Yum!

I've discovered a new drink. It's Grapefruit Sour..... in a bottle!

For those of you who remembered my previous post, I first tried Grapefruit Sour in Watami at Ion. Then, at the Japanese Food Court at the newly renovated Paradiz, I discovered a bottled version of the drink!

Refreshing, tangy and sour. It's the perfect drink for Singapore's hot weather. And the buzz I get from the minuscule alcohol content is just icing on the cake.

The grey cotton drop crotch pants

Why, in this bad economy (and in the light that I'm also becoming jobless), am I buying trendy clothes?

Walked into River Island today, saw a pair of grey cotton drop crotch pants with detachable suspenders. And I thought to myself: Cool pants and I must have it!

Then the other half of my head said: Grey Cotton Drop Crotch Pants with Detachable Suspenders? It'll got out of fashion in 6 months!

Argh... Don't think so much, I need something that excites me, and I need it NOW!!

So out with the classics and in with the trendy! I walked out $99 poorer, but damn excited to wear something special, and that feeling is priceless.

Once Upon a Milkshake

It's always a good feeling to discover a new great food place. Last week, I was introduced to a little hole in the wall shop at Maxwell Chambers called Once Upon a Milkshake.

One word, fabulous milkshakes! Rich, thick & creamy! The ultimate comfort food (or rather drink). Their secret? Premium ingredients - and the result is evident!

Luckily I went there with a few people, so I got to sample a few flavours. My verdict? The best is Strawberry! Followed closely by Chocolate Truffle, then Peanut Butter, in 4th place is Run & Raisins. Not a big fan of the Maple Syrup flavour. Although my friends loved it - 'it's like drinking hotcakes!!' Haven't tried their Vanilla Pod and Cookies and Cream flavours though. I guess it means, I'll be back!

How to make Grapefruit Sour

Went to Watami at Ion and got to get to make my own grapefruit sour.

It's really easy!

More time will be spent online

Prada now has a youtube channel. And I say YAY!

Political Sighting

Spotted while I was jogging this evening, Dr Ng Eng Hen jogging at the Alexandra park connector. I was rounding a blind corner and I almost ran into the Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence! haha.. Our eyes met for a moment but I was so surprised that I didn't even smile or say hi or get his autograph or complain to him about my neighbour who doesn't pick up his dog's poo.

So, just to make sure I got the spelling of his name right, I googled him and got linked to his page in the Cabinet's webpage. Yup, under recreation, it correctly states jogging. It's refreshing to see someone like him jogging alone in a public park instead of a private gym surrounded by bodyguards. Must be because elections are coming up, so must appear more down to earth?

Thanksgiving

You may recall in an earlier post, that I almost lost my Nokia E51 when it slipped out of my pocket onto the taxi. Thankfully, I managed to recover my phone. Today, the same thing happened again. Slipped out of my pocket, onto the mini bus that shuttles between the foot of Gombak hill to Mindef.

When I realised, it was already a good 15 mins after I got off. Strangely, I was pretty calm when I discovered that it was missing. Perhaps it's coz I know I have a spare handphone at home, but mostly I got a sense of reassurance from God that it will be found.

I went all the way back to the bus stop, waited for the bus to come back, went onto the bus and found my phone wedged between the seat and the side of the bus.

The bus driver was so surprised that I got my phone back. He said I was lucky. I don't think so.

It was God telling me that He is still watching out for me.

A shoot

Now I know.

Every 1 minute on camera, hours are spent off camera prep-ing for the reel time.

I must say, I had fun though! Will try to post the finished product.

Watch this space!

Just another meal

Went yesterday to another of those restaurants that has been around, that everyone seems to know of, but sua ku me hasn't gone yet. MOF at Parco Bugis Junction! I hardly ever go to Bugis area coz a) No direct public transport from there to home & b) No particularly interesting shop there. To me it's like a neighbourhood mall that happens to be in town area.

Tried the Japanese Curry Katsu. The Katsu was pretty thick, but I suspect that it was not freshly fried. The Jap curry sauce was lacking in some oomph. And it was accompanied be some shredded cabbage and diced cucumber and tomatoes. Altogether, the dish seemed pre-prepared, no fresh taste to it. Just assemble the pre-cooked stuff, heat it up and serve, not unlike those TV dinners in the supermarket.
Oh, and another gripe: the green tea was WAY TO POWDERY. Think it is made from tea dust. When left to stand for a few minutes, the cup was one fifth filled with sediment! Undrinkable.

