Excel Exhibition Centre - the excellent best and worst for travel and toilets

 Excel this year I was at The Real Italian Wine And Food Experience. 

Excel, Prince Regent DLR station entrance/exit. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Toilets

The absolute best was the juxtaposition of the entrance on the ground floor and the toilets also on the ground floor opposite.

This end of the gigantic venue, larger than some airports, is best. You still have a five minute dog leg or L shape walk to Prince Regent station. The semi-circular 4 star hotel has a spa and gym, delegates who stayed there told me. The hotel is conveniently right outside.

Left, the multi coloured hotel. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Behind it is a large car park.

Advantages of Prince Regent Station DLR

Although one DLR stop further from central London, best for events at the end furthest from the Custom House station end. 

The PR station has a convenient lift behind the long staircase.

Advantages Of Custom House Station DLR

This alternative Custom House station is at the big entrance which is for larger events occupying the entire building or shows at this end. 

The walkway above from the station passes a wall of green plants on your left. On the right you pass restaurants and a coffee shop.

Toilets on Two Levels

Inside Excel from the Custom House DLR direction, the first toilets you reach are down stairs. Not ideal if you are carrying goods to or from the show. Good if you want to get some exercise. If you can wait, you can use the ground floor toilet at the Prince Regent station exit at the other end. 

The hall is the size of a major airport. I wish they would instal a travelator!

DLR stands for Docklands Light Railway. 

TFL Transport For London.

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Lost in translation - American, British English

 

American - British English

backup lights - reversing lights

blinkers/turning lights - indicators

elevator - lift

emergency brake / parking brake - hand brake

faucet - tap

fender - mudguard/wing

gas station - garage

gas tank - petrol tank

hood - bonnet

lug nuts - wheel nuts

pavement - tarmac/road

sedan - saloon

sidewalk - pavement

station wagon - estate car

tail lights - brake lights

truck - lorry

trunk - boot

windshield  - windscreen

British English - American

bonnet - hood

boot - trunk

brake lights - tail lights

estate car - station wagon

garage - gas station

hand brake - parking brake / emergency brake

indicators - turning lights/blinkers

lift - elevator

lorry - truck

mudguard - fender

pavement - sidewalk

petrol tank - gas tank

reversing lights - backup lights

saloon - sedan

tarmac/road - pavement

tap - faucet

wheel nuts - lug nuts

windscreen - windshield

Useful Websites

https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/do-you-know-these-15-british-terms-for-auto-parts/

https://blog.intlauto.com/2019/04/30/us-english-uk-english-car-parts/

https://www.adrianflux.co.uk/uk-us-car-part-names/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English_vocabulary

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Getting To Grips With Chinese Language

  When I get in the lift (elevator) in Singapore I read the Chinese and English instructions. I look for the simple signs, like the double curve like the running legs pronounced ren for person. The English instruction mentioning the guard uses three symbols, including this one.

Another simple source is the children's card book I bought which shows the flags. I have learned the sign for Japan. Ri ben. Sun origin. Sun, like a squared off sun, doubled, like sunrise and sunset.

The Chinese sign for America is beautiful country, or beautiful kingdom. Wei, meaning beautiful is the sign for sheep. 

(That reminds me of the slightly rude joke about sheep in New Zealand: 'Why do you have to fetch the sheep in before it gets dark? So you can see them and recognize them. Otherwise, you only get the ugly ones.')

Useful Websites

books

Chinese for toddlers and beginners

Academic

The language of Language by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira and Sunita Anne Abraham

duolingo.com

wiki Chinese language

The Red Box - what is it and where is it?

Singapore flag.


The Red Box
The Singapore flag, like the flag of China has red, and in the centre of Singapore, is a big box shaped building, painted red, easily seen from the grassy, green open area in front.

What is it? A youth centre. Youth includes the young helping the elderly. However, that doesn't mean you can't go there if you are not under a certain age limit, not in their target market of youth. I went there for a contest about polluton and preserving the environment with a group of all ages.

The welcome desk has some interesting free leaflets. The decor inside and out is funky, inviting and inspiring. Do take a look.

