Cherry on top

An unpaid advertisement for Twelve Cupcakes - because their Chocolate Mint spoke louder than the supposedly good Red Velvet. Yummy visually and gastronomically, but punishing to the waistline.

As I end my third week at work in a new environment, it's only human that I start to evaluate my choice to transfer to the ground. Unlike "up there", as they all call unanimously, my new office is bustling with energetic young managers earnest to learn and perform together as a team, as well as well-weathered seniors to keep us from veering off-course. The support staff are a fun bunch to be around, especially when they call us their "xiao hai zi" (little kids). I'm still starry-eyed and getting used to the fact that there's staff reporting to me, and not me reporting to everyone else. A senior raised a challenge to me while chatting on the bus ride home today, by betting a meal on the duration I'll last in this race. "Let's wait and see," I retorted. And I'm bent on claiming that treat.

Gross-out: Dancing squid, anybody?

To reinforce my lacto-ovo-pescetarian diet, I had to subject myself to a small amount of grotesque viuals.

Warning: Not for those with weak stomachs or have just finished their meals.

You know how the Japanese love their seafood - freshly slaughtered, skinned and served. Someday, I wanna pop by Hakodate market for a visit too.

Or, like what the Japanese would cordially say, ITADAKIMASU.

Stage play

I have to clarify; I'm not a KOI advocate, neither do I promote the extremely unhealthy obsession with the seemingly mundane drink.

Okay let me attempt to justify why some Singaporeans are so smitten with the milk+pearls+tea+sugar combo. People my age should know exactly when bubble tea was introduced to Singaporean tastebuds - we basically lived through the revolution which started with a monopolizing Quickly (or 快可粒) before several other names mushroomed. So naturally people would be flocking back to this familiar drink, despite the fact that it's adopted a Barbie-doll name called KOI. Just to give it some credit. KOI tastes slightly better than the regular $1.50 milk tea, and the smaller-than-others pearls fascinate my senses. But at $2.50 or more for other concoctions, it's a crazy deal, especially when I sit back and while slurping on a cup of KOI, decided that the extra dollar charged to me was absolutely for my queue slip, the plastic-sheathed straws and the choice to choose how much sugar I should be short-changed of in my drink. Perfect business model.

The catch? Gong Cha (貢茶), the lovely dome-covered cup of milk-topped Oolong Tea is still my kind of poison. The frothy milk cap which you can choose to either mix in or sip directly from the top prolly beats those odd-shaped KOI pearls hands-down.

And did I tell you about my harrowing experienceS with the telco with the S and the L? And everything went back to 2 years ago, after my parents was talked into subscribing to a 4-in-1 service at a much lower price than a competing telco was offering. Then the problems started. My WiFi would go dead all of a sudden, and I wound up needing to restart the system several times before getting the service back on. And I called in the telco technician probably half a dozen times to fix the problem, and everytime the problem would pop right back in after a week or so after the servicing.Things got worse when my Dad came back from overseas and had to tap onto the WiFi; my connection would snap instantly from all the traffic. AND I SERIOUSLY WANTED TO PUT AN END TO IT. Then my parents EFFING RECONTRACTED IT. My Mum said, "it has a bigger bandwidth you know". And I thought things would get better.

HELL NO.

I thought my nightmare would end when the technician came in about A MONTH AGO to fix up the new modem (apparently it was the SAME MODEM MODEL). After fixing up everything, he said, "Miss, I think your telephone line got problem. I think I go check for you, and I come back on Monday to fix it up."

HHHOOOKKKAAYY. *eyebrow twitches*

I received a call on the promised Monday from the guy, who called me using a private number. "Eh, Miss, I don't think I can come down today. Don't mind give me a few days?" That was the last I heard from him - I didn't even get his name or number down.

BECAUSE I SO WANTED TO CALL UP HIS MANAGER AND SCREAM AT HIM FOR HIRING SUCH AN INCOMPETENT AND LAZY ARSE.

