PARKROYAL on Beach Road

We're back in another PARKROYAL hotel again. KB and I just had our wedding anniversary staycation in PARKROYAL on Pickering just few months back. This time, we're here at PARKROYAL on Beach Road for KB's cousin's wedding lunch and the family and relatives decided to enjoy a hotel stay for the night. (Don't have to worry about drinking too much alcohol during the banquet.) In all, we occupied 9 rooms excluding the bridal suite.


Hotel lobby


Sitting are at the lift lobby on the 7th floor

This is how our Orchid Club Premier Room look like:





Toiletries from St Gregory Spa


Mini bar


The Singapore Flyer can be seen from our room.


How about chillaxing at the balcony?


The gym here is much bigger than the one at Pickering.


The swimming pool, which never fails to keep the kids occupied.


The Orchid Club Lounge serves coffee, tea and cookie all day, breakfast from 7 to 10 am and evening cocktail from 6 to 8 pm. I wonder why they do not serve afternoon tea like the one at PARKROYAL at Pickering.







This kind of spread could have been our dinner, but we ended up eating at Golden Mile Food Centre instead (because the majority didn't take the Orchid Club rooms). Sigh, what a waste.

Houtong Cat Village

Who else is a cat-lover? I love cats even though they don't seem to like me very much. Oh, don't run away please. They don't seem to want my cuddle. Sad.

So, how can I not include this cat village in my itinerary, right? If not for the cats, there would probably be hardly any tourists in this little quiet town. The cat population here is not overwhelming, just more than the usual as compared to other towns or cities. I think there's still more human than cats.


Papa (or Mama?) cat with his little kittens. (Spot a real kitty crossing the field in the background.)



Some of the non-living kitties around the town.


Yawn! They must be "suffering" from food coma all day because some tourists came with cat food. Why didn't I think of that? They seem so well-fed that some are not even interested and continue to nap on the motorcycles or any corner along the street.



KB and I took a break at this cat cafe. And the whole time I was hoping the owner's cat will wake up. No, it didn't, but thankfully this ginger cat came back and jump right on the empty table. It wasn't scared when the cafe diners came near and took photos of it and with it.

PARKROYAL on Pickering

This was where we had our Anniversary staycation, at PARKROYAL on Pickering! It's conveniently located near Chinatown MRT station, but we still drove there since there's complimentary parking anyway.

While waiting to check-in, we were served icy cold lime juice.

Walkway to the rooms on the 15th floor

Our room with king-size bed

Bathroom with the most-squarish bathtub I ever seen

Toilet and shower area

Complimentary drinking water and toiletries

Nespresso coffee machine and TWG tea bags provided

Complimentary red velvet cake

Orchid Club Lounge on the 16th floor serves afternoon tea from 2pm to 4pm

Coffee, tea or juice?

View from the Orchid Club Lounge on 16th floor. We have the same view from our room which is only one floor below the club.

Outdoor rooftop terraces on 16th floor

Gym on 5th floor

The always-very-crowded infinity swimming pool (also on 5th floor)

The quiet side of the 5th floor

Cabana for chilling out

After exploring the hotel, we decided to get changed and hit the gym. We would love to enjoy a dip in the pool, but it was crowded and all the pool-side loungers were occupied! Then, we showered and head down to the ground floor for dinner at Lime restaurant. Before calling it a day, we went back to the club lounge for another drink and to enjoy the night view of the city.

Enjoying a glass a champagne after breakfast

Champagne breakfast is served in the Orchid Club Lounge from 6:30am to 10:30am. But we chose to dine at the common breakfast area in Lime, where there's definitely a lot more food variety than in the club lounge.

Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. Exhibition

So, I brought my "big boy" KB to the Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. Exhibition in Science Centre Singapore during the December "holiday" (both of us were clearing our annual leave). Since it was still school vacation, the place was crowded as expected. We queued to buy the tickets (brought our ICs to get citizen price), queued to get our tickets scanned and our arms stamped with UV ink, led into a "briefing room" where we waited and watched a short video-clip, then finally allowed into the exhibition hall.

The queue and our tickets

After the staff check our tickets, there's instructions on setting up the app.

The Briefing Room

The first zone - Captain America

Second zone - Hulk

Interactive screens of Dr Banner's vs Hulk's brains

Information boards of Hawkeye and Black Widow

Thor (and his hammer), Loki and the universe

To the left of the picture, are game stations. But we got no patience to wait in the queue.

The different Iron Man suit

Final game before exiting the exhibit. Before entering the game zone, there are staffs stationed outside to help you get your app ready for the game. The teams are randomly assigned by the software.

The game is not difficult, just keep throwing your weapon at the enemies. Before you know it, the game is over (and you won of course).

US Election 2016

[Click on picture to go to BBC website and their live coverage on the election.]

Yesterday, the social media was flooded with posts about the US Election - posts reporting on the vote counting progress, posts reporting the final result and posts about the analysis of the result. Many expressed that they cannot believe the jaw-dropping outcome. Yap, me too. I hardly see any positive comments, except for those that try to make sense of all this by suggesting that the angry working class had voted in hope for a change.

For months, the media featured the outrageous things that he said during his campaigns and portrayed him as a lunatic. I still think he is crazy to be so extreme and demeaning in his speeches. And I don't like the way he said Singapore (and some other countries) are stealing their jobs. Come on, we are all trying to survive as a Nation and it is seriously not very nice to label others as "thieves"!

In the early part of the vote counting, he was already in the lead. Even before the winner was confirm, Canada’s immigration website crashed. It was later suggested that it could purely be coincidental, but well... we'll never know. And now, California wants to leave the US (#Calexit) and they could potentially become the world's sixth-largest economy.

Although his victory caught everyone by surprise, there are people who think that he would actually win this election. One of them is Hollywood director Michael Moore who listed 5 reasons for his prediction in July.

[Click on picture to go to article.]

Now that he is the US president, let's take a look at his to-do list by BBC and by Straits Times, compiled based on his campaign speeches. There seems to be a depression forecast of what is to come in the next 4 years. Looks like this super-power is not going to care about the well-being of the rest of the world. So really, what exactly is the change that the Americans are expecting?

[Click on picture to go to article.]

I must say that I am extremely glad that I am not doing my internship in US in this era. The situation now is just way too unpredictable.