Loving Life

The right way to end the work week..a party!

2007-08-05T12:17:00.001+08:00

Friday morning started off badly with a F2F meeting with the "good" folks from the Agency. It was the 3 of us facing the five of them but numbers is not an issue as long as you have A at the table..she gave such a performance that I have never seen a more sorry sight..she had the 2 big guns from the Agency bowing their head in shame at her truthful statements. Felt really bad for the Agency but I have to say they deserve it seeing how much angst they have put me through for the past 3 months and oh no, I have another 3 more months to go with them..save me! sob sob sob.

Thankfully I had Cheryl's party to look forward to..that dear lady decided to splurge her well earned "award" $$ on a les amis catered event. My initial plan was to drop in early to watch the set-up but of course got delayed approving copy (due to Agency sending me the stuff at 5pm and then had to have an hour conversation with them till wayy past 7...and the nerve of the new agency girl - she was giving me such a trying time on the phone..she goes : "but sometimes more is less and less is more but more does not mean more..do you know what I mean?" - Gosh, I really had to practise my yoga breathing techniques to keep my cool!! I just replied - "Look, it's Friday evening, I am so late for my appt that it's not even funny and I don't really appreciate riddles like this after such a long day" - I hope she got the hint :).

Anyway, I arrived to the sound of laughter and wow, a lovely scene of candles and "survivor" torches. Les Amis did up the place really nicely. The menu consisted of duck pate, salmon and prawn mini bruschettas - all done pretty well. And there was a bar set-up with a good range of hard liquer. I quickly forgot about work and immersed myself with good company and dinner. Here's Cheryl and me before I had to make a quick dash home to accompany Jin for his late dinner..poor guy waited till past 10 to have his mutton murtabak from across the street where we live.

Lin chose Bonta, to Bonta we go

2007-08-04T23:23:00.000+08:00

Celebrated Lin's bday 2 days earlier as she was off to KL. Gave her a list of choices - Original Sin, Macaron, The universal and Bonta. She wanted comfort food so opted for italian at Bonta. We chose to sit in the al fresco area and not wanting to be very adventurous, stuck to the items which had been reviewed. The bread was excellent - made with a combi of walnuts and tomatoes and a dash of cheese in the middle.

The sashimi trout was a excellent starter and the considerate chef split the portion into 2 plates - a nice gesture. My mains was the roasted seabass fillet and I found it a bit too bland - can't complain too much as it did taste very healthy. Lin's lobster was yummy but the angelhair pasta could have been a bit more al dente. Too stuffed for dessert so I owe Lin a bday cake :).

It was a nice evening but spoilt a bit by this particularly rude waiter..I did not manage to catch his name but his arrogant behaviour cheesed me off...he brushed off my questions and walked away with the bill despite me mentioning several times that I have not signed it..he kept saying that there was no need to sign..and when he realised it did indeed require a signature, he did not even have the decency to apologise for his mistake..what an idiot!

Crabs galore at Ming Kee

2007-07-19T23:33:00.000+08:00

Weekday bday celebration with the two Serene's last night. Initially the plan was to eat at Seafood Paradise (Defu Lane) but after hearing rave reviews on Ming Kee (MacPherson Road) come separately from two friends who are seafood fanatics, we decided to check out this place.

We ordered the signature crab bee hoon, pepper crab, cereal prawns, brocolli shoots and a tofu, brocolli and mushroom dish. The crab bee hoon (pictured above) was the dry kind unlike Mellban's. Pretty good but Sin Huat's still tasted richer (but with tons of MSG - what can one expect ;). It was a good thing we ordered 2 portions, otherwise there would not hv been enough crab to go around. My fav of the night was the black pepper crab. All the crabs were very fresh and huge ($38 per kg). Feeling rather greedy, we ordered a plate of mussels. Mussels were quite yummy but sauce was really oily. Gave dessert a miss as there was talk about heading to geyland for durians and bean curd. Overall, a relaxing good meal at reasonable prices. Here's the group - I insisted we take a group photo seeing we missed taking any at the last gathering for Andrea's big day at Sage Restaurant :p. Everyone in black except me - totally forgot we were eating crab..sigh, I blame my work!!!

Barnacles - Good seafood all round

2007-05-31T21:54:00.000+08:00

Got to enjoy a mid-week holiday this week. It's Vesak Day today and we started off the lazy morning heading to Vivo City for an early lunch with Lin and RY. Unfortunately, they were running late so we headed to Food Republic on our own. This place is probably the prettiest food court in Singapore and with its good range of stalls was packed as usual even though it was not even noon yet. Jin had a hard time choosing between bak kut teh, kuey chap and claypot laksa. He finally decided on the famous Depot Road claypot laksa ($6.90 a bowl) and was very very happy with his yummy choice.

Having tried most of the stalls here, I opted for something new which was the Korean beef bibimbap at $8. It was surprisingly good (I am always a bit wary about Korean food court stalls since they typically fall short on authenticity) with lots of veg topped with a fried egg. Stomachs full, we met up with our MIA lunch buddies to watch Shrek the 3rd, which btw, was corny and def a dvd movie (what else to expect from a Hollywood sequel) :p

Ended a rather easy-going day with a lovely dinner at the newly opened 2 month old Barnacles restaurant located at Rasa Sentosa Hotel. Jin read reviews about it 2 weeks ago and decided to give us both a nice treat to celebrate since that we did not have plans to get out of Spore (which incidentally felt kinda weird as we are almost always away over long weekends / public holidays)

The restaurant is located on the edge of Silso beach with views of the sea and container ships in a distance. The weather tonight was pretty cool after the rain and very pleasant. We got a table in the alfresco area outside and munched through a fresh bread basket while deciding what to order. The menu was relatively simple so we did not take too long. Appetizer was the 'ying yang' which was a combination plattter of 4 good sized mayo prawns and deep fried baby squid. The prawns were good (wished they had wasabied the mayo though :) but the squids were wayy too baby and Jumbo's version definitely tops this one.

Next came our mains - Jin choose the mixed grilled platter which came with servings of beef, lamb and 1 tiger prawn accompanied with mushroom sauce, salad and fries. I have to say for $38, it was very generous, good value and all 3 meats were pretty nicely done. I kept eyeing the beef which Jin generously shared 3 bites with me :)

My choice of main was the grilled seafood skewer which came with 2 portions of salmon, 1 red snapper and 2 prawns. The salmon was a bit bland but the prawns were excellently marinated and the snapper grilled just right, tender and tasty. My only gripe is that the kitchen had not properly cleaned up the prawn - something one would have expected an establishment like this to have paid more attention to!

We were too stuffed for dessert - Our total bill came up to slighty below $100 and with great service, lovely views - Barnacles is really worth checking out and I can already foresee us coming back :) The nice service staff even helped us redeem back our $2 Sentosa entrance fee which you get back for every $28 spent.

Good grief - S$20 prawns at hawker centre

2007-05-29T22:55:00.000+08:00

Got a nasty shock during dinner at Newton Circus on Sunday night when Jun ordered 8 tiger prawns and we were served with a bill of S$160!!! That's S$20 a prawn which boils down to S$5 a bite..and trust me, it's definitely not worth S$5 a bite! I mean, I would pay $5 for one chocolate but for a chew size bite of a prawn?? and at a hot local hawker centre too :p

Here's a link to IZ's post for the full details and pictures of the small sized tiger prawns.

Lesson learnt - don't ever order from the prawn uncle who wears a cap hovering around the newton circus open air section..(actually, to be fair, the guy wasn't an uncle yet la..:) Good point to note though - one of the island's best maggi mee goreng can be found here - Din's muslim stall serves a mean and yummy maggi mee goreng with beef bits and 1 sunny side-up egg for just S$3.

Jin's dad's 67th bday...

2007-05-27T14:00:00.000+08:00

Last weekend, we headed back to KL for a quick trip to surprise Jin's dad as it was his birthday..made mom my partner in crime..she splendidly pulled off the whole plan without arousing suspicion of any kind :). We arranged to meet at Boathouse restaurant and surprised dad after he sat down..heehee.

The food at Boathouse was wayyy below expectations and rather expensive. Thankfully the service was at the very least - good.

Met up with the usual KL gang for dinner at Mrs Reed's Delicious cafe - see how big Nicky and Ethan have grown!

Next morning, to satisfy Jin's bak kut teh (BKT) craving, the group gamely accommodated and Keat introduced us to a shop in the outbacks of Sungei Way. Here's the big bowl of BKT we all shared. Yum!

It's May? US trip - vegas, san diego, LA

2007-05-14T19:35:00.000+08:00

How time flies...i just realised that I hv not updated my blog since March!..gulp..my new role is really eating up into all my spare time for blogging :(. anyway, it's time for a quick update..to start things of, this is a quick recap of my recent US trip - got to go 'cos of the award nomination for one of the campaigns wee hoon and I worked on last year! Spent 4 lovely days in San Diego - perfect weather, food and fun. Above pix shows the glorious sunset that greeted me on Day 1.

Prior to the event at San Diego, I also spent the weekend in Vegas. Pic above shows the wonderful display of flowers at the Bellagio hotel. Did not gamble much so fortunately, only lost $10 :P..but it was fun to watch others gamble and win some :)

The HP Circle Awards - was a bit sad not to have won it but then again, was up against the HP board scandal nominee :p..Here I am at the awards night with the HP China team.

La Jolla resort and spa - the luxurious venue where the Circle awards event was held and where I stayed for 3 nights. There were some cute bunnies running wild in the premise and tons of roses blooming..very pretty!

Managed to find time for a quick run the on the day of the awards..it was much needed work out after all the rich cheesy food! The hotel's quite near the beach and following the running map provided by the hotel, I found myself seeing amazing views..Jin and my retirement plan should definitely include getting a home here! :)

And of course, no visit to San Diego is complete without a visit to La Jolla town area. This is my 3rd visit here and I am still captivated by the scenery and great weather. I got to feed the seagulls, see the seals and eat my lunch while people and sea watching.

Before heading home, managed to spend a day in LA to catch the musical "Wicked"..amazing stage props, OK singing. Also, redid the usual tourist stuff..walk of fame and rubbing tails with tigger :)

Finally, no post is complete without at least showing some pictures of the rich, gargantuan american food we overindulged in..urgh! easily put on 5% fat percentage..gonna definitely have to stay off burgers and cheese for the next few weeks!!

Entertained at dinner - Crystal Mirror

2007-03-27T23:44:00.000+08:00

Jin gave me a treat on Sunday night by buying us tickets to the Crystal Mirror - a dinner cum show event. Although we got the cheapest (S$160 per pax) tickets, our booth seats were perfect! Bcos there were only the 2 of us, we got the whole private booth to ourselves vs people who bought more expensive tickets but had to sit at shared tables with strangers. The booth seats were also elevated so we managed to get a good view of all the performances.

The 4 course dinner specially designed by World class Michelin Star chefs met our expectations..we had 3 versions of scallops, lobster bisque and risotto, foie gras quail and 4 kinds of Viennese desserts. Can't go wrong having scallops on the menu :).

The show itself was entertaining although admitedly a bit kitsch at times - we saw acrobats, singers, comedians and some amazing skating , hula hooping and the bubble blowing man (this guy was really good)! My only gripe was that the show was really long (4 hours!!) but I guess that's how people used to be entertained in the roaring 20's (before they had TV, internet, PS2 and mobile phones :) Here's a pix I took of Jin while waiting to enter the tent - I love this shot :)

It was a good end to the weekend - having worn myself silly by attending my 1st dragon boat attempt. Met up with some colleagues at 10am on a Sunday at the Kallang Sports Centre and spent the next 3 hours trying to play our part in moving the long boat (don't know who we were trying to kid..I was more concerned about how good I would look after the time under the hot Spore sun!)

However, despite the heat, lots of sweat and hard work, an aching back and butt - I had fun and it was a nice way to spend Sunday morning looking at the Spore skyline from a different view on the (dirty) Kallang river. of course there was a lot of eye-candy for me - Jin even commented that Sporean men in general have nice bods (editor's note: comments like these should not be widely disseminated) ;)..would I do it again? ask me after my butt and back stops aching :P

Desmond & Jeraldine tie the knot :)

2007-03-26T12:36:00.000+08:00

Our couple friend who we met during the Egypt trip 2 years ago got married on Sat at Marina Mandarin. Jeraldine such a radiant bride - she mentioned that her wish was to look like a princess and that she did..i loved her blue dress! It was also good to see part of the group again and the first thing most of us said was that it felt like we were back on the Egypt tour as we sat on a round table overindulging just like on many of the tour meals :)

The one addition to the group is of course, baby Francine...who has grown so much since we last saw her before Christmas and super well behaved

Finally, a trip to the spore zoo with Chloe Luthi

2007-03-18T17:19:00.000+08:00

When we found out that we have to move out of our Cuscaden home by end March 07, I informed all our close friends that "Hotel Cuscaden" was closing down so that they could take the final opportunity to stay :). Olivia and family finally made it down this weekend and they have the honor of being the last guests before the end of the Cuscaden era..(sob sob!).

Anyway, it was fantastic to see everyone again and Chloe, being 3.5 years old is at the perfect fun age..Friday night saw us introducing them to Spore's pepperish version of 'bak kut teh' which Olivia really liked. Steph and I drank too much of the pepperish soup and paid for it when our stomachs started protesting big time not long after after :p (editor's note: let's skip the gory details here)

I had promised Chloe in August last year to bring her to the Spore zoo should she visit her Ah Yee Cindy..The spore zoo is small but really a world-class attraction with some of the best exhibits like the polar bear and orang utan open home. Was quite dissapointed that the penguin exhibit was closed and had to tell Chloe that when the penquins get back from vacation, she will have to come visit again :). Here are some great shots taken with Steph's super high-tech Nikon SLR.

And here's a shot of Steph taken with my baby camera ..heehee

Last night, we satisfied Liv's cray fish craving with dinner at the newly renovated Newton Circus hawker centre. I have not been here for ages and was pleasantly surprised with the nice change after the reno works. We ordered a variety of typical Newton fare : 2 kinds of cray fish (black pepper and garlic), 1 chilli lala, fishball noodles, popiah, maggie mee goreng and fried oyster. The maggie mee goreng was close to KL standards..yay, found a place to come to to satisfy maggie goreng craving! Finished off the meal with a durian ice kacang - introduced durian to Chloe and she clearly liked it :). ..Liv was not all too happy about this as she hates durian. haha!

This morning, we managed to convince Steph to play a game of tennis with us..he claims that he has not played for like 8 years but I guess Steph's one of those guys who is good at every sport cos he managed some really good shots and that left both Lin and me impressed :). Lunch was at YhingThai at Purvis..food's always good but a tad pricey (avg $40 per pax).

Our last Cuscaden visitors just left..and I am already missing our guests and feeling a twinge of sadness that we will soon have to move out of our wonderful city home of 4 years. Must remember to take some final pix of our 1st home in Spore before we move. Here's a pix of Chloe taken on the way to the zoo yesterday..,say Cheese :)

Su Korean with korean gal Inya :)

2007-03-18T17:06:00.001+08:00

I usually try not to mix work and play especially with the good folks from the agencies (after one really bad experience!)..but have always made an exception with Inya cos' she's one cool agency gal and she's hip korean :D

Anyway, we have not seen each other since last year so some catching up time was required. As with all things Inya, korean's our favourite type of meal together so she recommended Su Korean located at Far East plaza (they hv another branch at boat quay). The wed night crowd was not bad - a good sign that this place probably serves pretty decent korean food as the prices were not exactly for one with a budget.

We ordered the beef galbi, some really yummy bean soup and topokki (korean rice cake with chilli sauce). The beef which we chose to barbeque ourselves was well marinated and tasty (cos it did not have the marbled fat everyone else loves :p) but what was really memorable was the appetizer small dishes..it had a marvelous range of vegetables - I like!

The topokki was not as good as the ones I have had in korea - chilli was too sweet. The soup was very tasty and came with a generous amount of ingredients. All in all, not a bad place to visit if one has korean food cravings.

After dinner, we adjourned to Hyatt - the Bar, for more girl catch up time and delicious cocktails at expensive prices..Inya treated so that made the evening extra nice :).

Brown Sugar Cafe Bistro - just the right amount of sweetness

2007-03-16T00:20:00.000+08:00

We celebrated Myra's bday at Brown Sugar Cafe this week. Tucked away along in a non-descript section of River Valley Road, Brown Sugar offers 2-course and 3-course set lunches at $23++ and $27++ respectively. We ordered to share and went with the Penne carbonara, Ribeye sandwich and lamb chops for our mains choices.

All of the selections turned out very well. The Penne was cheesy but not over powering and nicely al dente-d to perfection. The lamb and ribeye sandwich were also very decent. Appetizers were a grilled squid salad and grilled tiger prawns salad. Although they were both yummy, I wished the the prawns were bigger :)

We made excellent choices for dessert : toffee sticky date pudding and bread pudding. Neither was over sweet - just the way all good desserts should be. All in all, Brown Sugar's a great place to visit for a decent good meal with no hassle finding parking :)..very important for people who drive :)..it was Myra's first time tasting toffee date pudding so am Happy that she enjoyed her bday treat! Mental note to self to come try out their Sunday brunches.

Weekend with Shih Tzu puppy - Muji

2007-03-11T18:03:00.000+08:00

Invited Anne and VB, Ed and Liliane for a simple dinner on Friday night and got to meet Muji, a 5 month old shih tzu puppy that Anne's doggy-sitting for the week. Muji's a real sweetheart - very loving and hardly barks and best thing is, does not shed much hair :). Baby Lucas was not too happy with Muji's social skills and made a fuss each time Muji tried licking him..hahaha :)

Also had a weekend visitor - Keat dropped over for 2 short days to attend a concert at Esplanade with his cousins. We took him for dinner on Sat nite to Uncle Leong's crab stall at Ang Mo Kio. Mellban (the more famous one next door) was as usual super packed with a long wait queue outside even though it was only 630pm..thankfully Uncle Leong had ample seats and honestly, having tried both places before, I personally find Uncle's preparation at least on par, if not better than Mellban.

We ordered the black pepper crab bee hoon and curry paste crabs. The waiter must have taken a liking to us cos he gave us the crabs with the most amount of eggs I have ever seen (editor's note: the curry paste version is to die for..simply superb)..it was soooo plentiful that even the greedy guys could not finish it (sigh..wasted!)..we hid the remaining eggs under the crab shell so that the cute waiter boy wouldn't feel offended..heehee.

