Trip to Singapore : Day 6! (Clarke Quay, Ikea Alexandra & Orchard)

Dropping by today to continue writing about my previous trip to Singapore. :) I'll be writing about the 6th day of our trip where we visited the nearby Ikea which is at Alexandra during the day and then both Clarke Quay and Orchard at night. Oh, and another thing, I might be less active in social medias for a week or so as my recently bought phone has been sent for a diagnosis. My new phone's only around 2 months old and it already has problems with it. It was stuck in the 'headphones mode' for a couple of days. Really hoping that I could get it back as soon as possible to avoid having any inconvenience (you know, I'm struggling with my old phone as it is slow at loading and etc). I really did not expect that to happen. :(

Starting off this post with a picture, in the morning of the 6th day of our trip, my father and I went to the nearest morning market to buy some ingredients for our dinner at night. As usual, I woke up early in the morning to accompany my dad to the market. I was eager to find out how the markets in Singapore looked like in real life as I always get to see these places in their movies only.

Their markets are indoor based, just like how it was shown in the movies.

However, the floors are a bit wet and slippery.


Another surprising fact, some of their markets are joint together with the hawker centres.






Bought a cup of soya to drink. It was from a drink stall which has a chio name called "sipei cool" hahaha. It was really good except that it was sibehhhh sweet. It's only 1SGD per cup which was pretty reasonable.

In the afternoon, my dad, sis and I went to the nearby Ikea which is in Alexandra for our lunch and we also visited the other shopping malls that were nearby.

It looks just like any other ikea stores.




The ikea in Alexandra was pretty small compared to ours in damansara and cheras.


Things there were quite cheap for Singaporeans, in my opinion. A cup of coffee paired with a cinnamon bun were only priced at 1 SGD.


As for lunch, my sis and I got ourselves a food set which comprised of a hotdog, soft drink and ice cream cone.


Yay for ikea's ice cream!


Found such interesting things in cold storage. Are these even available in Malaysia?


They even sell really pretty cupcakes in their supermarkets omg omg omg!


We were in Anchorpoint shopping mall, Alexandra.


Self check-out counters in cold storage. How cool.


Then we went to this Queensway shopping centre for a walk. They have a lot of shoe shops there.


Okay, I don't know why but I find this funny.




I know this is lame but hey, a heart shaped potato! :p

At night, my family and I went to Clarke Quay and Orchard for a visit.

On a bus to Clarke Quay!

Passed by Chinatown.

Arrived at Clarke Quay Central shopping mall.

Beautiful dangling fairy lights.

Looking across and there it is, Clarke Quay!

Out of the mall.

I was deeply amazed by the view of the entire place! It was full of colourful lightings, bars and restaurants and loud music. It was lively.

This place is beautiful, don't you agree with me?

Spot the 'Read bridge'.

The bridge was really nice with its purple coloured lights.


It changes colour too!

There were some bars like this beside the river. Grab a drink, chat with friends or lovers beside the river while drinking, relaxing.

Do you really call carrots as 'ginseng' in chinese? LOL.

Guess where we're at now?

Yup it's from the swarovski christmas tree.

ION Orchard!

What I love about Orchard was that the street was full of shopping malls and of course, beautiful christmas decorations!

Taken inside the swarovski christmas tree.

TANGS plaza.

Inside ION Orchard.

Then, we walked around the place and explored a bit.

Street performances.

Selfie-d in one of the washrooms haha.

Sis went to get a mango smoothie from mcd.

We went back to cousin's place after that and the lovely neighbours gifted them some pretty and delicious twelve cupcakes! Why are the neighbours here so friendly?! :o

Here's a short video about our 6th day of the trip,

Alright, I need to take a break now.
My eyes are tired after facing the laptop for so many hours.
 See you soon! :)

    

Financial Times Video on Chinese Economic Slowdown

The Financial Times released a well-produced fifteen minute video last month on the present state of the Chinese economy. It’s entitled “The End of the Chinese Miracle.” It can be watched here.

I like the texture and flavor of contemporary China this video gives. It has long shots of factory life, daily life in urban areas, and scenes in smaller cities and rural outposts. There are also insightful uninterrupted narrations from the factory workers who’ve been the drivers in China’s economy over the past decade.

The most important point highlighted in the video is the difficulty that those who only just recently began to participate in China’s new economy over the past decade now face. Folks from the countryside who, during the low hanging fruit years of China’s boom, could easily go to a big city to find work now don’t have as many options. The big factories in Chinese megalopolises manufacturing goods for the rest of the world just don’t have the demand anymore for the endless supply of rural Chinese citizens. There are now millions of people throughout China wondering where their place is in the country.

