Dadi's and the East Coast Park

(from Tammy Chin)

This week has been great. My work in the lab is going well. We had some good results today and my supervisor offered to buy me icecream, but of course I refused her gesture. The principal investigator of our lab brought us all Dragonfruit from the Duke-NUS GMS building today. There are plenty of new faces at work. An NUS honors student is spending some time here working on antiviral strategies for Dengue.

Over the weekend I went to East Coast Park with a hall mate from India. East Coast Park is known for its nice scenery and pathways and its delectable seafood. Everywhere you look there are people running, biking, and rollerblading. They even have underpasses with ramps to suit bicycles. The first thing we saw was a cable ski park, which I had never seen until then. We had Singapore's famous chili crab, and although we had a hilarious time trying to pry it open, the food was amazing. On the way back to our residence, we passed many prisons. They are all strategically located on the edge of the island, near the international airport. We saw a sign for a women's prison and talked about how the conditions inside must be unfortunate.

Yesterday, we went to eat at a place serving North Indian Cuisine called Dadi's, located right by a Cheese Prata Shop. The Cheese Prata Shop has been continually trying to shut down Dadi's because of its increasing popularity. Dadi's does not legally have a right to let people sit down and eat, and there are illegal workers inside. An inspector from the government had come that night to take pictures of the place, and the owners were pretty nervous. They made most people take away their food, and many workers were told to hide. The whole situation was confusing for Mary and I, especially at the beginning when we had no idea what was going on. The food was delicious, though, and we hope the place doesn't shut down. We had sweet lassi, mutter paneer, and palak chicken. Yum.