Inside, I liked the lift (elevator) with the door painted red and a motto about lifting people up. I suppose in the USA you would have to change the motto to elevating people.

Finding It
You can see it easily on street view. However, coming out of Somerset MRT station it wis hard for me to find. From exit A you turn right. It is hidden behind the big building on your right which has the green cafe in front. Go past the big building and there's the open space with the red bus which I showed in my previous post.


Photos shortly.

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

Braille Signs In Your Lift - and Braille in Singapore, France and the USA

Many lifts when upgraded have added the Braille signs.


Singapore flag

Braille signs in lift (US elevator). Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Here are the ones from Cashew Heights in Singapore, a series of skyscrapers 12-16 storeys high, 30 years old, with apartment units up to four bedrooms often containing one or more residents over 50.

The couples with small children are often visited once a year or more by elderly relatives from overseas.

The point is that not only the residents but any visitors can find out where the lift is going and register the floor they are visiting and check if they have stopped at the right floor. The lifts also have robotic voices announcing the floor number on arrival.

The first thing I noticed in the lifts, before the Braille was installed, is the strange way, strange to me from the UK, of ordering the lift buttons. I would expect the buttons to go up in a line. But two is to the right of one. All the odd numbers are on the left. All the even numbers are on the right.

More About The Invention Of Braille
Braille was a blind teenager at school near Paris when he started workign on his system to communicate with his schoolfriends. He adapted his raised dots for the blind from a system used by the military at night. When they could not see at night, before the days of electricity and battery torches, they would use raised dots. Another reason for using dots, was that you did not want to speak at night and give away your position to the enemy.

Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille.

Braille experimented as a child at school with communicating with his friends. The sighted teachers did not want the pupils to have a secret way of communicating not known to the teachers. But eventually Braille's system caught on amongst the blind school age pupils and adults so the sighted people had to learn it and could see that it was a success.

Now there is an increasing campaign to get sighted people to learn sign language and Braille in order to communicate with blind people. Learning sign language and Braille when you are young has a second advantage for the learner. It also means that if you lose sight later in life you already have the language at your fingertips, literally, and have less of a challenge learning and can cope immediately with daily life.

Places where you can see and learn more about Braille
1 Braille Museum in France, east of Paris.
2 The American Printing House For The Blind Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
3 Lifts in Singapore and other countries.

Useful Websites

USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_the_American_Printing_House_for_the_Blind

Picture of Braille bust in French library. Public domain from Wikipedia.
See my other post on Braille.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Welsh words for bus, train, new - and accents

Welsh dragon.

When I was travelling through Welsh station by train I picked up a view Welsh words by looking at the bilingual signs.

Welsh - English
Abertawe - Swansea
bws - bus
Caer - Chester
Caesnewydd - Cardiff
Cwmni - Wales
lifft- lift
newydd - new
trên  - train (Circumflex accent on the e in tren)
Wreksam - Wrexham
Y Rhyl - Rhyl

Accents
 trên I could not find the accents in Google nor in Word. When I was using an Apple computer you held down the key. But now typing on a thinkPad doing that produces a line of the letter e. 
I googled the answer found a guide with three suggestions. One said use insert but I cannot find insert in blogger. Another suggestion said hold down alt plus g and r but that did not work and involved too much time and effort. 
So I looked up Welsh dictionary and found a university website Welsh dictionary from Wales, typed in train, and copied the Welsh word.
When I find a solution to inserting accents in Word and blogger I shall write it on a sticker and stick it on my laptop.

I have been learning Welsh on Duolingo, which is a website teaching several languages for free - with occasional advertisements.

Useful Websites
https://www.duolingo.com/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Google Local Guide eg Braddell Heights Community Centre, Singapore, and worldwide activities

Club Tampines West, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
How do you give brief but useful information about a Community Club in Singapore or anywhere?
First, how do you find it? Google maps. The map on the nearby MRT station. Look for a large building with the sign club outside.

Answer
I wrote this about Braddell Heights Community Club in Singapore and the nearby MRT underground station.

