Eating in church

Remember the wedding invitation I wrote about a few weeks ago? Well the lunch was today. And it was great! This was the location:

At first you might think: why are the benches in this church lined up so weirdly? The answer is, because it is not a church. The place is called Chijmes and it is basically an old church building that was turned into a very fancy restaurant. The lunch was an 8-course meal and it was delicious! Here are a few things we had:

I like the orchid in the middle of the plate :)

This inconsiderable soup contais shark!

This is what the restaurant looked like from outside.

It was an amazing location and the food was fantastic. Plus I had a really good time with the people from the lab! I have to convince more people here to get married within the next three months!

Cool Pool!

It was a busy day today so I'll keep it short but I really want to show you the place where I swim. It is a swimming complex nearby (I can walk from here, although it's a while) and I am surprised I did not find out about it until very recently. When I went there for the first time it was like being in a drem.

Out of nowhere this appears:

Yes, this is the community swimming pool (there is also a competition pool if you turn right, but this looks so much cooler!). As I found out the entrance is 1 Euro (!!) and I can pay with my MRT card (it was too convenient to be real). I love this place and I love going after work for a while, since it lies on my way back home. I have not tried the slides yet, because I am waiting for someone to come along so I am not the only one that is over 8 years old there... Any volunteers?

Singapore Views

One of the most amazing things about Singapore are the views. Here are two pretty cool ones from these last days:

Urgh, there is this awful Marina Bay Sands destroying the whole picture again! No wonder all the restaurants that are facing it are so cheap, it's almost unbearable. (Jokes apart this view was the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life. The picture does not show it well, because it's just taken with the phone, but the whole thing continued to the left and you could see some illuminated spheres on the water (actually you can see them on the picture above if you look close) and the Fullerton Hotel and then the whole skyline. It is really breathtaking!)

Ok, after the previous picture any image will look less impressive but this one is also very interesting. The small houses are Chinatown. I love the contrast between these small buildings and the incredibly large ones in the background. Btw, the red building in the middle of the picture is some kind of temple. I hope I get the chance of taking pictures there one of these days and I'll show you more details, because it's pretty exotic. 

Leaf it to the Singaporean flora

People must think I am stupid for staring at the local plants, but they are definitely different from what we are used to in Europe! Here is an example:  we don't have autumn here, but some of the trees still lose leaves over the year. While in Europe you can kick a bunch of them easily here chances are high you will get eaten by just one of them:

I know all you have eyes for right now is the incredibly photogenic woman on the picture with the gorgeous and very suited facial expression, but I would like to draw your attention to the leaf next to her. Yes. ONE leaf. (Btw. I earned quite some "suspicious-looking-person"-points for taking pictures of myself with a LEAF in the middle of the street at night, i should reach the top-ten soon).

So as you walk, this is what you step on. If I ever have to build a hut in the forest in Singapore it will take me about 3 leaves...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

My Christmas Holidays this year were reduced to one and a half days, so I had to make the most out of it! (It was better that way, I did not have Christmas spirit for many more days). On Christmas Eve we cooked dinner at a friends house. This is what we made:

The food was delicious and we had a really good time!

On Christmas day we did the only reasonable thing to do on the 25th of December: go to the beach! I have always wanted to do this since I saw a picture of Australians celebrating Christmas on there.

So we spend the afternoon in Sentosa (that was massively overcrowded. Not the beach, though, only the attractions).

For dinner I was invited to another friend's house. She was celebrating with her family and this is what we had:

It was all amazing! I never had turkey for Christmas and the desserts were also incredible!

Even their two cats were dressed for the occasion and having Christmas dinner with us.

These days were a lot of running around but it was definitely great fun. I want to thank Lavinia and her mom for the great Christmas Eve dinner and the present I got :). Big 'Thank you' also to Rachel and her family for letting me be part of their family dinner and Rachel for providing these last 2 pics.

And to wrap it up four sexy (and shy) feet .

