"What's Your Name" - Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1997

Hello again from Singapore!

The courses I'm running all this week are in the Singapore Marriott, where I'm also staying. From Monday to Wednesday, I taught in the "Belimbing Room". The name sounds awful -- but then I guess it's not actually "DE-limbing", is it?

I asked one of the waiters what "Belimbing" means. He told me it's a type of fruit. In fact, he told me that all of the meeting rooms are named after fruit.

That made me curious...and this evening, I've looked up all of the meeting room names here, just to see if he was right. Not quite, it seems...

Firstly, here's some information about "Belimbing" -- which is otherwise known as starfruit.

For today and tomorrow's class, I've been moved to the "Lengkuas Room". "Lengkuas" seeme to be a rhizome.

And here are the other meeting rooms' names...

"Asam Room" - "Asam" seems to be tamarind.

"Terigu Room" - "Terigu" appears to be some sort of wheat flour -- take a look at the entry for "bubor terigu".

"Ketumbar Room" - I found "Ketumbar Jawa", which is a sort of Chinese coriander.

So there's your cultural lesson for the day!

I'm headed home tomorrow night...so I'll write more once I'm back in north Oxfordshire over the weekend...and after I've had some sleep!

Janet