The annotated budak

There were several, perhaps 8-10, of these mice running about in the knee-high hedge of dwarf variegated Pandanus planted alongside the walkway just before the town centre. A few individuals would scamper right onto the sidewalk before scooting back to the safety of the thorny herbs. I think they are mice not rats as the latter get much larger. Some were helping themselves to food from discarded plastic bags. Two little girls seem to be the only other people who took notice of the rodents. Happily they screamed not in fright but delight. Some missies do like their mickies....

Spider in pied

Neogea sp. (Araneidae) at the Botanic Gardens.

Details from the Peranakan Museum

A love for colours that clash with harmony and an exquisite sense of aesthetics that prizes craftsmanship and minute detail distinguish the material culture of the Baba Peranakans. The heirlooms of wealthy merchants and their humbler kin are now gathered in the former Tao Nan School at Armenian Street, which now houses the Peranakan Museum.      

One of the stars of the galleries within is a beadwork tablecloth from early 20th century Penang, featuring a tapestry of exotic birds and flowers threaded with a million minute glass beads using silk and cotton. Measuring 126 x 118 cm, this is one of the largest pieces of Peranakan beadwork in existence and was probably used in the bridal chamber as a firmament on which fine silver, blue porcelain and betel boxes were laid.

At the Heritage Conservation Centre of the National Heritage Board, a conservator works on a Srekap Laok or food cover from Palembang, South Sumatra, circa 1900. Fashioned from Pandan leaves and held together with rattan strips, the food cover is elegantly decorated with gilded phoenixes (which symbolise marriage and fertility) and murai birds (representing love). With a velvet top sewn with myriad beads and a lacquered finish, the cover would have probably been reserved for ceremonial functions such as weddings.

Phoenixes also adorn the Ranjang Kahwain or wedding bed of Quah Hong Chiam, a Penang-born Nonya who moved to Singapore after her marriage early last century. Made from gilded namwood (said to be a rare hardwood tree), the bed is replete with ornate carvings and would have been dressed with rich beadwork and embroidered curtains during its use. The wooden parts are slotted together without nails, which allow the bed to be dismantled part by part. It's said that seven of Nonya Quah's 11 children were conceived born on this very bed.

More than a mere display of artefacts, the Peranakan Museum offers a post-modern narrative of identity and experience, from the second storey that is dedicated entirely to the 12 days of festivity and fertility that mark a traditional Peranakan wedding to a dim and narrow tunnel on the third floor (which comes with an advisory for the young and vulnerable) lined with claustrophobic sackcloth and the spine-chilling wails of weeping mourners.

For the masses who question not the mutability of culture, the museum provides few answers but merely raises a hall of mirrors in its lavish accounts of the lives (and death) of true blue Babas and Nonyas. In their seamless fusion of symbols from the East and West and embrace of a homeland far removed from their forefathers, the larger-than-life faces that greet guests and bid farewell from the museum's walls do so with a note of minor pride and the flavour of mixed bloodlines.

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Here be dragonet...

The bunny found this little fish flitting about in a small pool. It has broad, wing-like pectoral fins an outsized spiny dorsal with gold-rimmed occeli, which it regularly flicks forward like a Chinese fan. Kok Sheng also came across the fish, which has a dainty mouth that sets it apart from similarly-clad species with a broader maw. It looks some kind of dragonet and with fearless peckishness, it pursued its inch-long hunt amidst the pebbles for the benthic bodies of even tinier beasts.

Birds of the Botanic Gardens

A lesser whistling duck at the Symphony Lake. I saw only five that day. Two were swimming amidst the reeds on the far side of the lake while the others were resting on the nearby islets. With their mottled brown plumage and pigeon-sized proportions, they would have been overlooked altogether save for the curiosity of passers-by who wondered what I was aiming at. The other side of the lake was lined with families and couples intent on feeding the turtles and carp that lurk in the murky waters. Where were the other ducks? I know some spend the day elsewhere (perhaps at Marina South until the day the marshes are drained) and descend upon the gardens in the evening. Are they nesting? I have never seen ducklings at the lake though. And for some strange reason, most people I overhear seem to think these are Mandarin ducks...

The goodly population of fish in the lake is a boon to piscivorous birds such as the stork-billed kingfisher. This was one of a probable pair hunting in the evening from the trees whose branches overhang the water. Intent on their prey, the birds were not too bothered by the presence and noise of walkers below, who nonetheless could not fail to notice the periodic streaks of electric blue that plunged into the lake to pluck out a fingerling.

The resident mute swans at the eponymous Lake sometimes engage in mock sex, but I haven't heard of any instances of actual nesting. The two were poking around under the Dillenia on the island though, picking up bits of debris and looking broody. The lake post renovation is again filled with giant gouramis, tilapia, sliders and the odd pacu. The tiger barbs and red-tailed rasboras that used to shoaled around the edge are gone though, and now that the water is kept weed-free, there is probably little cover for minnows  in this peasoup of suspended green algae. The feeders aren't discouraged though, and spilled scraps from their bread bags are eagerly pecked at by bold mynahs and spotted doves. 

Perhaps one who appreciates a fellow fowl, this male glossy starling came down from his usual haunt at the tree-tops to eye-ball my duck. Far shyer were the white-breasted waterhens which stuck to the undergrowth and banks of the artificial stream by the Symphony Lake. A number were immature birds, probably survivors from this season's nests.

The pink-necked green pigeons and hill mynahs remained too high up in the canopy of the rain trees for my length-challenged duck. The broad hill between the rainforest and Swan Lake is dotted with trees from distant shores, from African sausages to Brazilian monkey pots. The birds don't seem too concerned with these imported attractions though, and the resident squirrels have no qualms about helping themselves to some foreign fruit. To non-discriminating feeders such as these yellow-vented bulbuls, any berry's probably as fine as another. Just as for some, any tree is as good as  the other, even meagre saplings planted in mock tribute to mightier woods felled to feed markets whose hunger for fuel starves both humans and habitats.