caleb・khor

Went back to Singapore over the Christmas holidays. Christmas feels very commercialized here, different from Norway. I somehow have the feeling that all everyone wants to do is to party and have a festival, rather than have a time of reflective contemplation or family bonding. I’m not particularly religious, however I would rather prefer a more contemplative and thoughtful pause where people take stock of their lives rather than just to live as if the Mayan prophecy is happening every tomorrow.

Anyway, here are some pictures I took while roaming the town in the night of Christmas Eve. It was a real hot and humid night, so I didn’t roam around much, only around Orchard and Marina until the crowds and heat got too unbearable for me. Nonetheless, I did get some good shots, like the one below.

This is the Marina Bay Sands resort, one of the last shots of the evening.

There seemed to be some singing/theatrical performance happening at the Sands at that time. I think I was really lucky to have gotten this shot as the colours were changing every minuite or so and I so happened to capture this lovely combo on camera.

I started off my night photography session by alighting at Dhoby Ghaut MRT and working backwards towards Orchard.

Here are some of the Christmas decoration around Plaza Singapura. As I have mentioned earlier, Christmas is very commercialized in Singapore, even the decorations have advertisements of sponsors. Strangely, all the crowds were at the side of the road where the Istana is, and surprisingly no one went to the other side (except me). Which is a good thing.

This is Orchard Central above. The theme of its decorations was about snow coloured tree
s and a rosy boulevard which a lot of people stopped and posed for pictures. Yeah it’s about the ‘OC’ (Orchard Central) “attitude” geez… and ironically “OC”, as a pun in Cantonese can be connotated to mean ‘shit’.

Caught red handed trying to snatch a bauble :).

Centrepoint and Orchard Point shopping malls. After this, the crowd was really bonkers and I decided that enough is enough. So I took a detour and went behind 313, around the buildings along Somerset MRT. It seems that I’ve discovered a lot of places where I can walk comfortably last evening without sqeezing in with everyone else and their odours.

At Somerset TripleOne. Nice logos

Around Cineleisure, a choir of sorts was seen and heard singing…

Photogenic Visa baubles…. They somehow get in my way at times in photographing people though.

The decorations are quaint, but as you can see, the crowd was really swelling up and I think I’d reached my limit of tolerance with the people and heat. After these pictures were taken, I just dropped by Takashimaya and attacked ANY ice cream store where I just had something for a much needed relief. But this wasn’t just ANY ice cream store I found, but an italian gelato one, which serve really nice almond gelato. Nom nom….

Off to the Padang area which was much nicer, I can take decent pictures in peace unlike going through some army obstacle course for them. The night sce
nery at the CBD area was quite scenic. Managed to get a few nice shots around Fullerton Hotel and also a grand picture of a chandelier on top of a fake christmas tree :).

All in all it was a warm Christmas… but that’s just the temperature and the climate.