A brief entry as we prepare to go to a house for *a month* in Chiang Mai, Thailand:
We had a great trip to Singapore, stocking up on all the items that are not available in the other countries we have been visiting. A place where you can drink the water (!) and where you can eat salads and ice cubes and other wonderful modern conveniences for a hot and humid equatorial country.
We loved the Singapore Art Museum, which had several exhibitions to be summarized in a gallery to come. Meanwhile, the featured artist was Hyung Koo Kang, whose portrait of Marilyn Monroe is accompanied by the following description:
"People recognise these portraits of famous people as photographs, but I do not draw famous faces. I fragment them and then I reclaim the original through assembling."
Here's Marilyn
;)
and the artist himself
;)
and for the traditional news from the location: You may have heard of "SlutWalk," a worldwide movement, set off by a Toronto police officer's remark that women could avoid being raped by not dressing like "sluts." Well, in Singapore, the land where hardly anyone showed up at Raffles Place when there was an "Occupy" event that lacked a state-issued permit, there was a SlutWalk event. According to a local newspaper, "Hundreds of people gathered at . . . downtown Singapore's Speakers' Corner, the only public outdoor space where demonstrations are allowed in the Southeast Asian country." The newspaper called it "a rare public demonstration in the tightly controlled city state." The newspaper also noted that last month, authorities in Singapore decided to abolish a law that allowed a woman's sexual history to be examined during a rape trial. Hmmm.