"It's the Tropics..." II

Now, where was I? Oh yes, that's right, arrival at Bill and Sunsook's palace. Well alright, it *is* a house but only just... It is this enormous mansion type thing with several bedrooms and bathrooms to match - that was novel, the only time I have ever had my own bathroom actually attached to my bedroom was when I used to stay at my Great Aunt Mary's house and I had a teency shower room connected to my room, but let me just tell you how nice it is to be able to get up in the middle of the night and walk straight into your bathroom - although in order to be completely fair, the distance between my bed and that bathroom is probably the same as the distance between my bedroom and the bathroom in my flat here! The space was absolutely terrific, I loved it, not that I actually need a three floor house or anything but if I had that much space, I should think living with other people might actually be tolerable... have I mentioned how much I loved the space?! Also wonderful are the orchids Bill and Sunsook are growing in the living room and in the front garden where they actually like, have breakfast in the morning because unlike me, they are proper grown-ups! *I* on the other hand, managed to avoid getting up in the morning and having breakfast on most days so that was great...! The other great feature of the house is the kitten, well, ok, she's not actually a feature per se... and although Sunsook will swear blind otherwise, she isn't as cute as Simon or mary-the-hamster, but she is very cute indeed and I had great fun playing with her until she decided to try and eat my jumper and sank her teeth into my arm instead... here's a picture of her in a carrier bag. (Don't ask me...)
So, when I arrived, Bill was away on business somewhere - possibly India - so it was up to Sunsook and me to battle on bravely and cope alone.. As you can imagine, that was a terrible hardship. what with us being such utterly waif like, girly creatures... (haaaaa haaaa!) but we managed. Somehow.
The first day we went to the Singapore Art Museum - I hear that sarcastic laughter at the back!- It was quite an education since as we all know, I am a complete ignoramus when it comes to art. But see, here's the good thing, because Sunsook is an Artist-with-a-capital-A, she does installations, and so, I had the privilege of my own art critic to tell me what was what as we walked around. Well, I say, walked, in my case it was probably more like staggered, from work to work, as I was still only half-awake despite the fact that it was very much afternoon by that point. If I said "Explain to me why this is art" once, I must have said it a thousand times and when I wasn't saying that I was asking "Yes, but what does it mean...?". I think I learnt, well let's say reinforced a previously formed idea, that I do not understand modern, well I say modern I suppose I really mean abstract, art in any form. That goes for literature, jazz, sculpture and paintings, too. I mean really, what does it mean?! What are these people trying to say?! Anyway, to Sunsook's credit she was remarkably patient, if I had been in her shoes, I would have turned around and told me not to be so thick. I think I did cheese her off just a tiny bit when I mentioned liking Renoir because she treated me to a 7 or possibly 7 and a half minute tirade about why Renoir is bourgeois, unoriginal, not representative of real life and in short, crap. So there you have it, you heard it here first; Renoir is rubbish! I did see one sculpture I really liked called "Anxiety" which was like, 3 slush coloured blobs each bigger than the previous one, constrained by bands of metal so they looked to me like brains being squeezed by vices. Most interesting. Of course, what the artist was actually thinking they represented was probably something totally different! Mostly I just stumbled around, looking at stuff going "huh?!" while Sunsook glided around elegantly muttering about lines and forms...!