Art and nibbles

With a Friday night dinner date set up with Mike and Tilly, we had decided to spend the evening at the Gillman Barrakcs Art After Dark event.

            Once every few months the former barracks, which now house a number of studios and galleries in the old mess halls and sleeping quarters, keeps its doors open through to midnight, and hosts a number of music and art events, with the aid of food trucks and pop up bars throughout the night.

Hiding from the rain

The intention is that people gather, look around the art and then hang around out side drinking, enjoying the music and generally soaking up the atmosphere, and so this was our plan for Friday night.

            When it rained for the entire duration of Friday I did recommend changing the plan, butt the others were adamant that it was going to be a great night out again, so we stuck with it, and after spending 40 minutes waiting for a taxi we made our way about an hour out of town to the event.

Four hours in, we could finally venture outside again

Sadly, the rain didn’t stop. The taxi drive was about twice the duration that it should have been. The others were over an hour late turning up. The restaurant that we booked to eat in thanks to the rain had horrible service. All in all, what could have been a great evening just didn’t pan out quite right. We still had a good time, and it’s always great to catch up with Mike and Tilly, but I don’t think that I will be in a rush to get back out there for one of their Art After Dark events again any time soon.

Pollen treats

Every so often Nick gets to take his main client and his wife out for a nice dinner, and the best thing about the wife being included in the plan is that it means that I get to tag along too.    

            With the company very nicely footing the bill, whenever these dinner dates get booked in we spend some time finding the nicest places to try out, without the stress of having the settle the bill ourselves when it gets to home time.

            In the past we have been to all sorts of fabulous places, and we have stocked up on more than enough cocktails and courses while we have been there, but with all four of us on good behaviour, this time around we went for a slightly different approach.

Dinner was booked at Pollen, a sister restaurant of the fabulous Pollen Street Social in London, which has a great reputation for food, drinks and over all experience. Whilst a good reputation is obviously great, the main appeal for this particular restaurant is that it’s nestled in the flower dome at Gardens by the Bay. This means that to sit and enjoy a three course meal you have to wear a jumper and sometimes trousers just to survive. It’s probably the only place in the world that works so hard to replicate the autumnal chill in the air that we’re missing so much now that it’s nearly November. It might have been artificial, but a night spent wearing layers were utterly ideal!

Dinner was delicious, and the drinks were too. Considering it was our cheat day for this week we did really well at keeping it restraint, with Nick opting for a carb free salmon dish for his main instead of the amazing looking steak.      

            It was tasty, not too naughty, chilly, and of course lovely to catch up with Phil and Nathalie for probably the last time before we head home this December – what a way to celebrate the return of the cold! 

All Go for F1 Weekend

The weekend of the Singapore Grand Prix is always quite intense for us. We like to get zone four walk about tickets for all three days, which means that whilst we don’t have specific seats in a stand to watch the action we can get onto some stands for a good view, we can wander around the entertainment stages, bars and food stalls, and at the end of each night we can head in to the main stage to watch the main performers for the evening (this year we have Bon Jovi which was pretty impressive!).

Myself, Elly, Nick and Jules (making the most of Nick's ticket while he had to work!)

On top of all the action on the track, we also always have friends in town who we like to catch up with, and Nick has to balance socialising with a string of events and parties with clients that he has no way to escape from. Generally we end up getting to bed at later than 2am every night, and then having to fill the days with activities and events too. It’s not good for my skin, my diet or my sleep patterns.

Soaking up the atmosphere 

Following a long and testing week at work I was not very enthusiastic about all the action we were facing this weekend, but we also knew that it was going to be even more intense than normal this year.

Late supper of street food on Friday night 

Nick and Elly are both massive F1 fans. Whilst Nick and I like to go along and join in the fun, they had strong opinions on who needed to win, who needed to place in what order, and there was quite a bit of focus on being close enough to the action at all times to ensure that we’re 100% making the most of the tickets. On top of this, Nick had select the Saturday day of their visit to propose to Elly!

