:: Alex's World! ::

Spring Is Blossoming In Pittsburgh

Alexander Tan — Thursday, 14 Apr 2016

Although it snowed over last weekend, I am glad these flowers hang in there. This is The Village of Eastside in Pittsburgh, and the photo was taken just off Penn Avenue with Bakery Square in the backdrop.

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Strolling Down Allegheny River

Alexander Tan — Friday, 08 Apr 2016

When visiting downtown Pittsburgh, you should check out the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. In today's post, I explore the banks of the Allegheny River.

The river in the above photo is the Allegheny River. We were lucky to have a beautiful day over last weekend. If you look between the bridges at the far end of the river, we can even see the source of the Ohio River. This photo was taken on a pedestrian walkway between Fort Duquesne Boulevard and 10th Street Bypass, next to Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh.

Strolling towards David L. Lawrence Convention Center, you will get a view of the side of the city when you face towards the source of the Ohio River. You can see the convention centre on the left of the photo below.

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Architecture Along Sixth Avenue

Alexander Tan — Friday, 01 Apr 2016

As promised, I am going to do my best to post more about Pittsburgh. I think downtown Pittsburgh has a lot to offer, and one of which is the architecture of the skyscrapers. The photo in today's post shows the design of buildings along Sixth Avenue downtown. What caught my eye is the red baroque-like roof (Midtown Towers). Let me know if you have any other place in downtown Pittsburgh that you would like to see.

For more sky watching, enjoy the beautiful skies from all over the world at

Architecture Along Sixth Avenue

Alexander Tan — Friday, 01 Apr 2016

As promised, I am going to do my best to post more about Pittsburgh. I think downtown Pittsburgh has a lot to offer, and one of which is the architecture of the skyscrapers. The photo in today's post shows the design of buildings along Sixth Avenue downtown. What caught my eye is the red, baroque-like roof is the Midtown Towers. Let me know if you have any other place in downtown Pittsburgh that you would like to see.

For more sky watching, enjoy the beautiful skies from all over the world at

Architecture Along Sixth Avenue

Alexander Tan — Friday, 01 Apr 2016

As promised, I am going to do my best to post more about Pittsburgh. I think downtown Pittsburgh has a lot to offer, and one of which is the architecture of the skyscrapers. The photo in today's post shows the design of buildings along Sixth Avenue downtown. What caught my eye is the red, baroque-like roof is the Midtown Towers. Let me know if you have any other place in downtown Pittsburgh that you would like to see.

For more sky watching, enjoy the beautiful skies from all over the world at

Keeping Track of Blog Issues 2016

Alexander Tan — Tuesday, 29 Mar 2016

In this blog post, I want to discuss some house keeping challenges I am facing and how I intend to address them.

As Alex’s World keeps expanding, it becomes more and more difficult to manage and be on top of every issue. Thus, often if you come across a problem in my blog, and it isn’t rectify after awhile, There is a likely chance that I am not aware of it. If I am aware of it, I would have made some changes to fix the problem: like today, I fixed some broken links, and refactored some code to hero you all share my article easily and seamlessly. For those of you who are unaware of this, I built this blog from ground up without any Content Management Systems (CMS) like Wordpress or Joomla, just for the fun of proving to myself that I can create interesting Web technologies like the big players out there. That is why my blog is never perfect.

So back to the increasing challenges I am facing to maintain the blog, I can think of three ways to address the problem.

1) Create a bug tracker like those available in many CMS: This will consume lots of time and yield little productivity.
2) Create a create a form for people to submit issues: This is a great idea, but it is difficult to keep my viewers in the loop.
3) Use what I already have/created: So this is a hybrid idea of the first and the second idea to post a blog article (the current article that you are reading) to inform my viewers about my thoughts. You all can post the issues that you all are facing in the comments below, and I can keep everyone in the loop. Furthermore, I can keep track of the issues and not mess around with creating even more complicated tools, which may require even more maintenance.

This is what I am going to do. I will go with the third method, and I intend to do this as a yearly activity. Hence, if you are facing any issues with my blog in 2016, please post the issues as comments below. If you are wondering how you are going to find this post again some time much later, I will include a link to this post at the end of the right column as "Report Problems".

Many thanks to those of you for keeping me informed about the issues in my blog, your comments are very much appreciated.

Hunt Library In Dusk

Alexander Tan — Friday, 25 Mar 2016

Since I moved to Pittsburgh, I realized that I have not posted many articles on this city. So I am going to put in more afford to publish more about my activities in Pittsburgh. I want to share a photo I took last week at Carnegie Mellon University. This is a picture of Hunt Library taken at dusk from College of Fine Arts Lawn.

