Tean's Taiwan RTN & Free Cone Day 2013
The jellyfish is back! ^^
Just about slightly less than a month to go, and Tean is going to ORD! As he just came back from Taiwan to sort of clear his OVL for the year, we met up to have a chat about life and shun bian have a distribution of souvenirs! :) So met up with him and JM at Buona Vista for the meet-up / singing session. ^^
Posting about 2 outings: Singing with JM/Tean, and Ben&Jerry's Free Cone Day! =D
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Tean's Taiwan Return Trip: The singout!
Actually the original plan was to go for another cycling trip, however JM was against the idea, not due to physical reasons, but rather due to spiritual/religious reasons. o.o
JM: "My god tell me that I cannot ride on anything with 2 wheels."
In a scientific perspective, that's an extremely screwed up reason as that is against the doctor's idea of a good exercise. However, well religious reason soothes the mind and heart, so yeah, that's why we ended up with the singing idea instead, which is also good! :)
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One thing War will like about Buona Vista is that there's Koi! It's even more convenient than JE as the Koi outlet is right in the station itself, compared to a short distance away from JE MRT~ Well of course I didn't buy, since Gong Cha is like so much nicer compared to Koi~? :)
JM: Wah Jeff, you don't drink Koi but you drink Gong Cha. Biased sia!
A nicely phrased statement which WL would give 2 thumbs up. Star Vista, the closest shopping center to Buona Vista, is an open/outdoor concept shopping mall, a rather cool idea which you can hardly find in Singapore for an entertainment outlet as most Singaporeans would prefer to shop in an air-conditioned environment due to the daily hot weather. Of course, every atas mall should have a Gong Cha outlet and true enough! This large area mall not only is it a good place to hang out, it has a Performing Arts facility at the top and an awesome Gong Cha outlet somewhere in the mall. ^^ So to start off the whole outing, we had a cup of Gong Cha each, with me having the awesome Mango Green Tea. :D We didn't walk in Star Vista for very long as Tean had reached BV just as we bought finish Gong Cha.
"It's a Love Story, Baby just say......"
"NO!" - Jeff / JM. XD
A big welcome back to Tean who has reached SG and he bought souvenirs for the people he know (just like PH ^^). So sweet! It's been a long time since I have seen him, and well he looks the same as ever. Bear-ish as some may call it, but yeah thanks anyway! I should put a picture of the souvenir here. :)
The KTV place which Tean recommended is located at the NTU Alumni building, which ironically anybody including non-NTU students could enter, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the name. Whatever, it's a really nice building though! The air-con is very cold, it has lots of entertainment facilities, restaurants, dining places, auditoriums, etc. The setback is that it's a long way upslope, so if you are the kind who is physically exhausted due to much training (not in War's definition) or has just ran a marathon for no damn of reason, going to this place isn't the best choice. =P
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When they mean a small room, they really mean a seriously small room! I think my house sofa is even bigger than their couch, and the K set is just right in front of the couch. If that was a murder scene, I think Doors and Rooms would have take this room to be one of the extra stages in Claustrophobia. Hey, me and JM are in the same room, if you are talking about WL then perhaps you can put about 6 or 7 and no one is gonna complain. =P No free food / snacks is provided, but hey, they allow the bringing of outside food, and their can drink is priced at $1 / can, a rather reasonable price. :) Price for a small room, $8/hour. Cheap right! This sorta made up for the smallness of the Sofa~ ^^
Next up, songs! ^^
Singing with JM and Tean will definitely have more Chinese songs, and that's an accurate prediction. The classics, Wu Ding, Dou Jiang You Tiao, Tong Hua, Cheng Li De Yue Guang, all in the house! I realised that everytime when there will be a selection of Chinese Songs, it's always these few that revolves around the years 2005, 2006... Perhaps those songs were way too awesome. :) There's Qing Fei De Yi also, except that it's not a rock version. There's a Chinese clubbing song, which nobody has actually heard of it before. I shall put that song in another post! =P
As expected, there isn't many ATL songs or Owl City songs. But it doesn't really matter as none of them really knew songs from these 2 except Fireflies. >.< Why is it that everybody only know Fireflies from Owl City? He has so many other nice songs!! But ah oh well, JM tried to find his favourite Rebecca song: Friday, but somehow there isn't such a song in the list! Too many dislikes? He replaced it with 'My Moment' which seriously in my opinion, sounds nicer than Friday. Tean dislikes this. =/
The whole singing session ended with One Direction's 'One Way Or Another'. It is a cover, as there's an original singer for this song. 3 hours of fun and sing out of random songs, awesome! XD
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Let A be the event that it rains
Let F be the event that Jeff goes out with friends
Let W be the event that there's a long unsheltered way to walk
Let X be the event that none of Jeff's friends brought an umbrella
P(A n W) = Almost 0
P(A n W n F n X') = Almost 0
P(A n W n F n X) = Happens always. And yep! It happened again. So backup plan, cap and jacket down the long long slope. The view of Star Vista from the top of the hill looks awesome, comparable to SOTA! Perhaps if I have a gf in future, I will take her to this place, not to pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars, but rather look at the beautiful, dazzling lights of Star Vista. =D
Fu Xiang's famous Curry Chicken, with mini baguette and omelette for late lunch! Just like the Jurong West FX, the curry is fragrant, the meat is tender, and the spice level is suitable for me (not that spicy!). JM ordered a mushroom sauce thingy, but somehow liked my curry to a greater extent~ Rather expensive though, it added up to about $7.20 for my entire meal in a food court, even though it's normal cuisine. Ah oh well. =)
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Star Vista: Shopping proper!
