This is just something odd I saw while at the shopping center near my new place. I was leaning against a rail while my wife was using the ATM, and I noticed this sign behind me. I thought it was amusing so I snapped some photos.
Apparently, the children are supposed to hang out on the adjoining playground while the old people get their workout:
These workout areas and playgrounds are common in Singapore, but this is the first time I’d seen one that claimed to be specifically for old people.
It had been a long time since my wife and I had gone to see a movie at the theater, but we’re both action movie and X-Men fans, so we decided that going to see Wolverine was something we just had to do! Lucky for us, we went on a night when the theater had multiple screens showing the movie, so there were good seats, and the prices were even discounted. Typically a ticket in Singapore costs 10 to 11 bucks, but our tickets were only 8.50. We booked our tickets 21 hours in advance of the showing, which was a smart move because they were selling out fast.
I didn’t really know what to expect going into this movie. The third X-Men movie was sort of a let down. It didn’t seem to follow along with the story in the comic at all. Also, I’d scanned over a few articles about the movie and I saw a lot of negative comments.
Luckily, we decided to find out for ourselves. Wolverine is definitely worth seeing on the big screen! It was packed with action and gave a lot of background history to one of my favorite characters. I say I’m an X-Men fan, but I stopped reading comics over a decade ago. Still, I remember being excited any time Wolverine was involved in a story. I always wondered where he came from, and when I watched the other X-Men movies it renewed my interest in where he was from and why he did the things he did.
The first few minutes of the movie give a brief overview of Wolverine’s first hundred or so odd years. I remember reading someone’s complaint that they felt it was unnecessary, but I think the movie would’ve been a bit confusing without it. You’ll get a rough idea of how old Wolverine is, how his powers first developed, why he has such an aggressive personality, and what his relationship with Sabertooth really is.
The rest of the movie played out nicely and filled in a lot of the gaps about the years just prior to his meeting Rogue. The only part that confused me a bit is why Professor X didn’t recognize Wolverine when he met him later (in the first X-Men movies). He was present at the island and was in mental contact with Scott Summers, which means he should have been able to detect Wolverine’s presence as well. On top of that, why didn’t any of the people present there every mention Wolverine to Professor X? Why did no one ever make the connection?
Despite that, the movie is still fantastic. You get backstory, action, some new characters (like Gambit) and it leaves you excited to see what they’ll come up with next.
This is a bit off-topic, but I just wanted to use this opportunity to point out that taking infants or 3 year olds into a movie theater isn’t the brightest thing to do. Some little punk was kicking my seat, hanging off it, hanging off my shoulder, and making noise right behind my head during the majority of the movie. I kept having to turn around in my seat and stare down his parents before they would grab the kid and sit him back down. Then, they would apparently get caught up in the movie and there he would be, hanging off my chair or shoulder again. If you’re going to take your kids into a theater, try to make sure the only one they’re bothering is you, or someone (not as nice as me) may lose their temper and club them like a baby seal. I mention infants because at the start of the movie I heard a baby crying. Wolverine isn’t a kid’s movie.
We were walking out of the Tampines 1 mall to take a shortcut down to the lower level and heard loud music playing and saw a crowd gathering. I ran over to see what was going on and immediately got my camera out. This is kinda weird, and not something I’d ever expected to see going on as a mall promotion. I’m not entirely sure it was the mall they were promoting, though. I saw a Tampines 1 logo on one of their suits, but the wading pool in front of them had a message about renewing energy, so it could have been a mall sponsored energy conservation promotion.
[Update: I found out that the mall has a blog and that these guys are promoting the Amore Living store on the 5th floor, which has an outdoor pool on the roof, as part of their fitness complex.]This second group surely had something to do with a toy store. I quickly took a few pictures. Then a woman asked if I wanted my photo taken with them. She looked like she was wearing a jacket with a business logo on it so I was scared she was going to ask for money. I politely said no and then quickly retreated!
A few weeks ago I was checking around the new mall in Tampines (Tampines 1) and I saw the entrance to a restaurant called Manpuku. The entrance area was jam packed with people in line to get in and people ogling the items on display in the window:
I met up with my wife there during her lunch break and while we were walking around together we even got to see the mascot. At the time we didn’t know what restaurant or store the mascot represented but it was fun anyways.