Sunday morning was spent running off the crab calories with 2 hours of tennis. But all the calories were replaced with a fabulous lunch at Royal China. The char siew soh was just as good as we remembered it to be..flaky pastry that just melts in your mouth wrapped delicately around succulent honey char siew...yumyum such blissful happiness!! everything else was also really good...We managed to leave space for dessert and discovered that the glutinous black rice with coconut ice cream in pumpkn puree was excellent. I also tried the orh nee and it's not bad..not too sweet, just wished they did not add the almond paste as well :p

Vietnamese coffee to perk me up!

2007-03-02T23:21:00.000+08:00

Upon hearing of my interest to try the local coffee, Ms Mai picked me up for breakfast early yesterday and took us to Highlands Coffee, Vietnam's answer to Starbucks. They have chains all over and nice deco based on dark warm wood - personally a bit blase for me as the shop concept was done up by Fitch designers who I have worked with closely over the last 3 years :)

I ordered the fruit yogurt and black version of the Vietnamese Coffee. Ms Mai also chose the fruit yogurt and ordered the french baguette set for taste. The coffee was really aromatic and a true caffeine fix. I like! The strawberry jam which came with the baguette set was good as it smooth and was not overly sweet.

L’Olivier at Sofitel Ho Chi Minh delivers outstanding French food :)

2007-03-02T23:18:00.000+08:00

KT had previously mentioned that the French restaurant at the Sofitel Ho Chi Minh (L' Olivier) was good. I had to convince Mark though as we were initially planning to eat at the Vietnamese Pho chain – Pho 24..everyone who has been to HCM raves about the pho here. Mark relented (prob due to my insistent whinning :)) so off we trotted to try out the place.

We got ouselves a nice seat in the 'false' alfresco area. The menu was a simple 2-pager listing the soups, starters, fish and seafood , meats and dessert. We ordered 2 starters to share – an eggplant salad and fish soup. The salad was really yummy – I thought the grilled eggplant was done just right as it did not taste squashy and the emmental cheese which accompanied the salad was delightful . Quite disappointed with the soup which came at the recommendation of the nice waiter..it had a generous helping of seafood (huge prawn and mussel) but the stock tasted bland :p

I stuck with a safe main of grilled scallops and it came beautifully served on top of turnips and accompanied with some asparagus. It was just delicious. Shared 2 scallops with KT. KT went for mushroom risotto..that guy can really eat. He had already consumed 5 bread portions before his main arrived and yes, the risotto was good – albeit a bit rich for my liking :p

Mark's beef steak and it was huge! Came with a stack of french style French fries..I tasted a bit and it was not bad..Mark said his S$40 steak at Esmirada (Orchard Parade hotel) was the best he has had but this one here was pretty good too.

We were too stuffed for dessert although KT kept on saying that it was really a must try..oh well, guess this will have to be left for the next visit :)

Ho Chi Minh for work and play...

2007-03-02T22:43:00.000+08:00

Was in Ho Chi Minh (HCM) couple of days this week to attend the Commercial Bootcamp summit. Stayed at Caravelle Hotel centrally located in HCM's prime District 1. Hotel was so-so..at USD160 a night, a bit pricey but then again, Vietnam's economy is doing really well. Here's the view of the mighty Mekong river taken from my 19th floor room.

The first night, Ms Mai, my vietnamese colleague, along with Mr Tanth brought Mark and I out for a local Vietnamese meal. We had shrimp cakes, grilled pork, river fish, spring rolls and Mark was given him own bowl of noodles to satisfy his picky taste buds.

Day 1 of the event saw us taken out for team building sports. We were transported to the games venue through a boat journey down the Mekong..scenery was tranquil most of the way..but we started to feel the humidity soon into the hour-long boat ride..worse still, event organisers forgot to provide water on board..could it be they thought we could drink the lovely brown river water? :p

The boat docked at HCM's version of the spore botanic gardens..actually the setting was more reminiscent of Lake Titiwangsa in KL. Upon arrival at the playing field, we were greeted with the welcoming drums of a full brass band. Quite cool :). The team games were quite intense as there were 6 teams and everyone was quite competitive (in spite of the heat :P). I took part in 2 food challenges: Challenge #1 had me stuffing the most salty preseved egg which I honestly could not even bite much less swallow. Challenge #2 was less daunting - eating raw prawns topped with a LOT of vietnamese wasabi. I now know how potent wasabi can be..don't play play with the vietnamese version is my advice to anyone who thinks of trying it on.

In the end, Team Black - my team, got 2nd place..am proud we beat both Mark (red) and Cheryl's (blue) team :)))

That night, while walking around the streets near the hotel, we got to witness the Vietnamese Chinese New Year celebration. The streets were filled with tons of spectators and motorbikes..very atmospheric.

My taste for expensive cookies :)

2007-03-02T07:58:00.000+08:00

During Christmas last year, I got to sample some madeleine cookies from the V tea room located at the Esplanade. Have not gotten the taste of the rose floral cookies out of my mind since. It's so fine and delicate..visions of me sipping tea and relaxing in the countryside pops up with each bite :)

Anyway, last weekend while grabbing a late dinner around that area, I decided to indulge in a tin...what I didn't know was that it was going to set me back S$26 bucks..ouch..it might just be my last time buying these cookies..for now, I get to readily satisfy my cookie craving with each piece of delicate, very fine English Rose floral cookie. On the packaging it says : A lovely snow-white pure rose cookie made of fragrant edible rose petals that leaves a very soft, lingering, lady like scent...Reminds one of classic love stories ..I can't agree more! Yum!

Year of the Golden Pig - CNY 2007

2007-02-22T19:23:00.000+08:00

Jin and I always look forward to CNY cos that means good food and of course, the yearly catching up with relatives who we meet only once a year :). Noticed how good food came before relatives? Well, it is the YEAR of the PIG so cannot blame me for going along with the piggy in me right? heehee

CNY in Penang

The bummer thing about having to go back to Penang during CNY is that all the yummy places are usually closed :(..thankfully there's always our favourite Apom Manis aunty at Pulau Tikus. No visit to Penang is complete without a breakfast stop to take-away at least 10 pieces of this yummy apom (a sweet pancake made from slighty fermented rice flour and egg ; cooked over low heat in an earthen pot with a lid it gives off absolutely delightful scents). We did this on both mornings 2 days we were there and I am still craving for more!

After a full tummy filled with apom, next stop was the cendol stall on Penang Road. This stall is soo popular that finding a parking space nearby is always a challenge..I always feel bad for the cendol stall next to this famous one cos one will have a long queue and the other would be "business-less". Personally, the cendol in Melaka still rocks but with 30 over degrees of heat in Penang, an ice cold bowl of cendol seems heaven sent :)

Finally, we always grab a nice green pandan coconut at Lorong Selamat before boarding our flight to KL. Part of the fun of drinking this is watching the coconut uncle skillfully chop the coconut..it's pure entertainment by itself :).

CNY in KL

1st stop after arriving into KL was to check our apartment..we just got the keys and planning to sell it since we don't want to go through the hassle of renting it out..I love it! it's airy and big , finishing not exactly up to Singaporean standards but acceptable and the views are superb. Here's what we get to see (Damansara/PJ, golf course and the Petronas Twin Towers in the distance):

The family dinner this year was hosted at Aunty Lai Ming's house..finally, after 3 months of not being back in KL, we got our fill of good food. Slide show shows all the relatives from mom's side of the house. Uncle Kam Yoon and family came back from UK for the occassion and it was just fabulous to see everyone again after so long.

On the 2nd day of CNY, we woke up at 7am to hit the greens at mom's club for my first ever game of golf..soo exciting! The four of us (Aunty Yap, mom, jin and myself) decided to skip the buggy to walk off all the CNY calories. Weather was perfect - cloudy and cool. Really enjoyed myself despite getting "scolded" by mom half the time for not knowing the rules of the game and hitting badly :p

Then it was a quick rush to grandparents house to savour the traditional noodles with soup. After a bowl (jin had 2!), we rushed over to Ku Che's house for lunch. We hung out for 4 hours and played some mahjong where I lost .40 cents to Jin..bummer :p. Here are some shots taken at this lunch.

2nd day dinner was a reunion dinner with close friends - Lb and family, Michelle and family, liza, keat, teon and cheryl. We choose this restaurant called Delicious at Bangsar Village One. (they hv another outlet in 1 Utama). We tried their selection of pastas and salads and it was top notch..especially considering everything was half price in SGD :). I really enjoyed the duck confit angelhair pasta..yummy! LB's kid, Amberlyn decided to start liking her aunty Cindy (always kena reject in previous visits!) and was really accommodative to smile and do her 'pocky' face for the camera :). Here's the group at Delicious :

Day 3 morning saw us up and early again at the 1 Utama public golf course. This time around, our buddies were Teon and Keat. Only RM50 for a game with buggy included..talk about decently cheap..and on a public holiday too! I always wanted to drive a buggy and I think everyone secretly learns to play golf just for the chance to drive the golf buggy..haha ;). Weather was too hot so I only played 5 holes and watched the guys finish the 9. They lost soo many balls, I lost count (I did not lose any!! Could it be bcos my shots were all within walking distance? :p) The funny thing was, halfway through the course, an Indian uncle popped his head up from over the bushes and offered to sell us a packet of 20 used balls for RM10. How to resist? After that, the guys got to lose all the balls they wanted to as we had many spare balls left to play with :p

After golf - we rushed to Lin's place for her mom's yummy curry chicken and choc chip cookies. Can't resist and must have popped in like 5 cookies at a go. Caught up with Mei Leng and Karen one last round before seeing them again like don't know when!
We left Lin's place in search of a cendol man at Taman Bahagia where Jin had his fill of ice cold cendol. Then it was off to Angie's place to meet up with Mun and her..soo good to see them again after more than a year. Angie looking really good as usual even though she's 8 months pregnant.
Dinner that night before we had to leave for Spore was at mom's friend - Aunty Grace's house where she cooked an excellent organic meal. We had organic yue sang followed by kim chi, fish and beef dishes. Ended the meal with home made organic ice cream with a dash of cherry sauce. Should have taken more days off for CNY back in Msia :(....blah to work :p

Lazy weekend!

2007-02-11T16:53:00.000+08:00

It's been awhile since I last blogged..laziness coupled with having my camera hijacked by Jin (he left it in the office) , my mantra : no camera = no pictures = no blogging :p

Anyway, I told myself that in 2007, instead of planning for every single weekend to be over occupied, I am going to take it easy and let the weekends plan themselves. So far, that has given us lots of time to catch up on our backlog of dvds (this weekend alone we watched The Painted Veil, Pan's Labyrinth and Curse of the Golden Flower) and I finally finished 1 of the 4 books I am halfway through reading :)

Slower weekends has also given us more time to do spontaneous stuff..like visiting Anne and VB for breakfast on Sat morning..Anne made sourdough pancakes, bacon and sausages and I stuffed myself with her yummy homemade nut cookies. Jin had a great time playing with her two dogs. In the evening, we visited Janice's (colleague) pre-CNY open house and tasted some marvelous mee soto and homemade popiah. Wished I had my camera to show how good the food was and also the 2 doggies, snowy and yuki :p

And then we did a impromptu stop to check out Cheryl's (colleague) apartment at Aspen Heights. She's got a lovely unit on the ground floor with a super huge balcony. Hope I convinced her to get a bbq set and be invited when she does a mean amercian BBQ :) On sat, we also helped Edward and Liliane (who have just moved to Spore, together with baby Lucas - he is such a cutie!!) do some grocery shopping..I now officially know the price of a pack of Fair Price baby diapers :p.

Today was a really slow day. Went to check out our new apt - move in date still unchanged - mid 2007 :(. Also gave in to Jin's chicken rice craving to check out Loy Kee at Balestier. Have no comments on their chicken but the rice and chilli was pretty good. They also do a really tasty hainaniese porridge and for $3, a good deal.

Now, waiting for Lin and RY to arrive for a good game of tennis..weather's been really good so expect a good workout before our cze char dinner at Block 89, Zion Road.

Mezza9 afternoon tea

2006-12-22T17:43:00.000+08:00

Going for a high tea is usually quite a treat cos it means getting off work early :). After hearing good raves from Charmaine on the Mezza9 high tea, we decided to check it out. Unlike the usual buffet style one gets at most hotels, this was in the format of a fixed menu. For S$20++, you get a savoury platter , a sweet platter and choice of drink - smoothie or juice.

The savoury platter came with 2 bread sticks wrapped with a generous amount of parma ham, smoked salmon brushettas, spring rolls, sushi , thai mango salad and a good sized foie gras with potato salad.

The Sweet platter was a cholestrol overload: slice of log cake, 4 scoops of gelato (hazelnut, lychee, yogurt and berry flavour), tiramisu laden with rum/vodka, chocolate tart, fruit cake and banana crepe.

My berry smoothie was thick and good and quite filling. My fav from the savoury platter was the salmon . From the sweet platter, the hazelnut gelato was yummy as well as the banana crepe. A good place to check out once a year - would be too repetitive otherwise since the platter sets are fixed :).

Cooking class at-sunrise

2006-12-17T16:46:00.000+08:00

I attended my first ever cooking class yesterday. Sponsored by Corning/Simply Her magazine, the class was hosted by chef Irene Jansen. I got to learn 3 new sexy sounding recipes : Butternut Squash Soup with Honey Baked Ham, Christmas Roast Chicken with Ginger Lime Sauce and Sweet Potato Cakes and Raspberry Warm Chocolate Cake.

The class was fun and the recipes were all fairly straightfoward and relatively easy to do. I enjoyed the sweet potato patties a lot and that's something I will definitely try making. That and maybe the butternut squash soup. However, found the chicken and desert dishes rather ordinary - nothing that can't be downloaded from allrecipes.com :)

Irene was a fun chef and a friendly teacher with very easy-going demeanor. Afterwards, we all sat down on a nicely made up table with views of Fort Canning Park and enjoyed our afternoon creations. Great female-bonding and all in all a very full + filling afternoon!

Christmas 2006 activities

2006-12-16T11:10:00.000+08:00

Christmas with the kids

Yay! It's December and carols are playing on my radio...with the spirit of christmas in our hearts, the office team decided to start the season's cheer by skipping the usual chi-chi high tea and gift exchange session for something a bit more noble..we spent half a Friday afternoon entertaining the kids at the Chen Su Lan Methodist Children’s Home.

Started the event by serving the kids tea - we had sausage buns, cream puffs, chocolate muffins, sponge cakes..I was too busy serving thus, no photos of the tea meal. Furthermore, my camera got hijacked by Mark...here are some of the pics he took :)

Thomas was a really good sport and he played Santa wonderfully..I think the kids really enjoyed themselves (only had 2 cases of crying). This should definitely be our new Christmas tradition (bye bye nice chi chi high tea at Regent Hotel) ;)

Christmas reindeers

This year, I learnt from last year's mistake ..I did not wait till the very last minute to decide if I should be spending $25 for a cute reindeer. Last year, I thought about it soo long that by the time I decided that those reindeers needed a nice home, there were none left and I had to basically call like all the florist carrying them , begging for one!

So, dragged Jin to Orchard (editor: aka "the wallet") one sunny Saturday afternoon and here's Rudolph (red nose one!) and Reindeer (i know,,not too creative :p).

Christmas with Egypt group

Helen was really sweet to host this year's Christmas gathering at her new place in Yio Chu Kang. Daniel amazed us once again (and made the guys feel very inadequate) by baking a cheese cake from scratch! And we finally got to meet Marcus's and Ling's baby girl - Francine who was really well behaved.

Christmas holiday visitors

Met up friends visiting from US - Johnny and Mel along with their 2 kids - Joshua and Daniel. Joshua who we last met when he was only a few months old has grown into such a well behaved boy. Daniel is really a mummy's boy and was soo jet-lagged that he cried the whole 2 hours of dinner. Poor guy. Here's him with his eyes all red and puffy.

Waiming hopped back to Spore from Amsterdam for a month long break. I organised a brunch meet at the Turquiose Room with Neel and family, WH and IZ and Abhi who forgot to bring Zen the doggy despite my numerous reminders :p

Christmas misc

Prepared for this Christmas wayyy in advance (compared to previous years). Presents all bought 2 weeks b4 Christmas (sigh of relief from Jin - he hates the crowds and long lines at the check-out counters), cards sent out 1 month b4 Christmas...am trying to psych myself up for a long break ahead - 3 weeks jetting around the world! hurray..(if only there wasn't soo much to do at work :( )

Going for a baking lesson this afternoon to learn some new Christmas recipes..and will try to make some cookies and chocolate before we leave next week :). One last thing to do - go around snapping Christmas scenes along Orchard!

Simply yummy beancurd - Rochor Original Beancurd

2006-12-05T08:11:00.000+08:00

I can honestly say that Spore is home to one of the best beancurd you can find. The beancurd at Rochor Original Beancurd (Scotts Rd off Selegie Rd) is silky, soft, never too sweet and really melts in your mouth. Best of all, you can always get it when the cravings hits you at midnight. so when Su Ming was in town we had to introduce her to it (also good excuse for us to go :) )

Besides the house speciality bean curd, we also had the equally good grass jelly dessert and dough fritters. The shop aunty took a liking to Jin and gave him an extra fritter for free :D

Su Ming visits and brings along 4 seasons famous duck!

2006-12-05T07:50:00.000+08:00

Jin has been on cloud 9 since Sunday..his cousin from London, Su Ming dropped into Spore for 2 nights and carried with her a whole roast duck from the famous Four Seasons Restaurant in London. Now, I am not much of a duck fan and people close to me know that I love Dian Xiao Er's duck only because I get the fantastic gravy :D. Jin on the other hand LOVES duck (and Chicken rice - which I also do not fancy except for the hainanese chilli sauce :p)

So, imagine his absolute delight digging into the fatty duck at 10am on Sunday morning..and then having it again Monday night for dinner - claiming repeatly how yummy it was :)). Thanks Su Ming for making Jin one happy boy (well, for a few days till his duck supply runs out anyway..heehee)

p/s- check out the coincidence..the morning Jin was digging into his duck, Sunday Times featured an article on Robin Ho, marmalade pantry's chef stating that the best meal he ever had was the roast duck at Four Season Chinese restaurant (!!!) Quote : "...they use free-range duck from farms around Britain. The birds are corn-fed, so the meat is fatty and super succulent. Best in the world."

Winner new recipes..cleaning up is another matter :p

2006-12-05T07:19:00.000+08:00

Early last week, we saw a clear weekend with no plans so Jin suggested inviting his ex-MS colleagues over for dinner. I willingly agreed as I have been meaning to experiment with certain recipes which caught my eye lately. So Friday night saw me spending 2 hours running like a mad hatter round and round Cold Storage - buying ingredients for 4 recipes - tomato bruschetta, prawn bruschetta, meat and veg lasagna and tiramisu.