1. Electronic gadgets
Apparently Tean is looking for a new earpiece, new laptop, and new router to prepare for Uni. I can say that the last 2 are the important ones, which could improve the quality of work and usage. There's a shop which doesn't seem to have nice furnishing (esp. the floor), but have a lot of items of different kinds. Earpieces took up like about 20% of the shop, and it has covers with more varieties than other shops. I don't know much about the price, but hey at least the things look cool. :)
2. Japanese shop
There's a Jap shop which sells various Sake, frozen Jap food, confectioneries, snacks, desserts, etc. The prices don't look cheap (typical), so we sort of walked around, and I bought 1 packet [6 pieces] of strawberry yoghurt/ice-cream for $3.10. For the sake of trying, it's actually quite nice, melts in your mouth, with a very smooth strawberry taste. The chocolate is not really evident though! Hmm, I don't think I will be buying again though!
3. Candy Empire & Soft toy shop
I thought this only appears in VivoCity and one more shop near Suntec. Apparently there's an outlet in Star Vista, and I can say it looks just as atas as the other 2. Didn't buy anything from there, as the price is not exactly cheap. A perfect gift for a friend though! =D There's also a soft toy / bear bear (Not Tean) shop! Not many kids are inside, but hey the variety of toys inside is amazing!
Somehow most of the shops (except restaurants) have automated glass doors, including Four Leaves and a few deco shops. Oh, Creamery Slab is another shop without the glass doors! Why the special mention? I have always liked ice-cream cakes, they taste so good, and the ice-cream inside gives a all-time chill out feeling and it's double sweetness! ^^ The shocking part is that one small cake (very) cost $20, and a regular size cake cost about $60!!! That's expensive, but hey, it serves good ice-cream, even though I don't think I will go try it. =/
That's about it for the singing trip! ^^
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Ben & Jerry Free Cone Day 2013!
9th April 2013, a day after I left Avarto.
So much memories, the art of pasting pouches on cartons, the tiredness of working through the wee hours, the fatigue of trying to rush through the almost never ending Yamato's orders, the disappointment of not being able to work night shifts anymore...
All returned in a pass, which doesn't even require a signature to return! Alamak who ah! Still say need signature then can return, if not can ask War to help me return. =P So yeah! Before me and JM went for the free cone day, we decided to do a bit of exercising by returning the pass, and shun bian complete my task, buying a rainbow flavoured doughnut for Rebecca and buying sugar doughnuts for the rest! =P Well, I must say that there should be a sweet ending to everything right? :) With that, officially case close in Avarto~
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Free Cone Day is on April 9th! So, make sure you swing by one of our participating Scoop Shops and grab yourself a FREE cone.
Free Cone Day is something we’ve been doing since 1979 when Ben and Jerry celebrated their first year of business! Ben and Jerry wanted to thank everyone for their support in the best way they knew how; with free ice cream!
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That's basically a summary and the origin behind Ben and Jerry's annual FCD. I actually didn't know about such a thing until War and JM mentioned. So apparently there's free awesome ice-cream once and a year and I have missed out 20 years of those, so yep, not going to let down my 21st year by joining in the crowd! =D So we proceeded to Great World City, via a free shuttle bus from a bus stop near Orchard MRT / Chinatown / City Hall. A rather smooth journey, and soon we arrived at Great World City, a building which I have heard before but never been there before~
Contrast to what I expected, GWC is actually quite an ulu place, nowhere near the factor of 'bustling business Center'. Not many shops inside, as is definitely not as atas as Star Vista. Oh, there's no Gong Cha or Koi inside, so for ShareTea lovers, it's great news for you! =D
~~~ FCD: Getting into the mood! ~~~
The shortest time JM recorded for Ben & Jerry to clear a queue of 52 people: 6 mins +!!
