islandhippy

Olive cools off in the paddling pool and plays with the neighbour's new dog, Winkie. (In case you misread that, she wasn't playing with the neighbour's new dog's winkie!)

We would have expected nothing less from photographer Collin and designer Biona's wedding: a laid-back party in a chic garden setting facing the seafront. The gods threatened to spoil the event by sending menacing storm clouds to Singapore in the morning but they chilled at the prospect of a good party and gifted the happy couple blue skies and a light sea breeze.

The venue was 1 Twenty Six, a restaurant and bar with a lush garden located on the beach at East Coast Park. The garden features a central, timber-decked pagoda, which the couple used for the solemnisation, an island bar overlooking the beach and lots of secluded chill zones with wicker tables and chairs. Pebbled paths meander through the greenery and water features complete the zen-like ambience. We had the whole garden to ourselves so Olive had fun wandering around collecting pebbles and trying to swim in the fountain.

In our experience, wedding food in Singapore is often a let down but the food prepared by 1 Twenty Six was very tasty. Before the solemnisation, staff drifted through the garden with light bites of smoked salmon and quails eggs wrapped in bacon. Free flow from the bar also helped get people in the mood. For dinner, the restaurant laid on a simple buffet spread so guests could help themselves then mingle in the garden with a plate of food. For starters, there was a sweet potato salad, a duck salad and Vietnamese rice-paper with sweet chilli sauce. For mains, there was spicy seafood pasta, rice, and dishes of beef stew in red wine, chicken and wild mushroom ragout and John Dory ... enough to satisfy all tastes.

With the sun hanging low over the sea, wedding vows were exchanged in the al-fresco garden pagoda, and orchids hanging on ribbons from the pagoda roof fluttered in the breeze. Half of the guests were professional photographers, the rest — like us — keen amateurs getting in the way, so the paparazzi was out in force.

We had a really fun evening and we were sorry to have to take the sleepy baby home before the tuak (rice wine), flown in from Sarawak by Collin's family, put in an appearance. We wish Collin and Biona a happy, chilled-out life together.

Olive's friend Poppy celebrated her first birthday with parents Adora and Max and a large group of friends and family at the Botanic Gardens this afternoon. We joined for a short time before rushing off to Collin and Biona's beach wedding.

If you're in Singapore, come down to The Shophouse Fair today at 22 Lock Road, Gillman Village (behind Little Bali, off Alexandra Road) for lots of exciting goodies, including books from Monsoon (at up to 30% off bookstore prices!). There's wine and food, and activities for the kids. The fair is housed in a furniture shop so you can even buy the display furniture: Monsoon's bookshelves are going for S$1,000 and the teak table we're using is S$2,000!

Why spend S$800 on a fancy BBQ when you can make one for S$5? ('Because it looks better and means you don't have to squat on the floor?' Sandy)

Chicken drumsticks with a rose and harissa rub; juicy steaks with nothing but Murray River salt and black pepper. Delicious.

The Joy Luck Club

[From the left] Jordy, Dora, Poppy, Adora, Ned, Liz, Sandy and Olive celebrate Sandy's birthday at Keppel Marina.

Once known as the safest place in the world, Singapore has experienced a marked increase in crime, notably raspberry snatching from chocolate cakes. The culprit or culprits are operating in the Portsdown Road area of the city-state, close to where terrorist Mat Selamat made his infamous escape. Mat Selamat has been ruled out of this series of crimes due to the presence of alcohol in the cakes. Preliminary investigations have turned up little in the way of evidence and the public are urged to assist the police in their hunt for the thief or thieves by keeping a lookout for people with chocolate-covered hands and faces. Recent sightings of a two-foot-tall hobbit-sized humanoid with a large tummy and eight teeth have been dismissed as urban legend. Investigations are ongoing.

Part II of "Baby didn't ship with a manual". To read part I, click here.

This week my baby daughter and one of the websites I look after both fell sick. I fixed the website but Olive is still malfunctioning.

Solving the website crisis was comparatively easy. The Circulars Page of the Singapore Book Publishers Association website suddenly stopped loading. Only the header and title of the first post would load. I upgraded the Wordpress platform it runs on but that didn’t work. I reduced the number of posts that appear on the homepage and that had no effect. Next stop was the plugins; I disabled and reactivated each plugin in turn and sure enough, the problem lay with a Twitterfeed plugin that either clashed with something else or was corrupt. As soon as it was disabled the page opened fine.

