The Textures of Singapore

Between the time after AFA and CGM, I had the opportunity to go out and about Singapore. From what I had been told, this time of year was a good time to be in Singapore, as it was nice and cool in December. I’ve been to Singapore in the summer, and honestly, it’s too much for me to handle. The December weather in Singapore felt very much like a warm summer in vancouver. To think, the majority of the time, Singapore is like this, or hotter. It seems kinda nice.

I wanted to see some monkeys but didn’t get the opportunity to. These are photos from my brother in law. I’m floored by the detail of these photos. I should ask him what lens he used for this.

Almost as if in defiance, this little baby monkey climbed up onto this sign.

One of the local supermarkets. They stock things that I’ve never ever seen up close before. North American supermarkets have mostly mainstream stuff, and squid would not be considered mainstream over here…

From what I heard, FairPrice is under NTUC, which is some sort of unionized supermarket. There’s some benefits to being “members” which I’m assuming is union members. I don’t quite know how it works, but if a union is big enough to own their own supermarket chain, that shows how powerful they are. I wonder how things work at the negotiation tables…

Simply not available in North America. By Knorr too!

Seeing this blew my mind, especially since North American Heinz just has ketchup, mustard, and other basic North American condiments really. It’s pretty cool though! It goes to show the market in Singapore is more interested in Chilli Sauce than ketchup.

Another bottle, this time by Del Monte. It’s really interesting to see usually North American brand labels selling asian sauces in a mainstream manner.

A cake shop called the Icing Room. Very unique cake designs. They have fully decorated cakes that are small enough to be consumed by 1 or 2 people (such as this one). The price however, is equivalent to an 8″ cake though!

Delicious! Vancouver has asian-style cakes too, but nowhere near as elaborate. These cakes seem more in line with Japan’s quality of aesthetics.

Even the sushi looks better quality than T&T!

I really do like their attention to aesthetics.

The cake we ended up buying. Sorry for the terrible lighting and exposure. No DSLR. Regardless, the cake was absolutely delicious!

Since my brother in law was getting married, there were a lot of traditional Chinese customary gifts going around. It’s a basket of mandarin oranges with “Happiness” labeled on them.

Other various gifts that also came in a basket. A very traditional-style basket too!

Sorry for the blurry photo, but whatever. If you looked at the previous Singapore post, you’ll notice a flower-looking christmas fixture. (actually, facebook friends will see it in the album). Well, to tell you the truth, those pictures from that post were ALL from last year. I never got around to posting Singapore 4/4, and posted it as if it was part of my recent trip. I did hint in there that something was amiss though. How many of you caught on to it?

I bring this up because this year, in the same spot of the flower-like fixture is this giant cathedral-like display. As Singaporeans know, the Christmas displays are different every year. So if you had seen or been aware of some of the decorations from last year, you’ll have caught on to it! 🙂

Time for dinner. You NEVER see any of these in food courts in Vancouver. I don’t think even the asian malls around here have these. It’s just such a cool idea to have food prepared in a clay pot at a food court. After ordering one of these though, I regretted it the next day. I was still coughing, and this clay pot was VERY heaty, causing me to cough A LOT the next day. 🙁

The full dinner. My clay pot of food on the bottom of the pic.

Just outside, you can see a very nice view of Marina Bay Sands and surrounding buildings. This is a panorama shot taken with my Sony TX-1. Click to see a larger size. Right click and view image to see an even larger size!

A close-up of Marina Bay Sands. When I was in Singapore last year, the top “cruise ship” section had not been built yet. I saw the three towers from a distance – at Marina Barrage at night. From the construction, and the lights and everything, it looked like something out of Ghost in the Shell. I had no idea they were going to put a ship on top of it like that!

The “durians”. I remember when these were first designed and built, how there was a lot of PR about it being an architectural and mathematical wonder, since it’s able to block out the sun’s rays all around. I wasn’t sure if it was designed so that the panels would shift in accordance to the sun, or if the panels were aligned in such a way that it would block the direct sunlight at all times.

A close up of the lotus. It’s still under construction. I’m tempted to turn this into a tilt shift photo. Maybe later.

If you were in and around the same places that I was, then you should know by now where I was from looking at the photos thus far. You might even have seen this bag in one of the shop windows.

I find it interesting how it’s referred to “hp” or hand phone. North Americans call it Cell Phone. Or the technical term “Mobile Phone”.

I don’t know if this is a wallet or a passport holder. But I liked it.

A boutique for eyebrows. Who’d have thought there would be a market big enough to start an entire retail store?

Christmas lights at night. They were still setting these up.

umisushi.