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Shocking Discovery In Vancouver

Alexander Tan — Friday, 18 Mar 2016

You may already know that this exist but I was pleasantly surprised to find such a beautiful classical Chinese gardens in Canada. I would recommend the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden to anyone who visit Vancouver. Not only do you get to see this magnificent garden, but you should also check out Vancouver's Chinatown at the garden's doorstep, and the neighbouring Gastown.

It was a lovely day when I visited the gardens. The clear blue skies helped to highlight the beauty of the house and gardens, even though the pond was frozen. By the time I managed to visit the surrounding areas, it was getting late, and I headed to Harbour Centre to capture some colourful aerial view of downtown Vancouver.

For more sky watching, enjoy the beautiful skies from all over the world at

Walkway Next to A Worksite In Downtown Vancouver

Alexander Tan — Sunday, 13 Mar 2016

When I was walking from Waterfront station to Davie Street for some food, I walked through this protected walkway next to a worksite. I thought the way the sunlight seep through those gaps could form a nice composition for a photo. So I walked back to snap this shot.

Do check out the other beautiful shadows at Shadow Shot Sunday 2

Evening Skies of Canada Place

Alexander Tan — Friday, 11 Mar 2016

Following up from my previous post on "Vancouver City from Seawall at Stanley Park", this post features the famous Canada Place in Vancouver, Canada. The lovely colours of the night lightings really bring out the best of the surroundings. I wished I could spend more time shooting the shoreline of North Vancouver, but the wind was so chilled, that sent me searching for a warm cafe.

Sorry for missing last week post. Work has caught up with me.

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Vancouver City from Seawall at Stanley Park

Alexander Tan — Friday, 26 Feb 2016

Recently I have been busy traveling for two reasons. One for a holiday trip and the other was to spend time with my family. In this post, I was in Vancouver for holidays. It was not as cold as I was predicting it to be. Thus, I managed to visit quite a few interesting places, which I will share with you all in my coming posts.

For more beautiful reflections, please visit

Heinz Memorial Chapel In the Snow

Alexander Tan — Friday, 15 Jan 2016

I have received some very nice comments from all of you out there recently. In particular, Felicia, who requested to see some snow for winter. And I think you can't have winter without snow is it? So this week, I thought I would post something with snow since it snowed for almost the entire week. I hope you will like the shot of Heinz Memorial Chapel in the snow, taken from Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh.

For more sky watching, enjoy the beautiful skies from all over the world at

Winter Is Properly Here

Alexander Tan — Friday, 08 Jan 2016

If you recall in my last article, I posted that winter is being held back. However, now we are properly into it. The photo above was taken at dusk on Walnut Street, facing towards South Aiken Avenue. The silhouette of a tall building in the backdrop is the Cathedral of Learning at University of Pittsburgh.

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Winter Is Late. What Is Holding It Back?

Alexander Tan — Friday, 11 Dec 2015

Winter is arriving late in Pittsburgh. Weather reports early in November suggest that, due to the Albedo effect, this year's winter will be drier than other years in Pittsburgh. The positive side of it is, we have a longer Fall/Autumn.

The photo in this post was taken on Ellsworth Avenue, between College Street and Spahr Street.

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Updates about me: Over the last 2 months I have moved from Singapore to Pittsburgh in the United States. Thus, at least for the next few months, please stay tuned to catch up on my adventures in North America!

My Review of Harry's Shaving Product

Alexander Tan — Tuesday, 24 Nov 2015

I recently bought the Harry's Truman set to try out a different shaving setup in my attempt to save money. Read on to see my review and verdict of the product.

What I have bought was the Harry's Truman set to test out a cheaper setup for shaving, that advertised to provide quality shave. Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I am doing this review based on my own experience, and I am not paid to do this review. So this is my honest opinion. I have always used Gillette for my manual shave all my life. Gillette's product was good, but the cost was getting way to expensive, so I found out about Harry's product through an advert and I decided to try out alternative quality shave.

The Harry's Truman razor have a certain weight to it that makes it feels a quality product and gives you that extra confidence when shaving. The blades that came along in the Truman set were as sharp as Gillette, and because there was lesser mechanism at the razor's head, it feels like a slight tighter and cleaner shave. The only complaint I have is due to the way the blades are manufactured, it does not give me the access to shaving areas that are narrow. For example, the area between the nostrils.

