Bak Kwa Fever

I've been sitting here trying to figure out what I should put as a title to this post and I'm still undecided.
The article (taken from today's Straits Times) says it all.

Every year, near Chinese New Year, this particular branch of grilled marinated meat bustles... for what reason, I do not know, because the meat itself is not all that delicious, doesn't warrant an 8-hour queue just to get to purchase the meats. So people used to get their helpers to queue for them, but this is just crazy!

2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR WORLD!!!

It's a brand new year! Time to throw away the bad and embrace the good!!

What's your new year resolution? For the first time in my life, I've decided to make one and it's to be healthy :) Find the time to exercise regularly to boost the super metabolism rate which I used to have as a young kid. Wish me luck!

Intolerant

It's befitting that this be an end-of-year post. Life in Singapore this year has had its many, many ups and downs.

Recently, news of worldwide economies struggling to stay afloat till the end of the year have been making their rounds and people are generally holding on till the end of the year... I'll fix it in the new year... Procrastination is rampant. Even then, it looks like there's little impact of that here, people are still chugging along with their daily life, lost in their own little world.

Meanwhile, a minor disruption such as the 20-year old subway train tracks recently give out at a certain part of the track have had residents dissing the provider like the intolerant people that they are... *sigh* Someone commented in the newspapers that the locals have been so supremely pampered that an offered alternative transport provided is just not good enough. How would they survive out in the 'real' world? London's subway is constantly unreliable but Londoners and visitors accept that. No one really grumbles.

After living here for so many years, I'm still unable to call this place my home. Like staying in a bad job with great workmates, I fear that I will not be able to tolerate the locals' degenerating attitude for another 20 years...

If we die, it is our Maths teacher's fault

People say kids these days have it easy what with iPhones, iPads, computers and air-conditioning while attending school. But worrying reports coming out of China tells us otherwise. Kids have been committing suicide because they are unable to finish their homework!!! I don't know if I would've used this excuse when I was younger and in school, primary school at that!

Kids who take more time to understand a concept (especially in Maths) should be cut some slack. Teachers should be responsible for their actions, because looking at the reports, the kids are afraid of getting scolded and probably humiliated in front of their peers so badly, for not completing their homework, that they have to resort to suicide.

F1 : Abu Dhabi

Last race of the season and here's to hoping that Vettel wins. I can't believe how supportive I am of him. He's such a kid when he's not in the car, but once he gets behind the wheel of that Red Bull, everything changes. He's focused, drives without any huge mistakes or impatience and everyone in his camp hopes that no one gets into his path. It's the same with driving on the roads. I always hope that the other drivers stay within their lane and not interrupt my driving.

With Abu Dhabi being behind here by 4 hours, and this being an evening race, it's going to finish late so I'll post this first and sincerely wish Sebby a safe and pleasant race!

The Flu

I've always hated being sick... bludging school, work and getting pampered are pros but the massive con... is that I can't swallow tablets for nuts!

Anyways, I've somehow managed to catch the flu virus this weekend. Sucks being sick when there's no work or school, right? It's a strange virus for me, starts with a sore throat, moves to a cough and then a runny nose. No fever... I think.

And since I hate taking medicine and coughing, I've discovered that Manuka honey sweets help to fight the onset. The sore throat lasted a day, missed the cough and I'm now in the runny nose stage and I haven't found anything to stop it. But since there's no pain (just the inconvenience of your nose leaking without control and having to blow it ever so often) I'll just let it run its course... have to give the virus a win or the next attack will be worse, right?

Binary

In binary terms, today (11.11.11) works out to be 1+2+4+8+16+32=63, a totally random number.

And yet, plenty of weddings all over the world, as it's a pretty easily memorable date.
And some even find the numbers lucky, for what reason, I don't want to find out.
Here's a quick post to mark the occasion!

Food Blog : The Manhattan Fish Market

Bad, horrible, never-come-back-again place!

