John Thomson, photographer, was born today in 1909; he had a studio where now stands Raffles Hotel's Palm Court in Singapore. Here's a wonderful photograph by George P. Landow that gives a good idea of that place, from the fascinating site http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/singapore/4h.html .
On this same day in 1819 Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, arrived in Singapore, and there is of course a Sir Stamford Raffles Suite named after him in his namesake hotel. Next year, after our library is finally unpacked (it just arrived two days ago after a long soujourn since July in Asia and the Atlantic, and I have literally hundreds of boxes to unpack), I'll try to get a photo of that...
From Barbara Ann Kipfer's 365 Days of Savoring: Things to Be Happy About in 2011:
unloading the groceries
-- which I just did, with the happy help of our new resident kitty.