Graffiti in Clifton Street Car Park

This is the kind of vibes in Hoxton.

Charlotte Road

 

Another example of the vibes of Hoxton. It makes me feel safe.

Hotel Review: The Hoxton Hotel

I stay at room 108 (a double room) of The Hoxton Hotel from 29 to 31 January, 2010. The first night costs 99 pounds while the second night costs 129 pounds.

The Good:

1. Stylish interior (pictured left).

2. Friendly staff.

3. Good location. The hotel is situated in Shoreditch, perhaps still the most edgy part of London. The Hoxton Square (where the White Cube contemporary art gallery is located with other trendy bars and cafes around) is within a few minutes by walk. Ten minutes or more take you to Brick Lane, the place to go for boho types (and Bengali curry lovers). For access to central London, Old Street tube station is five minutes away by walk. After the tube stops running at half past midnight, you can go back to the hotel from the city center by night bus easily (N35 from Tottenham Court Road, N55 from Oxford Circus, 243 from Aldwych).

4. The bed room is equipped with the not-so-touristy list of places to go in the Shoreditch area, which is also available on the website.

5. Not only is the Wireless broadband access available for free but also you don't need to enter any password to obtain access. Simple is the best.

6. Breakfast at the restaurant in the lobby, The Hoxton Grill (pictured above), is superb, if a bit pricey. I tried full breakfast (which includes black pudding) on the first morning. Even baked beans (which I don't really like) tasted good. I had pancake and bacon with maple syrup in the second morning. I expected an American pancake, but it was better than that. While the center part of pancakes is soft, the edge of pancakes is crispy and soaked in maple syrup. Yummy. For freshly squeezed juice, they serve not only orange juice (which every hotel does) but also pink grapefruit juice and watermelon juice. If you don't have time for breakfast or don't want to spend money, don't worry. A banana, a cup of yogurt, and freshly squeezed orange juice can be ordered for free at your preferred time. Since the bed room is equipped with an electric kettle (the common sense in UK but unfortunately not in other countries), Twinings tea bags (not Earl Grey or stupid flavored tea but proper black tea), and fresh milk in the fridge, you can have a hearty cup of milk tea right after you wake up, too. Very nice.

7. Two bottles of mineral water and a bottle of fresh milk are available in the fridge for free every day. There are no other unnecessary drinks in the fridge. But who need them? The front desk sells them for those who really need them.

8. The wake-up call can be snoozed once. (There's no alarm clock in the room.)

9. The soap bar provided in the bathroom smells very nice.

10. The dryer is provided in the bed room by default (in the desk drawer).

11. There are four electric sockets above (not below) the desk. One for the kettle, one for your laptop, one for your mobile phone charger, and still there's one extra.

12. Even though the ground floor lobby becomes a noisy bar after dark, bed rooms on the first floor remain quiet.

13. Wittiness. The invoice is entitled with "THE DAMAGE". On the bed room door, the instruction to use the safety box is entitled "Boring message number five" (I failed to find other four messages) and declares that they spend 175 pounds (if I remember correctly) for the safety box. The "Don't Disturb" door hanger instead reads: "Go Away."

The Bad:
Slightly tricky to arrive from airports except if you fly in to Gatwick (then you simply go to London Bridge station by train and change to the Northern Line for Old Street station).

The Ugly:

Nothing in particular.


Verdict: For a weekend city break in London, this is the ideal hotel for you.

Miso-marinated sea bass at The Engineer

The Engineer is a gastropub (a pub serving quality foods) located near Primrose Hill in London. Wallpaper City Guide London 2010 doesn't say much about foods when it introduces restaurants in London. It mostly talks about stylish decor. For The Engineer, however, it does mention quality foods that they serve.

Usually, the Wallpaper City Guide does describe what kind of foods each listed restaurant offers. For its London version, however, it seems difficult to praise foods offered by restaurants. :)

When I looked at its menu online, dishes are reasonably priced. So I picked this pub as a venue for dinner with a Japanese friend of mine.

