Met some friends here and they invited us over to their house before the Quay. We sat on a roofdeck with a view of the city. The deck came equipped with something that we've been pondering since we got here: drains in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. His beautiful deck has a huge drain in the middle, as if it were a shower. Our home has one like this in the kitchen and in the bathroom. It makes random sounds, from time to time. I've only been lucky enough to be in the room once when it made the sound. Otherwise, it's a sound off in the distance of another room that makes you wonder. I digress. The view from the deck was beautiful and the cold Tiger beer was beautifuler.
Saturday we went to Sentosa, which is an island off of our current island. Life is rough, I know. It's so dang close you can take a taxi or a cable car ride there. It's a beautiful serene place -- except for Saturday the 20th of June when there was a radio station promotion right on the beach. We lounged on the sand with a view of palm trees and ocean while listening to "come up and try Twister for a t-shirt! Can!!" ("Can" is another singlish phenomenon that means either "can you?" or "you can." That dangling word frustrates me to no end.) We decided to relocate to another part of the beach. We had heard about Cafe del Mar, which boasted a pool on beach. Turns out it was a gross vision of eurotrash, techno and orgies. Poor families on the beach were hiding their children's eyes and running them away from the scene. Liz and I, on the other hand, couldn't take our eyes away. It was like a carcrash; we couldn't stop staring. We finally pryed ourselves away to relax on the beach. How lucky we are to be in a city that has beautiful islands and palm trees (and half-naked humping eurotrash) within walking distance.
Video of Del Mar:
Another highlight of the weekend was the Jurong Bird Park. We tried to go on a hike but the trail was closed to we opted for the bird park, instead. Again, tough life. We first saw a bird show where they let a lot of them lose and let them fly really close to your head. I really just didn't want one to poop on me. However, I failed at that (spoiler alert). We saw ostriches (nasty animals, if you ask me; their bodies are monstrous, their heads are tiny and they have scary eyes that look into your soul and shout "I know what you're thinking"), parrots, penguins, flamingoes, and a whole lot of other birds that I'm not going to try and recall because, I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a huge bird connoisseur. However, some are damn cute, though, like the snowy owl. Big ol' round furface living in the dark. We also got to see the world's largest man-man waterfall; it was in the African bird section of the park and was beautiful. We also bought little cups of white bird food that we brought to a really large enclosed area where you hold it up in the air in the hopes that a cute little birdie will come down and perch on your arm and eat your cup of nasty. Liz held out her hand until it was completely white as all the blood rushed down towards gravity and there were still no birds. Finally after standing in the heat, just dripping with sweat, some birds decided to humour us and eat the milky "food" the trainers provided us with. They are cute at times, but their tongues close up are indescribably disgusting looking. I can think of a metaphor but I it's not PG-13 and I'd like to keep this blog clean.
It really was a beautiful day and I'm glad I got to go to one of the "must-see" spots in Singapore. Oh, the spoiler alert. We go shopping after the bird park and I'm trying on a skirt in the dressing room when I put my shorts back on and see a little token of a bird's love on my bottom. I was okay with it, though, because, unlike the birds, I was able to leave the park. If I were a caged animal, no matter how large my enclosed space was, I'd be doing everything possible to piss off the people paying S$22 to invade my privacy and peer into my cage at my confined life.
...Wow, I can't end on a downer like that. Food makes me happy; let's talk about food. I just ate Cendol after lunch, which is one of the ice desserts that actually originated from Indonesia but are in all of the Kopitian's (food courts) here in Singapore. It looks terrifying but tastes oh so good. It is a must-eat if you come here. It has shaved ice under palm sugar, coconut milk, red beans (beans for a dessert? I know.) and green bean flour strips. I will miss it when I'm gone and I'm going to take a guess there aren't that many places in the States that cook this baby up. Check it out:
Try the Beng's house for a Cendol-like dessert, it looks familiar so I think there is a similar Cambodian dessert.
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