Not a good dinner

Tried SuperDog at Vivo for the first time on Sunday evening. (yup, finally) I must say that I am not impressed by the food there.

Chose the Chili Cheese Dog set meal. I expected something really cheesy with lots of chili. Instead I got mostly not-so-fresh onions on a thin hotdog with a hint of cheese and almost no trace of chili. Certainly not what I imagined: a fat and juicy hotdog, overflowing with savory chili and cheese.

And at $7.80 for the meal, I thought it was pretty expensive. If I were craving for fast food, I would pay a few dollars more and have a satisfying meal at Carl's Junior.

Go West

This is the furthest west of Singapore I've been in a long time. Went all the way past Boon Lay station, past the Pooneer station to the sparkling new Joo Koon station! All to have a lunch at the Tung Lok restaurant at Arena Country Club. Hope the food is worth the journey!

Our God is so BIG!

This is the story of how big and mighty God is.


A long long time ago, the Israelites were living in the land of Egypt. The Egyptians (yellow cuffs) were living in harmony with the Israelites (those with scarves).

The Egyptians (yellow cuffs) were living in harmony with the Israelites (those with scarves).


However, a new Pharaoh came into power in Egypt... He thought to himself: if the Israelites continue to grow in number, they will outnumber and overthrow the Egyptians.


So the Pharaoh ordered all Israelites to be enslaved.


The Egyptians treated the Israelites badly. They made them work in the hot Egyptian sun with little rest and food.


Moses asked Pharaoh to release the Israelites but Pharaoh refused. Pharaoh did not believe that God was big and powerful. So Moses prayed: Show Pharaoh how big and powerful you are.


God sent the plague of flies


and the plague of frogs. The Egyptians were suffering from the plagues, but Pharaoh still refused to let the Israelites go.


But it was the last plague that changed Pharaoh's mind. All the first born male in Egypt was struck dead, including Pharaoh's own son! Pharaoh summoned Moses and told him and all the Israelites to leave Egypt.


God lead his people out of Egypt. By day, it was by cloud..


the people had to follow the cloud.


At night, God lead them by a pillar of fire! In this way, the people knew that God was always with them as they travelled out of Egypt.


Back in Egypt, Pharaoh realised that no one was left in Egypt to do the hard work. He decided to chase and capture the Israelites. The Egyptian army chased and chased the Israelites until they were cornered. The only way they could escape from the Egyptians was to cross the Red Sea!


Moses prayed and God told Moses to raise his hands over the Red Sea. Something strange happened: the Red Sea parted. The waters stopped flowing, walls of water formed and the Israelites were able to cross the Red Sea on dry land!


However, when the Egyptians tried to cross, the walls of water formed in Red Sea came tumbling down and Pharaoh together with the Egyptian army drowned!


So this is the story of how our big and powerful God rescued the Israelites from Egypt!

Inefficiency at Audio House

Why can't Audio House implement a cash and carry system for its
products?
Curently, I have to queue to pay up, then join another queue to
collect the items!! Some crap reason about stamping the warrenty card.
Then when I reached the collection counter, they took another few
minutes to find the items i bought. Queued for more than 20 mins
altogether to pay and collect 2 hairdryers.

The Christmas Miracle!

This is entry is also to test the blogging via e-mail function that I've just disocvered.

When you have faith, and your heart is pure, and maybe if you are a bit forgetful and decide to do a little spring cleaning on Christmas eve, MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN!

These are the Hogan shoes that I thought I lost many many months ago. They were my favorite pair coz they just about go with anything. I literally searched my whole house for them, turing out every corner. In the end I couldn't find them and I thought I must have left them at somewhere when I changed out of them.

Then, on Christmas eve last year, I was packing my shoes and I opened my shoe box to put a pair of shoes in and guess what I found in the shoe box? My Hogan shoes!! Turned out, when I bought my shoes, I decided to wear them out of the store and I placed the Hogan shoes in the box and forgotten all about them.