Unfortunately, the meals that I have are not very great. However, the one that my friend orders---miso-marinated sea bass, bok choi, mash, soy & sherry sauce (17 pounds or 19.5 euro)---is superb. To our surprise, the taste of miso matches very well with mash. What's more, gari (thinly-sliced ginger pickled in sugar and vinegar, usually served with sushi in Japan) is hidden in the mash, and again, the sweet and sour taste of gari matches very well with miso and mash. This dish takes miso to another level. These days it's not that difficult to find an interesting European interpretation of Japanese food ingredients (for example, at Ljunggren in Stockholm). But it is rare to find a successful one.

By the way, the interior of The Engineer is decorated with flowery wallpapers (in Scandinavian taste, I would say). After dark, however, it's difficult to see them as the room is dimly lit. It's perhaps better to visit this place for lunch.

Camper Regent Street

Visiting Camper's flagship store in London at 207-209 Regent Street is a joy. Opened on September 25, 2009, the Spanish shoe brand's shop is designed by Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka. Customers trying on shoes sit on his critically-acclaimed "Bouquet by Moroso" chairs made of paper tissues of reddish colors. One side of the wall is also covered with crimson paper tissues. Amazingly, Yoshioka's design is well matched with our common image of Spain, where Camper comes from. The place is perhaps the most delightful and thoughtful shoe store in the world.

 

V&A Medieval and Renaissance Gallery

The much-hyped medieval and renaissance gallery, opened last December, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (aka V&A) indeed beautifully showcases European design from the Middle Ages. Or I should not use the term "showcase" because they do much more than simply putting items in showcases.

Enter the museum from Cromwell Road and take the staircases on the right downstairs. Here you learn Romanesque and Gothic styles of design visually, because the first thing you will see is:

Then in the next room you encounter:

 

Like other newly-renovated galleries such as The Jameel Gallery on Islamic art and The Dorothy and Michael Hintze Galleries on sculpture, the V&A is very good in this gallery, too, at displaying objects in a way that enhances their attractiveness: 

Go upstairs to the ground floor. There the V&A has transformed the gallery space into a medieval court yard with the glass roof letting the sunlight fall. The view from the first floor balcony (pictured right) is elegant. 

The first floor gallery rooms feature Renaissance art. Here I do feel a completely different atmosphere, and I personally find it uneasy. The Renaissance style is too well-organized. It even feels a bit pretentious. That's my personal take, but it also means that the V&A succeeds in transforming the general theme underlying Renaissance into the gallery's vibes before explaining what Renaissance is about in words.

Before encountering the V&A during my life in London, I didn't understand the merit of visiting museums at all. The V&A changed my idea of a museum completely. They display objects as if they were decorating the living room. They present the whole gallery space as something pleasant to stay in. That helps visitors really appreciate the displayed objects. If you hate museums, think again when it comes to the V&A.

Skogskyrkogården in winter

Last summer I visited Skogskyrkogården. I visit the Woodland Cemetery again today, when the temperature has been below zero for the past one month or so. It turns out that the Cemetery completely changes its face in winter, perhaps more beautiful and thoughtful.

All the white LED-illuminated trees in Tokyo become a lame once you see all these trees.

And I understand why Erik Gunnar Asplund designed the cemetery as the woods. With tall trees looking down tomb stones, the bereaved who visit this cemetery realize that, no matter how sad their loss is, it is a small, integral part of nature, the fact that helps them accept the loss.

 When I look up, the view looks as if I were watching an abstract painting.

 

Pictured above: The sidewalk on the road connecting the Cemetery and the metro station

Verner Panton

(The photo taken from Excite Ism)

I didn't know who Verner Panton was. But this Danish interior designer is apparently one of the must-know persons in the history of design, and the picture above (used in the flyer for the exhibition held at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery until today) is intriguing enough for me to decide to visit the Gallery just one hour before the closing time.

Skipping the first section on the biography of Verner Panton and his early works on display (which I think is a bit boring way of introducing the whole exhibition), the corn chairs and other geometrically-shaped chairs catch my eyes:
(The photo taken from Excite Ism)

Using the inverted circular cone as a chair is the idea Panton came up with back in 1958. It is actually a functional idea. A circular cone has a flat surface that can be used as a seat and the cone part can be used as a support for the chair.