DIRECTIONS
From Serangoon MRT take escalators to exit F (fewer escalators than the other set of escalators which exit to the shopping mall). Along the corridor you emerge by bus stops. The Community Centre (changed name to Community Club in 2018 to sound more friendly) is a large building, same side, to your right, on the corner. Compact building with office, signboards and lift the lobby.

ACTIVITIES
Open to all. Non-members pay slightly more. Many activities are courses such as martial arts, Lion Dance group, singing, crafts, for children or adults, seasonal events. However, you can often drop into either the Mandarin speaking Toastmasters' International speaking club or one of the three English speaking Toastmasters clubs held on three of the five Saturday afternoons each month.   

EATING
No eating place is inside but a hawker centre is diagonally across the road junction beyond the HDB housing block; or go back to Nex shopping mall beside Serangoon MRT railway station. 

I could say much more for the Google reader, but the text would be too long for Google browsers. What else have I not said? This community club is one of my two favourites, because of its nearness to the MRT (trains every three to five minutes) and the number of English language activities. My other favourite is Cairnhill, near Newton MRT, with about nine English language Toastmasters clubs plus one Mandarin and one bilingual English and Malay.

You could also check out the Community clubs website which lists the clubs all over Singapore. 

PHOTO
I am in two minds about putting up a photo.

Inside the atrium of Braddell Heights Community Club. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Useful Websites (Alphabetically by country)

EUROPE / GERMANY
The Rathaus, not a rat house but what we in the UK call a town hall. Normally the historic building is on the main square of each city. The big basement with columns and carvings usually has a bustling cafeteria serving reasonably-priced local food. Signs on walls and tables tell you about activities and local events.















Bremen town hall or Rathaus. Source Wikipedia article on Bremen. Photo by Pederec.

I remember that Bremen in north Germany has a typical, striking basement cafeteria.

In France the town hall is called the hotel de ville.

SINGAPORE
https://www.pa.gov.sg/our-network/community-clubs
TOURIST INFORMATION
https://www.visitsingapore.com/see-do-singapore/socialiser/?cmp=SEM_LEISURE-EATDRINK-NIGHTLIFE
SINGAPORE AIRLINES
singaporeair. com

CLUBS
toastmastersinternational.com/find-a-club

UK
Cities have events and activities in town halls, Arts Centres, churches, church halls, colleges, public libraries, pubs (the whole pub or a room upstairs), restaurants, schools, and theatres.  Look for the free newspapers in racks outside railway stations, in Tourist Information Centres, 
and in supermarkets and outside newsagents and the shops of estate agents (property agents).

USA
Just google 'community centres near me' and you will get suggestions for each city.

Author 
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Free Language courses: First Words In Indonesian And Malaysian

Petronas Towers, KL, capital of Malaysia. Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones played characters in Entrapment, who escaped, suspended from the bridge between the towers.

You want to learn a language if you are an expat in a country, doing business there, or likely to visit.
Why would you want to visit Malaysia or Indonesia, apart from adding two more countries? You might want to see the Petronas Towers, known as Menara Petronas (notice the adjective first). That's where Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones acted in the film (Americans say movie) called Entrapment.

Problems
Duolingo offers a dozen free language starter courses with more in the pipeline and you can sign up to be informed when the new ones start. I signed up for Indonesian because it was almost the same as Malaysian which was easy to pick up from signs when we drove up to the pretty pink port city of Malacca from Singapore.

Later, we drove on to KL to see the Petronas Towers which feature in the film Entrapment starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery.

I must admit before visiting both Malaysia and Indonesia I never initially saw the use of Indonesian. I never knew where I could learn it. I assumed it would be difficult. I was wrong.

Answers
Indonesian and Malay are almost the same apart from a little vocabulary. The grammar and sentence structure is simple, like Chinese.

Singaporean flag.

Singapore
Indonesian / Malay is also one of the four languages in Singapore. So you hear it on the station announcements when you take the trains, and see it on signs at MRT railway stations, lifts and exits, and on buses. The announcements end with the words for thank you, terimah kasih. I think of terribly grateful. Greetings often include the word Selamat, like salaam.