If only the same simple logic could be applied to babies.

Olive, who has slept through the night – from 8pm to 8am – since she was three months, has decided that Mummy and Daddy have had it too easy. Recently she’s been waking during the night, crying and sometimes regurgitating. We have no idea what is wrong. Using the same plugin logic, the problem could lie in the fact that she recently started drinking cow’s milk in addition to formula. Could the cow’s milk plugin be clashing with the formula plugin? Maybe Olive runs on an operating system that doesn’t support cow’s milk? Maybe the cow’s milk isn’t to blame … perhaps she’s been infected and needs sweeping for viruses?

UPDATE: We think the cow’s milk plugin is to blame after all. She did a day without cow’s milk and was fine. The following day she had a mug of cow’s milk, woke up in the middle of the night and vomited all over her bed and soft toys! Looks like we need to book an appointment with the paediatrician. Poor sausage! ☹

Phil and Olive enjoying Sunday morning breakfast in bed watching 1980s re-runs of "Yes Minister".

Staying on a Jim Hacker theme, yesterday, while Phil was reading the newspaper—the Saturday edition of The Times from UK—Olive started pointing at the newspaper and doing her monkey impression: she tucks her hands into her armpits, jerks her upper body forwards and backwards and squeals "Eee Eee". We looked at the page she was pointing to and found a caricature of British PM Gordon Brown! Oh dear.

We bundled Olive into our time machine and sent her back to the 1940s and 70s for some photos ...

Olive makes some new friends at ToysRUs.

I rushed back from work this evening to say goodnight to Olive and found her parading around the flat in her Drypers with a handbag slung over one shoulder, a bottle of mineral water in her hand and, bizarrely, a pair of Sandy's granny pants round her neck. Obviously heading out for the evening. But she's only 13 months old!

Unfortunately I only discovered it was mother's day today halfway through the picnic when Sandy started receiving mother's day SMSs (er, how many other kids does she have?). Olive and I quickly dedicated our picnic to mother, despite the fact that mother prepared it. We've found the perfect adventure playground for Oscar when he next comes to visit. Located in the 50-hectare West Coast Park, the playground features loads of activities; both Sandy and I wanted to have a go on the aerial zip-line flying foxes.

On Saturday we attended a BBQ at Yeoh, Ling and Shannon's office. A BBQ in an office? Sounds strange until you see their office ... it's a 2,500-sq-ft duplex apartment with garden in Kovan. Nice. The ground floor is open plan — office plus kitchen — and it leads out to a small back garden.

Last week Sandy's sister Ngae lost her handbag to a motorcycle snatch thief in KL. She was with friends, about to get into her car in Pudu, when a Malay guy on a motorbike drove up, snatched her bag and sped off. The bag's strap broke and Ngae took a tumble after trying in vain to give chase. Ngae's mobile was in her handbag so half an hour later she used a friend's phone to call her number. The thief picked up and said hello! He'd already returned home and there was a baby crying in the background. This being Malaysia the thief offered to return Ngae's credit cards and identity card ... he may be a thief but even he knows what a pain in the butt it is to renew your identity card in Malaysia! ... so he drove to a nearby petrol station, called Ngae on her friend's phone and told her which petrol kiosk to look for. Ten minutes later Ngae had her identity card and credit cards back.

This happens so often in Malaysia that in Ngae's employment contract there's even a clause which gives victims of snatch theft two days emergency leave! Unbelievable. When Ngae finally made it back to work she found out her colleague's bag had also been snatched and worse, her face slashed.

Ngae did make a police report but there wasn't much point doing so. At least she didn't have to offer sexual favours. Another friend went to the police in KL to report a stolen bag and was told by the policeman that if she "had dinner" with him, he would help her. She declined the invitation.

Snatch theft happens on a daily basis in Malaysia. I've seen it happen twice, right in front of me. Last week a pregnant woman was killed in Malaysia when snatch thieves took her bag while she was riding her motorbike. She fell off and was run over by a car. A month earlier another pregnant woman was killed in exactly the same fashion.

Malaysia boleh? Yeah, right.

Happy Birthday Olive!

We celebrated Olive's first birthday with a BBQ in the garden. Cake courtesy of Myrna, meat from the Australian butcher in Holland Village, potato gratin and salmon from Sandy, crap photos by Phil, good photos by Collin.

