Jose Rizal's 147th Birthday--Singapore Style

I posted this somewhere else weeks ago with the intention of reposting it here right away. But you know how things sometimes happen and one gets caught up and forgets about what she's supposed to do. Here it is, anyway--a couple of weeks later:
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Ok, a disclaimer before I begin: I don't normally celebrate Jose Rizal's birthday. (Nothing wrong in celebrating it, but I just didn't get around to doing it, I suppose. Hehe.) The title is too good to pass up, however, because the day, 19 June, Rizal's birthday, actually began with a lecture about Jose Rizal (delivered by foremost Rizal historian Ambeth Ocampo) and his trips to Singapore. It was followed by the unveiling of a Jose Rizal Marker by the Singapore River in honor of these trips.



The lecture was both fun and insightful and taught me a number of new things about Jose Rizal, the most interesting of which for me was how he visited the Botanic Gardens every time he set foot in Singapore. (I say 'set foot' because in his last visit here, he was a prisoner already meant for execution in Manila, so he wasn't able to get off the ship.) I found it interesting in the sense that the Botanic Gardens is still very much around, and I haven't been there. I suppose knowing Rizal went back to visit it several times has given me an incentive to finally visit and walk the very same path Rizal did--and maybe see for myself what it was about the place that had so captivated Rizal. The unveiling was uneventful, though I thought it was a bit of a thrill to see the President of Singapore, S.R. Nathan, there.


It was a really nice day for an unveiling. It was sunny and breezy. I also thought the location of the marker was perfect. I could imagine Rizal sitting in that same spot by the river, either lost in thought or writing compulsively.






Originally, the lecture/unveiling was supposed to be followed by a night-out with friends, but they couldn't make it, because they couldn't get out of work (again! hmph!). Not to be deterred, Fama and I decided to go ahead with our plans. Reservations had been made, and it was, after all, Jose Rizal's birthday. :) We had a(n unexpectedly) good (even great) pizza and pasta dinner at Pasta Fresca Da Salvatore at Boat Quay. The four cheese pizza with parma harma was absolutely delicious, and so was the pasta marinara in white wine.



Not sure about the other stuff in the menu, but these two were good. It was a bit of a surprise for us, because many of the Italian places we'd tried here weren't really that good. Or at least, what they offered didn't really match our expectations.

After dinner, we walked around the area and took lots of pictures. We needed to walk off all the carbo we ingested in preparation for what was to come.





Next stop was what I'd been dreaming of for some while now: the chocolate buffet at The Courtyard of the Fullerton Hotel. Upon seeing the chocolate fountain, I knew I was in chocolate heaven.




I totally enjoyed the Fullerton chocolate cake and the chocolate-coated strawberries. There were lots of goodies, of course, but these two were the best. Well, there was also the cranberry pudding with chocolate cream sauce. And the chocolate and vanilla creme brulee. And the... Oh, ok, you get my drift.


I know it seemed like at this point we had forgotten about Jose Rizal, but not really. Because when we tasted the hot chocolate that capped off our chocolate feast, we immediately started talking about Rizal and his 'tsokolate eh' and 'tsokolate ah'. We definitely had 'tsokolate eh' that night and ended the day with Rizal in mind.