3/23/2009

Hi Everyone,

  I have hundreds of photos from Singapore that I would love to share, but I’ll try to show some restraint and not send all of them.  The Internet comes and goes…so we’ll see if this will work.

Bugis area

Singapore Art Museum with a “temporary” blue sculpture.  It wasn’t there the last time I walked past surprising me.

My favorite bookstore.  For 2 Singapore dollars I you can buy some really good books.  I buy mostly fiction; lots of “Oprah” books. It was also 3 for S$ 5 but I could always only find 2 until my last visit when I made myself find 3.  They had a copy of Beryl Markham’s West With the Night.  That’s one of Randal’s favorites and he likes to have several copies so he can give them away and still keep his hardbound copy that Bill Kimley sent to him.  And I found two that I wanted.  There are two tables just to the left of where the cart of boxes of books is in the photo.  Luckily it’s not so crowded when I go because only one or maybe 2 people can browse at the same time.

I went through our growing pile of books and collected some we no longer needed.  They were mostly the fiction that I had bought, but some others too.  I took them with me to the Bras Basha Complex that has lots of used book stores and started with my favorite so they could have first choice.    “Two-fifty” the owner said.  “Two dollars and fifty cents?!” I asked?  “Yes.”  I felt that was insultingly little so told her I’d rather donate them to the library!  (The library is just across the street. )  I knew I wasn’t lugging the pile of books back to the boat; but I wasn’t going to sell the lot of them for S$2.50!  I went upstairs to another book shop and he offered me S$3.00.  I told him I’d rather give them away.  Now in all fairness to the first shop, they do sell the fiction paperbacks for S$2 so they can’t pay much.  But the hardbacks go for S$20 and up.  The second shop sells paperbacks for about S$12 and prices go up from there.  I donated them to the library which made me feel better even though they wouldn’t let me have a library card since we were only in Singapore for a short time.  I still have some on the boat to use for boater book swaps and to leave in the Sebana Cove small library. 

Down one of the side streets off North Bridge Road.  I love the multi-colored winding stairways.

A modern day rickshaw with a semi-ancient driver.