Dinner at Chin Lee Restaurant.

Birthday cum family dinner at Chin Lee Restaurant, Bedok North.

Post-massage. Late night supper.

Post-massage late night supper at The Coffee Club at Jung Ceylon, Patong.

The sun feels so good.

Tannin' me hide...

Chillz, baby, chillz...

Chillin' by the pool.

Cables and wires and posts. OH MY!

I've always loved the cables and posts all around the city. No, it's not messy, it's character - the city's character. Besides, they frame the view nicely.

There's always room for desserts.

Desserts, anyone? Haagen-Dazs at Jung Ceylon, Patong, Phuket.

Yums! Thai food in Thailand.

Dinner at Le Siam, Jung Ceylon, Patong, Phuket.

My Private Balcony.

View from my private balcony at the hotel. Love the traditional houses in the distant hills.

The Bliss South Beach Patong

View of beach from breakfast lounge at The Bliss South Beach Patong.

Paul Bakery at Ngee Ann City

When you're single, it's unavoidable that your friends can't make it for dinner with you. So, you dine alone. :D

Starbucks at Liat Towers aka The Unsinkable

Fellow coffee drinkers...

Ad-hoc Chinese New Year Sketchwalk

There is an ad-hoc sketchwalk on Saturday, 14 January. Information as extracted from Tia's blog:

We will sketch with Steven Reddy from Seattle this Saturday. Steven is going home from China via Singapore from 10 to 18 Jan. Check out his blog full of beautiful sketches. Before his trip to Singapore, he sketched with the Bangkok sketchers so now he is egar to meet the Singapore Sketchers.

Meet 9.30am at McDonald's Lucky China Town Point located at 211 New Bridge Road. We will explore the New Bridge Road, the big dragon, the bridge and the row of beautiful heritage buildings aka Majestic Hotel, Yue Hwa Emporium.

Here's the map:

View Larger Map

ION Orchard. The OTHER residence of my favourite maison et atelier.

ION Orchard (Chinese: 乌节弯), formerly known as the Orchard Turn Development or Orchard Turn Site, is a shopping mall by Orchard Turn Developments Pte Ltd , a joint venture between CapitaLand and Sun Hung Kai Properties, and started operating on 21 July 2009. The Orchard Residences, a high-rise residential condominium, will also be built together with the shopping mall under the same developer, manager and owner, and is expected to be completed by late 2009. Orchard Turn Developments Pte Ltd only have a 99-year leasehold with effect from 13 March 2006. Located along the prime shopping district of Singapore, Orchard Road, The Orchard Residences will be the tallest building along the shopping district, standing at 218 metres. This residential building will have a total of 175 residential units from the ninth floor to the 54th floor once completed, four of which are penthouses. During the first phase of the sale of 98 units, the units were sold for an average of S$3213 per sq ft. Orchard Road's newest shopping mall, ION Orchard, has 335 food and retail outlets.

The last sentry: Steadfast reminders of old Orchard Road. Old terrace houses along Devonshire Road, Somerset, Orchard.

YEAR END SKETCHWALK

Hi all,

For the last Saturday of the year, we will be having our sketch walk along Orchard Road. This will be our chance to capture the Christmas decorations before they come down. (Christmas is still on considering there are supposed to be 12 days of it.) Here is the plan:

10AM- Meet outside ION's entrance (where the colourful sculptures are, facing Tangs)
1PM- Meet at Scape (outside Toastbox) We will either head for the basement or one of the higher floors of Scape
where we will have space for "show and tell". Then we will have lunch around the area.

The weather report say that Saturday will be stormy. But we will have plenty of shopping centres to hide in if it does. If you feel overwhelmed when you think of Orchard Road, too many things to draw, and the crowds, then think along these lines:

1. Isolate smaller interesting things. eg, just one decoration or one shop.
2. Use the crowds to your advantage. You can hide among them to sneak a drawing of interesting people.
3. Go into and around the malls to explore and draw:
• Some interesting ones are ION with organic curves inside and outside the mall;
• Outside Prologue bookstore are many interesting displays and shop fronts to draw;
• Lucky plaza (with their signature domestic help and foreign workers on leave);
• Mandarin Gallery (they have nice big chairs to sit inside);
• *Scape(interesting building design; dance classes upstairs;
• Youth Park, just across from Scape with a skatepark for wheelers;
• Buskers in the underground tunnels, between Tangs and ION as well as Lucky Plaza and Takashimaya.

See you there!

P.S. Edric will be leading a group after lunch to finish drawing the Tudor Court area. (other end of Orchard Rd). Please follow him after lunch if you are one of those who can't get enough of sketching!

