June 2017 - You Write

14 Jiak Chuan Street, Chinatown, Singapore

June 29, 2017 FLAI40 Leave a comment

“My advice is to go for numbers 5 and 8,” said 13-year-old Pang. The elder Ken Loh pondered for a wee while, then asked Ying and Chong, “What do you two think? The numbers suggest that if we choose 5 and 8 as the winning numbers, we tend to gain a lot. It is the second best gain for us in the twenty-five options presented.” “I’ll go for numbers 1 and 5, the best option,” said Chong, who had just been nominated to this leadership position ten months ago. “No,” said Ying, the only lady member of the leadership team after […]

Iskandar Jalil, my Victoria School Classmate

June 16, 2017 FLAI40 Leave a comment

A significant event for me during my present six weeks’ stay in Singapore is the meeting up of my long lost classmate, Iskandar Jalil, from the class of Form Five S of Victoria School way back in the year 1958. We have not seen one another since then when we were both young men of eighteen. Below is the photograph of the class he showed me: As I look at the photograph, the names of the classmates and teachers came flooding back into memory. Teachers De There were teachers there - DeSusha (Music), Williams (Mathematics), Gay Wan Hin (Geography), Principal […]

Emerald Hill Conservation Houses, Singapore

June 15, 2017 FLAI40 Leave a comment

Emerald Hill Conservation Houses are valuable houses located just off Orchard Road, close to the Somerset MRT Train station. The current market book values of houses that are completed renovated are in the S$8 million regions. The rental values vary from $10,000to $18,000 per month. The houses are collectively known as the Peranakan houses, where in the olden days (early 1900’s) wealthy Chinese families who adopted the Malay style of living gathered to establish their own brand of Peranakan food. Emerald Hill has been the setting of many famous short stories by Singaporean writer, Goh Sin Tub, like ‘The […]

Art in Paradise

June 10, 2017 FLAI40 Leave a comment

This is a place in Pattaya, Thailand where simple fantasies appear in front of our eyes. Let us say we want to inspect the throat of a whale (clearly a fantasy), Lin did it. See the featured photograph of her doing this here at the start of this article. The idea of making such fantasies happen is the drawing of large paintings on walls and floors of big exhibition rooms such that the paintings can appear in a 3-D version and we can appear to participate inside the painted backgrounds. There are three such an interactive 3D Art Museum in […]

Difficult Sudoku Challenge

June 8, 2017 FLAI40 Leave a comment

I am out to prove a point regarding Sudoku Challenges posted in newspapers and magazines. My point is simple. Simply count the number of exposed cells in a Sudoku Challenge and if we find that there are less than 26 exposed numbers in a Challenge, simply ignore that Challenge. Why? You may well ask. The simple answer: That Challenge cannot be solved. “Show me proofs,” you may well say. The recent Sudoku challenge classified as “596 MEDIUM” published on page 64 of the New Zealand Listener’s May 27-June 2 2017 issue provides the proof. I shall demonstrate the possible solution […]

Chess Lesson 7-6-2017

June 7, 2017 FLAI40 One comment

For chess players, I am suggesting that you can get a lot of enjoyment from the website www.chess.com https://www.chess.com/ Chess dot com has 18 million members and more than 65 live playing members online at any single moment in time. It also provides lessons on all aspects of the game - opening, middle and ending, plus strategy. After each live on-line game with an opponents miles away from us, chess.com provides us with a quick analysis of the game played. And, the most interesting aspect of chess.com is that it is available free of charge. Of course, if we want […]