monkey faces

I blogged about my company's early X'mas party here but left out some really cute pics of the girls making monkey faces. I think we all look so cute I must showcase these pics.











All photos are courtesy of Mr Chun.

highlights of my sg trip: eating non-stop

Everytime I return to SG, I go around eating all the local food with a vengeance. When deciding on venues for my appointments, all decisions will be centred around what type of food I have yet to cross out on my to-eat list. And more often than not, I end up eating five or six meals a day and gaining five kilos in the span of less than three weeks.

This most recent trip, I kind of overdid this eating business and got myself an extremely sore tummy and endless trips to the toilet on the second day. A visit to my regular doctor earned me a scolding from him for being too greedy when I listed the types and amount of food I had on the very first day back home. I didn't allow enough time for my digestive system to get used to the extremely oily, extremely spicy and extremely salty food that are in large contrast to what I normally consume in Sydney. I was punished for my gluttony by having a strict plain porridge diet imposed on me for a few days.

Below is a series of pictures of some of my gastronomical adventures taken with the iPhone camera and edited with some really cool apps such as Instagram and Tiltshift Generator.


Here's showing you a greedy me to kick off the series of pictures.


Mum made these glutinous rice balls in a thick sweet syrup on Winter Solstice.


My favourite was the black sesame glutinous rice balls.


I found a Hakka Delights stall in Food Opera at Ion selling these traditional 'Abacus yam balls' - 算盘子. My grandma being Hakka used to make it when I was a kid but stopped in recent years as it's very time consuming and a lot of work to cook this from scratch. This tasted authentic enough but I found it lacking in shrimps, mushrooms and minced meat.


I requested for homecooked crabs but my uncle decided to substitute with lobsters! I was more than happy, of course.


Alright, this was something I could have done without... but as it's a favourite among many in my family, I couldn't really say no when my uncle asked if he could include this for dinner.


More homecooked stuff! This is my uncle's specialty braised duck in lots of different spices.


Grandma's dining table... a full spread of cantonese, hokkien and teochew dishes even though she's hakka!


I haven't had hokkien prawn noodles in a long long long time and so I felt I had to have it at least once this trip.


After reading so much about the super thick peanut butter toast from Kim Gary Hong Kong Cafe on Angel J's blog, I made a special trip to Tampines One to try it. It was pure indulgence. I felt really guilty after finishing it all by myself, leaving none for my Mum who was my dining companion for that evening.


I had 'lor mai gai' - steamed glutinous rice with chicken - for breakfast almost every other day, among many other dishes. I always end up eating all the meat and leaving the rice...


Flyaway treated me to a nice cosy dinner at Soup Restaurant where I satisfied my craving for their signature Samsui chicken. The soup of the day was double boiled winter melon and pork rib soup.


My bro took my whole family to try out the best roast in Bugis. It was sooooooooooooo good!!!


Bro's gf received an order from her family in Indonesia to buy lots and lots and lots of bak kwa for her short trip home before New Year's Day. So we all trooped down to Chinatown and bought 5kgs of these oily sheets of meat!


I went with Tudi for some steamboat buffet at 鲜得来 in Nex. I loved those elaborate looking pots.



Here's Tudi's greedy looking face. So cute right?


Had a late lunch with Xuan at PS Cafe in Paragon and I chose the most interesting dish on the menu - Laksa Pesto. It was just simply spaghetti in a bit of laksa gravy. Wasn't fantastic but wasn't too bad either. I may try cooking it myself.


Caught up with the HAH ex housemate for dinner at TCC in Ion. It was her first time in Ion since she returned home for good in Aug. *Gasps* Again, I ordered the most exotic sounding dish on the menu - mentaiko spaghetti with salmon tataki. 美味しい!


The only fast food joint I visited during this trip was to Carl's Junior where I had the Portobello Mushroom burger. It was so so so big but so so so good!


Here's another shot of my gluttonous face to wrap up this entry.

いただきます!!!

highlights of my sg trip: shopping

Because:
1. The Australian dollar was so strong at 1AUD = 1.30SGD;
2. Everything is so cheap in Singapore even if you don't take into account the favourable exchange rate;
3. The sizes and cuts of clothing and shoes fit my Asian build so much better than most of what I can find in OZland;
4. There is an abundance of everything iPhone related in Singapore that I find severely lacking in OZland;

I let loose and went all out to splurge. Below are pictures of only a few items I remembered to photograph. Besides these, there were also lots of clothes - both for work and for party, bags, accessories, an entire year's worth of hair products, sanitary napkins, deodorants, cosmetics and other toiletries. I didn't buy books as originally planned as I went over the baggage allowance and had to leave a bag of stuff behind. I'll have to make do with whatever free e-books I can download onto my phone for now as I'm really reluctant to pay so much more for the same book here in Sydney as compared to SG.


I love the light blue denim flats I got for only about $20 from Bata! Left pic shows me wearing them and you can take a closer look at these comfy flats in the right pic.


Obviously these boring looking ones are for work. They are exactly what I want - flat or at most one inch high, soft, simple and easy to match with any attire, and comfortable enough to wear everyday.


One for dollar notes, one for cards and one for coins. The one on the extreme left which is my favourite was actually bought 2 trips ago. I went back to the same shop to look for another of the same design for a colleague but it's no longer in production so I got her a coin pouch in the same collection as the card case in the middle.



