young darryl, on leave from his teaching position in japan, is back in singapore for a week and we had dimsum at shaw house and then went to robertson quay for cake at canale. (lemon curd tart, with soft folds of meringue and candied zest, and a pot of what was suspiciously like sngbuay tea.) let's go say hi to my friend at the singapore tyler print institute, he says in between, and i agree readily to say hi to his friend, who turns out to be called yishan, and who'd majored in theatre studies and english at brandeis, and i liked her immediately because she said she missed tealuxe*. we were there chiefly to see picasso's vollard suite but we also saw the works of lin tian miao and chua ek kay. darryl admires chua ek kay's white lotus particularly and has been to see it twice while in the same collection i favour this one called migrating birds beyond the reeds. (i don't think the full collection was included in the catalogue because i don't remember seeing many of these.

*oh, and this is the place to mention it: a scandal, as always is, when one by one the signature shops of harvard square have moved away or shut down, but toscanini's is leaving harvard square - they can no longer afford the rents, but the central square shop remains open. but, i encourage people to buy toscanini's owner gus rancatore's memoirs ice-cream man: 25 years at toscanini's