spoils to share

Hi Everyone!

You who hold faithful to this cobwebbed blog, are thus now rewarded!

this is looong overdue. sorry folks for the lack of update, but as what i have told some concerned souls, i was keeping in spirit with the title of this blog. i was mugging in kingston.

so indeed, kingston is a cosy place. apparent below, ain't it so? my bed looks so personalised. it looks boring.

fret not for my sanity, there are a lot more things in my room now. this photo is dated beyond historical records, it should belong in some neanderthal archives. well it should, since its dweller remains a neanderthal. most especially cluttering my room now are foodstuff (really. not dirty laundry, nor touristy presents like bags of keychains and niagara falls tshirts) that i have amazingly managed to unearthed in reputedly the most british of ontario's cities. and as i told jessie, previously i didnt, but yes i am now missing singaporean food! but only when i started to prepare them myself. how ironic.

and so from the picture of city hall you see what characterized kingston architecture. yup even my campus looks like a multiple replica of the city hall. limestone were apparently the most abundant construction materiel; cathedrals and churches here have been known to be erected on limestone quarried directly from the ground on which those buildings are now situated, some 150 yrs ago.

so question of the day: what do they stand on, now that the limestone are above ground and making up the very buildings themselves? hmmmmm.....

St James Church, a small church on Queen's Main Campus. pretty little thing, elegant and dignified in a little corner of the campus. yet none of the buildings here are ever dwarfed by other more majestic cousins situated right next to them. more pictures of Queen's buildings akan datang. fact of the day: a by-law of the city once stated that no building in kingston could be taller than the first clocktower erected on Queen's campus, now still standing as part of Grant Hall. it was a mere 5 storeys tall. even today it is hard pressed to find more than 2 tall buildings downtown; for a city, it is amazing how i can always see the sky from whereever i am standing.

and my first trip around town on the first day i arrived! a 40 min ferry ride to Wolfe Island! this small island on Lake Ontario that lies between Kingston and New York. in fact there is a customs checkpoint on the island that allows Kingstonians to drive over to NY viz this ferry and the island, taking another ferry on the other side to cross the border. cool huh. farrell was right. if i swim long enough, i should be able to climb ashore Gotham City.

anyway as you can see the ferry operates every hour on the dot. means we had exactly one hour to explore the humongous small island. didnt catch much (didnt know what to catch either on our first day in kingston) but managed to snap a pic of this quaint little church built in early 19th century (i think it was 1821..?) and the sunset behind it... and the trees are still green; its still summer. a freezing one.

so that was the first day in kingston. thankfully, our days did not turn out as prophetically apocalyptic as our initial fears postulated at Subway after the outing: we needn't resort to eating Subway Daily Specials everyday every meal just to save money. we subsequently decided to 1) not save that money, 2) cook cheaper meals, 3) go for dining hall meal plans which turned out rather nice and most importantly, nutritious. more on food in later posts.

our second outing was more of sightseeing. weirong's landlord's son from his first marriage who isnt staying with weirong's landlord anymore but somehow still got to know weirong and agreed to bring us around kingston decided that the time and date was ripe for the mission, and so off we went across the Great Cataraqui River to Fort Frontenac and Fort Henry. to gain access to Fort Henry we embarked on clandestine covert operations.

first we rendezvous outside Royal Military College of Canada. for the un-NSed this is not some passionate gathering of the sexual nature. it simply means we get off the bus and start reading the map. we looked up from our map and saw this:

okay it wasnt so dramatic. we got off the bus and saw this; there was no map. we had a guide remember? so we took pictures. to think farrell once entered this gate. think again, he never did so as a cadet; he was a company sergeant major in the canadian army, not an officer. this place is responsible for the latter. still, specialists and NCOs rocks. nothing against officers. really.

looks like chinese high? grand looking place, with the RMC flag flying. in fact the canadian national flag is derived from the RMC flag in design; they held a competition to encourage submissions of designs for the canadian flag, and the winner replaced the insignia in the middle of the RMC flag with a maple leaf. minor changes were made still, but the flags remain extremely similiar.

and NS has value after all. Fort Henry required admission fee. we decided to blast our way in and maybe they might pay us the admission fee instead. so we hijacked a tank from the RMC. see the tiny singaporeans in the below pic?

operation success! tank successfully occupied, we mounted triumphantly atop the weapon of mass destruction. eh wait. the tank cannot move. is it because we have a taiwanese in our midst? no must be an enemy sabotage. so we do what singaporeans do best in a situation of impasse and crucial decision making. we take pictures.

pictures taken, time wasted, we climbed down from our conquered yet immobilized beast of war. singaporeans being singaporeans, some of us had to step on the "for exhibition only: do not climb or mount" signboard pitched in front of the tank to get our feet back on the ground.

after the nonsense we were in fort henry. the fort, built in 1812 and upgraded in 1836 to defend the Rideau Canal against Yankee invasion, was the reason such an invasion never took place, much like singapore's south-pointing guns during world war two. in doing so, the fort preserved ontario from american conquest. its capability was never put to the test, however, also much like our south-pointing guns, for their original purpose. it never saw action, except as prison for rebels captured during the 1837-38 rebellions.

the plaza or parade square, where cannons now lie in exibition; below, ammo and guns... the shells are empties now, but still weigh some bit...

and this is the view from the cannon above. martello tower covering the cannon's arc of fire in forward position. these martellos would dot the coastline of lake ontario as first line of coastal defence, from the land, against hostile vessels, which we did see on the ferry ride to wolfe island earlier.

home sweet home! till next time, that's all for now! essays coming up!