On our day trip to Lucerne, we had lunch at this young, hip pasta joint called Pastarazzi. 

Over the weekend I caught the Japanese animated film, Children of the Sea (2019).

What's it about: Ruka, a petulant child, dreads her summer holidays because she has no friends. At the aquarium where her dad works, she encounters two boys that were raised by dugongs. Ruka then embarks on a watery trip of a lifetime.

The film deals with themes like the cosmic realm and birth. While not completely comprehensible to me, the animation was breathtakingly gorgeous.

Enjoy dynamic scenes of ocean creatures and absolutely stunning landscapes. The quality of visuals and details are off the charts! If I'm not wrong, there's a mix of 2D and CG work in this film. 

Beautiful animation and amazing 'bullet' perspective work too!

Ridiculously gorgeous palette and skies.

Lovely streets of Japan. The vibrant reds and greens will always remind me of Spirited Away.

Had to include this scene - the little boy figurine holding the ice cream is too cute. 

I just had one of the most meaningful and productive mornings in a long while! Let me tell you about it.

Recently I've been feeling stuck. I tried various methods like sleeping more, or doing more, to try to feel less lethargic, but to no avail. Cycling through different projects didn't seem to help either.

Now, regular volunteering has been something that I have been wanting to do, but it has always been on the back burner due to work commitments (and other excuses).

In my mind there are just so many things I need to accomplish! I want to improve my guitar skills, learn coding, learn drawing with my free time. Well, sometimes it does happen but more often than not, the free time is eventually squandered (usually to doom-scrolling?).

So yesterday night, I decided that since I'm not getting anything done, I might as well use this time to accomplish something more useful! 

I went ahead and signed myself up via the e-portal  for a volunteering session at Willing Hearts, which by the way, has moved to a new location at 1 Lorong J Telok Kurau, Singapore 425792.

This is my first time helping out at their new address.

(You can read about my First Time Volunteering at Willing Hearts too if you like)

Previously I only got to work with preparing vegetables. Today I got to do so many different tasks! 😆

First up, let's suit up!

1. Scan the QR code at the piano area to check in if you want to register your hours. 
2. You can put your belongings at a metal rack in the vegetable cutting area.
3. Put your hair in the disposable hairnet, wear an apron (disposable or cloth), and put on gloves.

At about 8.30a.m., we packed rice, minced meat and vegetables into rectangular plastic boxes for delivery. 

• Collect huge tray of rice
• 'Cut up/mince' and scoop meat
• Scoop veggies
• Cover tightly with plastic lid
• Pack and it's ready for delivery!

Sounds simple enough but when you're preparing thousands of these... it's not as breezy as it seems! WH serves 11,000 meals a day! Isn't that amazing?

The packing room seems to be the most well ventilated so far, with a large fan in the middle. There's even radio music to listen to while packing. We had three efficient stations so time flew by quickly. 

Soon some of us were called to help at different stations. Some of us ladies were tasked to cut open packages of sliced ham and separate them into single pieces for easy assembling. There was a lot!!!! of ham. 

While preparing the ham slices, I couldn't help but feel like I was preparing food for a buffet. Kitchen staff are really such heroes! If you ever entertained thoughts of working in kitchen (maybe because you play Overcooked like me, or watch too many episodes of Gordon Ramsey), you can maybe experience a tiny sliver of kitchen staff life here.

The kitchen area is definitely much warmer, so I was glad to move to a different part of the place once we were done with the task. 

Next, we prepared food for steaming. Some cooked rice has already been portioned out by the earlier batch of volunteers (who start at 5am!!!), so now we have to:

1. Put vegetables (broccoli, cailan etc) in the box of uncooked rice. 
2. Add water.
3. Stir.
4. Add the meat (minced meat or 3 slices of ham).
5. Close the plastic boxes.
6. Load them onto the huge trolley.

If you are keen to volunteer, visit https://willinghearts.org.sg/ for more information!

Love,

Skye

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland. We found it to be a pretty mix of historical architecture and modern amenities. We did a lot of chocolate shopping here and also visited the Swiss National Museum* (free if you have the Swiss Travel Pass).

Food wise, there are more options other than the usual meat/potato/cheese kind of western fare. There's Asian food, Italian and Mediterranean too.

In a previous post, I shared about the cheese fondue we ate in Gruyères. What we ate in Zurich is decidedly less traditional. Here are 4 places we ate at!

To be honest I had low expectations but the juicy beef patty in the hamburger really exceeded my expectations! Also enjoyed the flavours in the hamburger. Simple but it works. You can probably skip the Buttermilk Chicken burger though, there's nothing too special about it. Guess it's true then, that cow products are just simply irresistibly good in Switzerland!

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Cafe Henrici

Niederdorfstrasse 1, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland

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This last place I want to tell you about is Cafe Henrici. It is located at the Old Town of Zurich. 

To be honest we didn't notice this cafe despite walking past it several times. It looks quite simple and nondescript. But after some research we headed there because they had quite an extensive menu of coffee, drinks, pastries, mains and dessert and opened pretty early!

Inside, the decor was inviting and cosy. There were wall paintings and little nooks with coffee books (in German). 

We ordered an iced latte, a blueberry muffin and chanced upon this page of Tarte Flambée, a type of French dish. 

You know us. Our curiosity was piqued. We ordered it.

And we were rewarded. Turns out a Tarte Flambée resembles a thin crust pizza. We chose the 'Champion' tarte, and enjoyed avocado and paprika!

It felt very luxurious and satisfying to be having this for early brunch. 

The cart offers both sweet and savoury crepes. Sweet crepes include lemon and sugar, apple sauce, and chocolate. 

We ordered the cheese and spinach flavour (kase and spinat). This crepe cost us about $11CHF. 

There were benches around the cart so we just ate in the little square. Ah, the joy of a hot, floppy crepe. The cheese is extremely melty too. You also have an option of topping your crepe with Paprika (and salt?). For some reason this made the crepe kind of salty, so we started to think of paprika as the Western version of MSG. (lol)

Extra notes:

I also think that if you have a chance, maybe dine by the waterfront! For us, the weather would abruptly become drizzly by the time we wanted to do that so we missed our opportunity to do so. I think it would such a nice experience though. It is truly as they say, Switzerland is as picturesque as it comes.

Ending notes:

As you know, my Swiss travels have long ended and I'm making these blogposts back in Singapore. Do I miss Switzerland? Yes. 

Covid-19 has basically been a dampener on all travel desires and this mood has been sustained for two whole years (and more.) I can see how 'revenge travel' is a thing. Well, I hope to have a chance to travel again! 

Love, 

Skye
P.S. New posts every Wednesday.