Flags and Food For Singapore's National Day and other national days

Singapore flag

I was looking for items for a Singapore theme for the meeting of my toastmasters club, two days before Singapore's National Day which is August 9th.  Daeso the Japanese bargain shop, where everything is two Singapore dollars, was selling pairs of Singapore flags; also a banner with several triangular flags on a white cloth string, again for two dollars.

Daeso. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I went to the Daeso branch in City Square Mall beside Farrer Park MRT station, one stop from Little India on the North East line. Daeso in that mall is quite hard to find, even when you know where it is.Walk past the main escalators on the ground floor to the back and then turn left and take the back escalator up to the fourth floor.

Biscuits and Cakes
I found pictures of biscuits with the red and white flag on them. Quicker and cheaper to make, or buy and decorate than a full size cake.

Cakes are hard to carry intact. You need to keep them upright in a tin, or wrap in clingfilm. Or decorate on site. Biscuits, if very hard, would be easier to transport, so long as they are hard and don't crumble. If you buy from a shop such as a patisserie, you might get a cake in a box with a handle.

Failing all else, I shall simply put the flags on the food table.

Other Flag Items
Ebay sells iron on or sew on patches for clothes, also tattoos, and bumper stickers..

Toothpick Flags
You can also buy toothpick flags, a dozen countries but not singapore. You could print a teeny flat and paste it over another flag. I thought you got mixed flags. When I went to buy, I discovered that on several of the sites you do not get a mixture of flags but you can choose 50 or 100 or the same country's flag, for example the USA.

Customised Cakes
A couple of years ago I customised a cake in Singapore for a major birthday. The cake maker, Mr Ho, who was catering at the American school and for events everywhere, made a cake with four pictures on the top showing my husband's interests which were, one was a mountain for trekking, one was a playing card for playing bridge, another a motorbike, because he had a motorbike, and another was a portrait of the birthday boy.

Later in the UK I looked at ordering printed edible toppings for a birthday cake. The first time I ordered a large photo of the birhtday boy, my husband, and instructed him to do that again for my birthday, with a picture of myself.

The third time we tried to do it the price had increased. However, it was cheaper to order a dozen pictures to go on cupcakes. I made the mistake of adding text included in the price or very little extra, happy birthday to be printed over the picture. Unfortunately, on a tiny picture this obscured my face, over one eye.

One picture of the birthday boy or girl can be used in the centre of a larger cake. The others can be kept for another event if it is within the use by date of the edible topping.

To print a flag or the picture of a person (such as the UK queen or the US president or your club or company president or your mother or Member of Parliament or guest of honour) you need an edible printer. Or take a photo to a bakery and ask them to print a topping. You then lay it on your iced cake and if you like, add whipped cream rosettes around the cake base and up the sides and around the photo A lot of work.

Singapore flag cake from the Cake Shop Pte Ltd, cheapest is:
listed as $62.90. I messaged them on their website chat and got immediate reply.
They will delivery free for a cake dosting over 70 dollars.
They replied:
We can customize a photo image print cake. The smallest size is 8 inch around 1kg. The cost is $62.90

You can order for the photo image print cupcakes instead. We do have 12 pcs ($46.90) and 16 pcs ($55.90).
We also give 10% discount for SAFRA Member."

From their website:

Hotline: +65 3157 0303
Whatsapp: +65 9662 0303

Email

Please kindly email us at admin@thecakeshop.com.sg for any enquiry after operations hours.

They are at JCube, Grandstand, and Seletar Mall.

Useful Websites
carousell.com
ebay.com
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Toothpick-Flag-100pcs-Qatar-Saudi-Arabia-Singapore-Thailand-Turkey-UAE-Vietnam
Video on  you tube about how to make a photo cake - fasinating even if you don't have the budget or time to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ldH9EBm2XI
UK cake with optional topping photo
https://www.sponge.co.uk/cakes/whole-cakes/chocolate-orange-cake
UK topping to order free delivery UK, can deliver worldwide:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Birthday-Cake-Edible-Image-Printed-Topper-Decoration-PERSONALISED-Mobile-Phone

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

The Smart City with green malls, driverless transport and offices on the move

Worldwide experiments are being made with driverless cars.Singapore already has driverless trains. .On the MRT stations you can see plans for the future. Get out at Farrer Park (not to be confused with Farrer Road) and above you is City Square Mall. It looks much like any other modern mall. However, you can read posters inside and out telling you how the building collects and recycles water and a host of other ideas, which were innovative at the time they were inaugurated.

ERP
Electronic Road pricing.
Definitely an improvement. You don't have to keep buying payment stickers. The money you owe is deducted from a card, with automatic time of day, day of week or seasonal increases and reductions made automatically, so no hunt for machines and change or shops open and stocking coupons and no fines for getting it wrong.

Singapore's seasonal decorations for Diwali on the underground train. In the UK in England and Wales special trains run with a character dressed as Santa on mainlines and special lines, particularly steam trains. But holograms could also be added on trains, perhaps sponsored in major cities by Madame Tussauds.

MRT station Downtown Line display of vision of the future by local schoolchildren.

An exhibition on the smart city of the future at one of the stations showed a phone kiosk turned into ta miniature office where you could sit down, type into a computer and print off a document. You would have to pay, like using a business centre in a hotel. But you could even do without an office if you were constantly travelling, and use an office briefly when needed, the way we used to use public phones on a pay as you go basis.

So many people want to do their homework on cafes, write their novel over a cup of coffee, or even have a business meeting in a pub or cafe, it's time that rooms or areas were set aside, perhaps business  booths, separate from others who might overhead.

Instead of restaurants banning phones, they might offer seating with phone plugs. We already have internet cafes, but they are basically internet, with a cup of coffee. Instead we could have something more like a miniature meeting room.

Cars and Vehicles

Rock stars have caravans kitted out like mobile homes combined with rehearsal rooms and offices. 

?Why aren't cars and taxis set up like offices on the move.

Conferences have press rooms with refreshments, even if it's only water or coffee, and desks with computers. Tables for meetings are set up for sales to be made behind booths. 

How do you expand your city? That depends on the terrain. Down to basements one and two with . underground walkways and malls sheltered from the weather. Up to skyscrapers with linkways from one to the next. Rooftop gardens. Greenery providing warmth or cooling, or soothing, or shade or even food. Parks or swimming pools in the sun with a view on rooftops. 

The latest planning departments in Singapore are specifically designing satellite cities, with inputs from adults and students and children and the disabled. For example, to see how long it takes a person in a wheelchair to cross from a busy road from a car park to a shopping mall.

All over the world, all sorts of ideas are emerging and being pooled. For example:

Shanty towns being painted in rainbow colours.

Water supplies.

Unemployed Mafia type gangs and hooligans stopped from destroying business by employing them or their wives and children to work in the business.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker, trainer.