Jollibee intentions

A friend of mine from Sydney messaged me and asked what was good at Jollibee. I laughed and said that I don’t know, since:

1) I try and minimise my fast food consumption; and

2) in the three years that we’ve lived here, I haven’t eaten at the one and only outlet that I know of (the one in Lucky Plaza on Orchard Road), because the queue is always sooo lonnngg, and I don’t like to queue up for anything – least of all for fast food!

And I can’t even remember the last time I tried it in the Philippines, the birthplace of this fast food joint. All I knew was that it was famous for its fried chicken 🍗 and its spaghetti 🍝!

So after all this talk about Jollibee, I am really keen to finally have it again after all these years 😂 I was going to go today, but then trading kept me occupied for longer than I expected; and then some important economic releases were being announced this evening as well, which I wanted to watch (and hopefully benefit from…!). So Jollibee didn’t happen 😔

BUT I have a free day tomorrow, those rare weekends where I have absolutely nothing planned. No Chinese class, no dancing, no catching up with friends. NOTHING. So I was thinking of satisfying my Jollibee craving tomorrow. But given that I have a whole free day to myself, I am also keen to go and do something that’s far away, like maybe go to the bird park out in Jurong, or perhaps go to the zoo again. Or maybe go and do a walking trail somewhere. So I’d like to decide now – at the very latest before I go to sleep – because if I haven’t made a decision before then, then I know I will end up not doing anything at all tomorrow, and it’ll be a complete waste of a rare free day, and I’ll be back here this time tomorrow, lamenting how I wanted to do something but didn’t. So obviously I don’t want to be doing that 24 hours from now!

So on that note, let me sign off so I can go and do some research on what I can do tomorrow 😊

A mental health day

I took the day off to give myself a bit of a break from trading. A mental health day, as we called them, back in my previous industry. I’d like to get my mental health back in order before returning to the trading screen on Monday. I hope other industries are embracing the importance of these days as well.

I wanted to have a local breakfast this morning, but all the kopitiams (coffee shops) near our place were packed as, with locals having their daily breakfast, I suppose. So that left me no choice but to have a western breakfast.

The cafe where I ended up was having cash register issues, so when I went to go pay, things were going awry. So the staff member exclaims “Alamak! The receipt won’t print!” And continues to say alamak a few more times until they finally get a receipt printed for me. That’s the first time I’ve heard alamak said in real life! It was used a number of times in that book I read recently, Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan, a Singaporean author. And I’ve seen it mentioned in Singlish related stuff. So from these, I knew how it was used, but up until today, it’s just been an academic word for me. So it was rather exciting to actually hear it in real life – and with so much frustration from the speaker as well, it just really brought the expression to life! 😆

After breakfast / brunch, I went to Gardens by the Bay, like I said I would. It was the first day of Tulipmania in the Flower Dome, and I was very excited to go see it today 🌷🌷

Until I actually got there. The display was a bit too artistic for me, it just went over my head. I just didn’t quite get it 😐

Are they meant to represent certain people? The Dutch people, perhaps? The eyelids actually opened and closed on some of them, which was also a little freaky. I don’t get it… I just don’t get it…

Despite the odd display, the flowers were very pretty, as they always are, so wandering through both the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest raised my spirits.

I then did a bit of wandering around the shops on Orchard Road, before heading home and relaxing for the rest of the evening. We were supposed to practice tonight, but N is still not feeling all that great, his cold is still lingering around 😔

We have a comp tomorrow, but we’ve barely practiced in the past few weeks, with me first having the cold, and now him. If we hadn’t already registered and paid, I’d pull out of this comp, to be honest. Our dancing probably won’t reflect what we can actually do, and it’ll just make me feel disappointed if we don’t dance to the best of our abilities. It’s not about the results – like I’ve said before, we always rank poorly against the specialists anyway, so we’re used to not placing well. But it’s when we don’t – or can’t – give our all that will be more disappointing. Sigh. Oh well, it can’t be helped. We just have to make the most of tomorrow. Who knows, maybe the lack of practice will let us ease up and just enjoy the performance tomorrow, rather than get all bogged down in the technical detail, like we usually do😆

Animals, animals and more animals

My friends from Sydney and I went to Singapore Zoo today. It’s out in the sticks, but it is so totally worth the effort to go out there. The zoo is really well designed, with large enclosures for the animals, and lots of trees to help keep the place relatively cool for visitors. It’s clean, and the animals and their homes are also in immaculate condition. We didn’t get to visit all the animals today, but what we did see was very impressive.

