Hungry Ghosts and Friday Night Fun

I just returned from several weeks in the States. I had planned to blog philosophically about being away and then coming back or about being a resident of two continents. But I just wasn't inspired until...

 I was taking my morning jog and found food and drinks placed artfully on the sidewalk in front of a modern house. And then drove past a construction site with a huge iron mesh cage with burning ashes.  And I remembered that Hungry Ghosts are out now and need to be feed - fed food and fake money.  Homes create little tables for food offerings


                                and businesses provide barrels or cages for employees to burn paper:

                  But sometimes the rain comes and makes a big mess of the pretty arrangement...

  

Crazy!!  We live in one of the most modern cities in the world, but sometimes it seems like ancient times....


And then on a whim we decided to attend an event at a museum. We took the MRT down to Chinatown and walked along the lantern-laden streets.

(I had forgotten about the Lantern Festival also) We were greeted with loud music and huge tents erected for the festival; elaborately dressed singers (and wannabe singers) entertained in lavish style.  I had no idea who they were or what they were singing about, but the crowd was dazzled.

Here is a taste of the sound:

Look closely...the singer is wearing a costume covered 

with fuzzy dice.  Is she good luck?                                                      Kinda like bad karaoke...

THEN we reached out destination, the Red Dot Design Museum:

We heard there was a special event where vendors were selling their handmade items.  I always look for places to share my mosaics, so we went to see what it was all about.  We found lots of artists with lots of creativity.  But, the coolest thing was the live portrait drawing contests!  They put 4 people up on stools and let the participating artists create portraits in 20 minutes. Amazing!

The models:

The artists:

The artists' fair:

The musicians and audience:

Next fair is October 11 - check out MAAD for more info.

Bye for now.