Singapore Art Festival – Hélios 2

So a few friends and I went to the Singapore Arts Festival opening act, Hélios II by French “dream architects” called La Compagnie Malabar. It was held at the newly constructed Marina Barrage.

Hélios is some sort of a post-modern, surrealist performance of the descent of a god. I’m not a Thespian or a great appreciator of the urban arts, so I honestly didn’t quite “get” it. I just read from the event site that there would be insects and “pyrotechnic displays” so I was anxiously waiting for the fireworks like a child waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve.

The Hélios insect-grasshopper-thingy with a dude on its forehead.

The performers with the insect-grasshopper-thingy.

The pyrotechnic display.

Another shot of pyrotechnic display.

Marina Barrage

After the performance, we walked around Marina Barrage, which is a dam constructed to be a freshwater reservoir and a public picnic spot. (Pretty neat idea!)

Here’s the bridge that apparently controls the water flow.

This is the pump house.

I don’t know what it is. It’s umm a romantic spot that lacks benches.

This the fountain to wash your legs for kids and big kids to play in.

View of Singapore City

The Marina Barrage being tucked away at the Southern tip of the island has an excellent view of the city. Note: I don’t own a DSLR or a tripod – and my camera was running out of battery from all the incessant zooming, so here’s a few crappy shots of the view.

This is the construction site of Marina Bay Sands, which will be Singapore’s first legal casino. It’ll be completed next year, I think.

And this is Downtown Singapore with the Singapore Flyer and the Suntec City Convention Center in sight.

Ayaschool at the Blujaz Cafe

After our evening stroll at the dam, we went to Bugis in search ofArab Street and Kampong Glam. That’s where there are rows and rows of shisha joints and a South East Asian delicacy (with Indian roots) called Roti Prata. We finally got there after getting lost and walking for about 30 minutes.

We originally wanted to try out the shisha, but I was distracted by the faint sound of jazz playing from an alley somewhere. Turned out there’s a jazz bar (with 2nd and 3rd floor playing club music) right around the corner called Blujaz Cafe.

There was a live band or rather a group friends, playing called Ayaschool led by Aya Sekine, an accomplished jazz pianist who happened to be an alumna from my high school, the Singapore American School. (Now I wished I talked to her!).

The laid back, funky ambiance.

The psychedelic art pieces.

My lime daiquiri at Blujaz Cafe.

…And the Adventure Continued

(Sorry, no pics my camera was flat by then!)
By the time we left the cafe, it was around 2am. We found a clothing store still open and decided to do some crazy late night shopping. And in our tipsy state we began to look for a late night snack. We walked for almost an hour, getting lost (again!) in the process only to end up exactly where we started – at the store. By then, most of the eateries in that area were closed and we decided to walk to Bencoolen Street to haunt the 24 hour Roti Prata joint.

By then, it was almost 4am. We feasted over the prata and the milkshakes, as if they were the rewards of a very long, arduous walk around town. And by 5am, lethargy and exhaustion finally set in, and we promptly retired for the night.

It was a lot of walking – probably about 10 kilometers – but a ton of fun! A really interesting getaway from the shopping and cafe chats that I have become all too accustomed in the weekends.

P.S. More pictures of my adventure on Flickr!

Related posts:

1. A Night in Photos
2. My Valentine’s Day in Singapore
3. FORMULA 1 Singapore Grand Prix

6.15PM: From Ritzy Restaurant to High-Class Hawker

ID and I met up yesterday to conceptualize a new layout for our new joint blog/vlog/podcast at ToiletRev.com. We spent many hours scrummaging around the corners of the ‘Net to look for a ritzy restaurant, and finally decided on Makan Sutra at the Esplanade. Turns out that the ritzy restaurant is actually just a high-class hawker in the middle of the city.

Hungry bloggers aren’t choosers, so we stayed and had our fill. As you can see, the hawker had quite an ambiance, completed with earthy umbrellas, fans, seaview and rocky tables. The added ambiance and the prime location also meant that we had to pay premium for otherwise average-tasting, affordable local food.

6.30PM: Dinner at a High-Class Hawker

I had Roti John (left), which is fried bread with beef and onions stuffing. ID had Nasi Goreng (right), which is Malay for fried rice. Talk about healthy

11.20PM: Midnight Walk in a Tropical City

Just in case you were wondering what we did from 6.30 to 11PM, we walked around Raffles City to check out some clothes and stationery. We then worked on the layout at Starbucks until its closing time at 11PM. We then proceeded to McDonald’s, where it was 24 hours. To venture our way there, we had to walk past the luxurious Raffles Hotel, which is one my favorite spots in Singapore. I’m in love colonial architecture; there’s just a certain romantic atmosphere about it.

