a spot of singapore

Morning, y’all. Hope your weekend was a good one, as all Easter weekends should be. Mondays are usually less blue after a lazy long weekend. Or more blue, depending on how much you dread going back to work, I suppose. Either way, I ain’t complaining about having 3 days off.

With the husband home for 3 whole days, we managed to check out some new places and revisit some old favorites with the kids. I’ll put up the ones we really enjoyed, starting with the Changi Point Boardwalk.

After hearing about the Changi Point Boardwalk, we just had to check it out. Mostly because any place with the name boardwalk in it has got to be fun. It’s got such a nice ring to it, boardwalk. Like Scorsese’s Boardwalk Empire (love it), Sentosa Boardwalk, and now Changi Boardwalk.

The kids loved that they had so much space to run free and we loved that there were railings to prevent them from falling into the ocean.

It’s been getting tougher trying to keep up with Tru ever since he started on his acceleration training. It’s a move he learnt from Lightning McQueen. He stops for a moment, strikes a deadly prepare-to-accelerate pose, mumbles “FOCUS, SPEED…” then sprints off into the sunset.

The good news is that we have a potential Usain Bolt on our hands but the bad news is that momma won’t be able to keep up.

If you plan on visiting, I’d recommend going later in the day. Most of the boardwalk has no shade so we spent a lot of time under the scorching heat. Couple that with having to sprint after a kid on speed, I honestly felt like I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion. Good thing there’s the husband to tag team with.

Breakfast in our house usually means a quick cereal or a cheese sandwich but when the weekend comes along, we like to sit back and do a nice leisurely brunch. And one of our favouritest places to do that is Riders Cafe at Bukit Timah Saddle Club.

There are several reasons for this: they have good bacon (and eggs), they have Mr Fluffles and they have horses.

You can watch the horses walk by right outside the window as you eat, which is both a good and bad thing. The clippety-clop sounds awfully therapeutic but the smell of horse takes a bit of getting used to. The kids love it though.

PS. This is an unsolicited review, not that it really matters.

PPS. Ok, technically not even a review, just a couple of pictures.

PPPS. The bacon is really good though.

PPPPS. Also, Mr Fluffles is not his real name. I just named him that because he looks so fluffly. He almost never responds when I call him that.

What do you get if a peppermint candy cart had babies with a trishaw?

This baby.

Wait, I think you need a better view of it.

We wanted to go cycling at East Coast and we saw this instead, which was just nice for the 5 of us. There’s a bigger version for 6 adults and 2 kids (or 15 adults if you’re Pakistani).

If you’re planning to try this out, call dibs on the centre seat because that’s the most relaxing one. You get to chill and shout orders at your minions to pedal faster, only the topspeed for this is 3km/h tops and that’s considering we were pedaling so fast we couldn’t feel our legs after a hour and a half.

In fact, it was so slow I thought the kids would get restless but they loved it so much they sat completely still and gaped the entire time.

Or rather, they sat very still until Truett sensed that we were on our way back to return the bikes and he started making a preemptive strike by declaring firmly “I don’t want to give uncle the bicycle.” He’s exactly like his father that way. He’s got a spider sense to detect when his fun is about to end and spends half the time worrying about not having more fun instead of living in the moment and enjoying it.

We cycled all the way to the Bedok jetty for a breather and there were all these people there fishing under the blazing noon sun on a Friday afternoon. Like don’t these people have to work or something? And they were obviously experts because this guy caught a whole bunch of these pointy fishes. He caught 3 in the 10 minutes that we were there and was nice enough to let Tru hold one.

You can’t really tell but it’s got a row of very menacing teeth; it’s a good thing he didn’t lose a finger to the crazy snapping fish.

PS. A couple of friends are looking for volunteers to knit hats for preemie babies as part of their Weaving For Hope project. Every hat you knit is going to keep a preemie baby snug and warm, and they’ll feel like they’re being held in bosoms of fluffy warm clouds all day long so you’re not just weaving hats people, you’re weaving hope. If you’re keen to help, find out details here.

Went to the Sentosa Flowers exhibition last week to admire flowers. To be precise, my mom and the kids went to admire the flowers, we just went along to check out the new Sentosa Boardwalk and have an excuse to get out of the house.

It was kind of like the time we went to the conservatory of flowers in San Francisco. I allocated an entire afternoon to spend admiring the different flowers in bloom but we got there and after 2 minutes, we were having this conversation.