In the long-term, macro view, there is still a lot to like about China’s position in the global economy. It is set up well for, I think, continued growth in its prominence and importance. There will be a tough transition coming, though. The explosive growth of the past twenty five years will not be able to be replicated. It will be a grind and serious test of the country’s leadership to continue to meet the demands of the population who has begun to taste the fruits of a higher standard of living.

Shabu Ten, Rubberduck, Slappy cakes

 

I promised myself that I would get my blog updated with a new post right after I've done with trials so here I am now! I've just gotten my shower and I'm now sitting right in front of my laptop updating my little space. After a month of hectic studies, I can say that my head was literally going to explode during this period of time. Trials was really tough. A2 is really no joke. I've always thought to myself, hey since you can kick AS in the ass so you must be able to cope with A2 as well. Never. ever. think. like. this. If I knew that A2 could be this hard, I would have started studying earlier. *sobs with tears of regret* Anyway it's too late now to rant, I've still got one month's time left. I need to work even harder from now on. I ended my trials today and the last paper was psychology.

I'll only continue updating about my previous trip to Singapore in the next post. As for today, I'll be talking about the three places that I've been to this month. First up, Shabu Ten. I've never really fancied having steamboat as my meal as I'll always feel queasy after eating it. I just don't know why. During my exam period, my mum and sis went to try out the shabu ten steamboat restaurant in one utama and they told me that it was quite okay and they suggested that I might like that place since it's a buffet styled steamboat restaurant. The curiosity in me started to spark, I was craving for tom yam soup at that moment too so I thought it would be a good idea to try out that place. It was on the last Saturday afternoon that my mum brought my sis and I there and yeah, it was quite good as you get to order as many things you want and they have prawns! I mean, it's not really fascinating to know that they do have prawns but as a prawn lover, I was delighted to know that I can order as many prawns as I like, woah! :) However, their service needs more improvement..

Their steamboat ingredients were served on rotating magnet belts. One tip, if you can't eat a lot at once, don't take too many of it at once as they might charge for wasted food.

They had little cold dishes, curry fishballs, chawanmushi and cooked seafood cakes.

The sauce, noodles and etc area. At the end of the left side was the fruits and desserts corner.

Agemono corner.

Our selection of soups were the chicken soup and tomyam soup.

Curry or soup cooked fishballs and meatballs.

Cooking some of the ingredients.

The curry fish and meat balls tasted good!

Prawns and tofu.

They also serve fish maw there.

Oh yes, not forgetting to mention that they do have an ice cream machine there as well! :D

Matcha and vanilla ice cream.

There was a chocolate fountain too, but for dinner only I guess.

Looking at this makes me crave for chocolate marshmallows right now haha. :p 

Then, on a weekday afternoon, I thought of trying out the smoothie bowl from rubberduck that everyone was talking about on instagram. The smoothie bowl looked super attractive due to its vibrant coloured fruits. It would also be great to have a cold treat during hot weathers like this too. Hence, I walked to the nearby plaza damas with Wei Wen to try out their smoothie bowl! Mine was the sunshine bowl which its main ingredient was mango.

The desserts counter.

This pavlova looks so alluring!

Here it is, the sunshine bowl! RM18 for one.

It was quite pricey to me as the portion was pretty small..

Nevertheless, it tasted quite good, it's also less in sugar as well! As you can see here, it consists of mango, granola, bananas, dragon fruit, coconut shreds, chia seeds on top and mango smoothie at the bottom.

Perfect treat for summer days like this.

Wei Wen had a plate of aglio olio. RM18.

Snapped a picture of their menu from afar.

Another place that was being raved about on instagram is slappy cakes! Slappy cakes is a pancake shop which serves both pancakes and proper meals. The reason why I was attracted to its pancakes was that customers were able to cook their pancakes by themselves on the skillet! The pancake batter was served in bottles for easier handling. Another thing about this was that the squeeze bottle made it possible for us to draw our pancakes while cooking it, how interesting! If I'm not mistaken, they have 4 types of pancake batters to choose from which are chocolate, pandan, peanut butter and the buttermilk. I personally prefer the buttermilk one.

Everyone gets their own spatula to cook their pancakes.

Buttermilk RM9 per bottle, pandan RM 11 per bottle, maple syrup RM3.50 per serving and I forgot the exact price of the strawberries but it's around RM2 or RM3 more expensive than the maple syrup.

As our mains, we ordered two breakfast sets as they were on a buy 1 free 1 promotion!

My breakfast plate.

Time to cook some pancakes!

When it starts to bubble up, it means it's ready to be flipped!

Mini pancakes of assorted shapes. :p

This is the prettiest one I've ever made.

Mini stacks of pancakes.



We were really full after that.

Alright, I gotta go now, see you guys in the next post!