CYO - Cook Your own

With Nick’s uncle, auntie and great uncle in town for the weekend as they make their way home from visiting family in Australia, we were called up for supper service on Sunday night.

            I met Andy when he was travelling through town a few weeks ago, so we went over to the dinner very relaxed, knowing that he’s great fun and that the rest of the family would hopefully be more of the same, and I am very pleased to say that they really were.              

            We had a brilliant evening at a Japanese BBQ restaurant on Boat Quay. Whilst cooking our out scallops, prawns, steak and corn we worked our way through a bit of wine and caught up on their holiday adventures from the few weeks before.

            They were all on great form, and it turned out to be a hilarious family dinner, spent overheating slightly around out own private BBQ.  

D-fence

Sports Fans!

When I heard that you could go and watch the Singapore Slingers professional basketball team for a grand total of around $15 (that’s less than a tenner a ticket), I was obviously going to sign up for tickets as quickly as possible.

Dining room chairs for the court side seats, and less than half full seating

           

Sadly, as the games are only held on Sundays and we have been pretty busy recently it took us until the second to last game of the season to get there, and what a game it was! The Slingers were on the back foot for most of the game, but they won it back beautifully in the last three minutes (which lasted for about half an hour), eventually securing a win and getting them through to the finals!

Despite the stands being only half fun (it felt a bit like watching a secondary school game), the crowd was pretty vocal in their support, and although most of the crowds found the Singaporean attempts as cheerleaders a little confusing, there was a great game atmosphere. Singapore basketball fans really are proper fans, which is incredibly refreshing.

         The icing on the cake of this bizarre and incredibly ‘local’ event was that we got to get out pictures taken with the team mascots at half time. They were a little bit creepy, and I am certain that they scared most of the children in the crowd, but we go hugs and very Asian photos as an award for braving their oddly disturbing faces.

Popping out for a quiet beer

Following our separate adventures on Saturday, Nick and I both arrived back at the flat at around 3 in the afternoon. Whilst he had some gaming that he wanted to get done, I was struggling from my 6am accidental wake up, so I settled down for little mid-afternoon nap. Heavenly!

            Sadly I only slept for around ten minutes before Nick got a call that woke me up. Our friends Liv and Flash have just moved into a new flat less than a minute away from us, and so to celebrate them getting the last box of personal possessions through the front door we decided it was only right that we should take them out for a beer to welcome them to the area.

            In essence this was a fine plan. The intention was to go for a couple of beers and then maybe have dinner somewhere close to home before headed back to the flat to catch up on sleep and drink tea. Somewhere along the way the one or two beers turned into three or four. Our dinner plans took us into Little India to a French style restaurant where our friend Farrant joined us and we passed a rather merry few hours chatting, drinking and scoffing a lot of very tasty food.

            

Then, just when I thought we would be safe and homeward bound, I found myself being bundled into a taxi and on my way to Club Street where there was a huge Heineken sponsored street festival taking place. The rest of our night passed on the balcony of one of the bars, watching a large chunk of the Singapore expat community drink themselves silly. Nick and I escaped unharmed at 1am, but I dread to think how the rest of night unfolded for Liv, Flash and Farrant.

 

When in Asia...

When I first moved to Singapore I made a nice long list of all the things I need to do, places I need to go and weird Asian experiences that I need to embrace.

            Over the past eight months or so I have been working my way through this list fairly steadily, but there was one thing on there that I had put on hold for a while. Initially I was waiting for Debbie to come to visit, then I thought I would wait until Karen was here when we ran out of time during Debbie’s trip, but with a free Saturday morning stretching ahead of me while Nick went out to a tech convention (from the sounds of it, it was a conference centre filled to the brim with wires and electronics – he was in his element!) I decided it was time to bite the bullet and go on my own.

So it was that my Saturday morning was spent in Neko no Niwa Cat Café. That’s right, a cat café. I had assumed that this would be a bit like a normal café with tables and chairs set up as usual, but with cats wandering around and jumping onto your lap when you had been settled for long enough. That sounded like something I could handle on my own, and so I set off on my Saturday adventure.

            My assumptions were not entirely accurate. It is a café in the sense that coffee is served to you while you’re there, but rather than usual café seating, there was simply a bench running around the perimeter of the room, all facing straight at a cat play / sleep / scratching tower where ten cats were entertaining themselves.

The rules of the house are that you are only allowed to approach the cats when they are awake, and even then you’re not allowed to pick the cats up or manhandle them too much. The sensible cats slept through most of the morning, but two or three were up and about, and so facing the brunt of all the visitors enthusiasm.

            I’m not sure if it was perhaps the first time some of these people had seen a cat in the flesh, but they were chasing them around the room like crazy, desperately trying to get them to sit with them and nuzzling them in an attempt to lure them onto their laps and of course, desperately scrabbling for the best possible selfie opportunity whenever a new cat opened their eyes for more than five seconds. After a quick look around and a couple of ear scratches I decided that I would drink my coffee from the safety of a seat in the corner and observe the crazy rather than involving myself too much.

            It was a very strange place to have a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, and one that I am not sure I will need to return to anytime soon. Still, it’s another slightly bizarre Asian game ticked off the list, and it was quite fun in its own special way, so I’m glad that I made the most of the free Saturday morning (and that I didn’t try to force Nick to come along with me – I would have been in trouble for that one!).

 

Singapore by night is a wonderful sight!

With no big plans for Friday night, Nick and I decided that it would be the perfect chance to check out the Singapore Night Festival. A handful of streets between our flat and my office were being closed off for the celebration, which saw buildings, roads and even trees being dressed up for the occasion. I had watched them get everything ready for the past few weeks, so I was keen to see it all in full swing.

            With the main action (including musical performances with lights and street side pro-wrestling) not getting started until after 10pm, we decided to head back to East8, our new favourite haunt for tapas style dinner and a couple of lovely cocktails first.

Just on the corner of the road by my work, this New York tapas and cocktails restaurant is one of the best locally for good service and great wings, so we invited Kev and Jules to come along with us too – Kev loves wings and Jules loves an adventure, so there were the perfect buddies for our outing.

Following a delicious dinner we wander back home through jam-packed streets. All of the main museums are located along this strip of road, so they were all open late with special exhibits open until 2am.  We stopped to watch some very interesting (not very professional) local pro-wrestlers performing in a ring that had been set up in the middle of the street, and meandered through the stands and stalls that had been set up selling local and handmade crafts and tasty treats.

The whole place had an amazing carnival feel to it, and for the first time, Singapore felt a little bit alive and excited about something. It was great fun, and only a 5 minute walk from our flat.