[EVENT] Swiss Club Open House 2017

The Swiss Club is a family-friendly retreat with access via its very own road, Swiss Club Road. Together with my hubby, Meryl and her siblings, we participated in the Swiss Club Open House to tour the clubhouse and their facilities.

As the clubhouse is rather inaccessible without transport, a free shuttle service was provided looping from Sixth Avenue MRT station Exit A.

Established in 1871, The Swiss Club is one of the oldest and most historic Clubs in Singapore. Photos taken before the guided tour begins.

The first few things that comes to my mind about Swiss would be Chocolate and Swatch watches. Here's a giant one.

The Arbenz is an open-air restaurant offering  authentic Swiss and International cuisine with a view of the Club's surrounding and poolside.

The Rifle Lounge is fully air-conditioned and can be booked for various events, meetings, solemnizations and etc.

At the Guesthouse, there's 13 Rooms with 1 Family Suite attached with a Deluxe Room. All amenities included and breakfast at the Pergola Terrace as well as a 1 day membership per guests per day is included. This is great if your family from overseas is visiting and need a place to stay.

The one and only Padel Court in Singapore. It's somewhat like a sport between Tennis and Squash. The padel court is highly popular in Spain and Argentina and now it's gaining popularity at the Swiss Club too. Seems like a fun sports.

5 astro turf surface Tennis Courts are available for booking.

The annual 5-day Oktoberfest event is held at the soccer field here during mid September.

The fully air-conditioned indoor Multi-Function Sports Hall that comes with a performing area and spectator gallery. 

The leisure pool and lap-pool. Good to know is that helpers can enter and do not need to be members.

They even have a towel dispenser machine.

The specially imported stainless steel signage from Switzerland.

The Pavilion, Gym and they even have a Hair Salon!

Light refreshments provided to us at the end of the tour. We also got to try out Raclette, a Swiss dish whereby the cheese is melted then scrap off onto the serving plates. This comes with Potatos, Gherkins and Cocktail Onion.  

A great and sunny day out to the Swiss Club. Couple look with my hubby.

36 Swiss Club Road

Singapore 288139

[DBS] Beat the queues at Singapore’s eateries with DBS FasTrack

For those working at the CBD area, you would probably have heard or tried before the freshly brewed tea, coffee and other beverages from this very famous Old Tea Hut.

In fact, it's so popular that customers are willing to queue up to an estimate of 24 minutes for their drinks! So this is what happened during the 24 minutes. Customers arrive and join in the queue for about 12 minutes, takes about 2 minutes to place their orders when it's their turn, waits another 5 minutes for their orders to be prepared and finally takes about 5 minutes to complete the payment.

Understanding and personally experiencing this very real problem, a team at DBS has actually came out with a solution known as the DBS FasTrack, that powers several F&B mobile app.  With the mobile app, it allows customers to order and pay ahead therefore significantly reduce waiting time by 70%. Just think about all the things that can be done during this precious time.

Together with some of bloggers, we tried ordering our drinks with the Old Tea Hut App to experience how convenient it is if we ordered using the mobile app compared to the traditional way of ordering which is queuing up and I'm going to share here the whole process.   

1. Search for DBS FasTrack in your Apple or Google app store

A list of restaurant apps will appear. Currently Old Tea Hut, Five Star Restaurant, Old Kim Guan (OKG Express) Koufu (Certain outlets, see notes below) and Boon Tong Kee are among the eateries who have this app, powered by DBS FasTrack that can be downloaded. Download and install the restaurant app that you wish to use, in this case, we are using Old Tea Hut as an example.

More restaurants such as Li Xin Teochew Fishball, Tiong Bahru Bakery, Wolf Burger, Miam Miam, Qi Ji, Aloha Poke, and Food City at Midpoint Orchard are in the pipeline to launch their apps

2. Launch the app and order

Select your order from the list of menu. The staff at DBS highly recommended Salted Lemon, something unique. I ordered a hot Horlicks instead.

3. Cashless Payment

Payment is a breeze and customers can choose to pay using DBS/POSB credit or debit card, or with DBS PayLah!. I paid mine using the DBS PayLah!. All these are done in the comfort of the meeting room at DBS office, MBFC.

4. Receive Notifications when order is ready

A push notification will be sent to you once your order is ready for collection. Only upon receiving this notification, do we leave the office and pop by the store to pick up our order. This is a cool way to beat the queue during rush hour! 

