December 13, 2004
Countryside idyll
Every morning I'm passing this huge sand storage on my way to work. First (from a distance) I thought they were natural sand dunes, but no, this is sand imported to Leijonakaupunki from Indonesia or Malaysia. Leijonakaupunki is doing a lot of land reclamation projects, so actually the island is growing all the time. I read that Indonesia wasn't so happy selling sand anymore, because they're afraid that soon Leijonakaupunki will grow so big that it will bump into natural Indonesian islands.. It is pretty amazing that Leijonakaupunki managed to grow economically so much without having any natural resources. There's nowhere to turn to if something goes wrong. If Nokia is not doing too well, Finns can always rely on their forest. Nothing like that here.. If not for its extremely well educated people, this island would be useless..
Last weekend we went to Pulau Ubin with Monika and Roland (Kaj "took it easy" in Orchard road..). Supposedly this is how most of Leijonakaupunki looked like couple of decades ago.
Not such a long time ago Leijonakaupunki was just a bunch of several kampongs (villages) where people were living really down to earth kind of life - growing their own chicken, vegetables. There's stories that one tiger was shot under a table in Raffles hotel when it ventured there by accident (if you would know how central Raffles hotel is these days, you would say "really??!? cannot be!")
People still live simple lives in Pulau Ubin, everything is run on generators, there's no electricity cables coming to the island (I think). Seems that the people who live there make their money through bicycle rentals - there're hundreds of bikes available. Bike rides are amazing - there's very little traffic on the island, but lots of green forest, little houses, wild pigs, chickens, dogs and cats around. True countryside experience 10min boat trip away from mainland (rather main island :)
There's also several shrimp farms on the island, so there's lots of good and fresh seafood available.
Unfortunately everybody remembers cameras only when the most of food is safely stored in our stomachs. So there's nothing spectacular on the plates, but believe me, sambal prawns were deeliiicious!!! (Kaitsu regrets that he didn't come along soooo much now.. I'm sure we're going again :)
Otherwise, I'm turning a bit short of pictures, because I'm sitting inside the office most of the day, well in fact, I have plenty of coffee and tea breaks, but it feels embarrasing carrying cameras around, don't know why, because I'm not a "tourist", but "a working woman" these days?.. So I borrow some images from the official TP website (note, they're not copied anywhere, just linked, so I hope no copyright infringement, right?). Its still been great at TP, just very tiring, I should adjust to the new schedule, still feeling "jetlaged" getting up at 6:45am...
Muuten tyoministerio soitti mulle tannan ja mina missasin 3 soitot, nyt ihmetelen etta mita ne halusivat, onko jotain vialla ja ne potkii minut saaresta kohta? Huomenna tiedan.. Siandien paskambino is darbo ministerijos, praziopsojau 3 skambucius, dabar lauzau galva, ko jie norejo, kas nors netvarkoj ir jie ruoshiasi ishspirti mane ish salos? Ryt suzhinosiu.. :)
Posted by gkligyte at December 13, 2004 07:26 PM