Of gatherings and food

Have been meeting up many people in this 2 weeks and have been trying out stuff I've never had before - quite a bit of Japanese food in fact. It's one of my fav food and I think I can have that everyday and not tire of it.

With Elvie @ Raffles City:
My sandwich from Canele- they have an updated menu now with more food items than before - worth a try.


With FY & Xinyi @ Tampopo, LiangCourt, before 5-hour long KTV session:
Before the food:

Swordfish sashimi


My Hokaido ramen with aji tama- so so only. Sun with Moon has a better version i think.


The black pig shabu shabu original ramen is pretty good. I should have ordered this instead.



With Medha @ Tonkichi, Isetan Scotts:

Ladies set - definitely not for one with a dainty appetite. Tonkichi is not really for me, all fried stuff.



With Widi, Hernanto, little Danielle and Widi @ Akashi, Paragon:

Food at Akashi is pretty good and reasonably priced - no queues on Saturday afternoon. Realised I did not take a photo of my food but i think I'm quite off taking pictures for the moment, now that i have a lousy camera phone. Sucks. But I had to take a picture of little Danielle of course, so cute!



With Serina and Weiming@ Orchard on Saturday:



As usual, my camera phone can't do justice to the picture - sigh, i just can't stop griping about that..

We tried out Waraku's new restaurant concept at Starhub centre for dinner:


Why is my food not here yet?


Cabonara on hotplate -yum!


Okonomiyaki with noodles


Potato Mentai


The potent deep fried garlic that gave Weiming a nasty shock and a lingering after-taste that lasted one coke float, 2 strong mints and another good 2 to 3 hours......

你不是真正的快樂

My dear friend, how have you been?
It has been a long while since we've met up and i miss you.
I hope I am not one of the many you chose not to keep in contact because I offer no business potential.
If it is sadly so, I hope you are truly happy now. Because I feel you have lost an important part of your life in your pursuit of a perceived "quality life".

Till the day reality hits, I wish you well, my friend.


你不是真正的快樂

音樂：五月天
詞曲：阿信
from：後青春期的詩



人 群中 哭著 你只想變成透明的顏色

你再也不會夢 或痛 或心動了

你已經決定了 你已經決定了



你 靜靜 忍著 緊緊把昨天在拳心握著

而回憶越是甜 就是 越傷人了

越是在 手心留下 密密麻麻 深深淺淺 的刀割



你不是真正的快樂 你的笑只是你穿的保護色

你決定不恨了 也決定不愛了

把你的靈魂關在永遠鎖上的軀殼



這 世界 笑了 於是妳合群的一起笑了

當生存是規則 不是 你的選擇

於是妳 含著眼淚 飄飄盪盪 跌跌撞撞 的走著



你不是真正的快樂 你的笑只是你穿的保護色

你決定不恨了 也決定不愛了

把你的靈魂關在永遠鎖上的軀殼



你不是真正的快樂 你的傷從不肯完全的癒合

我站在你左側 卻像隔著銀河

難道就真的抱著遺憾一直到老了 然後才後悔著


你值得真正的快樂 你應該脫下你穿的保護色

為什麼失去了 還要被懲罰呢

能不能就讓 悲傷全部 結束在此刻 重新開始活著


Just as I was kind of feeling a little down, i read the most recent post by 阿信 (http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4b66ade80100bw9q.html). Wow, he's not only cute and talented, he reads my mind too! * swoonz*

The Man - cute and talented. I like :)

SG Biennale 08 - South Bridge Development

Taking some time to post the pictures taken at the second location of the Biennale for 2008 - South Bridge Devt. This piece of land will, unfortunately, not be restored/preserved but soon be re-developed into shopping malls, hotels...etc.

Taken from Shaw Towers carpark


Among collected mess


Charcoal door. There were no lighting in the buildings. Lightbulbs were the souce of illumination - which was actualli quite cool.


I love this room.


The white stuff on the ground are all bits n pieces of soap. Spot the little stool n the red basin in the middle.(erm...yah. I think you call that a basin :p) The whole place smells of soap.


Florescent swing.


LV does flooring too?


Sugar rush - that's what happened to the bees and ants....


