Met up with Reg and SH at Suntec's Tang Dian Wang (汤点王) for our gathering for X'mas. I've not been to Suntec for ages, and everything's changed...
The restaurant's deco was rather special. These lamps hung from the ceiling, and they just reminded me so much of pumpkins & Halloween:
The menu was also rather interesting. The signature dishes were their soups, of course. We ordered the Golden Crisp Salted Fish & Minced Pork Pancake. It was like deep fried pork cutlet actually, but saltier and slightly less dry.
Our mains were:
A) Ginseng with Bamboo Shoots & Chicken Soup:
B) Glutinous Rice Siew Mai Dumplings:
C) Signature Stir Fried Bee Hoon with Preserved Meat:
(No photo, cos forget to take. Plus it wasn't remarkable visually - it looked like any normal plate of economical beehoon. Haha!!)
I loved the glutinous rice siew mai dumplings - very special. I especially like the very thin wrapping they used - a must-try! The soup was simply amazing! It was very very sweet and yummy. We were in soup heaven after drinking it. :) Ahhhh.... This is a restaurant I'm definitely going back again. :)
I'd been staring at this blog for the past year, before I finally plucked up the courage to make some orders. So I ordered 2 dozen cupcakes for the folks in office. The lady lives in YCK, it was really a stretch going all the way there, but I made it nonetheless. :)
And the cupcakes were great!!! Let the pictures do the talking:
The lady was really nice. Besides giving me an additional cupcake, due to packing arrangements, at no extra charge, she also gave me a box of super yummy macaroons, 3 nicely wrapped muffins & 3 huge cookies with pretty icing. Some of the very nice freebies:
Since I won't be around for X'mas, I'll just take the opportunity to wish everyone a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
One of my favourite festivals and activities of the year - making dumplings (汤圆)! :)
This year, mum wanted me to make extra so that she could bring some to the columbarium to pay respects to my paternal grandparents. As I sat there at 7am, rolling the little balls of dough between my hands, the most ironic thought crossed my mind. The one and only time in my life I ever made food for my grandparents was after their lives were over. A friend in JC once described me as a person who lived life without regrets and till today I still try to live by that motto. But I find that as I grow older, more and more regrets just pile on my shoulders...
Nevertheless... this is not going to turn into a regretful post.
汤圆，汤圆，团团圆圆：
This is also the first year I did almost everything myself. Usually sis and I will take charge of rolling the dough into little balls (cos it's just so fun!) and mum or the maid will boil the soup. This time, I made the soup too. :p
And now, my little balls of unity are ready:
Jade wishes everyone a very happy 冬至 (winter solstice)!
So we were on the taxi with my guest from Taiwan at the unearthly hour of 6am, and we were just speeding towards the airport. I was just making casual conversation with him when the taxi driver rudely interrupted us and asked him, "Are you from Taiwan?" When the judge answered in the affirmative, the taxi driver launched into a whole tirade/rant/one-sided speech about the whole affair of the bail of the ex-Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian. He just went on and on about how could the government allow such a thing to happen, that Ma Ying-Jeou would be ousted, there would be chaos, etc... CM and I were quite powerless to stop him from talking and yet my guest was still rather politely patronising at the beginning.
Eventually, the taxi driver stopped after 10 sentences or so and I tried to engage the guest into further conversation on other things, then the taxi driver continued to rant again. At some point, the usually easy-going and jovial guy almost kind of snapped and asked him to slow down his acceleration to shock the taxi driver into shutting up. In order to prevent the taxi driver from talking more rubbish, I chatted with the guest on as many topics as my 80%-fried and extremely tired mind would allow me to conjure. And I think at some point, CM also told the taxi driver to shut up. And yet, just before we arrived at the airport, the taxi driver still managed to make a few more snide comments about the Taiwanese parliament and how the politicians always fought in Parliament. His was the kind of "I-saw-it-on-TV-so-I-know-best-and-better-than-you" tone.
That was seriously the most incredibly embarrassing taxi ride I'd ever been on and the worst taxi driver I had ever met. Taxi drivers are actually the most basic service champions and ambassadors of Singapore. I shudder to think how many more foreigners he had already already embarrassed in the past and how many more potential tourists he would be embarrassing in future. Perhaps I should send a feedback email to LTA indeed.
Last Friday JH was supposed to pass me the finished product. We wanted to have lunch initially then I cancelled as I realised I simply couldn't afford the time to go out and eat for an hour. These days, it's been sit down at 9am and work till 8pm non-stop, while munching on bread or beehoon or whatever I brought in the middle of the day. My mind is going crazy and my eyes are dying of exhaustion too.
So when he brought over the CDs and gave me a packet of 3 mini buns (white, green & brown some more!), as he knew I wouldn't have time to go out to buy food, I was more than touched.
A little gesture - with a big heart. :)
And I'm finally almost at the finishing point of accumulating enough to get myself a MegaMini (emerald) Butterflye on my (fluff)Friends in FB. Yay!
There's only ONE way to express my feelings right now:
(screams at the top of my voice) OBAMA!!!! (then punches my right fist in the air)
CONGRATULATIONS man!
And oh yes, to a certain Ms... "Pro-life Huntress": Buh-byeeeeeeeeeeee......
And I got this a couple of weeks ago during the 15% sale at Takashimaya. ECCO never has sales and their shoes are always so super expensive. But the moment my feet slipped into them, I fell in love with them. And with 15% discount, what's not to like? Hehehe...
