Sunday, February 6, 2011

Happy CNY!

Howdy!

Happy Lunar New Year! Its been a good couple of days for us here in Singapore. Thursday was Chinese New Years Day, and Andrew's (and Robyn's) birthday. The entire island pretty much closed down on Thursday and Friday. Andrew went to work on his birthday as well (poor him!). I caught up with my sci-fi and reading lol. I've gotten intrigued with steampunk after reading a steampunk romance, and I've decided to break out my jewellery making mind and give steampunk jewellery a go. Andrew finished work early, and we made our way to the Singapore Flyer. For those who don't know, the Singapore Flyer is a giant observation ferris wheel, similar to the London Eye, but bigger by about 30mtrs. We got some great shots of the view, and we even saw Indonesia!

Carriage on the Singapore Flyer

Future Botanical Gardens

City views

Formula 1 pits

Us on the Flyer

Casino

Singapore Soccer Ground


This is my fave shot. Singapore doesn't have a long dusk, so this is just before it went full dark.






After our flight, we went and had dinner at a restaurant called "New York New York" and had burgers. It was the first time in Singapore I'd had proper beef (I'm not counting McD's or Burger King), and it was quite nice. We came back to the hotel afterwards and had birthday cake! I found a swiss roll with 3 layers: chocolate, strawberry and pandan. I wasn't sure of what pandan tasted like, but we gave it a go. Its a mix of floral, pine and citrus, and its very tasty. A lot of the cakes over here are flavoured with it. Here are some shots of Andrew with his cake:

Mmmm.......Triple Flavour Swiss Roll.......

Andrew taking a deep breath.......

........and blowing out his "candles".......

.......then cutting his cake.
On Friday we didn't do much cos the island was still on holiday. I went out for a walk in the afternoon, then cooked dinner at night. On Saturday we went to Suntec Shopping Centre to have a look, got lost, found our way, then decided to go to Holland Village. We've heard heaps of good things about it, and that its a really big expat area. To be honest, we were really disappointed in it. Holland Village is only 3 short streets of  pubs, restaurants and coffee shops, and most of the shops were mainstream shops like Starbucks, Harry's Gastro Bar, and Cold Rock. But we did get a shot of the only Dutch item we saw:



Today we stayed at the hotel for most of the day, and went out for a walk at lunch time. We went to the hawker centre for dinner, and had a coconut waffle each for dessert. Andrew had peanut butter on his and I had strawberry jam on mine. It was really cheap, only $1.50 per waffle!

Be back soon!

Mandi xoxo



Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Slow Go

Hey everyone!

Sorry I haven't written for awhile, but not much has happened since my last post. Last Tuesday I caught up with another expat Aussie girl for coffee, and that went really well. I also went out on Friday night to an expat meet-up, but the taxi got me lost and by the time I got there, nobody was waiting for me! *sob* I was more upset with the taxi driver than with the girls. Not to worry, I'll catch up with them eventually!

Other than that, I've done a bit of househunting, and today we started to organise the paperwork for a unit! Yay! Its a nice newly renovated 3 bedroom condo with a full size kitchen! It has been so hard looking for a place that has a decent kitchen. Most of the units I've looked at have had a stovetop, or nothing at all, since a lot of Singaporeans eat out all the time. The condo even has a nice little room for Fox and Ty. Hopefully we'll be able to move in next week.

In other news, its Andrew's 24th birthday tomorrow! And of course, Robyn's :-D. We're planning to use one of our wedding gift vouchers tomorrow night, the one for the Singapore Flyer (Thank you Sarah and Craig!), but we're going to double check and see if its open, because tomorrow is also Chinese New Year and its a public holiday in Singapore on Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th. If we go, I will post some photo's of the view.

Thats it from me today, catch you all later!

xoxo  Mandi