Oh... why did we decide to walk in?
But this place is always packed, always has a queue out the front...
Doesn't mean it's yummy!
It's supposed to be similar to that other place...
I.don't.think.so!!

The Plaza Singapura branch recently re-opened, not sure if they just went through massive renovations to the place or that the owners changed. Something about the fact that the servers weren't all that experienced (like first time service crews) should've rang some alarm bells in my head, but no... we decided to sit, order, eat and pay.

We started with a bowl of seafood chowder which came in a tiny soup bowl, was watered down and had a hint of seafood taste to it. Then came the fried whitebait on a bed of coleslaw with raisins. Whitebait is supposed to be somewhat fleshy, but these were severely under nourished ones that reminded me of asian anchovies. The vegetables in the coleslaw wasn't fresh nor crunchy and again, not enough dressing.

I had the flame grilled prawns as my main which just meant that the prawns were grilled in the kitchen, covered in a cheese sauce that's lightly flamed with a hand held butane torch in front of you before being served. The sauce was weird to say the least, I couldn't put my finger on the distinct taste and the dish came with fries that looked like they've been re-fried.

The hubs had a fried whole burramundi which was pretty good, surprisingly... the rice which came with it was a little weird, garlic flavoured rice it was.

The plates looked old, porcelain side plates have been stained with the metal scour, plastic drinking glasses cracked but not leaking, serving plates are thin metal bordering on plates found in hawker centers and remember not to use the outer sides of the napkins as one of the servers used it to wipe the side plates dry on a table of four and placed it on the last side plate!

F1 : New Delhi

I can't believe we just stayed back in the hotel room to watch the inaugural Indian F1 with Italian commentary! Talk about die-hard fans!

The commentary sounded pretty good, if only we could understand it.
The race itself was exciting, some crashes with Schummy, Massa and Kobbie being knocked out and Sebby winning! I love the way he races... it's so accurate, it's amazing. Hammie was being his slightly good self this round, maybe he's really on the mend after the last race.

Nexta stoppa... Abu Dhabi and we've gotta go out and enjoy this city!

Vacation time!

I can't believe I'm on holiday again in a couple of day's time and I'm not excited.
It's weird...

We've been planning this holiday for a long while now, usually our holiday plans are pretty last minute but I think we have had this planned for nearly a couple of months now. Maybe that's the reason I'm not excited about it anymore.

This time we're going to be parking ourselves in one city for a whole week! Yes, it's called a lazy holiday. Venice the destination and everyone looks at me a little crazily when I tell them that I'll be there for a week.

There's nothing to do there for a whole week!
Hmm... we'll see about that :)

The thing is, we don't want to do that four cities in a week thing again, it was exhausting and we vaguely remember everything that we saw, if not for the camera. So from now on, we're just going to park ourselves in one city for our holidays and explore the place like it's our home.

Twirl

Do chocolates that have been siting in the fridge for close to eleven years expire? Yes, that's double one, 11, years! I just took out a packet of 3 twirls and they taste absolutely yummy! *grin* I guess we'll find out tomorrow if chocolates do expire!

Cook Curry Day

I have to log this down. The subject was so ridiculous to everyone in more ways than one except the families involved.

A little background on the subject matter. A family from mainland China came over to Singapore and has decided to rent out a government housing board apartment. They live next door to a family who has curry for their meals. Unable to stand the smell of curry, they decided to proceed to an arbitrator to work something out. The outcome was that the family could only cook curry if the China family were not at home. I hear both families agreed to that.

The decision was published in the newspapers, as it was the first of its kind and has riled many, many people. Would the family have to knock on the China family's door, making sure that they were not in, in order to cook curry? For anyone who's eaten yummy curry, you'd know that it takes hours of blending and cooking for the flavours to infuse into the meats before having it as a meal.

My other question is, if the China family was never out at meal times, does that mean the family has to look for alternate dishes to eat? Doesn't it sound like asking a vegetarian to eat meat because there's no more vegetables and tofu?!!!