You know you've reached Auntie-hood when it seems perfectly normal to meet a girlfriend or 2 for lunch, go shopping then end up in a supermarket buying groceries.
Saresha and I spent nearly 3 hours trying to shop at Isetan and Metro today (ok she tried, not me). We ended up at the Paragon Market Place - its gourmet supermarket and I ended up with this:
It's an amazing supermarket with absolutely super fresh sashimi. The baby octopuses - my favourite - and chuka wakame (seaweed), etc also looked extremely fresh and well-prepared. It's amazing how therapeutic shopping for groceries can be... :)
I swear to every God... if there's any job on earth that should be eliminated, the job that ranks highest should be "tele-marketeers". Seriously, how in the world is their jobscope connected any real part of human lives at all? And who gave them the right to prod their pesky little noses into one's private affairs?
Case in point: Wednesday 15 October, 4:45pm
I receive a call - number is alien to me. I pick it up anyway (serves me right lor!). Woman on the other end says, "Mam, may I just have ONE minute of your time to help us complete a survey on tourism please?" I thought I was being kind when I agreed. Then she proceeded to ask me question after question, all the while talking at break-neck speed.
"Have you ever stayed in 5 or 6 star hotels when you were overseas?"
"Have you (something something - totally forgot the question now, but it was tourism-related)?"
"Can you give me the designation of your job?"
*I was starting to get weary and wary now, after only 3 questions*
"Which industry?"
*Getting more irritated by the millisecond*
"Do you and your husband go travelling together?"
*Invasion of privacy!*
And by this time, I was already fused. I asked her exactly what this was all about, and she started to talk in a very agitated manner. Then she asked me how to address me! This was my exact reply:
"Don't you already have all my particulars when you called me? Otherwise how did you call me?" (And I remember she already asked me at the beginning of the conversation if I was Ms XXX.) And she actually had the gall to tell me that she only received details of my mobile number from A TRAVEL AGENCY which was collecting such data and there was no names given! Bloody liar! I wanted to spew blood liao. So I told her I'm not interested to carry on this conversation. Again, she got agitated and kept calling out, very loudly, "But Mam...."
And then, I hung up. In the span of 1 minute and 9 seconds, this woman (whoever the hell she is) has managed to piss me off totally. For the 1st time in my life, I slammed the phone down on somebody who's not even finished talking. It's exactly what the other tele-marketeers do to me whenever they start their sales pitch of some credit card or credit line - especially Standard Chartered Bank's Cash One! I usually interrupt them after their 3rd sentence to say "I'm not interested" and promptly get "rewarded" with a slamming sound in my ear. This time, it's tit for tat.
Seriously, this job is the most useless I've ever come across in my life. Not only is this job useless, but the people who're trained to be tele-marketeers tend to be rude, impatient and talk to you as if you owe them a living. ARGH!!!
Truth be told, I've never really followed nor cared about the US presidential campaign in the past. When George Bush Senior was a president, I was still schooling. All I remembered of him was the Gulf War. Then came Bill Clinton and a great rosy economy... but of course - the Monica Lewinsky business. And after George Bush Junior got elected, I totally lost any slight interest I ever had, more so after he was re-elected to office. That made me doubt the judgment and sanity of the American voters, but that's another point altogether.
But when Hilary Clinton decided to run, I took a great interest. I felt she's a really great woman - someone who's strong, tough and independent - someone whom women can look up to. Well, at least from what I saw. So I was pretty sad she lost to Barack Obama. But Obama had shown himself to be a tough case and he's probably what America will need to pull through this crisis with minimised damages. (Note the usage of "minimised") I don't really care for Mr McCain - perhaps I'm an ageist. But at his age, he still wants to be the most powerful man on earth and do the most stressful job on earth? Then he has to go and choose an unknown as his partner in running. I had regarded Palin with just passing interest, noting that she had 5 children. In this time and age, a woman in politics with a career and still have FIVE children (aged a few months to 18 years old) struck me as really really odd and what was odder was the vast difference in age between the oldest and the youngest. Perhaps we should all be applauding the fact that a 40-something year old woman is still having an active sex life. But is it really wise to have so many children? Anyway, that aside. I read something about her today that struck me as the oddest I've ever read - she was described as being "A devout Christian mother-of-five who is pro-life and a committed hunter..."
Now wait just a moment. There's something really wrong with that description. How can somebody claim to be "pro-life" and yet be "a committed hunter"??? Are you trying to tell me:
a) Hunting animals is not equal to killing, hence pro-life?
b) Hunting animals / killing animals is not the same as having abortions, because the lives of animals are lower than that of human beings?
c) Abortions are wrong because they're killing humans, but hunting is alright, because they're just animals
d) All of the above
I mean, what the F**K... seriously! How fake can this candidate be? And if you're are that pro-life, shouldn't you be a vegetarian as well? All lives on earth should be respected, every being on earth - even ants and lizards - have as much right as human beings to be on this planet. I don't think we have the right to kill any of them. I'm not condoning my own actions of eating meat - given that I've been brought up on meat-eating habits for more than 80% of my life. But I'm not going round telling everyone, "Hey, I'm pro-life... let's go shoot a few partridges tomorrow!"
As the rate things are going, I'm supporting Obama and his camp more than ever. I really hope he wins this election.
