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Monthly Archives: August 2007
WOMAD Singapore 2007
Stationary and Chinatown
Note: I am post-dating these entries to make it more chronological. I apologize for any strange mistakes that I might make.
My goodness, we spent 3 hours at Mustafa Centre learning about the different type of stationary supplies available in Asia.
The highlights:
Notebooks are 2-hole punched
There is 30-hole punched paper and dividers
There is no “loose-leaf” paper, all of them are in notebooks only
A4 size is longer and slimmer than the 8.5×11″ in the US
I love pens and stationary but I wasn’t very satisfied with their selection, I wanted more!
But we got the basics and headed to Chinatown for dinner. We ended up at hawker food court right near the MRT, I think it was called the Hong Lim Complex. Right there is also a handicraft center where they seem to have crafty things like beads and scrapbooking!
We were eager to go see a movie afterwards so we headed to Vivo City to check out the showtimes. Seems like theaters in Asia assign seats when you purchase tickets so you don’t need to show up early to get a good seat but you do have to purchase tickets early online if you want a good seat. When we got there to try to see Bourne Ultimatum, the only seats left were in the first 3 rows! So we skipped that and just walked around Vivo City. We stopped by PAGEONE bookstore and took a peek inside. Most of the books are shrink wrapped so I guess you’re not encouraged to browse too much. I ended up buying a book on using origami to make cards 🙂
The stationary portion of the bookstore looked fun though so I hope to go back soon.
Yay! We have a home!
Note: I am post-dating these entries to make it more chronological. I apologize for any strange mistakes that I might make.
This morning we signed all the paperwork for the lease and officially have a place to live. Although, we can’t move in until Tuesday, August 28th. It was a very long morning with all the paperwork and inspecting the apartment for it’s furnishings and transferring over all the utilities.
We were plenty hungry so we headed over to the HDB food court for lunch. HDBs are flats built by the Housing Development Board of SG and are basically affordable housing for Singaporeans. Beneath these HDBs are usually food courts and small markets so that the residents don’t need to go too far for shopping. The food is pretty inexpensive, around S$3 per dish (exchange rate for US to SG is 1:1.5) and drinks are usually S$0.60 to S$1 each. Not bad, huh?
After lunch, we went back to the hotel and I took a long nap. We knew we were going to be up late because we were going to WOMAD in the evening. It’s a large open air concert with multiple venues. This year was their 10th anniversary. One of Ron’s classmates set up the event for us to go listen. It was a different experience for me as I don’t often listen to music from other parts of the world, the acts we watched were from Japan, Brazil, Israel, and many more. The food at the event was pretty good too. Yum.
Oh, if anyone decides to go to an outdoor event like this, I’d recommend bring a mat or blanket to sit on, that was the only uncomfortable thing.
Shopping for Provisions
Note: I am post-dating these entries to make it more chronological. I apologize for any strange mistakes that I might make.
To prepare for our new apt, we needed some home furnishings so we decided to go to IKEA for lack of a better place. We found some nice bed linens and had lunch at their cafeteria. They have a “Friends” program here in SG where you can join if you’ve spent over S$300 in one day or sign up for their VISA card. It entitles you to a free drink with each visit and earning points for other prizes. I wonder why we don’t have it in the US.
We headed over to the grocery store, Cold Storage, in Holland Village to buy provisions for the Partners BBQ at Heritage View in the evening. If I haven’t explained, the significant others of the INSEAD students are called “Partners” and there are BBQs and other outings that are arranged by the Partners. This was the first one for us and we were clueless because we didn’t know how these BBQs worked: who brings the charcoal? who has the grill? how much food or drink to bring? are the “other halves” allowed or is it only for Partners?
It ended up being a lot of fun once we found everyone and got the grilling started. They had plenty of food (actually too much) and karaoke. I was glad to finally meet some of the other Partners to chat.