There was a 3rd location of outdoor art installations that I really wanted to see but had to miss due to time constraints. But anyway, still glad to have caught most of the Biennale08. Some of the pictures are really quite blur cuz of the lousy camera phone I'm using now. Sigh, i really miss my SE K800i badly and I'm surprised that i can miss a non-living thing this much. Am contemplating getting a digital cam but still think a camera phone is more convenient cuz I can just pick it up n shoot. But there doesn't seem to be any decent cam-phones that meet my criteria in the market now and it's dumb to get myself another k800i, duh. What a headache.......can SE read my mind and come up with something that I want, please???? Minus the stupid charging point problem, thanks.

Home alone?

I just realised that this weekend, all my usual hangout kakis are going to be out of town; the shopping ones, the "starbucks gang"......well, almost all. Is this good timing or wat?

Better start making some plans or I'll waste my weekend away. No way man.....

Afternoon Tea again

Had tea with my longest-known friends (shall not use the word "old") at Sheraton Hotel last Sunday. Pretty good and it comes in a set so you don't have any chance to overeat. There's a one-for-one promo with Citibank cards, so it's really quite a good deal. :)

Our spread


Set for 2


With Anqi, my longest-known friend from Kindergarden 2! Come to think of it, we have not taken a picture together since....primary school maybe?


The four of us.....since 1987.

Busy Saturday of a tai-tai

Had an enjoyable Saturday with activities I will be doing when I'm a full time tai-tai - high tea and visiting an arts exhibition. =)

Attended Yvonne's ROM party at Old School. Nice, nostalgic place- plain old school lor. It was a simple, fuss-free event for the couple. ROM ceremony , cocktail, simple finger food served, retro/ jazz music in the background, friends catching up, photo-taking. It was definitely more relaxing for everybody....Nice.

Had to walk down the longest flight of stairs in order to reach The Cathay at the foot of Mt Sophia, and that was supposed to be a short-cut. I supposed they made it a sheltered stairway in view of wet weather but don't feel good walking in that descending tunnel- claustrophopic.

Indulged in English-style high tea buffet at Hyatt in the afternoon. Love the scones! Though selection was not wide, i definitely stuffed myself full - taking care of both lunch and dinner at the same time. Felt that I was too greedy after that.

Went for some "exercise" after that, at the Singapore Biennale held at the City Hall. Interesting exhibits but there were some a lot of video clips that were super s-l-o-w and I didn't understand what was going on -too arty. But for S$10 entrance fee, you could well get your money's worth if you went through all the exhibits and sat through ALL the videos/movies even. You can spend a whole day in there definitely.



It's a bird's eye view of Singapore. Or at least my photo shows more of the South and East of SG. The white parts are all stickers with comments by people who attended the exhibition. It was all fun searching for where our homes and schools are and also reading the silly but innovative stuff people wrote.

Alien invasion? This cleverly makes use of the Supreme Court as a backdrop. Looks like an UFO rite?


Tiny wiry plants on a bed of fine sand.


Close-ups:

Finally........

Finally....... i got my much needed massage last Friday. Left shoulder was aching the whole time, I even considered using Salon Pas, old le.

Immediate relief after the massage, but as I kept having to remind myself to relax my shoulder muscles cuz they seem to go into auto-tense mode by default.....very bad, very bad. Which is why I ended up with this:


I have joined the "Package Gang". =) In bad times, packages offer "bulk discount" for repeat purchases/services if you share among friends. For this, the package price is $10 off the usual price! So for the greatest good of all, muz sign up. Looking forward to my next massage session!

GE Run 2008

Yay....i completed my 5KM run last Sunday. And it wasn't difficult at all. Thanks to the people who took the run for the "big walk", i slowed my pace in order to weave in and out through the strolling crowd, such tt I even had energy to admire the scenery of the race route. 5KM is not a lot to most people, but I am happy I completed it. =)

Old HongKong

Chanced upon this restaurant in Square2 when mum, sis n me were looking for a place for late lunch. Serves dim sum and Cantonese dishes. Prices are comparative to Crystal Jade and Imperial Treasures but the menu is quite extensive and they have quite a lot more variety for drinks compared to Crystal Jade. According to my sis, they do have some authentic HKG dishes that is not so commonly found in S'pore except probably at the pricer /HC restaurants.

We ordered a few dishes cuz we decided we should not be greedy and over order - which was a good choice cuz we were reasonably full at the end of the meal and very happy :) Here are the pictures:

The snack - this is already impressive cuz other restaurants just serve only peanuts or achar....Look at the pretty side plates!