My wife getting her licks.

More awesome traditional wedding gifts. I really like the traditional basket. It’s so interesting!

Delicious fruit tarts and assorted desserts! They were all very delicious! omg.

I was still coughing at the time, so needless to say, these did not help my cold. But damn it was worth eating!

Can’t remember what kind of cake this was. But if I recall correctly, it was moist, and fairly delicious.

? What’s this? I can’t remember. O_o;

The McDonald’s in Singapore actually serves cakes too! In Vancouver, all we got are those damn muffins. I want me a Darn Good Brownie!! Or maybe some Diva Cake!

For obvious reasons, the Happy Meal boxes in Singapore are different from the ones in North America. It’s so interesting to see how different they are from North America. A live-action Ronald instead of an illustrated one, tips for kids, and not a single piece of capitalist promotional propaganda anywhere. Complete opposite of North America Happy Meal boxes. However, Vancouver’s Happy Meals have long since gone environmentally friendly, and use recycled paper bags instead. There have been some rare instances where they use the cardboard box, mostly for certain high-profile promotions.

There were several instances during my stay where the weather was like this. The clouds rolled so fast, it was like watching a storm. I suppose it is a storm, as the downpour and lightning was pretty severe.

Pics of the Icing Room. You’re allowed to design your own cakes too! They give you a pre-iced cake, and colored icing, creams, gels, etc. And away you go! That’s the way to do it! Get your customers to do the work, and then have them pay for it!

mmmm… do you want some? I know I do!

The cool thing is the staff are required to wear these costumes. You can’t see the lower half from here, but just look at Mikuru, and there you go.

We all know that Singapore has a lot of shopping malls. But what intrigues me are these sort of “low-budget” hole-in-the-wall shopping centers littered around Singapore. They’re mostly out of the way from the main streets like Orchard Road, and are sometimes hard to spot until you’re right up to it, or unless you already know it’s there.

These shops are multi-leveled just like the newer shopping centers, except there are lot of branches outwards that loop all around like some sort of crazy maze. And the ceilings are low too!

Not only is it claustrophobic, some of these branches are downright creepy too! There are stalls at each section where merchants set up their “boutiques” to sell their wares.

I have to say, Singapore’s got a lot of small business owners, and a lot of them must be crammed in these little shops. I wonder if these businesses make much money…

Just outside, off the main road. Do you know where this is? Some of the minor “landmarks” should be familiar to some of the local readers. 🙂

Guess where this photo was taken. But wtf, 2009?!

In the previous Singapore post, where I was eating tako balls, that was at Takeshimaya… last year. This year, I had tako balls too, but you might be able to tell that the lighting is different. Takeshimaya had renovated their food court, and I was amazed at how nice it looked. Singapore is always changing, so it’s kinda refreshing even to visit familiar places to see how much has changed.

My mean. It’s called a “Roti John”. You already know that I love Roti Prata, so I figured that this might be a good try too. I was horribly horribly mistaken. This thing tasted terrible. The hot sauce was too much, the egg and beef just weren’t tasty. It was mostly all bread. I can’t say that I’ll “never have a Roti John again” because I’ve seen other Roti Johns after and they looked pretty delicious. Just don’t have the Roti John at Takeshimaya, I guess.

More wood block toys. Japanese products are always so nice to look at. 🙂

LAST year, I got Royce chocolate covered potato chips. It was a little weird tasting, so this year, I just went with straight-up chocolate medallions. I sampled these at the store, and absolutely loved the taste. $15 a box! I’d say not bad considering how much chocolate you get from it, and how high quality these are. I prefer these over Purdy’s, but that’s just me.

A little brunch. Can you guess where this is? It’s a franchise. Unfortunately, they performed under my expectations. I’m assuming it’s because the staff are mostly new. Regardless, the ham and the cheese were delicious. Just looking at this right now is making my mouth water.

Wife decided to order a chicken salad one.

For Konata. :3

What’s this? A cream puff? Not just any cream puff. This is durian cream puff! Needless to say, I was not interested in eating this. Really, durian isn’t my thing. I really can’t stand the smell of it. But obviously, some people (my wife included) love durian.

Well, that’s it for now. I’ve still got more posts on Singapore, but those will come whenever I feel like it.

I hope you enjoyed these pics, and got a better feeling of what Singapore is like. And for those that have been to these places before (whether because you’ve toured there, or you’re local) I hope you enjoyed me sharing these experiences with you, and you enjoy these experiences as much as I have. 🙂

But before I go… say… who here likes JRPGs and owns a Nintendo DS? If you do, go to the associated facebook page and tell me what your favorite DS JRPG is.