Thank to Gerald’s morning afternoon call, I managed to meet him on time at City Hall for BookFest, which is held at Suntec.

Settled lunch at Exhibition Centre Level 1. The food court was pretty nicely decorated in the old fasion style. The chicken rice set ($6.50) I ordered was within expectation too. Sorry, no photo, too hungry.

Then the tour started. The place is so huge, but where’s the crowd? It’s the first time for me to see so few people at a Suntec exhibition. Maybe that’s because I only go to TravelFair and ITShow.

no crowd, only a huge casher sign at the far end of the hall

Other possible reasons might be the lack of publicity, and the fact that Popular is the sole organizer and participant. As a matter of fact, the other book exhibition BookFair is organized by Singapore Press Holding. There are some small booths rented out to other companys, one of them is Suzuki, which is selling laptops! (First time knowing Suzuki actually make laptops. Just like some people are unawared that Mitsubish once made hand phones.)

Ok, that’s a bit off topic. BookFest is filled with selves of books and stationaries, but I got no incentive to buy books, because I will be going to Borders later with a discount coupon, and am not lack of stationaries at this moment. (Because I never use any stationaries since erm… when the holiday started?)

So end up I only bought a bulky, weird but yet useful item for friend as X’mas present. Gerald bought a pink file for my cousin Mianmian.

more than 30 cashers, and no customers…

feel very attracted to X’mas trees recently

never see the train station getting so crowded before, and it was only 4pm. ok, maybe I saw before, but it is still quite rare

So we then headed towards Borders @ Orchard, as there is currently a promotion going on: Get any 4 books and enjoy 40% discount, further 10% discount for members (thanks Gerald for the membership card). Don’t get fooled by the 40%+10%, it is not 50%. It is 10% after the 40%, so it’s in fact 46%. Download and print your own discount coupon HERE.

Bought 4 books as expected. First one is McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Accounting Course, which hopefully will help me to understand what is accounting all about, and help me to decide if I want to study accounting after my degree course in engineering.

The other 3 are actually sold in a package. The Rules of Management, The Rules of Work and The Rules of Life. But I chose to purchase them seperately, because although the retail price is lower to buy as a package, I wouldn’t be able to get 40%+10%,  but only 20%+10% because it is treated as one book. So after calculation I decide to buy 3 of them seperately, which saved me more than S$10.

Happily carrying the books, we went to meet Mianmian. She just finish working and we need to find a place to eat dinner.

outside the building between Lido and DFS, what building is it?

adidas shop, shoes hanging on the tree. what if you let MacDonald do the decoration, BigMacs?

After walking around for quite some time, we had no choice but to go to this Ramen Ten at the basement of Far East. The place look ok, and food look ok too (on the photos), so we decided to give a try.

However the place turned up to be terrible. First of all, there’s no free ice water. Okay, we can drink soup since we are ordering ramen. And then, it took so long for the food to come, than I need to complain to the waiter. Ramen was very plain, looks more like well-cooked instant noodle. Seriously, for that kind of price I would really prefer Ajisen or Crystal Jade.

Later a couple came in and sat beside us. I heard the waitress telling them: Sorry Sir, you have to wait 20 - 25 minutes for ramen, because the house is full, and seems like everyone is ordering ramen. Did I mention the place is called Ramen Ten? Or maybe it should be Ramen Zero. If you don’t have the ability to prepare food on time, tell customers before they come in!

So, we managed to finish the food. Despite this kind of service, they still have the gut to add service charge. It is because there’s no similar restaurants nearby, that they still have business. Service and food, two important factors of dining, are both substandard.

photo of their menu, I don’t bother to shoot the food

After dinner Gerald and Mianmian went home, I walked around at Orchard trying to look for a pouch for my newly upgraded-for-free hand phone. I walked the whole of Tangs, Far East Plaza and Lucky but couldn’t find a suitable one. I almost bought one Goldlion money pouch, if only it fits my phone better.

Orh well, so I gave up and start to walk aimlessly, while waiting for friend to finish her event. Only when you stop looking for it, then it appears. At a small booth outside Centre Point I found the suitable pouch. Although the design is not very nice, but the texture and price is good, I got it for only S$2. Photos of the phone and the pouch will be in my next blog entry.

Some random photos before the end of the day.

Lotus Elise, the car I am driving in NFS11. I mmsed Elise the photo and told her I saw her car. It’s so small in size!

yet another X’mas tree. tricks for shooting lights at night: reduce exposure/brightness on your camera

Good night all!