.  They knew all about it because they'd visited a web site that tells more about this death-by-chocolate experience. 

     You can, too, if you go to this home page:  http://www.crizfood.com/1845/chocolate-buffet-soy-g-hotel-penang/
(I figure there's no point in reinventing the wheel by telling you all the same stuff that that food blogger does.  Besides, he did it better!)

It takes a lot of will power not to stick a finger in!

    But let me just say that the buffet offers chocolate in all its delicious manifesta-tions.  Besides all those pralines, there's a line of silver chafing dishes with hot items, like lava cake, a banana chocolate "pie" and such. 

    Then there's the inevitable chocolate fountain, except that there are two -- one white and one regular.  There are all kinds of logical and illogical things you can dip into them, though I've never done it personally.  I do know that kids just love playing in chocolate fountains, dribbling the stuff all over, mixing the white with the dark, dropping chocolate-laden items all over the buffet and so on.  Luckily nobody seems to bring little kids to this Saturday night buffet, so it remains fairly pristine (except for the bit of white chocolate that seems to have wandered into the black chocolate fountain in this photo.)

Chocolate Fruit Pizza, anyone?

     Kids also seem to like chocolate fruit pizza, though I've never been even tempted to "spend" any of my precious chocolate space on it personally.  I prefer my pizza savory!

This doesn't look like THE BEST ONE, but it is!

         
   I chatted with the chef and she was willing to go out on a limb and say that her personal favorite of all the offerings was the "Exotic Milk Chocolate Adventure," and I agree!  Not only is the name enticing, but the cake itself defies description, it's so good.  But there are a lot of other scrumptious-sounding things, too:  White Chocolate Mango Rosemary Entremets (whatever that is!), Chocolate Cherry Mousse Torte, Chocolate Fruit Tartlet, Chocolate Marquise Cake, and -- well, you get the idea.  It just goes on and on!  All the while you're plied with tiny cups of real, and I do mean real, hot chocolate to drink.

        The chef also told us that the leftovers from the buffet are sent to the staff canteen, which makes me wonder if somehow I might get myself employed at the G Hotel.  I'd work for minimum wage myself if there were quality chocolate treats like these in the break room!

The shiny stuff on top is gold!