Singapore Granite

Singapore is near the equator and while I was there it was around 30 degrees C every day. Bit of a rainy season Oct/Nov/Dec and we had a few thunder storms some evenings. Back here in Leechpool it's nearer 0 degrees C and I'm freezing my butt off. It's enough to freeze the b***s off a brass monkey and I am cold. The top two pictures here show the triple tower blocks next to the Marine Bay and you can see the curious boat-cum-space-ship connecting the tops. It's truly sublime and magnificent and they are full grown trees that you can see on the roof garden. I visited the Gardens By the Bay next to this structure. Acres and acres of tropical planting with dragon-fly lakes and cultural gardens of many nationalities.....my favourites would be Indian, Chinese and Indonesian. I also visited the rain-forest National Park of Bhukit Timah and I was pleased to see that the mountain was a Granitic Basalt Outcrop. Like a higher Dartmoor and Exmoor except populated with buttressed hardwoods, and the bio-diversity of the trees was simply staggering. Hundreds of different species vying for space. A different tree every few yards. It annoyed me to see the information tags on so many trees because every tag explained in what way the particular tree was useful to mankind. This tree for match-boxes, this tree for match-sticks, this tree for furniture, this tree for tool handles and fence posts and sadly the tempines tree so useful for window frames and door frames that there are hardly any remaining on the island of Singapore. There are many roads in Singapore named after this tree and there is also an MRT station named Tampines, slight different spelling but celebrating the contribution this wonderful tree has made to the developing Singapore.
Oh yes....I said that I was pleased about the centre of the island being a Basaltic/Granitic Basolith. It means that the volcanic interior of the earths core has risen up and cooled to make a solid dense massive block of stone/rock which essentially means that you won't get an earth-quake. Krakatoa isn't far away......and we all know what happened there. Indonesia was struck pretty bad by the Tsunami and serves it right for being in an unstable area.....but lucky Singapore is just that. Lucky. It's also the reason why monstrous tower blocks can be happily constructed on such firm footings. And of course you have the granite for building colonial palaces and Raffles Hotels and walls and terraces like at Fort Canning. The massive quarry in Hindhede National Park, now filled with water like a huge Alpine lake, bears testimony to the usefulness of this magnificent material.