We both love to go out and eat, and we particularly love Japanese food, so we were excited about going to check this place out. We finally made a visit to Manpuku today and it was great!
It wasn’t quite what I expected, in a good and interesting way. As you get to the head of the line a greeter will ask you how many people are in your party and will then pass you a corresponding number of cards that look and act like credit cards. The waiter will explain that as you walk around inside the restaurant, you pick different foods from the various stalls and the price of the item is charged to your assigned card. At the end of your meal, you bring the card to the cashier by the exit and settle your bill.
That’s when I realized that Manpuku isn’t simply one restaurant. It’s a collection of restaurants acting under one name, serving Japanese style food. In fact, the place reminded me of a big, themed food court, though a very well appointed one.
Here are some photos we took inside Manpuku:
As you can see from the pictures, the interior of Manpuku is pretty big. It sits at one end of the mall on the 3rd floor and stretches from front to back. There are at least half a dozen different mini-restaurants inside, offering everything from skillet plates to sushi.
The prices have a wide range from a bit on the high side (a four piece sushi plate at 38 bucks) to the affordable (my pork okas was 9.90). I saw quite a few dishes I want to try, and I’m looking forward to going back again. For this trip, we wound up having a sushi set, a dish called pork okas, and a soup that my wife devoured and said was delicious. I forgot to ask her what it was and she’s asleep now! Just thinking about it is making me hungry again!
Looking for something sweet to nibble on while you’re walking around Vivocity mall? Want a snack to enjoy while you’re sitting outside, enjoying the breeze and the wading pools? I really have to recommend that anyone who visits Vivocity stops by this stand and picks up some of these coconut cakes. They’re about the size of your palm and about half an inch thick. They’re made fresh as you wait, and they’re best when eaten warm. The outside is some sort of chewy dough and the inside is sweetened coconut shavings. It looks like it’s mixed with brown sugar, but it still maintains a mellow, even taste. I know, I know, I should’ve taken a photo of them, but we gobbled them down too fast!
If my recommendation isn’t enough, you can see in the picture above that her stall was featured in The Straits Times, which is the major newspaper for Singapore.
The last time we were at Vivocity, which I think was in September, we tried these coconut cakes on a whim. I mean, why not? You get four for only 2 SGD. They were incredible, and since then I’ve talked about them frequently, reminding my wife that the next time we’re there we should get more. Sure enough, almost right after arriving at the mall we made our way to this cart and snagged a little bag of four of them. We then found a cozy spot outside with a view of the water, got comfortable and enjoyed them.
The shop lady making our coconut cakes.
A cruise ship docked in front of the mall, and you can also see the Sentosa cable cars that go between Sentosa and the main island of Singapore.
Last night my wife and I were at Vivocity mall at Harbourfront and we noticed that there was a new store, a National Geographic Store. In Singapore, there seems to be a specialty store for everything. I guess National Geographic is no exception.
We went ahead and went inside to check it out and we wound up having a lot of fun! Looking through the store was like looking through a museum where everything is for sale. I took photos of a few of the more interesting attractions/products:
This thing greets you as you first come into the store. It’s pretty visible and is actually what caught our eye in the first place. When I saw it, the first thing that went through my head is stuff about pale horses and death. It’s a horse made of pieces of some type of old wood. I didn’t check the details on it but my wife said it’s selling for the low low price of only 9k SGD. I think I could build one myself for cheaper than that, but maybe it has some historical value?
Next up was this bookcase that was apparently made in Sweden in the 1880s. I thought it was particularly interesting because one of the blogs I follow is written by a Swedish girl in China, Jonna Wibelius. Besides, I love books, and it would be nice to have a fancy bookcase to put them on. I don’t think I’d go this far though. The bookcase is selling for about 25k SGD.
Next I saw this really neat jewelry case. It’s 7k SGD. How’s that for a high end Valentine’s gift?
Though not the most expensive, this one was probably the oldest. It was the oldest one I saw anyways. The tag says it was made in the 900s in England, and it was selling for 21k SGD.
