If you enjoy selfies and "foodporn"-type shots, the Capitol is for you.

The Capitol Building is a vision with illuminated bidet sprays!

Wedged between the boot of city hall and the quay side of town, the Capitol Building is an erecting stature that boasts the same towering presence of Ion Orchard, Tangs, and even, Abercrombie and Fitch. Although they share similar powerful infusions powered through air vents- think yuzu, vanilla, and Ion's aloe relaxant, Capitol's floral spray matters because it throws off the simmering rank smells of concrete, sweat, and the urban buzz outside. "Breathe new life into luxe," it promises.

Since its restoration, Capitol has swung its doors open (with a Jubilee highlight of a film 1965 to boot) to fanciful eateries and upscale boutiques- a modern fixture of luxury hotels one can expect to par for the course.

Though, without breaking the bank, the swanky new mall is a better place to take your coffee, along with a couple of selfies.

Fixated onscreen toward my right was not what it looked like- a burger.

As a stopover for the blistering hot afternoon with plenty of time to kill, Capitol offers a platter of food options. Motivated by two-storey boutique cafes with a view to absorb the piazza's experience, the place is fully air conditioned with an outdoorsy view bathed in daylight. Apart from a few uninitiated tourists captivated by its interior, you'd find locals tucked into the corners of cafes, settled in with the atmosphere, serving as backdrop for a Sunday's painter landscape artwork.

More excitedly in its basement, you'd find the novelty in BreadTalk owned Palette, a multi-cuisine (read: food court) dining concept housing signature dishes with award-winning titles like a wrestling belt. But there's no fighting for seats here. Palette is an upscale food court with uniformed wait staff and a functional cocktail bar smacked at the entrance- just in case you missed it the first time. With unflinching gazes, they'd eagerly bring you to your seats, which, compared to the endearing concept of "chope" at real food courts, are assigned. You'd be handed with an iPad, per protocol with most dining concepts these days, and you'd want to ask for a glass of water. But that's not in tandem with the rest, no; water's three dollars, free flow.

Easy navigation make ordering food fool proof.

Confirming orders from a touch-and-go iPad beats old fashioned menus, hands down. 

If you're not yet dizzy from the glitz of luxury food court, the food actually performs well. It's what you'd expect from spending $11 for a bowl of soupy noodles. Or in our case, $4.50 for prawn chee cheong fan and $3.50 for six pieces of prawns swathed in crispy beancurd skin. Chugging beer alongside the afternoon dim sum is also a bliss, notwithstanding the chargeable service fee that'd later, much to our chagrin, top off our bill of two beers and dim sum to a steep $32.50.

That's me seducing the lens with a fun-sized seaweed wrapped beancurd roll.

A cool, tall one smooths over your palate, greased with delicious hawker dishes.

As the wafting fragrance hits you on the nose one last time before you sober up from the exorbitance of Capitol, joining back the school of people outside feels real. The crowd, the construction, the noise drilling into your consciousness can only be an awakening. That if Ion made you feel like the rich, Capitol would be royalty, like every whiff of its floral scent unique to its illusory lavishness.

Must be a bitch to clean.

Think About Littering If You Love Murder

Also, put a smile to those behind 

Back in 2013 when Singa drew its own resignation letter, jokes exploded on the Internet like a fine ticket- the horror, dismay and a gradual realization that we were a bucket case for graciousness.

Today, with a spike of up to 19, 000 notices for littering, a double from that same year Singa called quits, it seemed that we have alas reassured ourselves a quality for debauchery. And if that’s not a trait to brag about, why do we still persist?

I knew from the get-go that littering is wrong. Even before the cases of UFOs (Unidentified Falling Objects), sighted from the windows of our neighbours, left the rest of us puzzling over what can, or cannot, be considered “killer litter”.  That the act itself too, cannot be singularly defined either- cases of an entire household burned to the ground by obstructing “litter”- where a collection of your neighbour’s possessions strewn in the corridors stood in the way between you crawling out unscathed, and folding in completely into flames. 

Litter kills, I know that, but it’s a careless killer who leaves behind evidence… Its idiocy has roused flat, tall jokes about a certain occupant who gets 4-weeks of jail time for flinging a bottle of perfume through his window grilles, not a fear of a killer the public would usually worry themselves over. And it’s no surprise for such an inconspicuous act to arouse absolutely no degree of suspicion. After all, litter has no common sense. Litter, as charmless as it’s indifferent, has become collateral damage.

Today, I am part of that generation of indifference reflected most recently in a Facebook post by our prime minister. This time litter has saved on the killing, but disfigured an entire pasture of our Gardens by the Bay. The evidence of Laneway (a Facebook photo of our yearly music festival held outdoors) became his concern, and they sounded like warning shots fired at environmental agencies to tighten the viceroy grip on this continual case. Those shots were heard: every 19, 000 of them.

You see, litter has little mystique (if not none) over what’s feared as a crime; it strikes between apathy and a nagging conscience of how conservative the country has been about the way it’s to be sown forever evergreen. So if I could suggest an emphatic approach toward murder by litter, it should be one that revises from graciousness to actually saying our proper graces. Something like the next time the ticketing man comes to “fine” you, the rest of us could go, “Bless you!”