I was in London earlier this week and stayed with Holly, Nel and Oscar. England was experiencing a heatwave ... 21°C in April is very unusual ... so we made the most of the good weather and hit a few local parks.

[Phil in Papua New Guinea]

Mum and Dad digitzed their Papua New Guinea slides and I've posted a selection on a new PNG page. We lived in PNG in the early 1970s. Don't miss the photo of the "PNG Post Courier" headline from 1971, which reads: "Judge frees seven who ate villager"!

Jay

I had lunch with Faith yesterday and marveled at the bird life in her walled garden. It was a beautiful sunny day so we ate in the conservatory and watched the birds poke around in the garden and feed on nuts from a hanging bird-feeder. In the time it took my grandmother and I to polish off a bottle of wine (not long!) we saw the following birds:

jay
magpie
nuthatch
great tit
blue tit
chaffinch
dunnock
moorhen
greater spotted woodpecker
jackdaw

Faith said the reason so many birds are back in her garden is because she accidentally roasted to death a pair of resident crows! Apparently they got stuck in the chimney while she was testing a newly installed wood-burning stove. What amazed me was how beautiful and green this part of England is — we were only 20 miles outside London.

Ariel played by Atandwa Kani (photo taken from the RSC website)

I'm back in England for London Book Fair and was very lucky to be invited to see a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest in association with South Africa's Baxter Theatre Centre. I'd never read The Tempest before but it translated well to a South African setting. The island setting mirrored apartheid South Africa with a white Prospero and a black Caliban asserting "This island's mine", and the play was full of African ritual, music and dance with stunning puppetry. Definitely recommended.

Bizarre fact: I was seated in the second row of the stalls next to a lady who, I soon discovered, had been my sister Holly's piano teacher at primary school!

Sandy: Every Monday I meet up with Adora and baby Poppy, Dora and baby Jordan, Liz and baby Ned. We meet for a coffee and a chinwag and we usually try and squeeze some cakes into the weekly agenda. Olive is her usual antisocial self and takes no interest in the other babies ... she seems to prefer older kids.

We opened Friday's Straits Times to find a two-page advert from Sheng Siong supermarket offering live turtles for sale! To eat, not to be kept as pets! I don't even know how to kill a turtle. I'm not sure I would know how to cook one either. We could buy some and release them at home but our neighbours would probably eat them.

The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has ordered several brands of Burmese lephet off the shelves after detecting the presence of Auramine O in 20 types of tea leaves imported from Burma. According to the AVA, Auramine O is a yellow dye used as an industrial colouring agent for coloring silk, cotton, paper and leather. Nice. Thanks Burma.

We love to eat lephet or mashed tea leaves that have been left to ferment for a year underground and are then mixed with chillies, nuts and dried peas. If we're eating at a Burmese restaurant we always order a plate but we also buy packets of the stuff from Burmese supermarkets in Peninsular Plaza and use it to cook an absolutely delicious pasta dish. Fettuccine with fermented tea leaves, shallots, spring onions, chili padi, lime, tomatoes and fat juicy prawns is without doubt my favourite pasta dish. I first tried this fusion dish over ten years ago while dining at one of Angie Hiew's restaurants in Kuala Lumpur. Angie saw her staff eating lephet and decided to toss some into a pasta ... I don't think she ever put it on the menu but I remember her cooking it for me once.

Looks like no more fermented tea leaves for us for a while.

[Loughborough Grammar School, 514 years old]

Thanks to Facebook, I met for drinks last night with an school friend who I haven't seen for twenty years. Martin and I were at Loughborough Grammar School together; I think we were in the same physics and maths class but it's all a bit of a blur. Martin and his family stopped in Singapore on their way to Australia and stayed at The Raffles so we downed a few Tigers at The Long Bar. We trawled through all the names in the year book and had a good laugh about times past. Martin's eldest son now studies at LGS and amazingly half the teachers who taught us are still there! We thought they were pretty ancient twenty years ago. Poor old Martin missed his flight over from the UK, rather amusing since he's a private jet pilot.

A reader in Jordan emailed me this photo:

OK, OK, we don't have any Jordanian readers, this was sent in by Jörg, who's shooting on location in Jordan, no doubt slumming it in another 6-star resort spa. There was no explanation from Jörg where he found this sign but one assumes it was at the entrance to an olive grove ... with just one olive.

"Jörg, will it fit in the suitcase? I've been looking for a nice sign for Olive's bedroom door."