The steamed rice with chicken, mushroom and chinese sausage - this was pretty normal, nothing to shout about.


Pan-fried carrot cake with XO sauce.


Pig stomach soup with preserved veg. Those who know me well enough will know that I'm sold whenever there's salted veg, egg or fish in the dish, I just had to order this. The pepper in the soup was not overpowering like some others and you could actually taste the saltiness of the preserved veg in the soup. Yum. U can be sure not one drop of soup was left. I could drink a few bowls myself.


We also ordered har gow and custard buns. The har gow was pretty good but the star of the meal was the custard buns. These are no ordinary custard buns but SALTED egg yolk custard bun which are absoutely to-die-for. These buns are supposed to have molten custard fillings that will oooze out when u bite into them, droolz...... Unfortuately, i was busy with the other dishes that when I got to the bun, it has turned cold and the filling had solidified but still yummy otherwise. Imagine how it will be when it's hot!

And all the above for S$36, which I thought was pretty reasonable. This place is worth checking out and if u're interesIed, it's tucked in one of e corners behind the Sakae sushi shop on either the 2nd or 3rd floor. I muz return again so as to do justice to the custard buns....eat when they're pipping hot!

Still more of London

Friday is the day of saying goodbyes......It's Audrey's last day as well. Quite a surprise that she's leaving cuz she joined about the same time I did. I quite like her really. We all left office early today for drinks at Red, the bar round the corner. Super sunny day it was, but the guys wanted a seat outside to enjoy the sun.......sigh, they haven't tried being in the sun everyday.....

This was taken at a supplier's warehouse and that's my colleague, Ken in the picture. See how small he is in the pix! There's archive files on the left and storage crates on the right. Super big, I felt really small standing right there.


Last day of my trip, I took a train to London to meet Mingzong, lugging my luggage up and down steps at the train station and tube. Not that bad, I did not get lost. :p



Sign on the opposite platform says "Welcome to Weybridge", but I'm leaving....so sad!




Mingzong was late due to some subway train fault - and that's pretty common there. I made my way over to the library based on his directions to wait for him.That's the British Library at King's Cross station. The building reminds me of TianAnMen Square somehow....


That's Newton doing his Maths homework in the library....:p


This is the start of the ultra shortcut sightseeing tour courtesy of Mingzong. Mind you, it was a very good one, no less. You'll find out why as we go along. We started with a tour around the CBD area with all the banks.......




This is a shopping area but it's Saturday afternoon in the CBD, so shops are not opened. No shopping for me :(


That's 3 relatively iconic buildings in London: Lloyds building on the left - a cold, metal structure that looks totally out of place in London; that's the Gherkin in the centre- yeah, it got its name from how it looks, like a gherkin but I think it looks quite cute. And the third building on the right- I dunno what building it is but it is also one of the few in London that have a modern look.


Ladies and Gentlemen, can you guess where this is?


Oh yeah, that's just it. You would have though it looked a bit more grand that that -The Bridge that we all have cursed to fall since we were young. To think we still sang it so happily, evil leh. And oh, for the record, I was told the Bridge has actually fell twice before, this is the 3rd one. So actually, the song works......oopz.


And there is Tower Bridge in the background....taken on London Bridge :)


I think Millenium bridge has a nice design and the view on both ends are really good. You have the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral on one end........




And the Tate Modern Gallery on the other end.....


Sunset captured on Millenium Bridge


Pictures of St. Paul's cathedral from different directions. Super big building.




This was a little patissiere shop near St Paul's Cathedral that was called Paul. Erm, no relation to the church but it has really good hot chocolate and huge yummy macarons.



This is obviously a resturant opened by a Singaporean. Wat a name!

This is the last pix i took before we head for dinner at a small but cosy Japanese restaurant. And all the places were covered in about an hour and a half, wat a rush! It was generally a tour of London's bridges and a few other must-sees and given the limited time I had, it was quite a lot covered. Dinner was simple Japanese soup udon with tempura and sashimi so I didn;t take any pix. But the food was really good. Left for the airport right after dinner, and made it all in good time for my flight.

Yep, everyone said it's a pity I didn't extend my stay, go shopping...etc...but i didn't really think so. I had really enjoyed myself this trip. Afterall, I had a very different experience since I was staying in the countryside which was so beautiful. Anyway, I'll have opportunities to return again next year and I'll be sure to extend my stay the next time round. Anyone wants to join me for London trip 2009?