A small world after all

At Raffles City this week they've set up a Lego Creators World. This is a chance for kids to play with and buy Lego sets, as at the googly-eyed crocodile car on the left, and for experts to show off what they've made, like in the giant spider display soon to bring Lego Wisconsin to its knees. I'm kind of suspicious of projects completed where everything's the appropriate color, but I can't deny the evidence of buildings in bloom, ready to be picked, or other wonders.

There are some life-size figures, like this of Boba Fett, who like many bounty hunters is not as tall as you might expect. (Nobody in movies is as tall as anyone else expects, which is why the observation someone isn't so tall is a more common movie greeting than ``Hello.'') By walking around I discovered what I didn't know before, that Fett carries a small Chrysler building on his back. There's also a neat little Max Weinberg, showing off his shiny robes and hourglass figure.

They had a lovely display of local attractions, like a dramatic re-creation of Merlion Park, which was set up with a button that meade something roar and did some lighting effect that just didn't photograph. In this whirlwind tour of the Pacific Rim you could see a nice Taiwanese temple adjacent to a Vietnamese hotel, though inexplicably I forgot to photograph the labels so I don't know which they are.

The Great Wall of China and the Sydney Opera House turn into surprisingly convincing Lego versions. I took this picture of the Opera House because nobody ever shows the real thing from this angle. On this little simulated beach nearby you could see a poor diver with his legs cut off.

There's also New Zealand's franchise of the Big Spikey Tower concept, around which was this charming slice of life scene: ``This is the best vacation ever, honey! Let me buy you a blender!'' There was another couple enjoying their blender unaware that just a few feet away was a charming little Lego drug runner roaring into Lego Hong Kong. All this was taking place at the Hong Kong Convention and Expo Centre, seen here in range of the Singapore Merlion (not to scale).

It was all really a lot of fun to look over, although I didn't buy anything, and they only had licensed theme sets for sale rather than just tubs of, you know, bricks. There were no dinosaurs in sight.

Trivia: The Continental Army, when George Washington assumed command in 1775, nominally consisted of 20,242 officers and men, 17,215 of whom were present for duty. Source: The March of Democracy, James Truslow Adams. (And while I'm at it, happy 790th to the Magna Carta, if you don't mind ignoring the conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars.)

Currently Reading: World History, 1815-1920, Eduard Fueter.