5. Grab and Go

In less than 5 minutes time, I got my Hot Horlicks from the store after flashing the collection slip on my mobile phone. There's a priority collection counter for those who ordered through their mobile app too. We are totally getting the stares from those who are physically in the queue!

I'm a happy customer with my favourite drink in my hand. With DBS FasTrack, I can save the queuing and waiting time to relax and have a proper conversation with my friends. It also saves me the hassle to find small change when paying.

CURRENT PROMOTION

 Koufu at 100 AM mall in Tanjong Pagar and Square 2 in Novena is the first food court in Singapore to use DBS FasTrack. Koufu has plans to expand usage across its outlets, starting with some 100 stalls islandwide. To celebrate DBS FasTrack's official launch, enjoy 10% off ala carte orders via the Koufu app.

For more information, please check out DBS official website at

https://go.dbs.com/2ngtAEO


XOXO

[DBS] Imaginarium@DAX - Building Fine Cuisine and Fine Lives by Enoch Teo + DAX Office Tour

AImaginarium is a community run by like-minded innovators in DBS. A network that provides inspiration and support. The speaker this month is chef Enoch Teo of E & I Food Concepts which was awarded a grant in 2015 by the DBS Foundation as part of its Social Enterprise Grant Programme.

Imaginariums are internal events usually opened for the DBS staff but they happened to extend the invite to the external community this time round and I'm so glad to receive the invitation for this seminar.

Greeted with a hearty breakfast curated by Chef Enoch Teo himself. Having a good breakfast is a good start to the day! E&I Food Concepts is the Company that runs Garcons which sells affordable French Cuisines.

A little background about Chef Enoch Teo. Being a graduate of the Sunrice Global Chef Academy, Enoch discovered his passion in cooking at the young age of 15 when he was working at a zi-char stall. He decided to pursue his interest in French cuisine and has worked at several top restaurants such as Restaurant Andre, Absinthe, The Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore, The Cliff, and Bistro du Vin (by Les Amis Group) before. He was one of the winners of Concours Cuisine at the age of 19. Today, at age 27, he has set up and co-run this social enterprise, E & I Food Concepts with a partner that give a second chance by providing employment, mentorship and training programmes for ex-offenders.

However, before he became who he is now, there's actually a not so glamourous past of him that he shared with us too. Mixed with the wrong company, he dropped out of school at age 14, get involved in gangs and drugs, went into rehabilitation and lost his best friend to drug when they both agreed to turn over a new leaf. He considered himself lucky as his passion in cooking has saved his life.

Now, he feels that his everyday life is like going to the library, not on the knowledge from books kind of learning but more on the practical kind of study in life. By hiring ex-offenders, they provide them a chance to redeem themselves and that hope they need in order not to give up on themselves.

Beside having a social cause in his business, he has also implemented a self-ordering system for menu at the Timbre+ outlet. This is quite an essential innovative move to prevent orders from being taken wrongly due to the loud music playing in the background at that outlet.

A great sharing for the day. It goes to show that no matter what kind of past a person had, if there's a will to change and with some stroke of luck, good timing and meeting the right people, one's life can be changed too.

Shortly after the seminar, we had a short tour of the DBS Asia X (DAX), 1 Fusionopolis View. It's a rather new, modern and open-concept office. How I envy the staff working here. It seems like they are always in a group doing brainstorming together.

The first innovative thing that we were introduced to is this smart fridge from CryoWerx. It's locked and to use this, one have to scan a QR code to unlock the door, once you've grab the food you want, you close the door and payment is automatically deducted when the door close. Was told that many staff were intrigued by this and tried to break the system but failed.

The special corner for those on special projects and only this area has a doors that keeps outsiders away.

Next, we were introduced to the POSB Smart Buddy which is a wearable watch for kids to make payments at school. This allows the parents to manage and monitor their kids spending and savings. This technology is the first in Singapore and is currently on pilot at Anchor Green Primary and St. Joseph Junior.

Another innovation from DBS is this Virtual Assistant called KAI. KAI is a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform that allows consumers to bank "conversationally" with them on Facebook Messenger. The days of conventional logging in to banking mobile app might soon be replace with a simple chats on FB.

This POSB Video Teller Machine (VTM) operates 24/7 and will be launched at multiple locations this April. Customers can perform transactions such as getting a new debit card or internet banking token instantly. Real-time support from a customer service officer via live video-streaming is provided should customers require assistance. Another good initiative to give customers access beyond the banking hours.

