Role Reversal: Haw Par Villa & Settlers Cafe

SG and I went for another session of laboratory tutoring for C programming today. After knowing what to expect, I didn't really want to do much preparation, though I still woke up early to run through C programming stuff. It ended that we became late but it was no misnomer. Oh well, for the money!

We had a quick lunch at NUH and had a fun time walking to the morgue on the way to the staff canteen. SG raised an interesting question of how the bodies are transported from the other parts of the hospital to the basement where the mortuary is tucked in a corner of the hospital. We had much time to burn after that, so SG went back to his favorite hobby of forum postings and I went to Central Library to zap past year papers for JLPT3. Wish me luck!

It was around five when we decided to move ourselves to Settlers @ Katong where we'll meet up with the rest of the SoC friends. We walked to Haw Par Villar from PGP and spent some time there since it was free (and still is).

A very excited SG at the famed gates of Haw Par Villa

*snort* Can you hear me through your big ears?

Make peace with any kind of dragon! Even cute-looking ones!

SG, you must have done many bad deeds! Why must you make peace with everything everywhere?

Lotsa monkeys at the Sun Wukong exhibit

Welcome to the crazy zoo!

Quite a big guan yin statue

Singapore's own King Kongs

SG chillin' out with the koalas

Is this some Aussie section of the park with the 'roos and emus?

Genkina shyashin

Aiyo, with him also you must make peace with!

Cute pandas

A last look at Haw Par Villa

I felt a little poignant when we left as I remembered everything looking so ferocious and scary when I went there as a young kid and the statues were just so huge! I remembered being terribly afraid of the statues that depict killing scenes from Chinese classics. Oh well. :)

We then head for Settlers Cafe after that. Everyone was late as expected, haha, which put both SG and I in a spot as Settlers charge according to the number of hours spent in the cafe (as they offer a lot of board games for their patrons to enjoy - that's their business model). It was with relief that we were given a flexible eat-first-play-later plan and we ended spending S$12 each. It was quite fun! We played games like Green Apples where we have to "sell" ourselves to the judge by showing that "Girl Guides" are indeed "Juicy", for example. (Guess who had the honour of doing that.. ;) ) Very, very fun and funny too, with YH getting stitches on her side!

However, we were the only customers for the evening (goodness.. which was a blessing 'cos we can shout all we want). The food was alright (western style) and the waiters and waitresses, friendly and willing to teach us to play the games. I guess as we were the only ones who were there tonight, we had the honour of being guinea pigs to try out their new dishes (we have to give comments in the end). Not a bad deal!

Everyone tucking in to a dish of clams (so lucky!). I didn't get to eat though as it's seafood.