West side outing, incld MR


The jellyfish is back! Posting about an interesting Sunday outing with JM and Tean, which almost everything went out of the plan.

“Jeff, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.” – PM Hazlina.

Original plan: To go cycling at West Coast park and then have a simple meal at JCube before going home.

What we really did: Go West Coast Park and walked for a round, proceeded to Clementi to eat Burger King, went to MacRitchie Reservoir for photo taking and exploration, finally have dinner at Bukit Timah before going home.

“Why do you have to make things so complicated?”

0959: One of the rare times which JM is earlier than Tean for an outing, which the cause was due to Tean forgetting the time, venue and activity message which I sent the previous week.

Jeff: “Eh Tean ah, your current location?
Tean: “At home. Why leh?”
Jeff: “The outing 10am sia, how come still at home?”
Tean: “I wanted to ask you about the timing, only to have lost your number as my phone is spoilt.”
Jeff: “Ah… ok…”

We went to the food court to have some light breakfast. Ate a ‘big’ chicken pau, which is smaller and less tasty than the one near my house. For $1.50, it’s not really worth it. JM ate 2 pieces of roti prata. Chat about NS life and about our respective juniors, without leaving out the ‘2 and half months to ORD’ phrase. =P Thought about Yaznisham, a very awesome junior. Just praying hard that the new junior or two will be at least 80% as good as him! :D

The pudding milk tea sucks, luckily I didn’t buy it! While waiting for Tean to arrival, we proceeded to the ice rink, and amazing there’s already a decent crowd in the early morning! I feel that those who can ice skate are simply amazing, the balance, the technique, the style is just beautiful! Imagine if someone could do a K-pop dance on the ice, power sia! =P

1100: Apparently Tean bought some gifts from overseas, and I was supposed to have a message request on what do I want from Thailand, but seems like I didn’t receive any. I got 1 packet of garlic bread snack and a small container of strawberry breath sweets. JM got a packet of wasabi peas instead of the garlic bread. Thanks Tean! =D Now this makes up for the lateness. =P

1145: It’s my 1st time to West Coast Park, seriously. Compared to East Coast, WC seems much smaller and there isn’t any crowd along the whole park. The whole place where there is a lot of people is the barbeque pits area, as there are many company functions / gatherings / ‘what the hell are they doing there’ activities. Other than that, it’s just a few people walking their dogs, playing with the go-karts, or even taking a picture of the outdoor water cooler with a proper camera with tripod. Weird things people do.

Speaking of go-karts, 1 major difference is that you simply do not see many people cycling / rollerblading at the park on a weekend. It was a huge mystery, until we saw the price.

Go-kart: $15 / 30mins [cheapest], JM’s size: $$28 / 30mins
Bicycle: Avg. $10 / hour

Compared to the East coast prices, this is rather ridiculous. Poor JM didn’t get to ride on his go-kart (which would look rather kiddy on him), and we gave up due to the price. If I’m not wrong, I was entitled to ride a bicycle at East Coast for 3 hours with just $8, so I don’t see why I should overspend. Perhaps that is the only bicycle and go-kart shop in the whole park? It caters to small needs only. =/ so anyway, the sole purpose of going to West Coast is defeated. I shouldn’t have outings with a sole purpose, it doesn’t work! [Reminded of the strictly pancakes outing]

We walked the whole length of West Cost Park, which is approximately 4.4km. Nothing very interesting, so JM took out his packet of wasabi peas and munched along the way. There is a dog park at the end of West Coast Park, so some dog-owners took their lovelies out for a walk in the weekend. How nice! =P

My comment about West Coast Park? Very cui. Shall never go there again unless it is really necessary. I think only 175 and 176 can reach there, from Clementi and JE library respectively. Bad initial experience. =/

1220: Since the weather is rather warm, we headed off to Clementi mall for a break. An almost 1st time experience for everybody (just like WCP), so it looked rather new to everybody. Seriously, it’s quite a small shopping mall and the shops are just about the same as other malls. Nothing interesting. Even Lot 1 has better shops than it.

1300: Since the original plan is ruined, we took some time at Burger King to think about the afternoon activities. We continued with the packet of wasabi peas, which I took the ones w/o a high concentration of wasabi outer shell. Doesn’t taste nice! I took some misleading ones and had a ‘choking’ feeling. I opened up the garlic bread too, and that tasted AWESOME! It’s rather sweet, crispy and you won’t get sick of it easily! It’s about $1.60 SGD, and that is a very value-for-money snack. A pity SG doesn’t really sell that at a cheap price.

Besides debating about where to play pool or to go and sing, we talked about the pros and cons of having siblings and how it’s wrong to commit incest VS ability to resist the temptation. Apparently religions do talk about the negative consequences of incest and how it should not be done, even though some cannot be explained with scientific theories / logic. Among the pool of deep knowledge and amazing reasoning, Tean suddenly shot out a profound theory.

“Water is liquid.”