My verdict for the Harry's Truman razor is, for value it scores a 9.5/10; while for the quality it scores a 9.0/10; for a clean shave, the Harry's Truman razor scores an 8.0/10; and finally for aesthetic it scores a 9.5/10. Thus, overall, I would give the Harry's Truman razor a 9.0/10. Definitely, a must try!

Mount Aso Spilling Ashes

Alexander Tan — Friday, 20 Nov 2015

The University of Manchester recently released a list of the world's 10 most dangerous volcanoes. While going through the list, I noticed Mount Aso in Japan was ranked 4th. This reminded me of my visit in December 2014, where I witnessed Mount Aso spilling ashes and my bus had to be diverted. The photo in this post was taken from my bus while it was being diverted. I thought it would be interesting to share my experience and my apologies for the reflection from the bus windows.

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Fighting Dengue In Singapore's Neighbourhood

Alexander Tan — Monday, 16 Nov 2015

A local community afford in Ang Mo Kio town in Singapore is campaigning to fight dengue through legal Graffiti. However, the residences of Cheng San Zone E have other ideas how the space should be used. I guess it adds character to the surroundings?

Colourful Siloso Beach at night

Alexander Tan — Friday, 13 Nov 2015

Strolling down Siloso Beach at night. I wonder how much Singapore as changed over the past ten years.

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Capitol Took My Moviegoing Virginity

Alexander Tan — Thursday, 23 Jul 2015

Capitol theatre and the buildings surrounding it have been restored and rebranded as Capitol. To me Capitol Theatre brings back a lot of memory. It was where I watched my first movie and I am glad that its exterior has been restored quite well to what I remembered it to be. However, the theatre has not yet opened itself to the public, so I am still waiting to see how its interior is done.

The entrance has been given a new face, a more posh image to blend with the shops co-located. The new Capitol targets to the higher end shoppers. I have mixed feelings about the new image. If you have memories of Capitol Theatre, please share in the comments - I would love it read about it.

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Pilots in Transit Lounge

Alexander Tan — Tuesday, 21 Jul 2015

During a visit to Changi airport terminal 1, I came across a few pilots discussing some issues in the transit lounge. I wonder what they are talking about?

Netherlands Second Largest

Alexander Tan — Friday, 10 Jul 2015

If anyone was wondering what happened to me for the last 2 weeks - I was in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Above is Rotterdam Centraal railway station. I like the angular look that distorts the surrounding buildings. It kind of remind me of Manchester Oxford Road railway station with a more grandeur exterior.

Below is a photo that I have taken along Meent where it crosses Delftsevaart. I like the surroundings of this cafe, which carries the character of the place.

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Get Me Home Please...!

Alexander Tan — Wednesday, 08 Jul 2015

I managed to capture this sign strapped to the bus stop near City Hall MRT station early this morning. Evidence of the what was left from last night commuters distress.

Thousands were left stranded last night at MRT stations when Singapore's two main MRT (subway) lines simultaneously came to a complete halt with little options to get home. A sight more and more frequent these days in Singapore.

Blessed with a little sixth sense, I strangely took a bus home yesterday, rather than my normal train ride home. I wonder why. However, my dad was not so lucky and was trapped in the mess for almost 3 hours.

Night Sky Straight Up

Alexander Tan — Friday, 19 Jun 2015

In one of my previous post, we discussed about how's housing is like in Singapore. Today, I would like to share the view of the sky from the park.

For more sky watching, enjoy the beautiful skies from all over the world at

Contemporary Arts In Singapore

Alexander Tan — Tuesday, 16 Jun 2015

Legal graffiti art space is limited in Singapore. However, I managed to spot the above graffiti at the side of The Substation.

Founded in 1990, The Substation is Singapore’s first independent contemporary arts centre. I would recommend The Substation to those who are visiting Singapore, who wishes to experience something unique, contemporary and local. The performances and exhibitions at The Substation are commonly Singapore’s finest artists, writers and intellectuals.

The box office is on the left hand side as you enter the main entrance as showed in the photo above. The Substation is located at 45 Armenian Street, Singapore 179936; and can be accessed by buses and the nearest MRT (Subway) station is City Hall.

Reality of housing in Singapore

Alexander Tan — Friday, 12 Jun 2015

Where we live is an integral part of our life. This photo depicts how most Singaporeans live: small apartments, within very close proximity and high up. However, if you are rich, there are 2 ways you can live: (1) in a landed property surrounded and cramped up with all the other high rise buildings. Or (2) live in a penthouse in a tall building. That way you will have more privacy and peace that is until another taller building creeps up next to you.

The photo was taken on a cloudy day, so I took it in black and white, hopefully to minimise the gloominess.

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