It's been over a week since I last posted anything here... I am trying to remember if the past week has really been that insignificant... And the truth may be just that... We have gone out and found new places to eat, if that counts - I tried Japanese KATSU dishes for the first time - Bryan's favourite, naturally, since it's FRIED breaded pork or chicken or seafood... Served with a quite yummy cabbage salad and a special dipping sauce. I liked it, I did not love it - you know, it was fried chicken, it tasted like chicken. Over all, we had a lot of Japanese food last week - we discovered Tonkichi (the place that serves the katsu) and another Japanese restaurant - Watami at the ION Orchard. Watami offers what they call "modern" Japanese cuisine, based on the so-called "ishakuya" dining concept - i.e. a bar serving a wide variety of drinks and cocktails but also a lot of dishes. There we tasted several things, including hot pot scallops with butter and mushrooms, and I also tried SHOCHU for the first time. Shochu is stronger than sake (25% alcohol) and it is distilled. It's no vodka for my Polish pallet but it was as close to it as you can get in a Japanese restaurant and I was quite happy.
Saturday, the 3rd was the day when we had our 4th of July celebration. We've planned it for some time - we bought tickets to the Singapore Flyer and we were also going to attend the 4th of July party organized by the AAS - American Association of Singapore. Unfortunately, it rained pretty much all day, which really messed up with our plans. We went out with another American couple from our building - Erin and Jason from Idaho, their two kids and another family of a guy who works with Jason. The other family turned out to be Polish! A Polish guy named Greg (Grzegorz), his Polish wife Mag (Gosia) and their two little girls. How weird is that? I think it's even more weird for poor Jason who came to work in Singapore and here he met new friends most of whom are Polish... He admitted he had never known a Polish person before (I was so sad for him - living a life without a Polish person in it is like... oh well, you know ;). The best part of the day was that we got to hang out with other living, breathing, English-speaking human beings! It was a lot of fun. We went to Brewerkz - it WAS our 4th of July celebration so we decided we deserved Western food. They ALL had BURGERS - I was the only one who had a sandwich - as close to a burger as I need to get. We had a very leisurely lunch and then we went to the Singapore Flyer. The flyer itself is really nice, great organization and infrastructure and everything, but the sights were not very impressive. I will say that to Singapore's credit - it was overcast and daytime so everything around looked pretty much gray. Maybe we should have taken the tour at night when all the lights are on in the marina and the city looks beautiful. Because it does not have much to offer as far as actually admiring landmarks from the top of the Flyer goes - it's certainly no London eye or Eiffel tower. All you can see is skyscrapers on top of even more skyscrapers. The only cool thing is the proximity of the casino building with the Boat on top. This is going to be our next destination. I don't want to discredit the Flyer or anything but I would like to do it again maybe in the evening. An interesting thing is that they turn the Flyer cabins into a mini-restaurant for private celebrations, offering what they refer to as the world's first full butler sky dining. It's 200 S$ per couple and you are served two courses during two rotations of the Wheel (each rotation lasts half an hour) and then a dessert in the VIP lounge. We did NOT do that, but it sounds interesting.
After our Singapore Flyer flight we went to get more drinks and then, having said good bye to the Polish family - it was time for their girls to get back to the hotel - we went with Erin, Jason and the boys to get some Taiwanese dumplings - my favorite xiao long bao :). It was fun to teach the boys use chopsticks - they learnt very quick! We all enjoyed the dumplings, followed by ice-cream at Haagen Dazs. We never made it to the AAS celebrations, as it was raining and we did not feel the fireworks in the rain would be much of an attraction. Instead, we sent the boys to sleep and came back up to our room, where we drank wine and watched Germany kick Argentina's ass in the World Cup quarterfinals. It was a fun day spent in a great company of fellow Expats.
Saturday, the 3rd was the day when we had our 4th of July celebration. We've planned it for some time - we bought tickets to the Singapore Flyer and we were also going to attend the 4th of July party organized by the AAS - American Association of Singapore. Unfortunately, it rained pretty much all day, which really messed up with our plans. We went out with another American couple from our building - Erin and Jason from Idaho, their two kids and another family of a guy who works with Jason. The other family turned out to be Polish! A Polish guy named Greg (Grzegorz), his Polish wife Mag (Gosia) and their two little girls. How weird is that? I think it's even more weird for poor Jason who came to work in Singapore and here he met new friends most of whom are Polish... He admitted he had never known a Polish person before (I was so sad for him - living a life without a Polish person in it is like... oh well, you know ;). The best part of the day was that we got to hang out with other living, breathing, English-speaking human beings! It was a lot of fun. We went to Brewerkz - it WAS our 4th of July celebration so we decided we deserved Western food. They ALL had BURGERS - I was the only one who had a sandwich - as close to a burger as I need to get. We had a very leisurely lunch and then we went to the Singapore Flyer. The flyer itself is really nice, great organization and infrastructure and everything, but the sights were not very impressive. I will say that to Singapore's credit - it was overcast and daytime so everything around looked pretty much gray. Maybe we should have taken the tour at night when all the lights are on in the marina and the city looks beautiful. Because it does not have much to offer as far as actually admiring landmarks from the top of the Flyer goes - it's certainly no London eye or Eiffel tower. All you can see is skyscrapers on top of even more skyscrapers. The only cool thing is the proximity of the casino building with the Boat on top. This is going to be our next destination. I don't want to discredit the Flyer or anything but I would like to do it again maybe in the evening. An interesting thing is that they turn the Flyer cabins into a mini-restaurant for private celebrations, offering what they refer to as the world's first full butler sky dining. It's 200 S$ per couple and you are served two courses during two rotations of the Wheel (each rotation lasts half an hour) and then a dessert in the VIP lounge. We did NOT do that, but it sounds interesting.
After our Singapore Flyer flight we went to get more drinks and then, having said good bye to the Polish family - it was time for their girls to get back to the hotel - we went with Erin, Jason and the boys to get some Taiwanese dumplings - my favorite xiao long bao :). It was fun to teach the boys use chopsticks - they learnt very quick! We all enjoyed the dumplings, followed by ice-cream at Haagen Dazs. We never made it to the AAS celebrations, as it was raining and we did not feel the fireworks in the rain would be much of an attraction. Instead, we sent the boys to sleep and came back up to our room, where we drank wine and watched Germany kick Argentina's ass in the World Cup quarterfinals. It was a fun day spent in a great company of fellow Expats.
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