This obsession with a chair that doesn't have a standard form culminates into the Panton Chair (the photo to the right, taken from Wikipedia):

This chair is familiar to me because I often have lunch by sitting on this chair at the cafe in my Stockholm workplace. The exhibition tells visitors that Panton invented the concept in 1965. Technology at that time did not allow the concept to materialize in the commercially viable form. Only in the early 1990s, plastic materials became sturdy enough to realize this chair shape durable for a long time. Usually, people whose idea is too advanced are only cherished in history. In the case of Panton, we can appreciate his idea in real time, for example, at the cafe in my workplace.

What really blows my mind, however, is his talent in space design. The exhibition replicates two installations he produced back in 1970. The first is Phantasy Landscape, shown in the picture at the top of this blog entry which does not really tell what this is about. It's a cave-like structure made of foam rubber. Visitors can sit down, lie down, and even sleep. What strikes me is that this space makes people look happy. When I enter into this cave, quite a few people are sitting, chatting, and sleeping. The crowd usually looks a bit annoying and can be intimidating. Here in this cave these people look beautiful. This is an installation that comes to fruition when it interacts with people, a very popular idea for today's art installation. But Panton did this almost 40 years ago.

The second mind-blower is 3-D Carpet "Wave". A huge red carpet that has wave-like humps, which can be used as a chair, a sofa, or a pillow. Visitors sit down and lie down on their back on this carpet to watch a film on Verner Panton on the wall screen. The view of this installation is again a very pleasant experience. People apparently enjoy it. You feel it by looking at their faces. And I myself enjoy chilling on a wave-hump.

Some nightclubs and bars should adopt these two spaces designed by Panton. Actually, some of the other spaces produced by Panton appear to have influenced the design of some nightclubs and bars today. The decor of Cocoon in Frankfurt and Zouk in Singapore, I believe, has some traces of his design, if not intentional.

On the way home, I read a giveaway leaflet for this exhibition. I learn the following behind-the-curtain episode. Directed by the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, the exhibition has been on the world tour since 2000. However, the Tokyo version is curated quite differently from the earlier exhibitions in other countries. While Panton's works were on display chronologically and often in the same room in those earlier exhibitions, Ichiro Katami and Uichi Yamamoto, the directors for the Tokyo exhibition, thought such a way of exhibition wouldn't be effective enough to deliver Panton's pursuit of fantasy space to visitors. Consequently, at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, they split the exhibition space into several separated booths each of which represents different philosophies Panton embodied into his works. Plus, the 3-D Carpet replica was made specially for this Tokyo exhibition. In other words, people in other countries who visited this exhibition were unable to experience that happy atmosphere.

Another reason to believe that Tokyo is the world's most interesting city.

Changi Airport

Singapore's Changi Airport deserves a few praises.

1. Wireless broadband internet is available for free of charge. (All the airports in the world should follow suit). To get a logging-in detail, go to the information desk with your passport.

2. Unlike other airports, departing passengers in Terminal 3 first go through the passport control and, after walking a lot to the boarding gate, go through the security checkpoint located in front of a group of boarding gates. It is a clever idea to reduce the notorious congestion at the security checkpoint all the other major airports suffer from.

3. After going through the passport control in Terminal 3, there is a food court for you to taste the last Singaporean cuisine (located in Transit Mall Level 3). Prima Taste Kitchen serves a wide variety of Singaporean cuisine with its famous (a bit pricey though) ready-to-cook sauce kit for each dish on the shelf for your souvenir. You won't end up leaving Singapore with the last meal being a sandwich.

4. The interior design is quite pleasant:

Terminal 3 checking-in area (above); A waiting lounge for boarding gates (right)

Hotel Review: HangOut@Mt.Emily

During my stay in Singapore from 18th to 24th December 2009, Room 408 at HangOut@Mt.Emily is where I sleep. The room rate for a double room is 98.85 Singaporean dollars (about 50 euro) per night.

