they serve up clean-tasting, but tasty food, which doesn’t try to masquerade as being meat. i had their mushroom noodles, handmade dumplings and a deliciously rich square of chocolate cranberry goodness.

finally, a place that lives up to its name!

real food, the central, #b1-52, tel: 62244492

ps cafe ann siang hill, 45 ann siang road, tel: 97970648, http://www.pscafe.sg/ann-siang-hill/

check it out for yourself

cocotte, 2 dickson road, tel: 62981188, http://restaurantcocotte.com/

i had a salad of perfectly ripe fruit, served with a side of tart natural yoghurt. a latte with just the right head, and a delicious ciabatta sandwich with layered grilled vegetables in between, just moist enough.

the plain, 50 craig road, tel: 62254387, http://www.theplain.com.sg/

7 sensations, 16 madras street, tel: +65 6298 8198

because sometimes you just need places like these to give your head some space.

bar stories, 57A haji lane, tel: 6298 0838http://www.facebook.com/pages/BAR-Stories-at-57A-Haji-Lane-Singapore/125204254191475

kluang promises good coffee, cheap organic vegetables, passionfruit and dragonfruit fresh off the vine, delicious bubble tea, kaya buns, goats to cuddle and a hill to climb.

places to check out are:
- uk farm (short for un keng, not united kingdom!) for goats and passionfruit
- witchery idler bubble tea
- kluang rail coffee at the station
- zen xin organic veggie farm

:}

the drinks are good, as is the novelty of their flowerpot dessert. food offerings are on the slim side, but that’s probably more an issue of my veggie diet than anything else!

enjoy the lovely quiet the place will afford you

vanilla bar and cafe, 3 boon tat street, tel: +65 6423 0366 http://www.vanillacafe.com.sg/

it has taken a while for me to explore more of her work, which i’ll blame on inertia. wanderlust is essentially a history of walking, a book that weaves together different aspects and interpretations of walking from the arts, social commentary, gender studies, history and civil movements.

it’s a dense volume, one that has taken me a month to plough through, and through the barrage of facts that solnit shares in the book, what remains are beautiful turns of phrases and platforms of thought to leap off from.

here are a few choice sections:
- walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. it leaves us free to think without being wholy lost in our thoughts…the rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. this creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.

- pilgrimage is premised on the idea that the sacred is not entirely immaterial, but that there is a geography of spiritual power. pilgrimage walks a delicate line between the spiritual and te material in its emphasis on the story and its setting, though the search is for spirituality, it is pursued in terms of the most material details- of where the buddha was born or where christ died, where the relics are or the holy water flows. or perhaps it reconciles the spiritual and the material, for to go on pilgrmage is to make the body and its actions express the desires and beliefs of the soul…pilgrimages make it possible to move physically, through the exertions of ones body, step by step, toward those intangible spiritual goals that are otherwise so hard to grasp. we are eternally perplexed by how to move toward forgiveness or healing or truth, but we know how to walk from here to there, however arduous the journey.

- cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunciton, qualities best basked in by walking. a city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination…this was the daytime marvel of cities for me: coincidences, the mingling of many kinds of people, poetry given away to strangers under the open sky…rural walking has found a moral imperative in the love of nature…urban walking has always been a shadier business, easily turning into soliciting, cruising, promenading…

- there is a subtle state most dedicated urban walkers know, a sort of basking in solitude– a dark solitude punctuated with encounters as the night sky is punctuated with stars. in the country one’s solitude is geogrphical– one is altogether outside society, so solitude has a sensible geographical explanation, and then there is a kind of communion with the non human. in the city, one is alone because the world is made up of strangers, and to be a stranger surrounded by strangers, to walk along silently bearing one’s secrets and imagining those of the people one passes, is among the starkest of luxuries…in small doses melancholy, alienation, and introspection are among life’s most refined pleasures.

- the original treadmill was a large wheel…that several prisoners trod for set periods. it was meant to rationalise prisoners’ psyches…and break down the obstinate spirit. the body that used to have the status of a work animal now has the status of a pet: it does not provide real transport, as a horse might have, instead the body is exercised as one might walk a dog. thus, the body, a recreational, rather than utilitarian entity, doesn’t work, but works out.

firstly, flash floods around the island. it is unfortunate that these are happening and that they are affecting the livelihood, property and convenience of so many people. yes, the government has some part to play in the matter to ensure that drains should be well-maintained and can channel the waterflow effectively. it also needs to engage in longer term infrastructure planning for drainage needs, which it does already do, looking ahead by 40-50 years. but to expect the government to be omnipotent and omniscient can’t be fair, because as the best-laid plans of mice and men, really do often go astray. plans are dynamic and need to be reviewed, especially when faced with curveballs such as the recent freak weather. the frequent bouts of intense heavy rainfall in the past few weeks should speak of a deeper, more worrying issue of what is happening to the state of the environment and how it is impacting on our metereological conditions. singapore has been fortunate to be shielded from most natural disasters, so we’ve been able to continue operating in our happy bubble while the rest of the world has been impacted by earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and hurricanes. this is a wake-up call for some changes to be made in our lifestyle and actions. instead, some of the comments online in response to the flash floods ran the gamut from blaming third world immigrants to singapore for bringing along their third world disasters to untempered sarcasm directed at the government. it’s a little disappointing.

the second thing which took up front page news of life was sumiko tan getting married. i know, the general comments have been about how something like that could warrant front page news, and maybe that’s true. but can i say, i’m really glad for her. yes, the columns have been tiring and repetitive, especially in recent years, but i think when you’ve been looking for so long and not finding a partner, especially in a line of work that has erratic hours, you do tend to land up in that hamster wheel of repeating yourself. it’s hard to pull yourself out of, and when you do meet someone, it’s a cause of celebration. so congrats sumiko, i hope it all works out :}