Kevin was invited to speak at blinkBL_NK #22 about bicycling after an impromptu session at a recent BarCamp. He invited Zendogs to chip in and I agreed to help out.
“The Rise of the Foldies” was the working title for an article I had drafted recently. I had to toss it as the article coverage changed, but it was suitable for the narrower confines of this talk and I happily revived it.
blinkBL_NK says,
“Wed 20 Jun 2012: 7:00 pm, first speaker 7:30 pm @ Blu Jaz, 11 Bali Lane (entrance via Ophir Road, S 189848) Cost: Free to enter, $5 suggested donation.”
I was told the Q&A would be energetic and interesting so am looking forward to that. Then, naturally, Kevin says, he’d flying back from Bangkok that day and hopes he will not be late. Now, at least one of us should ride down that day and with a spoke fallen out of the GT during my last ride, I’d better check that Brompton’s tyre.
How Singaporeans are re-discovering the freedom of cycling
“Cycling was a liberating experience of our childhood, made possible by a safe environment available to young and unsupervised riders. Through scraped knees and elbows, our skills developed organically with time.
Urbanization has since robbed our streets of their nurturing role in communities. Increasingly crowded roads with fast and large vehicles saw cyclists fade with loss of safe spaces even as we became more sheltered.
But in the past few years, there has been a dramatic change, brought about by the rise of foldies and the extension of the PCNs. Thousands have returned to the saddle and we now ask “how ready is our city to embrace this evolution?”
Speakers
- N. Sivasothi (@sivasothi) aka Otterman is a lecturer at the Department of Biological Sciences and a research associate of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research at the National University of Singapore. He maintains several blogs including “Cycling in Singapore”, leads a longstanding cycling group called the Zen Dogs, and is working with his student on a nature cycling tour on the north-eastern PCNs called the “Otter Trail”.
- Kevin Lim (@brainopera) is an Assistant Director, Strategy & Experience at The National Art Gallery, Singapore. In his previous life at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), he was known for his “social cyborg” experiment in memory, privacy and cybernetics, Nowadays he’s examining the bicycle as a timeless, sustainable form of personal transportation.
Otterman speaks... 