Ok, now THIS is cool. You walk up to a coke machine and have no change? No bills? No problem. You have your phone, of course. So send a properly formatted text message to the address on the Coke machine to get your beverage!
You can SMS for taxi’s, radio station contests, COKE, and all kinds of things here. In the US, you are hard pressed to find people who can spell SMS.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!??!
I’ve been prowling the Singapore radio stations today. Normally, the only radio I hear here is on the way to work in the morning in Chris’ car — the normal morning show stuff that is quite entertaining.
This afternoon I’ve heard all kinds of stuff but the best thing I’ve heard in a while is a conglomeration of two things that I don’t have much fondness for: the french and rap. Ok I really don’t have a problem with the French, it is just fun to pick on em. Anyway yes, you guessed it — rap in French. It was really good. The artist is MC Solaar.
Well, Steve & Lynne left this morning for their 10 days in Japan and I’m all alone again. So sad. Happily, they should be updating their blog, Hundred Acre Woods so we can all share in the glory of their fairly comprehensive itinerary in Japan.
An extended trip to Japan will most likely be nothing like Singapore due to the fact that communication will be more difficult — even though Steve has been working pretty hard on learning rudimentary Japanese, we all know how that usually turns out in actual practice. 
However, everyone appreciates someone trying to speak a language — even if it is mangled.
They, of course didn’t bail before going to see the Post Bar in the Fullerton hotel for some exotic beverages, Saint Julien’s for oysters and Kir, and the Palms seafood restaurant for CHILI CRAB!!! WOOHOO!
The dinner at the Palms included Chris and Kim Low (and Ester!), Samuel Low and his fiance Quintella, Steve and Lynne and I! I had a great time as usual. Sam and Quin were just back from an extended trip to Europe and had some, uh, adventures to share.
I leave Wed August 3rd early in the morning. Looks like the weather is clearing up in time for me to leave! Typical, really.
Well, actually it is fish head curry. A specialty here in Singapore.
Chris took us to a restaurant that serves it over near little India. A really nice restaurant with lots of indian stuff, however their specialty is this fish-head curry. Now fish-head curry is a dish that we have been hearing about since our very first trips here, but have never really been overly motivated to try it.
Well this trip, our time was up, er, we got to try the beast. Now we get to the restaurant and Chris says we should probably get the large serving for the three of us. So we do, and a bunch of other miscellaneous food.
Well, the “large” part of that order wasn’t referring to the serving size, it was referring to the fish head size, and by extension, the serving size. It is difficult to get the scale of this thing with these pictures I took from my phone, but that white bowl is a large serving bowl, and the spoon in it is a large serving spoon. This sucker was hyuuuuge.
Unnerving, but tasty. We seem to have done it justice. Nobody went for the eyes though. Imagine that.
I just couldn’t resist any longer. I threw caution to the wind and bought a Motorola RAZR V3 (Black) for myself. Everyone said that it was a beautiful phone with wonderful construction but had terrible operating software. After using it for a couple of days, I’d have to say that they are right about the construction, but the software is just fine except for the address book. It has only single-letter searching, which makes a long list a bear. Also, if you have multiple entries (emails, phones of the same type, etc.) for a person there is no way to differentiate (that I have found) between themSpecial Edition Black RAZR V3
.
One of my favorite things. Guavas. Mmmmm. Here you can get them peeled and sliced and sprinkled with plum powder, on a stick! Yummy.
Waiting for dinner at a restaurant, we were tired and hungry and started making up diversions. One such diversion was this successful mind-over-eye trick.
Before:
After:
Its nice to see some familiar faces. Even Steve… AHAHAHAHAHAHA. I’ll post some incriminating pictures as soon as I get them.
Here are two “informational” placards in my hotel room that made me snicker.
The first is the little card in the pocket of the bathrobe. You can click on the images to open a larger version if you can’t read them.
The second, on the stem of the lamp next to my desk.
RAWR