New Asia Bar

There is this event that was supposed to take place this Friday according to some ancient civilizaitons that I don't want to name, because if I hear anyone talk about it one more time I will explode. Be as it may, one of my friends organized a Pre-"not-to-be-mentioned-event"-Party. We ordered some pizzas (man, it had been a long time since I had not had pizza!) and the headed for a bar called New Asia Bar. This bar is located at the 71st floor of the Swissôtel and therefore has some pretty amazing views over the city. They also opened the Helipad on that day, but we missed it because we were too late, so I hope I get the chance to go there another day (it only opnes once a month).

Here are some pictures I took with my phone-camera. They are pretty crappy, but I hope they can give you an impression of what it felt like to be above Singapore.

You can see the river in this picture. If you look closely you can see Boat quay which are the small houses at the side of the river. 

And of course you can see the Marina Bay hotel (at the right side of the pic). If I go to the helipad the next time, I will make sure that I take my camera and make some decent pictures!

Orchard Lights

The pink Christmas decoration was pretty crazy but in the Singaporeans' defence I have to admit that there is  more and especially more regular decoration around town. Let me walk you through Orchard Road, the shopping street of Singapore.

This decoration is very nice until you notice the "Visa" logos on each and every Christmas ball (for everything else there is Master Card - badam tshhh).

This is the decoration inside a mall (not too bad either).

The lights are really cute and I especially like how they look on the trees they have here:

Uhhh.... so exotic!

Of course there are Christmas Trees with less pink lights on them...

All in one it is something worthwile visiting. It looks really cool, but to be honest it is still not enough to evoque Christmas feelings at 30ºC. If you ask me it is still August...

Rock on!

This weekend I went to a bar with my friends where they have live rock music and I loved it. The group that plays there everyday is called Heritage and the cover all the classics. The lead-singer (that looks EXACTLY like an asian Jack Nicholson (and EXACLTLY like Jack Nicholson when he put his sunglasses on)) plays the violin as well as the flute (I really missed my flute as I saw him playing there). 

The base-player was very unique, too. He is this old man in the back with a big beard that was completely sunk in the music and barely looked up from his base.

We had a really great time and I hope that we'll all go back there soon. Good night!

Singapore Signs at their Best 3

One would think that my repertoire of unbelievable posters should come to and end... but it is far from it! Here are my favorite signs for this month:

Well... that escalated quickly! Haha, I don't know what is more exaggeratd, the apocalyptical consequences of people putting tissues in the sink (for whatever reason), the expression of the woman, that is about to drop dead or the statemen "Clean public toilets are possible". Be as it may, the message is clear: if you cloaked the sink with what seems 4 kg of paper towels at least have the decency of turning off the tap.

I am sure they are.

And this is my favorite comic of ALL TIMES! Here is the story of a man, that was preparing himself to go out. As we can see in the second image his main goal is to get the attention and love of all the women out there. This image is priceless, so let me zoom in: 

Notice how he has this gold chain arount his neck with a huge bar of pure gold that says money? Hahaha. And then the bracelets and the money bills coming out of the pockets! He clearly thinks the money will atract all women of Singapore that will then madly fall in love with him (may or may not be true, we will probably never know, because...) ... as we can see  there is trouble around the corner (literally). In the last image (you have to look at the precious pic again) our hero is wearing nothing but a cardboard box, because, as we learn from the women laughing at him, he was robbed by the mugger (by the way, good job being a social person, ladies. There is this whole crowd of women that witnessed the scene but did not feel the urge to be of any help...). Be as it may, the sexyness of the protagonist disappeared with his golden chains (which does not necessarily speak for Singaporean women) so now  all women are making fun of this poor (literally, at this point) guy instead of helplessly falling for him. And that, dear children, is the reason why you don't wear expensive jewelery and money looking out of the pockets, you will never score with the ladies. We also learn from this, that once a mugger has begun to rob you he wont stop, because he even took what in the beginning seemed to be an aparently very regular t-shirt (he won't take your sun-glasses, though, so people don't have to see the look of shame in your eyes). It is cute that they warn you not to flaunt your valuables in a country like Singapore, which is probably pretty high on the list of countries that need such a warning the least. It is even cuter that this message is written ON A MUG that they use in food courts (unfortunately you had to give them back). 

