Another big weekend. Nice…can’t believe it’s my last one here for a while. Not that the time flew by, I do have a sense of having been here for a while, but still…

Well, the new Rochester Park development provided its first major disappointment. If you haven’t investigated this new Singapore hotspot-hub, conveniently walking distance from school/Dover/heritage, you should. The restaurant Graze is superb, and the no.1 bar is a really nice spot for drinks…it’s a completely tranquil little hidden patch of Singapore. Its flagship restaurant, Min Jiang, however, earns a pass from me. The reviews of the food I read were fairly glowing. And it was aight..but for the price, you could eat good Chinese food for a week here. With MUCH BETTER service.

Yesterday, I called to make a 9pm booking, and was told they wouldn’t have anything until 9:30. Fine. At around 10:30 (on a Saturday night) when I was mid-entrée, a woman came over with the bill. I looked at her, confused. She said they were closing the cash register, and would I mind paying the bill now. Half a bottle of wine left, along with much of the food. I couldn’t believe it. Then I looked at the bill, and there was a $3 item listed as “Pickle”. I asked what it was, and she pointed to the dish of [untouched] nuts on the table. On a $200 dollar bill, they had decided to charge another $3 for nuts that I didn’t order. More shock. She was such a meek and demure old woman, though, and because I was there with a friend from Singapore who I didn’t really want to cause a scene in front of, that I agreed to pay the bill, thinking that would be the end of things. Nope. About 15 minutes later (still before 11pm) they began packing up all the outdoor tables and chairs, rather audibly. I just started laughing. Then, it got worse. Finished with food, but still drinking wine, someone else came over to the table and asked if he could take the light from our table, since they were closing soon. So I told him to take the light, the table, and the chairs, and we’d finish our wine on the floor. He laughed, apologized…and then took the light. Soon after, while there was still some wine (and their wine list starts at $80) to be drunk, someone came over to tell us the restaurant was closed. Unbelievable. At that point, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. So I did. The lobster noodles were good, but not THAT good. Don’t go. Seriously. Do not go. For $200 bucks, you can gorge yourself on crab 5 nights in a row at G7. And be treated about 1000 times better.

Today, after my [now] habitual brunch, I ended up walking around downtown for about 4 hours, just wandering. I ended up at the Singapore Art Museum. It’s the first museum I’ve been to here, and it’s housed in a really great building. It was also the first politically active content of any kind I’ve seen since I’ve been here. It was really refreshing. After learning yesterday about, among other things, Singapore’s immigration law which prevents immigrant domestic workers from getting pregnant (which leads, in many cases, to their being prevented from having any contact with the outside, never mind the outside world) I needed something like that to cheer me up and buoy my plans for returning. Check it out.