Moved...

Good bye to Green meadows.. n Hallo Woodgrove!

Almost 20 good years in green meads, definitely miss e plc lots. Across e road is e beautiful & cool pierce reservoir & that part of upp thomson road is known as e 'green tunnel'. Anyone who's been scubadiving before, well, this is like seagrass but above ground. Bird's nest ferns, streching branches, winging birds.. n blueskies above, green-ness otherwise.

Now, i wake up to see a big expanse of blue skies n clouds. High up, different but nice.. n adjusting to a new experience.

Still remisnescing over green meadows. Blue skies beckoning :)
(i'll post some skies pics in e next posts)

News: Expert warns of unrest as rice price soars

LOS BANOS, Philippines (AFP) - - As the price of rice hovers near record levels, many poor countries face the spectre of riots by hungry people, according to one of the world's leading rice experts.

- These are just some of the problems that keep Robert Zeigler, head of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) up late at night.
Located at Los Banos, a university town south of Manila, IRRI is regarded as the one of the world's premier centres for rice research.

- "I worry about Indonesia because they've been trying to source rice," Zeigler said.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080319/tts-food-commodities-rice-politics-c1b2fc3.html

Winnie's rambles:
Especially in a well-run urban cluster like Singapore,
Food is something we take so for granted, for it almost automatically "appear" on our plates. All we have to do is stroll round to the nextdoor stall-order a plate of chicken rice or whatever we fancy at that moment.. or check out the aisles of NTUC & Coldstorage - we bring to you the freshest!

Have we ever thought how it really.. step by step get to us.
And the real world where it is grown, harvested, transacted, transported.. and also the factors that affect its availability & affordibility on the ground?

Did the rice just heavenly appear in front of us?

There are real pressures on provision of basic human fuel to our plates.. or maybe more like our neighbours plates. Something to think about.
Indonesia has 124million just on the isle of java, and already cropping intensively, carving terraces, struggling to increase croppage per year. A swarm of pest, crop disease or just havoc in the climate would wipe out the crops. As easily as that.

I hope this wont keep me up at night ;) ..
And hope at e least that i wont be living ignorantly in bliss.

Last night, over coffee with Ramesh & friends, we talked about T.R.I.S (sounds something like this), a special russian problem solving methology, and one key point was that solutions can head towards zero resource & resistance, towards a central Super System. (hmmmm**)
Lets try to do our part, and also it will be very interesting to be in an era of the unfolding of events and big changes.

Sand Mandala

A Dzambala sand mandala at TC, created in abt 2 weeks & dissolved on 8march-2008 :) !