Today I took my camera out again and decided to shoot some architecture around The Esplanade. Although we’ve been in Singapore for 1 year now, we hadn’t really explored that part of town. It’s was a great day for a walk and some photography. We walked from The Esplanade over the Esplanade Drive Bridge to the other side of the river, where the famous water-spitting Merlion stands outside The Fullerton Hotel. We then continued towards the CBD and China Town.

You can find the results over here.

Today I took the whole team (everybody that was there when we spontaneously decided) out for lunch. Got a last minute reservation for 30 at Crystal Jade in Holland Village. It must have been the biggest and greatest lunch in a long time. To give all of you a little flavour of our 7 or 8 course meal, here’re some of the things we had today:

• Rice Rolls with Shrimp, BBQ Pork and Gourd
• Ha Kau and Siew Mai
• Steamed Chicken Feet
• Fried Beancurd Skin
• Fried Carrot Cake
• Boat Congee
• Flying Colours
• Sliver Fish
• Chinese Herbal Jelly
• Peking Duck
• Shark fin Soup
• Lemon Chicken
• and Chinese Tea

After 2 hours of fine lunching, we returned to the office (stop-over at StarBucks) and finished the planned activities in time. A great achievement for the team, we have come a long way and the team lunch was a well deserved celebration. I can recommend Crystal Jade @ Holland Village for all your celebrations.

Food & Beverage
Staff & Service
Setting & Ambience
Location
Value for Money

Swine Flu alarm in the office today. A friend of a friend of a colleague of somebody, blablablah became the 20th odd confirmed case of swine flu in Singapore today. In a typical Singaporean reaction, the desinfaction crew were called in to clean everybody’s desks. I guess we’ll go back to taking temperatures again 3 times a day. No need to panic anybody!

Dear visitor,

You might wonder what happened to this usually busy blog, but I am so busy at work, that I have no time to undertake anything worth writing about. And if I do, I often can’t find the time to blog about it. We arrived in Singapore 12 months and a few weeks ago and the one and only reason we came out here, is for me to help my employer through this 3 month testing period. So, testing started as planned about 5 weeks ago and since then, my “normal” Singaporean working day of 9.5 hours, has been extended to a good 12 hours in average. And next week, Olivia will join the Singaporean working force officially as well and she’ll start understanding the real meaning of a weekend (time to regenerate).

But I am not complaining, it’s just the job I do and will not change unless I start a new career or retirement. So, it’s going to be a tough few weeks ahead and potentially busy until the end of the year. During which I will occasionally post something interesting. My weekend remain free of work for now, so I will try to get out and play some golf, shoot some pictures or any other hobby I aspire.

So keep visiting!

So yesterday just after lunchtime, Olivia had the brilliant idea of having some Chinese food. She knew exactly what she wanted, but it took us a long time to find. In the end, we found a Chinese restaurant using Google Maps on my Blackberry and a vague memory I had of a place just outside StarHub’s former headquarters called The Eastern Restaurant. We started off with some steamed peanuts and lime-juice and had some very nice spring-rolls, various wanton and dumplings and spicy & sour soup. All together, very nice but nothing compared to what’s being serviced in Australian Chinese restaurants.