Festivals and Malls

Whenever there’s a festival in Singapore, you’ll know.  Hari Raya Puasa is on the 10th of Sepember and there were pretty lights up at Toa Payoh. The lights were for National Day, but I think they might leave them up for some time as this is a festive period.

There’s also the upcoming Lantern Festival which is not a public holiday, but you can see shops using the festival in their marketing.  Most sales you’ll see will be related to that festival – like Hari Raya Sale, Deepavali Sale or Christmas Sale.  Unfortunately sales in Singapore are not that great.  They are not like the real sales in the US or Australia where goods are heavily discounted and not just by 20% but as much as 90%!  Anyway today I saw these strangely creepy rabbit head mannequins at Tampines 1.  Yup the Mid-Autumn festival is here and begins at the malls.  The rabbit features in the legend related to the festival. I found this story on the web because I realize I don’t quite know the story myself. Not a tale for kids, but then again neither were Grimm’s fairy tales.

Three fairy sages transformed themselves into pitiful old men and begged for something to eat from a fox, a monkey and a rabbit. The fox and the monkey both had food to give to the old men, but the rabbit, empty-handed, offered his own flesh instead, jumping into a blazing fire to cook himself. The sages were so touched by the rabbit’s sacrifice that they let him live in the Moon Palace where he became the “Jade Rabbit.”

photo by bookjunkie

photo by bookjunkie

I could not capture how pretty the blue and red lights looked at night.

photo by bookjunkie

photo by bookjunkie

About bookjunkie

Blogging about life in Singapore & recently cancer too.
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4 Responses to Festivals and Malls

  1. Omgoodness, those mannequin bunny heads are so cute!
    In Canada, most of the mannequin heads look so real that it’s just freaky.

  2. Crystal says:

    To be fair, you are totally right that there are far more sales in the US than there are in Singapore. They are, as you say, far better in terms of discount.

    However, 90% is not common. That would be a store going out of business (days before the end) or something that has been on clearance for a long time.

    Traditionally 20-30% is the standard sale (this weekend was the Labor Day Sales and I have several offers in my inbox for 30% off sales–and I found it hard not to shop and then have stuff sent to my in-laws…did, in fact, a few weeks ago when I needed to order Elanor’s costume).

    However, what I miss most about US shops isn’t necessarily the sales. I miss the discount process/clearance process, particularly in clothing stores. New collections come into stores like GAP every 6-8 weeks or so. When the newest collection comes in, the previous collection is often put at a modest discount. But once it’s been 2-3 collections and the merchadise has been on the shelf for 12-15 weeks, it moves to a clearance rack where it’s 30-40 and sometimes discounted deeper. If you can catch things at the last discount, you can get them for the absolute cheapest…at Gap, for example, if a price ends in .97, that is the lowest clearance price. I’ve gotten Ravi t-shirts for 5.97 that started at 30, and myself sweaters for around the same savings. I’ve gotten E things as cheap as 1.97 (although that’s not super common…and was easier in the smallest sizes, like 0-3 months and 3-6 months). GAP here in Singapore doesn’t do sale/clearance racks. I’ve often wondered where their old clothes go (back to the US to the outlets?).

    I also miss regular sales…you could usually find a grocery store that had soda on sale, so a 12 pack of soda could be purchased for 3-4 dollars instead of 5-6. There just isn’t as much competition in terms of different chains, so Cold Storage doesn’t really need to competitively price their goods (especially the imported goods that no one else has).

    • bookjunkie says:

      Thanks for sharing about how it is in the US Crystal. I wish we had real outlet stores here too. I also find it annoying that Singapore only brings in the smaller sizes even though larger sizes are available.

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