Ministry of Education Building, Singapore

Trains everywhere, even in front of the Ministry of Education. Buona Vista MRT station is on the right, just out of the frame.

This isn't the city center, it's more like a science or industrial park in the middle of a residential area. This one is called the Biopolis. Singapore government wants to make it a hub for genetic research. They seem to be succeeding.

The two black cars are both Mercedes Benz. Don't ask me why, they just are.

• Nikon D7000, 18-200mm f3.5-5.6.
• At 38mm, f4.2, 1/250 seconds, ISO 100.
• Aperture priority, auto white balance, center weighted metering.
• Picasa: cropped, graduated tint fake blue sky.

Neighborhood McDonald's, Singapore

In case anyone was wondering what a McDonald's in Singapore looks like. I would guess pretty much the same as anywhere else in the world.

Nobody paid any attention to the camera because I didn't lift it up to my eye. I held it in my hands and shot blind. I realize now that I could have switched on the live view, but I'm not used to using it and didn't think of it at the time.

Note the green Iced Milo drinks machine in the middle. Maybe that's unique. Milo is Nestle's chocolate drink, equivalent to Ovaltine and Swiss Miss. Has been the dominant chocolate drink here (and in Malaysia) since when the British were in charge. You can order a cup at any local coffee shop.

This is 6:30am, breakfast. You can see the sign for the $4.00 Sausage McMuffin With Egg Meal, at the top. They recently started this special, where you get the breakfast meals for 2/3 the normal price ($4.00 for Sausage McMuffin With Egg Meal, usual price $5.85) between 6am and 9am.

The red tag with the yellow arrow over the cash register, says "Order Here." When the cash register is closed, they flip the tag around and it becomes yellow, can't remember the words. "Next Counter Please" or something. Rightmost cash register doesn't have a tag. I think it's permanently closed.

This is a small McDonald's, only three cash registers, with two operational. It's in the middle of a HDB public housing estate. McDonald's used to be in the city center only, but they decided to blanket Singapore with branches, about 20 years ago. They started going 24-hours on some branches, a few years back. This is one of them.

The illuminated signs at the top are easily changed to the lunch/dinner menu. They rotate, so you just turn them. I remember when the flat panels had to be manually swapped out.

First McDonald's in Singapore opened in Liat Towers, along Orchard Road, in the 1970s. My sisters and I were fascinated by their straws. They were the thickest straws that we had ever seen, because they had to deal with the thick McDonald's milkshakes. We took the straws home, washed them, and played with them.

McDonald's discontinued milkshakes here a few years ago, but they're back now. 

I read their corporate hagiography many years ago, John Love's McDonald's: Behind the Arches. Fascinating stuff. Total soap opera.

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8.
• At f4, 1/60 seconds, ISO 200.
• Aperture priority, auto white balance, center weighted metering, auto ISO.
• Picasa: Cropped, boosted fill light 3 stops (metering was thrown off by the bright signs, didn't catch it on the LCD because the D7000's display is quite bright, ISO 200 so could boost it a lot without adding too much noise).

Singapore Mosque: Masjid Al-Iman

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At f2.8, 1/4000 seconds, ISO 100. Should have stopped down a bit, 1/4000 seconds for a building is ridiculous. 
• Aperture priority, auto white balance, center weighted metering.
• Picasa: Auto contract fix.

This is a new mosque, opened in 2003. Between Pending and Bangkit LRT stations. Mosques in Singapore are overseen by MUIS (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura: Islamic Religious Council of Singapore):

http://www.muis.gov.sg/cms/services/Mosques.aspx?id=498

"In Singapore, where Muslims constitute a minority living in a society undergoing far reaching changes, the mosque stands as an important bulwark of Muslim identity and community integrity. Mosques have not just played a vital and meaningful role as the focus of religious activities, but also as centres for Islamic Learning and Social Development.

"Mosques in Singapore are currently managed by volunteers, refered to as Mosque Management Board (MMB). There are specific units within Muis which oversees the administration of Singapore Mosques in general."

"Masjid" means mosque in Malay and Arabic.The strange thing about studying Malay, is that you end up learning some Arabic too. And Malay is about 90 percent the same as Indonesian. When I was staying in the south of Singapore, I could pick up Indonesian TV. I could understand the news broadcasts, but the colloquial language was barely decipherable. Within formal Indonesian, there were some strange and not so strange differences. In Malaysia, the government is called "kerajaan," which literally means "kingly" but just means "government." In Indonesia, they refer to the government as "pemerintah," which means "ruler."