Ben & Jerry got more manpower to manage the queues, and thus the queue extended all the way to the overhead bridge outside Great World City. I can say that the queue is quite fast though! We queued for 3 rounds, 1 before we do anything proper, 1 during the walk in GWC, and another one before we left the place.
When they mean free, it's really free! No need for something like, oh buy a sundae and it will be a free cone, or buy a free cone and get the next one free. Not like that, but however, they do welcome any kind of donations to Ben & Jerry's, as they are doing some sort of charity which I have forgotten for who. I think I donated a dollar or two, and helped them to fill a survey. The survey is rather long, and I completed that only after getting my free cone. Rather epic, but yeah! They offered 5 different flavours, Strawberry Cheesecake, Toffee, Maple Tree Hugger, Chocolate Swirl and some Lemon flavour. I tried the Maple Tree twice and the chocolate Swirl once. The Maple Tree Hugger is awesome! Rather sweet, the syrup taste is there, and you won't get sick of it. =D The Chocolate Swirl is really heavy on the chocolate taste, definitely not those anyhow type of passby flavour. Hmm, I still prefer the Maple Tree thing though! Didn't try the Strawberry Cheesecake (don't like), Toffee (Er...?), and Lemon (o.o). A pity they didn't offer the cookie dough flavour, if not I will definitely try that! XD
After about 4pm, the queue is awesome. Thankfully we came rather early. =P
~~~ The walk around the ulu Great World City! ~~~
1. Lunch @ Food Court
I didn't know Delifrance could open in a food court. Usually I thought that people will go to the food court for dining for a few reasons. They couldn't find cafe / restaurants they want, eating with a group of friends with all different choices could be irritating, and thus going to the food court would solve these problems. Most importantly, it's more economical compared to the rest of the dining outlets~! A delifrance over there, er... I don't remember anybody patronizing the stall for the whole 45 mins I'm in the food court.
Had Kway Teow for lunch, delicious, but it cost $4.30. =/
2. Jap restaurant, the awesome Tamago!
A box of Tamago that looks like it can be gobbled up in 2 mouthfuls cost $4! Expensive? Apparently not as said by JM. Tamago is made with some skill. Grilled egg that consist of a few layers of egg that is not supposed to be burnt, and made into perfection by combining a lot (10-20) layers together. That sounds awesome, and probably after I get some extra money, I will buy a box to try! =D
3. Marks & Spencers
A brand which I don't think I have seen for a really long time! Somewhat~ Anyway a walk inside made me and JM realised that there's actually a lot of products that is the house brand! Clothes, food items, ice-cream, underwears, accessories, decos!
4. Toy shop
A rather interesting shop! In the middle of the shop, there's actually a display of a glass container with some decos and live shrimps inside. Not believing that this is true, I stared for quite awhile, and hey! There's really living organisms inside! The container is aimed to educate about a self-sustaining mini eco system, the shrimps' droppings will be absored by the water plants, which will in turn produce nutrients for the shrimps to makan. Wow, such bio in a toy shop!
5. 'THAT music shop'
Just another music shop that sells muffins. (yeah muffins!) Ok la, that's not the point. This shop has quite a collection of classical and old songs, so that means I won't recognise them~ The songs that they played are not bad though, at least me and JM know some of them. =P I didn't really want to leave the shop (good music), until JM went up to the Music Player system, and pressed next.
Few seconds later...
"Shining Bright Like A Diamond!!!" O_O
In less than 5 seconds, we left the shop. Thanks ah JM!
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After the walk in GWC, we left the place and intended to head off to City Hall. It turned out that even before we were close to the MRT station, the shuttle bus stopped and we alighted at a super random bus stop. Since that is totally random, we decided to counter that randomness by visiting a random place.
*SCDF Heritage Gallery*
Yeah. It feels like yesterday when the Gallery Encik asked if I was drinking oil, and explained that they used Peel Fresh cartons to put lubricating oils for the Artifact parts. So here we go again, feelings come and go again. The gallery didn't change much, but the things brought back memories though. The frontline life, saving people and properties, turnouts with firefighters and seeing them put out the big fires, extricating the trapped RTA personnel, the height rescue as somebody wanted to commit suicide at 2.30am. Perhaps with better technology in the future, the current PLs and LFs will become a legacy in the gallery too. :)
The motor vehicle fire-fighting simulator thing looks kinda cool. Using real water mist to spray a waterproof screen that has a simulated car fire. They put some hazmat suits to show a good waterproof material, and oh, tracing paper for people to draw the different logos! I drew the EAS and Hazmat (by accident) logos. Shall keep that as a souvenir! =P
Before leaving the Heritage Gallery, I took a look of the different badges and ranks of Civil Defence, and only to realise that they actually do sell the ranks in the Gallery~ So a Private rank would cost $2.50, while a LTA rank would cost $8. Wow, such a big difference, $5.50 more if you want to be an officer. =P With that, ends the very short trip inside.
