End of long weekend

Time really flies... 4 days has passed so quickly and tomorrow I have to go back to work again *sigh*.... How I wish I could have more time just to laze around and do whatever I want. Perhaps the end of the year is coming so don't really have the mood to work :P Can't wait for the next weekend to come...

Shopping @ Jurong Point

Today, I woke up at around 8.30 am, which was very early for me on a Saturday morning. My mum and sisters had planned to go for breakfast at Jurong Point before starting our shopping. My youngest sis suggested Old Town White Coffee as she had tried it in Malaysia and had liked it. We actually wanted to order the set menu but was told that the set menu was only available on weekday mornings. We only ordered drinks with kaya toast and french toast, but still ended up very full. However, I felt it was rather expensive as a cup of coffee cost $2, yet the taste was about the same as those at Toastbox or 旺角.

After the breakfast, we started walking around. It was not 11 am yet so we just wandered around for a while until most of the shops have opened. I managed to buy 2 pairs of working shoes to replace my old ones that were worn out. Hopefully they would not hurt.

We shopped till almost 2 pm before deciding to have lunch. My 大妹 mentioned that the Kopitiam at the old wing has just renovated so we decided to lunch there. However, all of us were not very satisfied with the food. My youngest sis felt that her fish soup noodles were too bland, while my mum felt that her vermicelli was too gooey and the pig's liver too hard. I ordered Yong Tau Foo but felt that the one at Vivocity was better.

After lunch, I went for a quick haircut at EC House before continuing shopping. My dad joined us after his work at about 5.30 pm. After shopping for a while more, my 大妹 was starting to get tired from all the walking and asked if we wanted to go home. We decided to have dinner first and my mum suggested the newly opened 莆田 restaurant. Luckily there was no queue as we were considered early. Perhaps due to the unsatisfying lunch, we ordered quite a number of dishes and was so full that we didn't even order dessert. My favorite was the stir-fried yam :)

Braised Pig Intestine


Drunken Cockles


Spinach with Salted Egg and Century Egg


Sweet & Sour Pork with Lychees


Stir-fried Yam


Stir-fried Cuttlefish

Long Weekend

Tomorrow is a public holiday and I decided to take one day leave today to enjoy a longer weekend. Actually wanted to accompany my youngest sis to Sitex at Expo as she thought of buying an external hard disk but I felt really lazy :P I suggested just going to Jurong Point as there might also be offers at stores like Challenger or Best so the price difference would not be that great.

Just then, my mum called and we told her of our plan. She said that she had planned to go to Jurong Point to shop too this weekend so she suggested going together on Saturday instead. So in the end, we stayed at home and I just spent the day playing games and watching dramas :)

A Christmas Carol

Our company organized a subsidized movie event tonight and 小花 and I decided to attend. The movie that we watched was "A Christmas Carol", adapted from the story by Charles Dickens. Though I have heard of this title, I have never read the book before so did not have any idea of the plot at all.

The movie was entertaining, though some parts startled me due to the sudden and loud sound effects. It was good that Mr Scrooge was a changed person after a night with the three ghosts, though the transformation was so sudden that the people around him couldn't seem to believe it. I think the moral of the story is that we should share and enjoy our lives as much as we can, since no matter how much money you accumulate, it would be of no use to you when you are dead...

No movies again

Today is Friday but 小花 and I did not watch any movies again as the timings of the movies that we wanted to watch were either too early or too late. We had also intended to use the one-for-one birthday movie voucher from Golden Village. However, we were restricted as we could only select movies that have been shown for some time, and we could not watch the movies on Fridays and Saturdays. Not sure if Golden Village is really sincere in giving members this "privilege", as I can't understand why they then had to impose so many restrictions on the use of the birthday voucher *shrugs*

Marutama Ramen

Today, I had lunch with 小花 and another colleague at Marutama Ramen at Central. Have not been there for some time and we missed the ramen. 小花 and I ordered the spicy ramen as usual, with an egg topping. I really like the egg as the white was firm but the yolk was still soft. It tasted really good... yum yum :)

My mum had experimented on cooking such an egg previously as my family all loved the egg, but without any success. I decided to search the internet for a recipe and managed to find one finally... Yay!



