Indie Travels: The Arab Quarter - Singapore - part one

It isn't really called the Arab Quarter. I just gave it that name because its centre is a large mosque. Adding to it's Indieness, it is such an awe-inspiring blend of old and new and different cultures. Old shop houses but with such trendy wares and vibe. It's such a gem.
You can get good Middle Eastern food in the Arab Quarter. And it's much cheaper compared to Australian prices.
I am sorry that the pictures did not load in the order I took them in. But then I didn't think ordering them chronologically would be that important...
Most of the boutiques photographed are on Haji Lane. You can have a great time on Haji Lane shopping for clothes, Ray-Ban collectible sunglasses, stationary, eating ice-cream, buying vintage frocks for a fraction of Australian prices, playing video games and enjoying aircon. (i.e. It's the place to go when you're needing full-on Hipster Cultural Immersion)
Shame I didn't take a picture of a hippy lounge cafe on Haji Lane where people were sitting on the ground smoking pipes and making Japan aid materials.
Mate, Singapore has got a pretty good Indie shopping scene, it's not just the big shopping malls.

Halal Swedish cafe, Arab Street.

Tumbled-down house with jungle growing inside.

Graffiti in Singapore.

The search for perfection always leads us back to minimalism.
(Incase you don't get my comment, those boxes have t-shirts in them and say 'The Pursuit of the Perfect Tee Project".)

LEGO is the best educational toy. Now in love heart brooches.

Can you see the green popular penguins?

Crafty ribbon, a book on impressionism, the essential denim jeans and The Satorialist.

A scarf for every type of indie.

I guess the scarf just got a bit indier.

Sky Room, where I bought a cool dress. Chinese Indie fashion.

I wonder if that tasteful brick wall is functional or decorative. Look, there's retro furniture too. Upstairs was a bar.

Cats are the indiest animal. They roam around the place. There were lots of cats around the neighbourhood, so isn't that kind of grungey?

The bicycle - an indie must-have

The Kingdom of Spain

Ah, hello to the many readers who follow my blog! Hahaha. Anyway, since quite a while back I’ve been wanting to do a pilgrim walk through Spain. Wouldn’t that be so interesting? And a few days ago I watched Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations trip to Spain and I was thinking about Spain again. Hahaha. I know, Whiter Shades of Pale by Christian Lander has a chapter about the show. I realised a bit of hilarious hypocrisy in that episode – so, this Anthony Bourdain guy is tired of the whole nouvelle cuisine scene and is searching for something different, a bit more down to earth. Buhe was praising Spain as the place to go for the latest in food exploration, indulgence and study! Hahaha. I’m just linking to a page I think is quite inspiring and creative (read: ‘creative’ is an indie attribute) which I found on the internet. It’s an interactive metro map of the Spanish Indie music scene. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to show the map on this page so you’ll have to follow the link.

http://graficos.lainformacion.com/arte-cultura-y-espectaculos/musica-rock-and-roll/el-mapa-de-metro-del-indie-espanol_W8ZtXUdjluWQOpQ8EWz8m6/

Billie.

Penelope Tree

Penelope Tree was born into a rich, influential, dysfunctional British-American family in 1950. According to online sources, she was very intelligent and could get her way around New York when she was eight. Her first photo-shoot was at thirteen by Diane Arbus. In her early teens, she would go adventuring to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez concerts. When her family found out, she was sent to boarding school. At seventeen, she was "discovered" by Diana Vreeland at one of Truman Capote's Black and White Balls. Her family disapproved of a career in modelling, as they did four years before. But Penelope Tree had had it with her family life and dropped her plans to study English Literature at University and instead moved to London and into the photographer David Bailey's flat.

Penelope Tree is supposedly the Ultimate Sixties It Girl, the one who started Flower Power. She stood out from the other models at the time because she had her own personal style i.e. she was pretty Indie Indie. She was also apparently something like new York's representative to the Swinging Sixties (in London). Although she doesn't like to think of herself as an icon, I say that she is indeed an icon of the Sixties as she carried forward the whole "vintage dress-ups" look. I think that what made her such a fashion legend is that the way she dressed, did her makeup, carried herself and thought of herself were all one. For example, she felt like an "alien" (note: a negative thing) and did her make up to express herself as one. (And for a joke, guys, I tried to do my makeup like that in Year Eight. Fortunately I have no photographic records.) Ironically, I think the way Penelope Tree fully completed her "character" showed her as pretty classy, too. What an Indie character.

