Singapore is warmer than Auckland

Yeah... A LOT WARMER. Nothing is as depressing as hearing "Ladies and gentleman we are starting our descent into Auckland. We will touch down around 10.38am and hope to have you by the terminal before 10.43am. It's raining at the moment in Auckland with patches of hail and the ground temperature is 7 degrees". In Singapore - the magic number was 33!!!!!!

I went to Singapore last week for work and didn't have much time for anything else. I had a list of yarn and craft shops to visits but only got a quick 2 in. (I'll add my list whenever I find it in my suitcase). The Hobbies & Craft store in the Singapore Handicraft Centre and Golden Dragon had loads of gadets from the Clover brand and a wide variety of yarn. I'm steadily reducing my stash so am off indiscriminate yarn purchasing. Some of the gadgets looked cool but I had no idea what they were for plus price wise it was all pretty standard - no bargins for me!

The biggest bonus of my job as a reinsurance broker is eating and drinking. Entertaining is a large part of the role so restuarants are my favourite haunt but I do get away with some lovely bars, cafes and pubs. The posh Chinese restuarant "Si Chuan Dou Hua" in the UOB building was a good this time with a long, multiple course lunch (although it did include REAL shark fin soup which I struggle with on an ethical basis) and dinner at a steak house "Ulura" one evening in Duxton Hill was lovely too. I also caught up with a friend, KL, and she took me to a fab Myanmar restuarant. To top this foodie heaven off, through sheer good luck, I managed to get a free upgrade to first class - so Dom Perignon and Krug bubbles all the way! I nearly peed myself with excitment and kept asking them to check it was ok before I ordered another glass of Dom. I'm sure this was karma's way of easing the pain earlier in the week when I spent $1,400 on a crown for molar #26.

A quick trip to Singapore always provides me weird and wonderful eating expereinces and the top 10 this trip were:

1. Eating cold jellyfish head with chilli sauce

2. Drinking $14 bottles of Heinken @ the Highlander whiskey bar

3. Eating cold, giant mushroom slices the size of luncheon sausage

4. Eating pickled tealeaf salad with raw garlic & chilli, lentils, peanuts and dried prawns (pictured below)

5. Closely followed by the Pennywort leaf salad and duck curry

6. The Clinic Bar in Boat & Clarke Quay - complete with operating theatre lamps, booze drip chairs and gold wheelchairs for seats

7. Sipping hot green tea served by tea-boys from copper pots with 1m+ long spouts - scary as hell but they are so precise! The length of the pour the better the tea-boy and the cooler your cup of tea is. Pretty similar to the Indian method of drawing a cup from very high.

9. Drinking Dom Perignon 2000, Krug and The Gaffer Shiraz 2005 in First Class with the man next to me reading his bible the whole way, frowning at me through his diet coke

10. Drinking not-so-sweet tamarind juice

Hey, did anyone see the knitting weekly magazine that's started up this week - $3.99 or $9.99 normally - looks good for beginners. Oh and has anyone read a copy of World Sweet World - new NZ creative mag out now - I've ordered the first 2 copies?