life in singapore has been passing in a sort of boring manner, but there have been a few exciting events here & there, so let's begin!
friday & saturday, 25 & 26 september
first, last weekend (was it really only last weekend?) i went to the formula 1 singapore grand prix. pretty much, it was a big night car race that lasted three days & had tons of music, overly expensive food stands, ridiculous traffic, and lots of loud, roaring cars. i personally, know nothing about cars, but my ticket (priced at 190$) was free so i figured, why not?
the race was held at marina bay (home of the esplanade, the singapore flyer, and the merlion) so we got to see a lot of pretty tourist attractions at night!
the esplanade (affectionately named by the locals as the durian)
the singapore flyer off across the bay
doesn't this remind you of disney world?
the famous singapore merlion
some office buildings and hotels in the distance past the brightly lit racing track
they lit up the bridge that leads to the merlion as well!
us with our 12$ drinks (the singapore sling! the national cocktail of singapore) and our 5$ fries... we learned quick, and the next day, we had dinner before we came to the race...
i was in the back and apparently shorter than everyone else there so i had some trouble seeing... but look! a car came around the corner
the cars were extremely loud and extremely fast. this made estimating when to get your camera ready really easy, but this also made it really hard to actually get a picture of the car... see below. all of my pictures came out like that cause they went by so fast [300 km/hr]!
the second day of the race! obviously not paying attention to the actual race... there's only so many minutes i can stay entertained by watching cars drive past me...
a horde of people eating in between the races
some new-age world band that involved inflatable balloons, lights, and a jellyfish
city hall looking pretty
some famous british band called travis
aside from f1, my friends and i have had an adventurous mid-autumn festival weekend!friday 2 october
on friday, we went to eat the famous chili crab at east coast park! the meal (though cheap by american standards) was rather pricey... for 7 people it cost us $210, but the food was so tasty! we had drunken prawn, seafood mee goreng (fried noodles), bee hoon with sauce, and chili crab to wrap things up.
chilli crab ($40/kg) --- it was pretty giant
drunken prawn --- i think all sealife here is just mutated into giant forms
the drunken prawn is rather appropriately named. to make it, you put live shrimp in a bowl of liqour and let them die of alcohol poisoning. um... yeah. and then they mix the alcohol with some broth, ginseng, and other such things and boil... it tasted... like.... shrimp. in herbal tea.the nice thing about the restaurant is that they divide up the food for you ... but the portions all seem mysteriously small... hmm.
saturday 3 october
happy mid-autumn festival! aka, chusok!
no rice cakes for me, but i was invited to a singaporean girl's house for a night of culture exchange! (i didn't think to take my camera though...oops.) for dinner, us americans showed the singaporeans how to make a taco salad. they were amazed and thought it was the tastiest thing ever.
in return we were given chinese tea and a variety of mooncakes to eat! pandan mooncake, lotus mooncake with yolk, lotus mooncake without yolk, strawberry snowsheet mooncake... one of the guys even made us an amazing green tea cake! yum!
once it got dark out and it stopped raining, we went outside equipped with lanterns (somehow, sticking candles inside of paper lanterns didn't seem too safe to me...) as we walked to the park. unfortunately... we didn't see the moon. at all. it was supposed to be the best moon of the century, but apparently it missed singapore. but it was still fun!
everyone had their own lantern and we set off 200 sparklers and made jewelry out of glowsticks! they told me that this activity was really for 8 year olds, so they were just as excited as us exchange students were to be setting off fireworks and playing with candle-lit lanterns, haha. overall, a good chinese mid-autumn festival experience.
i stole this picture from facebook! i blend in with the singaporeans, yah lah?
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