Monday, July 24, 2006

Upcoming Pedal Ubin Ride @ 13 Aug Sunday

Touch and Smell
Pedal Ubin Guide and Project Manager, Ivan Khong aka Wingman, in action! Photo by November.

This 3.5-4 hour ride is suitable especially for those who are
clueless about Ubin. Don't worry if you're a novice cyclist. As long
as you can balance yourself on a bike, you can certainly join us!

More details on the Pedal Ubin website.
http://pedalubin.rafflesmuseum.net/

Time: 8am meet at Changi Point Ferry Terminal.

Cost: $10.50 (inclusive GST) per participant per ride. It goes
towards paying for the bumboat ride to Pulau Ubin and whole day
bicycle rental. It also includes a token sum to indicate your
commitment to the ride. If you are bringing your own bicycles, the
charge is $7.35 (inclusive GST) per participant per ride.

Contact: To register, email pedalubin @ yahoo . com

Pre-registration is essential. You will receive a confirmation email.

Places are limited.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Days earlier, other student dies after fall from bike

The New Paper, 18 Jul 2006

ANOTHER ITE student suffered a similar fate last week.

Ms Zawiyah Mohd Muliana, 18, a biomedical student from the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) Simei fell off her bicycle and hit her head while cycling in Pulau Ubin on Tuesday.

The regular cyclist had gone there with 12 of her schoolmates for a cycling trip. She was cycling in Ubin for the first time.

Initially, it was thought that she was okay as she had suffered only some cuts.

But minutes later, she fainted and slipped into a coma and died in hospital the next day.

After she fainted, she was ferried back to the mainland and rushed to Changi General Hospital at around 1pm.

It was revealed that she had a blood clot in her brain which needed immediate surgery.

She was admitted into the intensive care unit after surgery.

She died on Wednesday morning - 20 hours after going into a coma. Her funeral was on Thursday.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

The hunt for Ubin Granite

On 13 July 2006, I led a group of American students, staff and faculty from the Semester at Sea program to Pulau Ubin.

Despite it being a thursday, the island was crowded. Mainly with NPCC cadets and possibly participants at the outward bound school. It was the first time I saw people canoeing off the Jetty at Ubin.

Canoeing at sea
Photo by November

Some of the students were there as a field trip for their class on Environmental Geology by the Professor onboard, Prof Robert Carmichael from the University of Iowa. Being a geologist, you can only imagine how excited he was to be on the "granite island". He was on a quest for the Ubin Granite.

Thai Temple
Photo by November

It had never occured to me before that it would be so difficult to find granite on Ubin. Afterall, it is the island where we have been harvesting granite from for more than a century up till the last quarry closed in the late 1990s. However, the quest proved rather challenging.

First of all, in order to see how exactly Ubin granite looks like, you have to look for freshly exposed rocks. That is almost impossible because most of the rocks around the island are deeply weathered. You can tell which rocks are weathered by seeing the dark color on the surface, the smooth surface, or sometimes even a layer of moss on the top. Freshly exposed granite should be bright and rough. However, the only such patch of rock was on the steep cliff face at Ubin Quarry!

Secondly, although we find a lot of granite pebbles and bits of rocks strewn across many of the roads and trails, most of these are not from the island itself. A lot of it are actually transported from the mainland and dumped there as a site of disposal. Talk about foreign talent! Even our native ubin granite are possibly being replaced by 'foreign' granite materials from the mainland.

Waves
Where has our granite gone? Photo by November

Although the Ubin granite are often considered similar as the Bukit Timah Granite on mainland Singapore, studies have shown that:

"The Pulau Ubin Granite has some differences from the Bukit Timah Granite. It is richer in minerals, e.g. green hornblende and brown biotite occuring in clusters. Inclusions occur commonly on Pulau Ubin and Changi, representing mainly the bodies of basic rock and these can vary from 1 cm to tens of metres." (Wong et al, 2005)
Alas, the day ended rather disappointly for the professor despite several encounters with the granite kind but I do not think he has actually managed to find any real Ubin Granite.

Mudskippers!
Photo by November

Still, everybody enjoyed themselves after a long day on the granite island, discovering mudskippers in the flesh for the first time and "getting away from the city on the mainland" as some of them confided in me.

Dog at the Wayang Stage
Photo by November

It was a satisfying day for one and all, especially knowing that a group of people walked away enriched with a little known and fast disappearing side of Singapore.

For more photos, visit my flickr set of the trip.

Source:
  • Lu Xi Xi, Wong Poh Poh & Chou Loke Ming (2005) Singapore's Biophysical Environment, Mcgraw Hill
  • Thursday, July 06, 2006

    More cookery magic on Ubin

    Cooking Class in a Kampong House on Pulau Ubin (29 July 2006, Saturday, 8.30am - 2pm)

    Menu: Nasi Kerabu. We wil go harvest the jungle herbs for the cooking. This is a hands on cooking class. You will also be served Lontong upon arrival.
    1. Nasi Kerabu
    2. Sambal Blachan

    3. Butter Pepper Fresh Prawns
    4. Ice Kachang.

    Cost: S$85 per person (Cost includes ferry and taxi ride on the island)

    Contact Ruqxana at Cookery Magic