Family Lunch

Tasty Court today was crowded with 4 big tables of office workers having company lunch.

I observe the changes at this place in the neighbourhood and I am happy for this quiet corner at Jalan Tua Kong and Figaro St to be so lively again with this new restaurant by a famous chef.

Stewed rice vermicelli with seafood and supreme stock in opeh leaf is really good. We had the chef's special chicken last time so today we tried the duck in mango sauce, yummy!

www.facebook.com/Tasty-Court-by-Chef-Pung-718798384975248/

Self Portraits

Two self-portraits one with pencil and the other ink and wash. One with glasses and one without glasses both done after my cataract removal surgery which was on 23 Aug 2017. I am still trying to get used to the new vision which is not balance now since I only operated on the left eye. Meanwhile I am relying on wearing contact lens on the right eye only and I will need reading glasses for desk work. I am working with my eye doctor to have the other eye operated so that I can use my right eye to read without wearing reading glasses in the future. Right now I am also having clear and bright vision like seeing cool light in the operated eye and blur and yellowish like seeing warm light in the other eye.

Neighbourhood pizza place

Bakers&Cook is side by side with Plank, both operated by a celebrity chef Dean Brettschneider who also runs a baking and cooking school. My son joined me for dinner later and we met an old colleague of mine, what a day!

I Love our Local Coffee

The freshly brewed coffee here is S$1.70, black and thick just the way I like. The shop just added the glass door and glass shopfront for a new air conditioned interior but the glass door never shut properly for that kind of heavy traffic to the shop.

In the past, the local coffee used beans that were drum-roasted with sugar, margarine and maize. The beans were sticky, shinny in dark black brown before they were ground and brewed with a sock-like cotton strainer.

Teo's noodle at Bedok

It is weekend and such a long queue at Teo's noodle at Bedok. Everyone in the line was looking at the smart phone except a few middle-age aunties.

Must try since we were not in the hurry. I could also do a sketch while my hubby in this sketch in red top was waiting in line. The noodle was really good except getting a little salty towards the end, still yum! Will definitely come back again and again.

Even my other favourite local dish was seeing a even longer line. It was not too long a queue when I last visited the stall and did a sketch here

Good Vibes Only

My very first cup of coffee for the day at 1pm here at cafe called "Stamping Ground Coffee", no wonder I was feeling strange in the morning without my coffee. This cafe outside my house has a rather long name. There are only three big tables inside the shop but if you don't mind the heat, there are seats outdoor.

Good food, good coffee, hope I have a sketching company next time. Good Vibes Only!

Pan Pacific and Conrad Hotel

I sat at the indoor cafe and looked through the window without wearing my sun glasses for the first time even it appeared to be very hot outdoor.

Sketching Pan Pacific Hotel on the right brought back fond memories. My office was involved in the Marina Square Master Planning in my first job as a junior and young architect in 1979. Pan Pacific Hotel together with Mandarin Oriental Hotel and Marina Mandarin Hotel were the first three hotels at Marina Centre designed by John Portman widely known for popularizing hotels and office buildings with multi-storied interior atria. I remember I saw John Portman briefly at the office boardroom and admired the large and detailed models at that time. I heard his sketches done on the spot were kept by the bosses and they were probably no where to be traced by now.

Within a short span of over 30 years, Marina Square at Marina Centre is now fully developed with so many new hotels and mega malls sprouting out here and there, Portman's hotels still stand timeless and modern in this cluttered world of new buildings.

On the left is the relatively newer luxurious Conrad Hotel designed by another famous American architect, Philip Johnson. Far left is Millenia Tower by Kevin Roche, Pritzker Prize winner. All such luxurious and expensive buildings.

View from the Library

This is the view from the Marine Parade Public Library. You can spot the Church of the Holy Family easily from the low rise surroundings. The entire stretch of land opposite the library is currently under construction for the new Thomson East Coast Line (TEL) so it was boarded up and construction equipment are seen everywhere. The TEL will open in 5 stages from 2019 onward, and interchanges with all existing lines. Across the Library will be the Marine Parade Station which is under stage 4 scheduled to open in 2023. Another 6 years!

