2010 February | Voices from within

4Feb/100

Indian Food Marathon

Yup, Indian food for the past three days at work!

During the past three days, we had two events to observe - a colleague, who will be leaving us end of this week and a Malaysian colleague, who came over to our Singapore plant for a three-day knowledge transfer session.

Two good Indian restaurants - The Prata Place and Shami Banana Leaf Delights. Bottom left - the colleague who will be leaving us, top right - my best buddy in the company, bottom right - Mr. project manager and the Malaysian colleague.

Although it was the first time I had nasi briyani, I think Shami Banana Leaf Delights has the best nasi briyani. Yummy! It was my second time at The Prata Place. The first time was also because of a farewell for another colleague. I think people who love prata should really try the pratas there. We ordered mutton (M-size), chicken (M-size) and vegetable (XL-size) murtabaks. Yup, they have small, medium and extra-large sizes for their murtabaks. An XL-size murtabak is roughly 1m² big. Haha. Huge, isn't it? Each of us ordered our individual pratas too. I ordered a chocolate prata! And got teased by my boss!

"Eh.. Only kids would order chocolate prata."

But, it tasted really good! So, so, so crispy!

Filed under: Eating Out No Comments

2Feb/103

Quest to Egypt!

Flight tickets to Egypt!

Umm.. not quite, but close :-)
It was the Quest for Immortality - The World of Ancient Egypt exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore. The exhibition began in December 2009 and will last until 4th April, 2010. It features 230 artifacts from 4000 BCE to 950 CE. In general, this exhibition was an eye-opener and thanks to the tour guide, we learned something about the Egyptian culture particularly, the mummification process.

At the museum entrance

Grabbing some postcards at the entrance

The guided tour was to begin at 2:30PM but we entered the gallery slightly earlier. At the first chamber, we found a game or two. These were the "starters".

Make an origami pyramid

The Egyptian writing system. They prepared paper and rubber stamps for all the alphabets in the writing system. We got to stamp our initials! Apparently, they do not have the letter 'C' in their writing system, hence, I had to go with 'SZ' 'H' 'M'.

Some Mathematical/IQ games

At 2:30PM sharp, our tour guide came. She's a sweet looking, petite lady :-)
I forgot what was her name but she's extremely fluent and could remember every single bit of information pretty well! We really enjoyed her lessons.

Here comes the real mummy! This mummy had of course undergone a face-lift before being put as an exhibit here. We were told that various parts (organs) of the body were dug out and kept in jars (one jar for each organ) before the mummification process. This was to prevent the body from decaying. Those jars were very important for the mummy as they could help them to resurrect later (The Mummy Returns!).

An excerpt from the Book of the Dead. According to our tour guide, one or more sentences from the Book of the Dead will be chosen and inscribed on papyrus. The inscription will then be placed onto the mummy. It served as a guide for the mummy in the Underworld.

We spent an hour plus in the gallery. Besides the interesting Egyptian culture, one thing that fascinated me the most was in fact the intelligence of these Egyptians. Pyramids existed since 2750 B.C. and it is amazing how people at that time with limited resources and knowledge could construct such great architecture that still stand tall to-date.

Outside the gallery

Next, we realised that Fort Canning Hill was just behind the National Museum and it had a public artwork! And so, we dashed to Fort Canning Hill.

At Fort Canning Hill

The mentioned iconic artwork - ASEAN Sculpture Garden (8/52 icons checked!)

While I was busy photographing the sculpture, KC turned around and spotted another iconic artwork, hiding behind the National Museum :o

Pedas Pedas (9/52 icons checked!)

When the night falls.. we were at Chinatown to get a glimpse of the Chinese New Year decos in Singapore. It wasn't too exciting and we managed to get only a few bad shots :D