初一 | 21TWELVE

This is a photo documentary of (almost all of) my first day of the Chinese New Year, engaging in activities that aren't even remotely related to CNY. The only event not photographed is our yearly tradition to the temple at Pandan Gardens to pray ~~and eat free beehoon~~. Oh, and my 5h long nap too.

This is the Burmese Budhhist temple at Toa Payoh. I'd say this place is of substantial significance in my childhood. Besides going there to pray since days before my parents got a car, we've been there a couple of times to celebrate Thingyan (Burmese new year) as well. It's a water festival where people pour and spray water on each other (with water guns no less). I do remember a dude spraying perfume at me though. I was probably 8. Idk. Anyway, the place still looks the same after all these years, albeit with a L O T of Chinese people in recent years.

This is 晚晴园, which was uhm, Sun Yat Sun's hangout place during his stay in Singapore lol. We only went there bc it was right beside the temple and we've never been there before despite driving past it all these years.

This is a cool staircase that I really like bc of the stark contrast between the #000000 stairs and #FFFFFF walls, accompanied by the warm lighting from the ~classic~ lamps. The whole combi makes the whole area exudes a Shanghai-Tang-meets-minimalism sort of class which therefore makes it a really cool staircase (oo the colder a/c here also contributes to its cool factor). I thought to myself, I should design my staircase in a similar fashion if I ever should own a house that has stairs. Oh, but it is also a staircase that makes me feel stupid for taking a photo of it and dedicating a paragraph to it.

Well, that just shows how uneventful my life has gotten - to a stage where I'd write an entire paragraph just to describe a mere stairase.