Countdown to Espana

On Thursday morning we received the wonderful news that Grace was born safely to Anna and Yaaren, the couple whose wedding we attended in February. Anna is my brother Col's second child and their plan to start a family as soon as possible has unfolded perfectly for them. We wish them all the very best as they navigate the ups and downs of life as a family.

I have just completed a frustrating hour putting together our Spain-Morocco itinerary on Google Maps to share with you. Turned out the easy bit was embedding it here, and that was the part I wasn't so confident about. It has been a long time now since I used to teach staff and students how to use the tools and so much has changed. Anyway, below are the stops on the way. We fly into Madrid on the 6th Dec, go south to Tarifa to catch the ferry across to Morocco, loop back, and then follow the coast as much as we can to Barcelona. We fly out on the 26th Dec. If you click on any of the destinations it will give you more details, fold the red pane away with the arrow pointing left. The days in Morocco are with a tour group, for the rest we are arranging our own train travel.


Accommodation is booked but our day to day plans are loose so we can respond to whatever takes our fancy or what we learn from others we talk to along the way. When in Madrid we definitely plan a day trip to Toledo. Of course in Granada we will go to The Alhambra. Mum visited there many years ago and it remains one of her highlights of the trip, so she has lent me a copy of a book of tales first published in 1832 yet it hasn't aged at all. It includes first hand impressions of an American diplomat who lived within the walls for some time. With my history of seasickness I'm not really looking forward to crossing to Morocco but I certainly want to visit this country at the opposing end of the continent to South Africa which we loved visiting. We haven't yet found our best options to get to Valencia but as the home of paella Eric is excited and we want to see their City of Arts and Science Project. Finally we return to Barcelona of which we both have fond memories. We will spend Christmas there and with luck go to Sagrada Família church on the day.
We celebrated Thanksgiving at Kovan this week with Craig, an American, whose Canadian wife Melisa (of Italian extraction) loves to cook. For dinner they brought along roast chicken (imagine turkey) with stuffing, green bean casserole (cooked in carnation milk), mashed sweet potato topped with toasted marshmallows and cranberry sauce. But we hadn't finished yet, we also had pumpkin pie. A veritable feast and it is easy to understand why there are so many overweight people in The States. 

After work Sunday we met up for end of year drinks at Sque Bar. This was Eric's last commitment as Leader of the Social Committee and it was very well attended by the older members of staff but almost all of the younger ones had better places to go or things to do. 

Angela from Punggol, for one, was flying home to NZ for her wedding. Fair enough. She was thrilled with the SG50 Elephant Parade gift the branch gave her. The original, designed by Diana Francis stood in the grounds of Raffles Hotel in March last year.  Diana is a British artist, living and working in Asia for the past 24 years, the last 18 of those in Singapore. She worked as creative head for Elephant Parade globally, and with 100 other artists to create Elephant Parade Hong Kong, in 2014. Hers then visited Raffles. A limited edition of the replicas now have a small SG50 stamp on them and that's what Angela and I have. 

Since the walkers were meeting for an evening walk, we went for a stroll around Bidadari in the morning. It was glorious after recent rains and we were enjoying it despite not initially finding many birds. Then we struck gold. Of the passage migrants: ashy minivet (below left), ruddy kingfisher, Asian brown flycatcher, Asian paradise flycatcher, black baza (below right), oriental cuckoo, drongo cuckoo (new sighting, below centre), blue tailed bee-eater. 

And then there were the residents: olive backed sunbird, common iora, white throated kingfisher, Javan myna, Asian koel, pink throated green pigeon, common flameback, black naped oriole, yellow vented bulbul. I also picked up a slithering tree snake in my binos while I was searching for birds, hope the bazas got it. What a morning. So good we dropped into Prata King o the way home to celebrate with roti and teh tarik. Eric found himself a new favourite on the menu, Kothu Prata. It is a roti diced up and mixed through chicken, egg and vegetables served of course with curry sauce. It doesn't get better than that, especially as we have the feeling that work for the year is over. Yes, 2 more days to go, but really only half days. 
This is the team at Kovan on a Sunday afternoon after eating yet another cake, Robert's birthday coming up next week.

The evening walk from Tampines to, and around, Bedok Reservoir looked like it was going to be washed out but fortunately, over a coffee at McCafe, the rain stopped and it was lovely and cool by the time we got going. Bedok Reservoir is a converted sand quarry and an important part of the water catchment system. Our group had swollen to 11 starters to enjoy the last strike out for the year. We were joined afterwards by Peter at WaWaWa restaurant, which is located in the sculpture garden that features a section of the Berlin Wall in an interesting shelter. After the walk we relaxed on the dining verandah and enjoyed the tranquil scenery of lights over still water at night.

We are so relaxed about this being the end of the year; no chores are pressing, no jobs left to complete or contracts to sign. So we went birding to Venus drive on Tuesday morning. It was a lot hotter than yesterday and we really didn't make a very early start but we were still rewarded with 2 new sightings and a colugo (slow loris). These creatures have membranes that connect their legs and tail, which enables them to glide from one tree to the other. They are largely nocturnal and difficult to find but this one wasn't very high up the trunk of the tree. That is where they are usually seen perching, with head pointing upwards. When disturbed, it either flees up to the higher limits or freezes and hopes not to get noticed, which this one did. The cream vented bulbul (below left) with its prominent white eye ring was one of the new sightings, in the centre is the Eric's greatest picture of the greater racket-tailed drongo and the shy colugo is at right.