Singapore

May 29th, 2006

before i left for Singapore, i told myself, no. no. no. you cannot, you shall not. you should not, and you will not.

but then within my first few hours in Singapore, i was bombarded with …

OMG how la. there is no way that a girl can resist hot pink signage that scream 50% OFF!. it’s just not in our DNA makeup. i tried so hard to fight the temptation and defend my wallet, but i failed miserably. oh damn you, Great Singapore Sale. damn you.

so i spent my first day in Singapore shopping on Orchard Road. and eating ice-cream! Orchard Road is SO the best place in the world - every 20 steps you take, there is an ice-cream cart with those cute little ice cream wafer thingies! and since 20 steps is just enough to finish one cone or one wafer thingy, it’s like the perfect strategy for the connage of icecream freaks like me. i ended up buying 4 cones while traipsing around Orchard. and then, um, another 2 on the way back. i love ice cream. bring me back to Orchard Rd.

me and the nicest ice cream vendor in the world! i have no idea what flavour i’m having - all i know is that it’s pink, it’s not strawberry, and it’s HELLA nice.

i met up with Kevin later on, and we had a splendid good evening compared to the splendid good morning we had when we first met :D i was really excited when i saw him, and started jumping up and down, screaming ecstatically -

“take me somewhere totally singaporean!!! let’s eat something singaporean! let’s DO something singaporean!!!”

so what he did was take me to dinner at an *American* diner-style restaurant.

and then we went to the movies. to watch Xmen3.

@$#%*$^*!!! at least dinner was pretty good. and X3 was actually not too bad! (though i preferred X2, and would have liked to see more of Angel and less omgsoCORNY scenes in X3) oh and guess what we did after the movie! yah you guessed it. more ice cream!

we parted ways at about 11pm, which gave me one whole glorious hour of midnight shopping at Topshop! oh man, midnight shopping is so awesome - on top of the discounts that are already available, midnight shoppers get an extra 20% off to boot! damn happy. unfortunately, half of Singapore’s female populace was damn happy as well, and it was like a madhouse in Topshop Wisma Atria. i left the place at midnight slightly dazed and dizzy - a mob of purpose-driven and determined women who all want the same size 4 white dress are not the best crowd to rub shoulders with.

i dragged my ass out of bed damn early the next day - 7am on a Saturday morning, gawd! - for the Singapore Youth & Media Conference, which is really the main reason why i went to SG in the first place. (contrary to popular belief, no, i am not Jovann, who flies to other countries just to attend their shopping sales. the bugger is in Hong Kong for the summer sale as i speak!!) so i met up with Vicnan my dahling at the MRT station, and off we went to Clementi for the conference. and it is on this very train ride, that i experienced the most traumatic and most depressing conversation of my life. i forget how we arrived at this, but here is the apogee of the convo anyway -

me : Utt is so hot.

vicnan : and so gay.

me : huh???

vicnan : you didnt know?

me : DONT BLUFF ME LAH.

vicnan : really! everybody knows. he’s always spotted with this rich old white MAN.

me : *heart breaks*

how come nobody told me this?! how could you all just stand back and let me pine for years over a (damn hot) guy who’s not even straight, all the while knowing that he and i will never be?! some friends y’all are :( it’s been about 36 hours now, and i’m still depressed. siigh.

but stories of unrequited love aside! the conference was pretty spiffy. learnt a lot of new stuff, met new people, managed to cajole the staff into giving me a free conference tshirt, and ultimately did not make up my mind as to whether i wanna pursue a career in the media industry or not. i think i changed my mind 3 times throughout the course of the conference. someone would say something really impacting and i’d go - yes, mass comm is what i want to do. but then someone would say something quite discouraging and i’d think okay maybe i should still stick with psychology. but then someone else would come along and gush about how doing mass comm was the best decision they ever made. and then i’d be back at square farking one. BLAH.

anyways, the best part of the conference was not the talks or the discussions or the paper presentations. the best part was finding this solid red wall in one of the corridors, which granted us the perfect opportunity to …

camwhore!!!