A facebook page was born and everyone has decided that today would be a cook curry day.

Sleep swaying

I saw the funniest thing on the train back home today... Someone sleep swaying! It was hilarious!!!

If you've ever played the balancing game on a large moving vehicle, you'll know that you have to sway in the opposite direction of the moving vehicle in order to compensate and not tip over.

This guy had it pegged! He was doing it while sleeping!! With one hand holding the pole, every so often he looked like his legs were going to give way. But no, he would automatically straighten himself and life just goes on! Hilarious!!! :D

Channel 124

Having finished all the possible DVDs of Korean dramas in my stash and watching them a few times over... I decided to turn the telly on to check out what's showing. Nothing interesting on the regular channel 115 but, so I surfed and found this channel called 'One'.

'One' is a channel that only shows Korean dramas subtitled in Malay and some of them even have the audio dubbed in Malay! Aren't I glad I speak the language?! *grin* albeit not fluently but enough to realise that the subtitles are pretty close to what's actually being said. My Korean has improved a lot!

Prasarana

New Malay word for today : Prasarana
Which means infrastructure

I would have thought that infrastructure would be infrastruksi or something to that effect, but there's actually a proper Malay word for it. I can't believe how bad my vocabulary has gotten. But then again, I don't remember hearing this word while I was studying in Malaysia.

Anyways, I decided to try to translate an article, which was written in Indonesian (which is quite close to Malay) today and it took me ages, because on top of the fact that I cannot literally translate it, I had to look up certain words to get the actual meaning. Just skimming through the article, you kind of get the gist of what it's trying to say, but to actually translate it, it's plenty of hard work!

Food Blog : Brotzeit

Wanted to have some sausages... ended up ordering a schnitzel! Talk about vast difference *grin* but I'm glad I did. On top of the veal schnitzel which they usually serve, they have decided to have pork ones too. I think in this country, the pork schnitzel is one better than the veal, not as dry.

Maybe it helped, but this particular schnitzel had bacon, mushroom, cheese, onions and parsley stuffed between the meat pieces... *yummo* This place serves yummy french fries too, coated with their secret spices. I can imagine sitting with a few pints of German beers, munching on them...

Bauern Cordon Schnitzel

So behind!

I'm so behind on my posts and I've just realised that I'm almost two months behind! I have titles written with no content, half written blogs with no titles and on some days, I don't even know what I was supposed to write about!

My only excuse... Korean drama... no, make that, addictive Korean drama! Now that I've finished one, I'll try to update as many posts as I can before my brain starts to itch for another one *grin*

Air-condition

Our air-condition is starting to break down. The one in the lounge is no longer useable, it has been sitting there unused for the longest time... since someone complained of the racket it was making and management told us to get someone in to have a look at it. The one in the master bedroom especially, has required more looking into whenever the servicing people are around, twice the gas had to be topped up, which is not a good thing. Once I even caught a glimpse of the wiring above the false ceiling... the insulation has been rotting off and condensation has been dripping onto the false ceiling.

Oh, well, it has served us well, I think. The life span of an air-condition these days is around five years, right? Gone were the days where air-con units stuck out the hole in a wall of the house, those lasts for eons! These days, they don't make them like they used to! But then again, maybe we should really get it regularly serviced... as it is, we only get it serviced twice a year, if we remember, or when the ceiling starts to leak :P

Food Blog : Fish & Co Clementi Mall

Utterly disappointed with today's meal at Fish & Co. After having to clean up the veins from the last meal, I can't believe we actually stepped into this place.

The Clementi Mall was recently opened, another hub with heaps of people streaming through as the mall links to the MRT and bus stations. Nothing else looked appetising and the food court didn't have enough seats to cater for the amount of people milling through it, the hubs and I decided to have dinner here.