So I called the telco 1 week later, from the Monday the technician last called. The system made me press commands for 5 minutes and hold for another 5 before I could talk to a technical support personnel. After telling her about my problem, all the sweet voice could say was, "Oh, sure, I'll email the technical support people to ask them to help you trace the technician on the job."

Are you thinking that I'm stupid? Don't I know how much red tape you guys have UP THERE?!

No replies, whatsoever for 1 week. My Mum was practically screaming at me, my Dad calls me on my phone during lecture to ask me about the phone line, and my relatives even thought our line got cut off because we couldn't foot the bill. And all this while I had shitload of projects on hand. The superb service of that telco just made it worse twice over. So I held back my anger one night and dialled their helpline again.

"Eh, sorry miss, if you don't have your Dad's IC number (the line is under his name), I cannot retrieve your account details. Sorry ah."

What a load of bovine excretement. The previous lady I called could trace my account details simply from my Dad's name and my home phone address. INCOMPETENT.

And I called again; it was the third phone call to a horrible service provider. I was pinching myself for not convincing my parents to switch to the other telco with similar services. The lady on the line apologised profusely and promised to send a technician down over the weekend. And so a technician was sent to my place yesterday to fix something that has gone wrong since the start of the month. Marvellous. Then I received a call from my sis amidst my tuition session - "Jie, they say they have to CHARGE US FOR THE REPAIR SERVICE." Dear horrible telco, are you telling me that you are CHARGING me for a job you didn't complete?! Their justification is because this job was apparently out of their scope of normal maintenance services.

GO DIE. SERIOUSLY.

The most horrifying thing came today; the customer service lady called me back to ask if everything was alright, and apologised again. But when I started to broach the subject of asking for a 1-month fee waiver (since we were deprieved of our telephone service for 1 month and therefore I see no point in paying for something I didn't use), she immediately started to speak in gibberish and started uttering whatnot, before going back to the question, "so is there anything else that I can help you with?"

These people should be commissioned to represent rogue countries in nuclear talks.

This is, by far, the worst kind of customer service ever.

Oh, and did I mention that I'll attempt to call back and ask for my 1-month waiver? We shall see what kind of wayang excuses these people can come up with.

Jack's 24

I love birthdays, especially when they 1. belong to the people I love and 2. I get to organize. :) Plus I love digging up secret foodie spots with comfort food and great ambience. It was Coffee Nations last year, so this year I brought Birthday Boy to The Garden Slug, a little diner tucked away in a small corner of Singapore. And because it was so tucked away, we had some trouble getting there. Haha. But all's well ends well.



For photographers, it's perfect hunting ground for food porn. For birthday boys, it's comfort food in boy-style portions.





The Garden Slug offers a good range of beers and ciders. Boyfriend Jack picked Hobgoblin to go with his half-slab of hickory babyback ribs, complete with mash and salad. Feels so good to watch him tuck into comfort food and smile that 'I'm conquered' smile. The poor boy's cough has been keeping him off sinful food.



The Garden Slug's food oozed generously of 'comfort', just like my pasta in cream sauce. Frankly speaking, I'm not a fan of cream sauce because of the queasy aftertaste I get everytime I force down a serving. But the people at the Slug didn't do it that way; the sauce was light, the sauteed veggies were ol' too good for a veggie lover and the springy fettucine, oh the fettucine, stole my gastronomical heart away.



Decided that, since we came all the way here, we should at least order their house specialty: Ugly Salmon Cakes. And I'm not kidding you; they're so ugly, my fork repelled them and they kept falling apart. BUT. But the salmon-and-mash combination was good, better than they look, although they were a tad salty. Were they supposed to be that salty?



Thanks to the Slug bunch, I got him the perfect birthday dessert: Apple Streusel with Vanilla Gelato, complete with candle and birthday tag. I remembered him returning from the washroom and commenting that he hoped the apple streusel the waitress was carrying wasn't his. Now was that supposed to be a good thing, or not? Oh well, good thing or not, he wolfed down every single bit. *happy*

Happy Birthday, today, tomorrow, forever and always. :)

Yet another getaway

Julie sure has her ways of enjoying life to the maximum. :)

After a relatively long R&R trip to Shanghai, I packed myself off to a great getaway in a small corner of Singapore. Details are... private and confidential, so I'll just be sharing pictures to a great story.



