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• What are the different type of trees planted along the divider on the road that joins Singapore and Malaysia border post? • How many of these have flowers? • What type of fruits does a palm tree have? • What is the height of security fence that is been put along the highway? • How many cameras are fitted on the poles and how their angles are maneuvered remotely? • What happens to the car engine when it is running for several hours without car moving few meters every 10 minutes? These and many such questions were answered as we trudged along 2.3 km long road after passing Singapore immigration and before entering Malaysia border. It took us 4 hours to cover that distance. Would this long wait have been avoided? I think the answer is No. Immigration officials did open most of the gates and they handled the papers quickly. There was no stoppage for baggage screening. It is just that cars kept on pouring during morning hour of Deepavali holiday adjoining the weekend. ...

An orange light comes on as you were hoping to go past the signal. You decide to put brakes and stop well before zebra crossing. In a split second, all you hear is a bang from the behind. Vehicle owner behind you didn ’t manage to put the brakes in time. What do you do? The answer is: depends on the city you are driving. In New Delhi: You get down, go towards the car behind, haul the driver out of his car and start hitting him below his ear. (This is more valid if you are true Delhite and have some high level connection, else reverse situation may happen). In Mumbai : Both drivers get down and look for damage to their respective cars. With speed no more than 20 km/hour, it must be a dent or few scratches. By now, rest of the drivers are honking and howling. Realising that you too are getting late, you start get back to your wheels. In Dubai: You get down the car as the other driver does the same. Both shake hands saying Salam Aleikum , Alekum Asalam ... kaif Halif .... . Pull ...

Time has come to rewrite alphabet learning textbooks for small kids . M for Mac, K for KFC , C for Coke , P for Pizza Hut and Power Rangers, D for Diaper, B for Blackberry , I for i Phone . Thanks to visible brand merchandising, Akshta has learnt alphabets well before any textbook would put into use. Add to that the tool of ' You Tube' with karaoke tagline , the learning is at rapid pace with entertainment . i phone is the hallmark of GUI. Even a child of two and half years can effortlessly use it. In Singapore , there is more crowd at mobile phone service operator's customer service center than could be at bus depot or airport. With the availability of I phone at all three service providers, it's a minimum an hour's wait to get anything done. Singapore must be one of the top countries with smart phones users per million population. Poor Nokia , it's relegated in the league of Samsung and LG. Just couple of years ago, Nokia was one of the top 10 gl...

Q: How do you (Indian) celebrate New Year? A: Drinking Beer! ‘wow.. Drinking beer?’.Nope, I immediately corrected myself. This must be true only with some in cities. Q: But Jan 1st is not New Year for Indians. A: Yes, It is not Q: When is the New Year? A: Sometime in March. Q: What is it called? A: There are several names in different parts of the country. And celebration too is different to the different regions. But this is just one of the New Year. We have many new years. Hindu calendar New Year, Accounting New Year ( Chopda Pujan ), Financial and taxation new year ( March 31st) and also Jan 1st universal new year. The conversation ceases. It is too much to absorb for any foreigner who is keen to understand and know the Indian customs of celebrating New Year. Y’day, at the East Coast Park, two ladies approached us to know about how we were celebrating New Year. They were doing an article for ‘resident’ - a magazine for eastern suburbs residents of Singapore. We look forward to seei...

A chance meeting with a teacher on a travel web site is all that it took me to see, know and understand an early education system in Singapore. My limited educational domain had always perceived a ‘play school’ as an essential escape route for working parents to ensure that their kids are physically safe, well fed and have their nappies changed on time. For me, a concept of a ‘play school’ as a temple for nurturing everlasting values in small kids was always a utopian model. Add to that was an Indian mindset that was overeager to slot professions based on the number of alphabets present in an educational degree. With that pre-conceived notion of a ‘play school’ and their teachers, my visit to The Moral Childcare Centre It was past lunch time that I arrived at the school after navigating streets of Alexandra. Curtains were pulled over to create compulsory lullaby siesta time for kids. Most of the kids were already in deep slumber on their kid size foam mattress laid symmetrically on flo...

In every man’s life, there comes a time when his reputation, stature, skills and performance reaches nadir. This person was no exception either – his consecutive 23 movies crashed at the box office and people who stood by him all his life started deserting him. When he learnt that Nav-Ketan banner with whom he and his father had done every movie, too have decided to shift loyalties, he kept his ego aside and reached for Dev Saab and pleaded not to discard him. However, Dev Saab was unmoved by sentimentality. Soon he was all alone by himself compounded further by his cardiac ill health. That was the time, he remembered the advice his father gave him ‘When things are down and out, immerse yourself in creativity. That creation will bring people back to you’. During the time of convalescence, he created nearly 2000 tunes. This story and few others narrated by Harish Bhimani during ‘All Instrumental’ performance Pancham Relive 2008 brought out some of the unknown facets of Pancham. This was...

‘What can we do together?’ An initial remark by Sheikh Mohammed – ruler of Dubai during his meeting with senior minister of Singapore summed up the extent to which Dubai’s aspiration of emulating Singapore have come true. Dubai in a short span of time is galloping fast to catch up with Singapore or may even surpass it. In recent issue, TIME magazine compared New York, London and Hong Kong on various benchmarks and found all three cities have remarkable character resemblance. Being an expatriate in Dubai and Singapore I would love to compare both cities that have a lot in common and yet are strikingly different. However my involvement with Dubai is much longer to Singapore and hence ‘initial impressions’ would be more appropriate while comparing these two vibrant cities. Singapore is efficient. There is no doubt about it. It is also remarkable that Singapore has made its development uniform and made it accessible to every precinct. No matter where one resides, one has uniform com...