Baby Vanessa went galavanting around Suntec City with her daddy (me) recently, and we ended up at the Koi Garden. I bought her a packet of fish food to feed the Koi fishes in the pond. Vanessa was rather careful with the feed she was dishing out to the fishes, so we ended up taking quite long to finish up that packet of feed.

While at the Koi Garden, we saw so many school kids coming by. It seems like a school excursion. Funny to have a school excursion to Suntec City? To see the Koi Garden? What is so fascinating about Suntec City or the Koi Garden to deserve an excursion for the kids?

This is Princess Vanessa, all dressed up in her crown of bubbles. She is thoroughly enjoying her bubble bath. Actually I guess she generally likes water a lot, because she also enjoys splashing around in the swimming pool (it is like her giant bath tub). The other babies her age in the pool generally look to be rather apprehensive of the water. But Vanessa is quite the opposite, totally exhilarated splashing water all over.

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.

The Korean charboiled chicken we all ordered is pictured above. It is quite so-so only. Very average, definitely nothing spectacular. Why do I say Koreans are so poor thing? Actually it is my colleague who said that. Well… BBQ Chicken’s tagline says that they are Korea’s No 1 Chicken Restaurant. Wow. If this is the best chicken restaurant in Korea, they really haven’t eaten good chicken!

The service from this restaurant was quite atrocious. They forgot to bring one drink. This was not remedied until after we informed their staff three times. Then, it finally emerged that they had sent one of our drinks to the wrong table. They retrieved the drink from the wrong table, disappeared into the kitchen, and reappeared to serve this drink (photo on left). Now, we had joked about whether the staff will actually change the drink to a new one or not. Look at the cup. Okay, in particular, look at the straw. Do you notice that the bendy straw is already stretched out?

Seeing that the drink itself was still bubbly, we imagine that the drink was indeed changed. But what about the straw? Change drink, but not the straw?

One waiter came by and asked to clear our soup bowls. He left one behind. (The bowls are small, and he had nothing else to carry.)

That’s not all. All of us ordered the same main course, but they forgot to serve one of it. They had to be reminded twice. In fact, we had also noticed that another party that was seated way after us (like maybe 10 minutes later) were already digging well into their main course while we were impatiently waiting for ours.

Seeing that they were quite slow, we decided to ask for our ice cream desserts (which came with our set meal) to be served while we were still having our main course. We finished our main course, they cleared the table. Then, a waiter came to ask what was our dessert order. Huh?! It took them so long to figure out they missed out our dessert order!

The only thing that arrived instantly (one minute tops) was our bill.

For their sake, I hope these are just some teething problems with a new restaurant which they will remedy quickly.

(No offense intended to Koreans.)

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.

Category B and Category E prices also fell sharply, from $8,301 to $4,889 and from $10,490 to $6,889 respectively. Category C prices fell from $8,889 to $6,189. Category D fell from $1,509 to $1,012.

Incidentally, this $2 is the record low for Category A. The $1 price record set previously was for Category C.

I wonder where the prices will be headed in the coming months. Is it good time to look for cars now?

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 new President-elect of Maldives has announced his intention to create a sovereign wealth fund to relocate the people of Maldives should rising sea levels drown the country. Singapore is rich. It will be interesting if Singapore can be relocated to, say, Melbourne.

This is the Shoyu Ramen from Ajisen Ramen. It is a set promotion that comes with drink and two sides. It’s quite nice (I usually like Ajisen’s ramen anyway). Usually I would order something somewhat spicy, since I like spicy food. But nowadays, the choice of food is sometimes influenced or determined by compatibility with baby Vanessa. Heh.

Well, Vanessa has been eating adult food for some time. So whenever we go out, either we have to order something for her (i.e. from the kid’s menu), or she eats off from one of our food. Usually she won’t have her own kid’s meal though, since she likely won’t finish it anyway. So it makes more sense for the adults to order a baby compatible meal and perhaps add on some baby compatible sides.

Then the time will come, when Vanessa will order her own meal, and she won’t like it, and then papa or mama will have to finish it. We see it happen with other parents, finishing up their babies’ leftovers or unwanted food.

Maybe it’ll be interesting if Vanessa chooses to order spicy food. I’m thinking she might like spicy too, because I’ve tested offering her some linguine with chili flakes and she seemed to enjoy it. We should condition Vanessa to like food we like, so food she doesn’t want, we will enjoy finishing up anyway. Heh.

Vanessa’s hand picked selection of flowers from the garden.
— Posted from my N95 Lifeblog.

This should be an embarrassment to SMRT. It looks like they forgot to pay their bills. Their corporate website www.smrtbuses.com.sg is now inaccessible, because apparently the license for their Blue Coat proxy appliance has expired. Maybe it’s time to raise bus fares again, so that they have enough revenue to pay for their IT operating expenses. Not only is there inflation, rising fuel prices, wage increases, but there is also IT costs to grapple with.

Instead of spending money on blinking map displays, probably public transport operators should focus more on making their services more frequent, more reliable, and more convenient. I’ve seen blinking map displays overseas. They are certainly helpful to tourists. Are we trying to copy them in order to be “world class”? Hey, serve the locals first. There are many more important things on our wish list than blinking map displays.

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.

My class was in the Administration Building. It drizzled and rained the last two days. We realized that while all the rest of the SMU buildings were interconnected by an underground concourse, the Administration Building was isolated. In fact, if it rains really heavily, it isn’t even possible to get from the MRT to any SMU buildings without getting drenched. The MRT is so near, yet so out of reach. At least not until the new Circle Line station opens. A Circle Line station opens into the underground concourse.

The SMU buildings look really nice on the outside, but they are not extravagant on the inside. The campus is still quite new, so everything does look nice and modern. I had half expected the place to “posh”, because of the publicity over their Herman Miller Aeron chairs (which I did get to sit on). But no, they weren’t wasting taxpayers money.

They have plenty of escalators. My colleagues and I were just musing over the complete lack of escalators in NUS. Yes, NUS campus is so much bigger, but there is not a single escalator. In fact, you’d have thought that the Kent Ridge terrain that NUS sits on, where just about everywhere is a slope, would have deserved plenty of escalators. (I’m fine with no escalators, but one thing I wish is for NUS to make their lifts go faster. I wonder if they realize that the time wasted waiting for the lift over the lifespan of the lift might actually be much more costly than the money saved from installing a cheaper lift.)

I like their underground concourse: food court and retail shops. It is just like a scaled down City Link Mall. We’re talking about real retail… Kou Fu food court, Settler’s Cafe, that sort; Not like “The Frontier” canteen in NUS.

What was I doing at SMU? Well, IDA organized this Hadoop Training class. Considering that NUS and IHPC seem to make up most of the people in attendance, I wondered why the class was held at SMU. In fact, what has SMU got to do with Hadoop?

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.

Pictured in the photo above is their Mango Duck starter dish. It was so-so. In fact, I found most of the food to be quite mediocre. Their Sea Bass was not done well. It is a little disappointing overall. The price is reasonable, but I had expected better quality considering the good food offered by the previous Guild House restaurants.

The only dish worth noting is their coffee flavoured pork ribs, which was served with just one (wished there was more) papadum.

The restaurant has only been operating one month. In this one month, it seems they have not yet sorted out some of their teething problems. Service was slow, food was slow, staff were not sure of items on their menu, etc. The lights above our table was flickering. I’d have thought one month is enough time to sort out these things.