hehehe this is like the best pic ever!! Vicnan looks so stiff that i cant help but giggle like crazy everytime i see this pic :D

yes he is that tall. almost 2 metres. shit.

the conference was from 9am till 6pm, and after that, the two of us went on this crazy, crazy food-inhalation process. it started out with this hunt for a well-known ‘ah balling’ (or what we know as tong yuen. but damn cute right, the name! ah-ball-ling!) stall in Clementi Ave 3. we found it. and i just want to say … THANK YOU GOD FOR CREATING THIS WONDERFUL SUBLIME CREATION THAT IS THE SINGAPOREAN AH BALLING. i hereby attach a picture for your titillation!

i never knew that the singaporean tong yuen was served in PEANUT SOUP instead of the usual sweet ginger soup! so when i saw the peanut soup, my jaw dropped and i was just like ‘omg are you sure i should be paying her only 2 bucks for that?!’. but then, when i tasted it. WHEN I TASTED IT!!!

angels sang and the skies of heaven opened up and God smiled down upon me.

i shit you not, it is that good. the soup reminds me of the peanut & lotusroot soup that Chinese households usually make, but with just a hint of sweetness and with way more peanuts. so amazingly good. what’s even better is that this stall lets you mix n match your tongyuens fillings, so you can get all the diff tongyuens in one bowl.

after our successful ahballing search, we proceeded to hunt down the following, and all at different shops too : coconut kuih, popiah, dim sum (really really good hargao and siewmai!) at Geylang, beef kway teow, and finally yu tiao (yau char kwai) + hot soya bean. and all in 2 hours @_@ when we were done, i just wanted to crawl back to my hotel room and die. but a very contented kinda death, you know? but still a death nevertheless. called Chong Lam to say that in light of my impending (contented) death, MoS was just not going to be possible. so we rescheduled, and agreed to meet for a quick breakfast tomorrow instead.

*at this point, i’m thinking, WHAT?? more food??*

but i woke up the next morning hungry anyway. met up with Chong Lam, and we went to Killeney Road for a so-so wantan mee. (eh everyone lied to me la, where is this ‘ketchup wantan mee’ that is supposed to be the only wantan mee in singapore? all i see is the wantan mee that we get back here in KL as well!) after a nice chat, we passed by this shop that had all these newspaper articles over their walls touting the headlines “durian chee cheong fun”.

HELLO????

OF COURSE I WENT IN TO TRY IT.

so what it is, is sweet durian pulp, wrapped in rice flour rolls, then sprinkled with a nice dry mixture of chopped peanuts, coarse sugar and sesame seeds. it is absolutely the BOMB, and is possibly the best dish i had in Singapore this weekend. the durian pulp is like, cold and sweet, and the rice wrapper is soft and chewy, with the peanut topping giving the whole thing a nice crunchy texture. ooooh. i’m getting all hot and bothered just thinking about it! :D

after saying byebye to Chong Lam, i met up with Vicnan at Chinatown, for .. yes, more food .. this time it was char siew fan and carrot cake! then immediately after that was a peanut cream and mango cream dessert just down the road. then we went shopping on Pagoda Street, which i love. there are all these cute artsy places with the nicest paintings and fine furniture that are so much fun to poke around in. a must-go.

i was really disappointed cos i wanted so badly to go to the Sunday flea market in Clarke Quay, but turns out it closed down 2 weeks ago. the guard there said it had moved to Bugis Junction? so that’s where we went. well, we were duped! :( no flea market at Bugis either.

i then made a mad dash to the hotel, packed and checked out in record time, then finished off my weekend in SG with a Hainanese chicken rice dinner with Vicnan at the airport :D

so i had a great weekend :D the only thing that spoiled it was when i picked up the paper in the airplane to find that there was an earthquake that claimed 3000 lives in Indonesia, and that the Malaysian AIDS Council seriously thinks that ‘homosexuality is a reason why HIV is so widespread’.

Entry Filed under: Photos, Travel