Today we went on a search for a new laptop for Ron. First though we went to Raffles City Shopping Center for lunch. We ended up at Chippy British Take Away. We ordered the beer battered fish with fries and the cheesy spicy chicken.

The beer battered fish pieces were quite small, maybe 2 to 3 inches in length and 1 inch wide. It was hard to differentiate between the fish and fries. Also it is only served with one small cup of sauce. You can choose either malt vinegar or ketchup/mayonnaise. It costs extra if you want another serving of condiments.

The cheesy spicy chicken wasn’t very spicy. But the cheesy sauce that comes with it is pretty good… kind of like nacho chicken… the sauce is good with the fries from the fish. We think they overfried it a bit because the pieces were too crunchy.

We ate around the fountain in the basement. It was nice but I wish they had a more comfortable seating area for take away food.

Afterwards we got some coffee at Starbucks and I have to comment that the Raffles City Starbucks seems to always have poor service. This Starbucks is close to my Chinese class so I stop by sometimes for coffee. One time they completely forgot to make my drink, just a grande latte, nothing fancy. They served the 5 or 6 customers after me before I had to remind them of my drink and they made it for me. The guys there tried to be nice and make conversation with me but I was already irritated so it was no use. That was one incident.

Today we ordered and they were serving drinks to customers who came in after us as well… especially all the cold or ice drinks came up first but the hot drinks took longer. Plus the person helping with the cold drinks was expediting drinks for customers who had ordered both cold and hot drinks versus serving customers who ordered hot drinks only. Quite irritating again. I know I ordered something that takes a bit longer, a tall soy latte, because of the soy but still it does not make sense that 3 customers behind us get their drinks served first. They don’t seem to have a good system of making their drinks in order and they don’t even ask the customers for their names. The cashiers don’t write the orders down for the barista but rather call out the orders to the barista and the barista has to stop and write the order down. Doesn’t seem very efficient to me. In the US, Starbucks is much more efficient and seem much more organized.

At the VivoCity Starbucks I’ve had the same experience of them being extremely slow. Everyone is crowding around the counter waiting for their drinks. If the cashier took the time to write the orders on the cup, the queue of people waiting for their drinks would be shorter because it delays people from paying too quickly. They really need to find a way to balance the workflow out. It can be quite irritating for customers.

I have not had any problems at Coffee Bean so far, this is one of the reasons I think I prefer Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf now.

After our coffee incident, we went shopping at Funan DigitaLife Mall to get some ides for Ron’s new laptop. I also got to see some cool things like small tablet PCs, Apple computers, etc. I don’t think Ron has decided on a computer yet but at least has a better idea on the features available.

We just had dinner of our freshly caught prawns from yesterday. We had two types: steamed and stir fried.

Both quite yummy, very fresh.

It’s been quite a nice weekend…