Cards and Birds

June took pity on me on Saturday night as we are both in the same boat ie finishing at a reasonable hour but no-one to share dinner with so we arranged to meet at Kovan. When I arrived she was waiting with Libby so we ended up at the Smith's local for one of my favourite hawker dishes...coffee pork. We made our first visit of the year to Joes after work on Sunday and it was only a short ride to the Smiths for a nightcap!
We headed east for our Monday walk, strolling from Tampines to Pasir Ris through Eco Green and Pasir Ris Park. Despite the large group we saw quite a few birds including the beautiful Spotted Wood Owls in Pasir Ris Park. We were lucky to run into a very knowledgeable local who pointed us in the right direction and Eric was able to get some great shots.

It had been quite a while since one of our card nights so the girls came over to share pizzas and 5 Crowns on Monday night. There was much laughter...that is until Helen and Jo saw the gift they had given Michael for his birthday, was still here!
Several people had shown me information about an exhibition at Gillman Barracks called Railtrack Songmaps, a multimedia visual art installation. It was created by Jean Tay to document and investigate development in the area near The Rail Corridor and Tanglin Halt, which is populated by more than 100 species of birds. The installation was rather underwhelming and not quite what i was expecting but we did see some unusual sights and the Barracks is an interesting area.

Gillman Barracks is located on the site of a former military camp named after the late General Sir Webb Gillman, a well-known British army officer. Set up in 1936 to accommodate the expansion of the British infantry in Singapore, the camp consists of 14 buildings that were taken over by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in August 1971 as part of the withdrawal of the British military from Singapore. After the SAF vacated the camp in the 1990s, the buildings were used for commercial purposes and the site was renamed Gillman Village in 1996. The site reverted to its original name, Gillman Barracks, in 2010 and was re-developed and launched in September 2012 as a contemporary art centre.

Fortunately our afternoon was not completely wasted as one of the other galleries had an exhibition by Steve McCurry. Best known for his evocative color images, the American photographer specially selected fifty-three photographs for this exhibition, including images from Afghanistan, Burma, China, Thailand, Pakistan, Turkey, Tibet and Sri Lanka, as well as a large body of work from India. The images, many of which have become modern icons, span more than thirty years of his career.

Photos by Steve McCurry

We followed up with Cate Blanchett's last movie Çarol'. Despite a slow start it was a very thought provoking story.  In typical Singapore fashion by the time the movie was over we were all half frozen.