Hotel in the heartlands! Park Hotel Alexandra

Park Hotel Alexandra

Park Hotel Alexandra
Prices from SGD$175

When I first saw a hotel being built near our neighbourhood (and by one of my favourite hotel groups too) I was both excited and a little confused.

Alexandra Road is actually quite close to town, but it is not somewhere you immediately think of staying at if you are a tourist.

My husband immediately booked a 3 days 2 nights stay at a Premium Queen Room for the long Jubilee holidays after seeing that there was a Special Opening Offer.

We booked a:

Premium Queen Room for 3 days 2 nights.

What I loved about it:

Location – There are a lot of delicious food in the neighbourhood! Go to Alexandra Village Food Centre for delicious claypot laksa and the famous avocado drink stall!!! Just behind Alexandra Village Food Centre is the ‘posh kopitiam’, Salut! My favourite go-to stalls there are Two Wings (chicken wings) and Immanuel (french food). Good food at cheap prices! There’s also a Cold Storage supermarket at Anchorpoint mall opposite the hotel if you want to buy snacks and drinks. Right outside the hotel, there is also The Bakehouse by Carpenter & Cook, where I highly recommend you to try their fresh homemade pastries!

Room – The room was very basic but it has 3 big mirrors, including one in the bathroom. The room was also very clean.

Bed – Very comfortable! I had a very good sleep~

Gym & Pool – The pool is actually quite cool and opens till 11pm at night. The gym is 24hours, small but well-equipped.

The Not-So-Good:

Location – I find it rather inconvenient. You need to take a bus to the nearest MRT station. Then again, I guess most tourists will just take a cab?

Lobby – Cushion seats for waiting guests were water-stained and looked dirty. The white floor was also clearly dirty. Considering it’s a new hotel, I just can’t understand whyyyy. There is also no music at all in the lobby. It feels kind of strange.

Service of Reception Area – Staff can speak in both Mandarin and English fluently. Majority of the guests seem to be from China and Taiwan tour groups, so I guess it’s a requirement for their staff to be able to speak Mandarin. We observe that the staff at the reception area all seem to be very cheery and friendly.

View – If a good view in Singapore to you is the night scene of our city, obviously you won’t be getting any in this hotel.

Door to your room – Rather difficult to open because one of our card keys was faulty. Staff was not apologetic at all when we went to exchange a working card. It’s not the typical slot-in card, but a magnetic one which you tap in front of the door.

Service at The Carvery – Would appreciate it if the staff could tell us beforehand when we went for the breakfast buffet (not included, $20 each for hotel guest), that the breakfast would end in less than half an hour. We arrived at 10:10am and the breakfast ended at 10:30am sharp. There were no signs whatsoever at the entrance to let us know what time the breakfast ended. Anyway, the food is ok, but given that there are so many good food places nearby, I would recommend you to eat somewhere else instead.

Housekeeping – They start making up your room at freaking 8:30am!!!! Who would already be out of their room at 8:30am?!

Facilities

Bathroom, hairdryer and wardrobe – There is a rain shower but it’s not a really powerful one. The bathrobes are really nice to wear. I actually wore one to sleep because it provided much-needed warmth in our too-cold room. We adjusted the temperature but it was still really cold. The wardrobe has an ironing board and iron as well, which is really useful. They also have a pretty nice hairdryer in the drawer.

Fridge – I like how you can squeeze your own snacks or drinks in the given fridge. Many hotels pack their fridge to the brim with things you wouldn’t take because of their ridiculous prices. If I remember correctly, Marina Bay Sands Hotel even has a fridge where everything is neatly slotted with digital price tags, and if you take one item out, the amount is deducted. Something like that. I can’t remember if it’s that hotel though, but yeaaa, let us use the fridge, man!

Overall verdict: It’s a very basic hotel in the heart of Queensway. Would I stay here again? Probably not. There are much better hotels in this price range around Robertson Quay which is much closer to town, has awesome night life, and has nicer rooms.

