Today, a few colleagues and I decided to head to the new West Coast Plaza for lunch. It’s the newly refurbished shopping centre that used to be known as Ginza Plaza. I had the impression that the shopping centre was already more or less fully open for business, but I was quite wrong. Many shops were not yet open. As a result, there weren’t many choices to eat, and we ended up dining at this BBQ Chicken restaurant.
COE prices for Category A (Cars 1600cc and below, and taxis) have fallen to $2 in the latest round of COE bidding. Surely a sign of the economic gloom ahead. Prices in all categories have fallen. The biggest drop, of course was for Category A which fell from $10,445 to just $2, with just one more bid received than quota the available. Still does not beat the $1 record though, but close enough.
It’s 37 days to Christmas, and some of the trees are getting into the mood. Like this one along Bras Basah road shedding its leaves to lend an autumn atmosphere to the area. If only there was a nicer backdrop than a construction site. How nice it would be if SIngapore had two weeks of snow every year.
The last two days I’ve been attending class at the Singapore Management University’s downtown campus. It’s actually my first visit to the SMU campus, so during the breaks I went around exploring the place a little. I always thought it would be nice to be studying in such a central downtown location. All the shopping, movies, and other entertainment just a stone’s throw from studying.
To welcome a colleague back to work from maternity leave, all of us had lunch at the new NUSS Guild House yesterday. It seems the old western restaurant has been replaced by The Scholar Chinese Restaurant. That’s where we had lunch. The restaurant was, surprisingly, fully packed. Fortunately we were early so we still managed to get a table.
It’s interesting how different phases of our lives are marked by the types of events that we attend. For example, there are the stages of chalets and BBQ, then wedding dinners, then baby first months, etc. Sometimes it cycles, because of the “next generation”. I’m actually past the wedding banquet phase, but I was just invited to one wedding lunch earlier this month.
After one postponement due to bad weather, and another due to scheduling difficulties, we finally made our excursion “flight” on the Singapore Flyer. Personally, after having gone up enough ferris wheels, observation towers, etc, I had not expected to be particularly exhilarated by the views from atop the Singapore Flyer. But being a Singaporean and living in Singapore, it is something we have to try. So we went on the 6pm flight in order to catch the view of Singapore at sunset time.
It’s the RSAF’s 40th anniversary this year. The last couple of years, the RSAF (and to some extent Mindef as a whole as well) seems to be making lots of effort to reach out to its “men” in more personal ways, to re-invent itself and to run itself like a modern private corporation. This is not bad, of course, since there are certainly some things that military organizations can learn from the private sector too.
I was coming home a couple of days ago when I saw this at a bus stop advertisement display. I’ve been playing with Drupal lately, and I just thought how familiar the logo seems to be. For a moment, I was thinking how interesting to see Drupal publicity at a bus stop in Singapore. Check out the Drupal website. Quite some similarities eh?
We went to the newly renovated New Garo Japanese Restaurant for dinner last night. They’ve done up some simple renovations to brighten up the place and make the place feel less congested. It seems like there is less seating now, although that may be because the place just feels more spacious. Still the same staff, and the food is still as good as ever.
Vanessa's hand picked selection of flowers from the garden.
— Posted from my N95 Lifeblog.
This scholarly chinese restaurant at the new NUS Guild House serves up pretty good coffee flavoured pork ribs. The other dishes were quite mediocre though.
— Posted from my N95 Lifeblog.
