The Pasir Panjang Guides offer the MIA trail each May since 2006 as part of International Museum Day festivities in Singapore. It started when Melissa, then from NHB’s Corporate Comms asked me for something interesting. So Amy, Stella and I over breakfast at Holland Village cooked up this idea, influenced by the night at the museum theme.
Though we had to abandon ALL our scary ideas in case of casualties (people are so faint-hearted these days), the tour proved to be popular and we always had a full load of two buses within days of first notice.
We had included Memories at Old Ford Factory since it had just opened and National Archives wanted to promote awareness of this new gallery. However, the guides agreed that the itinerary was too crowded for the average visitor so I cut it down to just Raffles Museum, Kent Ridge Park and Reflections at Bukit Chandu this year. It’s going to be more comfortable this year!
Despite the late start to IMD’08 publicity this year, our first bus for the MIA trail is already almost full. I usually try to give the public a head start but since word is out late this year, I’ll let NUS staff know directly tomorrow. I might stretch it to Wednesday latest. They really sign up in large numbers when we let them know so we reserve February’s walk for their first notice.
This IMD MIA webpage was setup last year when I was dabbling with Rapidweaver at Kevin’s urging. I forgot how to use Rapidweaver or was too lazy to open the app two months ago as I was in the midst of teaching. So I simply used TextWrangler to edit last year’s page. That took little effort, and I just had to get the details right.
I added the IMD’08 logo from a screen grab of the webpage at yesterday.sg/imd08 and added the “3 days, 20 museums, 37 events” since that about sums it up. This webpage went live early today.
I wrote to my fellow Friends of Yesterday that IMD’08 is modest this year. But the guided activities and discounts make it worthwhile. Often the most important thing at a museum is the availability of a guide. Most of the IMD events are guided or they are running staff directed activity. The minority are just discounts/goodie bag based. Duty staff are usually out in more significant numbers so there is an air of festivity normally absent at other times which makes it a plesant time to visit.
I’ll be having a busy Saturday – Sungei Buloh in the morning, another meeting, the MIA tour and rushing back to dive into bed – I’m cycling the NTU round island Bike Rally ’08 the next morning and its a 5.30am start!
I would have wanted to go for the Malay Heritage Centre’s line up of activities and try my hand at calligraphy. Well, maybe next year!
Otterman speaks... 