Winter Solstice (冬至)

In scientific term, winter solstice (冬至) is an astronomical phenomenon which marks the shortest day and the longest night of the entire year. In another word, it happens during the point in time when the earth has reached the position in its orbit such that the sun's daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest. When the northern hemisphere experiences winter solstice during December, the southern hemisphere would experience the reverse which is the summer solstice.

For the current year of 2014, winter solstice in the northern hemisphere occurs at 21 December 23:03 UTC time (i.e. 22 December 07:03 Singapore time). After this day, the daylight hours will gradually lengthen (for the case of equatorial regions like Singapore, there won't be any difference). For this reason, the Chinese considers this day as a start of a new lunar year as more daylight means more positive energy flowing in. 

Different cultures have their own ways of observing winter solstice. The southern Chinese consume glutinous rice ball (汤圆) during family gathering while the northern Chinese enjoy dumplings filled with meat or vegetables. Since most Chinese in Singapore are descendents of southern Chinese, eating glutinous rice ball is a common practice during winter solstice. Every year around this time, my mum would prepare glutinous rice ball to offer to ancestors during prayer and also for the family to consume. According to Chinese tradition, eating glutinous rice ball symbolises becoming older by a year although in reality, we grow older each year whether we consume glutinous rice ball or not. Winter Solstice is widely observed by the Chinese communities in Singapore as this is a time for Taoist/Buddhist to offer prayer to ancestors and the fact that this day is very near to Christmas, it is almost impossible to forget. Most importantly, this is the time of the year when students are having semester break and working professionals are clearing annual leaves, thereby allowing more time to celebrate this occasion.

Glutinous rice balls are usually filled with peanuts, sesame or red bean paste. However, these days there are many new flavours such as Chocolate or fruit paste. Nevertheless, those filled with peanuts are my favourite.

If you are reading this post, whichever culture you belong to and wherever you are, I wish you a happy winter solstice and hope that you have an enjoyable time with your loved ones.

Christmas Island

Watching the drama The Journey: Tumultuous Times (信约：动荡的年代) currently showing on MediaCorp channel 8 made me reliased that my understanding of Singapore history is quite limited. Another thing that came to my mind recently is a place known as Christmas Island which I first heard of in secondary school when one of my classmate mentioned that this island used to be part of Singapore until one of our ex-president sold it to Australia. After doing some research online, I found out that he wasn't exactly correct.

Recently when Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott's flight stopped over in Singapore while returning home from London, our Prime Minister treated him breakfast and the two leaders had a discussion. This news was reported on social media and there were people who asked whether our Prime Minister talked about the topic of buying back Christmas Island. Apparently, I am sure it wasn't discussed.

First of all, I am sure lots of Singaporeans and perhaps even the older generation are unaware of this island. Christmas Island is situated in the Indian Ocean, quite near to Java, Indonesia. It probably takes only about 1.5 hours of flight to get there from Singapore. The main activity on this island is phosphate mining and the land crabs and sea birds are most noticeable fauna on the island. There are even flats on the island similar to the one shown below that are build in accordance to Singapore Housing Board standards in the 1960s.

The island got its name because it was discovered on Christmas day by either English or Dutch explorers. Somehow, the island was controlled by British and was administered under the Administration of the Government of Singapore which was still a crown colony of Britain back then. For some reason, the UK government decided to transfer the sovereignty of the island to Australia in which the Australian government paid £2.9 million in compensation to the Singapore government. Literally, it was the colonial government that sold Christmas Island before Singapore's independence and not our own government.