We then started cooking right till 130am on Friday nite/Sat morn...the recipes were simple enough but man, the amount of cleaning up is no joke. I must have finished half a bottle of detergent that night! Happy to say that the meal was very good and thanks to WH, I now know how to make a winning tiramisu :)

After a late night and tired hands, we decided that some pampering was in order :p..treated ourselves to a nice brunch at Epicurious (Mohd Sultan). Jin ordered a breakfast combi of sausages, eggs and mushrooms and I choose the egg benedict. These folks sure know how to make good egg dishes and with quiet view alongside the river, we "re-charged" with a good meal and fantastic coffee (Latte n cappucino - frothy max! my fav)

The last of this year's bday postings...

2006-11-29T10:38:00.000+08:00

Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro

Charmaine found out it was my bday last week and treated me to lunch at Greenwood Fish Market today. UOB had a great 1-for-1 offer for November bday boys/girls so I suggested that we hv lunch there (good deal for an othewise too expensive fish n chips place :p). We ordered the calamari as a starter and dory fish and chips as mains. The calamari's were a tad oily but very fresh and went especially well with the thai chilli dip.

The fish came with 2 generous portions, chips and salad. Again, freshness was the key to the tasty meal. After finishing the fish, C still wanted dessert and I asked to share with her but she said we shld each hv one so we could try 2 desserts instead of one. Heehee. Hence we ordered the apple crumble and chocolate fondont which needed 20 minutes of preparation time. I think I must be tired of eating chocolate fondont which is another name for the molten lava cake. This version was not bad..again, you can't go too wrong when using Valrhona. The apple crumble served with a scoop of vanila ice cream and drizzled with some raspberry sauce was actually a refreshing change from having chocolate for dessert. It was not too sweet and baked quite well as the insides were just nicely moist and not too dry.

C and I had a pretty good time catching up. Am def going to bring Jin here to try out the food..service is good and food is pretty decent once you get over the prices ;)..am keen to check out the seafood platters as well..they hv 2 versions, hot and cold priced at $80 each..ouch!

Peach Garden @ Novena

Last week, I finally got to try the food at Peach Garden with the girls. We had the eggplant with floss, wasabi prawns, pork ribs, venison with noodles made from fish , soupy spinach with egg and the house speciality dessert of pulut hitam with a scoop of ice cream served in a young coconut. The dessert is truly a meal in itself and we were so full we were semi-comatose after the dinner. I really liked the wasabi prawns and noodles which were quite springy and tasty! Found the pork ribs a tad too porky for my liking and the eggplant was wayy too oily. Pulut hitam dessert should only be eaten on an empty stomach in order to allow oneself to walk steadily after :p

Humble House @ Esplanade

On another night, I visited Humble House. Have not been back for 2 years and vaguely remembered a really good spinach tofu with enokki mushroom dish and the wasabi prawns served with macademia nuts. We ordered these 2 dishes and some herbal soup, soft shell crab and a deep fried beef dish. The tofu and prawns were still as yummy as I remembered them to be. The other dishes were so-so and pricey! Beef tasted like expensive bak kwa :p. Service for such a supposedly classy establishment was downright poor..the staff hardly spoke English, served us a wrong order and did not clear our finished plates. Have informed Jin that we won't come here again..will check out Club Chinois and do a comparison soon :)

Bday lunch at Au Petit Salut

2006-11-28T22:29:00.000+08:00

My work colleagues are such a sweet bunch...they got together to buy me lunch at Au Petit Salut @ Chip Bee Gardens today..the set lunch offered a $22+++ was one of great value. On the appetizer list were a number of good choices : half dozen escargots, cold platter, soup, salad etc. For mains, the team had venison stew, chicken cordon bleu, pan seared beef, tuna and seafood risotto. Dessert choices were creme caramel, chocolate ganache, choux buns with vanilla ice cream and chestnut mousse. I was pleasantly surprised when the chestnut mousse came with a bday candle and my dining companions sang Happy Bday to me :)))..Ended the meal with a cup of strong coffee (also part of the set) and very very satisfied. My choice pick would be the escargots as starters, beef for mains and the chocolate ganache to end.

The best wedding meal to-date..Ipoh

2006-11-27T17:00:00.000+08:00

When Seong Jiun first informed us that his wedding lunch was going to be held in Ipoh on a Sunday, we initially had doubts on whether we could attend it - mainly due to the distance (no direct flight to Ipoh from Spore and driving would mean at least 6-7 hours one way)

However, Seong Jiun has always held a special place in our hearts and we consider him one of the best friends one can ask for in our short time in planet earth..so Sunday saw us driving up from KL to attend the wedding. Made a quick stop before lunch to visit Jin's aunt, cousin and nieces and nephew before lunch. Here's Shawn, Emily and cutie Alexis with mummy Ah Ling.

Then it was off to Sun Lee How Fook restaurant at Jln Kampar - opposite The Store supermarket (+6016 540 8218). BOY, are we glad we decided to attend the wedding!..besides finally getting to meet the lucky bride and share in the occasion with SJ, the wedding lunch was beyond excellent. I seldom take pictures of food at a wedding (it's quite embarassing to make a table of 10 semi-strangers wait for you while you go trigger happy) but I really could not help myself.

We had crabs, lobster, soup, suckling pig, sea cucumber, 2 kinds of cod fish and dessert was hasma with soya milk. Although there were only 6 dishes instead of the usual 10 I can honestly say I have never eaten a better wedding meal elsewhere. We also managed to catch up with Ming Ming and Heng Choon and made the wedding couple kiss long long while we did the dragged out "yam seng" cheer.

Had to rush off for our 6 hour drive home to Spore right after lunch but not before stopping to stock on famous Ipoh biscuits. Am going to be biscuit happy for many weeks to come :)

And Mitsu gets a new resident...

2006-11-27T16:55:00.000+08:00

Good buddy Li Ling gave me a Harrod's bear for bday pressie. Rather than stuff another stuffed bear in the cupboard, I decided that he was so handsome that he deserved a permanent seat in Mitsu (my car) next to the other resident who's been a feature since Day 1 - Bunny aka Rabbit.

During yesterday's 6 hours drive back from Ipoh to Spore, Jin and I brainstormed through a list of potential names for our new friend....so, here's introducing William Wallace the IInd (aka Wally for short) - named after Mel Gibson's character in Braveheart the movie. We decided to name him after the Scotish folk hero based on his kilt...starting to regret it though...poor wally, lots of people have been molesting him to check out what's underneath that dress ;)

Happiness is...

2006-11-21T01:14:00.000+08:00

... definitely a weekend spent with special friends and family. As Jin has gone MIA in HK (editor's note: there was a very legitimate reason for this) for 2 weeks, leaving me stranded in Spore all alone, I quickly planned my weekend getaway to home sweet home across the border. It was a busy weekend - managed to have my usual Penang chee cheong fun at OS restaurant, met up with Lilian (finally- like after 11 months of not seeing her!!) for coffee, attended Piggy's wedding dinner, squeezed in a haircut, pedicure and walked up the hill near the house. The highlight was the cook-in dinner cum bday celebration held for me at SC and CW's house, where I got to play with Ethan and baby Nicky :). Here's a happy pix of him at 4 months!

The dinner was fun - Marc showed off his amazing skills in the kitchen by whipping up mushroom bruschettas and one yummy creamy carbonara pasta. Then it was SC's turn to hold the limelight with her lemon glazed grilled chicken with amazing tasting grilled veges. I managed to send some people to chocolate heaven with some molten lava chocolate cake- this time, I used the 70% valrhona cocoa..I liked it as it was much more bitter but I think the 62% one is better suited for this cake. Cheryl got quite addicted to it and finished up 2! Talking about Cheryl, she made a very good honey rock melon sago which I need to get the recipe off her to try out.

Lastly, as per last year's set tradition, I was presented with a beautiful bday cake from Bakerzin - strawberry mousse with crunchy crust. It was so good that I took home 2 slices for mom and HM to try :). With bday meals and celebrations like this, how can one not look forward to another bday? heehee... if only Jin could have joined us :p

Oh, after the dinner, I tried my hand helping out SC with some corsages for Piggy's wedding and managed to pull one off! quite proud to see some of the folks at the wedding wearing it! Here's a pix of keat playing instead of working..terrible :P

Here's us at Piggy's big day :

Before I left, took mom to try out Kemaman food (from the state of Trengganu) at a kopitiam in Section 14, PJ. I had the nasi dagang with fish curry and mom went for the curry noodles. The nasi dagang came with white rice instead of the purple one and the fish came with a whole load of oil. After 5 minutes of painstakingly removing the oil, I finally got to settle my craving for nasi dagang. Mom's curry noodles was not bad - nothing like the ones we get at the chinese coffeshop..this one had a lot more curry powder taste. I enjoyed the vietnamese coffee which this place does well..wonderfully thick and black with nice coffee powder texture!

My first HP dinner & dance

2006-11-21T01:12:00.000+08:00

Last Friday saw me dressed in a yellow boa strutting embarassingly on the stage representing the Team Yellow for the best dressed contest. Was one of the final 3, got a $20 Tangs voucher which covered the cost of the yellow boa :). Overall - a very planned D&D (held at Raffles Town Club)..kudos to the organising committee! Pix below taken in office fooling around with Myra's costume :D

Going pepper crabby @ Roland's

2006-11-15T09:21:00.000+08:00

Fellow foodie C organised a weekday dinner at Roland Restaurant. I'd never heard of the place before but apparently for all those who Singaporean crab lovers, Roland's is an old favorite food haunt that's been around for ages....Located on top of a multi-storey car park next to Parkway Parade the place was easy enough to find and naturally, parking was no problem :)

We ordered pepper crabs, chilli crabs, asparagus with baby mushrooms, you tiao (chinese dough fritters with fish meat filling) and a seafood noodle. The highlight to me was the pepper crab - just super yum! The sauce was rich and pepperish with a nice, spicy tang. The chilli crab was not too bad but I felt somehow that something was missing from the overall taste...maybe it was because my taste buds have become accustomed to the Jumbo/Long Beach versions.

The asparagus was very good - again, one can't go too wrong ordering anything with mushrooms :). Noodles and fritters were a bit oily but generally OK. The fritters came with a tasty sweet black sauce for dipping...All in all, a pretty good find as far as I was concerned...a good alternative to Jumbo for taking visitors next time!

Me with the Dim Sum Dollies and Hossan :)

2006-11-15T09:07:00.000+08:00

Managed to catch Little Shop of Horrors, Spore modified version over the weekend. As we wanted to save some $$, we bought the cheapest tix $40 and sat really far from stage..could not see much but at least the sound system was good :p. The show had a promising start but dwindled in the 2nd half and the ending was totally blah! Managed to grab a pix with the cast - thanks RY for such great photo taking skills ;)

Benefiting from WH's farewell extravaganza...

2006-11-11T08:22:00.000+08:00

Gosh..it's been ages since I updated my blog! Actually I've started on quite a few posts but the works in progress pile is growing cos of missing photos, details etc. and MIA editor (you know who!)...anyway, thought I'd bang out this one about Ah Hoon's multi-farewells.

My cubemate of 3 years, Wee Hoon (WH) resigned a couple of weeks back (sob sob)...WH is moving on to greener pastures at Tourism Australia where she'll be driving the come visit "bloody" Australia campaign. Man, this girl sure is one popular person...her send off started 2 weeks before her official last day! No complaints though as I have been a happy beneficiary since as her cubemate I inevitably get invited by default to these festivities...so far, I have been to one farewell thrown by the worldwide folks (we had a good Indian meal at Ivory Kitchen at Clark Quay - good food but pricey! LOVE their Indian bread options and grilled prawns), one hosted by an agency @ Wild Rocket and another one last night with the business team at Margarita's. There's still the finale to go, in 2 weeks, we will be doing a Karaoke session at St James Powerhouse..:p

Not so Wild about this rocket

I patroned Wild Rocket about a year back when they first opened. Despite its popularity with the yuppie crowd, my conclusion then was that the food was pretty mediocare. WH never tried it before and having read good reviews of it recently, we decided to give it another go. There were 4 ladies in our group and we ordered a good range of dishes (recommended by the waiter) to share family-style.

For starters, we had the cream of mushroom and cream of brocolli, soft shell crab and tofu rocket salad. The mushroom soup came with a generous sprinkle of white truffle oil but the whole combination left a rather bitter aftertaste..This is my first ever bitter mushroom soup! Further queries with the chef confirmed why..seems some batches of the mushroom could be bitter! hmm, and no amends were made despite the feedback....anyway, moving on...

The soft shell crab came with two large crab pieces and was served with black pepper sauce on the side. I found the crab rather oily (they could hv drained of paper towelled off some of the oil!) but the choice of dip was rather unique. It was really pepperish and not something one would normally choose to dip the crab with. The tofu salad was pretty healthy fare - not a bad choice as a starter as it was not overwhelming.

For mains - crusted catfish, seabass, pesto laksa prawn pasta and beef sirlion. The two fish dishes shone - very yummy - seabass tasted like cod and thankfully was not overcooked. The catfish was crusted with tomatoes and other herbs and all in all a pretty good choice from the set menu. I was dissapointed with the pasta as I thought the gravy could have been thicker..it was rather watery. The pesto taste was overwhelmed by the laksa coconut taste - also the prawns felt undercooked. eeww! No comments on the beef as I found it quite ordinary. Morton's to me still serves the best beef :)

Thankfully, desserts were acceptably good. The molten lava cake was just right although I can't be sure they used valrhona :p. Conclusion - still unchanged..pretty good but doesn't really pass muster in the highly competitive Singapore foodie scene...unless I get another surprisingly good review from personal friends on this place, I probably won't come back here again.

A jolly good time @ Margarita's...

There is a little unassuming place tucked secretly away in the residential area of Clementi at Faber Drive. If you are looking for mexican fare beyond the usual fajitas, tacos and quesadillas, this is a great place to explore what other dishes hail from the land of mehico.

Walking in, I felt like I stepped into someone's cosy home instead of a restaurant. Nice ambience created by warm lighting, a mixture of round and square tables and colourfully decorated walls and chairs, mexican style - the whole place felt truly inviting. Our waitress sensed our hungryness (had to wait for WH while she struggled to download her last remaining files) and immediately served us nachos with tomato salsa (do note that this is chargeable and not FOC as I initially thought it was seeing no one requested for it :p). While we nibbled on the nachos to placate our hunger pangs, we decided to avoid the hassle of looking through the menu and just ordered what was recommended by the waitress and a few friends who have frequented this place before.

We had : portobello mushrooms (not listed in the menu), spicy chicken, sliced beef, fajitas with prawns and chicken. The mushrooms were big! and served with one jalapeno and some salad. Grilled perfectly, they retained their juicyness and every bite spiralled me into mushroom heaven :). The spicy chicken (called pollo bibil) was actually not so spicy. It was oven-baked and came accompanied with a bean paste sauce (which tasted like bean humus) which you spread along your warm tortilla and lay a couple slices of chicken to give you a comforting meal. The beef was tender and not overcooked and I liked the sauce that came with it and splashes of sour cream.

Although the prawn and chicken fajitas were tasty (prawns nice and crunchy) - I did wish after we were done cleaning the plate that I had not noticed the globs of oil left on the hot plate. Very stuffed after all the food (servings were big! I can't imagine finishing a dish by myself) ...but as always, somehow there must remain room for dessert. We picked the kahlua tiramisu and mango turnover crepe. Both desserts were OK - the tiramisu was very simply done up and the sponge in it wasn't all that soaked in the coffee liquor - so you do get some bites where in between you taste dryness. The mango crepe was a tad too sweet for my liking but the coconut ice cream which came as a side was a refreshing end to a good meal.

Of course we had maragaritas which explains Wee Hoon's face colour ;). We ordered the

premium version at $55 a jug and although it did not taste very strongly of tequila, mind you..it's strong! so go slow on it :). Would def come back - but only with a big group as that helps spread the portions and give you more variety. Prices a bit on the high side with appetizers starting at $10 onwards and mains at $25 onwards.

The verdict - OLA! (but only with a big group)

Justin Crap? lunch at Snappers

2006-10-13T00:07:00.000+08:00

We had eagerly reserved our table about a month back when we heard reknown home grown chef, Justin Quek (of Les Amis fame) was bringing his whole team of staff from Taiwan to host meals at Snappers, Ritz Carlton for 3 days. Therefore, our expectations for the set lunch at $64 were pretty high..and I guess perhaps why we were even more dissapointed when the food turned out to be on the whole quite ordinary.

The entre on the set was a herbal duck consomme with herb cream foie gras dumpling. While waiting for that to arrive, the bread tray came along and all of us choose the good-looking olive buns..Sprinkled with rosemary and other herbs and topped with halves of olives, the bun was yummy :)

The starters finally arrived in time to stop us from finishing the whole lot of olice buns...I confess that until today, I am still not a foie gras fan and so, did not enjoy the super-rich foie gras filling in the dumpling. On the other hand, I found the soup quite enjoyable, tasty even..but M and A thought it was rather salty :p

Next came the seared romaine lettuce with king oyster mushroom and autumn dressing. Anything with mushrooms can't really go wrong..however, definitely more taste could be added into this dish - maybe it was supposed to be more on the subtle side so that it did not affect us from enjoying our mains?

For mains, we had a choice of poached ocean fish with ginger nates and fresh herbs OR grilled seared stirloin with bordeaux sauce. I choose the meat and the other 3 ladies went for the fish. This took really long to arrive and until today, we are still not sure if the fish was overcooked or is ocean fish supposed to have the texture of white steamed chicken? is was so tough that you needed the use of the knife to slice it. The herb sauce was the saving grace of this dish. My beef was ok, not much to shout about and even presentation wise - was unimpressive.

After the unsatisfying mains, we looked forward to dessert and were pleasantly surprised to be told by the waitress that there were 2 desserts which will be served and one was a "surprise" dessert..wooo..that sure piqued our curiosity. Shortly after, she came out carrying a plate with 2 open egg shells sitting prettily in a base of black sesame seeds. We took a shell each and under the layer of foamy froth, we discovered an excellent chocolate mousse and when we dug into the bottom of the shell, there were bits of hazelnut..YUM!

The 2nd dessert was a jasmine infused jelly with bits of pomelo and sides of a yogurtish sorbet. I found this a bit too sweet and something I could get from any of the local HK cha chan tengs.