The Good:
Wireless broadband connection for free.

Breakfast is included in the room charge.

Very friendly staff.

Stylish minimalist decor.

Washing machines and dryers available on the second floor. 5 Singaporean dollars for a wash and another 5 Singaporean dollars for a dry. You can buy a packet of detergent for 6 Singaporean dollars at the reception. This helps me a lot as I lost my luggage on the way to Singapore, and my clothes need to be washed with cold water and should not be tumble-dried (ie. washing on my own allows me to choose the appropriate way of washing them).

The Bad:
You need to switch on the boiler in the bedroom and wait for 15 minutes to take a hot shower.

No hand towel is provided. (Bath towels and floor towels only.)

Housekeepers rarely change your towels for environmental reasons. Which in itself is fine, but you cannot expect which towel will be replaced tomorrow.

The naming convention at this hotel is a bit confusing. For example, the reception is called "Help Out". "Veg Out" is a second-floor communal space with a TV set, a pool table, vending machines for snacks and soft drinks, complimentary coffee and tea, a small library, and internet terminals. The seventh floor is called "Look Out", which is a roof-top garden.

I cannot turn off the noisy air-conditioner in my bedroom (I have to wear earplugs to sleep).

Every time I put the room key card into the slot for room electricity, the room temperature setting for the air-conditioner is reset to 22 degrees Celsius (which is too cold for me).

Breakfast ends in 9:30 am. (Cheap places to eat are located within a 5 minutes walk, though.)

The hotel location is slightly inconvenient. It's located at the top of a hill. You have to climb the stairs either from Mount Emily Road or from Wilkie Road. (The signage is clear enough, though.) The nearest metro station is Little India, 7 minute walk away. Taxi drivers do not know where this hotel is.

The safety box available at the reception (or Help Out) is very small (although in Singapore you don't really need to worry about theft in the hotel room; plus, access to each floor requires a guest room key).

The Ugly:
Nothing in particular.

Verdict:
As a budget hotel for back-packer types, you cannot expect more than this hotel. If you're used to more luxurious hotels, however, this hotel is not your option.

A strange view at a supermarket in Singapore

I didn't know there exists chicken that's black.

Fashion for youngsters in Singapore

To my surprise, Singaporean girls do not follow one particular trend in fashion. Each of them wears whatever they want to wear, it seems. For one thing, the tropical climate that ensures temperature of at least 20 degrees Celsius throughout the year constrains the variety of wearable clothes. For another, a bit like London, Singapore is a multi-cultural society that makes it difficult for one particular style to be popular for everyone.

After visiting several shopping malls on and off Orchard Street, the most fashion-conscious girls appear to flock Far East Plaza. A variety of numerous budget boutiques each of which presents different styles are housed in a rather outdated decor of the shopping mall. Inside the mall and on the way to Far East Plaza on Scotts Road from the crossing with Orchard Road, you see distinctive-looking (by Singaporean standards) teenagers one of whom I take picture of (see above).

The Heeren shopping mall on Orchard Road offers more of a cheap imitation of Tokyo's latest fashion. Far East Plaza seems to me more interesting.

An example of multi-cultural Singapore

Far East Plaza, the shopping mall popular for fashion-conscious teens, has a restaurant called Sakura Cuisine that serves halal Thai Chinese foods. (Sakura is a Japanese word for cherry blossom.) I see a queue of head-scarfed girls in front of the restaurant.

Foods in Singapore

The biggest attraction of Singapore is a wide variety of foods. Chinese and Indian cuisines meet each other with local Malay twists. Various local Chinese cuisines (including Sichuan hotpot to mutton soup from northen China) are also available. Plus, the influx of foreigners from various countries expands the range of options available from proper Western cuisine to Burmese (see this post). Stylish cafe chains from other countries in East Asia open their branch in Singapore: Trung Nguyen Coffee from Vietnam serving Vietnamese coffee; Emperor Love from Taiwan serving green tea.

