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...