PM Lee comes to the Canal Park

The PM came down to our local park for a community garden party, so we thought we’d go along to say hi.

We’d seen the advertising that MP Lee would be coming down to the canal park (check out my parks of Singapore post about the name) but we really didn’t know what to expect.

What was going on?

As we walked towards the park there were a couple of police around to organise the traffic in what is a back road normally.  First up we noticed the tents that were up in the park, balloons and lots of people.  The park is used but you never see more than 10 people here normally.

It was nice to be greeted by Dr Maliki, who is one of the local MPs.  We have met him a couple of times as he does his rounds of the estate and he’s even used our drive for the food of one of his community meetings once.

The whole thing was well setup for kids and the first thing that we got given was some bubbles to blow. Due to the number of people we just parked the pushchair (one of the advantages of Singapore, it did disappear) and headed to the playground area.

The PM Arrives

When PM Lee arrived he was mobbed as everybody wanted to get a photo or say hello. It was at this point that we got the opportunity to look around some of the stalls.

It was then that we realised how much of a community event it was. They had all turned out to show off what they were doing and rightly so. The first tent we went to was selling organic vegetables. The really surprising thing was that the local gardening society had grown them on the school roof! We bought a box for $8, they were also handing out composted coffee grounds from a well-known coffee shop chain and seeds to encourage people to grow some veg at home.

The tent next-door had bunch of folks turning leaves into insects!  Mainly grasshoppers but also cockroaches.  There was also a tent repotting orchids, not sure if they were being given away or not.

As close as we got

We then had to get out of the way with the little ones as there was such a mass of folks around the PM. He did go on to also plant a tree and unveil a plaque.

A band from a local school even knocked out a couple of numbers by the beetles.

As you can see in the photo of the band there was balloon sculpting for the kids, I’m still not convinced by balloon swords and getting stabbed all the way home.

There was also a stand about worm farms, many folks said that they couldn’t as they lived in HDBs but apparently the lady displaying them does exactly that. We’ll be looking into getting one of those for our plant pots and apparently there are no problems with cockroaches which was our concern.

We didn’t get round all the tents but definitely the strangest tent was the local space club! It seamed to be mainly expats and one of them brought his replica space suit that had been signed by the last man on the moon!

All in all a fun community afternoon, so if you see banners around of these events I’d encourage you to go along be it with the PM turning up or just the opening of the local lime grove. Just didn’t get the opportunity to say hello to PM Lee, he’s a popular man.