Dangdut music and dance in Singapore and all about Home  · Global Voices
Preetam Rai

Singapore is a good place to explore  cultures from all over South East Asia. The blogger at licencetospill took some of her friends to a Dangdut club. Dangdut is a form of music from Indonesia. The blogger explains
the main difference between a DD song and any other indonesian song is the cheesy lyric. there’s a lot of lurrrveeeee and heartbreaking going on in there. numerous mention of “hati” (heart) and “sayanggggg” (loveeee) in the lines. there’s a lot of onomatopoeia like “auu auuuu auuuu”, “aduhhhh aduhhh aduhhhh”, “degappp deguppp deguppp”, all to mimick the sound of a pulsating heart. wakakaka!
Check out the post for a video that demos the moves that go with dangdut:
now, how do you execute a successful DD move? i tell them they can start by doing a slow-motion running movement with their hands. once they have done so, move the shoulders back and forth. then, tilt the shoulders up and down according to the beat. and tadaaaa, a simple DD move for you!
It's not all dancing though. Curious about Sikh culture, a Singaporean Muslim visits a Gurudwara – a Sikh temple and, in contrast to his initial reservation, finds a warm welcome.
Beyond Singapore itself Peishan, a Singaporean living in Chicago, wonders if Singapore is really her home:
How to tell my parents that Singapore isn’t really my home anymore? I mean, yes, they are back there, I grew up there, they took care of me there, but how do you call home a place where you haven’t lived in years, and do not intend to live in for the next few years?
The post got commented heavily and the replies ranged from people missing home -
Its Singapore for me. For now. Here in Michigan, I don’t have many friends, no family, no house, no home, no sense of belonging, not much memories, no attachments. I will pack up and leave with no guilt & no regrets once I’m done with school. But of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t reminsence about it once in awhile after that.
to  this one from Kevin -
For me I don’t mind living anywhere in the world, so long as there’s an Internet connection (I’m serious!). I’ve two younger siblings so my parents encourage me to go as far as I can (career-wise, not proximically-speaking!). I must admit though that my decision to go anywhere would be limited to where my partner can go, which is something I fully respect. While I would miss Singaporean food as well as my friends and family (no particular order!), I can live with the idea of the Internet giving me a compressed experience of home. After all, I think it’s always good to experience new cultures and to learn a few things from them.
Budak  reports that a  baby colugo that was injured  by poachers two weeks ago has been put to sleep. It had stopped eating and become weak. A culogo is a tree-dwelling, gliding mammal found in South East Asia. The injured animal was under the care of nature volunteers who tried their best to take care of it.
We end in a graveyard. A bunch of paranormal enthusiasts keen on history went on a cemetery tour. They failed to see anything strange but discovered some interesting historical trivia:
And a little distance away, near to the edge of the cemetery, sheltered by a huge Frangipani tree and kind of enclosed by a low brick wall, are 14 tombs, said to belong to the Geishas who lived in the late 1800s in Singapore. The earliest died in 1899, said to be working at Malay Road (the current Bugis Junction, where once upon a time, a Japanese community flourished).