Fisk fish restaurant and fun deli shop

The decor of this shop is a novelty. Look at those curved cliffs of shelving. The moment I stepped through the door the manager's friendly voice greeted me. I admired the giant fish, some with heads
and some without.

I knew of the restaurant because a member of my family had eaten lunch there and recommended it. The restaurant had been chosen by a group of Scandinavians, one from Denmark.

I noticed organic mulberries at under 10 Singapore dollars, my sort of price. After seeing that small samples of the mulberries and other items were available to try, I did some sampling. However, I was not tempted to change my choice but stuck to the organic mulberries as being most original purchase.

Fisk shop by the Mercure and Novotel hotels on Stevens Road, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Aloe vera drink

I was very interested in trying this aloe vera drink because aloe vera had been growing, thriving, on a balcony in the tropical heat. We didn't find the gooey texture nor the bland taste appealing but we had read that you can liquidise it and use it in drinks. The liquidiser solves the texture problem. What about the flavour?

The commercially produced drink was very pleasant, sweet yet refreshing. Reading the list of ingredients, on a second tasting 24 hours after i had first opened the carton,i wondered whether the major flavour and appeal came from the cane juice. Or was it the barely perceptible coconut? Whatever.
I found it even better the second time around. That often applies to food, too. I suspect the reason is connected to the drying out of the food intensifying the flavour.
I am sure aloe vera drink will become one of my favourites.

Language Meetups In Singapore

Problem
I joined a language meetup group in Singapore after meeting one of their members at a Toastmasters club. I am an amateur polyglot. I am learning the Greek and Russian and Hebrew alphabets, and keep looking at Chinese.

I also had a go at Korean, but I found Korean hardest of all, although it is supposed to be the quickest language to learn, with fewest letters. It's all circles and squares and bears no relationship to anything I know. I don't speak a single word of Korean. Yet, if I look at a page of Malay, or Spanish, or Italian, or German, I can usually pick out a few words which I can identify or remember.

Looking at the Singapore meetups, some of them are for fluent speakers who want to keep up their languages. Frankly, I have spent several evenings with the French-speaking Toastmasters club, Francophone, and find that a challenge, even though I can speak and read French fluently.

Once they used the French slang word for tipsy. An entire five-minute speech made to sense because I was missing one vital word. My friend was equally lost. She was teaching multiple languages at a Singapore polytechnic.

The group's site is full of warnings. You should turn up so as not to disappoint the organisers, nor take up a place which could be used by somebody else. You are not to use the group to sell anything. It is not a dating organisation.

What is stopping me attending? I suspect it's a bit like Toastmasters. You get interested and there are so many meetings, so many opportunities, but it can take a while for the right group and the right date to materialise along with your enthusiasm to get up and go out to meet new people at a place you do not know.

Learn English
The learn English group, with a free demo lesson sounds interesting. The Russian group with a reading of a short story would be good, but I don't know sufficient Russian and will have to wait for a lesson where they are learning the alphabet - or put more effort into learning the Cyrillic alphabet.

I am corresponding with an American woman I met at a hotel in Singapore. I was thinking of sending her to a meet-up group. If she goes as a native English speaker, with no intention of having to learn another language, she would get to meet people from all over Asia.

You can start your own group, anywhere in the world.

The cost of some of the Meetup language groups is five Singapore dollars for a drink for ladies.

How does that compare with Toastmasters? Toastmasters meets the first three Mondays of the month at the Sheraton Towers near Newton MRT and charges about $20 which includes a snack buffet. The meeting is large, with an evening of speeches, with socialising before and at the interval.

Other Toastmasters groups cater to speakers of Mandarin, Tamil, French, Malay, and a bilingual English and Mandarin club is starting shortly.

A bilingual Chinese - Italian group is being started by a couple from Braddell Heights Advanced. The wife, Jade, speaks Chinese. The husband is Italian.

Useful Websites
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
https://www.meetup.com/TheLanguageLovers/

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

Learn Chinese Months and numbers one to twelve

Chinese months
The second symbol is the symbol for month. The first symbol is the sign of the number. The easiest ones to recognize are January, month one, single line. February, month two is a double line. Four is like the four sides of a window with curtains. April, curtains. June is the sixth month.

