Yah, yah, a million people will ask me “why go to the museum? Blah blah…” and I will reply “because I like to be a tourist in my own home”. Yeah, closet tourist who lives in the heartlands. That explains my Singapore Explorer and my penchant for riding buses and trains. Hey, if you can’t tour foreign lands, try your own for a change, eh?

=)

Met Jia today for a trip to the recently revamped National Museum.

Museum

As usual, limited photo taking is allowed, and we’re two guys who aren’t exactly very fond of being in front of the lens. Hence more commentary and less visuals. Sorry.

Entry: S$10 for adults ($5 if you can produce a valid student pass or 11B), S$5 for children (as advised by the NHB corporate communications — see comment below)

Entrance fees are only required for two types of galleries: The History and Living Galleries. At the time of writing, there are two other exhibits: documenta and the stone banquet, which are free of charge and open to the public.

History Gallery
Paid gallery-darkness-audio companion-no pictures allowed. That sums up the history gallery. But hey, I spent two hours in there, so let me tell you more.

Essentially, the history gallery begins in pre-Raffles Singapore, and stretches all the way to 1972. The exhibits are mostly artefacts, manuscripts, commentaries, historian accounts, event recollections, first-person recollections, etc. The most interesting part was probably the splitting of recollections into events and people. In the events section, the history of Singapore was told through various occurrences of major events which shaped the formation of our nation, while in the personal recollections section, people who normally wouldn’t make it into our history books gave accounts of their thoughts, hopes and dreams of what Singapore would later become.

Interestingly, the two merged in the final gallery, as we saw Mr Lee Kuan Yew and a compendium of his speeches, as Singapore worked towards independence from the British and then Malaysia.

Typical history book stuff, brought to life. =)

Living Galleries
Essentially, these galleries chronicle the changes in food, fashion, film and photography throughout the ages. We saw old utensils used by street hawkers, smelled different types of spices, black and white photos and the eventual use of silver bromide in film, the making of malay films in Singapore by the Shaw brothers and Cathay-Keris productions, as well as female clothing evolving throughout the century.

Documenta
Held at the basement, this is essentially a tribute to the Documenta exhibition held in Germany every four years. Nothing much here for us, but I believe art and design people would be better able to appreciate this exhibit. Free.

Stone Banquet
Showcased in some of the local newspapers, rare stones are used in the creation of famous dishes. They look mouthwateringly realistic, but are actually not edible. Closed because some interview was being carried out inside. Bleh.


Some swinging lamps. They miraculously stopped after awhile though.

Also caught this short film “Love”. Don’t know why its titled so, because what was happening on screen can hardly be described as such!

One more to end the day:

Time Capsule, due to be opened in December 2009.

Daily rides:
Fri – 7302J (21), 2600G (33), 3623J (359)
Sat – 7440T (21), 7459R (80), 9565G (80), 7337J (12)
Today – 9573E (81), 9676S (80), 899A (2), 7422X (12)

Cameo watch:
Massive movement: Many NAC N113CRBs have been transferred to BNDEP, appearing as follows: 3623J (SP) was on 359 for a week and just spotted on 35, 3620S (SP) on 358, 3611T (SP) on 359, the list goes on. OACs have also appeared, like 39R (SP) on 518/518B and 64S (228) on 12.

New Deployments:
88 seems to be the next WAB service, as 4 B9TLs at BRBP have been deployed on the service. More to come, with many of the B9TLs still SP.