ishimmer.net

I’ve been to Far Coast for 2 weekends consecutively.

The first time we went, we were desperately trying to find some hang-out place which is not so crowded and enough seats for 9 people. The second time, we KNEW we wanted to go there!

I am very impressed by the settings and atmosphere of the cafe. Undeniably there are a lot of thoughts put into this to turn it into a concept cafe. There is a panel showcasing all blends of coffee, tea and cocoa. Each blend is defined by a certain art.

Seating area is comfortable and very lounge-like. You get lots of cushions. There are cool stools, cool coffee tables. The people are friendly. They spend effort explaining to you what all those terms mean, how does each blend taste like if you are undecided - which is really helpful for people like me who only understand how to order ice blended from Coffee Bean. *grin*

The drinks have special tastes. I experimented with Zwina (tea) and Art Haus (coffee) and they taste good, although the coffee is not as rich as Coffee Bean or Starbucks.

There is also a small little corner with lots of free mind boggling games. Small little boxes with holes and sticks and silver balls which you are supposed to shake (or by sheer luck), to make them go into the holes. I also noticed there is a small basket with lots of scraps from kids. Maybe they encourage kids to doodle on papers and keep them.

After having this good experience, I googled ‘Far Coast’ and found a few related articles. Apparently it was launched by Coca Cola to capture the coffee-drinking crowd. There are currently 4 branches in the world - Atlanta, Oslo, Singapore and Toronto. The Singapore branch is launched in November last year. Here is also one blogpost regarding the cafe overseas (Nice imageries and it’s similar to the Singapore branch. And apparently they don’t like the drinks and there are much more games there!).

But I would say that the place is really a cosy hang-out place with friends.

And of course, I always think that friends is the factor in making a place interesting. (So…Japan anyone?)

It’s bad.

After stopping myself from going to this site for 3 years, I’m back again to Neopets. And they have so much improvements to the site! New site layout, new games, new features which include blogs, video uploads etc.

I’m hooked once again. Just that for now, I no longer spend hours staring at the screen, hitting ‘Ctrl+F5′ to get the cheapest deal, chatting in my guild, training my pets. No, I have mellowed down. Now I am just here to collect things I like, and of course in order to achieve that aim, I need to play games so that I can earn money.

I know I am not young now, and I still cannot figure out the reasons why adults (for example me) spend time on a site that is created based on assigning superficial values for a bunch of images (which neopets need to purchase to move ahead). We shall see when I will stop logging into this again. *grin*