What I want to know is how anyone can afford to buy any of these things, especially with the current financial troubles. Maybe these items are just there for show, and are meant to amuse and attract customers more than anything. The store also carried framed prints and a large selection of wearable clothing (as opposed to costume type clothing as pictured below) and bags as well. Plus, there were some interesting notepads. I should’ve checked the price tags on the clothes and bags, but I’m sure it was all very expensive. I did look at the price of a little 3×5 inch “Expedition Notebook” and was disappointed to see it was 17.50 SGD. I would’ve bought it if it had been 6 to 7 dollars, but I can’t see paying more for an empty notepad than I would pay for an actual novel.
Also, the store of course had issues of National Geographic set up on displays everywhere. I used to have a huge collection of those magazines. They were old ones that my dad had in storage. I don’t even remember what happened to them now. I should’ve kept a closer eye on them. They might have been worth money some day.
Besides old furniture and clothes the store also featured two other unusual and interesting attractions. One was so interesting that I don’t even remember what was on the stands around it. An area of the floor was lit up by a projected image of sand. It had some sort of motion sensing technology built in that would display footprints when you walked across it. Also, seeminly at random, scorpions would pop up out of the sand, or out of your footprints, and skitter around. My wife and I weren’t the only ones that found it incredibly amusing. There was a little girl, maybe 6 or 7, that was going nuts trying to squash the scorpions. I recorded some of it. Sadly, I turned off the camera just before the little girl screamed, “Nasty! Nasty! These things are so nasty! GRRRRR!” It was hilarious!
The other attraction is a “cold chamber.” It wasn’t open when we went into the store, but for 1 SGD you can stand inside the chamber and experience -25 C (about -13 F) temperatures. The chamber has glass windows so everyone can watch, and, if you want to pay 5 SGD and submit a valid e-mail address, you can have your picture taken and sent to you as well. For some people in Singapore this might be a thrill because they’ve never experienced temperatures anywhere near that cold before. This is a tropical climate after all. For me, it would be a welcome relief to finally feel some real cold air. Even in the malls here the temperature is average, rather than the cool I’m used to. -13 F is a little extreme, but it would still be great!
So, even though we didn’t buy anything, we still got to have a lot of fun just browsing the store. Even if you don’t have 25k extra to spend on old furniture, I still recommend you at least poke your head in to look around.
My wife is a cat lover, and I’m fond of them myself. So, when my wife said that she’d heard about a movie called Gu Gu The Cat, I knew right away that we were going to see it. This was one of those times when I had to give in. Besides, it looked funny, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad.
Going to the movies here in Singapore is a very expensive outing, and will usually wind up costing about 35 bucks, including transit and a few light movie goodies, so she wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to make it. We’re getting ready for a move and our finances are tight. As sort of an answer to her prayers, her coworker won free tickets to the sneak peak showing for last night and wasn’t going to be able to attend. So, she asked my wife if she’d like the tickets and of course my wife jumped on the opportunity.
Last night we rushed out of the house at about 6pm, not sure if we were going to make it on time. The directions on the e-mail announcing the free tickets was a bit vague. It just said “GV Plaza 4.” So, she contacted a friend and asked where that was, and was told it was at Vivocity at Harbourfront. So, off we went! We managed to make fairly good time and were a bit anxious as we waited for the train to reach Harbourfront. We literally ran through the tunnel and dashed up the escalators to make it to the theater on time and sure enough, we got to the theater right at 7pm. Unfortunately… we were at the wrong theater. The sneak peak showing was at Plaza Singapura, and we were already out of time.
My wife was crushed. She really wanted to see the film. Like I said, she really loves cats! So, I consoled her by telling her that we’d set aside money and definitely catch Gu Gu at the regular opening on the 23rd. To cheer ourselves up we wandered around the mall and wound up having a pretty good time (more about that later).
Last night when we got home she started searching the internet to see if she could find a copy to watch. The film isn’t new, it just hadn’t been shown in Singapore yet. That’s nothing new. There’s a movie called Traitor that’s starting here in Singapore soon, but we saw a DVD copy from the US months ago. She found a copy on YouTube, but by then it was pretty late and she had to work today so I downloaded the files and set it up to watch tonight.
So, she was very excited and got home from work early. After we ate we got comfortable and started up the movie. For the first 15 minutes or so, it was interesting, to me at least, but after that it was painfully slow. The movie is more of a drama about life in general than about cats, and it seemed to focus more on the people in the story than on Gu Gu. Gu Gu was more there for comedic relief than anything.