Me: Wow, nice flowers.

Kel: Very nice..and so many different types too.

*extended pause*

Me: They all look the same though. They’re just there not doing anything.

Kel: Flowers should wiggle or something, it’d be so much more interesting to look at them.

Me: I know! At least with animals, you sometimes get to see them doing the naughty-naughty like on the Nat Geo channel.

Kel: Ok, how about I take a picture of you pretending to read a magazine so it looks like we spent an entire afternoon chillaxing with flowers and then go shopping?

We were out of there in 10 minutes and spent the rest of the day at Union Square. True story.

Right, back to the Sentosa Flowers. The boardwalk from Vivo was lovely, with the cool breeze and scenic sea view. If you got tired, you could even hop onto the travelator for a quick rest.

The flowers were ok, considering that I’m not the most discerning flower connoisseur. There were a lot of them in many different colors, which is good enough for me. These days, the most important criteria is whether the kids had fun and as a rule of thumb, they’re happy as long as we’re not stuck at home.

The exhibition should be over by now but you can still go check out the Sentosa Boardwalk. I’d recommend going in the late afternoon but if you’re the commando sort who doesn’t mind the scorching heat, then you can pretty much go anytime you want.

PS. Voting for The Bloggies is closing this weekend and if you completely forgot to vote, that’s ok, I totally forgive you. There’s still 2 more days to do it.

Believe it or not, I’ve never been to the Night Safari in all my 28 years. I know, that’s like living in Anaheim and never being in Disneyland. Or living in Beijing and never visiting the Great Wall. In other words, I’m what you call a total local snob who’s too cool and savvy to fall for a touristy gimmick.

The idea of a night zoo is novel but come on, who pays $32 to not see a bunch of animals sleeping in pitch darkness? The poor giraffes and zebras just spent the entire day entertaining overexcited kids in the day zoo and after the sun sets, they’ve still got to pull another shift without taking a break. If it were me, I’d be hiding under a rock somewhere nursing a very foul mood.

But you know where this is going though right? Me telling you about my trip to the Night Safari and how incredible it was. Except you’d only be half right because while some parts were really cool, other parts were entirely predictable and also kind of boring.

So here we go then.

1. Dinner at Bongo Burgers – One word, MEH

I heard some good things about Bongo Burgers so it was the dinner place of choice when we reached. I expected the tourist prices but I was also expecting better food, I guess. The spring chicken had deliciously crispy skin but the wedges, nuggets and burgers were meh.

2. Thumbuakar tribal performances – Smokin’ hot

Tribal artistic expressions are not really my thing. I’m glad they have a rich cultural heritage but that’s just not reason enough for me to want to pretend to like it. At first, they were doing their interpretive dance routine in their loincloths and I snuck a peek to see if they had decent abs before going back to feeding baby girl tasteless wedges.

The only exception is when it involves people eating fire and making big fireballs with their mouths like this one did, then I’m a huge fan of tribal performances. I think they also realized the tribal dancing wasn’t really reeling in the crowd so they were all like “let’s not waste time doing this and bring on the big fire.”

What can I say, me like big fire.

3. Creatures of the Night show – Painfully predictable

It was like any other animal show, just with nocturnal animals instead of regular daytime ones. I can’t say which category snakes fall into but I’m pretty sure they have enough evil powers to not need any sleep. Oh wait, apparently they do sleep but with their eyes open, which is exactly like my scary Chemistry teacher who used to make us do workbooks while she sat at her desk and stoned with her eyes open. We could never tell if she was asleep or in an evil trance to store up powers.

4. Tram ride – Mostly awesome

We had the option of walking or taking a tram around; we chose the tram because I didn’t feel very safe walking around with free-roaming wild animals in darkness. There was a no flash-photography rule in case the animals got blinded or startled into attacking us, which made it incredibly difficult to take pictures.

I shot with my 50mm on manual, had the aperture wide open at f1.4, shutter speed 1/40, ISO 800-1600, boosted the light for some and tried to keep a very still camera hand to reduce motion blur. 80% of the shots were very Blair Witch Project but I got a handful of pretty good ones.

5. Gift store – Headgear for if you ever meet a tiger

We were already doing the tourist thing, so might as well go all in. We were the only ones hamming it up with the gaudy tiger hats at the gift store, so much so that even the tourists were staring at us funny. Then again, that’s probably because I looked partially retarded with my headgear on (FYI, no way I’m posting that picture up).