I was particularly amazed by the entire streets of pushcart stalls - in Tampines, Bedok, Chinatown, in fact just about everywhere, even shops in the malls - selling iPhone covers and accessories at cut-throat prices! As you can see from the last pic above, I went overboard with the cover purchases due to deprivation of choice here; I hunted high and low in Sydney for a funky unique cover when I received my iPhone 4 from Santa Claus as my first Christmas present for last year but the only one I found that I liked was an original Speck cover from the Apple Store. The A$39 I paid for it could have bought me four Speck covers (maybe even eight if I bargain hard enough) of way cooler designs from any random store I step into in SG!

And believe it or not, I paid only $1 each for the phone socks! I especially heart the black sock with those cute little white cloud-like creatures floating around. I even got a spare external battery for about $20. Looking back at my iPhone case collection now, I actually regret not buying more. There were many more designs that I liked but had to force myself to stop the impulse buying.

The aim now is to save more for splurging again on my next trip home.

highlights of my sg trip: spending time with mum

Besides singing and lancing with my bro, the best part of my recent trip to SG was spending quality time with the people I love and who love me too, in particular a handful of friends and Mum.

With Mum, I found myself spending more than 80% of my time back with her; we stayed home and watched TCS drama series together, we went furniture and CNY shopping, and we went for foot reflexology and facials together (see below pic).

I have never felt closer to her than now. Distance and absence do make the heart grow fonder.



This trip saw me spend thousands of dollars on Mum and the household after excluding what I spent on my own shopping. It was the most I have ever spent in a single trip home. I guess I was trying to make up for not being with my family through all the important occasions by getting them all that I think they will need for the next one year. I'm sure such material things are not much of a compensation at all for their lost time with me but that's the best I can do for now.

lancing in lunar

Besides singing, my Bro also took me lancing lancing two days early for New Year's countdown so as to avoid the crazy crowds and also such that his rather-deprived-of-clubbing-just-like-me-GF who was due to fly out of SG before NYE could join in the fun too.

It was by sheer convenience that we chose Lunar at Clarke Quay for the night but we ended up having lots of fun with a bunch of great party goers there. However, two extremely unpleasant incidents involving the club's management and staff took place that totally ruined the night for all of us and led to me having seriously unglam confrontations with them. I had in mind to write a long entry detailing the sequence of events showing how my Bro was given discriminatory treatment just because the Chief Bouncer didn't like his face but I shall save this for another day as this post was meant to document the happy times for future reminiscence.

No more words needed. The pictures show our joy clearly enough. I heart my Bro.

a mega sing song xmas eve

I changed my travel plans to spend Christmas and New Year in Singapore instead of waiting until end Jan to go home for CNY. Knowing how much I love to sing and how severely short of karaoke companions I have in Sydney, my bro organised a huge party at Party World, Liang Court for me so I could countdown to Christmas in great company while singing to my heart's content without getting stuck in the human and vehicular traffic in town.

With 18 attendees in our group, we took the largest room they had for a total price of $1066 that included 4 jugs of beer, 3 bottles of Martell, fruits, snacks, party packs, use of a full body OSIM massage chair and a pool table, and superb sound system that enhanced everyone's vocals such that we all sounded like we were performing at our own world tour concerts in a world class location.


This room could easily accommodate 50.


There were 4 huge LCD screens.


The pool table and massage chair.


With my beloved bro.


With the other man in my house who also happens to be my personal hairstylist back home.


Bro and his gf.


I borrowed this pair of lens-less Harry Potter specs from one of the boys and hogged it the entire night. I think I look so cute in it that I forced all my close friends to use this as my profile pic in their phone contacts LOL.

The sweetest thing happened when I started singing Warwick Avenue by Duffy. My personal hairstylist rounded up all the boys, handed them a noise making prop each, lined them up in front of the room facing me, and did an awesome fan dance for me. These guys synchronised their movements with one another and with the music so well it was impossible to believe they did it spontaneously. I kept shrieking into the microphone for one of the girls to video the whole dance but all anyone did was take a few pathetic shots such as the one below and so the coolest dance anyone has ever done for me can only be relived in my memories. They got their well deserved standing ovation at the end of the song.



And so we did the longest karaoke marathon I've ever done that night from 11pm to 6am, only getting home past 7am, making it one of the most memorable Christmas celebrations in my life.

rex xmas party 2010

This year's X'mas party came early to Rex on the first Saturday of December. Worked well for me since I wouldn't be around from mid month onwards until the new year. Location was at Vivaz, a restaurant and and nightclub at The Rocks with a view of the Opera House. I didn't think the venue was quite appropriate to cater to a large party of guests with diverse interests in music as the live band played a very limited selection of songs mostly to latino-ish/salsa-ish beats. I did enjoy the free flow of their authentic Sangria in the company of the prettiest ladies present though.


This table is only for the fairest of them all.


The prettiest ladies in the house with the only guy who bothered to lug a proper dSLR to the party for capturing moments like this.


With my regular coffee/lunch companion.


With my favourite dressing-up partner.


And with my current flatmate.

No scandals to gossip about this year! Let's hope we do better next year.