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The last stop: Scape & ION Orchard
Scape, surprisingly empty on a random Tuesday afternoon. Of course, One Does Not Simply visit Scape without buying the awesome Gong Cha, so yep! A cup of honey green tea to go, while looking at the Muttons giving the quiz show: "987 You Don't Say"! Well, for some reason, I didn't see the Muttons saying any word from the start to end of the outside-studio visit, so perhaps the You dont say show is being recorded when the songs are being played, and not really live as I had expected. Ah oh well, finally got to see the Muttons! XD
After walking for awhile (including staring at some super big scissors, and weird toys), we went to Toast Box to chill out. They had this floss + mashed cucumber in a buttered toast. I must say that it's surprisingly refreshing (yea). I never had good impressions of cucumbers, esp. with that weird taste unless it goes with Nasi Lemak, so yep, that is a really awesome exception, and perhaps I should make a sandwich like that, with improvements of course! :D
Last stop: ION Orchard. More like we had nothing to do and JM wanted to go there for a walk. Nothing much there. Along the way we passed by Ben & Jerry's, and I swear that the queue is much much longer than the one at Great World City! I can't even see the end~ Looks like the people are really 'In The Crowd' for the Ice-Cream! :D
Oh, forgot to mention about 2 interesting things at the candy shop at the walkway between Ngee Ann City and Wisma Atria.
1. A random sweet toy, with a mini fan.
I think everybody has seen this before, and yea, do you have this evil thought? Instead of small rubber blades, replace them with super mini knives, and watch the incisions happen when people try to stop the revolution! =P Muhahaha!!!
2. Ultra large Hershey's bar!
$60 chocolate Hershey Bar. Total servings in the packet: 1. That sounds like 1 damn expensive small bar rite? Actually, it isn't. Serving size: 1/50. Aka the bar can be broken into 50 servings, aka each person tries a bit of chocolate for $1.20. It's awesomely huge! You must literally devote 1 large paper / plastic bag to it. XD
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That's about it for the FCD outing! Oh, before I end this post, here are some anyhows that happened during the 2 outings. =P
~~~~~ ^^ ~~~~~
1. Comparing Earpiece and a Router is just like comparing Rice and Gong Cha
Tean: I want to buy a router, and a earpiece. My house router is getting very slow. My earpiece I also want to get a better one. But like no money leh...
Jeff: Oh, then buy the router? More important.
Tean: Noooo....!!!! Earpiece is much more important! It is my life, it is just like er... Eating rice everyday!
JM: Huh what? Earpiece is like rice, then your important router leh?
Tean: The router ah, Gong Cha?
Jeff: -_-
JM: Oh... So by right rice more important than Gong Cha? Then you chose a person earpiece over a very important router?
Tean: XD
2. Tean's cash is liquid, but not water
Tean: Wah, need to withdraw money. My liquid cash not enough.
Jeff: (Mumbles) Cash always solid de wad...
Jeff/JM: Liquid ah! Water is liquid!!! =D
Haha no wonder Tean not enough cash la, his money flow like water. =P
3. While walking past Boston Seafood Shack
Jeff: Hey JM, remember when we worked in Avarto, and we were rather tired in the morning?
JM: Yep. What about it?
Jeff: You see that shop? (Points to BSS) A lot of people talk about it.
JM: Huh really? Got meh?
Jeff: Yeah. In the morning, everybody like keep on repeating. "WAH SHACK (shag) SIA!"
JM: Defauq!?
4. The $1 change issue
(Before we entered the singing room, JM paid $10 and actually had 2 x $1 coin, which me and Tean took 1 each to disturb him)
JM: Ooi... My $2.
Tean: Ya la ya la, here's $1.
JM: Another $1 leh!?
Tean: I never take.
Jeff: Ah why? JM you don't think is me who take right?
JM: Er...
Jeff: Then I tell you, if you think it's me who took it, then you're absolutely right!!! =D
JM: -.-!!!
5. 101? Correct place?
(In the toy shop, looking at a rather tall model)
Jeff: Hey look, this is so cool!
JM: Yeah, very tall leh! ^^
Jeff: Ya lo! Like Beijing 101! =D
JM: Beijing 101 or Taipei 101?
(Few seconds of awkward silence)
Jeff: Eh ya hor.
