Gardens by the Bay 2

I visited Gardens by the Bay with Ivan for the 2nd time on 9th Feb (Sun) as he had 2 free tickets to the domes and it was expiring soon. During the first time we went, we only walked around the garden cos we didn't want to pay to enter the domes. This time, we only visited the domes and didn't really walk around the Gardens cos it was scorching hot in the afternoon. Basically, we just spent our time camping inside the air-conditioned domes for hours until it was time for dinner.

Not walking around the Gardens doesn't make this trip a boring one. In fact, all the beautiful things are hidden inside the domes. Firstly, we visited the Flower Dome first. The inside of it was manifested with colours of the spring and seeing horse sculptures everywhere enhanced  the Chinese New Year ambience. 

Sharing some photos we took in the Flower Dome

 

There are many seats available inside the dome for you to take a rest or chill. As we had a lot of time to spare before dinner, we took one of those seats available and sat there for quite awhile. As we were sitting there, chatting, my Starbucks craving decided to bring itself to my attention, so I got no choice but to bring it to Ivan's attention. I tried to make him guess what I want through sign language but he failed quite badly at it. I was doing a heart shape and the gesture which stands for $ with my hands. I even hinted him to translate "heart" into mandarin first. And when he finally got it, it ended up that there wasn't any Starbucks outlet @ The Shoppes, so I had to make do with Gong Cha instead. 

After enjoying a cup of Gong Cha together, we headed back to Gardens again to enter the Cloud Forest. We were greeted with a large waterfall feature at the entrance. In the picture below, we were actually standing quite far away from it. It was already quite cold inside, I didn't want to run the risk of getting wet.   

We explored the entire place, walking on the "treetop" walkway, watching a clip about how human are harming the environment etc..Finally, it was time for DINNER @ Satay by the Bay!!

I bought a Steamboat Buffet coupon for 2 pax on Deals.com.sg for this occasion. Kind of treated it as a ORD treat for him too. 

I literally had someone to serve me without the need of giving service charge. He was the one bbq-ing the meat and peeling off the shell of those seafood while I sat there happily eating. The variety of the food was so-so and crayfish seemed to be the only seafood worth eating. They had flower crabs as well but it was so small and not worth the time cooking, peeling off the shell and eating the pathetic amount of meat it had. When we were done, each of us took a potong ice cream and left the place.

While walking to the MRT station, I told him more of my grandmother stuff, which I was unable to give him a detailed account previously... and that will also be what my next post is about...

Overall, I enjoyed this outing and the steamboat. And thanks for being my servant XD 

2 Degree Ice Exhibition

My blog entries are lagging badly! I will try to catch up with updating about several things I had done in Dec 2013. This blog post will be about the 2 Degree Ice Exhibition I went on 14 Dec.

I went back to the office one day and saw that there was corporate discount offered at $24/tix to the company for the 2 Degree Ice Exhibition. I kinda wanted to go there but the regular ticket price really deters me from going. So with the discount, I activated the whole family (just nice my aunt and her family would be in Singapore for holiday) and asked them if there were interested to go. In a rush, I managed to get confirmation from them and gave my order for the tickets on the very same day.

We rented the coat at $5/coat and took a picture together.

The original looks like this:

And it came out like that:

 

We bought the photos for memorial purpose since it's rare that we go out together in such a big group. 

It was really cold inside the big fridge. The personnel outside told us that it was -15 degrees inside but none of us believed it. It felt like 2 degrees at most.

Some sculptures that were displayed in the exhibition:

We went to the exhibition quite early so there wasn't many people around. It would have been embarrassing to try out the slides if it were dominated by kids.

My aunts suggested my sis's bf to kiss the sculpture, literally. But he replied saying that his lips would be stuck there. (if you tried eating ice right after taking it out from the fridge, you would know what I'm saying)

The whole exhibition area was quite small though. We finished the first round within 20 mins and we just spent the rest of the time at the playground and taking pictures around. Some of my relatives and cousins wore shorts and slippers there, so they didn't stay around for too long as their feet would turn numb. As re-entry was permitted, we came out for a short break to "defrost" ourselves first before heading back again for more pictures and fun with the slides.

In total, each of us had to pay $29 for the exhibition and I didn't think that it was worth the price. Nevertheless, it was an one-of-a-kind experience and it's still considered a cheap thrill for something you can only experience in Har Bin (China).

Zoo~ See you 10 years later

7 Dec 2013: Saturday

Ivan happened to see that Safra was offering a promotion at $13/adult ticket for zoo, so he came to Toa Payoh Safra to queue early in the morning. That was why we decided to visit the zoo anyway. 1) Discounted tickets  2) Got nowhere to go  3) Haven't been there for a long time.

We met at AMK and took the bus to zoo. The bus ride didn't feel long and soon we reached zoo at about 11 or 12 plus. Basically the whole trip only involved walking around, taking pictures and resting. You know you are getting old when you need to take many stops of rest when you're in the zoo.

The KFC seemed to be the most suitable place for us to have lunch, but it's just exploitation. The price of their 2-piece chicken meal is about $1+ to $2+ more that any KFC elsewhere. So my advice is, bring your own food if you want to go there, unless you don't mind being exploited.

*Look closely* I caught the Cheetah/Leopard peeing in the public.

Ending this post with an unglam picture of....

Pasar Malam food is da best

Yesterday was the 2nd time I went to Dhoby Ghaut Samsung Service Centre to service my Note II one week after I went there for the first time. They only managed to solve my batt draining issue temporarily and now I have to wait for 3-4 days later to collect my phone. I'm currently using my previous LG phone and it sucks badly. There's nothing much I can do with it.

After I sent my phone for servicing, we went to catch a movie: The Colony. It's abt the world becoming a place where there was no warmth, only endless snowing and how people set up a colony underground and survived in that condition.However, there's also another group of desperate people whose hunger drove them insane and they behaved like animals, hunting down colonies and clearing all the supplies out and eating human. Overall the movie was just so-so only.

For dinner, we came back to Toa Payoh and bought some food from the Pasar Malam. We named a lot of food we wanted to buy, but in the end we didn't buy all cos we wouldn't be able to finish it.

Here's the snapshots for the day:

Three Wombats Cafe

We went to explore this cafe last Sunday as I bought the deals online and it was expiring soon. Got no choice but to utilise it ASAP. The layout looks exactly like the picture.

 Cream of Broccoli. Tasted okay but the soup was too watery.

I ordered Chicken Chop with some red wine sauce. I could smell the red wine when the dish was served, but I couldn't taste it. The chicken itself is delicious, coupled with ordinary sauce and bad side dishes. So overall, I would rate this dish as so-so only.
 

Ivan ordered the baked fish pasta. Similarly, the fish was nice but the pasta was over-cooked.

Lastly, a pathetically small cake. We ordered a cheese cake and a brownie but it was so small that I didn't even want to take photos of it. Ivan was the one who took picture of the cheesecake. You can literally finished the whole cake in one full bite. I know we bought the deals at a discounted price and should be contented with that. But it's definitely a wrong move for the cafe to do that as customers will feel cheated and it doesn't reflect well of the cafe. I think it would be so much better if they didn't include it in the deal description if they are going to be so stingy about it. So now, I would associate the cafe with the pathetically small cake they served and doubt I would want to go back again.

On a side note, here's a picture of my handsome bf taken in the cafe... but don't be fooled by this, scroll down further...

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Can you spot the difference?