The greatest sin of all is selfishness - I just had to share great food places. Was back at Shin Sapporo, for their to-die-for Miso Ramen. Of course, my Butaniku always ends up in someone else's stomach - mostly Jack's - but it doesn't reduce the various sensations derived from slurping down fresh and springy noodles loudly, relishing each spoonful of soup stock topped with sliced spring onion and wolfing down that ol' so lovely half egg in a single mouthful. I may be an idiot who scores only B- for all her Japanese Studies modules, but Japanese food is like a mother tongue to me.

Yeap. When you see Rocky Mountains, it only means one thing:

BBQ!

I think no one does BBQs like us:

Asparagus, capsicums, Portobello mushrooms, broccoli, red snapper fillet, salmon.

But I love the sweet taste of fresh garden vegetables, poached in olive oil, spices and nothing else. I don't understand why people make use of BBQ sessions as an excuse to gorge on oil-laden processed food like satay and otah when you could be enjoying a healthy get-together with grilled fresh meat and vegetables? If you actually do your rough calculations, 1 stick of chicken satay is approximately 135 kcal, which is about the same amount in a regular bowl of Tokyo Chicken Stew at the Soup Spoon. Curse the health freak in me all you want, but I sure want to live a longer and healthier life.

Darling's pride and joy - our pit fire. He probably beats that piece of beefcake who was desperately trying to stop the smoke at his pit beside ours.

Have you heard of the new boy in town?

Well, Popeyes has been around here for some time, but it isn't as well-received as other fast food outlets like KFC or MacDonalds, main factor being the higher prices at Popeyes'. But you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW GOOD THEIR BISCUIT IS! While fried chicken from anywhere is the biggest bane of my life, Popeyes makes tasty biscuits! Not a bad start. Served hot from the oven with Smuckers strawberry jam, it's the best biscuit/cookie I've ever had. It has a light waft of cookie, and peel it open to reveal a white and fluffy biscuit core. And I have to give some credit to the Chicken Tenders Darling ordered. Unlike KFC's fried chicken, the fried batter on the outside resembles goreng pisang - light yellow and non-shiny, unlike the brown chicken pieces offered by KFC which ooze oil when you peel the chicken open. Popeyes? 100% chicken breast meat, with no hint of oil when you pry the battered pieces open. What you do get, is white and fluffy chicken strips.

Oi Popeyes. You should just make chicken tenders and biscuit.

And what better way to conclude a great getaway than brie, a bottle of 2007 Chateau Lamothe and the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy?

Next stop: The sun and sand of Tioman Islands, Malaysia! Counting down 2 days!

Movie: Iron Man 2

The serial movie junkie couple is back in action after a relatively long hiatus, and what movie could be more symbolic than Iron Man 2?

We chose this over Ip Man 2 because, quoting Jack, it's a Marvel production! We're all willing victims of Americanization, aren't we? LOL. Anyway I got kind of lost at the start because I couldn't draw a link between that tattooed Russian and Tony Stark, and more questions began to pop up in my head 15 minutes into the show. Why was his father dying? Why would he wanna build a scary killer machine to whip Iron Man apart? Why is he avenging his father? Huh? Huh? Huh? But I was too busy trying to feed Jack nachos in the dark to allow the questions to linger. Shall not be a spoiler here, since audience in the US of A will only get the movie (read movie poster) on 7th May. But it sure is a movie the boys would love to go to; it has their favourite superhero clad in gold and red saving the day with his silver sidekick, babelicious Scarlet Johansson in skin-tight bodysuits and killer moves to knock men off their feet with (pun intended), a huge badass going around whipping things apart with his high-voltage lash, in-your-dreams technology that shifts things around when you flick them with your fingers and, of course, a set of wheels every respectable man wants in his garage. Except Iron Man had other plans for his, which happens to be a white soft-top 5.2L V10 Audi R8 Spyder. That's a mouthful.

Jack and I totally cracked up at this scene.

