There’s been a lot of inactivity on this blog for a while (if there can ever be a lot of nothing), so I thought I’d take this chance to update you all on what we’ve been up to. The answer: not much, really. We’ve been out and about, and taken advantage of the nice weather to stroll around town. The pic on the left was taken the day I signed up for Mandarin lessons, something I’ve been meaning to day for q while now. I wanted to go for the basic option, but the teacher tested e on the Mandarin, and signed me for intermediate. Intermediate!. She obviously hadn’t herd me speak at length, because my mandarin is not only lousy, it is also worse that it used to be in China!! Ho hum. At least they didn’t sign me up for the beginners course (which admittedly was rather basic), and just take another few hundred dollars from me for no reason.
One of the fun things that we have done is go to the newly opened
Café del Mar in Singapore (on
Sentosa).
Café del Mar is a famous chill-out café/bar in Ibiza, and the opening of an Asian branch was much heralded. It’s part of a big development of the night-life scene in Singapore that’s seen Ministry of Sound and such like open here over the past year or so. Café del Mar is actually quite nice, and although you don’t really get to see the sun go down late at night here (roughly 7pm every day) as you might in Ibiza, the bar was cool, and included a pool outside. The day that e went (a spur of the moment decision), it happened that
Pete Tong (yes, it’s all gone Pete Tong for Singapore) was spinning his wheels of steel, so it was pretty packed. The place was on the beach, which begged the questions that you must be able to walk along the beach and listen to the music without paying?
This brings me onto a thought that’s been bugging me – I really am a southerner. Although I love gravy (ooh, Northern boys love
gravy), I am also a bit tight when it comes to things like this. I am always reminded of the joke about Northerners and Southerners going on holiday. The Northern goes away with £100 and comes back and exclaims “I went away with £100 and come back with nothing. I spent it all – brilliant!”; The Southerner goes away with £100 and comes back and exclaims “I went away with £100 and come back with £45. I spent hardly anything at all – brilliant!”.
I digress….
We’ve done some research on where we may want to take wedding photos, including arduous research trips to the
Irish pub that is my new favourite watering hole. Real bar food, and real shabby walls, and real Irish men (no, really), make for a decent atmosphere. We wandered in a few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon to take a butcher’s, and liked it so much we stayed to watch the football 4 hours later. The bangers and mash were decent enough, but the
Guinness was the best in Singapore so far. That doesn’t mean that I won’t stop looking, of course…
Preparations for the wedding seem to be progressing well. Everyone seems to be very concerned with preparations in general, and seem surprised when we are relaxed and say that we haven’t had any problems so far, which we haven’t Apparently, wedding planning is supposed to be a complete nightmare, only to be rescued by last-minute dashes to florists and so on. And maybe we will have that. But so far, everything has fallen into place quite nicely. Perhaps that is because we started planning almost a year ago. We have still to nail down our cup cakes (although following our testing yesterday we are a little closer), and decide on a few other things. But on the whole, we are more relaxed than we should be, or so it seems!!
You can see our
testing of cup-cakes at the Raffles on our wedding blog. You can also see
my new pair of wedding shoes on our wedding blog. Don’t we provide a good service?
What else has been happening on this fair isle?
Singapore has decided to build itself a version of
the London Eye, so that’s what they have done. We watched this wheel –
the Singapore Flyer – go up with amazing speed in only a month or two. It’s quite big, and the views promise to be spectacular. As the nice people at Wikipedia tell us, the wheel itself has a 150 metre diameter, and is built over a three-storey terminal building, giving a total height of around 165 metres. The London Eye comes in at 135 metres, so the Singapore Flyer has one over the Eye on that count!
It’s right next to where the
casino will be, so the night views will be impressive, I’m sure. I’m doubtful that it will be open by the time the family come and visit (early 2008, apparently), but you should certainly be able to see it, and probably as you fly in! Perhaps we can arrange a day trip for the family the next time you all visit.
We saw some
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles down Orchard Road last month – I think that they were promoting
their new film. I remember that when they were out in the UK they weren’t allowed to be called Ninja – they were “Hero Turtles”. Not sure if that still applies. It was certainly an odd sight, but given the large volumes of tourists/shoppers you always get on Orchard, a couple of Ninjas to fight the ladies out of the way should come in quite useful…
We also found some really rather good Chinese food – just like we had in China ast year (or was it the year before?).
Bei Fang Feng Wei, at 18 Smith Street had all manner of Northern food, including – as you can see form the pic – some
Harbin Beer. One of the best things about China was the diversity of beers there. Hundreds of littler breweries, with each province (roughly country-size, usually), having its own beer. There are quite strict laws on moving beer between provinces, which mans that ordinarily you can’t get Beijing beer in Shanghais, and so on. Which meant that travelling around the country was fun inasmuch as you got to see what the next provinces beer was. Would it be more than 2% proof? Was it a former German concession? (Incidentally, history is important here, and you learn a lot about the various treaties and so on. In essence, if it was a German town previously, the beer would be good – take
Qingdao beer, for example). Back to the restaurant, and we had shredded chilli potatoes, some
Zha Jiang Mian (a specialty of northern China), and some
Xioa Long Bao again. You may be realising that this is a favourite of mine!
Phew. That’s it for now, and you’re up to date with my movements (and food). More exciting tales next time, so stay tuned…….
%231.jpg)
Whilst I posted recently about the joys of dérive (note: this is not the same as getting lost), we ourselves did some exploring recently. We had heard a rumour about an interesting street in the Kampung Glam area of town called Haji Lane. Off we trotted form some exploration, and reportage. We had also heard that this was the narrowest street in Singapore. The lane itself did not disappoint. The lane did have some pretty cool shops, including one that sold vintage clothes and ice-cream (Pluck). No, we didn’t try the ice-cream yet, but yes, we will definitely post about it when we do!!! (the toils of service...).jpg)
Haji Lane also has one very small theatre. Pitch Black claims to be "...the only boutique screening room, art gallery and café featuring High Definition Blu-Ray Projection and 6.1 Cinematic Surround Sound.". More importantly, we were told that screenings were free, provided that you bought a certain amount of booze and food. When we go, we'll let you know what it's like..jpg)
.jpg)
Well worth a trip, and quite interesting. There's even a signal box that wouldn't look out of place in the UK.
