Cake in a Can

 The next morning J went out for some coffee before Jane and I met up. On the way, I found a store selling collectibles in the shopping center next door. They had these especially distressing No Garfield figures for purchase:

Jane and I met up at the station closest to her host family, a station called Beauty World after a shopping center nearby. From there we went to Dhoby Ghaut to explore and get some lunch before Jane’s class.

Once there we stopped at Mr. Coconut. Mr. Coconut is a chain that appears to only be in Singapore, that sells coconut shakes where you can customize the ingredients, sweetness, etc. Ordering is all done via touchscreen. Their special offering flavor today was Dino (which we couldn’t figure out). Jane ordered one with Milo (an Australian chocolate beverage powder) and I got a mango one after Jane told me about how great the mangos were. She was right, the mango was very refreshing.

From there, we explored the center. One feature that we decided wouldn’t be permitted in the US is these moving walkways at an angle. They’re like an escalator and a travellator combined, and require standing at a slight angle as you’re carried up or down. We found them in several places.

We also ran into a popup store for Ppulbatu, which sold a variety of plush objects featuring five distinct characters. It turns out Ppulbatu is the set of alter-egos/mascots for a K-pop boy band, TXT. 

Throughout the city are vending machines for almost anything. Each day we come across several machines for items we didn’t know could be sold through a machine, in this case, we came across some that sold cakes in aluminum-can-shaped containers:

There was a Lego store as well. The variety of sets looked to be totally different than what we had seen anywhere else. Which seems to be the case wherever we go to visit a Lego store (and probably has more to do with me not keeping up with the entire range of sets). Among the modern sets for grown-up builders was this one - a standalone reissue of one of the Blacktron series of Space Lego sets from the late 1980s. What a throwback!

After that we found a Photo Booth with a variety of props. They were featuring Squid Game-themed backgrounds for the pictures, which was totally for us!

Jane had to go to class soon after, so I went back to the hotel to take care of some things. We met up later to go to something we had planned for months - a play being performed by a local group, “Singapore, Michigan”. Singapore, Michigan was a real place on the shore of Lake Michigan. As we learned during the show, it thrived for awhile until the great fires of Chicago and Milwaukee. The leaders of Singapore MI harvested virtually all of the timber surrounding their townsite in order to help those cities rebuild. In the process, they exposed the sandy lakeshore soil beneath it. The dunes that formed had swallowed the town within four years, by which point everyone had left. (The town of Singapore MI and its story were only peripheral to the plot, which touched on questions of Singaporean and American identity and was really good.) this turned out to be the last performance of the run, so the director and playwright themselves (both Singaporean) were in the theater, which was cool!

The theater was in this art institute, which had some striking architecture.

The play ended late so we both went home afterwards. Tomorrow is the day Jane moved out of her host family’s home and over to the Hilton!