Trying to end this with some good things to say..well, the wait staff, all flown in from Taiwan were a pleasant polite lot..always smiling and very accommodating (although service was really really slow!). And that choc mousse was really something else :).

Hing Hwa meal @ Pu Tien

2006-10-12T23:54:00.000+08:00

Started off the week meeting up with Andrea, Mad and Angeline for dinner. We initially planned to eat at Majestic but Andrea mentioned that the standards have dropped since we were last there...So it was a choice between Taste Paradise or Pu Tien. The later became the choice as I was feeling a bit poor and Pu Tien's much more affordable! hee..

Having read up reviews on Pu Tien, we knew straight away what to order. The famous Hing Hwa mee hoon noodles, yam deep fried with duck, pork floss with eggplant, drunken prawns and house speciality beancurd. The eggplant dish I liked the most as the sweet taste of the floss mixed with the more bland fried eggplant gave each crunchy bite an interesting aftertaste. The noodles tasted rather bland but had generous ingredients of veg, prawns, seaweed, peanuts, tofu and somehow, even though it's fried, you don't see a speck of oil..it had a wonderfully dryish texture - I was quite impressed :)

I found the duck overcooked and tough so only managed to eat the yam part which was stuck to it. Not much of a steamed prawn person so drank more of the wine soup which was not bad..could do with more wine! The beancurd was good - but it was precisely what one would expect. Mad and I love the chilli in this place..I think we practically dipped anything and everything into it and finished up the container at our table! We concluded that this was a place to try at least once :). For dessert, we headed to Selegie for yummy Rochor beancurd at just 80 cents a bowl.

Busy Sunday!

2006-10-08T23:49:00.000+08:00

Where did my Sunday go?! Let's see :

9am : started golf lessons at Keppel Club today :)!! Our coach - Jo- is Aussie and seems to know what he is talking about..first lesson was all about getting the basics right - grip, stance, mid-swing. He took a video of us and am happy to say that my stance is very alike to Tiger Woods..lol...next lesson in 3 weeks time..can't wait!

10.30am : checked out nearby Caribbean apartments - lovely compounds and love their jacuzzi with views of the open sea. Too bad it's leasehold and over 1,000 units :p

12pm : rushed to Gilstead Brooks and 38 Barker road to view cluster homes. Gilstead reminded us of the townhouses in US. very nice development..now, where to find the mullah? :p

1pm : dropped in to check out Residences @ Evelyn (just launched) - fantastic views of the city, great location - have to start buying lottery!! :D

1.45pm : finally -time to feed growling stomach. went for a 1-for-1 chinese feast at Mouth restaurant @ Safra Toa Payoh. Here's what we had :

double boiled shark fin's with avocado and chicken soup (they ran out of avocado and replaced with mushrooms instead - no complaints from mua the mushroom lover here ;) - soup was very flavourful - good start to the meal
braised bamboo pith w pumpkin & spinach sauce (found this quite ordinary - sauce no oomph)
steamed black chicken w tang gui & black fungus (this was yummy - the chicky meat came off the bones and the soup gravy was soo sweet from all the good ingredients - polished this off easily and jin's portion too ;)
steamed crab with DOM liquer & egg white (how can one not like this? :)..we got all our fingers dirty digging the meat out and sucking the claws clean..the egg white was a great compliment to this dish)
braised abalone with brown rice (only one eenie meanie small piece of abalone but the rice was tasty with some nice gravy so that it was not too dry)
double boiled pear w lily bulb & fungus (this dessert was ok..a bit sweet but the fungus and lily bulb gave it a nice crunchy taste)

We also got a bonus dessert of their house speciality - durian 'mochi'..very yum! and this got us very very FULL....*burp*

3pm-5pm - can't remember what we did - must be due to food overload (oh, yeah, chatted with michelle - sweet gal called from KL..sigh, i do miss our friends back home:(

5pm onwards - worked on presentation slides for monday and tuesday :( , wanted to to watch Lara Croft on local tv but realised we have watched it before. stole some of jin's yummy jap instant noodles and had a huge choc shake for dinner :D

11pm onwards - update blog while chatting with little sis in US :)

Busy week ahead - looking forward to lunch with gf's at Ritz with celebrity chef Justin Quek who's in town. Then off to India to visit the lovely Taj (urgh, forgot that there's work too!) and then back to KL for flight to Nepal..woohooo..am really pumped up for that trip..Little sis flying back with hubby and bro-in-law to join us for this trip along with mom! It's going to be a HaPpY 3 weeks in October :)))

Mooncake - back to original

2006-10-07T12:02:00.000+08:00

It's that time of the year again where our office pantry is filled with boxes of mooncakes. Every year I look forward to getting a bite of the snowskin mooncakes - sadly, we got fewer this year compared to last year and I only managed to try the white chococlate truffle snow skin mooncake from Raffles once :p. YL mentioned to me she liked the baked ones from Ritz so imagine my delight when I received a box of Ritz Carlton's mooncakes and yes, she was right, the lotus paste really was excellent..just the right mild sweetness wrapped in delicious pastry! Of late, we have had all sorts of flavours hitting our shelves - Baked peach mooncake with macademia nuts and white lotus paste, baked mooncake with ginseng, wolfberries & melon seeds - to name a few, but despite all these new flavours, I still like the original flavoured ones - plain lotus without any yolk - especially when they are made so exquisitely like Ritz's....simple is best! :)

Happy birthday Jin Jin :)

2006-10-03T20:55:00.000+08:00

DH turned 31 today..(but still acts like 20)..heehee..I surprised him with a home made gourmet-style breakfast in bed - omelettes with sausages, banana and peppers; sides of bread rolls smoothered with eggplant dip and sliced strawberries and green grapes. Since I was on a detox program, I did not taste the omelette but Jin was singing their praises (*big grin*)...only downside was he said from now onwards, we don't have to go out for gourmet brunches anymore *horrors* since I can whip up the same :D

Did not manage to go for bday dinner as he was closing the big deal he's been working on for the past month...but, what's a bday without a cake right? Got him a gorgeous looking mango pudding (Jin loves anything mango!) and sang him my one person rendition of Happy Birthday ..whew! the things I have to do..thank goodness it's only once a year ..Hah!

James Blake - Thai Open 2006 winner

2006-10-03T20:45:00.000+08:00

Woohoo! fulfilled my dream of watching James play LIVE!! When I heard that Thai Open tickets were on sale a couple of months back, I quickly scanned through the participating players list. Was quite dissapointed not to see Federer or Nadal on the list...but still with upcoming stars like James Blake that sealed our decision to make the trip to Bangkok (also, part of my bday gift to Jin :)

We managed to catch the semi-final between James and Safin which was really exciting as Safin put up a good fight both on court and off (he whacked his racquet several times and even broke one). James managed to pull through at 3-6, 6-4, 7-6. The 2nd semis was equally exciting as home-grown star Paradorn was pitted against Ivan Ljubicic. Paradorn was not in the same league as Ivan but he is soo cute! ;) Ljubicic dented Paradorn's hopes right from the start, utilising his powerful serve to silence the partisan Bangkok crowd and keep the Thai out of the match, eventually winning emphatically 6-3, 6-2.

The finals was quite a shocker with James thrashing the higher Ivan :6-3, 6-1 in 58 minutes. World class tennis from James but Ivan was not himself at all with tons of unforced errors.

Our hosts, Nont, his gf Yui and good friend, Pong really took care of us..fetching us to and fro from matches and buying us good meals and the sweetest thing - paid for our tickets! Ah..what great friends :)

Noodles galore in Bangkok

2006-10-02T02:02:00.000+08:00

Just came back from a fun-filled weekend in Bangkok. Jin and I went on a noodle eating spree which started with our old friend Nont taking us for chicken noodles at his favourite noodle joint. I love thai noodles at these hole-in-the wall places as they are sooo yummy and you get to mix in as much as you want of sugar, chilli flakes, cut chillis, soy and fish sauce for to taste. The next morning, we walked down 5 minutes from our hip hotel (see below) and found a duck noodle shop.. in Bangkok, everywhere you turn is great food. The final noodle meal was saved for the best. Located at Soi 26 @ Sukhumvit, this place (which Jin's old boss Eric had introduced to him a year or so ago) sells Thailand's numero uno pork noodles.....the testimonial: between us we finished 5 bowls!!!

Stayed at a great boutique hotel - Shanghai-Inn - located in the heart of the ever-bustling Chinatown. This place caught my eye with it's "chinese" decoration theme - big vietnamese lanterns and four-poster bed. I had actually anticipated the place to be quite tacky but it turned out that the folks here do know how to imitate tastefully :). There was even a bird cage surrounded by 2 huge lanterns in our toilet with 2 fake birds in it...cute! Service was fantastic, rooms very clean - for $60 a night and with its great locale (24 hours of food at your doorstep - forget about the free breakfast at the hotel! - and a TOPS supermarket on the ground floor), this is one place I would definitely recommend and stay again on my next trip!

I actually came on my own to Bangkok on Friday night as Jin had work commitments and could only join me on Sat. Arrived into the sparkling new Bangkok airport - took budget airline which had to land really far away from the main terminal and required a good 10 minute bus ride to reach the terminal from the landing spot. Went to check out Khao San despite it being already 11pm - did not like it..very dirty and more wild. Next morning, ventured out to walk the backlanes of Chinatown - stumbled on a wholesale market selling tons of hair accessories..bought a few for fun to give away :).

Adrian gets a high from Mark's cherry :D

2006-09-27T22:46:00.000+08:00

To celebrate Adrian turning 35, the work team met up at Dempsey Hut to buy him a b'day meal. Dempsies is known for their yummy chicky wings, curry chicken and fish & chips. We ordered a side helping of french loaf to soak in Mark's remaining curry gravy..and washed down the meal with cool ginger beer. Also sang 'Happy Bday' (minus the clapping) and shared a brownie topped with vanilla ice cream. It was also a great bonding session for Mark and Adrian as we can see from the above pix!

WW 1-4-1 @ Capella

2006-09-24T18:29:00.000+08:00

Quick! Rush out to buy the Oct edition of Women's Weekly (WW). It comes with a dining coupon book with fabulous 1-for-1 deals at some good restaurants including Il Lido, Doc Cheng's, Secret Garden, Made-in-China.

We first tried Capella last year when WW had the similiar deal at this place. This high class restaurant located facing the gorgeous victorian church at Chijmes serves fusion italian fare. Their pastas left a lasting impression on us the last time round and we've been looking for an excuse to return ever since. Hurrah for WW to continue the offer! This time, the deal was for a set lunch at $30++. On the lunch menu were a choice of 4 appetizers, 3 mains (fish, chicken and beef) and 3 desserts followed by coffee/tea.

My grilled seafood cake came decorated so prettily that it seemed almost a shame to touch it. I thought it tasted more like a normal "huge" fishball although the accompanied sides blended really well with this dish. The pan-fried chicken was more like Chicken Kiev, oozing with mozarella cheese filing. I found the crust a bit dry though and wished that they there was more of the tomato puree to offset the dryness. I did not realise that my dessert was 70% almond and 2% chocolate :p..not much of a almond dessert fan, I became more keen on Jin's yummy strawberry ice-cream.

Jin's mushroom fritata was actually a quiche (i learn something new everyday :p) and it was good! Just the right amount of cheese so it did not seem too heavy as an appetizer. His grilled steak looked more like a pork chop but it was a real steak alright. Tender and lean, every bite got an approving nod from both of us. His strawberry ice-cream dessert was the chef's selected dessert of the day and was a good way to round off the meal.

We finished our lovely Sunday lunch with good coffee and at $35 (for BOTH of us), this was certainly one of our best value gourmet lunches in recent memory.

Penang food quite Delights...

2006-09-24T18:00:00.000+08:00

Since moving to Singapore 4 years ago, Jin and I have nearly given up hope of ever finding good Penang Fried Kuey Teow here. Singapore has its own version which neither of us has taken a liking to (soggy and sweet vs the Penang version which is dry and spicy). So when we read in last week's papers that there was a stall in Aljunied serving this, we happily arranged to have our Saturday brunch there.

Located at Aljunied Ave 2, Penang Delights is a small stall in Block 117. With the Strait Times review enlarged, laminated and proudly displayed outside the stall, there was already a short queue when we arrived at 10am. I stood in line and scanned the simple menu which consisted of 4 items - Penang Fried Kuey Teow (FKT), Penang Asam Laksa, Prawn Mee and Kon Low noodles. We went with the FKT and Asam Laksa.

The FKT looked promising with its 2 large prawns. It tasted close to the KL FKT - they got the texture right but the spiciness was missing. Nevertheless, it was one of the better FKT we have tried in Spore :). The Assam Laksa was also surprisingly good...definitely up yoKL standards and it was served with generous helpings of tuna. For $2.50 a dish, both came in a good sized portion to fill up a lunch stomach. Would definitely recommend this place to anyone who has never tasted Penang FKT and Assam Laksa...next, to come back to try the Prawn Mee (have never found this in Spore until now) and the kon low (dry) noodles.

Rack of lamb as thai cuisine?

2006-09-17T20:00:00.000+08:00

Patara (fine thai cuisine) @ Tanglin Mall was the 2nd eatery we attacked with Jin's 50% creative eateries discount card. This thai restaurant has not been frequented by us even though it's a 5 minute walk from home because of their dear prices..a dinner there for two can easily set you back $100.

After scanning their website, I had planned for us to order the rack of NZ lamb and black cod. However, the waiter mentioned that the cod might be a bit too fishy so we went with the grilled jumbo king prawns instead. One of our appetizers was the tom yam soup which came 2 large prawns and lots of mushroom and slices of coconut. The soup had a tangy sour spicy taste - just as like all quality tom yam soups to be.

Our 2nd appetizer was the "maeng kam" - betelnut leaves which you fill up with condiments of peanuts, lime, chilli padi, garlic, baby shrimps, onions and top up with a smear of coconut tamarind paste - fold and pop into your mouth for a crunchy mouthful of mixed flavours - I call it the 4 S's - sweet, salty, savoury & spicy :)

We were served 2 portions of the grilled prawns ($28)...the prawns were very fresh and went well with the lime and lemongrass chilli sauce. The lamb ribs marinated with lemongrass was also similarly excellent... the meat was tender and absent of the usual overpowering lamby...it also came on a generous bed of papaya salad. I would clasify Patara more as a fusion restaurant than thai - a good deal only with our 50% discount - otherwise, a bit overpriced for regular casual dining:).

Turqoise being the new colour..

2006-09-17T16:39:00.000+08:00

One my my favourite things about the weekend is that I get to plan and decide on places to eat for 4 meal times. Jin, who is ever accommodating - contributes by agreeing to my choice of outlets, driving us there and most importantly, picking up the bill :D..heehee.

To reward him for to his niceness, I usually try to bring Jin to places which I myself have tried out and found them to be good (this making me his guinea piglet :)....so for today's Sunday brunch, we headed to The Turqoise Room @ Gilman Village. I have visited this place twice in the past and always felt that their pastas were pretty good. On my last visit, I managed to "steal" a bite of crab meat linguine off my colleague's plate and knew instantly that this was a dish that Jin would love!

It was a quiet morning at Turqoise, we were the 2nd patrons. With the light drizzle and amidst lush greenery, coupled with the vast space and whitewashed interior - it felt like we were in our own dream home away from the city..nice! Jin wasted no time in ordering his crab meat linguine and peach smoothie while I gave their brunch menu (which consisted of mainly different variations of omelettes) a miss and went with the grilled chicken with pesto and sun dried tomatoes pasta ( I am a sucker for anything with pesto!)

The food took some time to come but hey, it's a lazy Sunday morning so armed with borrowed magazines, we kept ourselves busy browsing. The crab meat linguine was just as I remembered it to be,,creamy tomato base with generous helping of fresh crab meat..oh, it was wayy too good! My pesto based pasta dish had 3 fillets of chicken and I love it that the sauce was evenly spread among the big portion of linguine.

Turqoise's a great place to check out - although prices are bit on the steep side- you pay for the great tasting food and lovely ambience.

In hurry for curry...

2006-09-16T23:25:00.000+08:00

Hsu Wei's mom makes the best best curry chicken in the whole of Spore..honest! This home-cooked dish is made scratch from only the freshest ingredients ..no store bought paste and all that nonsense. I have eaten it twice in my 4 years in Spore so you can imagine my excitement and delight when Myra organised a dinner a her place and Hsu Wei agreed to get her mom to cook for us...the date of the dinner was infact only set after we first checked with Mrs. Tan if she was free to cook :)..like Myra said - no curry, no dinner!

And the curry did not disappoint and definitely worth the wait :)..it's the kind with tinges of everything - coconut, lemongrass, chilli, spices and it's not burning hot but with the right level of satisfying spiciness.

We had ourselves a feast tonight as Myra worked her magic on a japanese salad dish, tofu with century egg, garlic bits and pork floss, baked wings, thumb-sized mushrooms with a touch of salmon and bacon bits.

Wee Hoon and I delivered a tiramisu cake which we spent our Friday night stuck indoors making ..it turned out pretty well in terms of texture but sadly it lacked the alchoholic oomph :p

Adel kept to her promise and brought along her little Noah..he is such a cutie ;)

Around Singapore in 1 day...

2006-09-16T09:28:00.000+08:00

Last Sunday saw Yen Ling, Ed, Jin and me driving all over Spore as part of the Power 98 Carvivor event. It was a treasure hunt of speed that had us do the following :-

1) Answer 8 questions at Downtown East
2) Fold paper aeroplanes at West Coast Park
3) Separate red beans from green beans at Lower Delta Road
4) Squeeze lime and drink the juice at Chua Chu Kang stadium
5) Skip rope and answer questions at Sentosa

Once we found out that this hunt was based on speed, we were realistic that our chances of winning was slim with 120 teams to compete with. So we decided from the start to just enjoy ourselves and not even attempt the rush ;)..I got to ride the sentosa sky tower for free and the views of Spore from the tower really wowed me! Brave Jin had to drink up all the sour lime juice mixed with lime seeds, grub from our hands and lots of our saliva..he was the MAN! (poor hon! - thankfully you did not get stomach ache). Ed and YL were great team mates with Ed's vast knowledge of the Spore roads (he was our talking street directory) and YL's infallible chirpyness definitely made the hours on the road that much more fun.

We got lots of door gifts including free tickets to watch the Spore Slingers vs Adelaide 36ers basketball game next week..kewl!

Jin and Cin - 6 years!

