The Art of Love and War

I must be one of the last people in Singapore to have actually played a game of paintball, judging from all the advice from my friends that were preparing me for the experience. Often used as team building, or just a recreational game among friends, this profitable sport has sparked quite a number of paintball fields in Singapore.

Selecting the biggest and often remarked as the best in Singapore, we embarked to Red Dynasty for a hardcore session of paintball.


Located at the BottleTree Park in Sembawang, this peaceful park houses a seafood restaurant, a race track for miniature remote controlled cars, fishing pond among other shops and lifestyle outlets.

Of course, it is also home to the Red Dynasty paintball court. Scheduled for the last session of the day from 6pm - 8pm, with 250 paintballs per person, we had 5 missions to complete as a team.

I was really equipped with 2 pairs of pants and tops to buffer the blow received from the paintballs. Made up of vegetable oil and sugar, we had the mango tasting balls ( which I unfortunately savored when hit on the mouth during the course of the battle )

It was fun, all the running, scheming, crouching and shooting. Men became boys, and girls became snipers. We retired to a Thai restaurant to share a good meal, battle stories and good company.


Onwards to East Coast Park for blading tomorrow...

Red Dynasty Paintball Arena
Bottle Tree Park,
81 Lorong Chencharu (Yishun),
Singapore 769198
Official Website

Christian Lacroix at the National Museum

With outfits and sketches brought in from the Parisian museum of Centre National du Costume de Scène, Moulins, France, the National Museum currently has an exhibition on Christian Lacroix and his designs for operatic costumes.

Heading down to take a look, the small but interesting exhibition featured sketches of his inspiration for the costumes ...

Key pieces from various operas, showing his sense of style and drama. I especially liked the Othello pieces, where he used various shades and textures of black to make the costume stand out on stage.




Check out the exhibition if you are having a boring weekend, followed by high tea at the cafe within the National Museum, away from the crowds.

National Museum of Singapore
93 Stamford Road Singapore 178897

Christian Lacroix - The Costumier
20 Mar 2009 – 7 Jun 2009
10:00am – 6:00pm

The Little Dot on the Map

OMG !
Iggy's (45) Made to the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants ~
Here's one for Singapore ! Congrats !
San Pellegrino List for 2009
Iggy's

Ah, I am going to Tetsuya next year ! Come hell or highwater ~

The Green Stuff

When I was 18, I went through a phase, to put it mildly, I tried to remove all sorts of farmed animals from my diet after watching a video on factory farming. The video and the readings made me nauseous at the sight of meat, knowing what the poor animal had gone through. That vegetarian phase run its course after 6 months of non-stop sabotaging from my grandmother. Grandmama's logic, "Chicken soup without eating the meat is still technically vegetarian" + Big Watery Eyes of her food being rejected = Beaten Self Righteous Teenager


For my Buddhist aunt's birthday celebration, the family congregated at a vegetarian restaurant, ordering a 10 course meal for 10 people. We specifically did not want any gluten in our meal and went out of the way to locate this restaurant. It did not disappoint us, in fact, it might have made me relook the whole going vegetarian idea again.

There were Vietnamese rice rolls, sushi rolls, Roti-John, Soba Salad, Bibibap, Wanton Mee, Rojak, Toufu Goreng, Pumpkin Rice and Beancurd Skin with Veg Filling.

The dishes were original and imaginative, the taste and texture were carefully thought about especially in the Soba Salad. Centrally located at Fortune Centre, I really would go back there again to try more dishes.

New Green Pasture Cafe
190 Middle Road
#04-22 Fortune Centre
Tel: 6336 8755
11am - 8pm
(Closed on Mon)

New Love, Old Haunts

Went to Vivocity to catch Jackie Chan's new movie, Shinjuku Incident with the gang. The movie tried to portray the evolving Chinese immigrant scene in Japan during the 90s. There was plenty of gore, moralistic values injected throughout the movie. Not the best, but decent.

The movie was long, and ended around midnight. Sick of St James and its crowd, the gang decided to check out Keppel Island

I liked it the moment we drove into the place, conveniently located next to Harbourfront around the private estate, Carribean. Facing the marina with yachts docked, the ambiance was quiet, very much like Dempsey and the PS Cafe before the crowds discovered it. Unfortunately or fortunately, it is not very accessible unless you own a vehicle.

We wanted to go to the wine bar called Wine Glass, but it was closed at midnight. So we had to settle for Prive on the ground floor. Despite it being a holiday the next day, there was not much of a crowd. Very chill, kick back and relaxed vibe in the air. Had a yummy blackberry lychee mojito, cushion seats, full moon and good company.

Will definitely go back again for the wine bar on the second floor with its excellent views, Prive the restaurant and bakery.

Prive
2 Keppel Bay Vista
Marina at Keppel Bay

The Sniper & The Photographer

With special thanks to my friends with connections, I got to attend the Asia Gala Premiere of The Sniper 《神枪手》 in Singapore at the Lido theater. I honestly just thought that I was there to watch a movie earlier than everyone else, until I met up with my friends and we saw ...

The Hordes of screaming fans and the masses of photographers, then the slight notion that I might actually see some stars dawned on me. Maybe that and the 10 million people crowding outside the cinema's entrance ....

Ritchie Ren and Edison Chen were outside the cinema with the hosts for a brief meet-the-fans session. Let's just say that when the brief 5-10 min event was over, there was a group of teenage girls weeping, and one of them was holding up her hand saying .. no actually, SCREAMING at the top of her lungs, "EDISON TOUCHED MY HAND.. OMG OMG OMG HE TOUCHED MY HAND" (Disclaimer : Caps are not for dramatic effect, they were really THAT LOUD)

We were a really nonchalant group. Firstly, we were late, so we weren't one of the fans that made their way to the front, we didn't have signboards, 5 of us had only 1 camera (which happened to be mine). When the stars appeared, we just stood behind looking at the crazy crowd in front of us, wondering if old age has caught up to us and being star struck was a truly long time ago.

Once we cleared all the security checks to get into the cinema, we were seated in the fourth row from the front, frowning that we were so near the screen. Of course, we made our fair share of distasteful jokes about forgetting our bullet-proof vests and all. After a while, the stars turned up again and this time, there was no crazy crowd and we just sat in our seats and had an up close and personal look at the stars.

SNAP SNAP SNAP
Sorry young screaming teenage girls, you will be a jaded adult with connections someday. Just not today. :P

To be fair, other than just seeing the actors today, the movie was actually pretty good as an action flick about a team of snipers. My closest encounter as a sniper was when I was playing Counterstrike in my teen years, always ambushing people from the dark. It wasn't really a show like that, it had a good story telling more of a sniper team with perspectives of three main actors (The Good, The Bad and The Arrogant). Go catch it if you have time ~