Brunetti brings together a luscious array of everything we treasure in Italian cooking, in an enticing café space – a Gelateria, Cioccolateria, Pasticceria and more. They are famous for their mouth-watering cakes, freshly baked breads, delightfully sinful chocolates and flavourful gelatos.

Tanglin Place.

Sketching on Christmas day. This year's decor will be removed/modified at record speed in preparation of the impending Chinese New Year celebration.

Christmas 2011 Sketch Walks

Dear fellow Urban Sketchers and friends,

In conjunction with the closing of the Urban Sketchers Singapore: Volume 1 Exhibition at the URA Centre and also to celebrate this festive season the way we know best (through sketching, of course!), we have lined up a series of sketch walks for you!

1) First of all, we shall make a special return to Vivo City as we did for last year's Christmas sketch walk.

Venue: Vivo City's Sky Park Amphitheatre

Date: 24 Dec 2011 (Saturday)

Meeting Time: 9.30am

Show-and-Tell Time: 12.30pm

This time, we'll explore the Sky Park area, and sketch-able subjects include the giant Christmas tree, the huge rooftop wading pool, the various outdoor sculptures and installation artwork (including the Elephant Parade!), and also the nearby cable-cars, cruise liners, waterfront and ferry terminal facing Sentosa Island, as well as St James Power Station. And that's just the outdoor ones!

At the same time, we would like to reprise the "Sketch Gift Exchange" game that we had last year, in which every sketcher who turns up would participate by drawing a special piece (in any of your own preferred style, paper and size), submit it into a box or bag, and during the show-and-tell session, randomly choose ANOTHER fellow sketcher's work as a Christmas gift to bring home!

So please remember to bring along your own single-sheet sketch paper (or card) in preparation for this special exchange.

We could also buy your lunch and bring it over to the Amphitheatre for the show-and-tell session at 12.30pm sharp, and picnic at the same time.

After that, we should then all make our way back (by bus *) to the URA Centre by 1.30pm to have a special closure of the exhibition, and also to help remove and collect back our sketches on display, as well as purchase any of the frames used in the display if so wish.

There might be special announcements after that, so do keep yourself available till around 2.30 or 3pm if possible.

* We could take the public bus services 80 and 145 to URA Centre, or alternatively, if we could get around 30-40 sketchers, we would hire a special charter bus via URA, for S$40 and split the bill. Do leave a comment under this post with your name to indicate your interest to share this charter bus.

2) Some of us who might not be celebrating Christmas at home and might like to do it with fellow sketchers, could join a special Christmas Day sketchwalk!
WATCH THIS SPACE! 

3) With the Monday (Boxing Day) being a public holiday too, some of us would like to take this opportunity and sketch over at Pulau Ubin.

Venue: Changi Point Ferry Terminal
Date: 26 Dec 2011 (Monday)

Meeting Time: 10am
Show-and-Tell Time: 3pm and beyond.

4) There will also be a final and official last-Saturday-of-the-month sketch walk on New Year's Eve. So while keeping an eye on the updates, do keep that morning free to join us too!

WATCH THIS SPACE!
In the meantime, see you all there, and have a Merry Christmas!!!

Japanese dinner at Nippon

Nippon Japanese Restaurant (what's with the double-entry name?) is an authentic Japanese eating establishment run by Japanese (who still speaks English with a strong Nihonshi-accent). Apart from a few local (fusion?) concoction (Houston roll?) the food is good and authentic, but the same cannot be said for the famous Japanese soft-boiled lava egg. What was served in my ramen was not lava egg, but a regular hard-boiled.

Visit to the USS Texas BB-35 and San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site

USS Texas (BB-35), the second ship of the United States Navy named in honor of the U.S. state of Texas, is a New York-class battleship. The ship was launched on 18 May 1912 and commissioned on 12 March 1914.

Soon after her commissioning, Texas saw action in Mexican waters following the "Tampico Incident" and made numerous sorties into the North Sea during World War I. When the United States formally entered World War II in 1941, Texas took on the role of escorting war convoys across the Atlantic, and she later shelled Axis-held beaches for the North African campaign and the Normandy Landings before being transferred to the Pacific Theater late in 1944 to provide naval gunfire support during the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Texas was decommissioned in 1948, having earned a total of five battle stars for service in World War II, and is presently a museum ship near Houston, Texas. Among the world's remaining battleships, Texas is notable for being the oldest remaining dreadnought battleship.

She is also noteworthy for being one of only six remaining ships to have served in both World Wars.Among US-built battleships, Texas is notable for her sizable number of firsts: the first US battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns, the first US ship to control gunfire with directors and range-keepers (analog forerunners of today's computers), the first US battleship to launch an aircraft,one of the first to receive the CXAM-1 version of CXAM commercial radar in the US Navy, the first US battleship to become a permanent museum ship and the first battleship declared to be a US National Historic Landmark.