Enjoying a bit of Bon Jovi 

My Nick had been heavily involved in helping him to make a plan, to work out when and how to do it, and so on Saturday day, following a late Friday night during which I somehow managed not to spill the beans, we all got in a taxi on the pretence that Nick and I had to go for lunch with an uncle who was in town, so we were going to drop them off by the beach on our way so that they could get a little bit of sun whilst we were otherwise occupied.

            Four hours later, after Nick and I had enjoyed a very low key lunch (without any uncles present) and a twenty minute emergency nap the happy couple were back at the flat, ready for bubbles, celebrations, congratulations, and then more F1 action. Nick had a full evening of work events, so I was in charge of the evening, which lasted us through to 4am. I was exhausted by Sunday.

Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dipping helps everything!

Thankfully we had a quick lunch booked for Sunday and then nothing else until the racing action in the evening. Following a mammoth grilled cheese sandwich and another sneaky 40 minute nap we were ready for the last night of F1, the official race day, a quick burst of Bon Jovi on the main stage, and then finally managing to drag ourselves to bed at just after midnight.

            It was a great weekend, but one that I will be aggressively working to cleanse from my system for the next few weeks. Nick and Elly will be flying out of Singapore to continue their touring around Borneo for the next two weeks, so whilst we will be seeing them for one more night stop over on their way back through in two weeks time, I am now excitedly anticipating a week of sleeping, cleaning, laundry and just generally betting my life back on track again.

 

We miss Big Mike

Big Mike left us early this year to go and live in Dubai. He swapped extreme humidity for extreme dry heat, but he seems to be having a good time, as we discovered when we managed to meet up for a quick dinner before he had to fly back out of the country against his Thursday.

            When Big Mike was still living in Singapore, every few months he and Nick would meet up to eat meat, drink wine and generally enjoy a bit of a Man Date which my liver and my waistline was always more than happy to miss. However, because there was only one night open for a catch up with Mike, I got to gate-crash the Man Date this time around, and it was one eye opening experience.

I will let the photo speak for itself, but as you can imagine, I am not sure I would have survived these sorts of outings on a monthly basis. It’s going to take a month just to work off all that steak! 

A weekend of eating

After a number of months on very best behaviour, which saw me rejecting the majority of the invites that I got to go out and play in the past few months, we are being to ease back into real life while the build up to the wedding still has some way to go.

            On Friday night we went out to meet with Joyce and some friends that he had passing through Singapore, who he thought needed taking out for a few drinks to kick off their weekend. Thankfully, even though we were out to play, I had told Nick that if we left by nine then we ought to go and have a nice dinner, so at five to nine he came and informed me that the bill was paid and that he was ready to leave. I have it on good authority from those who stayed out later due to the lack of a dinner lure, that it turned into a pretty big night, and that things were still in full swing long after Nick and I returned home from dinner and put ourselves to bed. It could have been a whole lot worse!

Lunch with a view!

Saturday was another day of catching up with people that we haven’t seen in some time. Tommy was in town for the weekend, so we had a nice lunch by the seaside with him, Harriet and Jamie. Then following a quiet afternoon in the sun with Liv we met up with Mike and Tilly for dinner in a little restaurant tucked away just near our flat. For a small local restaurant it was absolutely fabulous, and very reasonably priced too, so that was quite a successful little Saturday night outing.

Manlove between Nick and Mike

Finally, Sunday dawned bright and early as we had a brunch date with Nick, Jing and their cute little two year old Kate. Whilst we were both a little jaded, we managed to make it out for a lovey late breakfast at my all time favourite PS Café. After a good few hours of chatting and coffee drinking we officially ended our weekend (at around noon), returning home in the midst of a brewing storm. The rainy afternoon therefore passed in a glorious blur of writing wedding invites and baking scones.

Write, stuff, seal, stamp, repeat

The diet really does start again on Monday. And I most seriously mean it this time.