2006-09-10T21:11:00.000+08:00

Jin and I celebrated our 6th wedding annivesary last weekend in KL.

As a treat, we checked into the KL Hilton and spent the weekend with friends, good Msian food at affordable prices and time with family. The nice thing about being married is having someone to do something with you (the poor spouse has no choice! right? ;)..it really magnifies the FUN factor. This week alone saw us attending our first pop concert - Westlife, watch a weekday movie (The HOST rocks!) and spent a good part of Sunday driving all over the island (north, south, east and west - we kid you not!) as part of the Power 98 Carvivor Rally.

Join me as I make a "blog toast" to Jin and me for many more HaPpY years to come and angst to endure ;) My one wish is that Jin will look at me as lovingly as my grandparents and in-laws are still doing :)

Addicted to Prison Break!!!

2006-09-10T19:59:00.000+08:00

Finally got hold of the dvd set of the latest "IN" tv series - Prison Break..this show is the reason I can't wait to come home during the whole weekend - forgoing weekend shopping at Orchard and not allocating time to check out the full suite of new eateries at meal times :p

Since Friday night, Jin and I have been averaging 5 hours of Prison Break a day. In between, we managed to squeeze brunch yesterday at Steeple's Deli and dinner at Al Dente trattoria.

Since hearing Charmaine raved about the peanut butter choc milkshake at Steeple's Deli, I could not come up with any good reason why we should not check it out for brunch seeing this old-time deli is barely a 2 minute walk from home ;). We sat ourselves at the half-filled bar counter and immediately ordered the milkshake. Then only did we allow our eyes to wander through the rest of the blackboard for the mains.

I choose the Reuben (pastrami with cheese) and Jin went for his usual Saturday morning brunch burger. The milkshake came first and one sip and I was silent for a good 5 minutes :) (still trying not to think about the 1000+ calories that shake's probably made of..instead, focusing on the good - nuts are good for you aren't they? hee)

I found the reuben quite ordinary - it came as a open-faced sandwich laden with tons of sauerkraut, followed by slices of pastrami ham and one thin layer of swiss cheese. Don't get me wrong..it's tasty but nothing super memorable...I think I miss my fav sandwiches at Simply Bread :). Jin's burger was a surprise... A good reasonable sized patty tucked in between 2 fluffy buns - and that's it! I was like ..err, where's the cheese? pickles? tomatoes? anything??? But there was a good reason why it came so plain..I guess the smart folks at Steeple's know how to make a good patty and they did not want any other ingredients to spoil the taste. Burger was succulent and very juicy. Not as fantastic as Marmalade's but then again, this burger was half the price :). Steeple's seems like a good place to go for quickie comfort food....laidback atmosphere and pleasant service too.

Al Dente Trattoria is located at the Esplanade's riverfront...and with the scenic Spore skyline as a backdrop this makes for a romantic dinner venue. With average mains costing $30, we usually only frequent such pricier establishments only occasionally. However, Jin received a "pressie" in the mail a few days back.,..courtesy of Citibank Platinum memberships services, he was presented with the Citibank creativeateries card that gives up to 50% discounts from the creativeateries group of restaurants. Yippee!! so Al Dente's the first on the list which we decided to check out.

Our appetizers were the grilled portobello mushrooms (which came with a good sized mixed salad) and the flower crab bisque. Both were yummy and despite having a conversation on the cell, I managed to quietly dig into my favourite mushrooms and salty rich bisque (I later found out that it was made with brandy..no wonder it tasted good..hic!). As a main, I found little fault with my oven-baked black cod fish accompanies with sides of garlic mash and slices of carrots and zuchinni. Jin thoroughly enjoyed his garlic cream based linguine arragosta which came with small portions of mushrooms and fresh lobster meat. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we had no more room for dessert but went home to Prison Break Disc 3 with happy tummys especially since the good meal came up to less than $50 for both of us :).

Let's go eat! I am hungry!!!

2006-09-06T15:02:00.000+08:00

These 6 words in Charmaine's email prompted 5 ladies to head to Majestic Restaurant for a sunny Wednesday lunch date. She had read about the lobster noodle review on Chubby Hubby's blog and the picture of the lobster alone got our crustacean cravings going :))

The 4 course lunch set started with a trio of appetizers : meat dumplings, jellyfish topped with 2 slices of bbq meat (char siew) and soft shell crab. Of the 3, my fav was the crab..it was fried with garlic and had just the right amount of seasoning to make every crispy bite delicious :). The dumplings tasted like normal "shui gao" to me and the bbq meat was like Steph commented - too porky :p

The double-boiled soup came next..presentation wise, very ordinary (hey, it's a soup..what did I expect? fireworks?..heee)..but the taste was quite aromatic with a tinge of herbalness and sweetness. Came with cubes of a chinese vegetable root..I have no idea what it's called but it had a cruncy texture like a lotus root.

Then came the highlight course - braised live boston Lobster noodles with spring onion and ginger. The portion served was surprisingly generous in nature. We had a meaty claw and one half of the body. Might be a bit too much for some but to me, the portion was just right :). The noodles were a tad too soggy and Yappy commented that the taste of the noodles and lobster did not gel. I loaded my noodles with red cut chillis and finished them in a jiffy. The remaining lobster noodle broth was not wasted either - slurp slurp ;)

We ordered an extra dish of pan-fried carrot cake to share. I thought it wasn't that great - too soft and wet. And Yappy found an "added ingredient" in her plate of carrot cake, which resulted in the chef coming in to apologise ....we were also given complimentary custard-filled mini buns as a compensation.

The set lunch ($40 with OCBC card) included dessert (choice of 8 options). My love of orh nee has not subsided so I choose that over the durian crispy ice cream. To my dissapointment, Majestic's orh nee did not impress..came slightly overcooked with a layer of almond paste (I hate almond paste :P) and 3 gingko nuts. I ended up finishing Yappy's durian pastry ice cream dessert instead..heehee..she had no choice but to share seeing that I was sitting next to her..hah!

Andrea commented that the ala-carte menu served better food at more affordable prices so I will definitely come back to try it out! One thing for sure, with great service and quality food, it's no wonder this place is packed most of the time..every table was filled during lunch!

Working on Merdeka :p

2006-09-01T00:06:00.000+08:00

It's Merdeka day in Msia today...all my msian friends had the day off while poor me had to work :p. I volunteered as a HP Demo Dayer at COMEX (computer fair) - which saw me standing on my feet for 4 hours this evening, with a huge smile plastered on my face, saying "Hi - can I help you? do you need photo paper? do you need cartridges?"

Am happy to admit that I managed to sell quite a bit - now I need my bed to rest my aching back and feet..kudos to all the folks out there who have to be on their feet all day long. You have my full R.E.S.P.E.C.T (said in full Ali G's style ;)

Quickie lunch at Ristorante Bologna

2006-08-31T14:23:00.000+08:00

It's been a rather long, uneventful week and the constant rain did not help. Figured that a good meal was required to bring the weekend closer - so decided to meet up with Andrea for pasta at Ristorante Bologna. This place first caught my eye with its adverts featuring the "seductive" Chef Carlo. I am not sure if one can deem the ad sexy but hey, it got me there so I guess they did the job :). Andrea had a great credit card 1 for 1 offer so that sealed the deal on the choice of restaurant.

Bcos of the offer conditions, we had to stick to ordering only pastas. The menu featured about 15 choices. Based on the recommendation of the waiter , we ordered the home-made tortelloni filled with porcini mushrooms in Parmesan cheese and sage fondue and the Black tagliolini with crabmeat, lemon skin and light tomato sauce. The servers were kind enough to offer to split our pasta for us when we told them that we were sharing. Service was good and the food arrived quickly (for the hungry folks, a bread basket with generous portions of bread sticks and grain bread is served along with a simple tomato-based dip)

As baby Ixus is still in hospital, Andrea had to use her camera phone to snap pictures of our lunch. The nice thing about lunch with a fellow blogger is that while one snaps away, the other gets to start eating ;). I started with the mushroom pasta...which although looked quite ordinary, was surprisingly tasty. Every bite extracted the taste of mushrooms blended wonderfully with the cheese and sage....I gobbled down my 4 pieces pronto:)

I then took a bite at my 2nd pasta dish which strangely looked like the usual Beef bolognise to me. And guess what? IT was! The waiter wrote our order wrongly. He quickly made amends by removing the "salty" beef pasta dish and soon, the "correct" crabmeat dish arrived.

Although it came with generous servings of crab meat, I found the dish quite ordinary..there was a lack of infusion which I would expect from any good Italian restaurant. The thin slices of lemon skin in fact tasted odd against the tomato based sauce.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the company and great service..will come back again to try the bacon pasta which Andrea had the last time and got her thumbs up.

Melaka - where rice become balls

2006-08-27T15:14:00.000+08:00

I finally got to settle my craving of chicken rice balls at the famous Chung Wah a stone's throw from Jonker's street. After a short 2.5 hours drive, we reached Melaka slighty after 1pm and navigated ourselves through the useful signages to find this place in the heart of the tourist spot in Melaka. There was a short queue and after 15 minutes of waiting, we were sitted on a table with 2 other couples (strangers). With a simple menu of chicken rice, you only had to think of whether you wanted a whole chicken or half. We were each given 5 rice balls and I dipped mine constantly with the garlic laden chilli dip and was transported to rice ball heaven :). Liv keeps telling me that the rice balls are actually the same as eating the rice without the ball shape but somehow, the shape of the ball enhances its taste to me..I know..I am weird :p

Satisfied from rice balls (Jin had to finish like 2/3 of the chicken by himself - he loves the kampung chicken which he claims is much tastier than their spore town cousins - just not as smooth), we walked a good 10 minutes to Jalan Bunga Raya for cendol at Min Chong. The very nice smiley uncle served us 2 cendols and insisted we tried their vegetarian style rojak. Oddly, we found the cendol lacked gula melaka so we asked for extra to add on. The vegetarian rojak was quite standard - came with the usual beansprouts and tofu.

With stomachs full of rice and cendol (and in Jin's case - chicken too!), we staggered in the VERY HOT Melaka heat back to Jonker street where our car was parked. Came by the famous cendol shop at Jonker which serves its version with durian paste. Could not resist - so despite being stuffed, we walked in to order a bowl to share. There's another stall which serves all kinds of noodles under the same shop and we nearly ordered a bowl of assam laksa to share but am proud to say we resisted the temptation (now we have reason for a return trip to Melaka ;). The durian cendol was not as good as we remembered it to be..not enuff durian la! Jin commented that nothing beats his favourite Penang cendol ..sigh..this guy - so hard to please!!

Next morning, Liv took us to eat duck noodles at Bukit Beruang. The stall in the bullocks is actually mentioned in my Foodsters' Guide and that really surprised Liv as she grew up eating this noodle not knowing that it fell under the "famous to eat in Melaka" category :). The noodles were very smooth and the duck - lean and meaty. Simple comfort food at its best.

That ended our Melaka eating spree. On the drive home, Jin could still managed to eat his Ramli burger at the Gelang Patah rest stop on the north south expressway. This one stall on the far right of the food court area serves them fresh (only starts cooking when you order) and tastes pretty good (near KL standards :). Enuff of food for now..I need to hit the gym :p

Chloe Luthi - not 1, 2 but 3

2006-08-27T15:13:00.000+08:00

Yay! Chloe turned 3 yesterday and celebrated it with lots of adults and her little friend Margo. Liv worked herself to a frenzy preparing a feast for her 20 guests. On the grill were kebabs (prawn, fish, beef), lamb chops, steak and chicken wings. On the sides were crabsticks, pineapple, salads (which I helped made ;) honeydew with prosciutto ham, sandwiches, bruschettas, mozerella cheese balls with baby cheery tomatoes and the staple - fried rice and bee hoon.

Then came the huge bday cake dressed with Mickey, Minnie and gigantic pink candles. Seems Chloe's at the stage where pink's her favourite new colour so the bday theme was pink including her dress and pressies. We got her 2 gifts - the main one was the musical pink jewellery box which had a ballerina in a cute pink tutu swirling in music each time the box was opened. The 2nd was a pink small pillow with Patrick the dog embossed on it. I think she likes the musical box more as she kept that by her side throughout breakfast this morning ;) (that and her pink barbie doll). Have promised to bring her to the spore zoo to see the penguins when she comes visit in Oct (hmm, wondering if there are such things as pink penguins?) :p.

Floggers din din - where blog becomes flog...

2006-08-27T15:12:00.000+08:00

Stuffed - is the one and most appropriate word to best describe the Floggers dinner at Sage. It was supposed to be a 5 course meal but turned out to be a enormous 8 course meal - 2 appetizers, 2 mains and 4 desserts!!!

Here's the listing of the "official" menu :-

Fricassee of Burgundy escargot with lentil du puy and field mushrooms, poached egg and Italian parsley foam (generous portion of escargot interestingly served with an egg..loved the lentil sauce!)
Chesnut mousseline with oxtail consomme and truffle oil (this is ze best dish of the nite - definitely a must to return to Sage for this :)
Baked fillet of sea bass topped with tiger prawn mousse, braised fennel and lemon-basil emulsion (after 2 great appetizers, I found this 1st main a dissapointment - the fish was rather bland tasting, dry and probably overcooked)
US corn fed beef shortribs braised in red wine topped with slices of foie gras and bone marrow, glazed root vegetables and a mousseline of butternut pumpkin (with such a long name, you can surely expect this dish to be a winner and it was pretty good..despite not being a great fan of "fatty" meat, I finished this quickly..I just love butternut pumpkin!)
Fromage Blanc panna cotta topped with candied strawberries, Champagne jelly and a strawberry sorbet (yum yum yum! I don't think I have ever tasted a non chocolate dessert this good..the sorbet was super berry delicious!)

And the "unofficial" :-
Colin's bday cake - made with heavenly chocolate (how to resist?!)
Sponsored truffles from Julius Truffles (I only managed to eat one piece and boy, am I glad I did!! - The Volcano Premium - made with Remy Martin XO Cognac, this can only be described as a chocoholic cum alchoholic fantasy and makes it to my Chocolate Hall of Fame! )
Turkish delights from hinata (sigh..if only I had 3 stomachs)

I won't go into full details of the event as most of the floggers have already written extensively well on it :). Daffy's flogblog links to the other attendees and she summed up the event pretty good in a flogshell. Just wished that there was more time to mingle around..Andrea and I were discussing this and next time, we should suggest a musical chair event where people have to move seats at every course ;).. Special thanks to Colin for organising, to the other floggers for bringing the extras and great company. Of course, not forgetting our generous sponsors : Razorsharp for the pow wow Kasumi knives and BATS for the Staub lucky prizes (wished I had won a fondue set!! ;P)

Am already looking forward to next year's meet..now I wonder who is the lucky person who got selected to plan that? ;)...hee

I hate it when I can't sleep :(

2006-08-25T04:06:00.000+08:00

It's 4am! I went to bed at 1130 as I was feeling rather tired after an intense workout at the gym today..2 hours later, I was still awake..sigh..so dragged myself out of bed, had a quick snack and went back into bed. 1 hour later - still awake!!! gave up trying to sleep and am sure will regret my actions as I have a full day of meetings later today :p

Yesterday, attended a press event and "Friends" from Chomp Chomp, serangoon gardens were the caterers. Chef Peter prepared a spread of grilled prawns, fresh oysters, pan seared tuna and yummy cod. As baby Ixus is still in the hospital, I did not get to take any pix of the spread :(. They also set up a coffee bar serving Griffins coffee from Melbourne. I am still wondering if my sleeplessness tonight has anything to do with the 2 cups of coffee I had at the event :p Oh, finally got to taste VEUVE CLICQUOT champagne..people tell me this is supposed to be better than Moet..but honestly, I think I preferred the Moet taste more :)

Later tonight, will be attending the food bloggers dinner at The Sage. Can't wait to check out what's being served at $60 per head. Looking forward to a fun evening hanging out with Charmaine and Andrea and meeting the creme de la cream foodies of Spore! Hopefully I don't fall asleep in my soup :p

Guest Blogger - Made In China @ Haw Par Villa

2006-08-22T14:47:00.000+08:00

Wow, Cin has invited me to be a guest-blogger on her food blog! Reviewing Made in China, a Chinese restaurant nestled in Haw Par Villa, within the Huasong (“in praise of the Chinese”) museum. Was really looking forward to dining there! Haw Par Villa, despite looking rather forlorn these days, holds great childhood memories for me. I remember it to be a lively, colorful theme park filled with tourists and local visitors. Was especially intrigued by the “18 Levels of Hell” exhibit. Anyway, I thought it was a clever idea to have a restaurant-cum-museum there. Otherwise, who would travel all the way out?

So on Tuesday, Cin and I went to Made in China for lunch with Serene, Neel and Abhi from work. It was my bday treat from them :) Bloody hot day, so was glad there’s parking close-by. The restaurant is quite a distance from the Haw Par Villa entrance, and Cin mentioned that we were supposed to park near the entrance and stroll up the slope as part of the “experience”! The rest felt we have enough Vitamin D, so parked where it required just a nice short walk to the museum. The restaurant is housed in its main hall. (Note: Bring along your parking coupon and redeem the $5 fee against your dining bill. OCBC credit card gets you a 15% discount!)

First impression – I was disappointed by the decor. Not as impressive as I had imagined! But since this is primarily a food blog, I’ll concentrate on, well, the food! Don’t miss the museum though – it’s very enjoyable. Especially when diners get a complimentary guided tour with Mr Lai; there’s a fee of about $8.40 (adult) $5 (child) for non-diners.

On to the food! Service was prompt and we quickly made our orders. Got the recommended Hakka specialty “Suanpanzi” or “abacus seeds”. Dough made from yam flour and shaped like beads on a traditional Chinese calculator (abacus) are stir-fried with minced pork, diced water chestnuts and shredded black fungus. This was my favourite dish as the “seeds” were much softer and smoother than versions I’ve sampled elsewhere, and the water chestnuts added a really lovely crunch to the dish.

We also ordered the Taiwanese/Southern Chinese specialty “Sanbei Claypot Chicken with Basil Leaves”. “Sanbei” means “three cups”. I was wondering why it’s named that way. Then coincidentally, while watching a food program last night, I found out that it’s because the chicken is cooked with one cup each of vinegar, Chinese wine and dark soya sauce! Actually, I ordered this dish forgetting that Cin doesn’t eat chicken (oops, sorry Cin!). It turned out mediocre. I had the same dish at a restaurant on Yangmingshan in Taipei. Now that was so amazing that I unglamorously slurped and scrapped up every last fragrant bit! This version has too much vinegar, and for some reason, you don’t get the usual lovely aroma from the basil.

