Daily Archives: July 28, 2008

Grocery Shopping at Tekka Market & Surfing on the Airwaves from Radio 1003

Yesterday marked the third day of the Singapore Garden Festival (SGF) and it started with me meeting up with Richmond and Lily at Little India. We then visited Tekka Market to hunt for some interesting vegetables for showcasing and educational purposes in the Green Culture Singapore booth at Suntec City Convention Center where the Festival was held.

I found two interesting vegetables on sale in the makeshift Tekka Market. Both were cucurbits and I intuitively knew the first one was a bittergourd relative from the seeds found inside the fruit. They borne their characteristic ‘bite-marks’ on the edge of the rather flattish seeds. The identity of the plant that produced these fruits is probably Momordica dioica rather than Momordica foetida. Young green fruits sold in the market are shown in the picture below.

Another fruit that I bought is most likely to be the pointed gourd (Trichosanthes dioica) and a picture of the immature green fruits of the pointed gourd sold in a number of stalls in the market is shown in the picture below.

 After all the grocery shopping had been done at Tekka Market, we made our way back to Suntec Convention Center. At about 2 pm, I hosted Wilson Ng, a radio host from Mandarin radio station, Radio 1003 where I then brought him around the SGF and introduced him to the various exhibits on both the fourth and sixth levels.

After a quick, two hour long tour, we headed for the radio station at the Singapore Press Holdings located at Jalan Toa Payoh. The radio show about the SGF started at about 5 pm and we chatted at length about the various exhibits we saw at the Festival.

Halfway through the show, I found myself succumbing to the fatigue that had been accumulated over the past several days. My thought processes kind of slowed down and my mouth also did not cooperate with my mind and I found it somewhat difficult to convey my thoughts in the spoken form.  

I just hope that the radio show went well.