'Twas a simple day yesterday.  Only went to Din Tai Fung for an early dinner.    Have written about this Taiwanese restaurant many times here .  First one started in Taipei  in 1958, and the 181 restaurants worldwide today are still mostly fast food pick-up places.  However, the one that opened in   New York City   this summer sits 450.  The Seattle chain I went to is huge.  Showed up around 3:30PM and had to wait 15 minutes to get in.  It specializes in Shanghai Soup Dumplings, or Xiao Long Bao. Very large restaurant. Beef and pork noodles, plus pork/shrimp dumplings. Shanghai Soup Dumplings. With Johnny Walker Black and ginger/vinegar sauce. Saw two  great NCAA football games  yesterday: Oregon edged Ohio State. LSU never led until the end, and beat Mississippi in overtime.  I every two years particularly identify with this match because my Chemical Engineering Department is adjacent to  Death Valley .  If...

I'll start with dinner at Mikuni in the Fairmont Hotel, a ridiculously expensive Japanese restaurant.  So why did we go there?  Convenient, and we haven't had this type of cuisine for many weeks.  They had a special, for S$100 (divide by 1.3 for U.S. dollar), you will drink champagne, beer and sake.  Mind you, you still need to pay for the food,  A few photos. How much did this cost?  Too much, but almost worth it.  Breakfast was an Asian buffet...and free. Then on to our tour of  Garden by the Bay . 250 acre nature park, which first opened in 2012. I just happened to be in Singapore when this happened, so  dropped my wife's ashes off at a special location  within the site. Not yet built in 2012 were the two domes we visited, Flower dome and the Cloud Forest. Flower Dome is the largest (3 acres) greenhouse. Cloud Rarest replicated the cool moist conditions of various parts of Asia and South America.  A special Avatar experience is f...