Two Year Report on the Road to 500

Two years after deciding to keep track of the World Heritage Sites, here I am trying to catch up… I should have done regular updates but never got to it. The previous blogpost has been at the top of this site, promising new posts but looking abandoned. How am I supposed to fix this? I should never let this happen again… How to summarize the extraordinary places we’ve seen or the things we learned? 

Stranded on Lord Howe Island, a remote and barely accessible world heritage site in May 2023

The Best Country In the World

Welcome to Singapore

There might be exceptions, maybe one in a million years, maybe more, but as a general rule all politicians are bad. They are corrupt, they think they are smart when they are not, they think they have power when they don't, they think they are doing something important and historical when they just blunder chances and mess up good things. The big name freedom fighters or liberators invariably fail when they get in power. The occasional decent politician makes things even worse because he propagates the illusion that there is "hope". For newly established democracies they sell the political American model,

Singapore and Writers

In August 2011, I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo. Like November, the goal is to write 50,000 words of novel in a month. The idea had come all of a sudden, and I couldn't wait to write it. About midway through, I found another writer whose story looked interesting. I PMed her to tell her so, and as we were talking, I think I whined a bit about my word count (always an important consideration, though in 8 events I've never lost once).

"Oh, there's a writing group I help run. It's on TinyChat, if you want to join in."

Lion City

Hello Singapore!

Orchids! Real, live, colorful, plentiful, perfect orchids! In the airport! It seems an extravagant gesture, but this is a special country. It is an island, with no water, no resources, and yet, they have more than enough for everybody. 



My curiosity is aroused: will it correspond to my image, formed through years of homeschooling books? Through them I learned about their love for gardens and flowers, about the economy of water (which they import from Malaysia, not to waste it and recycle it), about their serious fire drills. 

Our hotel is in Little India, a colorful neighborhood. The townhouses are painted in contrasting colors, the shops sell in close vicinity food, spare-parts, fabrics for saree, herbal remedies. In the middle of the street, behind a truck, a man seated on the tarmac is eating his lunch with his right hand, from a take away. It looks like India, but it is not. There are no cows and no garbage. It brings back memories, the nice ones at least. The people here still talk while moving their heads and I am happy to polish mine.

Botanical Garden of Singapore

We should have left two hours ago, but we were sleepy. Though it is just nine o’clock it is already hot and muggy. At the Botanical Garden we choose a way to cross it and walk pass a mahogany tree protected by a lightning protection system, a lake with white swans, the bonsai exhibit, to arrive at the gem: the orchids. 

What are orchids? Symbiotic plants, they need a fungus to help with gathering the water. They have three sepals and three petals (one different from the other, called labellum=lip), one stigma and stamina. They live mostly in the tropical areas, but you can find them where is cold, in Patagonia (a region across South America) or close to Antarctica. They are used in food or perfume industry (vanilla), in traditional medicine, grown by inveterate botanists for their diversity, or for their beautiful flowers. 

The alley takes us along flowerbeds in which clumps of orchids show their colorful heads.

Some have names, some don’t. 

Some are named after V.I.P. others are not. 

Some are by themselves, some are grouped in contrasting colors. 

Some are in the sun, some are shaded. 

Here are some pictures of some of the flowers.

Maybe you will enjoy some. 

Vanda Miss Joaqim was elected national flower for its' beauty,  resilience and year-round blooming quality.