A WALK IN THE BOTANIC GARDENS

I didn't feel like blogging much and so here are some floral shots I took on 22 June evening, at the Singapore Botanic Gardens! The weather was perfect again; it is a pretty idyllic place despite being located in the heart of the city. Admission is free and open till midnight; unless you are planning to go into the Orchid Gardens exhibit (which is ticketed). I am currently struggling to get some art done but my table is full of vintage jewellery to be posted under my other blog shop (Lemon Kitscharms) and so art will have to wait. Enjoy!

This area is called 'The Bandstand' and it is surrounded by rain trees. In the 1800s this Victorian structure was used by music bands for their performances during Singapore's colonial days.

Pink frangipani

Red-yellow frangipani. And nearby there was the most humongous scary hornet. Needless to say I was scared off!

These are so cute, before blooming their buds look like pink stars =)

There is a swan lake near the entrance and people were feeding the swans. Not sure if that is allowed, but this swan swam close to me thinking I had food too.

Swan Sculpture

White bougainvilleas. They were blooming beautifully.

Peach pink bougainvilleas. These are probably the most common shrubs in Singapore but I like it when they bloom after a dry-sudden wet spell.

Dendrobiums outside the orchid centre. I didn't go into the exhibit since it was near closing hours.

TIME WASTING AT UNIQLO SITE

The Uniqlo site always comes up with such cool widgets!! First it was the Uniqlock. Now it's this Calendar widget:

http://www.uniqlo.com/calendar/

It was fun to stare at the funky time-lapsed bird's eye view of Japan. Talk about great web design and marketing! The best thing is it loads pretty quickly despite being mostly different moving scenes. I feel like getting more Uniqlo jeans now =)

Uniqlo is Japan's leading clothing retailer specialising in low-cost quality casual wear. I love their jeans and guy's tees - I dig the guy's shirts more than what the girls were getting. Like... I saw this Casshan/Casshern (70's sci-fi anime) t-shirt but it didn't come in girl's sizes. Guys get all the fun you know.

BLOG GIVE-AWAY RESULTS

The winner of my strawberry cake spoon is... Kimanh xo! Video below of the drawing process (I didn't look!)

Congratulations I'll contact you in a bit.

Thanks to all for joining, please keep an eye for more of my cute give-aways in future!

MY BLOG GIVEAWAY! - CLOSED

This giveaway is closed.

My first blog giveaway - a cute dessert spoon =)

Made of stainless steel with a polyresin slice of strawberry cream cake!

To join in the fun, simply leave a comment under this post and tell me which item you like most in my Etsy shop! http://lemonshortbread.etsy.com/

Closing date will be 27 June 2009.

I'll make little number squares and randomly draw a number; the number drawn that coincides with the comment post number will win this item. Results will be announced on 28 June!

If you don't have a blogger profile/blog, please leave me an e-mail address! This giveaway is open internationally and to everyone! I'll be having more giveaways in the future so keep an eye on my blog =) Have fun!

JURONG BIRD PARK - SPECTACULAR!

My trip to the Jurong Bird Park on 3rd June. The weather was rainy and cloudy, the downpour stopped just as I reached the place and became sunny for the later part of the trip. Perfect like my visit to the zoo (see earlier post), because I don't like the scorching sun when on excursions. Prayer works wonders for unpredictable weather!

I haven't visited the Bird park since about 17 years ago when I was small, and my memories of the place were: an A&W restaurant (now non-existent in Singapore), penguins, macaws (of course) and FLAMINGOS! Actually the only birds I was looking forward to were the flamingos and more flamingos! So here we go:

Entrance, there's a nice little duck pond on the side too.

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Here they are! A delightful flock of deep salmon-coloured flamingos! They're so much more vibrant in person and a whole bunch of them as well; their feathers are such a bright salmon-pink that my camera under-compensated their saturation!

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MORE flamingos... these were a pale pink with super fuchsia legs and beaks! =) I'm contented at this point though this was just the beginning of the trip lol.

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Scarlet Ibises. They were extremely red that it's almost impossible to photograph their actual luminance! They were scuttling about for fish (stinky enclosure too) and it was a patch of dizzying neon red all about.

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Pelicans. There was this funny one which took something much bigger than it could swallow. It caught a large black fish in its pouch and was trying to swallow it for ages. I wondered if it eventually let the fish go or if it choked to death.

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Cormorants. They are drying their feathers in the sun because the feathers get waterlogged when diving for fishes. These are the birds that fishermen in Asia use for fishing, by having a snare tied around its neck to prevent it from swallowing larger fishes when it gets a catch!

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Grey Crowned Crane. There were 2 crowned cranes which suddenly came out of the foliage and strolled across our path in the free-flying aviary! So very elegant birds.

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I think these are Marabou Storks. They are scavengers from Africa and reminds me of vultures.

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Emu sitting patiently.

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The ever popular penguins. There were several other penguin species in the enclosure and it was nicely air-conditioned too.

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Display in the Bird Discovery Center. They have specimens, skeletons, eggs and other useful info on birds.

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This cockatoo had its own quiet enclosure in the Discovery Center; it and its mate were the only living displays in there lol.

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Lories/ Lorikeets, they were flying all over the place as it was a free-flying large aviary. They are sociable, super noisy and you can feed them with some nectar water near the entrance.

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Tallest man-made waterfall in another free-flying walk in aviary.

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This bird has spectacular colours... its feathers are iridescent and shimmering with metallic rainbow colours as it moves about! The photo doesn't capture its true beauty. In the waterfall aviary.

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This bird is a patient darling and posed beautifully for our photos and video! It was just in front of our faces and seemed to know we wanted him/her to keep still for long enough. Maybe it's proud of how pretty its feathers are! Our favourite bird out of the whole trip.

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