Decided to check out this coffee joint in Tiong Bahru. It’s at Yong Siak street round the back of Chay Yan street.
The brew is likable and tasty. Aroma is beautiful. Snacks such as banana cakes, tau sar pao etc. are also available. Coffees range in prices, but average $5. If you pay with HSBC credit cards you get 10% off.
Love the homey feel about it – it’s like stepping into a quaint little joint in Paddington street (Sydney).
Highly rated 🙂
Current CDs on rotation:
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto DalĂ i Domènech, Marquis de PĂşbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), commonly known as Salvador DalĂ, was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD)
I’ve always been a fan of surrealism, and Dali’s ‘Persistence of Memory’ stuck in my mind after I first saw his sculptures in an art book. Of course it helped that one of my favourite thrash metal bands, Anthrax, borrowed his ideas for their album art, Persistence of Time.
It came to be that the newly opened Artscience Museum in Singapore, part of the sprawling Marina Bay Sands integrated resort, is staging Dali’s works, and this fell nicely in the school vacation weeks. So off we went to the museum – there’s a promotional package now at $80 for a family of four, or you could save a few dollars more if you used your OCBC credit card to buy tickets.
Dali’s works are on the 3rd level, and the current price of admission lets you access all levels – there’s a nice Van Gogh exhibit in the basement, and next door is the recently salvaged Tang dynasty shipwreck chinaware.
Anyway, here’s some of his works to whet your appetite – but better be quick! The museum’s open from 10 am to 10 pm.
For parents who think a confectionery store is loads of fun – so do we! 🙂
P/S: Reese’s peanut buttercups are – never thought I’d say this – yummylicious!
You can find the store at City Link Mall – in the underground passage between Raffles City and One Raffles Link.
Another activity we planned for, and did, was try ice-skating. There’s a rink at Leisure Park Kallang – accessible by car, bus and MRT. The charges are $6/hour for kids, and $8/hour for adults – skates are free. You might end up buying gloves as it gets quite cold in there – $3.50/pair for kids and $2.50/pair for adults. You might want to also wear jeans to avoid scraping your knees when you tumble. We had loads of fun for 2 hours. Parking charges are quite decent at the basement carpark. There’re loads of eating or drinks joints at Leisure Park after ice-skating; my regular stop is Starbucks for coffee 🙂
‘Staycationing’ in Singapore always posed some challenges to me – what to do, what to see? Well, I’m glad that Marina Bay exists. We spent quite a bit of time just soaking it all in, by the water’s edge.
You can park at the open-air parking lots adjacent to the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, where the charges are quite reasonable, and you pay by the minute.
Hotel Iris is a disturbing read. What starts off as a tranquil setting in some coastal Japanese town turns into a tale of misplaced love, sexual bondage, and subservience.
Mari, the only child of an innkeeper, from which the titular hotel takes it’s name, witnesses an aging guest arguing with a prostitute on a stormy night – in what was probably a transaction gone sour.
After that episode at the inn, the 17 year-old sees the old man again in town, and out of curiosity, trails him, only to be discovered.
From there, the odd couple strike up a friendship (and relationship) that is superficially cordial, but sexually perverted. There’s a ‘master & slave’ aspect to this, and it reflects Mari’s own relationship with her mother – where she is the epitome of piety to the outside world.
As the old man’s and Mari’s relationship grows, the old man’s mute nephew turns up to complicate the affair. Things go awry when old man discovers that Mari had slept with his nephew. Mari gets into a situation where the conclusion results in a chaotic and tragic end.
Pick up this book for a glimpse of the fractured layers within Japanese polite society. It certainly opened my eyes. A good, and short, read nonetheless.
So we decided to do the ‘Planet Shark‘ exhibition as advertised by the Singapore Science Centre. It’s located at the Annexe adjacent to the Science Centre.
We took the afternoon to do this, and it cost $20/adult and $15/child. If you added $1/person each, you could also visit the rest of the Science Centre. And I’m glad we did – we breezed through the Shark exhibit in about 20 mins – and it felt like we just donated some cash for nothing.
Given that the kids mainly liked to see the Great White shark, the rest of the exhibits were passable but boring, and once they had seen the life-sized cast of the Great White, the show was over. So time spent at ‘Planet Shark’ exhibit – 20 mins max. Time spent in the Science Centre proper – over an hour.
Thankfully the Science Centre had loads more entertaining and educational exhibits for all ages – I liked the Mathematics exhibit, where you could learn about the history of Maths, or how Mathematical equations could be found in nature, e.g. in the nautilus (the golden ratio). I learnt something new today too –Â Euler’s number. Lovely stuff!
It’s a great read, and Jennifer Egan does a ‘Pulp Fiction’-esque take on her story – it details the convoluted lives of a female kleptomaniac and her ‘rags-ro-riches-rags’ record owner boss.
The march of time, relentless and cruel, underpins this story about wantonness, hedonism, aimlessness, and redemption of sorts for its main protagonists.
Reaching as far back as the drug-addled ’60s and punk-rock ’70s to present-day New York, the story revolves around Sasha, personal secretary to Bennie Salazar, owner of Sows Ears record, a label built on the success of its early musical discoveries. Sasha has a chequered past, and she met Bennie while still student at NYU. Bennie decides to hire her an an intern, and that’s where their stories unfold.
Intertwined with Sasha’s and Bennie’s tales are flashbacks to the people who passed through their lives, either temporarily or permanently, each one leaving an impression on the central characters, or ending up being altered by them. The book also pays tributes to the musical history of American and British music, with subtle artistic references scattered throughout the book.
Time is the constant here, and Time is a ‘goon’, as one of the characters calls it. It creeps up on you when you’re busily focused on other things in your life. All the characters wind up in a different place, physically, psychologically and emotionally, not necessarily better off than before.
Egan does a beautiful job of teasing out what’s really important in life, and reminding us to be thankful for little mercies each and every day.
If you’ve not read a ‘pop culture’ for a while (or at all), do pick this one up. It’ll leave an indelible mark on your senses, and I mean that in a good way 🙂
Staycationeer - out & about 