Delightful pastries and brunch in Singapore: The Bakehouse by Carpenter & Cook

I’ve decided to do a review of The Bakehouse by Carpenter & Cook because I’m just so excited to introduce this place to all my friends!

I first tried Carpenter & Cook at Lorong Kilat some years back and I remember telling myself that this place serves the best pastries in Singapore! I’m pleased to finally find another Carpenter & Cook branch in the West, and this time, they not only have pastries, they have savoury food too! Hurray!

Even with savoury food, they keep up to their high standards and both breakfast items we tried were absolutely delish!!!

Note that breakfast items are currently only served during weekends and public holidays, and even though they open really early, savoury food is only served after 10am.

My husband and I ordered the only 2 breakfast items on the menu that day: Frittata @ $8, and Homemade salmon croissant with caviar and poached eggs @ $12.

Here’s our bill! I love how the advertised prices are already GST-inclusive and that there are no additional service tax. Even though there was no charge for service, the service there was really great! Servers were patient, chirpy, and friendly.

My frittata was lovely. The portion was just nice for me. There were lots of ingredients inside and the salad was great!!! I love salad where they use more expensive greens rather than sorry-looking lettuce that seems to be sitting in a corner of the fridge for days.

The caviar actually did nothing for the salmon croissant dish in my honest opinion, but the whole dish was really yummy and filling. Croissant was buttery and flaky. Salmon was delicious. I usually don’t like smoked salmon because it’s so salty, but this was really just nice! The eggs were also really nice too. For $12, I feel that this is really value-for-money and I highly recommend it!

I also couldn’t resist the freshly-baked cinnamon rolls on the counter and finally succumbed to one even though I was already really full.

I had no regrets!!! It was soooo good. I really think their pastries are stellar and you should really give them a try! There are so many pastries there that it would be a good idea to go with a group of friends so that you can try a little bit of everything.

Oh! My husband also ordered a latte. It was a really small cup for $5, but it was also really good. And I’m someone who doesn’t really fancy coffee and milk, which means that this latte doesn’t taste too bitter nor milky, and that’s why I like it! The aftertaste is really nice. There’s this coffee fragrance that appears at the back of your throat after you swallow the coffee down. But really, I’m not a coffee person, so I don’t really know what constitutes a good cuppa. Try it for yourself!

And if you don’t like coffee, they have cold-pressed juices too which I’m really curious to try but I’m not willing to spend so much on juice honestly…. Why must healthy things be made so expensively? ARGHHH.

Final Verdict: 

I will return again definitely, this time bringing more friends!! There are limited amount of seats though, and the place fills up very quickly, probably because there it is situated just outside Park Hotel Alexandra. Carpenter & Cook is well-known for their tarts, so if you haven’t tried them before, definitely try them!!!

A Good Storyteller

So, I was reading Mervyn’s Facebook post today, and I really liked it. I read and re-read it so many times.

As a trainer/coach/teacher/mentor, you must be aware of this bit of human behaviour—after age 13, people won’t change, UNLESS there is an emotional event. Death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce are just 3 examples of moments when we can and do change. If you’re a trainer, you must understand this. If you have ever wondered why information rarely brings about change, it’s because we are simply not wired that way. The name of the game is emotion.

If you want people to shift in any way, you must create an emotional event for them. I’ve scaled sheer cliffs without a harness, crossed an open body of water using a craft made out of whatever I could find in the jungle while blindfolded, cycled solo for 1000 km—all in the name of seeing what I’m made of. The dangers were real and I don’t advocate those methods in my workshops. Instead, I use drama and specially designed activities to provide emotional danger while eliminating the physical danger. Activities are designed to threaten the participants’ sense of emotional safety. Does he dare reveal aspects of himself to his peers? Is she prepared to be vulnerable in front of her colleagues. These are big enough fears to work with.