JM: LOL!!!
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That's all! ^^
Just about slightly less than a month to go, and Tean is going to ORD! As he just came back from Taiwan to sort of clear his OVL for the year, we met up to have a chat about life and shun bian have a distribution of souvenirs! :) So met up with him and JM at Buona Vista for the meet-up / singing session. ^^
Posting about 2 outings: Singing with JM/Tean, and Ben&Jerry's Free Cone Day! =D
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Tean's Taiwan Return Trip: The singout!
Actually the original plan was to go for another cycling trip, however JM was against the idea, not due to physical reasons, but rather due to spiritual/religious reasons. o.o
JM: "My god tell me that I cannot ride on anything with 2 wheels."
In a scientific perspective, that's an extremely screwed up reason as that is against the doctor's idea of a good exercise. However, well religious reason soothes the mind and heart, so yeah, that's why we ended up with the singing idea instead, which is also good! :)
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One thing War will like about Buona Vista is that there's Koi! It's even more convenient than JE as the Koi outlet is right in the station itself, compared to a short distance away from JE MRT~ Well of course I didn't buy, since Gong Cha is like so much nicer compared to Koi~? :)
JM: Wah Jeff, you don't drink Koi but you drink Gong Cha. Biased sia!
A nicely phrased statement which WL would give 2 thumbs up. Star Vista, the closest shopping center to Buona Vista, is an open/outdoor concept shopping mall, a rather cool idea which you can hardly find in Singapore for an entertainment outlet as most Singaporeans would prefer to shop in an air-conditioned environment due to the daily hot weather. Of course, every atas mall should have a Gong Cha outlet and true enough! This large area mall not only is it a good place to hang out, it has a Performing Arts facility at the top and an awesome Gong Cha outlet somewhere in the mall. ^^ So to start off the whole outing, we had a cup of Gong Cha each, with me having the awesome Mango Green Tea. :D We didn't walk in Star Vista for very long as Tean had reached BV just as we bought finish Gong Cha.
"It's a Love Story, Baby just say......"
"NO!" - Jeff / JM. XD
A big welcome back to Tean who has reached SG and he bought souvenirs for the people he know (just like PH ^^). So sweet! It's been a long time since I have seen him, and well he looks the same as ever. Bear-ish as some may call it, but yeah thanks anyway! I should put a picture of the souvenir here. :)
The KTV place which Tean recommended is located at the NTU Alumni building, which ironically anybody including non-NTU students could enter, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the name. Whatever, it's a really nice building though! The air-con is very cold, it has lots of entertainment facilities, restaurants, dining places, auditoriums, etc. The setback is that it's a long way upslope, so if you are the kind who is physically exhausted due to much training (not in War's definition) or has just ran a marathon for no damn of reason, going to this place isn't the best choice. =P
---
When they mean a small room, they really mean a seriously small room! I think my house sofa is even bigger than their couch, and the K set is just right in front of the couch. If that was a murder scene, I think Doors and Rooms would have take this room to be one of the extra stages in Claustrophobia. Hey, me and JM are in the same room, if you are talking about WL then perhaps you can put about 6 or 7 and no one is gonna complain. =P No free food / snacks is provided, but hey, they allow the bringing of outside food, and their can drink is priced at $1 / can, a rather reasonable price. :) Price for a small room, $8/hour. Cheap right! This sorta made up for the smallness of the Sofa~ ^^
Next up, songs! ^^
Singing with JM and Tean will definitely have more Chinese songs, and that's an accurate prediction. The classics, Wu Ding, Dou Jiang You Tiao, Tong Hua, Cheng Li De Yue Guang, all in the house! I realised that everytime when there will be a selection of Chinese Songs, it's always these few that revolves around the years 2005, 2006... Perhaps those songs were way too awesome. :) There's Qing Fei De Yi also, except that it's not a rock version. There's a Chinese clubbing song, which nobody has actually heard of it before. I shall put that song in another post! =P
As expected, there isn't many ATL songs or Owl City songs. But it doesn't really matter as none of them really knew songs from these 2 except Fireflies. >.< Why is it that everybody only know Fireflies from Owl City? He has so many other nice songs!! But ah oh well, JM tried to find his favourite Rebecca song: Friday, but somehow there isn't such a song in the list! Too many dislikes? He replaced it with 'My Moment' which seriously in my opinion, sounds nicer than Friday. Tean dislikes this. =/
The whole singing session ended with One Direction's 'One Way Or Another'. It is a cover, as there's an original singer for this song. 3 hours of fun and sing out of random songs, awesome! XD
------
Let A be the event that it rains
Let F be the event that Jeff goes out with friends
Let W be the event that there's a long unsheltered way to walk
Let X be the event that none of Jeff's friends brought an umbrella
P(A n W) = Almost 0
P(A n W n F n X') = Almost 0
P(A n W n F n X) = Happens always. And yep! It happened again. So backup plan, cap and jacket down the long long slope. The view of Star Vista from the top of the hill looks awesome, comparable to SOTA! Perhaps if I have a gf in future, I will take her to this place, not to pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars, but rather look at the beautiful, dazzling lights of Star Vista. =D
Fu Xiang's famous Curry Chicken, with mini baguette and omelette for late lunch! Just like the Jurong West FX, the curry is fragrant, the meat is tender, and the spice level is suitable for me (not that spicy!). JM ordered a mushroom sauce thingy, but somehow liked my curry to a greater extent~ Rather expensive though, it added up to about $7.20 for my entire meal in a food court, even though it's normal cuisine. Ah oh well. =)
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Star Vista: Shopping proper!
