as promised

the FULL weekend update...

It was another fun (yet exhausting) weekend.

Friday Night.

Pretty much the whole team went out including local resources from the client side. I skipped the group dinner since I wanted to get a workout in and instead ended up going to a Japanese Hibachi place called Gyu-Kaku with a colleague, located down the road from our hotel in the Chijmes complex. It’s one of those restaurants where you grill your own food right at your table. You pick your meat, veggies, and whatever else you want to grill and set it on the hot coals. Very cool restaurant; unfortunatly, I didn't get any pictures of the neat decorations, but I did get one of the food:

Post-dinner plans –
Met up with everyone else for drinks in Boat Quay at a Bollywood bar. This was a really cool experience because I got to see all the Indian guys and girls on the team in their element, per se. For those that don’t know, Bollywood refers to the Indian film industry (or a part of it), and I believe the name stems from Bombay + Hollywood and there's usually this type of dancing in the films... so you know how at the end of Slumdog Millionaire, everyone breaks out in dance? That’s quite common for Bollywood films and is a very popular form of dance that most all Indian people are accustomed to. Don't quote me on the exact details of the above and the origin, but it's a little background. The people on the team from India were loving it... their music, their dance moves, their culture... and I must say, it was quite entertaining to watch. Here's a group pic:

We stayed for awhile and then a few of us left the big group for a different scene. Next stop was Zouk, a large multi-level club, and after that, Loof for one of their delicious Pear martinis, and finally, we went to Chijmes for some late-night live music. Since I do want my blog to be an honest depiction of my travels, I'll include one picture displaying the level of fun we were having by the end of the night - yeah, probably an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10:

What can I say... we work hard. we play hard.

Saturday.

Work day – 10ish to 4ish. I know I haven't talked a lot about the actual work part, but for the record, we are working. We are having trouble meeting our very aggressive targets, hence the working on Saturdays and the extension of the cycle by another week. None of us were too thrilled about working, but we made it through the day... with the help of a Venti Cappuccino from Starbucks :)

Saturday evening -
I headed to the Singapore Zoo with a colleague for the Night Safari! The Safari takes you on a tour through eight geographical zones including Southeast Asian rainforests, African savanna, Nepalese river valley, South America, etc., and allows you to see tons of nocturnal animals (this is why it's only offered at night). The zoo uses special lights that simulate moon-light which allows everyone to see the animals, but you still need to look closely and carefully for moving objects in the distance. Many of the zones have walking tracks, but we decided to stay on the tram – didn’t want to get eaten by the striped hyenas! We saw elephants, giraffes, tigers, lions, rhinos, buffalo, and many animals I had never heard of. We couldn’t take pictures on tour tram since the flash would frighten the animals, but I got a few pics outside of the safari, including some at the pre-safari show:

Also at the zoo - fish reflexology. Remember how I experienced foot reflexology in Chinatown two weeks back? Well there’s another (common) type of reflexology where you stick your feet in water with a bunch of little fish who suck on your toes and apparently suck away your dead skin. It sounds rather gross, but someone on the team did it and said it was cool. I took a pic of this in action for all to see (no I did not partake in this):

After the Safari, we headed over to an area called Dempsey Hill which is a little square that reminds me a lot of something you'd see in the U.S. We were craving some non-asian food and there's a good Italian spot there. Yes, we actually went out for Italian food in Asia. Haha. The bruschetta was delish! My Salmon was just Ok; it had bones in it which makes it harder to eat. We went for mojitos after dinner and then called it a night since I was a bit tired.

Sunday.

Phone date w/ the P's in the morning. Got all caught up w/ Mom and Dad, and then headed to Chinatown. As stated in the previous post, it was so hot! I tried to shop around for some good finds, but ended up just buying a slice of watermelon from a street vendor and that was it. I decided that the shopping at Raffles is more my style - its kind of a mix of the shopping in London (and some in America)... Top Shop, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins, Coach, Guess, etc.

Sunday late afternoon I finally got to Sentosa!! Here's what the website has to say about Sentosa Island:

The 500-hectare Sentosa Island is a unique blend of leisure and recreational experiences including family attractions, sandy beaches, water sports, golf courses and hotel resorts. By 2010, the Sentosa-HarbourFront masterplan will house a 10,000 strong residential community, along with the much talked-about integrated family resort. Coupled with the multi-concept entertainment hub of St James Power Station and Singapore's largest retail and lifestyle mall in VivoCity, Sentosa-HarbourFront is poised to become Asia's premier leisure and entertainment destination.

It's basically a very touristy area full of fun for all ages... several bars and restaurants, beaches, a butterfly park, dolphin lagoon, laser shows at night, flying trapeze, underwater world... (also fish reflexology). Anyway, we took the cable car from Mount Faber. It was a 1.6 km very beautiful scenic ride over. We didn't have a ton of time on the island, but I was able to get some good pics of the massive Merlion as well as drink several mojitos at the Cafe Del Mar pool party. We forgot to wear our swimsuits, but the people watching was fun in of itself. Pics below!