Golden Showers

Sunday January 25 2009

Keith: I've never yet managed to find a taxi on New Year's Eve in London, San Francisco or Sevilla, so it was probably expecting a bit too much to find one at 5pm on Chinese New Year's Eve in Singapore. Which is why you'd have seen the two of us looking a little less than chirpy outside a newly-discovered French deli in Dempsey Road today.

What upset Courtney was the fact that we'd already hiked for an hour through the city to get to the Botanical Gardens up the road, and faced the same trek back - this in a climate where a ten-minute walk to the subway is considered excessive. What bothered me was that I'd just invested S$50 at the deli in a loaf of rosemary focaccia and some of the store's finest brie, stilton and gouda - and after ten minutes in the heat much of it was already starting to resemble fondue. Only those who've lunched on nothing but bread and cheese for the last 20-odd years could appreciate my bitter frustration. It was the culinary equivalent of meeting Jenna Jameson in a bar, spending $200 on dinner, persuading her to come back to your place and then discovering she's a practising Roman Catholic.

Still, the trip to the Botanical Gardens was worth it. It's not the world's biggest park, but it boasts a small swathe of really cool rainforest and some amazing orchid collections. We wanted to take some pics, but there was so much to see we weren't sure where to start. Thankfully, the park authorities came to our rescue:

I've included pictures of a few of my favorite orchids, including the aptly-named 'Golden Shower'.  An amazing sight: see how it explodes in a burst of yellow spray, saturating everything around it in a frenzy of pent-up release. I wish I could describe the aroma - vaguely familiar, sort of pungent...

There was also an orchid named after Margaret Thatcher in honor of her visit to the park in 1985, back in the days when people actually cared what she was up to and she actually remembered who she was. Tellingly, it seems to be wilting a little - I guess 24 years of hard-nosed monetarism and a weekly blue rinse does that to you.

And there was a really cool plant that entices insects in and then snaps its lid shut, a bit like a Venus fly trap. I'm thinking of buying one to add to my anti-mosquito armory.