Monday October 24th is a national holiday in Singapore and many other countries - in fact some businesses give their employees the whole week off.
Seeing The Lights In Singapore and Worldwide
In Singapore the street lights in Little India have been up since September and will continue until November. Naturally India has lots of lights, including illuminated buildings.
In Singapore in 2022 I took photos of the lights near Farrer Park MRT station near the 24 hour department store, Mustafa's, which has a large food section and is a good place to find Indian foods.
Singapore has a huge number of Toastmasters International clubs which train speakers and attract people who want to improve their English. The majority are English speaking clubs but there are also some Tamil and bilingual Tamil and English clubs.
Delicious Indian Sweets
In previous years at Toastmasters clubs the Indian members have brought along Indian sweets (called mithai), often boxes of sweet balls, or flat diamond shapes in different colours, sometimes with almonds or ground nuts, often cashew, rather like marzipan.
Look for them sold in the Indian shops in Little India.
Indian Savoury Biscuits
During the previous weekend on Saturday I was at the speech contest for Division S held at the AIA American Insurance Association building. The food at the interval included a large transparent jar containing savoury biscuits, coiled, a bit like pretzels, with small points projecting up. They were very dry and crunchy, hard to bite into, like frozen nuts. I was afraid for my teeth! I regret not taking a photo.
Dinner Guest's Gifts
I was invited to a Deepavali dinner on Sunday but it was cancelled because a member of the host family had Covid-flu symptoms. I had been wondering what to take as a guest, because one member of the host family was diabetic. Savoury biscuits would have been an alternative for those who cannot take sugar.
Questions & Research On Diwali
On Sunday I was online in a hybrid meeting of one of the five Toastmasters clubs of which I am a member, Braddell Heights Advanced. I was the Table Topics Master in charge of producing slides with questions for the impromptu speech session, where each person has to speak for one to two minutes on a topic which is occasionally still picked from questions on cards face down on a table, but in hybrid and online meetings nowadays frequently a slide show of questions.
I did some research.
The lights. Individuals and groups such as clubs send members and friends greetings for festivals such as Diwali. For Diwali they often feature lamps.
Oil lamps.
The coloured patterns on floors. Called Rangoli.
The stories.
Festival Information For Children
A quick guide to festivals for children is Home For The Holidays, which you can buy from Amazon. The book is a Sesame Street rhyming book, covering Chinese New Year, Christmas, Diwali, Eid-al-Fitr, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year. Read the reviews.
Useful Websites
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali
Book on Holidays
https://www.amazon.sg/dp/1728240247/ref=emc_b_5_i
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