Suburban Singapore
A plot of land in the midst of high rise apartments in Singapore
Being a tourist in most countries often means that one doesn’t get the opportunity to explore local living. You’re scuffled around to designated shops that work on tourist commissions, famous landmarks that everybody goes to see and take pictures, and you find yourself even eating places ‘for tourists’. Continue reading “Suburban kampong”
The Christmas Julbord buffét at the Sjömagasinet restaurant, Göteborg, Sweden
As the Christmas season rolls in, most restaurants in Sweden begin to offer a smörgåsbord of delights, known as the Julbord or the Christmas table. This line of buffet consists of traditional Swedish Christmas foods such as herring preserved in a variety of marinades, the marinades of which are as inventive as the chefs are themselves. Last year, we tried herring marinated in Coca-cola, by a chef called Mikael Sande, as one of the more unusual / eccentric dishes to the Christmas buffet.
Continue reading “Swedish Christmas Julbord Buffét 2007”
The crowd along the Haga Christmas market
Christmas is always a rush of activities, the whole city of Gothenburg is abuzz with festive activities and warm friendly people.
There are several Christmas markets going on through December, around the city of Gothenburg and these are pictures from the Haga Christmas market.
Continue reading “The Haga Christmas market”
Our batch of Lussekatter or saffron bread this year, for Lucia
I’ve asked some Swedish friends of mine, the significance of the festival of St. Lucia in Sweden. And few knew its actual significance, except that it arrived from Italy, back when Sweden was still Catholic (today it is more Lutheran), before 1700s.
Traditionally, Lussekatter are baked without raisins in them, but as you can see from our batch above in the picture, we cheated some with adding raisins in the dough. The bread is extremely fragrant, with the smell of saffron. It does tend to dry out quickly, also because of the saffron but we hope that with the raisins in the dough, it’d stay moist just slightly longer. The saffron bread, as with most breads, tastes best fresh out of the oven. But if left for the next day, it helps with heating the bread in the oven or in the microwave oven before eating. Enjoy with a warm glass of milk!
I found a fuller account of the festival of St. Lucia via a quick search on the internet. The information below is from the website of New Sweden
Continue reading “13th December: the festival of St. Lucia with Lussekatter”
Skyline in Stockholm on a Sunday, a grey winter’s day, November 2007
We were in Stockholm over the weekend and there was variation in weather. A bright and clear blue Saturday and a grey wintry Sunday. Temperatures were around -1 deg C with rain and snow at the same time. Just the day before, the picture below of the same waterway was taken, with clear blue skies.
A clear blue sky on a Saturday in Stockholm, November 2007
Just across Paragon, Orchard Road, Singapore
Continue reading “Christmas lightups”
Me in a curio stall at the Gothenburg Antiques Fair. On the shelves, the Swedish ceramic artist and studio Tilgman’s ceramics, much defining Swedish homes from the 1950s.
Over the last week, Gothenburg held its annual antiques fair at Svenska Mässan, a large convention hall for just such events. We thought we’d spend some time there browsing the ins and outs of antiques. Continue reading “Annual Antiques Fair in Gothenburg”
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, 2007
The rebuilt replica of the first East Indiaman Gotheborg, the Gotheborg III has now made its old trade route trip around the world, from Sweden, around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and up to Canton, China. On its way back from China, it touched base at Singapore earlier this year, where some of you might already have had a chance to view Her in Her majestic beauty. To me, she looks every bit belonging to the movie Pirates of the Caribbean where I can almost see Captain Jack Sparrow at the helm, albeit in the wrong flag colours.
The project was based on the excavation of the original East Indiaman Gotheborg which sat sail in early 1743 not to be heard of again before September 1745 when upon homecoming, She, with a huge crash, hit an underwater rock just outside the home harbour of Gothenburg and sank. The salvaging of the immensely valuable cargo of silk, tea and about 300,000 pieces of Chinese porcelain started immediately. This salvaging of lost treasures continued intermittently for centuries, since her foundering.
Continue reading “The Swedish East Indiaman Götheborg III: arrival in Canton, China”
Entrance to the Sanderson, picture by Morgans Group LLC, from the Sanderson.
JE and myself had the privilege of staying at the Sanderson hotel in London when we were there earlier this year.
The Sanderson opened on 25 April 2000 and after a great success of St. Martins Lane, Ian Schrager again teamed up with Philippe Starck to create, what to me is a fairly eccentric hotel with an ecclectic mix of too much money and not knowing what to do with it, although they have phrased it rather differently in this article. A quote from the article:
In a world where style is knocked off and mass-marketed at the speed of light, Schrager is keeping alive those most endangered of artistic species: experimentation, risk-taking, innovation and originality. Sanderson is all about charm, poetry, excess, glamour and elegance. It is an ironic combination – a balancing act – between extravagance and simplicity.
While I do agree on the originality of the idea of the design at the Sanderson, the “balancing act” as mentioned above, came across as none too well executed since the putting together of the pieces of art / furniture came across more as an indecision than statement purposeful.
The lobby at the Sanderson, picture by Morgans Group LLC.
The ’60s murals and mosaics clashed specifically with the enormous and out of place Louis XV armoire. Set that right next to the African chair, an etched Venetian mirror and you hardly get sophisticated but rather, confused. Something that is most definitely difficult to categorize and impossible to define. One could almost get a headache out of looking at all the fantastic furnishings that would have indeed cost quite a bit to procure.
Continue reading “The Sanderson, London”
Me and Lina Hane, Miss Sweden Universe, September 14, 2007
A while back out of sheer desperation with what I read about how Sweden was dealing with their Miss Sweden Universe (Nya Fröken Sverige) event, I searched out who was running it. A few days later I met with the most considerate and charming CEO of Panos Emporio, Mr Panos himself, who after having been in the jury for some years, decided to take over the whole event in an attempt to turn the tide in Sweden back to the glamorous and high prestige event it had once been.
The treatment Miss Sweden gets in the press was so far removed from my own experiences when I took part in the Miss Universe final in 1999 that I hardly recognized what I read in the Swedish newspapers. How come the same event was seen so different in Sweden, and why?
Continue reading “Leveraging on events, beyond Nya Fröken Sverige”