Don’t get me wrong. The movie has its high points, and there’s something to be learned from it, but if you go into it thinking it’s going to be a comedy, or very cute, or happy, you’ll be let down. The movie deals with a lot of heavy themes about love, relationships and missed opportunities. It even touches on the pain and loss of death.
So, I can’t say it was a bad movie, really. It just wasn’t what I expected.
Here are a few screenshots of the movie, courtesy of AsianFanatics.net, as well as the first segment of the movie (video was removed due to terms of use violation) movie trailer that’s hosted on YouTube:
A few days ago I posted about our cat Dapper getting spayed. I mentioned at the end of the post that she came back with a cough. I was planning on taking her to the vet, but my trip got put off. Then, somehow, her cough started to clear up on its own overnight. Perhaps the whole thing was related to her surgery.
So, I’m glad to report that Dapper is feeling much better now. It’s been about a week and a half since she was spayed and she seems to be back to her old self. In fact, she seems even more active and happy than before. I think going into heat over and over was driving her crazy. My wife and I were talking about it earlier tonight, and Dapper seems a lot more affectionate. It’s as if she’s a kitten again.
She has also started meowing again, which is nice. She was a very vocal cat and I missed it. Her meow does seem a bit huskier now, but that’s fine. I’m just glad to see she’s recovering. All that’s left for her, it seems, is to grow back the hair on her belly where it was shaved for the surgery. It looks a little funny.
So, what now!? It seems like it’s one thing after another with our cats. Now that Dapper is well again, Thumper seems to have taken ill. He’s been listless, sleepy, and he’s running a fever. I wonder if he caught something from Dapper? It’s possible that Dapper picked up a virus from the cats she came in contact with at the vet and brought it home with her, and that Thumper picked it up from her.
The fever isn’t too high, so we’re keeping him home. I’ve been making sure he drinks water and eats… even if he doesn’t want to. I think he’s pissed at me now, but thanks to my efforts he’s more active and aware and seems to be getting better. We also bought some wet food to tempt him into eating, and he gobbled down quite a bit of it, complemented with more dry food, before going back to sleep.
Hopefully he’ll feel better in the morning! Oh, and it’s quite an interesting experience to stick a thermometer in a cat’s butt.
Last year when I first came to Singapore to visit, we had to find a place to stay short-term. My first thought was hotels. So, I got online and started searching around for where we could stay. I didn’t mind spending a little money, but I figured we would be outside most of the time, so I didn’t want to spend so much on the hotel room. I’d rather spend the money at the destination. Looking through the internet for deals I came across a package for a flight and a few nights at a place called The Fragrance Hotel. I asked my then fiance about it and she cracked up!
She told me right away that it would be a bad idea to stay at one of those hotels. According to her, the Fragrance hotels aren’t very fragrant (cheesy right?). She said someone she knew stayed in one for a few nights and it wasn’t very comfortable, clean, or hospitable. On top of that, they have the reputation of being a hotel for one night stands and for hook-ups with prostitutes. I was surprised, because the image I had of Singapore in my mind was a pristine one. Singapore’s only reputation in the US is that it’s a place with hard laws and upright citizens, so the idea of a sleazy hotel where you take prostitutes didn’t occur to me. Regardless, I quickly crossed it off my list.
Monday night I got to see one of the Fragrance hotels firsthand. My wife and I went to the Geylang area to look at a place for rent. I had never been there and we arrived just as it was getting dark. Geylang is everything it’s rumored to be! Geylang is the gritty underbelly of an otherwise polished Singapore. The buildings are a montage of new and old, decrepit structures, some worse than shanties I’d seen in the Philippines. Even so, there were people living in them. There were newer structures here and there, but the further we got from the Aljunied area and the deeper we went into the Geylang area, the worse it got.
To clarify, when you travel to Geylang on public transit, the quickest way is to get off the train at the Aljunied station and then take a bus or a cab. We were running late so we took a cab and as we entered Geylang proper I could see quite a few of what the area is most famous for: the Chinese hookers! They were easy enough to pick out of the crowd and most were wearing cheap, slutty looking outfits and had hair dyed in unnaturally bright colors (for an Asian anyways).