Even managed to find the recipe for braising sauce for the egg when I followed the link in the video! Shall ask my mom to try it out when she has time :)

Dinner Meetup

Today met up with SKY for dinner. As she had to run some errands near Orchard area, we decided to meet at Sushi Tei (again!) at Paragon for dinner. I ordered Soba for a change and was quite satisfied with it :)

Haven't met up with SKY for some time so it was good to catch up with her tonight. She has decided to go into the teaching profession and is now training at NIE, so she has been busy with school work and exams. 頑張ってください！！

Christmas Light Up @ Orchard

After the dinner at 和民, 小花 and I proceeded to Wheelock Place and slowly walked till Plaza Singapura, stopping to take photos of the Christmas lighting and decorations on the way. When we just started, we felt a few drops of rain and feared the worst, but luckily it did not rain :) Haven't walked for so long in a while though :P

This was the first time I used my 大妹's camera that she bought not long ago, as the batteries for the usual camera that I use seemed to take too long to charge. Didn't have time to really figure out the different settings of the camera but fortunately the photos seem to turn out fine.

和民

I had suggested to 小花 that we could go out on a Saturday to take photos of the Christmas Light-up at Orchard and we agreed on today. We decided to have dinner at 和民 first before going around Orchard for photographs. We have been wanting to try out this restaurant since we know about its opening a few months back, as this was the very same restaurant where we had our dinner for 3 straight days when we were in Japan.

We had a little difficulty locating the restaurant in Ion as there were many people and the layout was a bit confusing. We did not have to wait long to get a seat, probably because it was only about 5.30 pm. As there were only 2 of us, we did not order too much and ended up trying 4 dishes that we ate in Japan.

Overall, the food here was comparable to that in Japan, though we felt that the Scallops with Butter and Stone Pot Rice could have had more garlic, and could be more sizzling when served. Just for comparison, the left column are the food we tasted in Singapore while the right are the food that we ate in Japan.

Grilled Squid
Scallops with Butter
Grilled Mackerel
Stone Pot Rice

We also ordered a Cassis Grapefruit to share. The drink was a bit bitter due to the grapefruit with a hint of sweetness that tasted like blackcurrant.

"苦中一点甜" - Before and after stirring

The dessert "Brownies with Vanilla Ice-cream" was so tempting that we decided to give it a try as well. We thoroughly enjoyed our meal :)

2012

小花 and I have already bought tickets for tonight's movie "2012". Before the show, we went to dinner with a few colleagues as well as another Korean colleague who was here for a training course. As the Korean colleague preferred either Chinese or Thai food, we decided to have our dinner at Thai Accent at VivoCity.

This was the first time I have dined here. Didn't know that the place was actually quite big as I could only see a portion of the restaurant from outside when walking by. We ordered some food to share and my colleagues told the waiter to serve us the food as quickly as possible as our Korean colleague had a flight to catch. Not sure if the restaurant has always had efficient service but they really served our food in a short time. We were rather pleased with their service, and as their food tasted quite good as well, we decided that we could dine in this restaurant again next time.

After the meal, there was still some time left so we went back to office to clear some work. We were still very full when we headed to the cinema. Though we had bought tickets for the show on Wednesday, we only managed to get seats on the 4th row out of a total of 8 rows! When the advertisements started, we felt that the screen was a bit too close to us but luckily it was better during the movie.

The special effects in the movie were rather spectacular. However, it's really scary to imagine that some day what we see in the movie may come true. Whole cities could just disappear in a matter of seconds and trying to flee would be useless. Hopefully this will never happen.

When the movie ended, we realized that it was already 12.30 am. We did not check the movie length beforehand but hadn't expected it to end so late. It was raining but luckily the the queue at the taxi stand was quite short and taxis arrived frequently. After confirming with 小花 on the time and place to meet tomorrow, we went home separately.

Happy Birthday to me :P

Today I took a day off from work as it is my birthday. Think this is the first time that I took leave for my birthday, because in previous years my birthday either fell on a weekend or I worked. However, I did not make any plans so I just stayed at home. To me, just waking up late and spending the day playing games or watching dramas is a real pleasure. I'm so easily satisfied haha.