Awkward silence. [If Zul is here, he will give a ‘YOU DON’T SAY’ expression]

1445: Not being a person who visits Bukit Timah frequently for various reasons (pool, KTV, mutton soup, chicken rice, tarts and pastries, etc.); I am forced to accept the high entertainment value of the place as recommended by Tean and JM. Apparently they had a debate of where to alight to reach Beauty World within the shortest displacement. JM insisted not to alight early, and before Adam Young could sing “It’s always a good time”, we missed the bus stop and headed off to the expressway. -_- At least I didn’t feel so bad from the experience of Shaw towers with War and WL! Thanks ah JM!

1520: Macritchie Reservoir, the place where think I wouldn’t go even if I am very bored, but here we are, at a cloudy Sunday afternoon. J

Honestly speaking Macritchie Reservoir has a plain, but yet beautiful scenery. “Clarity, peace, serenity.” It’s a place that is perfect for jogging, for dating, for having a picnic, for having a place where you can shout out your frustrations, for having a place to be alone while looking at the others, or even monkeys. I took a few pictures with my simple phone, shall post it in another post. =D

Macritchie reservoir has a lot of monkeys, especially under the big tree of monkeys. Apparently they do not really disturb people and instead just hang around in a family and observing people. WL would like them! There’s a forest trail that leads to the Lim Bo Seng Memorial, but apparently I didn’t like walking underneath the covers of the shady forest, so we skipped that attraction.

For the rest of the afternoon, we went to the fitness corner to see JM do a bit of chin-ups, watched JM and Tean attempting to let the stones skate across the water and took a bit more pictures before leaving the beautiful place. =P

1715: We decided to have dinner at Al-Azhar restaurant. Highly recommended by the both of them due to taste and price, so why not? :D

Along the way, JM talked about his bad experience with his driving instructor, how the car stopped on the road, how the gear and speed do not match, etc. Thinking back, I felt lucky that I didn’t experience too much of these problems since I learnt from a school. Perhaps, that is a plus point of learning things from a proper syllabus! =P

Al-Azhar is just like a typical Jalan Kayu restaurant, except that it’s a bit bigger and with amazing technology for simple things like seats and orders. Even though it’s before dinner time, the restaurant is already more than half-filled with people waiting for the food to be served. The waiters were rather enthusiastic in asking everybody to order their drinks, probably to increase the level of patience for the customers. =P

I ordered a cup of iced milo. It tasted VERY sweet! Anybody who suggested that the drink is being diluted seriously deserves to be thrown off a tall building. I think if there is any hypoglycemia cases, you can just force Al-Azhar’s iced milo down the patient’s throat. Goodbye Redbull. =P

The menu offered a rather huge variety of food, including prata, Roti John, rice, noodles, seafood, satay, western dishes, etc. From bbq-ed to fried to steam to claypot, anybody would be spoilt for choices when dining here. J Just take the Roti John, you have chicken, mutton, cheese (?), beef, long ones, long ones with cheese. Ah, Long John with cheese. No Cajun chicken! =P

In the end, we ordered seafood claypot rice, Chicken Nasi Briyani, Mutton cheese Roti John, and 5 giant satays! When they say that it’s a giant satay, it’s really longer and slightly thicker than your normal ones! Priced at $1.20 per stick, I would think is more worth it to order this big one than your small ones at 60 cents per piece. The menu said it’s 3 times as large? It’s really nice, and the minimum order is only 5 pieces. ^^Tean said that there’s nothing special about the satay sauce, I can agree to that. =/

JM’s chicken nasi Briyani: The chicken tasted very nice! The meat is rather solid and doesn’t fall off easily. The rice is rather fragrant. Al-Azhar offered a rather big serving. If I’m not wrong, the dish is $5.50. Definitely much more worth it than Zul’s order at Banquet.  (Imagine 1 normal biryani with chicken and egg costing $9, defauq sia!)

Tean’s claypot rice: Ok la, I do not really like spicy stuff. Shouldn’t comment. =/

My order of mutton cheese Roti John costs $4.50. Comparing the value, I would say that JM’s Briyani beats this order, but I still prefer eating something that is a bit special. =P Egg, thin sheets of mutton, chilli and mayo bread topped with generous servings of nacho cheese… Atas food sia! =D Even though it’s not the longer version, I still enjoy it a lot! Perhaps if I visit Al-Azhar again, I would like to see how long the Long John really is. XD

The total big amounted to an average of about $8 to $9 per person including of drinks and 7% GST. So much more worth it than $11 for a bowl of ramen sia! Thanks JM and Tean for the recommendation! If PH doesn’t know this place, should ask him to drive here and makan. =P

After dinner, Tean went back home while JM accompanied me to Cold Storage @ Causeway Point for some grocery shopping. Bought a number of random stuff, but I think it will be very boring to post the items I bought in this post, so skip! XD

That’s all for this post on going around the western side of Singapore! :D

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