Singapore's Formula One racing event is upon us. This is a massive event and crews have been busy building barricades for weeks with the worst of the road closures going into effect as of yesterday. Since a huge chunk of The Central Business District actually becomes the race circuit, traffic has become an even more snarled mess than usual as drivers try to navigate their way around the blockades and detours. Being a pedestrian is also much like being a rat in a maze since crosswalks are closed and bus stops are unusable. Guests of the Ritz-Carlton, which is right in the heart of the track, must enter the hotel through the underground car park of the hotel next door !
Since our theatre is a mere stone's throw from the grandstand, we are practically in the heart of the chaos and getting to and from work has become a grand adventure. In the evenings, after the show, I quite enjoy the walk around Marina Bay Lagoon or, as we call it, 'the long way', but in the afternoons, I just want to get to work already. You'd think the locals, who have dealt with this for three years already, would have a game plan, but not so. I was very entertained last night as everyone stood outside the stage door trying to figure out how to get home or figure out where their bus stop had been moved to.
Marina Bay Sands lit with a racing motif
It's not only a challenge for us to get to the theatre, our audiences will also have to find a way in. I'm pretty certain that as the week goes on and we draw nearer to the big race on Sunday, our curtain will be going up exponentially later with every performance. We are, as yet, unsure about the sound-proofing of the theatre. It's a definite possibility that the constant buzz and drone of speeding cars will seep into the Savannah.
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The Mid-August festival and my new-found love affair with mooncakes, have come and gone. One of the dressers, Justin, took me to the huge, annual mooncake bazaar at Takashimaya dept. store.
He is a self-confessed mooncake junkie and it was fascinating to have him lead me around the various stalls explaining the different regions and ethnic styles of mooncakes.
After dozens of samples, we eventually settled on our choices. I decided on a very traditional baked mooncake filled with black sesame paste. Justin opted for a mixed box of snowskin style cakes comprised of two green tea flavour and two chrysanthemum flavour. To our surprise, they made the snowskin cakes right there as we waited.
The flavoured paste is first rolled into a ball
then wrapped in snowskin
The ball is then pressed into a wooden mould
and banged out onto the counter
Happy shoppers
Part of the mooncake allure is the beautiful packaging
We traded with each other
(just like baseball cards)
so that we could both have one cake of each flavour
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Ramya, my Tamil makeup artist, has been passing along her knowledge of Indian cooking to me. I've attempted my first home-made lime pickle. Not a 'pickle' in the traditional sense, as in vinegar, but a preserve using salt, spices and oil.
The tiny limes have to be quartered, salted
and sat in the sun in a jar for around two weeks.
Then the spices are added, and the jar is
put back in the sun for a few days.
The final step is to cook mustard seeds in mustard oil, mix the whole mess together and put it back in the sun for another week or so. Problem is, we've had an endless series of cloudy, rainy days here, so my whole pickle schedule keeps getting pushed back. Sadness.
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Claudia, in make up, knows that I have an intense aversion to all things 'cute', so she insists on lining up her 'adorable' stuffed toys on her mirror. She even went so far as to move the cutsie circus onto Ramya's mirror so that I could 'enjoy' it more fully. Of course, I could not let this flagrant assault on my sensibilities go unpunished, so I took some of her stuffed family out on a day trip and sent the photos to her phone.
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Singlish just never stops being entertaining
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