7NNT25: Day 35 – Singapore

Soundtrack: “Holiday”, Madonna

Waking and checking social media, it turns out that if I’d stayed in the basement parking lot of the first venue for another hour or so, I’d have spent all that time sweating and queueing but at least seen Lady Gaga, who turned up and did a few minutes in the club. I still probably wouldn’t have got in, but I could have done the star spotting thing. Oh well.

My body really didn’t like waking up today, but I’d arranged to meet Singaporean-native pal D and have lunch and catch up so out I went. Lunch was at Pizza Express, the Singaporean version of a UK pizza chain, and while it’s not somewhere I would have chosen to go by myself, I’ll always choose catching up with friends anywhere over checking out some weird or interesting place by myself. And I get why D goes there, it gives him an opportunity to feel like a tourist in his own country, and he has a membership that gets him points and free things (always a good thing in Singapore). I’m also guessing having grown up and spent a lifetime around Singaporean hawker food, he likes to mix it up. So Pizza Express in the swanky part of Orchard Road it was. There are certainly some interesting things on the menu, from a vegetarian teriyaki to a carbonara to one that we did order, the Hawaii-not, featuring ham and pineapple chutney on bechamel sauce, making the spicy minced beef pizza seem rather normal. And both were pretty good, I’m definitely not ruling out pineapple chutney as a pizza topping (though am not totally convinced on bechamel sauce).

The mall also had some other shops worth trying on another visit, including a cheesecake shop that makes its cakes look like actual cheese, and a place that seems to do several different versions of kaya toast (another dish lacking from my Singapore food experiences). Too full of pizza, maybe next visit. We then wandered along Orchard Road, past stores with nothing we could afford, and also past the busy Philippine mall, it’s not called that but has lots of Filipino shops. Checked out a gaming shop, they didn’t have much in the way of D&D but did have a bunch of locally produced games on special (a moving sale, even though they don’t know when they are moving nor exactly where to) so visitors may be inflicted to games of Hawker Wars in the future.

We also had a good wander through Kinokuniya Books, not looking for anything in particular but they do have a solid range. While the store isn’t as big as it used to be, I’d like to think that looking at the sheer range of YA titles that relate to fandoms I have absolutely no knowledge of is at least a hope for the future where people remain engaged readers and many still like physical books.

We found a coffee shop that appeared to have a most amazing way of brewing coffee, using a glass system that had a heating element so it glowed, from what we could tell it worked along similar lines to the Italian stovetop method, but where the element heated the water, forcing it up through the coffee. Once this was almost complete, a staff member would turn it off, lift the lid and stir, and once the pressure normalised, the coffee would flow down into the bottom container for serving. No idea how it tasted, as I went for an iced coffee, but the process looked impressive.

We grabbed dinner at a Crystal Jade restaurant, apparently there are several of these that specialise in different things and range from fine/expensive dining to more affordable — we went to a more affordable place. We had some excellent roast pork and barbeque duck, along with a plate of dry noodles with wantons, covered in garlic and chilli. A very good meal

A bit more wandering and it was time to say goodbye to D, before I wandered some more before heading back to the hotel. Some rain had finally fallen, making Singapore feel more pleasant than previous days, where it had threatened to rain but some weather pattern was managing to get in the way. From the comfort of the air-conditioned room, I started to plan my final Singapore day, and do some blog catch-up.

Tomorrow is Gaga, and more food, and final shopping for the folks back home.