I love these signs and they are everywhere! Stay tuned for more of these priceless ads.

Chinese nights

I already showed you some pics of Chinatown during the day. At night this place can be even more photogenic! :)

There is not much to say, the pictures speak for themselves (for those among you who speak mandarin)

The contrast between the colonial style of the houses and the chinese environment is really cool.

Ironically one of the biggest Hindu tempels is actually located in Chinatown instead of little India. I have not been inside yet, but from the outside it already looks quite amazing!

晚安!

Good food

I have had the most delicious and incredible dishes during these last weeks and even though I already posted some pictures of food there is much more I need to show you (the hipster-bonus-points this will give me is unbelieveable, it's a pity I don't have Instagram). Unfortunately I forgot most of the names of the food (if I ever knew them), but as you know, a picture says more than a thousand words. Here we go.

I was not too thrilled when my friend took me to this burger place the other day. Little did I know, that the burgers were A BIT different from what we are used to in Europe. The patty is made of prawn and is covered with (I'm gonna say) oyster sauce. Also everyone knows that buns are too mainstream and since we are in Asia they substituted them with loads of rice. And all this was wrapped up as if it was the most regular burger from McDonalds. Definitely one of the best burgers I have had so far.

This is from my favourite restaurant in Little India. The yellow dish is AMAZING. It is called butter chicken and it is so good (especially with the naan)!!. The red thing is also chicken but with marenade and was also pretty awesome.

This indescribably light food is called carrot cakce. It is not really made out of carrot but rather beet, from what I have heard and it is basically the most filling brick of calories I have ever eaten in my life. I could not finish the thing but it was not bad at all (especially with chili sauce).

This is my favorite dish in the world!! It is a Malay dish called Nasi Lemak and I already mentioned it in my last post where I talked about hawker centers. The rice is amazing because it is boiled in coconut milk. You can choose all the side dishes you want. Here you can see a fried egg, some breaded fish, chili (in the upper right corner) and some small fried fish with beans. It is really, really good, although it is apparently not that healthy because of the coconut thing... Nom nom nom! 

This is also Malay cuisine. It is fried chicken with different side dishes and, of course, rice. The soup was very nice too although I don't remember what the ingredients were...

The food here is not only amazing but also incredibly cheap (e.g. the Nasi Lemak coust 2 Euros in the food court). I am really going to miss the variety when I leave Singapore! 

A very merry Christmas - Pink Paradise Edition

Today I finally went to Orchard, to take pictures of the amazing light decoration they have. I already showed you one pic but here is the real deal:

They set all of these fake trees that are illuminated and have animals on top of them. What animals, do you ask?

Well, what could be more christmassy than a racoon with a glittery hat and a mask? Not much, right?

 Maybe an equally fashionable owl with a pink wig and a fabulous scarf matching the hair?

In order to leave some space on the sidewalk for the pedestrians there were also huge plastic spheres with more animlas and Christmas balls in them floating around the trees..

I really like how they took the main elements of Christmas (like Christmas trees and Christmas balls) and created their own thing, that in the end is so different from our decoration! 

There were more lights which I will show you next time. Until then I leave you with my friend the (very traditional) Christmas sheep:

Next Generation Ice-cream sandwich

The ice-cream sandwich sold on the street is already pretty awesome. But then there is this:

This thing is amazing. The bread is not only thicker but also covered with butter (so it's not only diabetes but also artherosclerosis that you get, whohoo!). Then there are the bananas covered in chocolate (chocolate, oh, chocolate why do Singaporeans despise you?) and of course the vanilla ice-cream. Not to mention the almonds... I could write poems about this dish...

It's actually not very asian (despite the fact that they put ice-cream on bread) but I cannot be eating chicken feet all day...