Lead up to National Day

I met my first ever hamster today. One of my K2 students had his school hamster for the weekend and his mum thought it was a good idea to bring him to MAE. His presence did inspire quite a bit of chatter between my 2 students...all in English so it was effective. I was surprised at the size of it. I always though they were the size of guinea pigs, but they are only mouse size.

After work on Sunday night I met up with Helen and Kathy at our new local hawkers. It has only been open a couple of weeks and there are only two stalls operating so far. Even they were low on choices so we ate what we could.It will have to improve a lot before the trivia night if it is going to be considered as a dinner option.
Monday's walk was a very gentle stroll...more like a tourist walk than our usual. We met at Raffles Place and walked through Telok Ayer ending up at the URA Building in Chinatown before having lunch at the Maxwell Centre. We passed a variety of places of worship all with interesting stories.

Around the outside pillars of the URA building there were a number of paintings of Singapore Icons, part of the SG50 celebrations

 After lunch Helen, June and I decided to have a look at the Red Dot Museum. Although it looked very interesting unfortunately it was closed for a private function so it will have to wait for another day. Later in the afternoon Helen and I trekked across to June's household for a night of cards.
Tuesday was the MAE High Tea, at an untried venue called 10 Scott. It was a very pleasant afternoon although as usual I probably ate too much. It was a great venue for a group as we were in our own room which provided an easier 'mingling' space.
With all the discussion around SG50 I decided it was an appropriate time to learn a bit about Singapore's history so Kathy and I went to see the movie 1965. The acting was the usual Asian standard but the historical information was interesting. It told the story of the lead-up to LKY signing the agreement with Malaysia to separate in 1965. The two years prior had been a time of great unrest with a lot of racial disharmony and bombings. It seemed that the Chinese blamed the Malays and vice-versa, but there were in fact  outside influences in play. When I was discussing it with my year 6 class on Thursday night one of my students just shrugged and said...ÿea but who's better off now, Singapore or Malaysia"...enough said really.