| Our friend Howard has been living and working in Singapore for several years now (since at least before our previous visit). We met up for lunch with him and his girlfriend Nan at the Bugis Junction mall. | We ate at Nando’s, which had lots of grilled meat options, but no tap water | After lunch, Howard and Nan took us over to the Singapore Art Museum where they were having a show of Japanese artists | The museum had this fun interactive exhibit, with three identical sets of stamps, one set for a color, that the kids could use to experiment with artwork based on patterns | There was also this data visualization exhibit, presenting different kinds of numerical data in a variety of artistic ways | It might look like these three paintings are the same. But they aren’t. ☺ |
| This piece, made of metal flower petals, was especially striking | The plaque for the flower petal piece | A closeup, showing the fine details | The neighborhood in which the museum is located is also home to a number of historic and architecturally beautiful churches | One of the displays included these turbine-powered “hover boards” | Then there was the dance booth, complete with headphones, disco ball, and one-way glass mirrored on the inside |
| The artist’s conception was that it would be placed in various locations, and people would give impromptu performances dancing to the music | The kids were a bit tentative, but eventually at least went to see what it was like inside | Howard’s side project is his chain of sushi restaurants, one of which just happens to be next door to the museum, so he showed us around | We had a very nice lunch at his Standing Sushi at Raffles Place (that is both the name and theme of the restaurant), but the 8QSAM location was closed the day we were there | We had a lot of fun with Howard and Nan, but we did have to get back eventually. We took the train from Bras Basah, where it happens they have a pond over the glass ceiling of the station. | The station architecture is left open so that you can still see the underneath of the pond even from the boarding platform |
