1. We got back from HongKong late Tuesday night and welcomed our dear friend Nicky, who was coming all the way from Phoenix, Arizona via Bangkok and Jakarta to Singapore! Such is life these days. We have the pleasure of having house guests who had never visited us in NYC, for the past decade that we lived there, inspite of being only a short flight away (Nicky is a classic case for this one. Having lived on the West coast of the country for all the years that I lived on the East, she hasn't once visited me in NYC, while I've visited her twice in her Californian & Arizonian homes). So clearly this was going to be a first for us - hosting her at our place and making her a part of our daily lives, even though it was only for two days.
2. Nicky is one of my oldest friends, part of a school girl group that celebrated it's 21st anniversary this year (We call ourselves 'The Nuts'.....Shhhh..Don't judge!) and is still going strong. You know the kinds who've not lived in the same city for over a decade, but have stayed in touch forever and still pick up exactly where they left things off, the last time they met, somewhere in the world! That's 'The Nuts' in a nutshell for you!
Although we had barely two nights in our hands during her visit here, we decided to make the most of that time, catching-up over non-stop chatter. This month was 'Global Re-union Month' for our girl gang - Nicky and I were meeting in Singapore this week, she and two others were meeting up in San Diego, CA next week and then Snehi (another one from the group) was going to visit me the week after! In this entire global criss-cross, the only two who were not going to meet this month were the best friend (Raga, who lives in San Diego) and myself. But otherwise, it was to be an extraordinary rest of the month for all of us, considering there were a lot of 'first times' involved here! Hopefully soon enough, we'll be able to organise a meetup when all of us can physically be at the same place at the same time - as conventional re-unions go!
With Nicky Maasi (What Zoe calls her) in town this week, naturally Zoe's 22nd month birthday was to be celebrated with her. The other half of this month's birthday will be with Snehi Maasi, Ira & Atit when they visit in a few days as well. Lucky Zoe gets to have multiple celebrations as she counts down to her 2nd year birthday! This Birthday Girl, couldn't be more overjoyed, from what I can tell!
3. I have started indulging in a lot of Asian cooking offlate. Having collected various sauces and teas from our recent travels across the continent, the pantry in our kitchen looks more exotic and oriental now, with it's assemblage of different types of fish/oyster/chilli sauces etc. We might need a mammoth larder in our next kitchen - the rate at which these sauces are springing up in this one! It's like a whole new world of cuisine just opened itself up and has now become a part of our daily diets at home. While some of it is obviously healthy (soups, sauteed green Asian herbs, steamed fish and the likes..), there is also an unhealthy yet delicious Asian 'twang' to some others (coconut milk or cream, condensed milk etc). But overall, it's been nice to incorporate our present context in our home-kitchen and serve up these Asian delicacies to ourselves and our guests as well!
4. We took Zoe to the Jurong Bird Park this week. Clearly she loved the bird park more than she did the Zoo. It makes me wonder if this was the case because birds are closer to her scale than animals are? Seeing animals in books, she has always "Awww"..ed away at rabbits, mice, hamsters and other little creatures. Perhaps that is why she appreciated the bird park more as she went "Parrot....Crow....Macau....Penguin..." etc rattling away bird names one after the other, as she saw them. The Jurong Bird Park, like the Singapore Zoo, is easily seen and experienced thoroughly in an afternoon, thus making for an ideal Sunday post-brunch trip. Having checked both off our list, we (Hubster and I) believe we are now done with wildlife fauna in Singapore, at least for the near future!
5. Having Global Health Insurance makes life pretty smooth if you travel as much as we do these days. It gets easier to see a Dentist in one country, go to a pediatrician in another and get a Health Check-up done in the third, without having to work around our schedules. This week Hubster and I went for our annual Health screenings - for the very first time in Singapore. Having had them previously in the US and in India, we were amazed at the technologically forward medical testing machines that our nurses employed for our various tests, here at the Mt. Elizabeth Medical Centre in Singapore. Trust Singapore to have state-of-the-art machines in their hospitals, what with even their governmental offices (post offices etc) being so hi-tech!
