Two last comments about life in Singapore.
- All hotels and restaurants are required to let non-customers use their toilets, and they are all beautiful and so clean. For most restaurants they are actually located on the outside to avoid non-customer traffic through the restaurant. Very handy as a tourist.
- The basic idea of the public housing is to build at the pace required to avoid a price surge. When one applies they go to a central location, where a giant display board shows the apartment units still available. One goes there with a prioritized list, just hoping their first choice is still available when their number comes up.
Now pivoting to one of our fun things. When we last visited Japan we had this wonderful dinner. It is called Kaiseki, and features more than 20 courses. Each course is a bite or three, and they are served in bunches of artfully arranged ceramic dishes — with each dish unique in color and design. A wonderful presentation yet a dishwasher’s nightmare.
Betsy became intrigued when some of the plates and dishes served to me had gold veins in them, while hers did not. It felt like I was always getting the nicer ones with gold, perhaps because I was the male. Before we left we asked if we could buy one or two of the dishes with gold veins. The General Manager was at first perplexed, then had to laugh. Their dishes are valuable, and they fix the ones they break with a technique called Kintsugi. It has intrigued us since, and we discovered an opportunity in Singapore to actually learn how it is done at a special studio with a teacher certified in the art. So we did.
Essentially one mixes gold into epoxy glue, carefully spreads it on the first broken surface with enough for some to squeeze out, and then align and press the two pieces together by hand until it dries. When all of the pieces have been put together and more time has passed more gold dust is brushed across the seams with a mascara brush. If one is very careful the gold seams ooze out uniformly and make a beautiful design. Here is a photo of the final outcome plus one of the work in progress.
