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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