1. The Singapore Writers’ Festival kicked off with a bang on Friday night with Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon reading poetry, collaboration performances between poet Robert Pinsky and jazz guitarist Rick Smith, and readings of Teochew and Hokkien nursery rhymes. The festival runs until Nov 9 so it’s not too late to get involved. Find out more here, and don’t forget to check out our interviews with festival authors Jonathan Lethem, Geoff Dyer and Paul Theroux.
2. Everyone’s favorite mouthless cat (girl?) Hello Kitty, celebrated her 40th birthday in Singapore over the weekend with a massive fun run at Sentosa. 17,000 kitty revelers took to the streets to participate in the run, but many were disappointed with heavy rains marring the race, a lack of a wet weather plans and organizers running out of the promised Hello Kitty-branded finish medals. Runners angry posts and the official response were recorded on the event Facebook page.
3. The space capsule that will send the first Singaporean into space was unveiled at Resorts World Sentosa on Saturday. The local company behind it, IN.Genius, plans to launch our first galactic traveler on National Day 2015 with a helium stratospheric balloon into the atmosphere. You can see the Space for Singapore exhibition until Nov 30 at Resorts World Sentosa Aquarium.
4. Singaporean swimmers continued their success over the weekend at the Fina/Mastbank Swimming World Cup at the OCBC Aquatic Centre. Swimmer Tao Li took the silver in the 50m butterfly (less than a second behind the Netherland’s Inge Dekker who took the gold) and the 4x50m mixed freestyle relay team (Russell Ong, Lukas Ming Menkhoff, Nur Marina Chan and Amanda Lim) also took silver later in the day.
5. The weekend also mourned the passing of music composer Iskandar Ismail. The popular musician (and winner of the Cultural Medallion) was behind many successful Singapore national events, including National Day parades and the 2010 Youth Olympics. Ismail was also known for his unique musical style, fusing classical and pop as well as East and West influences.
