Arts @ Istana

We were at the Istana on Sunday for the art competition organised by NHB. This was the 1st time that the daughter did her drawing in an outdoor environment and the experience was sth worthy for us to make an effort to wake up early in a lazy Sunday morning. In fact i could count the number of occasions that the daughter was up by 8am, if i could recall were mostly for catching morning flights.

We started preparing on the day before, getting a white board which served as her drawing board and packing her colour pencils and a small mat on the night before. Missus also packed her favourite peanut butter sandwiches, just in case the whole thing took too long and we would have difficulty getting food.

It turned out that quite a fair bit of time was spent on the queue, waiting for our turns to show our IC (so as to have the admission weave) and the security check - gog thro metal detectors. I was quite worried that the daughter's good mood would change, cos we saw her yawning, and she might just doze off at the missus' shoulder if this went on for another half hour.

Thereafter we found a nice, cool spot under a tree so that our "great artist" would be inspired to draw a nice picture... which was none under than her favourite theme - "flowers, sun, butterflies"! Though this was typical of her previous artworks, we could tell that she really enjoyed the experience.

The Istana had a different tranquility compared to the Botanic Gardens, and the well-spruced trees and shrubs and the nice fountain could pass off as a lawn of a grand palace - missus told the daughter that this was Singapore's "palace", and that really caught the daughter to be interested in gog in there for a walk-through. She must have been quite impressed with the paintings and chandeliers... which bear some similarities to the disney storys which she was familiar with.

Apart from the gardens and nice decor, we were quite impressed with the windmills there. It was claimed to have at least 10,000 or so. The daughter was quite happy to see this sight, and there was even one kiosk where we could cut and fold to make our wind mills, and she was quite elated to see it turn under strong wind (i tried to create some artificial wind, but my lungs were not strong enuf)

Another interesting sight at the children competition was the active participation of the parents... helping their kids to colour or shade... probably their kids must have become too tired and the parents had to chip in. And i wonder how would the judges know if the winning pieces were indeed truly drawn by the kids...