Goin Green bananas

As part of my new year resolution to consolidate my blogs, for the first post of 2008, I present here a little story of how a crazy kid went green bananas... enjoy!

Funny how life moves in cycles. About 15 years ago I started a little eco company in Singapore called Green Bananas that made a paper making kit for people to recycle their own paper at home. Green because I wanted people to know it's environmental bent but more likely because I was totally green to the cutthroat world of business and Bananas because everyone thought I was crazy to give up a good and stable job for what? An unlikely little paper making kit that may not even have a market.

We did sell about 1,000 kits during the 2 or so years the little Green Bananas was out there doing paper making demos; giving magazine, TV & paper interviews encouraging people to start recycling paper in their own homes (in those days, Singapore had no recycling system for anything.


Things have changed now though) and even holding a handmade paper art exhibition called, you guess it, Paper * People * Planet.
Back then I had quit my well-paying
job as a writer for a Interior design magazine and put all my meagre savings into designing, manufacturing and marketing a simple paper making kit that made A4 paper.


It had everything you needed to make paper (apart from the blender) and packaged, quite charmingly in a jute bag.

How I managed to wrangle my friends & family to help out in it's publicity and sales I have no idea. I just stand in grateful awe that they did. We had quite a ride with it. I am willing to bet that at least 50 friends and family still remember how to make their own paper today. And if they've forgotten and would like to teach their children, the next post will help them along their way.

And this is was the purposely unintimadating instruction leaflet that came with the kit.

And now, here I sit years later, writing a blog on the beautiful diversity of handmade & recycled paper. On how people can use this humble medium of paper to help make this planet a bit better, by art & by recycling, for those who live in it now. And also for the children who will come after.

Greening the earth seemed so possible then.

And so it still is. It must be.

Because if not now, then WHEN?

And if not me, then WHO?

When Cousins Come to Stay

The good thing when family comes to visit is not just familiar faces bringing stories from home, and this trip in particular, cousin Diana schlepping in 4 kg of kopi Cap Karpal Tanker (ooohhhh yummie), but that I actually get a chance to visit the sights of Vancouver again.

After living here almost 3 years, I've gotten cynical about this city and have been gradually only concentrating on it's negatives. Like, the crazy road system, with it's wonky inbuilt frustrations every km or so and bleeding heart liberals insisting that hard earned tax-payers money is used to provide safe injection sites for the continuing of illegal drug addiction instead of finding a way to help them kick the habit. Coming from a smoothly run and fairly drug free Singapore, little things like this really began to grate.

So having the cousins visit compelled me to look for places of beauty & fun in and around Vancouver. Places that celebrated the energy & specialness of this city that butted between the foot of the Coastal Mountain range and the Straits of Georgia. And, once I relaxed my prejuidices and looked, these places weren't too difficult to find.

The Van Dusen Gardens for one is my favourite. It 's in Vancouver West and has large grounds divided into plants from different regions, lakes laced with pretty Japanese maples, a funky hedge maze and gorgeous temperate gardens. The garden is in the middle of the city yet, when you sit on the benches by the small lake,under the dappled shade of the willows, you hardly notice the city.

The trip up to Burnaby Mountain help give the girls a view of the city. From mountain to river, from the deep fjiords to the open ocean. Also there were the funky totems donated to the city of Vancouver by a sister city in Japan.


The problem with being a tour guide is that although you can control the itineiry, you can't really control the weather. So, for most of the time the cousins were here, we had the wet & grey Vancouver is fairly famous for. Still, that didn't stop us tough & intrepid sight-seers who picked the wettest day for a hike up Lynn Canyon somewhere in between some of the North Shore Mountains.
The suspension bridge alone was well worth the visit, and that's not counting the spectacular waterfall you get to see while standing in the middle of the bridge. The 20 minute hike to Rice Lake was, however, a disappointment (for me at least). BC hydro was working on a big water treatment plant there and the trail led past it.

Still, by the time we got to the smallish deserted lake, the sky had dried up , at least for a bit, and the view of the lake that unfolded before us was quite magical.

Not too bad for a city of over two million, to be able to feel like you are alone in the wilderness by taking juts a 20 minute hike.

Home & Back again

It's been some time since the girl's been back to Singapore since moving to Canada.
And she was a bit apprehensive.

With all the news I'd read on the Channel News Asia website (one no longer reads The Straits Times Online since they started charging. As if SPH hadn't made enough dosh selling their Times House site to Condo developers. They have to wring out what's left of an overseas Singaporean's pitiful non-taxed income to subscribe to their site).
I digress. From the stories of how quickly Singapore had changed in the past two years; with Vivo city coming up, the new developments in Marina South and the like, this girl was afraid that she'd not recognise her city anymore.

So it was gratifying that some things had remained where she had left them some 2 years ago. Thank god the good people at Hair Fair remained at The Adelphi and thank god Joo Hock still gave the best hair cut. The MRT still worked with economy & efficiency. There were no workers strike to impede a persons daily life. Everything chugged along at a pretty good clip. I pace I understood.

Also it was good that the 3Fs still remained, more or less how I'd left them. The Family were safe,healthy & busily happy (despite their complaints), the Friends were mainly still in S'pore and were all grappling with their learnings, their plans & their new additions....and the final F, so dear to a S'porean's soul, the Food still tasted the same. The quality of Tiong Bahru's Kampung Chai Tow Kueh was spot on. Altho I noticed that the size of their portions had shrunk. Must be the higher rent in the swanky, new, escalatored hawker centre.


I was really impressed with what was happening with Clarke Quay tho. It's a tiny step toward the "Singapore-Under-The- Climatically-Controlled-Dome" idea which I'm sure many sweltering S'poreans have proposed over kopi at the corner coffee shop. Very Star Trek.