Studying at Jewel: Pazzion Cafe
Into the vortex...
Being on the inside of the vortex is cool and all but it gets old after awhile. It offers a unique experience, however, that unique experience overstays its welcome after a certain point.
I arrived at Jewel first because Mik took the wrong bus.
At first we wanted to try Fun Toast (right next to Amazon Cafe), but Mik was unsure if there were any plugs there, so I had to do a little recon while waiting for him to arrive.
Toast? Yes. Fun? Questionable. Plugs? No.
Because of this, we decided to go to Pazzion Cafe instead (there were plugs), which is apparently a shoe store with a cafe beside it. Weird, but ok.
The Studying Experience
This cafe is located at B1, at the base of the fountain thing.
At 12:00PM - My interim rating for now is 2/5 - Mik
About half an hour in, Mik was really not feeling the vibe of this place. Here are a list of his greivances (VERBATIM):
Pros
- charging plugs
- coffee prices not too bad
- acceptable noise level
Cons
- claustrophobic
- too close to adjacent restaurants
- we are under the waterfall which seems cool for a bit but i think we will start to feel trapped after a while
- wifi is iffy (but unsure if really due to location)
- chair is not very comfortable
- ceiling height leaves more to be desired
Image of uncomfortable chair mik was sitting on (I was sitting in a nice booth chair)
Another thing Mik mentioned was that being at the B1 atrium, you don’t really feel like you’re at Jewel. You come to Jewel to study, and you want to FEEL like you’re at Jewel, studying at the B1 atrium just makes you feel like you’re at the basement of Tampines Hub or something (i.e., just studying at the basement of some regular mall).
I think one sad thing about where we were seated, is that there was this really giant pillar next to us blocking the view of the vortex. Also, not to mention that the view was not as magnificent, because we were under the vortex (as mentioned by Mik).
The feng shui was not good.
Jewel’s Wi-Fi
For some reason, the wifi is just not working again today, like right from the start. So we had to use our hotspots to work. I technically do not need any internet to work because I write code but the thing is if I want to pull and push my work I need the internet. I take all of this back. Not having any internet is terrible because of my habit of making commits every half an hour.
Being the good citizen I am, I could not just idle around accepting that Jewel’s wi-fi was down. What will the foreigners think about our country??? So I decided to call the concierge to let them know.
I actually called these mfs twice and I got the same response: which was that they will forward my concerns to the relevant authorities… or something.. hmmm…
After awhile, the wifi suddenly started working, and Mik went nuts! He said something along the lines of
Although he denies that he even said all this at all when I questioned him on his ratings…
The Coffee and Food
I got a mocha (again) and Mik got some regular coffee. It was expensive and the cup was weird and small.
The above is my hand for scale, and as all my friends know I have really tiny hands. This was $7.
Lunch
For lunch, we went cheapo mode and decided to share this sandwich set, that’s like a sandwich plus a drink for about $12.
The pu-er tea was disgusting.
Total Damage
Mik: $(5.50 + 6.50)+
Me: $(7 + 6.50)+ + 1 glass cup that I accidentally broke because I was trying to show Mik a funny video on my latop. Thankfully I did not have to pay for the damages, that video wasn’t even that funny actually, so if I had to pay for it, it would not have been worth it at all.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the broken glass cup, just believe that it happened!
Conclusion
Not gonna lie towards the end I was quite frustrated with the abysmal “ai mai” state of the wi-fi (Note: “ai mai” is like hokkien for want.. don’t wan’t…). Just when you think you have established a stable connection, the wi-fi goes down and you can’t do anything anymore. For realz.
The shitty wi-fi and the low ceilings… the weakest points of this establishment. -Mik
In the end, Mik gives this place a 2/5 without the wifi, 2.5 with the wifi. I give this place a 1. So it averages out to 1.75, I’m going to round that up to 2 because I broke one of their glass cups.
Future Plans
While going to take a huge shit, Mik did some recon on his own and scoped out a few high potential study spots for this Friday. Here are our upcoming plans:
Plan 1
- Go to FunToast early for a coffee and work until Mik’s laptop dies (My laptop will not die because I’m using a ThinkPad Carbon X1 6th Gen running i3wm on Arch Linux)
- Have lunch at a cheaper location
- Jump to Amazon Cafe and share a drink
Plan 2
- Either spend entire day at Koi Express or PINKFISH
However, taking into consideration the terrible state of the wifi (which could possibly be because we were in the basement) we may have to go with plan 1. Which means, there may be no new intel in Friday’s post, but I will definitely still post, so stay tuned!!