I could have found it any day of the year, but finding it on Christmas eve made it a little more special. Yeah, it is not an exciting story,and it might not be life changing, but now, I have a Christmas miracle to call my own!

The Dinner Party

Yo ho! It's been a long long break since my last post. Well, lots have happened since then. Too much to update in one post.

So lets start from this week. The highlight of this week has got to be when I hosted a dinner party at home. I can only do such things when (a) I am on leave, (b) My parents are away on holiday, (c) and I have the car to drive around to buy the raw materials. SO when all three conditions are met on Tuesday, the stars are aligned and so, a party I hosted!

The party was pretty much impromptu. So for those who felt left out coz you were not invited, I really apologise! (That means you Junhao and Cat Chia) I only decided at 2pm that very day to hold the party.

BUT for those who are invited, count yourselves lucky! There were 10 of us altogether. The 3 Lim brothers; Nicole (Elijah's gf), Sandra (Moses's gf), Sheryl (Sandra's sister) and Daniel, Melissa, Serene and Shuling from church.

The menu was planned in half an hour. Coz the party was quite big, I decided to have 2 appetizers, 2 mains and dessert. At least if one of the dishes fails, there is another one to back it up. From 2pm till when the dinner started was a blur of inviting people, running to the butchery, supermarket, washing the vegetables, chopping the tomatoes, breading the chicken, frying the mushrooms, boiling the potatoes, finding silverware for the party etc etc...

At 7pm: my critics arrive. The first appetizer comes out: Caprese. Caprese is such a simple dish to prepare - there is practically no cooking involved! Just chop up the tomatoes, chop up the mozzarella, toss them with basil leaves, extra virgin olive oil and a touch of balsamic vinegar. Coz it's such a simple dish with no cooking, the key for a good caprese is the freshness & quality of the ingredients. The secret for me was the tomatoes on the vine - double the price of regular tomatoes, but worth every penny. This time round, I used regular mozzarella. Next time, I will try it with buffalo mozzarella.

The second appetizer: Chicken Milanese. This also quite a simple dish to make. Fry a breaded chicken breast, put it on top of greens and cherry tomatoes (the same vine ripened ones) and toss it with olive oil and lemon juice. Yup! They loved it too!

The next one was a bit of a disappointment. The dish was a oven roasted, Australian Free Range Veal Loin. It was supposed to be cooked to medium on the outside and then rare in the inside. But I think I left it in the oven for too long. According to the recipe, the meat thermometer was supposed to read about 70 degrees celsius. But when I cooked it to that temperature, the whole thing was well done.

The next one was less of a disappointment. I took it out too early, cut it up, realised it was too bloody to be eaten, so stuck it back in the oven for another 5 minutes. Then it came out perfect!

Verdict on the accompaniments to the mains:

Store bought Mustard - too mild

Horseradish & Sour Cream - the guests loved this with their meats!

Brown sauce - bad! (I think it's coz I used vegetable oil to make it instead of the oil from roasting the meats)

Fried Regular and Sweet Potatoes - Some of the potatoes were undercooked.

Mushrooms - Delicious, too little to go around.

I thought that with such heavy and meaty mains, dessert should be something light and fruity. I wanted sorbet and strawberries but no supermarket in my vicinity sells sorbet! I was so upset. I had no time to make dessert. So I settled for Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream. But when Nicole arrived, she brought an Apple Strudel with her. The perfect ending to the meal - something sweet and not too heavy. So I kept the ice cream in the freezer and brought out the strudel for everyone!

Everyone's verdict: Passable.

Lessons Learnt:

If I am going to do it again:

1. Cater more time!! Deciding at 2pm to host a 6 course dinner party for 10 at 7pm is really biting off more than I can chew! I'm quite amazed that I managed to buy all the meats and vegetables and cook them in time for the party.

2. Include a seafood item. Feedback was that having 2 meats as mains was, well, too meaty.

3. I may want to try to do a cheese course. And I also forgot to bring out the wine when the dinner started! I actually chilled a bottle of white to be brought out when the chicken appetizer was served. Forgetful me.

4. Invite people who can help prepare and wash up later! Really, I don't think the dinner will be a success if not for my guests who helped out. Love u all!