Archive for May, 2009
A baby girl was born
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Silly gave birth to a 2.9 kg baby girl today. However due to the H1N1 virus, visitors were restricted to only 2 at time.
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Peony Jade Restaurant
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
It was a much delayed promotion treat from Blackhole, Silly and Tong Xiang. It was hard to find a day when everyone was around. When we finally settled on a date, the H1N1 virus segregation plan was implemented and all of us were separated into different zones so of course lunch plans had to be scrapped. Now that we were all back together, we decided to quickly go for lunch before Silly popped. We went for lunch at Peony Jade Restaurant at Keppel Club. We arrived at the restaurant at 12:30pm and quickly ordered some food as we were all hungry. It took a long, long time for the food to arrive.
After almost 30 mins of waiting, the first dish arrived. It was xiao long bao. It looked pretty with the wolfberry at the top and there was a thin slice of carrot at the bottom to prevent it from sticking to the basket. When I bit into mine, I found it quite dry as all the juices had leaked out through a hole at the bottom. I didn’t puncture a hole in the skin of the dumpling so I was sure that it was already there when it was sent to the steamer. I felt that the xiao long bao was not as good as the ones from Din Tai Fung, because even though I had eaten at Din Tai Fung many times, I have yet to find a hole in their xiao long bao. As Spider said, xiao long bao was not this restaurant’s speciality. We were given 2 saucers of soya sauce with ginger strips to go with the xiao long bao. Tong Xiang asked a waiter for more ginger strips and got 2 saucers of soya sauce with 3-5 ginger strips each.
Tags: chinese food
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A funny thing
Monday, May 25th, 2009
Blackhole sent an email:
A girl (I shall not say who) accidentally switched off her PC because she pressed the wrong button!
It didn’t take much braincells for us to figure out that the girl was Sayang.
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The cute stuff my friend has
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
I knew Bell liked cute stuff but I didn’t realize how much she had until I went to her house. She had a large collection of cute little figurines and these are some of them. I thought they were pretty cute but unlike Bell, I don’t like collecting figurines.
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Saturday outing
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
I met Bell at Ang Mo Kio Hub for lunch. It was a very hot day and I was already sweating after walking 15 mins to the bus stop.
I was early. Bell arrived later as she overslept. I dragged Bell to a camera shop in the shopping centre to take a look at the Olympus SP-590uz. The staff told us that the normal price is $698 but as it was under promotion now, there was selling for $620. The camera wasn’t available but he showed us a Sony camera which he said was the same size. It was surprisingly small and could sit comfortably in the palm of my hand. The lens was humongous and took up about half of the camera. I was very tempted to get it but in the end I managed to control myself and did not buy it. A pat on the head for me.
Then we went to a games shop where Bell checked out a game she wanted to buy. She was tempted even though she read many reviews that the game was hard. It was still a bit pricey for her budget so she did not buy it in the end. A pat on the head for her too, ha ha!
We bought a bowl of strawberry snow ice from a small stall outside NTUC. I still preferred the one I had in Taiwan as the portion was bigger and had more fruits. There was no evaporated milk added to our strawberry snow ice which was a bummer. But beggars can’t be choosers.
Lunch was at a hawker centre. It’s been a while since I’ve been to that hawker centre and it looks so different now that it was renovated. Bell went off to get lunch while I guard the table. She had to queue for a long time for the chicken rice. It is a popular stall.
After lunch we went to Bell’s house to play games and watch TV. Bell’s dog, Hana, is much bigger and she was so excited at seeing a visitor that she peed. Twice. I had read about such a reaction from dogs but this is probably the first time I experienced it first hand. Good thing Hana didn’t spray her urine around or try to mark me. But just in case, I stood far away until Bell chased Hana back to her cage and then I quickly escaped indoors. Dinner was pepper crab and prawn paste chicken we bought from a zi char restaurant nearby. Then we sneaked the food up into Bell’s room to eat. We had a fun time and before we knew it, it was after 9pm.
Tags: chinese food, desserts, hawker food
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Someone
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
This morning I was quite pissed at this person who sat near my new cubicle. He dropped by today, as with all other days, to talk about trivial things like “Have you eaten breakfast?” “What did you do over the weekend?” I’m not that close to him so I don’t feel like having a long conversation with him. Besides I have work to clear and I don’t want to waste more time than necessary. But being the nice person that I am, I entertained him for a while on very surface, trivial topics. Then I turned back to continue with my work. To my horror, he continued standing beside my table, even though I turned my back and ignored him and looked only at the computer screen. He just stood there silently, looking at my computer screen. I knew he was looking at the screen attentively because later in the afternoon he could tell me what I was working on in the morning. As the seconds ticked by, I felt very annoyed at his hovering presence behind my back. I felt like screaming. This person didn’t get it. Most people would have left by now, but he still continued standing there. I continued to ignore him until he finally left. I stole a glance at my neighbour who saw everything and she made a sign by twirling her finger in a circle around her temple. This is not the first time I was disturbed by this person. This person makes me look forward to the day that I could move back to my original seat.
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Chocolate chunks pancakes
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
It all started with an episode of Food Paradise featuring breakfasts. It reminded me of the chocolate chip pancake I ate months ago and I felt like eating it again. But at restaurant prices, the pancake is not cheap so I decided to make my own to satisfy my craving.
I bought a pancake mix and a bar of cooking chocolate. Couldn’t find hershey’s chocolate chips so bought a bar of chocolate instead. I used half the pancake mix and made some chocolate chunk pancakes on Saturday. As Si Hamil said, it’s really quite idiot proof. It’s just pancakes with chocolate chips. The pancakes were not good-looking but they tasted fine. I ate them with some mascarpone mixed with a bit of honey.
Today I made my second batch of chocolate chunks pancakes. I cut the chocolate into smaller pieces this time. The pancakes looked nicer and the last pancake I made was the best-looking pancake I had to date. It was just a plain pancake as I had ran out of chocolate by then.
I learnt a few things from this, like don’t eat food hot from the pan. I found out that I’m not a big fan of pancakes, I just like chocolate a lot. And never, never attempt to do any cooking when my mother is around.
I will be bringing some to office so the rest can have a taste. I wonder if they will still taste nice when they are cold and whether they can stand reheating?
Tags: bakery, desserts
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Blackhole is bad at identifying cars
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
One day, Achtung and Si Hamil offered to drive us out for lunch. Blackhole sat in Achtung’s car. Achtung’s car was a Honda Crossroad which looked a bit like a military vehicle with its dark grey colour. According to Tong Xiang, who was in the same car, that Blackhole did not recognize Achtung’s car and thought it was a delivery van. After Blackhole got into the car, she asked Achtung, “When did you change your car to a Kangoo?” Big joke. Tong Xiang suggested that Achtung should just drop Blackhole off at in the middle of the expressway for insulting his car. Achtung said that he had heard many comments about his car, like how much it looked like a Hummer, but this was the first time someone said it looked like a Kangoo. That day, Achtung very enthusiastically pointed out Kangoos to Blackhole whenever we saw them.
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