Anyway Julie decided to kill time - while waiting for her knight to finish his last paper - by conjuring my own version of Aglio Olio. Not too bad, except I could have used angelhair pasta or my favourite penne instead of fettuccine. Not to mention I used a considerable amount of my stash of olive oil at home. -_-

Starting my internship on Monday, so it'll be hitting the stores over the next few days to get office wear!

Rest

Been keeping myself busy, at breakneck speed, to take my mind off thinking about things. I've learnt alot from myself during this period, including educating myself that sometimes it's just better when I'm kept in the dark; I'm a much happier person this way. Keeping away helped, because it gave me breathing space, devoid of everything which could possibly kill my mood. And driving was a miracle pill in disguise, because I have to shut everything out and concentrate on the wheel.

Cooking's another. :)

Julie's homemade japanese curry with pan-fried spiced white fish fillet.

The hols didn't take me off media after all. They call this 職業病, or some kind of "occupational syndrome". And I was grinning from ear to ear when I flipped open Saturday's papers to see this ad by M1.

Orange = ?
Green = ?
Red = ?

See it? While this ad will probably reignite the telco battle for subscribers, the real reason behind all this hair-tugging is because M1's obtained retail rights for the Apple iPhone, following in Singtel's footsteps. So now, everyone's either fighting for iPhone sales figures, or for EPL rights.

And while watching the Singtel shop at Jurong Point fill up in the early afternoon, I was wondering aloud to my mum why everyone wants an iPhone, even when three-quarters of the users probably under-utilise the phone capacity. You see, every telco wants their thumb in the Apple pie (pun intended), so consumers (especially in Singapore) are following in their kiasu footsteps by owning an iPhone.

"See, I got iPhone. You only got slide phone ah? Aiyo, so suah gu."

But then again, we shall see how long Apple carries the iPhone craze, until they conjure up something more capable than the 3Gs. It's simply; look at the iPod Nano. With the first generation Nano launched only in 2005, it has been revamped 5 times, and launched its 5th generation just this year (it was launched on 09-09-09). If we all keep our fingers crossed, Apple should be selling another generation of iPhones by mid-2010. I'm no market speculator; I'm just an informed consumer. So think twice before hopping onto the Apple bandwagon.

Food Glorious Food

Bliss is currently blooming in my head. :)

If God made food, this has got to be one of His mighty creations. Since Jack and I had the RARE chance to skive a little today after our subject pool, we decided to conquer Ion@Orchard for the second time round. And we found Gindako.

Just a brief introducation, since there seems to be a thousand and one Japanese food stalls at the Ion, Gindako originated from Japan, selling Takoyaki as its main product. And judging from the Japanese site, it seems like they hadn't changed a bit in terms of their serving proportion and presentation, which is a pretty daring strategy in a foreign market.

Each little takoyaki of is packed to the max with a huge chunk of octopus, tempura flakes, red pickled ginger and green onion, cooked fresh before your eyes, and served in a boat-shaped wooden dish and topped with teriyaki sauce, mayo, bonito flakes and seaweed flakes. Mmmm...... Jack and I had 10 to ourselves for dinner, and it's surprising how it filled my stomach, despite giving Jack all the tako chunks. CHUNKS! It's not those miserable pieces of chopped up octopus pulp you see in other takoyaki stalls, but huge chunks with the suckers of the octopus still visible! And to have 10 takoyaki balls and 2 drinks of your choice for S$9.90, it's worth every single bite. Thinking of it still makes those gastric nerves tingle with happiness. :)

I kind of dropped out of it all. And I don't really regret it, like how I used to lament that I'm always uninvolved. It isn't so much of losing the passion, but more of losing the time and the bonds. Yes, it scares me to have to feel this way but, no, there're no pangs to return.

Killer cramps attack on Thursday, and didn't die until Friday morning. I took just 2 Panadol Extras this time round to curb the pain, instead of the 4-hourly dosage for most of the previous months. Die cramps DIE!!!