Another item we ordered was the “Feicui Toufu” or “jade beancurd”. It’s spinach-topped braised beancurd with vegetables and Nameko mushrooms. This was Cin’s favourite; I say she’s biased because they were generous with the mushrooms! ;-P But it is good… I really liked the lychee peach tea that Cin ordered – cool and refreshing, but it costs a ridiculous $6.75, which we only found out after we got the bill. Wait, but we got two lychees!

We also had some dim sum. Worth mentioning is the Crispy Banana and Red Bean Roll. A tad oily, but the light sweetness of the moist filling and crispiness of the wrapping was totally satisfying – especially for Abhi with the sweet tooth! Another unique selection is the carrot cake. Unlike the flat squares at other dim sum places, we had cubes of it stir-fried with crabmeat, egg and bean sprouts. Quite tasty, but for $18 a plate, I’d rather have my $2 “black chai tau kweh” at Ghim Moh hawker centre… J

Based on Tuesday’s sampling, I’d come back and try other dishes on the menu – probably more of the provincial signature dishes, and perhaps for dinner. Compared to other provincial Chinese restaurants I’ve tried, Made In China’s cooking is great for diners who like a down-to-earth style of cooking, but with more “refined” tastes – definitely not as “robust” (i.e., heavy on lard and sodium!) as traditional fare. Raymond our waiter told us we should try the Fish Maw Bisque next time. He kept pushing us to try the mooncakes too! He should have given us some free samples – duh! Anyway, we were all stuffed by the time Abhi popped the last bit of char siu bao in his mouth. That’s when we decided to “walk it off” in the museum. Only after that did we troop back to the office… satisfied!

Celebrating Wee Hoon's bday @ New Asia Bar

2006-08-22T14:45:00.000+08:00

WH invited Jin and me to join IZ and her 2 friends, Amy and Jeanne for complimentary Moet champagne and Prego cake at New Asia Bar. That lucky woman is member of Club 72 which entitles her to the above benefits. We sat at the special 'members only' area surrounded by great views of Spore.

Since we arrived during happy hour, I ordered the sour apple martini for $9 a glass..we also had a serving of calamaris (yummy!) and satay. The outing was a great way to start the work week. Had to leave early as Jin was as usual falling asleep on the cushiony couch :p. Below are some of the hazy photos taken with IZ's ipaq camera phone > sob, i miss my baby ixus :(

:p..(yet another) end of the weekend...

2006-08-20T22:15:00.000+08:00

Was a rather hectic week - been given a new role at work and had to sit through two full days at the Oriental Hotel to digest information relating to new role :p. I always believe that it's important to maintain a good balance of work and play..so to keep sane and make myself believe that life's not all work, weekends are something I look forward to - both in terms of planning and enjoying :)

This weekend was rather fruitful..we managed to check out some new condo developments - balmoral hills, the stellar and murano. Still have not found the "perfect" condo both in terms of price range and "feel". The highlight of my Saturday was the test drive session of the Lexus RX350 :)..since cannot afford to buy one now, we thought it would be fun to test drive one and boy, we are now even more convinced that it's the car to aim for next ;).

Also found time this weekend to squeeze in 2 sessions of shoulder massage. My left shoulder decided to play bad and has been aching like crazy, causing me great discomfort and making me highly irritable. To save Jin from my crankiness, I quickly checked myself into a 40-minute massage (S$23 -package price) at My Foot Reflexolgy. They have chains all over spore. I went to the great world city one and came out feeling a lot better. Had a repeated session today but this time at the nearby Forum branch. I got a blind guy working on my shoulders..although he was a bit "clumsy", he did hit some of the right spots :).

Went over to YL and Ed's place for some home -cooked chinese meal. YL outdid herself with 5 dishes and we wiped clean the plates :). Watched Ali G for the 1st time and found him silly
funny.

Oh, bought Jin his bday pressie in advance. Booked us on a trip to Bkk in Oct to watch the Thai (tennis) open. Got Nom (jin's work acquiantance) to buy us tix for semi and finals. My first time attending real tennis tournament. Can't wait :)

Plans for the week ahead :
Mon - Lunch to celebrate WH's bday at Made IN China @ Haw Par Villa, Drinks at New Asia Bar with WH and IZ
Tues - Lunch with Abhi and Neel for them to buy WH her bday meal
Wed - Lunch with Karine at Gilman Village
Thurs - Using free pass to enjoy the kickboxing class at California Fitness Gym
Fri - Dinner with Floggers (spore food bloggers) @ The Sage
Sat/Sun - weekend trip to Melaka to celebrate Chloe's bday and eat chicky ball rice and of course, durian cendol

So there you go, life's really not all about work ;) Yay!

Ah Boy and Chin Yat - fruit loving dogs

2006-08-20T16:45:00.000+08:00

Despite being just 2 minutes away from where Anne and VB live (HP offices are just up the road from where they live), we hardly get to meet up - so it was nice to finally catch up after not seeing them for more than 6 months. We picked them up for a quick tze char din din at Zi Yean (Redhill area).

It was my first time to Zi Yean since they moved from Stirling Road. There was a good crowd but the place was big - so no problems with getting a table. That coupled with easy parking made gave this place a plus for the convenience factor. Their menu was pretty intensive so we ended up getting recommendations from the waitress. Within 15 minutes, we were served our 4 dishes - red snapper steamed HK style, prawns in crispy bean curd skin, chinese braised spinach and grilled beef tenderloin. I won't go into details about each dish as I did not find any of them overly too exciting or memorable....it's a good place for a good quality tze char meal but for the same price, Por Kee at Tiong Bahru is still my top favourite :)

VB is a true durian fan and what's a meal with him without the usual hunt for good durians? He directed us to Bukit Purmei where we found an uncle who was selling D-24 durians a very reasonable price. We managed to pack back 2 full boxes comprising of 5 durians at just $10!

We headed back to their place at Gilman Heights (really nice place too if I may add - only $700 rent a month - VB's lucky to be on the NUS faculty) and met up with their 2 "permanent" house guests - Ah Boy and Chin Yat - 2 shi tzu bred doggies whom Anne has been doggysitting. I say permanent because they have been living with her for the past 6 months and she takes care of them like they are her own :)

The dogs are hilarious! Ah Boy is actually a female doggy who's blind so she bumps into everything and anything. Yet despite this "abnormality" of hers, she's has a wonderful spirit - happy , friendly and warm. On the other hand, her partner Chin Yat can see perfectly well but is so clumsy that one would have thought he was the blind dog :)). He is also quite the scaredy cat - being afraid of heights of any level. One thing they both have in common - they LOVE fruits of any kind. So imagine our delight to watch them patiently waiting for some of our durian morsels ;). Now to all our friends who still are not convinced durians are yummy - see here, even the dogs know a good thing when they "smell" one :). The durians were very tasty all with soft firm flesh - just wished that they were more bitter!!

Healthy chicken for a change...

2006-08-19T00:12:00.001+08:00

When WH told me how good the korean ginseng chicken was at the Crystal Jade Korean outlet, I was a bit suspicious as we visited this chain at Ngee Ann previously and found that the food sucked :p. But then again, we had the bibimbap (which WH agreed with me tt it was not good). With visions of yummy chicken soup in my mind, I managed to convince Jin to meet me for a Friday night dinner at the Centrepoint branch.

We did not make reservations but found out that there was no need to as the place was only half filled. Waitresses dressed in traditional korean customes lead us to our seats. I was quite impressed with the decor and ambience..lots of dark wood and good choice of lighting - reminded me more of a spa than a restaurant..I immediately felt relaxed :D

Since it was only 2 of us, we stuck to 2 dishes, the Ginseng Chicken (S$25) and the seafood pancake (S$15). We were presented with 6 kimchi dishes as appetizers and they all tasted rather good. Very shortly after, our chicken arrived. It was served as a whole chicken and when we cut through the tender soft meat, we found bits of rice mixed with gingko nuts, 1 chestnut and 2 red dates. The soup tasted fabulous and when we dug further, we found a whole ginseng embedded in the soup. I requested for some soya sauce and white pepper , which I mixed as a dip for the chicken..this is one real comfort dish which warms the stomach and makes you feel good :)

The seafood pancake arrived cut up in 8 slices and was also pretty yummy! It came with a special dipping sweet/salty sauce and did not have an oily taste despite it being pan-fried. I could only manage 2 slices and we ended up packing half of it as a take-away :p

Quite happy I listened to WH and gave this place a 2nd chance. It's definitely on my "return visit" list and am looking forward to bringing Jin's parents here the next time they come a knocking.

1 + 1 Zhang equals Azhang

2006-08-17T00:35:00.000+08:00

We celebrated Mad's bday wayyyy in advance as she's one popular chick :p. Having read some good stuff on Azhang at Mohd Sultan, the 5 of us decided to meet there for her bday meal. I was a bit surprised to find the restaurant empty despite it being dinner time..I am guessing that they get their crowd from lunch.

We ordered a variety of dishes (family style) - honey glazed lamb, beef curry, seafood platter and the corn salad. As Ava the hostess carefully warned us that the mains might take some time to arrive, it was therefore a nice treat to be served yummy focacia bread which we dipped in olive oil to hold back our hunger pangs.

The corn salad was refreshing with roasted corn bits and springy (ice?) lettuce. The seafood platter came with a generous portion of squid (which chef Patrick had done perfectly so that the insides were still moist, therefore, making each bite succulent and juicy), baked salmon and grilled tiger prawns on a platter of (butter?) cooked rice. I enjoyed both the squid (maybe bcos it was served with spicy belachan ;)) and the prawns.

The lamb had just the right amount of sauce (not overally sweet) and was tender to the bite. Was quite dissapointed with the beef curry as I was expecting something more spicy (i guess i was still missing the food at Bali!) - although the beef was super tender (totally melts in your mouth), the sauce/gravy was more bland and had a rather peppery taste.

Service was great - Ava's really warm and friendly and overall, Azhang's a nice place for a casual, relaxed outing with good company. Happee bday Ms Zhang Mei Li (coincidently, Mad's surname is also pronounced "Zhang" :p ) Pix below shows us all at Mamma Lucia after dinner enjoying their cheap drinks at the "bar". $1.50 for gourmet latte anyone? :)

Royal dim sum @ Royal China

2006-08-06T15:49:00.000+08:00

Have not eaten dim sum for months so when Lin suggested that we do Sunday lunch at Royal China @ Raffles Hotel, I eagerly agreed. I tried the Royal China in London a couple of years back and could not wait to check out if this Sporean branch was up to the same standard.

There were 6 in our group which was ideal for dim sum...RY did most of the ordering - we had pan fried carrot cake, chee cheong fun (prawns and pork), shrimp dumpling (har kao), bo lo char siew pao, char siew soh, fried calamari, rice rolls in peanut sauce (pictured), some mango-fruity roll and one of their house specialities - the crispy aromatic duck. This was similar to peking duck except that here the whole duck (ie not just the skin) was baked till crispy. Our server shredded our half duck portion ($45) into small meat strands which we were then supposed to wrap in paper thin flour tortillas together with spring onions, cucumber slices and sweet sauce. Very very delicious..in fact, I think we all agreed that this version is much tastier than peking duck and seemed healthier too as it was less oily (ya ya, who are we trying to kid? :p)

Of the dim sum we had, the bo lo char siew pao (which btw, is only served on Sundays) and the char siew soh (pictured) stood out. In fact, as I am writing this, I am already trying to concoct another reason to go back there soon ;). The fried calamari and the peanut sauce rice rolls can be given a miss. The other dishes were decent and most of the items came in servings of 3 which meant we each got our own little portion of everything. We ended the meal by sharing a bowl of dessert with our better halfs. Had the yam and gingko in almond drink (orh nee) and the rest ordered the manggo dessert. Overall, would give this place 4/5 for the value and ambience and can safely say that this could be our new fav. dim sum restaurant :). Move over East Ocean :D

Good ol Marmalade...

2006-08-05T22:44:00.000+08:00

Was starving by the time I got Jin out of his sleepy stupor this morning at 9.30am. We set off at 10 to Muddy Murphys to try their bangers and mash which a colleague had raved about. We were disappointed to find out that this place only opens at 11am :(. That left us with 2 nearby choices - Coffee Bean and Marmalade Pantry..guess which one was the obvious choice (especially since Jin was paying) ? :D

As it was only 10.15am , they had just opened for business and we were the 1st patrons. Jin said he was not going to have lunch by having a BIG brunch..and choose the beef burger while I went with the chicken pesto wrap. The burger came with a HUGE, fat patty, done perfectly medium well with pickles and sides of fries and baby tomatoes. At 1st bite, Jin was in burger heaven and was quiet throughout his meal except for the occassional grunts of satisfaction ;).

My grilled chicken wrap came in a thin tortilla wholemeal wrap with pesto sauce and butternut squash along with sides of salad and high quality chips. Meals at Marmalade never dissapoint and it was nice that we got managed to finish our lovely meal before the crowd trickled in...no wonder the place is always packed weekend mornings.

Emerald Hill chicken wings...

2006-08-05T08:44:00.000+08:00

It's August! How the year is flying by :p...since all of us at work had not gone out for drinks for ages, Myra and I decided to round up everyone for sangrias at one of the bars on Emerald Hill - Myra has been promoting the chicken wings for over a year and I recalled that Jin had also commented that they were pretty good..so time for me to try them out myself. (nb. other memorable places for chicky wings are Ikea and Dempsey Hut..and of course not forgetting KFC's spicy chicky drumlets ;))

Even though it was a Friday evening, being the workaholics that we were, we only left work at 7pm...so by the time we weaved through Orchard Road's notorious Friday traffic, there were no more seats at Ice Cold Beer (ICB) and No 5, our top 2 choices. Only Que Pasa had seats right next to the WC - but hey, at least we did not have to stand on our feet at the bar the whole nite ;)

We started off with 2 dozen chicky wings, 2 pizzas, 2 jugs of red sangria and 1 serving of shrimp dumpling. The food took some time to arrive and we found out that it's centrally cooked in the Que Pasa kitchen and the same kitchen caters for both ICB and No 5 as well. The sangria tasted too much like fruity Ribena, what's up with the lack of wine? :p The pizza came in super thin crust style and was overall quite good. The fried shrimp wantons were a bit too floury but crispy enough and decent enough when eaten with the accompanying chilli crab sauce.

The wings arrived and all of us attacked! Boy, Myra was right..very very good..Perfectly deep fried on the outside while still maintaining the soft, juicy meat inside. And surprisingly not oily at all - unlike Ikea's where you can squeeze out like 2 tablespoons of oil from each wing :p

4 dozen wings later and 2 more jugs of sangria later (these were a lot punchier after we reprimanded the waiter not to skimp on the good stuff), we all left satisfied with bellies swimming of wings..Yay, think I've found a new place to chill!

Cin's molten lava cake - 2nd attempt

2006-07-30T23:07:00.000+08:00

After the heavy tex-mex dinner, I could not persuade Jin and RY to have their own slice of choc cake. Lin indulged me by saying yes :)

This time round, I left the cake much longer in the oven..maybe a bit too long as most of the centre became less liquid. However, Lin loved it and that was most important. Still have not found the perfect vanilla bean ice-cream to go with this. The Waitrose brand I bought yesterday was creamy enough but lacked the bean taste.

Happee Birthday Lin! *hugs hugs*

Tex-Mex for Lin

2006-07-30T22:50:00.000+08:00

Lin wanted to eat Au Petit Salut at Chip Bee Gardens for her bday meal..unfortunately, they do not open on Sunday nights so we went with her 2nd choice - Chico's and Charlie mexican at Orchard Parade Hotel. When I made the reservations, they failed to tell me that they were now called Harry's (same chain of Harry's at Boat Quay) and we actually walked past the restaurant in search of Charlie's :p

Tex-mex food is definitely best eaten when in a group..cos all their portions are usually huge! We ordered nachos, seafood platter, grilled chicken chimichangas and beef steak fajitas. When the nachos arrived, we were a bit taken back by the size of the serving and immediately asked the waiter to cancel one of our mains. However, they replied that everything was already being prepared so we waited to stuff ourselves silly..heehee

The nachos were our favourite tonight..crispy and light, unlike some shops which serve them from the packet - this one seemed handmade - it came with generous toppings of sour cream, cheese, olives, tomatoes, guacamole and jalapenos. For the other dishes, although tasty, we felt that it was ordinary..Iguana's serves better mains.

We did not have dessert as I had Lin's bday cake waiting at home.

McD's for breakfast???

2006-07-30T22:39:00.000+08:00

With so many bdays recently and coming up, there was a need to tighthen up the money belt ;). Passing the McCafe at Shaw this morning, we were surprised to see that they served sandwiches for about $5 and cappucinos at just $2.50. It looked pretty good on the menu so we decided to give them a try.

Jin ordered the chunky chicken sandwich and the Himalayan tea frappe. I went with the chicken pesto sandwich and cappucino. My sandwich bread was enveloped with multi-grains and had a lot of chicken meat, cheese and tomato slices with pesto spread. Pretty tasty! and the cappucino - surprisingly good..now I am beginning to question the $5 I pay for spinellis..sigh, wished there was a McCafe at Depot 2! Oh, the Himalayan tea frappe not only smelt fantastic but made a great thirst quencher..reminded me of Thai ice tea.

Cin's molten lava cake - 1st attempt

2006-07-29T19:20:00.000+08:00

Lin's birthday's coming up and seeing that she's one the few who actually enjoys my baking (she's just a nice nice person ;), I wanted to continue the 'baking a cake for her on her bday' tradition. Last year, I bake her a sinfully choc choc cake and as seen on the right, it was sinful alright :).

One of my favourite cakes of late is the molten lava cake. I just wished restaurants do not charge over $12 for one small helping. I decided to attempt making it for lin's bday which we are celebrating tomorrow and made the trip in the pouring rain today to Holland V to get the ingredients. I splurged a bit to buy Valrhona chocolate instead of the normal other brands. The lady at Shermay cooking school was really helpful and indulged me with a few samples of the different cocoa mix in the Valrhona chocolate range. I settled on the 62% cocoa one.

The recipe was relatively easy and my only setback was when I could not get the mixer going - had to yell for Jin who as usual managed to fix it :)..yay! I accidently let go of the cake holder (it was hot!) and the cake popped out before I could stop it and the choc oozed out :(. Mental note to self - bake the cake longer and don't let it drop next time round :p However, in terms of taste, I can only quote Homer Simpson : Hmmm,...chocolate :D I don't usually say this, but was feeling rather proud of myself. Even though it failed in presentation, I can confidently say that given a few more attempts, I would pay myself $12 for this cake! heehee

Unfortunately, I did not have the vanilla bean ice cream which was recommended in the recipe and I substituted with teh tarik flavoured ice-cream instead. Nope, just does not taste the same..am running to the store now to find the vanilla bean flavour. Hopefully, my 2nd attempt tomorrow will turn out better.