Drama is a specialised teaching tool. Not to be taken lightly and thrown into a speech or presentation in the hope that people will listen. Storytellers often fall into the trap of dramatising their stories. It is not wrong. But it is certainly inappropriate for an adult audience because it creates a layer of INAUTHENTICITY. Dramatise things for the very young to feed their minds with as much stimulation as possible, sure. Not really suitable for the developed minds of adults.

When you tell your personal story, it is all about authenticity. Which means you must be vulnerable. So if you can get vulnerable through drama or whatever method, do it. Then when you deliver your story, you may have shifted enough to drop whatever masks and barriers you put up to protect yourself, and begin to be real with your audience.

When I was working as his assistant, I learned so much from him. The experience was invaluable. He’s a very special person in my life. I don’t think he even knows it, but he gave me the courage to change my life through believing in myself more. I’m really grateful towards him. I don’t know if it’s possible, but if it is, I plan to ask him if he could train me in the art of storytelling. He totally changed what storytelling meant to me. He’s a really great guy, my real-life inspiration.

Talking to him makes me feel really intelligent. I think he’s one of the few people I can listen to on and on without wanting to interrupt. HAHA.

My Top 10 Books List~!

I was tagged by Namie to do this post, so here are the first 10 books which I really like that popped into my mind. Basically, I love books that are easy to read, a page turner, and at times, make me put the book down for awhile, because the story is overwhelming or urges me to think about the parallels between the story and my life. 

1. The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

This book is amazing! I thought it was fiction at first, so imagine my amazement when I went to Google this book and found out that everything written in this book are real!!!!! I highly recommend ALL Jon Ronson’s books. He’s a brilliant journalist! I thank him for uncovering all these stories which I can never ever imagine happening in real life! He really made me think more about the different people co-existing with us in this world. Haha! I would love to meet him actually…how does he get such in-depth stories when the people he interviews are usually seemingly dangerous or unstable?? This is my first Jon Ronson book and it turned me into a huge fan of his. I follow Jon Ronson on Twitter! XD

2. The Confidant by Helene Gremillon

I haven’t read a book like this in a long while. It’s a very gripping and heartbreaking story. Very easy to read and you just can’t help but keep reading page after page till the book ends. Very very good story. I don’t understand why its book rating is so low. It is so good. It really disturbed me a great deal while reading it, and I took about 2 days to recover after I’ve finished the book. The story successfully brought out all my emotions and I found myself feeling the pain of EVERY character. Recommended!!!!

3. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

This book was introduced to me by a friend who realised we had similar taste in books and movies! It’s a very good book, much better than the movie. Recommended!

4. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS BOOK! Seldom do I re-read a book, but I re-read this because I loved it so much! Put yourself in the head of Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15 year-old boy with really interesting thoughts. I love this book so much, you can’t imagine. I even bought the book! But I lent it to the friend who lent me The Book Thief, and she didn’t return it to me. -___-” 

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I love Oscar Wilde’s stories, and Dorian Gray is my favourite book from him! So beautifully written. Many quotable quotes in the story which…I’m embarrassed to say, but I agree with. For example, “I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.” and “Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.” 

Don’t you just love Oscar Wilde?! He’s brilliant.

6. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 

This wasn’t my first book by Haruki Murakami, but it was the first one that impressed me so much. It was also the one I loved so much that I wrote about it in my blog, and then suddenly, there was a boom in Haruki Murakami’s books. I’m not saying that I started the boom, since I only had like, what? 50 blog readers a day. Haha! But I had been reading Haruki Murakami’s books for some time then, both English and Chinese translated versions, and I loved them because they brought me into another world – yea, his books can make you feel trippy. I remember I kept recommending his books to anyone who saw me holding his book. Nobody I talked to knew him then. And then suddenly, everyone knew him. He became mainstream. Haha! The thing about anything becoming mainstream is that now you’ve got so many people talking about it (in this case, books by Haruki Murakami), even people who only read whatever book is popular at the moment. I don’t like such people because the opinions they can render are trite and shallow. XD

Anyway, here’s my favourite part of the story that made me impressed that Haruki Murakami can describe the feelings of a woman so well!