And just as I was running out of ideas for 3rd Sis' birthday present, Jack came up with the perfect foodie's gift; Swensen's ice-cream mooncake vouchers. He sure knows how to curry favour. :P Dad took us all out for dinner (yes, future son-in-law included) at 甘家莊 at Ang Mo Kio Ave 3. I had expected the rush-hour jams on Lornie Road, the dinner crowd and the license paper-burning for the last day of the lunar 7th month, but what I hadn't expect was the 15-minute wait for the lady to come and take our order, and the 40-minute wait for our food.

And when the Lee family dines out, Mr Lee has no qualms about spending excessively and eating sinfully.

All the way from Jurong to Ang Mo Kio plus a long wait, just for those meat-junkies to try this fat slab of stewed pork belly. My meat-less diet is fully justified.

And I loved the way everyone interacted; Mum asking Jack about his burger shirt; Dad and Mum talking to Jack simultaneously about totally different topics and watching the poor guy getting torn between them; my sis tickling everyone with her gorilla joke; my sisters chatting with Jack... Surreal. And yes, even I'm finding it hard to believe that I'm sitting in the middle of it all.

And I'm fully convinced that any other sacrifice is worth it all.

BBQ + Boardgames

I hate Hearts. And I wanna play it over and over and over again. That's the consequence of boardgaming too much; you acquire such a competitive mindset that you just wanna thrash every single opponent you have out there, include the poor fella (in this case, Gordon) who taught you the game. The adage will have to be amended to "bite the hand that feeds you", in this case. Anyway, while I'm still suffering the emotional imbalance from losing to Gordon and Jack by 3 points in Puerto Rico (I was on a damn winning streak! Until Jack bought those dreaded buildings), we did a BBQ at Gordon's condo with some of the finest ingredients on Earth.

Shark steak, leatherjacket, streaky bacon, pineapple, portobello mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, corn cobs, prawns, asparagus.

And yes, we ate ourselves silly, and were especially generous with the sambal chilli (1 bottle, to be exact). Although the booking of the pit ran into some walls (some family claimed they booked the pit for the entire day, but they shared 1 of the 2 pits with us), we had great food, great company and a great stomachache (in my case).

Best thing of all? I robbed Jack of his entire day. Haha.

Hello, Good night

I'm just here to clear the cob webs.



Nah, just joking.


Blogging wasn't a necessity these days, because every day's just another pursuit of time to spend with the people I love most. Friday morning was spent bringing Grandma to a specialist to look into her frequent fainting spells. I had some trouble trying not to laugh, as Dr. Yap struggled in his questioning (because Grandma's hard of hearing) and Grandma's, well, hard of hearing. Plus we had a bad translator (a.k.a my mum), so was also having a hard time trying to bring her point across. Haha.


Uncovered another gastronomical jewel. Ding Tai Fung (鼎泰豐) serves a darling of thousand layer cakes! It's really as tasty as it looks, with a sprinkle of sago crowning the layered steamed sponge cake. And every single layer peels off with a little effort from a pair of chopsticks (plus some very nimble fingers). Never mind that it takes 20 minutes to prepare.

Picture source: Ding Tai Fung TW

And I started tuition! It's good when you reduce the number of noisy tykes in your vicinity to a mere 2, because it no longer sounds like a stadium of tykes watching ManU vs. Arsenal (yes, you just need 9 tykes). And it helps to have someone so dear give you a huge huggie just before the session.



Yesterday was blissful, because I had the best company ever (a.k.a Jack). Being the cheapo patriotic Singaporeans we are, we decided to pop over to Marina to watch the first full dress rehearsal for the NDP. The idea of firing the 21 canons on a floating platform was way cool (I was exclaiming so loudly everyone probably thought that I was some country bumpkin).

Springcleaning! It's too hot to be Spring, by the way. The main point's that I finally swept my table of a conspicuously revolting film of dust, which had accumulated from 3 months of negligence and mass-dumping.

So now I have half a table for my lappie and the next semester's notes. I totally love myself for being a neat freak.

And I love the way the wind catches your scent and carries it to me;

The way those fingers lace themselves with mine;

The times we kiss each other goodbye;

The little sparks you set off in my head.