Respite from the city ..Pulau Ubin

2006-07-29T15:24:00.001+08:00

This was one of the rare weekends where we had absolutely nothing planned - no trips back to KL, no theatre plays, no movies, no appointments, no errands...my hyper-self felt that something was amiss :p.

Never one to let a weekend go without something planned, I managed to convince Jin to wake up early and head to Pulau Ubin (little island - 10 minutes bumboat ride from S'pore) for a cycling expedition. To catch the bumboats, you need to get to Changi Village and as every true blue Sporean will tell you - what's a visit to Changi without having the famous nasi lemak at the food centre. There are like 5 stalls next to each other selling nasi lemak but only one stall has a 30 minute queue. Sad to say, today was no different so I decided to skip the famous store and went to one with no customers thinking the competitors should be of minimum standard to survive.....to my dismay I soon found out the 30 minute queues are there for a reason - the nasi lemak was pretty ordinary (sigh!). Jin's chicken cutlet wanton noodle was good though and lived up to the 'die die must try' makansutra billing.

After a quick breakfast, we jumped onto the bumboats which by the way, does not take off unless they have 12 passengers..thankfully, we did not have to wait long! It's $2 a ride per pax and moves at a slighty faster than snail speed..hand powered canoes would be the equivalent of snails in this sense ;)

Upon arrival, we did a quick check of the island map to get our bearings and then went to one of the many bicycle shops to rent our bikes for the day ($7 each). The weather was thankfully cloudy so the heat was manageable. The nice sea breeze helped as well. Halfway through, Jin started complaining that his bike seat was too hard and conveniently took over my bike (which had a wide, cushiony seat) as he said I have enough body cushion! grrr..MEN!

It's nice to leisurely cycle around Ubin - one does get the feeling that you are no longer in Singapore...its laidback and rustic and the nature is relatively unspoilt..some parts make you feel like a true explorer :p

July is also durian month and we saw local/wild durians for sale at $10 a kilo...which seemed a bit expensive to us. So as I was cycling pass one durian tree, I decided that it would be nice to try and get durians for free ;). The fruits were still on the branches which were really high up but I figured that if we shook the tree hard enough...tada! the fruits would fall..after 5 minutes of persuasion and lots of coaxing, Jin finally relented to my request of ramming one of the bikes hard into the tree :D

He did just that and guess what? nothing, nada zip! The tree did not even move..not a single leaf even fell :p...he shot me the exasperated "i told you this would not work" look and after I stopped laughing, we started to get on our bikes to head back..and then the shocker! Bcos of the impact against the super solid tree trunk, my bike chain had dislodged itself ..opps :p

So Jin had to come back and got his hands all dirty trying to fix the chain..the good news is he managed to..the bad news was that he gave me more dirty looks..:p

We stopped for a much awaited drink of Thai coconut water..very refreshing after all the heat! Then I saw another cyclist carrying durians he had managed to find and decided that I would not give up and would continue looking out for durians to fall from trees. Just around the bend from the drinks stall, I saw one tree with lots of fruits...and as I was stopping my bike to get off and search the area, one of the local villagers rode by - I casually asked him if there were any durians and he said that they only fall at night :(..but he came over and offered me one from his bike basket! You should have seen Jin's eyes widening at the uncle's generiousity..and my meano husband then said - "see, there are easier ways for a bimbo to get her durian"- grrr..MEN!

We left just after noon as the cloudy skies looked more like rainy clouds. It was a lovely Saturday morning outing where one gets away from the madness of the city and work to the simple life of ruralness, butterflies and monitor lizards.

And the durian, yum..the BEST I have eaten in ages..it had 6 seeds and tasted of the bitter version. Definitely was the perfect ending for our Saturday adventure :).

Jordy the parrot speaks...

2006-07-29T15:24:00.000+08:00

One of the best outcome from our Egypt trip 1.5 years back was that half the people in the tour still keep in touch, meeting 3-4 times a year at someone's house. Helen was kind to invite us for some home-cook Thai cuisine. It's fun to visit Helen's place as she not only has 2 cute cocker spaniel doggies but also a funny parrot who cackles "1,2,3, 4, 5", "I love you" and get this! He really loves chilli padi :D

So long Albert Tay...

2006-07-29T15:23:00.000+08:00

Albert is actually leaving after 8 years! Funny, always thought he was one of those die-hard people who never leaves HP. Am quite sure our paths will cross again but until then - I wish him all the very best and may he continue to entertain his new colleagues with his unique sense of humour and quick funny come-backs :). Pix shows us at his farewell lunch at House of Sundanese, Great World City.

Happee Birthday Yappy!

2006-07-28T19:18:00.000+08:00

It's really hard to choose a restaurant to bring Yappy to as she does not take both carbo and beef. As we were catching The Lakehouse movie at Shaw, I recommended Crystal Jade..however, upon arrival, I also noticed that there was a Tonkichi restaurant next to crystal jade and we bravely decided to eat (un)healthy fried Tonkatsu instead :)

Their speciality was the grain fed pork meat but I personally thought the basic tonkatsu tasted better..must be that my taste buds have to reached a higher status yet :p. Both Andrea and Ah Loi insisted that the tonkatsu at Liang Court basement was much better..I can't recall (been there too!) but then again, was never a tonkatsu fan anyway..

I went with a safe choice of the cold ramen which was rather tasty..I love eating cold ramen with yellow mustard but I think I had a bit of an overdose - finishing 1.5 small plates of mustard :p.

Sambal chilli paste fried fish..

2006-07-25T23:37:00.000+08:00

...definitely not the healthiest of lunch choices but hey, we live to eat ;).

While talking about food in Port Douglas some months back, I remembered DC going on about this fried fish he loves in the Zion Road area. He agreed to bring us to try it out but this "promise" was conveniently forgotten in the bustle of work back in Singapore...

I bumped into DC at the cafeteria yesterday and reminded him of the fried fish and boom (!) today we got to try it out for lunch. He drove us to a dingy hawker area just next to the Boys Brigade at Zion and we ordered from the zhe char store the fish, tofu, belacan chicken and pork chops.

The fish was indeed good. The sambal chilli tasted excellent with it - more sweet than spicy. We polished it to the core or should I say bone? :). Besides the fish, the pork chops were also yummy. They had tenderised the meat really well making every bite easy. I really enjoyed this lunch outing and will definitely bring Jin back here..maybe we will each have our own fish serving.

Barbeque meat galore @ Aburiya

2006-07-25T23:18:00.000+08:00

Jin has been pestering me to try out Aburiya ever since we walked by it while looking for the ramen place in the Robertson Quay (RQ) area. Getting a food request from Jin is quite rare - seeing he only eats to live and not live to eat like me ;) - so I thought I would indulge him and got a group of us together for this meat escapade.

We got a seat outside facing the river and the lovely coloured bridge in RQ. They have thoughtfully installed big fans on the outside so it was not warm. The menu is pretty intimidating as they had meat in ranges of pork, beef, duck, chicken, lamb - the words were small and Japanese was the main language followed by English. After the 2 guys scrutinised the menu for 10 minutes and still could not decide, we figured that the help of the waiter would move things along ;)

That it did - we ordered like 6 dishes of meats and 2 salads - spinach and cabbage..the salads were great compliments to the rather "heaty" bbq meats and yummy too. Our absolute favourite cut was the beef 'Jo Karubi' ..no words to describe this - everytime I think of this dinner, I can just imagine Jin's words - Hmmm, IT's soooo Gooood! Aburiya is definitely our place of choice the next time we are hit with a bbq craving and cannot fly to Hiro in Japan ;). Much better than Gyu Kaku down the street and cheaper too!

Little angel - Elizabeth Lang

2006-07-22T23:49:00.000+08:00

Today we visited Jin's ex-colleague - Arthur's house-warming. They have a little 18 month year old girl who is really good natured, lets everyone carry and play with her. Elizabeth is such an angel - she really melts your heart :)

Her home is a nice semi-D house near Bukit Timah. Her daddy must really like fountains cos he had one built at a whooping cost of S$10,000 *gulp*.

Finally - no more cinderella :)

2006-07-22T19:37:00.000+08:00

It has been some time since our regular maid, Aurora went MIA on us ...and I am sure those close to me would know this as they hear my constant whining about having to iron Jin's work shirts and not to mention keeping the house clean on top of doing laundry.

Thank you everyone who helped pass me the contacts of their maid. We finally settled on a lovely burmese lady by the name of Pow. She came highly recommended from Jin's ex-colleagues (Steph and Doris) who are now residing in Hong Kong.

She came right on time today and I liked her immediately..very sweet looking (infact I told Jin that I am happy she's not our full time maid as she can be a temptation ;) and five hours later, my house is back to its pristine condition! Hurray,,I hope she stays!

Non- blogger comments

2006-07-22T14:54:00.000+08:00

Dear Charmaine casually informed me last week that my blog does not allow non-blogger comments..opps, I did not even realise that there was such an option. Anyway, I hope I managed to do the right thing and tweaked the settings correctly. Non-bloggers - do try giving me some of your lovely comments ;)..warning : not nice comments will be carefully, discretely edited :D...In full support of Spore's understanding of freedom of speech and all that nonsense :p

Johnny Depp - the funniest pirate of all

2006-07-22T10:41:00.000+08:00

Pirates of the Carribean - dead man's crest was hilarious..perfect movie to end a long week at work and usher in the weekend ahead :). My favourite scene was that of Jack tied to a super long bamboo stick with fruits on both end..I will never look at a kebab the same way again ;). I surfed through 54,000 pix in the Google image library but could not locate that same scene..so decided to put in my 2nd favourite scene - showing Jack with multiple eyes..hahaha ;).

Triple M - Mark (at) Moghul Mahal

2006-07-20T22:38:00.000+08:00

Bday Post No 1 - day before actual bday.
If there ever was a world's fusiest eater title - I am 100% sure my colleague Mark would hold that honour. This Ozzie guy does not eat seafood of any kind, mushrooms (yes, you read correctly -what's wrong with him right?), tomatoes, fast food and gives coffee a miss. Going out for meals with him can be quite entertaining as you always discover something new that his delicate tastebuds reject!

Anyway, for his bday - we decided to go with indian and choose Moghul Mahal located at Novotel Hotel. They serve a pretty decent buffet lunch for S$15 nett. Mark seemed quite excited as he piled his plate up high with food- not once but twice!..we wondered if he knew the concept of a buffet is that you can go back for repeat servings (no need to cheong!) ;).

A good place to come to to satisfy indian food craving and value for money!

Bday post No 2 - actual bday
Angela (sweet gal she is), Mark's cube mate bought him a small choc mousse cake from Bakerzin. I gathered everyone around and we surprised Mark with the cake and a 'traditional' Sporean birthday song. Mark had previously commented that only in Spore do people clap while singing the Happy Bday song..I can't agree with him more! It's quite funny ..heehee.

Oh, and that Bakerzin cake? too yummy for words..it had a really nice crust at the bottom which we all attacked first leaving behind the mousse for WH to clean up. I believe this was his 34th - talk about being old ;))

Martinis, Steaks and more...@ Mortons

2006-07-20T08:58:00.000+08:00

I love the steak sandwiches at Morton's. I'm not much of a steak eater but somehow, the chunky bite sizes of meat sandwiched between 2 slices of perfectly crispy bread and loads of butter always draw me back to the Morton's....how to resist with happy hour deals of Martini's for S$10 and occassional free steak sandwiches (which you need to alertly pounce on as the waiter brings them around). I say occasional cos it only comes round every 20-30 minutes and you are only allowed one slice at a time..then the wait starts all over again ;p

Anyway, each time I visit, I have only had the steak sandwiches and lychee martinis. This time though, as there were 8 of us and we were a hungry bunch, we ordered some jumbo prawns and scallops with bacon wraps. The prawns were true to their name - big! and presented with some yummy marinara sauce for dipping, around a extra wide martini glass which all but screamed "eat me" - if prawns could talk :)

The scallops honestly deserve a blog post of their own. These were definitely high quality scallops - big, round and very succulent. The bacon was perfectly fried and that together with the scallops made every bite simply divine.

After 4 martinis (lychee, apple, lychee - i think Cass stole my 2 lychees!, apple), I can't remember much of what happened after that..though not drunk, I was definitely very sleepy so the rest of the night was quite a blur - i recall hitting some tennis balls and falling asleep on the bench in the courts ;). I blame the vodka laden martinis from Mortons *hic*

Bangkok - city of massages and spicy food

2006-07-17T11:41:00.000+08:00

Jin and I along with RY and Lin made a quick weekend getaway to Bangkok (we managed to secure a good deal on flights at S$182 nett per pax several months back). After a quick check-in at the boutique Luxx Hotel, we made our way to nearby Chinatown for supper. Bangkok Chinatown is quite well-known for bird nest and shark fin soup noodles. Honoring our credo as newly certified divers, we decided to give the fins a miss and had a bowl of delicious and nourishing (although a bit sweet) bird nest broth instead along with interesting road side clear noodles (pictured) and wet fried rice.

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market
Even though I've been to Bangkok many times, this time I thought it would be fun to do something a bit more touristy...so I booked all of us on a half day tour to visit the "real" floating market. Unfortunately the main downside to this was the 710am pick-up (groan!) :( After a 1.5 hour drive we transfered to a motorised long boat. Got showered with muddy brown river water but hey, guess that's part of the experience :). The boat ride took us through some banana and coconut plantations and we saw lots of locals using the same water we were on for washing (of all kinds and all parts =)).

After a short ride, we reached the floating market and were told that if we wanted to ride the smaller man-powered long boats through the market, we had to pay another 150baht each *grrr*..talk about money making! Anyway, part of being a tourist is being fleeced so we paid up. The boat ride was fun... I got to at least experience trading with the boat vendors who were selling all manner of food and wares. We bought a coconut and some local Thai delicacies. The rest of the story is better told through the slide show below :).

Siam Paragon
This is Bangkok's newest and if I am not mistaken - largest shopping mall. Very similiar to Taka and Paragon in Spore - except for their food court area. It's super huge! with tons of stalls. I was craving pad thai (pictured) so my choice was easy. We also ordered some really good fried chicken to share. Lin and RY bought lots for shareware too - fishcake, otak, thai mini sweet pancakes.

Spa -ing
One would have thought in the a city where spas sprout like mushrooms, you can easily get an appointment. How wrong we were..every other "nice" spa we called up that weekend was either full, did not have couple rooms or time was not suitable. In the end, we decided to try out the no name spas along Patpong and tumbled upon Green Leaf. It looked clean and the ultra comfy recliner chairs helped seal the deal. I went for the foot + shoulder, neck, head massage. The 2 hour massage was splendid and at less than S$30, a terriffic deal! We went back the next day where I had a repeat session of the same package..hey, who's complaining :).

Staying at Luxx
Luxx which I assume is short for luxury? is a nice boutique hotel off Silom street. Checking in was quite fast and we had to walk up 2 flight of stairs to reach our small room. Not recommended if you have lots of heavy luggage. The rooms were clean, nicely decorated and good enough if you only plan to sleep in it and not spend the whole day lazing in. RY and Lin were shocked when they were shown their assigned room which someone had forgotten to clean...the cleaner's mops and rags were still lying around! The nice staff were quick to react though and offered them the suite at the top floor which was HUGE. It had a patio, kitchen, separate living and sleeping space. Only downside was that they had to climb double the flights of stairs. heehee...oh, check out the cool bath tubs in our rooms :)

Breakfast at Luxx was a continental affair. You are given a slip of paper to tick off what you want to eat and naturally we went for everything - eggs, bacon, toast, cornflakes, yogurt, fruit, juice, coffee etc. Their crossaints were especially good.

Service wise, they did mess up on the breakfast timing but with pleasant smiles and accomodativeness, how can one stay upset. :). Not a bad place to stay if you only have USD58 for a night and want a clean bed, a hearty breakfast and somewhere with good access close to main tourist attractions.

Food-ing at Ishq
My colleague Myra recommended this place. Housed in a 105 years old Portugese Colonial residence, Ishq serves a mixture of Pan-asian style cuisine. This refers to food from Laos, Cambodia, Thai, Vietnam and SEA. For starters, we had the combi platter (pictured) for pork balls, springrolls, crab sticks and seaweed wrapped beef. I always say every meal should start with appetizers followed by dessert. Mains can be skipped and this should have been one of those occasions..not because the mains were not good..but just because the appetizers were yummier :).

The mains were quite standard - we had a banana flower salad..I first tried this at Ruen Thai in Suntec and I still feel that theirs is better than Ishq's - flavourful with tiny bits of shrimps. The one at Ishq just tasted ordinary (although I liked the spiciness) but portions were a good sized. We also ordered the duck confit, green curry with lamb and deep fried seabass. The duck was a tad too dry and some extra sauce would have been nice. The green curry had more brussel sprouts than lamb and curry..we actually ordered 2 bowls of rice to go with the curry but ended up not finishing the rice as the curry was lapped up too quickly :p. The seabass was quite interesting - they removed all the meat from the fish and placed the cube sized meat at the side for easy eating. It was cooked with lemongrass but I think garlic and onions would have made a nicer combination. We did not try the dessert as RY wanted to eat the sinfully good, condensed milk laden pancakes from the Patpong street vendors.

Oh, the ambience was really nice..classic colonial and the toilets alone made this place worth the visit :)

Final meal in Bangkok before catching flight home...
After squeezing in our last spa session at Green Leaf, we wanted some simple Thai noodles for lunch. Across the road was a Momo noodles shop. Momo essentially means instant noodles - the fried style. We were really hungry (it was like 3pm!) so I forgot to take pictures of the food..heehee. but the noodles, salad and tom yum soup was made for me..super ultra spicy! ..I paid for my indulgence in the spiciness with a fiery stomach all the way home :(.

Chatterbox is not all chicken...

2006-07-13T08:37:00.000+08:00

After more than 3 years living in Singapore, I finally checked out the famous Chatterbox at Meritus Mandarin hotel - home of the "Singapore's best"(and in my opinion - pretty pricey) chicken rice . However, for those of you who know me well, I am not too much of a chicky rice fan so I ordered the next good looking item on the menu - The Lobster Laksa!