1. Electronic gadgets
Apparently Tean is looking for a new earpiece, new laptop, and new router to prepare for Uni. I can say that the last 2 are the important ones, which could improve the quality of work and usage. There's a shop which doesn't seem to have nice furnishing (esp. the floor), but have a lot of items of different kinds. Earpieces took up like about 20% of the shop, and it has covers with more varieties than other shops. I don't know much about the price, but hey at least the things look cool. :)
2. Japanese shop
There's a Jap shop which sells various Sake, frozen Jap food, confectioneries, snacks, desserts, etc. The prices don't look cheap (typical), so we sort of walked around, and I bought 1 packet [6 pieces] of strawberry yoghurt/ice-cream for $3.10. For the sake of trying, it's actually quite nice, melts in your mouth, with a very smooth strawberry taste. The chocolate is not really evident though! Hmm, I don't think I will be buying again though!
3. Candy Empire & Soft toy shop
I thought this only appears in VivoCity and one more shop near Suntec. Apparently there's an outlet in Star Vista, and I can say it looks just as atas as the other 2. Didn't buy anything from there, as the price is not exactly cheap. A perfect gift for a friend though! =D There's also a soft toy / bear bear (Not Tean) shop! Not many kids are inside, but hey the variety of toys inside is amazing!
Somehow most of the shops (except restaurants) have automated glass doors, including Four Leaves and a few deco shops. Oh, Creamery Slab is another shop without the glass doors! Why the special mention? I have always liked ice-cream cakes, they taste so good, and the ice-cream inside gives a all-time chill out feeling and it's double sweetness! ^^ The shocking part is that one small cake (very) cost $20, and a regular size cake cost about $60!!! That's expensive, but hey, it serves good ice-cream, even though I don't think I will go try it. =/
That's about it for the singing trip! ^^
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Ben & Jerry Free Cone Day 2013!
9th April 2013, a day after I left Avarto.
So much memories, the art of pasting pouches on cartons, the tiredness of working through the wee hours, the fatigue of trying to rush through the almost never ending Yamato's orders, the disappointment of not being able to work night shifts anymore...
All returned in a pass, which doesn't even require a signature to return! Alamak who ah! Still say need signature then can return, if not can ask War to help me return. =P So yeah! Before me and JM went for the free cone day, we decided to do a bit of exercising by returning the pass, and shun bian complete my task, buying a rainbow flavoured doughnut for Rebecca and buying sugar doughnuts for the rest! =P Well, I must say that there should be a sweet ending to everything right? :) With that, officially case close in Avarto~
---
Free Cone Day is on April 9th! So, make sure you swing by one of our participating Scoop Shops and grab yourself a FREE cone.
Free Cone Day is something we’ve been doing since 1979 when Ben and Jerry celebrated their first year of business! Ben and Jerry wanted to thank everyone for their support in the best way they knew how; with free ice cream!---
That's basically a summary and the origin behind Ben and Jerry's annual FCD. I actually didn't know about such a thing until War and JM mentioned. So apparently there's free awesome ice-cream once and a year and I have missed out 20 years of those, so yep, not going to let down my 21st year by joining in the crowd! =D So we proceeded to Great World City, via a free shuttle bus from a bus stop near Orchard MRT / Chinatown / City Hall. A rather smooth journey, and soon we arrived at Great World City, a building which I have heard before but never been there before~
Contrast to what I expected, GWC is actually quite an ulu place, nowhere near the factor of 'bustling business Center'. Not many shops inside, as is definitely not as atas as Star Vista. Oh, there's no Gong Cha or Koi inside, so for ShareTea lovers, it's great news for you! =D
~~~ FCD: Getting into the mood! ~~~
The shortest time JM recorded for Ben & Jerry to clear a queue of 52 people: 6 mins +!!
