My friends Kevin and Tasha stopped by Singapore on their way to Bali so we met for dinner. After work I took a taxi over to meet with them. My taxi driver was a bit odd. The first question he asked me after I told him where I wanted to go was “Do you go to church on Sunday?” and when I answered No, he asked “Why not?” so I told him because I was a foreigner and didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to outright say that I’m not religious because I didn’t want to offend him. So he goes on to ask me if I’m Korean, or Japanese, or Vietnamese and do I live here now? Etc, just asking away… then he asks me if I like Singaporean food and we get on the subject of “hot pot”. He kept on asking “What’s hot pot? It’s called steam boat! In Singapore we call it steam boat.” He was very insistent. He said while in Singapore, I should learn Mandarin because everyone here speaks Mandarin, even the Malay can learn to speak it. He kept on talking all the way to my friend’s hotel.

But it was strange, once my friends got into the taxi, he stopped talking. At least he stopped talking to us, he started mumbling to himself. My friend was wondering if he was talking on the phone but he really was just mumbling to himself.

A bit weird.

But we did finally arrive at Newton Circus to have dinner. My co-workers recommended some specific things to try there:

1. Sugar cane juice with lemon
2. Chili crab
3. Satay
4. Oyster omelette
5. Chicken wings
6. Sting ray

We tried all. Just the three of us.

The stall owners there are a bit irritating though, they try to lead you to their stalls, called “touting”. You really don’t know where to go, you just sit and they bring you food.

The sugar cane juice with lemon was refreshing ($2SGD). The chili crab was not bad, actually spicier than I’ve had ($30SGD for a small crab). Chicken and beef satay ($0.50SGD per skewer). The oyster omelette wasn’t that good, a bit fishy tasty ($6SGD). The chicken wings were crispy but not much meat ($1SGD each). The sting ray was quite tasty with a nice sauce ($8SGD).

We called it a night after dinner as they were leaving for Bali in the afternoon and going to head to Sentosa before they left Singapore. I have meetings to attend this weekend given by our visiting expert so was also ready to head home to rest.

My work kindly allowed me to have half a day off work so that I could spend the day with Ron before he leaves for his trip to the US. We spent a relaxing afternoon together.

First we had a snack at Yoshinoya. I was very curious to try the green rice shishamo.

I’m not sure how the rice is green though but I do like to eat shishamo although I know it’s kind of bad because it’s mostly fish eggs.

We watched the movie “Jumper”. It wasn’t what I expected at all, I thought it’d be like that old TV show “Quantum Leap”, which I liked to watch when I was a kid. It was interesting but I’d recommend it as a rental.

We had dinner at a restaurant called Vis-a-Vis and had an excellent meal including French onion soup, escargot, foie gras, Chilean sea bass, lemon souffle, and dark chocolate souffle.

The chocolate souffle was DELICIOUS!!

The little copper pot it was made in was so cute.

Other food pictures:

Ron will leave for Los Angeles tomorrow morning at 6am.

A very popular food in Singapore is the fish noodles. You can either have fried fish, boiled/steamed fish then choose the noodles you want and then if you want milk in your soup. I personally like fried and bee hoon and milk. I’m not sure what kind of milk it is but I think evaporated milk since it’s from a can… it makes the soup more rich.

We have this new food court behind out condo on Dover Crescent. It just recently opened and it’s biggest claim to fame right now is that it has air conditioning. Not all the stalls are filled up yet though and the service still has kinks. We went to the fruit and drinks stall and it took them a very very long time to get a fresh fruit drink. But anyways, I had the fish bee hoon.

At least now we have more variety to eat closeby now.