Singapore malls seem to be split into two distinct families. One type, generally the ones located near MRT stations or hubs, tend to be large and tall buildings, sometimes interconnected with each other, are what I call sterilized.. they’re clean and shiny and pristine and full of big-name, “safe” chain stores, to the point that there’s very little variant between many of the stores in them — there are dozens of these malls, but once you’ve visited 3 or 4 of them, you’ve seen about 75% of the stores that you will find in any other given mall. These malls are apparently called REIT malls, or Real Estate Investment Trust malls.

And then you have a second type of mall, often smaller ones tucked further away from train stations, which are more.. independent. Full of eclectic stores that sell odd things, often the only branch of said store to exist, packed full of specialty goods in order to make maximum use of their cheaper retail space, and occasionally these malls will even become themed over time so a lot of similar businesses will set up there to try to become a one-stop shop for a particular kind of good. For example, the electronics mall i visited a couple days ago. I’ve also since seen a mall full of beauty services, one full of vegetarian eateries, and I’ve heard of one full of sporting good somewhere as well.

I find this mall culture really unique and interesting! And depending on what you are looking for, both serve a different purpose and can be equally useful and interesting. For me though, as an explorer, the second type definitely calls out to me more.

Anyway, I eventually picked up my desired shirt from the uniform shop, which turned out to be a small,  nondescript, roadside warehouse-like shop with a sliding door that I had trouble opening and closing. I simply named the school, the shirt colour (Team Spica’s shirt was the green one), and my size, and walked out of there with a shirt for $7.59 with no questions asked.

There was no visible school name on it or anything, which made it perfect! I’m not going to wear it around Singapore because the shirt is recognizable enough that it would cause confusion and disrespect to the actual school and students here, but I definitely would see no problem with wearing this around the house or even outdoors back home in Canada, or if I ever get to go to Japan to study or something.

After purchasing this, I started to make my way home to dump off my loot bag, as I planned to go down to Dunman High in the afternoon and felt it would be very disrespectful to bring another school’s attire along with me. On the way, I wandered through a REIT shopping centre next to Paya Lebar MRT Station named Paya Lebar Quarter, or PLQ Mall. On the top level of the mall, I noticed a bunch of claw machines from a company called Funclaw:

In particular, I saw this claw machine with very winnable and cute plushies (picture taken after I had already won the plushie, who was lodged up on the right of the chute on top of the mountain of other plushies there, right around where the grey one was):

It was winnable because the plushies in that machine were stacked so high up that even if the claw was rigged to drop the plushie due to the grip losing force, there was a good chance the plushie would be able to bounce into the chute from the impact of the drop anyway. I put down $5 for 6 tokens. as it cost $1 per play but gave bonus tokens if you bought them in bulk. But I easily nabbed my target plushie with my 3rd token:

He’s too cute. He’s a sleeping Tiger Cat, so I named him Napatak (Nap Attack), and will feature him in a future Plushie of the Week.

I still had three other tokens to go, and didn’t really see anything else that I wanted to try to win. I tried to give my tokens away to a mom whose kid was ogling the claw machines, but she turned me down, saying that she was no good at them. In the end, I gave them away to a pair of guys who had spent over $20 on tokens while I was there, and they were very thankful for that. They told me that they had noticed me winning the plushie earlier and that I must be very good at claw machines, I just said that the plushie I won happened to be right on top of the others so it was an easy grab!

Moving onward, I also saw other giant plushies on the way home:

And stopped off at a juice store by Eunos MRT Station:

This was a Large Avocado Gula Melaka with Fresh Milk, cost a whopping $6, and was something I had never heard of before. Gula Melaka is apparently some kind of palm sugar or palm sap. I didn’t dislike it but I didn’t like it either. It didn’t really taste like anything I ever had before, like a weird blend of tastes that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be sweet or savoury, but it certainly wasn’t worth $6 to me.

I rested for a little while in my nice, lovely, air-conditioned room, before braving the heat-drenched city again. This time though, I brought along my umbrella that I had bought in Mustafa the day before. I couldn’t decide if its primary use was to be a parasol or an actual rain umbrella, I suspect the former even though the store label said the latter. But it was nice and broad and worked great as a parasol too. I made my way over by bus toward my former secondary school.