shopping – miyagi.sg

The Last Minute Christmas Shopping Guide Part Two

And now for the second part of The Last Minute Shopping Guide:

Macheroux Photography

Know someone who takes bad pictures? Save us all from having them in our social media feed and give them a course at Macheroux Photography.

Either that, or buy them a couple of prints like this one:

Little Red Art

Little Red Art’s idea is simple – LRA connects artists and buyers, and educates would be buyers that art doesn’t need to be prohibitively expensive, and that you don’t need to ‘study art’ to appreciate it. Know anyone who’s just bought/rented/renovated a home? Then make LRA one of your stops to shop at:

Too Darn Hot — TOO DARN HOT
Fine Art Photographic Print | by Vanessa Ho

Kilts to Sarongs: Scottish Pioneers of Singapore by Graham Berry

If there’s a book to be bought this Christmas, this would be it. You’d be interested to know just how much of this wee city was built, way before August 1965, by Scots like James MacRitchie, John Crawford, and other familiar names like Napier, Fullerton, Thomson, Cavanagh, and of course, who can forget Farquhar.

Just a small sample of the street names in Singapore based on Scots and places in Scotland – read abut these and more in Kilts to Sarongs

Posted by Kilts to Sarongs – Scotland and Singapore on Thursday, 19 November 2015

Temasek Clothings

My friends at Temasek Clothings combine great word play with snazzy design on quality t-shirts that will be conversation starters. I’m very happy that their t-shirts are now carried at Naiise, Isetan and Megafash. Another mark of their success is the fact that there are several wannabe fellas who’ve copied their designs and phrases wholesale. Assholes!

Freshly Pressed

Some more on wearables – socks that will rock your socks off! I’m going to get some of these myself, because they are just so nice! And in case you doubt me, there are imitations out there already. Assholes!

That’s it! Happy Shopping and Merry Christmas!

How Cheap Is This Dashcam?

I’ve become that discount-seeking uncle by making my first Groupon purchase: an in-car dashboard camera by this brand called “Chronovski”.

It shoots and records 720p video onto a micro SD card, but I suppose the best feature is that I paid only $29.90 for it.

Here’s a clip from it:

Apple Corner

Anyone who’s been to the ToTT Store in Bukit Timah will know what a kitchen wonderland it is, chock full of appliances we can’t afford, plus an IKEA-style cafeteria that is suspiciously not as crowded as IKEA’s cafeteria.

We had been looking for an apple corer over the weekend, because one of our new projects required coring many apples at a go, and doing it the conventional way would mean at least half a dozen apples going bad before we finished a batch.

We called ToTT, and some friendly chap called Thud (but who spelled his name as “Thad”) very helpfully went around the 36,000sf store and found three types of corers in stock, and said to come down and take a look.

We did, found a Jamie Oliver Twist N Slide Apple Corer, and asked one of Thud’s colleagues for the other two types. They looked it up on their computer and said, “Sorry, it’s the only one”.

We said, “No, your colleague Thad said there were three!”

They said, “Thad? Oh. Thud. Wait, we call him and ask.”, and picked up the phone and said, “Hello? Thud? Gut one customer say you tell dem gut three kind of apple corner, but we cannut pine. Dut’s what we entered: APPLE CORNER. Don’t hub. OK, I look again”.

We bought the Jamie Oliver Twist N Slide in the end.

1076-large — Jamie Oliver cornering an apple

Singapore’s more like China than China

It’s been as busy as we’ve expected this Chinese New Year, and with Kai nursing a new cold (how many do babies get in their first year?), we were expecting even less sleep than usual, and we were right.

That’s not to say we haven’t been enjoying time with our families and relatives jetting in from all parts of Asia.

Our sister-in-law from Shanghai tells us that the only thing about coming to Singapore for the CNY holidays is that when you want to do a spot of shopping on the first or second day of CNY, you’re probably going to be limited to Mustafa’s or a few other smallish shops.

I said that was because Singapore is becoming more like China, as more and more companies seem to be observing more “Chinese traditions” as a result of employing more (Mainland) Chinese workers.

But I’ve now been told that by our good sister-in-law that that’s bunk, and that in Shanghai, most of the shops are open throughout the New Year.

Kitting out baby

I’ve not been too busy to blog, and I blame Twitter.

Even then, I’ve not been twittering properly either. But with that out of the way, we have been busy getting the house ready for our still nameless baby, who arrives in 7 weeks.

We’ve been shopping around but not necessarily buying, and putting things on gift registries so our friends can buy stuff for us that we’ll use.

It’s bewildering (and tiring) for first time parents – the slew of baby monitors, thermometers, carriers, slings, sacks, sleeping bags, full body suits and other gear you wouldn’t expect a newborn baby to need. But they do.

We even saw what I think is a baby astronaut trainer. I could be wrong though – I think I saw buttons for spin dry and gentle washes:

Baby Astronaut Trainer from Benjamin Lee on Vimeo.