6. Weekend nights have been spent wisely, checking out of various restaurants and clubs that the city has to offer. With our days here being numbered hence forth, we figured we'd put our weekend nights to good use and help the Singapore F&B industry prosper even more than it already does. So a few of us went to dinner to Relish by Wild Rocket - a place that prides itself on it's modern Singaporean style cuisine (called Mod-Sing cuisine). Hubster had taken his team to their sister restaurant Wild Rocket, a few weeks ago and proposed that we try out this place. The five of us who went, loved the place. Situated in a quaint shop-house style of a building, close to where we live, this was another culinary treat. The loft-like ambience of the space lent itself well to the modern menu. With an extensive brunch menu that sounded irresistible, we've now decided to return here for a weekend brunch sometime.
The night continued at Nektar - a bar that prides itself on it's mixology, also located close to our place. We had been meaning to check this one off our list for a while now, having received rave reviews from friends. For a Friday evening, it was surprisingly not-too-packed. It's outdoor back garden, where we sat, gives the place not just an 'open air' feel literally speaking, but also brings in a casual lounge-y atmosphere, as if one is seated in one's own backyard with a good bartender serving up the drinks. The bartender did live up to his repute and served up some spectacular concoctions to those of us who decided to customize our own drinks. Another recommendation I would make for anyone looking for experimental cocktails in this city!
7. Lunch with Khyati - my lunch buddy of the past few months, was special this week as she announced her new gig - She is taking up a full-time job at NUS - The National University of Singapore. That also means, that since her workplace will be further away, our weekday lunch rituals might cease to exist in the near future, making way for some Friday evening post-work happy hours instead. We decided to give yet another Mexican restaurant a try - Casa Latina. Inspite of being run by two Indian owners (something we learnt of only when we got there. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it does lift up the radar somehow!) this place had delicious Mexican fare, a rarity in Singapore, so with our cravings satisfied we were two happy lunchers that afternoon.
Here's wishing Khyati good luck on her new gig and hoping to keep our weekday lunch conversations going over weekend drinks here on!
That's all for this week! See you on the other side of the next!
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Shweyta
2. Nicky is one of my oldest friends, part of a school girl group that celebrated it's 21st anniversary this year (We call ourselves 'The Nuts'.....Shhhh..Don't judge!) and is still going strong. You know the kinds who've not lived in the same city for over a decade, but have stayed in touch forever and still pick up exactly where they left things off, the last time they met, somewhere in the world! That's 'The Nuts' in a nutshell for you!
Although we had barely two nights in our hands during her visit here, we decided to make the most of that time, catching-up over non-stop chatter. This month was 'Global Re-union Month' for our girl gang - Nicky and I were meeting in Singapore this week, she and two others were meeting up in San Diego, CA next week and then Snehi (another one from the group) was going to visit me the week after! In this entire global criss-cross, the only two who were not going to meet this month were the best friend (Raga, who lives in San Diego) and myself. But otherwise, it was to be an extraordinary rest of the month for all of us, considering there were a lot of 'first times' involved here! Hopefully soon enough, we'll be able to organise a meetup when all of us can physically be at the same place at the same time - as conventional re-unions go!
With Nicky Maasi (What Zoe calls her) in town this week, naturally Zoe's 22nd month birthday was to be celebrated with her. The other half of this month's birthday will be with Snehi Maasi, Ira & Atit when they visit in a few days as well. Lucky Zoe gets to have multiple celebrations as she counts down to her 2nd year birthday! This Birthday Girl, couldn't be more overjoyed, from what I can tell!