---

 “Waiting for the perfect love?”

“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”

“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”

“So then what?”

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

“Sounds crazy to me.”

“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”

---

 7. Mr Rosenblum’s List by Natasha Solomons

This book was lent to me by my previous boss. She raved about it and I could see why after I read it. Very well-written book. You follow Mr Rosenblum, a Jewish refugee, who arrives in London, determined to fit in. He takes becoming British very seriously. In fact, he takes everything he wants to accomplish very seriously. Things don’t always go so well as Mr Rosenblum planned but he never gives up. There are many reasons why I love this book. The characters feel like family after awhile. I don’t know how it would be for you, but I found myself rooting for Mr Rosenblum. Poor Mr Rosenblum. He has no one on his side in his family. But perhaps you may find yourself pitying his wife too, who desperately tries to hold onto what it means to be Jewish. Anyway, the description of the food Mr Rosenblum’s wife makes, is very satisfying. 🙂

8. ZOO by Otsuichi

I read the translated Chinese version of this book. I first found ZOO on Crunchyroll actually. If you can find the movie, do watch it. It’s a compilation of 5 short stories, all very impactful. I was delighted to know after reading the book that, the movie is very close to the book! My favourite story is “Seven Rooms” about a brother and a sister trying to escape from a mysterious cell with seven rooms. Many people like the story about the twins. Anyway, Otsuichi’s stories are very dark and gothic. I guess it’s either you like it or you don’t. To me, he’s a master of twists in the stories he tells. I was very hooked to his books after reading ZOO. Also, I’m very surprised that Otsuichi is actually very young, and he doesn’t look creepy, considering he has such masterful storytelling skills and the ability to write very horrible things. Haha!

9. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

My favourite book when I was a kid!! I could actually taste all of Willy Wonka’s amazing candy creations in my head. This is a very well-written and delicious book that opened up my imagination. I really think Roald Dahl’s books are classic and timeless!

10. Delicacy by David Foenkinos 

Another book with many quotable quotes. I loved this book so much I actually copied down all the parts I liked in my private blog which I have deleted because there were too many sad memories in that blog. Haha! But it’s really really good. I really recommend you to read it. What’s it about? It’s about this girl who is so in love with her husband, and then one day he died just like that in a car accident. And then she meets somebody else. Hold it! You’re thinking you hate such books right? The sypnosis would have turned me off too, and I wouldn’t have read it if not for Audrey Tatou on the cover (yes, it was made into a movie). But this book is so good. The author could write about the love between the characters so well. It’s French and very romantic, not in a soppy “The Notebook” way (man, I can’t stand Nicholas Sparks’ books). The romance is very real, probably what you will experience in your own love life. I hope you will read it because I’m sure you will enjoy it. 🙂

 

So there you have it! Any books you have read before and liked? Or any books you wanna check out now? Or recommend to me??? I’d be happy if you leave a comment!!!! XD

Cheap Japanese snack shops in Koenji

Japan has many awesome snacks. They produce different seasonal snacks and sometimes also collaborate with popular characters to create packaging that is irresistible.

I’m a fan of white chocolate and nuts and when I was in Japan during summer, I just couldn’t help but grab a box of this. It says on the box ”冷やしてもおいしい!” (hiyashite mo oishii), which means that it is delicious even when chilled. 

My question was, “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

Haha! 

Anyway, chilled or not, this was yummy. 

I go crazy when I see shops like this in small towns like Koenji (yea, this was in Koenji. haha!). You can often find many snacks you love at very low prices. 

I once bought my favourite Japanese snack at only 100 yen each! My country sells these too, but at 3 times 100yen!

This is the one I’m talking about!

My mother introduced this to me when I was a kid. It was love at first bite!