At the CIMB Singapore International Piano Festival last week, Vladimir Feltsman strode on stage to polite applause before sitting down perfunctorily and launching into J.S. Bach's Partita No. 1 in B-flat major. The initial excitement of the audience soon gave way to the dawning realisation that there was something very familiar about his style - it had all the symptoms of a child being forced by proud and somewhat musically-clueless parents into playing his Hanon exercises for visitors. Felts... Read Full Story

Grateful for the sliver of quiet before the fray begins.Sometimes, the Christian life seems to be lived from one crisis to another, from one ministry programme to another ministry event, so the in-between times are interesting.What constitutes the appropriate use of time, effort, money, skills/gifts? For we know all things are His and we are only stewards.We know that post-Fall, God's mission is the redemption of the world and all peoples, and we are called to be his people, his family, his a... Read Full Story

You know how it is with those youth camp romances: boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married, have kids, live happily ever after etc.This youth camp just past was no exception.Fortunately, there were no irate parents to appease, the boy and girl in question having returned to their Maker several thousand years before. The Book of Ruth was a great book to preach through. The campers seemed especially attentive to the narrative that, prima facie, concerned a topic that pre-occupied their a... Read Full Story

Hello, my name is Sick Like Dog. Which is how I came to be stuck in a hot little room with a dead chick, Kami Sakura. Easy pickings for a weekend dinner.Said chook felt faint at the prospect of something somewhat indelicate being done to her with a lemon.1 chickensaltpepperbutterolive oillemon1. Give chook a rinse.2. Pat dry, paying special attention to her under-wing area.3. Massage with butter.4. Anoint with olive oil.5. Season with salt and pepper inside and out.[At this point, she will ig... Read Full Story

Scottish Wholewheat Oatmeal Barley Currant Scones, Double Cream, Raspberry JamCommissioning the sun as the morning alarm is risky business. It means that on rainy days, one wakes only at noon, and in some confusion. These "summer" days however, she props eyelids open at 7am, leaving a delicious sliver of quiet time before work for pottering around and making breakfast, slowly, hummingly, wafting the olfactory equivalent of a quick hug, and then, with the even slimmer sliver time l... Read Full Story

In the dusty hungry thirsty light of our current leg of Exodus (Exodus 15:22 - 17:16), the past few weeks laid out in photos were an embarrassing smorgasbord of nom-nom-nom-ing in air-conditioned comfort, eg: a satisfying Sunday brunch of truffled mac and cheese (better than the Spruce fiasco), balsamic salad (distinguished from all such generic salad by sunflower seeds) and brat with beans at Folk Food, Illuma, 15% off because a bear liked my ordering style, with a little of Dale Ralph Davis... Read Full Story

Music-centric conversations these past few weeks have included: one on the football music of Basque country, lingering for a time on a macho cheer concerning dried cod fish; badger-ment about playing some Bach please leading naturally to the Glenn Gould discussion on the vulgarity (on the part of the pianist) and the sick voyeurism (on the part of the audience) of performance; a colleague's husband agreeing that non-Christmas carol/congregational song/pop ditty piano-playing is a very pri... Read Full Story

Last Monday, charity tickets for Lee Chin & Friends, part of the Raffles Girls' School Alumni Tribute Series, meant the sitting through a truly disappointing unsatisfying main course by Siow Lee Chin. In the audience there was one lady right in the middle of the stall seats who had either excellent cellphone reception or a very persistent phone alarm, the rabid pained scribbling of notes and then, the walking out citing severe emotional distress. Later at a comfort food supper for fra... Read Full Story

For years, the assumption was that the first Passover consisted of tasty meat - like sweet tender rabbit. This probably contributed to the tendency to draw bunnies with a big chomp taken out of the back of their necks. I blame the juvenile conflation of Passover, Easter and the so-called Easter Bunny for the confusion. This was despite the Children's Bible referring specifically to lamb rather than rabbit.By simultaneous free association on the subject of cute farmyard animals, there was ... Read Full Story

Last weekend, when the Klasse W came into my life from Tokyo thanks to E, we started on rather tentative footing, mostly because she spoke only Japanese. She (the Klasse W not E) behaved herself at the New Harbour Cafe and Bar along Tanjong Pagar Road where the finger-lickin' fried chicken wings, yummy bangers and mash, surprisingly decent sliced roast pork knuckle with applesauce and a good amount of crackling, all washed down with Guinness stout, German beers and Bulmer's cider, wer... Read Full Story