Ben & Jerry got more manpower to manage the queues, and thus the queue extended all the way to the overhead bridge outside Great World City. I can say that the queue is quite fast though! We queued for 3 rounds, 1 before we do anything proper, 1 during the walk in GWC, and another one before we left the place.
When they mean free, it's really free! No need for something like, oh buy a sundae and it will be a free cone, or buy a free cone and get the next one free. Not like that, but however, they do welcome any kind of donations to Ben & Jerry's, as they are doing some sort of charity which I have forgotten for who. I think I donated a dollar or two, and helped them to fill a survey. The survey is rather long, and I completed that only after getting my free cone. Rather epic, but yeah! They offered 5 different flavours, Strawberry Cheesecake, Toffee, Maple Tree Hugger, Chocolate Swirl and some Lemon flavour. I tried the Maple Tree twice and the chocolate Swirl once. The Maple Tree Hugger is awesome! Rather sweet, the syrup taste is there, and you won't get sick of it. =D The Chocolate Swirl is really heavy on the chocolate taste, definitely not those anyhow type of passby flavour. Hmm, I still prefer the Maple Tree thing though! Didn't try the Strawberry Cheesecake (don't like), Toffee (Er...?), and Lemon (o.o). A pity they didn't offer the cookie dough flavour, if not I will definitely try that! XD
After about 4pm, the queue is awesome. Thankfully we came rather early. =P
~~~ The walk around the ulu Great World City! ~~~
1. Lunch @ Food Court
I didn't know Delifrance could open in a food court. Usually I thought that people will go to the food court for dining for a few reasons. They couldn't find cafe / restaurants they want, eating with a group of friends with all different choices could be irritating, and thus going to the food court would solve these problems. Most importantly, it's more economical compared to the rest of the dining outlets~! A delifrance over there, er... I don't remember anybody patronizing the stall for the whole 45 mins I'm in the food court.
Had Kway Teow for lunch, delicious, but it cost $4.30. =/
2. Jap restaurant, the awesome Tamago!
A box of Tamago that looks like it can be gobbled up in 2 mouthfuls cost $4! Expensive? Apparently not as said by JM. Tamago is made with some skill. Grilled egg that consist of a few layers of egg that is not supposed to be burnt, and made into perfection by combining a lot (10-20) layers together. That sounds awesome, and probably after I get some extra money, I will buy a box to try! =D
3. Marks & Spencers
A brand which I don't think I have seen for a really long time! Somewhat~ Anyway a walk inside made me and JM realised that there's actually a lot of products that is the house brand! Clothes, food items, ice-cream, underwears, accessories, decos!
4. Toy shop
A rather interesting shop! In the middle of the shop, there's actually a display of a glass container with some decos and live shrimps inside. Not believing that this is true, I stared for quite awhile, and hey! There's really living organisms inside! The container is aimed to educate about a self-sustaining mini eco system, the shrimps' droppings will be absored by the water plants, which will in turn produce nutrients for the shrimps to makan. Wow, such bio in a toy shop!
5. 'THAT music shop'
Just another music shop that sells muffins. (yeah muffins!) Ok la, that's not the point. This shop has quite a collection of classical and old songs, so that means I won't recognise them~ The songs that they played are not bad though, at least me and JM know some of them. =P I didn't really want to leave the shop (good music), until JM went up to the Music Player system, and pressed next.
Few seconds later...
"Shining Bright Like A Diamond!!!" O_O
In less than 5 seconds, we left the shop. Thanks ah JM!
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After the walk in GWC, we left the place and intended to head off to City Hall. It turned out that even before we were close to the MRT station, the shuttle bus stopped and we alighted at a super random bus stop. Since that is totally random, we decided to counter that randomness by visiting a random place.
*SCDF Heritage Gallery*
Yeah. It feels like yesterday when the Gallery Encik asked if I was drinking oil, and explained that they used Peel Fresh cartons to put lubricating oils for the Artifact parts. So here we go again, feelings come and go again. The gallery didn't change much, but the things brought back memories though. The frontline life, saving people and properties, turnouts with firefighters and seeing them put out the big fires, extricating the trapped RTA personnel, the height rescue as somebody wanted to commit suicide at 2.30am. Perhaps with better technology in the future, the current PLs and LFs will become a legacy in the gallery too. :)
The motor vehicle fire-fighting simulator thing looks kinda cool. Using real water mist to spray a waterproof screen that has a simulated car fire. They put some hazmat suits to show a good waterproof material, and oh, tracing paper for people to draw the different logos! I drew the EAS and Hazmat (by accident) logos. Shall keep that as a souvenir! =P
Before leaving the Heritage Gallery, I took a look of the different badges and ranks of Civil Defence, and only to realise that they actually do sell the ranks in the Gallery~ So a Private rank would cost $2.50, while a LTA rank would cost $8. Wow, such a big difference, $5.50 more if you want to be an officer. =P With that, ends the very short trip inside.