Pros
Got our table changed quickly because the air-conditioning was leaking
The hubs ordered the swordfish collar and knowing that it takes a long time to cook, we asked for the chips to come out first

Cons
The air-conditioning was leaking above us
16 sticks of chips came out with one looking rather sorry
Service crew looked like they were new to the business
The person who's wiping tables shouldn't be the one handling new cutlery and napkins
Both our glasses of water weren't properly washed and the hub's one had what looked like a piece of charcoal on the side
Lemon wedges are no longer served with calamari or fish (since when?!)

Looks like we won't be visiting them anytime soon!

16 sticks of chips

A day in MBS

Has it been more than a year? Let me just check that... yes, it's been more than a year since the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) area was opened and the hubs and I just managed to spend a day there. It really has heaps to offer, now that the whole area is up and running. I remember when it first opened, there were hiccups (as a new place would have) and since we weren't interested in going into the casino, we've been putting visiting this place off for the longest time. Well, having taken a weekday off from work, it was the best possible day to visit, sans the casino even!

The MBS area is made up of a three over 50 storey high tower hotel with over 2000 rooms, large convention centers, a sky park on the 57th floor, theater, a casino, a shopping mall and outside, an art science museum and the Helix pedestrian bridge.

Taken from the Art Science Museum looking back at the MBS and shopping mall

Art Science Museum
What's unique about this museum is that it is shaped like a lotus. Circular and not very big, it spans over 3 levels of exhibition space. Dali is being shown currently and I must say that I was impressed with the exhibition.The last time I went to a proper Dali exhibition was back in the year 2000 while visiting London, the tiny one in Brugge recently doesn't count. Two other exhibitions are on at this time, Van Gogh and Shipwreck. I felt it was quite pricey at S$30 per person, but if you purchase a combination ticket with entrance to the Sky Garden, there's a S$5 discount.

Entrance to the Art Science Museum with Dali's Melted Clock

The Lotus of the Art Science Museum

A night view of the Art Science Museum

Theater
The Lion King is showing at the moment. The original season was supposed to finish at the end of May, but seeing that the response has been great, they've extended this season for another two months. Again, not expecting much as it's not in the same class of musicals as The Phantom and Les Miserables, I was pleasantly entertained throughout the show. The storyline and music were all taken from the movie, so anyone who had watched it would know what to expect. A small stage, which made the scenes more focused and the live band, hidden from everyone's view was superb. The characters would come onto the stage from behind, running down the aisles and the props! They were the most eye-catching of all, especially the head gear of Scar and Mufasa.

Shopping mall
In a country as small as Singapore, most of the international brand shops were only located on Orchard Road, the shopping belt of this country, but with the opening of the MBS, they now have a branch here. The layout is almost like Ion where big brands are located on levels one and two and local/smaller brands are located on basements one and two. There's a man-made canal running through a small part of the mall, maybe only 100m long where they provide 'sampan' rides for a fee. I guess they wanted to remind people that the Venetian is also a part of the Sands group.

Sampan rides

Dining
There are a couple of popular restaurants located where the general public can access, and a few within the casino area where guests with entry to the casino can access. There is also a food court, an upmarket one, or one that tries to be upmarket, called Rasapura Masters. It didn't hit me in the beginning that the name was all wrong for a food place that serves food from around the Asian region. Only until I ate my first mouthful of a dish that was supposed to be from KL, did it hit me that they were truly rasapura masters. 'Rasa' means taste and 'pura' means fake in the Malay language, so putting them all together, it's maters of fake taste! And sadly enough they were so spot on for that.

The Helix Bridge
After walking the bridge, I'm still not in awe of it. It's supposed to be constructed ingeniously with the shape of the double helix holding the bridge together, but I still don't see it.

The Helix Bridge

Sky Park
Located up on the 57th floor with an entrance fee of S$20 per person, it really gives a great bird's eye view of the central business district and surroundings. With the purchase of the Art Science Museum ticket, there's a discount of S$5. Lucky for us, it was a clear day. Managed to see far, far into the horizon and there weren't many people blocking access to the edge.

An eastern view from the Sky Park