The Good:

• Food. So much good food!! My particular favorites are the Hainan chicken and duck rice. So goooooodd. Another favourite of mine is the Kaya toast with the runny eggs on the side (with lots of soy sauce and pepper). Topped up with a cup of Kopi (traditional styled coffee), a great start to the day. I only had chili crab the weeks before my departure from Singapore and although I hate de-shelling with a passion, the Chili crabs are worth getting my hands dirty for. I had the chili crab at both Seafood Paradise and Long Beach (by the way Long Beach de-shells for you if you ask) … so yeah!
• Between the great people at work, the friendly bloggers based in Singapore and the amazing (and random) people Ive met on planes, the people I’ve seen and met  while in Singapore has made the experience here that much more amazing.
• Hot hot hot weather, all day, every day. Kind of nice.
• Lo Hei, was a strange and funny new experience for me.

The Bad:

• Things here are relatively more expensive than in Hong Kong. For example I went to UNIQULO the other day and the same pair of jeans were 20% more expensive than they were in Hong Kong (this might have something to do with the Singaporean dollar shooting up like crazy against the Hong Kong dollar, but lets not forget the 7% sales tax in Singapore as well).
• While some foods are tastier, I felt the variety was not as good as in Hong Kong, plus I’m not very good with spicy food :T
• Hot hot hot weather, all day, every day. Kind of  bad if you have to walk around outside for prolonged periods.

The Ugly:

• Starhub sucks

I wish I had time to write a more detailed post, but alas, I’m off to Hong Kong in 10 minutes and New York tomorrow, making a stop in Toronto, then heading back to Hong Kong again. So … lots of airport time, meaning more blog posts?

I spent most of sunday shopping .. picking up some books, a new pair of shoes, a pair of chinos, some linen dress shirts and a few gadgets here and there. But don’t worry, I’m not here to blog about fashion for men (for that see The Art of Manlieness).

Having grown up in Canada and living in Hong Kong, I was deprived of the luxury of having a Vom Fass franchise near me. For those tho are not familiar, Vom Fass sells premium liquors, oils and whiskey by volume and you even get to choose the glass bottle for whatever you decide to buy. Glass bottles come in a variety of shapes sizes and colours. Naturally, these make amazing gifts! So I picked up two single malt Whiskeys on the weekend (although both of them will be shipped out as gifts later on next this week, I just gotta get some bubble wrap and stuff).

250mL, Ben Nevis single malt whiskey, 12 Years, 40% abv. (Highland)
250mL, Braeval single malt whiskey, 12 Years, 40% abv. (Speyside)

The bottles also stack beautifully~

Recently, I purchased a Sony Vaio Z, and I’m loving this little thing. I waited until the new Macbook Pro specs were released, but in the end the 13” Vaio Z won. Actually if you configure the 13” MBP specs so that it is similar to the Vaio Z, its a little more expensive and almost 1kg heavier. The Z weighs in at just a little over 1.4kg and this thing is a beast… and I love the option between switching from the Intel integrated graphics to the NVDIA GeForce 330M . Oh and the screen is an absolutely amazing (although running 1920 x 1080 on a 13” screen takes some getting used to -___-;).

Oh I’ve been playing a tonne of Magika with Owen and Mark recently… there is still lots of random bugs but soooo funny.

Also went binge shopping today.. got something interesting to post later this week

So I spent Chinese New Years in Singapore (funny how this is my 4th CNY after I moved to HK yet I’ve still only spent one CNY in HK) and as expect everything closed. There was abit of food places open the eve of and on the day of only because I lived in the city, but it was pretty dead the first day as everyone was busy with family events etc.

While I was on the subway to the airport to pick Ema up, some woman’s snot landed on my hand… so that was a not so good start to my year.

The rest of the holidays were spent sightseeing in SG (as this was Ema’s first time) and we watched a few movies (Shaolin and Burlesque). We also walked to Sentosa Island and randomly went to Universal Studios… which was SO TINY. Most of the rides are just the same ones found at other Universals. I think we walked around the park 3 times and preety much went on every ride.

before Lo Hei

In Singapore, there is a tradition called “Lo Hei”. Its like taking this salad … with lots of different veggies, sauces and salmon sashimi, thne lifting the said salad as high into the air as possible, creating a huge mess as a result. I got to do this twice at work (once was for my department and the second one was company wide)… my hand… was covered in sauce!

end result

my hand

Oh and cheat sheet of what you are supposed to say when you add a certain ingredient to the salad… not that I can read it.

红萝卜丝 : 鸿运当头！
青木瓜丝 : 青春永驻！
三文鱼条 : 年年有余！
胡椒粉＋五香粉 : 五福临门！
一碗香油 : 来啊、财源滚滚来！
酸柑汁＋酸甜酱 : 大吉大利、甜甜蜜蜜！
干果＋花生碎＋碎饼 :  金银满屋、遍地黄金！
起筷捞生 : 捞啊！捞个风升水起啊！捞出运气、福气和财气！
然后大喊三声 : 发啊！（发啊！）发啊！（发啊！）发啊！（发啊！）

Spent the day bowling, playing pool and walking around chinatown today. The picture above? Yeah, from some bakery in chinatown.

So I had mentioned earlier I have internet. Let me tell you something, STARHUB SUCKS. I’m on their mobile prepaid boardband (7.2 mbps) and I can’t even browse Facebook nor check email without being disconnected every 5 minutes (lets not even talk abot how I can’t Skype).

What infuriates me the most is that I went into their customer service counter today the conversation went like this (and by the way, the rep didn’t believe me when I told her what kind of plan I had. She was like “sorry sir, we don’t have that plan?” and I couldn’t convince her I was on theplan until I showed her the leaflet HER OWN COMPANY puts out”) :

“Hi, I’m on the mobile prepaid broadband and for some reason my internet is really really slow”
*10 minutes trying to convince the CS rep that I had a 60 day prepaid plan. She kept insisting I could only get a 7 day plan from Starhub*
“ok sir, so what is the problem?”
“my internet is really really slow and disconnects me every 5 minutes”
“did you bring your modem and laptop?”
“yes”
“ok I’ll have  a tech look at it”
*10 minutes later*
“Sir, everything seems to be fine, it can connect”
“I know it can connect. I’m just saying it is so slow I can’t Skype and I have trouble even browsing!”
*I go to google. It can’t reach google. I hit refresh 3 times before it works*
“See!?”
“Sir, there’s nothing we can do about that”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry sir, there’s nothing we can do”
“F*ck this, I’m going to use SingTel next time”

So yeah… use SingTel

That’s it for now. Proper post about something more interesting soon? Maybe.

And yes, I finally got the Flickr photostream embeds working (it wont work, however, if you are reading this via an RSS reader like Google Reader or Facebook Notes)

What was I doing there? Nothing in particular I guess… I ate alot of food though! (note: I normally don’t take photos of food. Well I do, but I normally don’t take photos of food and put them up on the net. This time someone made a request so I’ll let it slide. You can find the food-only photos here)

This was my second breakfast of the day. Pineapple bun with a huge ass glob of butter.

Some half cooked eggs with soy sauce and some sort of slat mixture? It was actually quite good

It wasn’t all eating…

… I wandered around Orchard Rd, absolutely amazed at how much things had changed.

Apparently you can play air-guitar for money on the streets -_-; (well its better than sitting there and begging I guess?)

At the scene of the crime where an alien was murdered!

.. subway entrance o_o

Concluded the trip by eating a stingray! (it was quite good)

All in all, a short but satisfying trip!