Furama - Phone but No Phone

One additional item about the Furama is the phone service. If you have an international calling card, which has local a access number for Singapore (as most do), you'll be happy to find that you are unable to dial direct from your room. (This is, of course, only a problem if you have a working phone to begin with.) If you have a working phone, then you are obliged to call the operator/front desk to put you through. But it's not that simple. They have to call you back, and then put you through. Further, they don't usually pick up within 10 rings, nor do they call you back right away. I think they have 1 staff after midnight.

Might stay at the Swisshotel next time (former Westin, I hear).

Had some really good sushi tonight, in the Swisshotel, at Inagiku. SGD 90 for a sushi deluxe set, which comes with 9 pcs sushi, including uni, ikura, chu and 0-toro, hon-maguro, botan ebi, squid, some other tasty fish, maguro-maki. Also had some Gindara Misoyaki (cod fish with miso), and Hamachi (SGD35 for 5 pcs sashimi) and some below average kaki fry.

The total bill for four people was SGD 780, with drinks.

Furama City Centre Hotel - A partial timeline of painful customer service

Furama City Centre
60 Eu Tong Sen Street
Singapore 059804
Tel: 65-6533-3888

Recommendation: Never stay here. Ever.

Day 1: Check in at 12:30AM. Phone does not work. Go downstairs and tell staff to fix it - engineer to come up soon. Wait 15 minutes, still no one. I want to tell them to forget it, but I have no phone, so I have to go to use the elevator bank hotel phone on my floor. Oh, that one doesn't work either. I make the trip downstairs and tell them to fix it tomorrow.

Day 2: Get back to room in evening, and phone is still out. Go downstairs (b/c the hotel phone at the elevator is still out). No one checked the phone. As a matter of fact, the person who told me they would check, asked me, "Do you know who you spoke to?" YOU!!!

Day 3: (Same as Day 2, but the phone company came and can't fix it... somehow). So I do a room change next door at 11PM. Internet doesn't work. After some language problems, they send someone up. Their cable is broken, so they replace it.

Day 4: No problems.

Day 5: Get woken up by construction directly on top of my room. Change rooms at 11AM on Saturday. Evening comes, and I get frozen b/c the room's A/C is stuck at 23 degrees.

Day 6: In AM, tell them to fix A/C. Result? A/C is stuck at 22 degrees

Day 7: In AM, tell them to fix A/C. Result? No information... call up and after 10 rings at the front desk, and being on hold for 10 minutes, tell me someone 2 days ago "checked it". Great, ... what did they do? Did they fix it? No.. instead they made it colder. Tell them to fix it again tomorrow.

Day 8: ...TBC

Canine Crustaceans

(Original post date: May 1)
My "fish" tank has been relegated to a crustacean tank, as parasites run rampant in Hong Kong fish (maybe that's why $50 fish in the US cost $1-2 in Hong Kong). Anyways, I have 3 inhabitants.
1) Cleaner shrimp
2) Hermit crab (Plain orange)
3) Hermit crab (Fluorescent blue, with black stripes)

The cleaner shrimp was originally purchased in order to de-parasite the fish I was buying. Since all the fish have since passed, the shrimp is left to eat algae and whatever microorganisms are in the tank. That said, it has molted healthily, and survived without much care. The crabs have done just as well. I just returned from a 2-week trip, and all three were still thriving in my 29-gallon tank.

Although raising crustaceans may seem (it is) a tad boring, they actually do have interesting quirks. For instance, I just put some dried shrimp at the bottom of the tank, and just a few moments afterwards, the Blue hermit crab smelled it and rushed over to start at it. It was like a dog finding a bone!