The restaurant scene appears to be changing quite quickly. If you wonder which restaurant to go, check out Hungrygowhere to read reviews by gourmet Singaporeans. Below are Singaporean meals that I managed to try during my stay. There are, however, much more in Singapore. (I couldn't try chili crab, for example.)

Chicken Rice: Slowly boiled chicken and rice cooked in the resulting chicken broth. Yummy.

Laksa: A spicy noodle soup. Both Time Out and Wallpaper* city guides for Singapore praise 328 Katong Laksa as the best restaurant for laksa, but it's not really worth traveling all the way to East Coast Road, half an hour bus ride from the city center. If you still want to try this place, beware that its address is no longer 328 East Coast Road. It's 216 East Coast Road.



Kway Teow: Stir-fried noodle in Malay style.

Black carrot cake: Stir-fried daikon (Japanese radish) with soy-sauce. There is a white version that's without soy-sauce.







Fish head curry: See this post.

I also had Kueh Pie Tee, Otah, and Popiah, all of which are more of snack foods.

I'm quite impressed by the depth of Singaporean cuisine.

Night Safari

One of the famous tourist attractions in Singapore is Night Safari. Open only in the evening (7:30 pm to midnight), this night-time zoo without any cage lets visitors watch nocturnal animals around the world as if they were living wild.

With an experience of watching wild animals in Botswana two years ago, however, Night Safari is disappointing to me. The animal show is a bit of lame; waiting for more than half an hour isn't really worthwhile. Visitors can explore the zoo by riding on a tram with a guide talking non-stop about animals in sight on either side of the tram line. My complaint is that the tram is too noisy to feel the atmosphere of tropical rainforest. The tram does not stop at each view of animals, making it hard to take photo; as the flash is prohibited, you need to stand still for a while to take picture so the camera lens collect sufficient amount of light.

Having said that, Singapore's Night Safari is a well-designed zoo worth visiting if you know what to expect (and if you haven't seen wild animals in Africa). Don't waste time by watching the animal show. Don't take the tram. Walk on your own. And wish yourself luck so you will encounter animals by chance.

Although there are places to eat inside Night Safari, the best way is to have early dinner in the city center and head for the Safari by taxi (about 20 Singaporean dollars one way) on weekdays, when there are less visitors.

Expo MRT Station

Designed by Foster and Partners.

Expo station is the first stop on the MRT line (Singapore's metro) from Changi Airport. To appreciate the architecture, you do need to get off the train. With your heavy suitcase, it's a bit burdensome. On the other hand, traveling all the way from the city center (about 30 minutes) to see this Sir Norman Foster's creation may not be worthwhile unless you are a Foster fan.

Assyafaah Mosque

(Clockwise from top left: the front facade; the prayer room; the view from the entrance hall towards the prayer room with a praying boy standing)

Fourteen percent of Singaporeans are Muslim Malays. As a result, you frequently encounter mosques throughout the city (often next to Hindu and/or Buddhist temples). Assyfaah Mosque (pictured above) is probably the most innovative among those.

The mosque is located in the northern part of Singapore, off the beaten track for tourists. Take the MRT North South Line (the red route on the Singaporean metro map) and get off at Sembawang station. Walk a bit to the east from the station and turn left to go up along Canberra Road. After a five minute walk, the Road starts curving towards right. The back facade of the mosque will then appear on your left. (As of December 2009, Google Map's location for the mosque is 250 meters off, by the way.)

The arabesque front facade may attract the most attention, but personally, the beauty of this mosque lies in the prayer hall. After taking off your shoes and walking through a rather low-ceiling entrance hall, a vertically spacious room appears with an inward-sloping pitch-white wall inscribed with Arabic letters as if they were part of contemporary minimalist furniture design. The space creates a tranquil atmosphere, letting visitors remember that Islam is a tolerant religion. As a non-Muslim, I still feel comfortable to stay inside the mosque for a while.

Although in front of the building rises a stand-alone brown spire with the crescent moon and star symbol, there is neither a minaret in the traditional form nor a dome. People in Switzerland may be happy with this mosque.

The mosque is designed by Forum Architects from Singapore. Who talks about lack of creativity among Singaporeans?