July is the seventh month, and the Chinese seven looks like an upside down English seven. August is the eighth month and instead of two circles making the eight you simply have two curved lines. September looks like the ltter r in Italic script. October is the tenth month, like a Roman number ten turning anticlockwise. November, is ten plus one, the eleventh month.
一月 one month (January)
二月two month (February)
游行
四月 four month (April - four sides of a square, like a window, with curtains)
可能
六月six month (June)
七月seven month (July - looks like an upside down European seven and a backwards J)
八月eight month (August like two circles written in a hurry)
九月
十月 ten month (October - looks like Roman ten turned sideways)
十一月 eleven month (November looks like Roman ten turned sideways plus one line = 11)
十二月 twelve month (December - looks like Roman ten turned sideways plus two lines = 12)

Chinese Pronunciation

One, two - yi, èr.

1 Yī yuè
2 èr yuè
3 yóuxíng
4 sì yuè
5 kěnéng
6 liù yuè
7 qī yuè
8 bā yuè
9 jiǔ yuè
10 shí yuè
11 shíyī yuè
12 shí'èr yuè

After looking at the simplified Chinese, I decided to try traditional Chinese to find out if it was more complicated and if I could recognize it.

1 一月
2 二月
3 遊行
4 四月
5 可能
6 六月
7 七月
8 八月
9 九月
10 十月
11 十一月
12 十二月

1 Yī yuè
2 èr yuè
3 yóuxíng
4 sì yuè
5 kěnéng
6 liù yuè
7 qī yuè
8 bā yuè
9 jiǔ yuè
10 shí yuè
11 shíyī yuè
12 shí'èr yuè

It comes out the same. So, no trouble reading the signs, including today's date displayed on the hotel TV or above Reception in the hotel or in a bank.

Japanese uses the same symbols.

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

What do the Chinese signs on Sixth Avenue station mean?

I was sitting on a train in Singapore learning the numbers one to ten in Chinese which were easy. One is a horizontal line Like Hyphen. Two is two horizontals like an equal sign. Three is three horizontals like a Roman number three on its side. Ten is a cross like an X spun clockwise or a gravestone cross. Six looks like a stick man with a head, two arms two legs and imagine the body.

The train drew into sixth avenue station. I looked up and saw the middle symbol of the Chinese writing was the number Six.

If you look at the paper underground map you will see all the station names in Chinese. At one point I stuck the map into the front of my diary and tore off the Chinese part to make it less bulky.

Later I looked at the Chinese signs to try to find which word symbols were repeated. I was looking for names which were the same in English, such as park. However, I discovered that on my train stations map all the station names ended with an extra symbol. So the station name here has three symbols. On the paper map Sixth Avenue has four Chinese symbols, the fourth being either station or line.

Now, every time I go through Sixth Avenue station on the train, I am reminded of the sign for six.

Words for station

I typed in the words for sixth avenue station into Google Translate, then took each symbol and reversed the translation from Chinese to English

第

六

大

道

站

线

I got

The first

six

big

road

station

line

So the symbol for station has the right hand symbol like a little stick man, a station master behind an information desk, pointing to the right, to the station.

Numbers and Months

The numbers are also used for months. So if you look at a leaflet or poster which tells you the date in English, you can recognize the Chinese. January is two symbols, month and one. February is month two. Again, this is a handy reminder of the symbols for the numbers one to twelve.

January - month 1

February - month 2

March - month 3

april - month 4

may - month 5

june - month 6

july - month 7

august - month 8

september - month 9

october - month 10

november - month 11

december  - month 12

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

Sixth Avenue station architecture - two-tone brown and blue

I like the wave pattern created by the brown bocks. However, I think they missed out on providing an instant memory aid for local travellers as well as tourists. The design should incorporate an obvious and identifiable repeated pattern of the number six, as well as six in the Chinese script.

Mural on Sixth Avenue Station

I love this mural on Sixth Avenue station concourse on the Downtown line in Singapore. The mural is very Chinese with its green dancing dragon and pleasing pyramid roof pagoda.

The station is strangely named. Above is Fourth Avenue. It is not the sixth station on the downtown line but DT7 (down town 7). Nonetheless, useful station, and jolly mural.

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