Yesterday Tulip and 小花 gave me a treat at Sushi Tei during lunch. Although we didn't really order a lot, we still ended up very full. Think we all love Japanese food :) Makes me feel like going to Japan again... Hope the prices of air tickets will drop soon *crosses fingers*

Long Beach @ Dempsey

As my birthday is next Tuesday, my family decided to celebrate it in advance. My mum booked a table at the Long Beach branch at Dempsey Road as we have not been there before.

After deciding on the food to order, we waved to a waitress but was told to wait a while as only certain waitresses could take orders. A "black-faced" waitress subsequently came over and left without saying a word or even smile after taking our orders. Felt that her service was very poor and it might be probably better if we had written down our orders on a piece of paper and just passed it to her instead =_=

The first 2 dishes - prawn and tofu arrived after a while. However, we had to wait for almost 15 minutes before the next dish was out. And we were rather surprised that it was the Chili Crab as it is usually the last dish to be served. Anyway, we started eating the crab and then suddenly the rest of the dishes were served all at once. Our hands were already "dirty" from eating the crab so we just left the other dishes aside and continue with the crab first, so the other food were a bit cold when we finally finished the crab >_< In addition, we ordered another small plate of buns as there was still quite a lot of chili crab gravy left over. However, when the buns were served, we were disappointed as the buns were only a little warm but yet it took so long for them to be served.

Overall, the taste of the food was not bad. I felt that one of the dishes was rather special - Hor Fun with La La King. Though the La La wasn't really as big as it sounded in the menu, the hor fun comprised of both fried and normal hor fun and it was the first time I had ever tried this. However, we regretted ordering the roasted chicken as we "forgot" that this was a seafood restaurant and the chicken was so normal that it could have been bought from any hawker centre. But I think the restaurant really needs to improve their service level as people have many other choices for seafood as well, and probably at cheaper prices too.

Prawns


Tofu


Chili Crab


Spinach with 3 types of eggs


Roasted Chicken


Hor Fun with La La King


杨枝甘露 (with ice-cream!?)


Black Glutinous Rice with ice-cream


Durian Pudding

No movie

小花 and I actually wanted to watch Coraline but the latest show time was only 6.30pm, which was a bit early for us. The timing for other movies were also not very good so we decided to skip watching movies for this week and just have dinner instead.

小花 suggested having sashimi at a shop at the basement of VivoCity. However, there wasn't much food left when we got there so we decided to change a venue. As we already had fish soup noodles during lunch, 小花 didn't want to have "中餐" for dinner again. I suggested White Dog Cafe or Coffee Club and we ended up at Coffee Club.

There was a promotion for new dishes, which came with 99% fat-free drinks again. The main ingredients remained the same, except that previously it came with pasta while this time it was wrapped in pita bread instead. We ordered the Cheeky Chick and Crab Attack sets, with Mango-Banana and Ruby Fruit drinks. Both of us were very satisfied with the food, but we couldn't finish our drinks yet again. Shall see what other new dishes Coffee Club come up with in future :)

Eventful Day

Overslept yet again Orz. This time it's because my handphone battery went dead so the alarm did not ring. The battery indicator is really unreliable as I had checked that the battery still had 2 out of 3 bars before I went to bed last night. Luckily my 大妹 was preparing to go to work and saw me still sleeping, so she asked me if I was on leave today. I immediately jumped out of bed in shock and fortunately it was only 7.30 am. I have decided that I would change my handphone next year, partly because of this lousy battery indicator.

As 小花 was on leave today, I went for lunch with Tulip and 雪人. Tulip wanted to go to the bank after lunch and as we were making our way there, Tulip commented that we were walking too slowly. I told her that we were just following her pace and so she started walking faster. 雪人 and I also walked faster to match her pace and suddenly 雪人 said that we were "breast walking". She actually meant "brisk walking", but she did not seem to realize her mistake until Tulip and I kept laughing non-stop. She is really a joker, isn't she? ;)