 Moving on, is this huge, interactive big screen known as the DBS Location Analytics. This simple interface allows users to understand the micro and macro transaction patterns in different areas of Singapore.

After touring and understanding more about these different initiatives that DBS will be rolling out, I felt really amazed that beside banking, they are constantly improving and innovating themselves. This is indeed in-line with the Smart Nation that Singapore is transiting into. My next post would be on another great DBS innovation called the DBS FasTrack, using mobile app to order and pay for food and receive notification to collect your food. Sounds interesting? Check out my next post.


XOXO

[PERSONAL] Shopping on Qoo10 and Taka Baby Fair

With less than a month to go, I had been doing some last minute shopping as well as packing up for the arrival of my precious baby Rena. This post is just to share some of the essential items I bought online on Qoo10 as well as during the Taka Baby Fair.

MATERNITY UNDERWEAR - QOO10

The seller is really nice to pack my order nicely in a zip-lock bag with a return policy card and the material is soft and comfortable. Most importantly, it's a one size that fits all stages of pregnancy. Thumbs up for this. Bought them at 3 for $8 excluding shipping fee. Will buy them again.

Comfortable and nice packaging

WWW.QOO10.SG

So far, this seller has received quite a lot of positive feedbacks too. For those interested in this item, do check out Happy Maternity at: http://www.qoo10.sg/gmkt.inc/Goods/goods.aspx?goodscode=420854204&sAffiliate=Q101704881 

SPECTRA S9+ PLUS DOUBLE PORTABLE ELECTRIC BREAST PUMP - QOO10

I did some research and finally found this which has the lowest price on Qoo10. The only downside is that since it's couriered over from Korea, all the wordings are in Korean and there's no local warranty. The other point is that the flange size of 28mm is too big for Asian so might have to buy spare parts. Didn't know all these until bestie Lis told me. Do you know there's so many different types of breast pump, you can choose either manual/electric, single/double/hands-free and so many different brands. For me, since I think I would be going out a lot so I choose a portable one which is easier to bring around.

With its sleek design and powerful double electric breast pump, the Spectra S9+ is build for convenience with inbuilt rechargeable battery. The design is much smaller compared to hospital grade breast pump so it's not suitable for heavy use. Due to the close system, this breast pump can be used by multiple women safely and hygienically. Expressing from both breasts together also means saving valuable time especially during work or on-the-go. Sterilize all the parts other than the tubing and membrane. Bought this at $104.90 + Shipping of $9.90.

SHORT CLIP ON WHAT'S INSIDE THE BOX AND HOW TO ASSEMBLE THE SPECTRA S9+ PLUS

Fast delivery and item in working condition

WWW.QOO10.SG

 For those interested to get the Spectra S9+ Plus Double Portable Electric Breast Pump, do check out on Qoo10: http://www.qoo10.sg/gmkt.inc/Goods/goods.aspx?goodscode=420029763&sAffiliate=Q101704881

PHILIPS AVENT BUNDLE SET - TAKA BABY FAIR

Lis informed me of this Taka Baby Fair and I planned to go there alone to buy the Sterilizer. So glad to bump into her and her family there too and they gladly accompanied me to shop. If not I would be so lost as usual and this is quite heavy even to bring to the counter. Thanks Jason for helping me to carry. Luckily, there's free shipping available too, so I don't have to carry all these home by myself and I ended up buying a lot of other things too. Bought this Philips Avent bundle set for $149 (after a $30 further discount) and it consist of the following items.

I think it's quite a good deal as I really need the sterilizer and the warmer. Was told that breast milk cannot be heat up using boiling water, thus would need a warmer to do the job.

BABY MATTRESS - TAKA BABY FAIR

Bought this baby mattress at $26.90 to put on top of the play pen as I'm not so sure if baby like to sleep on the plastic type of material of the play pen. Didn't get the measurement and just bought on impulse, luckily it fits.

PIGEON DETERGENT AND LIQUID CLEANSER - TAKA BABY FAIR

 Was told that baby's skin is very sensitive thus cannot even wash their laundry together with the adults laundry and must use special type of detergent. Same goes for washing their accessories. New-age babies, the old folks would definitely say why need to be so particular? Last time babies also like that survive one what? Well, for the sake of my baby, I think this type of money have to be spent.

Even after I bought all these, there's still seems to be so much items on my shopping list. Gosh. Hope I can get everything ready in time.

XOXO