12 – 3AM: Toilet Humor and Bathroom Design

We spent the first 3 hours at Starbucks throwing out random ideas, and spent the last 3 hours at McDonald’s finalizing a sketch of ToiletRev.com‘s first layout. Collaborating on a layout design was far harder than I expected, because ID and I have such different and distinct styles. Of course, ID will be illustrating, and I will coding. We will meet next week to work on the it.

Of course, for such a fun project, all sketches, all ideas, all jokes pertaining to ToiletRev.com will not be released until the site is formally opened to the public. So here’s a spoof of Nanyate?! instead by yours truly.

From the quality of the doodle, I am sure you are all now convinced that I failed art in school. I clearly can’t write, can’t draw, can’t color – by hand.

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To see the rest of the pictures, visit my Flickr account.

Related posts:

1. A Day in Photos

Sorry for being away from the blog scene the past week. I’ve been extremely busy preparing for my return to Singapore next week; renting out my room, packing up, buying last minute stuff has been incredibly time-consuming and taxing. I’ll be blogging erratically for the next 2 weeks. Hopefully, by then I think I’ll be completely settled down in Singapore.

New Camera!

Perils of moving across 12 timezones aside, my boyfriend and I drove to the middle of nowhere to get me a new camera yesterday (because it was that much cheaper than buying it downtown). It’s the one I’ve been eying on since its release: Canon Powershot A590 IS. It’s a budget camera that takes amazing shots with full manual controls. It only costs 160 CAD. What a steal! And I even got a 4GB SDHC card for 15 CAD.

All psyched out like a little kid, I was haphazardly taking hundreds of pictures on the way back home from the store. I didn’t really have the time to figure out how to use the manual controls, so I shot everything in Easy and Auto mode. And this is how it turned out…

12.40PM: First Test Shot

As we were leaving the store, we drove past a marsh. It was so ugly that it was unworthy of my new camera. So I pointed the lens at the sky instead. It was shot on Easy mode in a moving car. Not the brightest colors but amazing nonetheless.

1.00PM: Lunch at Pacific Mall

Hunger struck. So, we drove to Pacific Mall for lunch (you know, the one Russell Peters refers to in his ‘Chinese bargain’ joke). And this is what I had: Chinese-cooked Korean food. Marinated BBQ beef (Kalbi), with potato noodles (Japchae), spicy seaweed and salad with fruit dressing (yuck! no, and I don’t mean the name).

1:00PM: Emperor Chair

This was on my left while I was savoring my lunch: the emperor chair. The sign on the chair was absolutely amusing. It says “Please do not sit on the emperor chair.” If I hadn’t had known it was an emperor chair, my urge to sit on it wouldn’t be half as strong. The irony.

2.00PM: Cosplay Store

After lunch, we spent a couple hours just checking out the stores. And then we walked past a cosplay (costume play) store. This mannequin particularly caught my eye because I instantly recognized which anime it was from (Ulquiorra Schiffer from BLEACH). I would have loved to try it on. Too bad the store was closed. I spent another 5 minutes peeking through window hoping to catch a glimpse of another costume that I might’ve recognized. Unfortunately, the 3500 anime episodes I’ve watched didn’t help with identifying anymore costumes.

3:40PM: Long Drive Home

I snapped quite a few pictures on the way home and I particularly liked this shot. I wanted to capture the yellow flowers as the car was coming to a halt (for the red light). Just as I switched on the camera, a bus was rushing from behind, so I haphazardly snapped before it would block my view. I was so sure that the camera wouldn’t shoot in time and I would have ended up with half a bus in my frame. But as you can see here, it’s 100% bus-free. What speed.

4.00PM: Longest Street in the World

Yonge Street used to be longest street of the world at 1,896 kilometers. Despite having its record broken, Yonge Street is still an important road as it neatly splits Toronto from the East and the West. The picture on the left is a snapshot of Yonge Street somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area (i.e. far away from downtown) and the picture on the right shows Yonge Street downtown. (I used to live not too far from here.)

6.00PM: Dinner at Korean Town

My favorite place to be. Doesn’t look spectacular but the food is amazing! Wasn’t paying much attention to where I was shooting, but the stuff at BnC cake house is just too yummy. The fresh cream cakes are just.. wow. If you ever visit Toronto, you must try one!

Epilogue

With this I ended my first date with the Canon A590 IS. My photography skills are currently at 0%. Nevertheless, I think the pictures turned out well. I just started to learn about aperture and shutter speed today and hopefully I can take some professional-like pictures when I go to Niagara this Thursday. So, until then, enjoy the rest of my amateur shots at my Flickr account.

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