We weren’t too sure of where we were going and we wound up getting out of the cab a block short. We didn’t mind though. It gave us a chance to stretch our legs and get a feel for the neighborhood. We called up the agent, got our bearings, and started walking towards the apartment building. As we walked down Lorang 14 we soaked up the sleazy atmosphere, and, unfortunately, quite a few lungfuls of what smelled like stale sweat, rotting garbage and raw sewage. It definitely wasn’t a very attractive place. This is also where I got my first view of a Fragrance hotel, and where I took the photo above.
Once we reached the gate to the apartment complex we had to stand and wait a while, as the agent hadn’t arrived yet. As we stood there waiting, more Chinese hookers passed in and out of the complex. I don’t know what it is about hookers exactly, but they’re just so damn easy to pick out. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to seeing decent folk around Singapore that they give off a negative vibe. They have that cheap way about them. They look cheap, smell cheap, and, even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying, even sounded cheap.
Regardless, it gave my wife and I one more thing to talk about while we waited to view the apartment. We chatted about how much like the Philippines Geylang is, and about how it feels a bit dangerous there, like you’d have to watch your wallet and watch your back while you were out. We talked about how the place seems more lively than Tampines, though not necessarily in a good way. Geylang definitely has an exciting atmosphere to it, and it might be quite an adventure to live in a place like that after having lived in Tampines for a year. Tampines is much quieter, and very upscale, especially for a “provincial” area. I say provincial, but nearly all of Singapore is becoming built up into more of a city-type area.
The oddest and most out of place thing I saw while standing there waiting was a young girl, maybe 12, in a school uniform come through the gate at about 7:30pm. She was alone and it seemed wrong given the surroundings. If I had a kid I don’t think I would live in Geylang in the first place, and I definitely wouldn’t let him or her walk around alone after dark. Not in that area. It just doesn’t feel safe.
I suppose you could call it a bonus experience, but one other thing of note is that as we were walking to and from the apartment we were viewing we got to see a man sleeping on the floor of the hallway. He was around 40 to 45, shirtless, shoeless, and probably passed-out drunk, sleeping first face down and then on his side on the hallway floor. That, more than anything else, was our quality of life indicator for that part of Geylang.
I suppose it’s not what’s outside your door that counts though, so even with all of that ‘excitement’ just a few steps beyond the elevator, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to live in Geylang. If you maintain your home, it can still be comfortable, and given the area, the rent is a bit lower than usual as well. Besides, there is one other thing Geylang is well known for, and that’s the food. My wife and I both love to eat, and we’re tired of the choices available to us in Tampines, so the lure of fresh feeding grounds is a big one!
From country to country you find a lot of laws and rules that don’t seem to make much sense to you at the time, but they’re usually laws like women having to cover themselves in public (Saudi Arabia), or it being illegal to step on the local currency (Thailand). They even make sense, given the cultural background of the area, or in the sense that stepping on the currency could be construed as a gesture of stepping on (disrespecting) the leader whose image is on that currency note.
I found a law in Singapore that kinda just blew my mind though. It is unlawful to urinate or smoke in the lifts (elevators), and there are signs posted by most lifts to remind you of the fact, as seen above. Reminding people to not smoke in an elevator is something I can understand. It’s a matter of common courtesy to non-smokers who have to share those same elevators, possibly with children, to get home. On the other hand, urinating in an elevator is just something that never crossed my mind. It’s just not something I’d ever even thought of. Are people’s mentalities really that different from country to country, that something as basic as only urinating in a toilet (or maybe in the bushes) is something a person has to be reminded of?
When I first saw these signs I was more amused than anything, but I recently stumbled across a forum where an instance of a person urinating in a lift was actually recorded on camera. And, to top it off, it was a woman.
Saw this in Xin Ming Ri Bao (17th Nov 2008).
A Gril was caught urinating in a HDB lift and it’s caught by the hidden camera.
The girl is believe to be in her 30s.
It happen in Sembawang GRC, but not sure where. Because the offender is facing away from the camera, they can’t identify her. The newspaper report that the town council is going to put up notice with her picture beside lift of HDB (Most likely Sembawang GRC) to warn others not to do it….
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I thought only boys or some dogs will do such thing in HDB lift… didn’t know girls also so daring….
I’m actually at a loss for words on this one. Is this just a cultural thing, or is it an individual fault? I would typically lean towards the latter, but the fact that there are signs up means that this must happen, or must have happened before, quite often.