More information on TEL at https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/ltaweb/en/public-transport/projects/tel.html

Sunday Breakfast

So many uncles gathered together at the coffee shop for Sunday breakfast, are their wives at the wet markets nearby?

The old uncles spoke so loud about a ghost story at the old Tampines Road and used phrases like ”电脑合成” (digitally manipulated) and other proper Chinese terms rather than mixtures of Mandarin and English or Singlish, I was impressed.

Craftmen Specialty Coffee at Siglap

I am on long medical leave for my eye op, its the best period to explore neighbourhood cafe since I only have 2 hours before the next eye drop which has to be stored in the fridge at home. Here is a very good write up about the cafes in Siglap written in Feb 2015 and updated in Aug 2016 https://ordinarypatrons.com/2015/02/07/cafes-siglap/. I found out that one of them, FLAVA Asia Bistro and Grill, had already closed recently.

Food was very very good at Craftsmen though I hope the long black could be a little stronger. Illustration on guide to coffee was excellent and professionally drawn on top of the red coffee machine.

Starbucks again

Added digitally colours later. It was quiet at Starbucks because it was a Monday when students were not here today.

Starbucks at Siglap

Added colours today, can't gauge the correct hues and tones yet but I wanted to remember this interesting neighbourhood.

I noticed people were queuing up at the shop opposite the road for a few Sundays. I overheard from a customer at Starbucks it was for free whiskey. The crowd made noise and whistle that i could hear across the road at Starbucks. I checked it out online it's was for 'fight week' on TV! The crowd started early in the morning and they were mostly Caucasian men at Bambooze Tarven having some fun times over TV with free drinks after spending $20!

East Coast Road and Upper East Coast Road

So bored at home after my eye op that I went to Starbucks near to my home. I could not get a seat indoor as this outlet was known for students 'chopping seats' to study for the whole day. I ordered a hot drink and sat outside the shop and watched and tried the 'art of doing nothing'. This neighbourhood is so interesting. I remember it used to have two road sign plates 'Upp East Coast Rd' and 'East Coast Rd" on ONE post but I saw two separate road sign posts now.

Does it mean the road between the two road sign posts have no road name? HA!

office meeting

Monday office meeting in a room filled with boxes of images of ASEAN after our Global Community Day event. Everyone was working on laptops as the boss read from the paper.

It's ASEAN50 this year. We just completed an event and these are the boxes with ten flags of ASEAN countries. There are (from the top left): Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Loas, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand.

my favourite local dish

Two popular dishes are found next to each other at Bedok Food Centre.
Chwee Kueh or 水粿 is a type of steamed rice cake. To make chwee kueh, rice flour and water are mixed together to form a slightly viscous mixture and served with diced preserved radish and and chilli sauce.
Soon Kueh or 笋粿 is a dumpling-like cake filled with fragrant mixture of shredded bamboo shoots, turnip and dried shrimps wrapped in a smooth rice-tapioca flour skin.
These are cheap and good local dishes and the chwee kueh here is very big and very soft - double the size of the usual size found in other food centre.
When I was little, the chwee kuehs were steamed in clay moulds but it was changed to aluminium moulds in the 70s by the National Environment Authority.

same same but different

Same cafes but different sketches.

It's Sunday again

Consecutively the 3rd Sunday I was at this cafe but this time to sip my very first coffee of the day over a piece of oneh cake at around 4pm. The bald head Caucasian man at the back was playing chess with a young boy presumably his son.

There are story behind this sketch too that I was sketching in pain on my right cheekbone coz I had a fall and hit the bath tub the night before after a blast in sketch outing at ORTO in Yishun with the gang in the morning.

My face is very very round now and my right cheek is still painful but manageable, lah.

Sunday Brunches at the same cafe

another day exploring campus

Campus Sketches