3. I have started indulging in a lot of Asian cooking offlate. Having collected various sauces and teas from our recent travels across the continent, the pantry in our kitchen looks more exotic and oriental now, with it's assemblage of different types of fish/oyster/chilli sauces etc. We might need a mammoth larder in our next kitchen - the rate at which these sauces are springing up in this one! It's like a whole new world of cuisine just opened itself up and has now become a part of our daily diets at home. While some of it is obviously healthy (soups, sauteed green Asian herbs, steamed fish and the likes..), there is also an unhealthy yet delicious Asian 'twang' to some others (coconut milk or cream, condensed milk etc). But overall, it's been nice to incorporate our present context in our home-kitchen and serve up these Asian delicacies to ourselves and our guests as well!
4. We took Zoe to the Jurong Bird Park this week. Clearly she loved the bird park more than she did the Zoo. It makes me wonder if this was the case because birds are closer to her scale than animals are? Seeing animals in books, she has always "Awww"..ed away at rabbits, mice, hamsters and other little creatures. Perhaps that is why she appreciated the bird park more as she went "Parrot....Crow....Macau....Penguin..." etc rattling away bird names one after the other, as she saw them. The Jurong Bird Park, like the Singapore Zoo, is easily seen and experienced thoroughly in an afternoon, thus making for an ideal Sunday post-brunch trip. Having checked both off our list, we (Hubster and I) believe we are now done with wildlife fauna in Singapore, at least for the near future!
5. Having Global Health Insurance makes life pretty smooth if you travel as much as we do these days. It gets easier to see a Dentist in one country, go to a pediatrician in another and get a Health Check-up done in the third, without having to work around our schedules. This week Hubster and I went for our annual Health screenings - for the very first time in Singapore. Having had them previously in the US and in India, we were amazed at the technologically forward medical testing machines that our nurses employed for our various tests, here at the Mt. Elizabeth Medical Centre in Singapore. Trust Singapore to have state-of-the-art machines in their hospitals, what with even their governmental offices (post offices etc) being so hi-tech!
6. Weekend nights have been spent wisely, checking out of various restaurants and clubs that the city has to offer. With our days here being numbered hence forth, we figured we'd put our weekend nights to good use and help the Singapore F&B industry prosper even more than it already does. So a few of us went to dinner to Relish by Wild Rocket - a place that prides itself on it's modern Singaporean style cuisine (called Mod-Sing cuisine). Hubster had taken his team to their sister restaurant Wild Rocket, a few weeks ago and proposed that we try out this place. The five of us who went, loved the place. Situated in a quaint shop-house style of a building, close to where we live, this was another culinary treat. The loft-like ambience of the space lent itself well to the modern menu. With an extensive brunch menu that sounded irresistible, we've now decided to return here for a weekend brunch sometime.
The night continued at Nektar - a bar that prides itself on it's mixology, also located close to our place. We had been meaning to check this one off our list for a while now, having received rave reviews from friends. For a Friday evening, it was surprisingly not-too-packed. It's outdoor back garden, where we sat, gives the place not just an 'open air' feel literally speaking, but also brings in a casual lounge-y atmosphere, as if one is seated in one's own backyard with a good bartender serving up the drinks. The bartender did live up to his repute and served up some spectacular concoctions to those of us who decided to customize our own drinks. Another recommendation I would make for anyone looking for experimental cocktails in this city!
7. Lunch with Khyati - my lunch buddy of the past few months, was special this week as she announced her new gig - She is taking up a full-time job at NUS - The National University of Singapore. That also means, that since her workplace will be further away, our weekday lunch rituals might cease to exist in the near future, making way for some Friday evening post-work happy hours instead. We decided to give yet another Mexican restaurant a try - Casa Latina. Inspite of being run by two Indian owners (something we learnt of only when we got there. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it does lift up the radar somehow!) this place had delicious Mexican fare, a rarity in Singapore, so with our cravings satisfied we were two happy lunchers that afternoon.
Here's wishing Khyati good luck on her new gig and hoping to keep our weekday lunch conversations going over weekend drinks here on!
That's all for this week! See you on the other side of the next!
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Shweyta
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