Penelope Tree and David Bailey
Unknown photographer
http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/2010/10/tree-squared-shaking-penelope-trees.html

At Truman Capote's Black and White Ball
Unknown photographer
http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/2010/10/tree-squared-shaking-penelope-trees.html

Unknown photographer
http://photos.lucywho.com/penelope-tree-photos-t285402.html

Unknown photographer
http://photos.lucywho.com/penelope-tree-photos-t285402.html

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So anyway, she was a very insecure and emotionally confused person at the time and had been suffering image issues for a number of years. She was very young and inexperienced but people took her as very mature. Then she had a scarring acne break-out, ending her career and the crumbling relationship with David Bailey. I read a story about her being caught with cocaine in a drug-bust. The police held her overnight, as they refused to accept that she was a famous model or of rich parents. Her reflection in an interview was that "In a way, I was stripped of my identity completely." So she travelled the world on the little money she had left and moves to Australia with her first husband.

Penelope Tree then spent many years of her life exploring spiritual paths. In the Eighties, she discovered Buddhism with the aid of the Dalai Lama. And she was released from continuation of the suffering of the past thirty or so years of her life. At a time when "people of the Sixties" were burning out, she was strengthened. An article written in 2008 says he was working in an organisation called Lotus Outreach International, founded by her Buddhist teacher, helping street-children in India. The organisation was also working in partnership with grass-roots women's projects helping give girls the opportunity to go to school. In Thailand and Cambodia, the focus was on sex-trafficking; doing things like teaching sex-trafficked girls new skills, educating communities about it and buying bicycles for girls to minimize the risk of being raped on the way to school.

An Indie in the Indiest sense of the word.

http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/2010/10/tree-squared-shaking-penelope-trees.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/03/celebrity.women

My New Thing with the Independent Grocers of Australia

Unless you're the seriously hardcore type of minority who shops only at farmers' markets and organic whole food shops, you probably shop at a supermarket. Yes? If so, then you know what I'm talking about. So, anyway, this is why supermarkets are your biggest window of insight into a suburb. (So, if you're a prospective home-buyer, you must visit the local supermarket when driving through the prospective suburb to see whether you really could live there.) These days, I keep coming up with a reason to pop into an IGA while I've been out, just so I can snoop about in there. IGA stores are more exciting than other supermarkets because individual stores have the freedom to stock what they want for their niche market.

IGA is a good place to buy your hors d'oeuvres in Canberra, the Nations's Capital. Having friends over for a movie? Quickly dash into the Deakin IGA to pick up a bag of Doritos and the gourmet salsa conveniently placed adjacently your chips. The Ainslie IGA is a favourite of mine. Do not let the humble facade of the suburb deceive you; their bread basket (the IGA) is filled with expensive pates, cheeses and small plastic tubs of hummus priced well above the ten dollar mark. The home-printed label on the container will tell you it has been made by someone whose name translates into English as 'Grandmother', deeming it an ethical buy. The sheer scale of the Ainslie IGA tells you it is not just a convenience store for Ainslie inhabitants, maybe meaning they find other supermarkets to be too mainstream, an unethical choice and lacking in local community feel. Nothing must comfort alternative people more than to find dirt on their radishes. The length of this paragraph is embarassing me. But anyway, this is the haven for buying Italian pasta flour, gluten-free kids' snacks, Asian food for people with dietary intolerances, vegetarian chilled foods and seeds for the garden, all in one go.

Despite all of that about the alternativeness of the Ainslie IGA, first prize in interior design must go to the Kingston IGA, which is another of my favourites. It's double the size that one initially thinks and it's the most dilapidated supermarket around! As a final sentence to this blog post, I've been told by friends that the once saw a man inside the Curtin IGA wearing nothing but a towel.