Amazing weekend

Hi friends.. it's been a while.. I had a busy rest of the week.. and a really great weekend.. It's Monday night, and I'm exhausted, but I wanted to pop in and share some words and some pictures with you guys and just say hello.

I spent this past weekend doing a collection of totally awesome things.. Friday night, I went to dinner at a great tapas restaurant near my house called Foodbar Dada.. it was delicious and cozy.. The amuse was a clam on a potato chip, and we ordered anchovies, grilled octopus over something creamy (polenta? potato puree?), and sea bass over potatoes.

Saturday, I went to the Laneway Music Festival!  This year it was held at Gardens by the Bay, and the weather was sunny and gorgeous.  I had a great time hanging out on the lawn and chatting with friends while we got to listen to some great music.

Beautiful day.. beautiful stage

All day.. all night

Sunday featured a late brunch, Djokovic - Murray, dinner on Arab Street, and Thaipusam.  I live near the temple where Thaipusam ends, so I wandered down to take a look.  It was pretty intense.  I saw some guys coming through the end of their march, and I actually watched them take all the needles and stuff out of one guy.  It basically made my stomach hurt the whole time.  It was hard enough for me to watch them take the needles out.. I can't imagine being at the start of the parade and seeing them put the needles in!!

One other fun thing to share with you from the end of last week.. I went to hot pot!!!  Over here, they call it steamboat, but it will always be hot pot to me.  Hot pot has always been one of my favorite cold weather meals to have with my mom, and although it is obviously not cold in Singapore, it was still a fun thing to do.  

We got to pick two different broths to cook our food in.  Basically, there was a buffet of ingredients set up in the restaurant, and you go and pick whatever you want.  The tricky thing was that nothing was really labeled, so we were basically just guessing haha.  Probably not the best strategy, but oh well!

Veggies, meats, noodles, and an assortment of fish balls :)

One spicy broth, one non-spicy broth

Hope everyone has a great week.. can you believe this is the last week of January?!  I know I say it all the time, but really - time is such a tricky thing!