We also decided to go to the River Safari next door. In contrast to the zoo, this place is very peaceful, with a boardwalk essentially lining the outskirts of the inlet. But the highlight of this place are the pandas! They are just the cutest! They have two giant black and white pandas named Kai Kai and Jia Jia, and these guys are totally worth a visit. There are other animals here, of course, but these giant pandas were definitely the highlight for me.

Jia Jia demolishing this piece of bamboo!

And then we finished the day joining N for dinner at Food Opera at ION Orchard, one of the food courts down on basement level 4 (yes, the malls have multiple basement levels, if you haven’t had the pleasure of walking through the rabbit warrens of the Orchard Road malls 😂).

I became a Friend of Wildlife today 😊 Amongst other things, I get unlimited entry into the four wildlife parks for one year. Since I was going into at least three of them with my friends who are here this week, and then I’ll probably go again when another friend visits next month, I would’ve already saved on entry costs just with these two visits. And then if I want to go again sometime during the year, then I can do that too. It could be my new Gardens by the Bay 😊 But let’s not be too hasty and dethroning Gardens just yet… 😉

I am now a Friend of Wildlife 😊 

So it was a fun but draining day, spending most of it outdoors in the SG heat🌞

Food courts in SG

One of my friends from Sydney and her partner arrived in SG today. Of course I tracked her flight 😊

She’s staying on Orchard Road (or just off it?), so we decided to catch up for dinner near her hotel. We went to a food court, which is now pretty stock standard for me, but it must be a different experience when you’re going to one in SG for the first time. I should’ve written about how I felt when I visited one when we first arrived. I was probably blown away by the cheap prices! Which are still expensive compared to the hawker centres, but yes, you are paying for airconditioning and usually fancier surrounds. And the lack of tissues. And that drinks are NOT served at the stalls, there is always a dedicated stall for them. And the one that I still can’t really get over: not having to clean up after yourself, because there are staff specifically for that. This one still makes me a little uncomfortable, after spending years (decades?) always cleaning up my food court meals after I’ve finished eating, it still feels weird just getting up and leaving all my crap on the table. I still tidy it up and make it easier for the cleaning staff, so at least I’m still helping in some way 😊 There you go, my ten-second version of what I reckon I thought back then 😂

I think they’re just going to wander around and maybe do the hop-on-hop-off bus tomorrow, so maybe I can join them for lunch or something. Hopefully they have good weather, especially if they get on the topless bus! 😂

CNY Day 4 – Monday after the long weekend

We took our usual trip to the vet this morning. The clinic was busy as! The vet nurse said that there were a ton of walk-ins this morning, after the Chinese New Year long weekend. She said that she was barely awake yet, implying that she wasn’t quite ready to handle all the commotion first thing on a Monday morning after a long weekend. I completely understand!

I had remembered that there was a lion dance scheduled today at the Centrepoint, one of the malls on Orchard Road, so I made my way over. But when I got there, I had obviously incorrectly remembered the time: I thought it was at 11am, but apparently it was at 1pm! Argh! So I had two hours to kill 😩 I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, so I really wasn’t in the mood for lunch at my usual haunts in this mall – including Bak Kut Teh! So I went to Starbucks, always my last resort 😂

There were a ton of students here, supposedly studying. I know what it’s like being a student. You guys are doing jack hahaha There were four students sitting nearby, with others scattered at the farther tables. Out of the four students sitting around me: one was watching some funny show on her phone, I could hear her cacking every now and then; and another two were just chatting. The fourth one looked like she was the only one doing anything actually productive. Although maybe she was just better at hiding her phone from me, as she sat the farthest away 😂 Ahhhh… to be a carefree student again.

And just some more evidence as to how safe this country is: the student watching that funny show on her phone walked away from her table for at least half an hour – and left almost all of her belongings at her table. Her bag, her notes, her jacket, her calculator, her pens and pencil case. She might have just taken her phone and wallet with her, wherever she wandered off to. And no one even noticed, nor even come around. In fact, I ended up leaving Starbucks before she even came back, so I don’t actually know for how long she was gone. Total amaze balls. The only other country you could probably do this in is Japan.

While I was waiting for the lion dance, I tried being a student role model and did some review of my Chinese 😊 I didn’t have my textbook with me, nor did I bring earphones, so I couldn’t review the current chapter that we’re working through nor do any listening practice, so I just worked on reviewing vocab. Anything is better than nothing!

And then I spent the rest of the day working on my trading, which is still full of frustration and anguish… One day it will all come together. One day. I hope! 😩