Surprisingly, the food took a while to arrive (considering that they were only about 70% packed and it was already 9pm). My laksa arrived in a huge bowl and the lobster looked really delightful...it tasted great as well ;). The laksa also came with 2 quail eggs, fish cake, lots of tau fu pok. I really liked the lobster and tau fu pok..I just wished the gravy had a bit more aroma and spice. The noodles were too soggy. The nice thing was that they served an extra bowl of gravy on the side just in case one felt the need to block up the arteries with more cholesterol ;)

My friend ordered the bak kut teh and it came prepared in the Msian style way - herby sweet soup instead of the pepper version. I now know where to come the next time I have a bak kut teh craving and am willing to shell $20 bucks for a bowl :)

le papillon (aka the butterfly) is no caterpillar...

2006-07-12T15:03:00.000+08:00

After racking our brains for a new place to check out for lunch..we were down to a choice between Song of India and Le Papillon. We finally settled on the latter as the restaurant of choice for our 2nd Pabulum Club monthly outing.

We had no problems locating the pretty Red Dot building (reminds me of A famosa in Melaka!) where the restaurant is housed but had to spend a considerable few minutes walking up and down the corridors (passing Pacific Coffee twice) to locate the restaurant. A sign on the walkway would have been helpful. A cute waiter ushered us into our seats and presented us with the set European lunch menu priced at an affordable S$32+++.

Complimentary bread (choice of brown or white) was served. Adel commented that it would have been nicer if the rolls which were cold, were served warm instead. Our appetizers came quickly - we had the proscuitto ham and rock melon salad , cumin carrot soup and warm chicken caesar salad. For appetizers, the servings were a fairly hearty...pretty yummy too. WH liked it that the melon was sweet and ham were sliced thinly.

Mains took some time to appear (the waitress had warned us that appetizers were fast and mains slower), which gave us time to let our eyes explore the chic ambience (love the wall murals!) and we especially enjoyed checking out their cool looking cutlery. Being safe (or rather health conscious), 3 of us ordered the pan-roasted sea bass and Adel ordered the beef heel stew. I found the sea bass a tad too salty and the portions a bit small (or maybe it was the large plate it was served in?). The fish came with sides of carrots, long beans, onions and potatoes..the onions were particularly good! Adel's beef stew stood out with its mushrooms raqout, sweet potato and melt-in-your-mouth beef chunks.

There was only one type of dessert on the menu which was the poached pear tart. I wasn't a big fan - it was tasty but I did wish they had put the valrhona cake on the set lunch list as well *hint hint*.

Overall - the food and ambience made this place a nice weekday lunch outing.. Their service needs a bit more fine tuning - they took forever to refill our drinks but thankfully, the cute waiter always had a ready smile and was very friendly. Their ala-carte menu is something we hope to explore next. This butterfly has definitely taken flight!

Waraku for simple Jap fare

2006-07-12T15:02:00.000+08:00

Met up with Jin for dinner at his work place and after 15 minutes of checking out the eateries at Marina Square, we settled for Waraku Jap Restaurant - hidden away from the main shopping area, next to UOB bank. Walking in, I had a feeling that I had somehow been to this place before...my suspicions were confirmed when I found out that they did have a branch in the East Coast - I had checked it out a couple of weeks back but the food was so unmemorable that I had forgotten the name of the place..heehee

This time round, I decided to go with Jap 'satay' (izakaya?) and Jin went for the ramen despite me telling him that the meat was pure fat as per my previous visit. My satay dish was a combination platter of pork, chicken, scallops, bacon with asparagus and a hotdog. My fav were scallops and Jin loved the bacon but overall, all the skewers were really good..just the right amount of grilling and teriyaki sauce seasoning that was just right so as not to overpower the other flavors.

Jin's ramen was a lot better than the one I had at the East Coast branch, the char siew was in succulent round cuts of lean and fat..I wanted to finish the yummy soup but he insisted that it had ajinomoto..bah!

Goodbye my gentle T-rex : April 1991 - July 2006

2006-07-09T20:50:00.000+08:00

He lived till 105 in doggy years. Rexy was given to me by my Form 4 secondary schoolmate when her brother developed asthma shortly after they got him. I remembered really wanting to haven him and therefore, took the risk bringing him back - all prepared for the "no no no" from my parents. Surprisingly, they took a liking to him too :). My fondest memories of him was when we went for a beach holiday leaving him alone for 3 days and when we returned, the living room was in a state of disarray. Rexy being the hyper silky terrier he is, obviously did not enjoy being couped up in the house for 3 days alone and decided that chewing and tearing down the house curtains would entertain him tremendously :)..I'll miss how he always barks like crazy and acts all brave when big dogs twice his size pass by our gate - knowing that he's safe with the gate protecting him from his nemesis.

We will all miss him dearly..Rexy - who greets you like there's no tomorrow despite having seen you just a couple of hours before - thanks for all the wonderful memories and as my friend Karen has aptly put it - for being the best companion one can ever ask for.

Girlfriends gathering = major mahjong sessions!

2006-07-09T14:23:00.000+08:00

Old friends Mei Leng(ML) and Karen visited from Sydney and KL respectively over the weekend. I have known ML since our old school days when we wore our hair in pigtails. ML introduced me to Karen while at college and we've remained good long distance friends over the years.

When I meet up with my other girlfriends, it's always the usual shopping or eating spree..with this group (Lin included) however, one thing always come to mind first ..and that's our get-together mahjong sessions. We played soo many hours of mahjong the past 2 days that I am now suffering from sleep deprivation! I did not know I looked so bad until my facialist told me today that my eyes clearly reflect severe lack of sleep. :p

Back to mahjong, I started with a winning streak..and was up quite a bit (the three of us basically emptied ML's start up capital) right till the point ML decided to go for a toilet break..we are still trying to figure out what she did in the toilet because right after that, she started winning..and winning and winning! Thankfully, she was also really sleepy and was quite happy to retire to bed after we finished the customary 4 wind-round of mahjong. I don't know about the rest but I was secretly relieved she was tired as I was just about even at that point and was quite sure that if we had played on, ML would have swept up all my $$ too :p (Pix on the right shows Karen eating up the super sour "kumquat" which ML brought from Sydney)

Why cook?

2006-07-05T15:57:00.000+08:00

Q : Do You Cook?
A : No, I don't
Q: Why?
A : Read on to find out why...

Jin's mom gave us some "mui choi kao yok" (preserved veg with meat) and I figured that we better eat it up before all her kindness goes to waste. As usual, if I have to eat post-cooked food (now, doesn't that sound better than "leftovers"?), I try to make an occassion out of it. In this case, I offered to cook fried rice and have the meat dish as a supplement. Now, everyone always think that fried rice must be one of the easier dishes to concoct..but no one ever talks about the amount of work required to make it. Here's the breakdown (calculated in minutes spent) :
- Time spent to mentally list down all ingredients required to make yummy fried rice ( 10 min)
- Supermarket : choose brocolli, mushrooms and prawns (20 min + lining up at counter to pay)
- All over Ghim Moh market and supermarket near office : looking for the fried rice paste (40 min - and never found it!)
- At home the night before the big cookout : pulled out meat to defrost (1 min)
- At home on the cooking day (here's where the madness starts) : de-shell and clean prawns (7 min), cut brocolli, mushrooms and sausage (12 min - hey, it was a lot of cutting!), crack eggs (30 sec), chop garlic ( 2 min), bring out frying pan and wok, wash them (1.5 min), actual cooking time (20 minutes), take picture of food (2 min), cleanup and washing up (45 min and still cleaning)
Total time taken to cook yummy fried rice at home : approx 2 hours and 20 minutes
Time taken to take-away fried rice from nearby coffeeshop : 20 minutes

Q : so why don't you cook in Spore?
A : Go figure ;p

Marc Loh turns the Big Three '0'

2006-07-04T23:52:00.000+08:00

Marc turning 30 is a big thing..soo big that we made a weekend trip back to KL just to celebrate along with him ;). We met at Sure Pizza, a pizza place at Plaza Hartamas and had quite a feast followed by a RM90 cake from Bakerzin! (gosh, cakes are such good money!!) The pix here shows me with bday boy, the huge bruschettas we had as appetizers and the Bakerzin sponge cake. Oh, forgot to mentioned that I cut my hair - short! The last time my hair was this short was probably in secondary school :p

After dinner, we adjourned to a nearby mamak to catch the England world cup game. The view was bad (we could not get a good seat!) and it was soo hot! Thankfully we had lots of teh-o-ais limau to cool us down. :)

Nicklas San - exposed to his 1st smelly durian cake

2006-07-04T08:01:00.000+08:00

Finally got to see CW and SC's baby..he was sleeping about 80% of the time we were there despite all the noise us adults make..very oblivious to noise which SC attributes the reason to the construction noise she heard every day at her office while carrying him..heee..

He has a 'mature' look surrounding him - lots of hair, well defined lips (like CW), my favourite feature are his cute cheecks..felt like giving them a quick pinch but way too many eyes on me :p

We also introduced 'baby Nicky" to one of life's greatest joys..the undisputed KING of fruits - the Durian. Keat picked up the durian cake (which I sponsored due to a lost bet ;p) and us adults had an excellent time digging in while baby had durian dreams - poor guy must be wondering why he could only smell and not taste! Soon Nicky, soon ;)

Breakfast tradition in KL

2006-07-03T22:40:00.000+08:00

Was back in KL for the weekend and a visit back would never be complete without going to our fav. 'heartlands' coffeeshop (O&S in Sea Park area - like only the best coffeshop in PJ, KL and some say, Batam too - because every stall here is excellent!)

(images from left to right) Penang Chee Cheong Fun - made out of simple rice noodles, lots of sesame oil and seeds, lots of fried shallots and sweet black sauce with prawn paste. Prawn Mee - spicy version of it's more bland version in Spore. Penang Fried Kuey Tiow - I truly believe it takes great skill to perfect this dish. A very hot big wok, a serving of good sized prawns and not too much oil coupled with a spoonful of chilli and THE secret ingredient - duck eggs! - makes the perfect dish (minus the cockles ;). Always end the meal with a kopi peng - kurang manis (ice coffee, less sweet).

Crazy Horse - art or porn?

2006-06-29T12:10:00.000+08:00

My work team decided to follow the Spore's govt stance on moving towards an open-minded society - they brought 90 of us to watch the Crazy Horse performance at Clark Quay last night. For those of you who aren't familiar with Crazy Horse this is the same famous topless revue from Paris recently 'imported' into Singapore. The night out started with a 3-set course at Le Restaurant, the western restaurant housed just above the theater. I had a tuna appetizer, followed by salmon and dessert of ice cream sandwiched in between 2 dark chocolate slices. The food was so-so tourist fare - edible but not memorable and certainly not worth the price! For $55 a head, it's no wonder that this place is not drawing any fans and I've even heard rumours that they might close down :p.

The ambience was reasonably inviting..the restaurant is decorated in scarlet red finishings and very Victorian style furniture. They have a lounge next door for pre-dinner drinks that looks like a good place to hang out with inviting "Dom Perignon" embroided cushions and even a bed-like chair ;)

The highlight of the evening was of course the show : We were ushered into a big seating area and as I was late, I was seated 3rd row from the stage..which was fine..still great stage visibility in a very plush comfortable chair. Our ticket allowed us one drink and they also served wasabi coated nuts..nice!

The curtains unveiled about 12 half nude ladies wearing those bushy hats that the English Queen's guardsmen are so often seen it, and doing a "salute" number. One cannot help but be drawn to the boobs on display - that is after all, the centrepiece of the whole show. Very little is left to the imagination here - I could basically see everything..the boobs and buttocks (the ladies wore fairly skimpy thongs) - all clearly visible and well-lit.

Honestly, I found myself bored midway through and concluded that this was more for the horny male (especially middle-aged blokes looking for a way to legitimize their thrills) than ladies. Out of all the performances (I think there were like 10 mini-performances), I felt only 2 acts managed to qualify as "artistic nudity". The rest of the performances seemed more like out of a glossy soft porn video. Lots of seductive poses as well as suggestive acts coupled with fake orgasms :p

So my last take ? Crazy Horse = XXX (poorly) disguised as art

A creamy affair at Melt Cafe

2006-06-29T11:44:00.000+08:00

I think I have figured out why they call the buffet restaurant at Oriental Hotel - Melt Cafe. Although they had a good buffet spread of Jap, Thai and Indian cuisine, it was the dessert spread that wowed me...chocolate fountain, local kuehs, fruits, ice-kacang, wafles,..you name it, they had it. I was particularly excited when I found out they served Movenpick walnut maple ice-cream - which melts easily , hence the name ;))

My love for this flavour began when Jin ordered the milk-shake version from Crossroads Cafe at Marriot. The first sip hooked me! Unfortunately, I could not find this brand in the retail shelves so imagine my delight when I saw in at Melt. I had 2 scoops at lunch on the 1st day..and could not wait to have more scoops the next day. On day 2, I was happily telling my work mate that she had to try it when she broke the news that they weren't serving my fav. flavour that day! *horrors* :(

Decided that it was time to bring on the charm monster in me ;)..went to slather my full smiles to the chef and within 15 minutes, he came and presented me with 2 scoops :). Add in my little nutty condiments and lunch was settled :).

Happy Birthday Mei Mei!

2006-06-27T21:00:00.000+08:00

June 27! My sister Lynda turns 29 today..(have not gotten her a pressie yet *gulp*..thankfully, there's online gift certificates ;)..heehee. ). That's us together on her wedding day last August (can you believe how hard it is to find a pix of just the 2 of us? :p)

Although we are gezillion miles apart, I hope she knows that she's always in my thoughts (we do have an uncanny skill of knowing what the other is thinking!) and I do miss her...sending out all our best wishes to her thru this blog (not sure if the homing pigeon arrived safely?) and may you have many more wonderful bday celebrations to come :) Love ya!

Spicy Ramen craving...

2006-06-25T23:12:00.000+08:00

After 2 days of boat food (altho very tasty, also very very oily), I developed a craving for a soupy dinner. Wee Hoon (WH) mentioned to me that she visited a ramen place at Hong Leong building in town and it served excellent spicy ramen so Jin and I decided to make that our dinner venue after being at sea for 2 days.

We drove all the way there just to find out that it does not open on Sundays :p (now, why didn't WH tell me that!) After much deliberation, we decided to head towards Robertson Quay (the lure of free parking on Sundays) to see what we could discover there. I remembered passing by a ramen place when I met up with Charmaine for lunch a couple of weeks back so in we went into "Ichibantei"

The picture-menu showed lots of different ramen (soupy, spicy, dry, japanese, taiwanese) and also Jap rice dishes. I zeroed in on the spicy katsu ramen and Jin picked the unagi, egg rice. Both were excellent choices :D. The pork in my ramen was really juicy and lean and very different from the pork in other ramens I have tried previously which is usually very very lean and not as tasty. I just wished that there were more than 2 slices! Jin's rice dish was extremely tasty and they were generous with the unagi.

We could not resist finishing the meal with a soft served ice-cream which we saw everyone having. It came in a cute cone-holding device and was delicious! Will definitely frequent this place again the next time a ramen craving hits!

Oh, funny ending to this meal..as we were paying, I picked up their business card and noticed that they had another outlet..guess where? Yup, the same one at Hong Leong building..hah! How's that for coincidence? ;)

Officially DIVE certified!

2006-06-25T22:16:00.000+08:00

I did it! After an intense week of theory and pool lessons, a weekend (2N,3D) on a live-on-board and 5 dives later, I am officially a PADI certified leisure diver :))

We sailed off on the MV Seabourne from the Republic of Spore, Royal Yatch Club at 8pm Friday night, arriving at 7am the next morning to Pulau Aur, off the Johor coast. There were a total of 14 divers and 1 captain/cook and 2 helpers. Jun and I were the only ones taking our open water exam. We met our Dive Master (DM), Eric, who has to-date done over 1000 dives *gulp*

We did 3 dives on saturday and I managed to touch a turtle! Not bad for a novice diver yeah? Saw tons of marine life, lots of nemos, sea slugs, 2 stingrays, schools of various fishes, 3 puffer fish, 1 hermit crab, lots of nudi branch, corals - both hard and soft. The visibility on Day 1 was pretty good and I really enjoyed myself.

Was woken up at 7am on Sunday to start our 4th dive at Jack's Rock at 745am. This looked like a really exciting place to dive ..unfortunately, we were hampered by poor visibility :(. This was the 1st dive where Jin and I got to be dive buddies! Too bad the visibility was bad so we had to cut short our dive but not before I got to see Jin doing mid-water cartwheels..heehee

Eric is a really good DM..very patient, meticulous and humorous. Jun and I were really fortunate to get him to ourselves..seems it's usually 5-6 pax per DM. Overall, it was a relaxing weekend trip away from Spore..we are already looking forward to another trip in July before we head to Bali in August in search of the "mola-mola" aka Sunfish.

Diving class madness!

2006-06-23T18:43:00.000+08:00

Last night saw Jun and me at the dive centre from 6.30pm till 1.30 am!! Unbelievable...my crazy dive instructor, Lido , is really too intense and strict ...was hungry, tired and sleepy..but good news! Scored 90% despite not studying :p..Jun and I are the official "Wing Masters" - only good at winging exams ..heehee

Am off to take my open water test tonight. It's a boat trip to Pulau Aur, off Johor. Can't wait for my first dive tomorrow..hope to see lots of Nemo fish :0)

A lava cake worth living for :)

2006-06-23T12:17:00.000+08:00

Finally! After weeks of tasting every molten lava cake on the menu to find one that comes close to the one at Ember, I managed to find one which satisfied my craving. Taadaa!!....

One of our agencies wanted to introduce their new graphic designer - Spencer. We met up for a working & introductory lunch at Andre Wine and Dine at Telok Air street. This small restaurant specialising in French cuisine is not that well-known but I personally think it's a hidden gem, very very value for $$. Although they serve set lunches at $20 with a good variety of options, I picked the duck confit from the ala carte menu. The succulent and perfectly oven baked duck was sooo good..I put it on my 'best place to have duck confit under $30 list' in Spore :)

After finishing every piece edible of the duck (I should have taken a pix of how well I cleaned it up..heee), I waited with mixed anticipation for the dessert made of Valrhona chocolate. It was presented in such a delicate way that I felt bad poking into it. But I had to - to make sure the chocolate will ooze out unlike the one I had at Iggy's the day before. You can imagine my delight when it did ooze out and my utter contentment when the taste lived up to its name : "Live for chocolate"...

By the way, Spencer? nice guy :)