And I miss you tonight, and every night.

Before dawn

NM2216 paper to clear tomorrow, and I've only began to straighten out some crinkles.



Mugging session progressed at an excruciating rate today, partially because of the temperamental weather and exam fatigue. Jack could attest to it by the huge tantrums the both of us threw in the course of 10 hours of mugging. PLUS we had the great company of loud-mouthed seniors studying just one storey under us.

And I thought NUS was a smoke-free campus. Those 7 guys were SMOKING ON CAMPUS, in broad daylight! What on Earth was that?! They were talking really loudly and clamped cigarettes between their lips! Oh God. I have a few questions to raise here.

1. Don't the students have any knowledge that the pungeant fumes were being blown upstairs to the rest of the students studying in the area? Do you want us to DIE with you all cursed ones?
2. Isn't the campus security supposed to be making their rounds around the campus and keeping things in order?
3. So are those things attached to the ceilings of our campuses pseudo sprinklers? Don't the SCDF or relevant authorities do checks? It's impossible that we have so many grown-up guys blatantly smoking together and the sprinklers are not activated?
4. What if a fire started because of their selfish and self-harming behaviour? Who will answer to the nation, and the entire educational field?



This is absurd.

And to add fuel onto fire, we had the WORST Japanese food on Earth (which, unfortunately, comes from NUS' Engine canteen), if 'food' is what you call it.

I pried open the box, all smiley and ready to tuck in to my dinner and forget that I still have 6 lectures to revise.

Fish was palatable, but rice was PASTY. Who in the world eats PASTY rice? And it was so PASTY that it clumped together, and it stuck obstinately to my chopsticks when I tried to dig into it. Yes, I had to DIG into my PASTY rice, which covered two-thirds of my rice box. The egg gravy was salt-laden, with onions that were cooked so hastily that they weren't even brown. The Miso soup looked like a combo of miso paste, water and hand-squashed tofu.

Who eats this?!

I know I'm a terrible sinner for not eating my rice (wait, I had a few mouthfuls), but seriously I'd rather go hungry. Jack finished his soggy tempura and a few mouthfuls of rice, which was plaudable. I swear that this would be the last time I'd be wasting money on such food. I'd rather eat cai fan.

Photos photos

I'm starting to get sick of my so-called 5.0-megapixel camera phone. The macro function is horrid! I miss my Samsung Ultra... Only if it didn't die on me so soon. It's a 3.0 beauty with a whole load of brains.


Met up with Fay and Jane yesterday. Fay won't be very happy about my snooping around... That superwoman's taking KOREAN LANGUAGE! She'll probably know more languages than the fingers I have on my hand by the time we graduate. And she was joking that she found it ironic that she could communicate in Japanese, but can't speak a single word of Hakka to her grandma.




See what I meant?! The macro function sucks! It can only focus if you place items at least 10cm away from it! WTF do you call macro function when I can't take pictures up close? Nokia developers, please please please do something to your trashy camera phones.



Oh, and Engine has a new Japanese cuisine stall! It serves decent fare, and the only (and the greatest put-off which is going to make sure that today's going to be the first and last time I'm going to eat from there) is that the rice is Thai fragrant rice! WTF. Is that even half-Japanese? The first thing I did was to dig into the rice, expecting it to be soft, sticky, yet grainy and fragrant with the light scent of Japanese rice and vinegar. I forgot it was Engine, after all. What tastes especially nice here?




So it's a big no-no. Unless it's the only stall open for the day, I'm stepping nowhere near.






When the audiophiles clash, this is what you get.

Remember how I was fluttering on about the button headphones by Audio Technica? Apparently I managed to tweak my thinking to place function over form, and here's what you get.

Yups, white ATs for the audiophiles. I like Jack's pair! The bass is ... astounding. But they look like a happy couple together, so I shall not be evil enough and make his headphones gay. Small headphones for the small-headed, small-eared me, and the larger headphones (with better specs.!) for the larger-headed, larger-eared husband. Sweet.

Thank you so much, so much for the advanced present.