This is a surprisingly difficult photo to take. Too many other buildings and distractions, hard to get a clean shot. Move in too close, and there's a mess of cars parked along the road outside. Move too far away and you get a HDB apartment block looming over it. 

That's part of the fun of photography. It's not just a matter of snapping anything that comes into sight. It takes some effort, judgment, and luck. 

Note again, how important the tree at the corner is. Take that away and the photo becomes more plain.

Singapore Canal, Night

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At f2, 1/4 seconds, ISO 800. Managed to rest the camera on a railing, so I could go down to 1/4 seconds and not have to boost the ISO too much.
• Manual exposure (because of uneven lighting), auto white balance, center weighted metering (but exposure was based mainly on feedback from the LCD).
• Picasa: Cropped.

Canals are normally this dry. They are mainly to handle runoff from rain. They are basically large drains. No boats on them.

This is about 9pm at night. You can see two ladies walking along the canal, at the bottom left. Singapore is quite safe, even at night. 

The trees make a big difference. Newer areas with shorter trees, don't look as good. Buildings are all HDB public housing. Actual scene is 4 to 8 times darker than what the photo shows.

Singapore Post Centre

Singapore Post Centre

• Nikon D7000, 18-200mm f3.5-5.6
• At f6.7, 1/750 seconds, ISO 100.
• Program mode, auto white balance, center weighted metering.
• Picasa: no editing.

Just thought that it looked cool, retro Art Deco. Like many buildings in Singapore, it's part shopping centre and part office building. Right next to Paya Lebar ("wide swamp") MRT station.The radiator in the middle, is the top of two external glass lifts (elevators). You can see the two tracks on the wall.

Singapore Post is the name of the mail service here, so the name of the building can be understood as "Singapore Post, Centre," not "Singapore, Post Centre."

Singapore is supposed to follow UK English, but with so much US media here, everyone gets mixed up. The names of places are still quite consistently spelt (spelled) in UK English: "centre" instead of "center." I've been trying to standardise (standardize) my own spelling to US, but of course I can't change the spelling of names of places.

Singapore Canal

• Nikon D7000, 18-200mm f3.5-5.6
• At f4.8, 1/2000 seconds, ISO 1600. ISO is too high for day use, but I was testing the D7000's high ISO noise. 
• Aperture priority, auto white balance, center weighted metering.
• Picasa: straighten, boosted fill light one stop, graduated tint for fake blue sky.

Doesn't look like Singapore, but it is. The walls of the canal are grimy by Singapore standards, which is why I thought it would make an interesting photo, especially when balanced by the lush green grass on the right. Took the photo from a bridge on a reasonably major road. Didn't have to sneak around some back alley to find this. 

The whole scene reminds me of a shot from the movie Entrapment (Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones), where they used special effects to combine a shot of the Malacca river or something, with the Petronas twin towers skyscrapers in the background, making it look like squalor existed side by side with modernity in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysians were quite upset with that. 

Water level is way down. It can go up a few feet after a few hours of heavy rain. You can see the small channel that runs down the center of the canal, that handles low flow days like this, at the bottom left of the photo. Occasionally, you get newspaper reports of kids trying to swim in the canal after the rain, then getting swept away and drowning.

Most of the rivers in Singapore are now concrete canals like this. If you follow the Singapore river up to its source, you eventually hit a canal like this. But then even the mouth of the river is now all concrete anyway.

Apartment Block Next to Jungle, Singapore

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At f5.6, 1/500 seconds, ISO 100.
• Center weighted metering, aperture priority, auto white balance.
• Picasa: auto contrast fix. Main problem with shooting through glass windows (took this from the train) is loss of contrast. You get a milky film over the image. Luckily it's easy to fix in the editor. 

I see this all the time, on the way to Jurong East to switch trains from the North-South line to the East-West line. I always look forward to seeing it, something peaceful about this particular scene. It's between Choa Chu Kang and Bukit Gombak MRT stations. That's real jungle, old-growth for all I know. Still lots of patches of it all over Singapore.

It's probably less of a problem for established areas, but I've heard stories of snakes being found in buildings, on newly developed land that's next to jungle. The police get called, and don't know what to do, and sometimes suggest shooting it. The police now have an understanding with ACRES, the local wildlife rescue charity. Police standard operating procedure is now to call ACRES if there are any reports of snakes or other wild animals.ACRES will capture the animal and release it somewhere else.

You can call the ACRES 24 hour wildlife rescue hotline listed at http://www.acres.org.sg/wildliferescue/hotline.html.