The Quay, the Secret
One of the city’s longstanding establishments The Forbidden City by the IndoChine group has just gone through a massive makeover and is now more luxurious than ever. “The new concepts will co-exist with existing outlets in Forbidden City, including Madame Butterfly Restaurant serving up modern Chinese cuisine and Bamboo Bar alfresco dining along the river side,” says an IndoChine spokesperson. New to the joint is a lounge area dubbed the Anastasia Lounge, a bar and dining space called Bianca Supperclub and for the grownups, The Oscar Whisky & Cigar Bar which carries rare Cuban cigars and whiskeys from the world over. The highlight of the new space is undoubtedly Anastasia, which is decked out in baroque-style silver furniture and towering, red chandeliers. Ooh la la.

Text Life
Part of the lead-up and fringe event to the literary event Sing Lit 101 (through Nov 23), filmmaking and photography school Objectifs has commissioned some of our most prolific filmmakers like Royston Tan and Kat Goh to adapt local literary texts into short films. The program, UTTER 2013, sees Tan transforming the works of Arthur Yap (2 Mothers in a HDB Playground) and Foo Chen Loong (Two Mothers Over a Wall in Queen Astrid Park) into 2 Mothers, about a woman’s daily chores, while Goh turns David Leo’s Soup of the Day into a drama about an abusive bak kut teh seller called simply, Bak Kut Teh. Food for thought. The films will be screened on Aug 24-25 at Objectifs.

Treasure Vault
Continuing their ad-hoc series of art events, our good friends at The Vault will hold a live installation showcase by up-and-comer Ceno2 on Aug 29, 8pm. This fine art and graffiti artist will work his signature strokes into a series of furniture, including sofas and tables and turning them into covetable one-offs, and on the spot, “For more than a decade, Ceno2 has been working the streets, homes, gallery walls and commercial buildings,” says Vault’s marketing manager and curator Sharmaine Khoo. “But for this one, he will be doing the totally unconventional.” We can’t wait to see what he has up his dirty sleeves.

Phoning It In
Just in case you missed the giant ad on the front cover, this week marks the launch of the Android mobile version of our award-winning I-S app. Just as we did for iPad, we’ve redesigned the magazine from the ground up for a better reading experience on your smartphone. This time round, we’ve pushed event listings to the front, so that you can access them quickly and easily on the go. We’ve stacked it with full screen photos and the thing looks just beautiful. And rather than run entire feature stories—and make you wait an age while the issue downloads—we’re running snappy highlights, with links to the full versions on our website. It’s completely free and available now in the Google Play Store—so what are you waiting for?