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The last stop: Scape & ION Orchard
Scape, surprisingly empty on a random Tuesday afternoon. Of course, One Does Not Simply visit Scape without buying the awesome Gong Cha, so yep! A cup of honey green tea to go, while looking at the Muttons giving the quiz show: "987 You Don't Say"! Well, for some reason, I didn't see the Muttons saying any word from the start to end of the outside-studio visit, so perhaps the You dont say show is being recorded when the songs are being played, and not really live as I had expected. Ah oh well, finally got to see the Muttons! XD
After walking for awhile (including staring at some super big scissors, and weird toys), we went to Toast Box to chill out. They had this floss + mashed cucumber in a buttered toast. I must say that it's surprisingly refreshing (yea). I never had good impressions of cucumbers, esp. with that weird taste unless it goes with Nasi Lemak, so yep, that is a really awesome exception, and perhaps I should make a sandwich like that, with improvements of course! :D
Last stop: ION Orchard. More like we had nothing to do and JM wanted to go there for a walk. Nothing much there. Along the way we passed by Ben & Jerry's, and I swear that the queue is much much longer than the one at Great World City! I can't even see the end~ Looks like the people are really 'In The Crowd' for the Ice-Cream! :D
Oh, forgot to mention about 2 interesting things at the candy shop at the walkway between Ngee Ann City and Wisma Atria.
1. A random sweet toy, with a mini fan.
I think everybody has seen this before, and yea, do you have this evil thought? Instead of small rubber blades, replace them with super mini knives, and watch the incisions happen when people try to stop the revolution! =P Muhahaha!!!
2. Ultra large Hershey's bar!
$60 chocolate Hershey Bar. Total servings in the packet: 1. That sounds like 1 damn expensive small bar rite? Actually, it isn't. Serving size: 1/50. Aka the bar can be broken into 50 servings, aka each person tries a bit of chocolate for $1.20. It's awesomely huge! You must literally devote 1 large paper / plastic bag to it. XD
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That's about it for the FCD outing! Oh, before I end this post, here are some anyhows that happened during the 2 outings. =P
~~~~~ ^^ ~~~~~
1. Comparing Earpiece and a Router is just like comparing Rice and Gong Cha
Tean: I want to buy a router, and a earpiece. My house router is getting very slow. My earpiece I also want to get a better one. But like no money leh...
Jeff: Oh, then buy the router? More important.
Tean: Noooo....!!!! Earpiece is much more important! It is my life, it is just like er... Eating rice everyday!
JM: Huh what? Earpiece is like rice, then your important router leh?
Tean: The router ah, Gong Cha?
Jeff: -_-
JM: Oh... So by right rice more important than Gong Cha? Then you chose a person earpiece over a very important router?
Tean: XD
2. Tean's cash is liquid, but not water
Tean: Wah, need to withdraw money. My liquid cash not enough.
Jeff: (Mumbles) Cash always solid de wad...
Jeff/JM: Liquid ah! Water is liquid!!! =D
Haha no wonder Tean not enough cash la, his money flow like water. =P
3. While walking past Boston Seafood Shack
Jeff: Hey JM, remember when we worked in Avarto, and we were rather tired in the morning?
JM: Yep. What about it?
Jeff: You see that shop? (Points to BSS) A lot of people talk about it.
JM: Huh really? Got meh?
Jeff: Yeah. In the morning, everybody like keep on repeating. "WAH SHACK (shag) SIA!"
JM: Defauq!?
4. The $1 change issue
(Before we entered the singing room, JM paid $10 and actually had 2 x $1 coin, which me and Tean took 1 each to disturb him)
JM: Ooi... My $2.
Tean: Ya la ya la, here's $1.
JM: Another $1 leh!?
Tean: I never take.
Jeff: Ah why? JM you don't think is me who take right?
JM: Er...
Jeff: Then I tell you, if you think it's me who took it, then you're absolutely right!!! =D
JM: -.-!!!
5. 101? Correct place?
(In the toy shop, looking at a rather tall model)
Jeff: Hey look, this is so cool!
JM: Yeah, very tall leh! ^^
Jeff: Ya lo! Like Beijing 101! =D
JM: Beijing 101 or Taipei 101?
(Few seconds of awkward silence)
Jeff: Eh ya hor.
JM: LOL!!!
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That's all! ^^
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