Four-language signs in Singapore include the Malay language.

The Malay for Botanic Gardens. 

Another warning sign in Malay.

Indonesian-Malay words are easy, like English with American spelling, but even more simplified. For example, apple is apel.

Duolingo has just started teaching Indonesian basic for free.

Just a few words, with my memory aids in brackets:

Indonesian - English

air - water (think of droplets of rain in the air)
apel - apple/ apples / an apple
itu - that / it's (the letters it in itu and it's)
jeruk - orange or oranges (juicy orange ok!) in Indonesian; oren in Malay
kamu - you / your (the word with u on the end is you)

makan - eat / ate / eating (making another meal such as lunch, makan)
minum - drink (keep your drinking of alchol to the minimum in muslim majority countries)
saya - I / me / my (what I say is all about me - everybody is more interested in themselves)
susu - milk (milk sustains you)
punya - have (p for possess)

English - Indonesian

apple / apples / an apple - apel
drink - minum
eat - makan
have - punya
I / me / my - saya

it's / that - itu
milk - susu
orange - jeruk
water - air
you / your - kamu

I have other posts on the Malay language and signs on stations and in trains.

Useful Websites For Travellers and Language Learners
duolingo.com
INDONESIA
indonesiatouristboard.com
MALAYSIA
visitmalaysia.com
SINGAPORE
visitsingapore.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. I have other posts on learning languages and visiting Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
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Singaporean English called Singlish - subtly different word shifts

Problem
I know what they mean but it sounds different.

Answer
Stop worrying about Singlish and be glad that you are constantly reminded that you are in a foreign country and if you come from England, America, or Singapore, you have your own brand of English.

Here are some differences which strike me in Singapore even though I've been visiting and living in the country on and off for more than twenty years, since the 1990s.

A Singaporean asks me, 'Where do you stay?'

I answer, "I live near Cashew MRT." (Meaning Cashew underground railway station. MRT is the Mass Railway Transit system.)

I don't copy his sentence construction and he does not copy mine. I am wondering whether it is time for me to start echoing local people and talking like them. However, I have positioned myself as a teacher of English, so I should sound English to maintain my credibility.

I ponder the subtle uses of the word stay in British English. When I say I am staying somewhere, I mean temporarily. I am staying with a friend, on holiday. That's a temporary arrangement. Living with a friend would be a permanent arrangement.

You stay in a hotel. Years ago, people lived in hotels, for years.

On the other hand, I could say, "We went to Singapore on a two-year contract but ended up staying there for more than a decade." That's a long-stay arrangement.

Car parks are short-stay and long-stay. You don't live in a car park.

Moving and Shifting
My conversation with the Singaporean continues. He says, " I used to live near there, but I have shifted to Yishun."

That's very Singaporean. Nobody in London would say that. I might move from the centre of town to the suburbs. I shift furniture. You shift something small and heavy, like a wardrobe, a big box of records. You say, "Can you help me shift this into the corner of the room?"

You don't shift people, unless they are in wheelchairs or on stretchers and unconscious. You shift something with a trolley. Lift and shift. You shift things short distances, within the same room, or within a house or building. Lift and push. You don't shift yourself.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages.

Beautiful Temple In Singapore

This beautiful temple is in a side road. Worth a trip. Visitors are welcome. You take off you shoes and   wash your feet at an area surrounded by seats and shoe boxes to the right of the entrance - foot washing on a hot day very welcome and refreshing. 

The gold tower gateway, a feature of such temples is eye catching and colourful.

Here's the history of the temple.

All the statues of the Gods are entrancing. These two are my favourites. 

Travelling there

The temple is on the Changi airport side of the island.

How to get there? By public transport, MRT (underground train) to Aljunied which is stop EW9, 9th stop on the East West line which splits to end at Changi airport or Pasir Ris (EW1). From Aljunied take a number 40 bus. On your return the number 40 bus stops on the opposite side of the road to the MRT station. If you can't face climbing all the steps up to the overhead bridge, there's a lift (elevator) up and down on both sides of the bridge.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. 

Photos copyright Angela Lansbury