Excuse Me While I Puke

I watched Bruno last Saturday, and it's probably one of the worst movies I've seen.

It's not the storyline that sucks, but it's the scenes. It's not about the acting abilities either. Actually, they were all good actors. It's really just the scenes.

I can still picture some of them now.. Eeeeew!

I'm not against vulgarity or nudity, but what they showed there was beyond my tolerance level. I'm surprised they even allowed it to be shown here in Singapore. (If they allowed Bruno to be shown, how come they even cut out some parts of the sex scene from Sex and the City? At least that one is between a male and a female).

Anyway, it's a waste of my free movie tickets (I got the free movie tickets from the Bank, the other was given to me by my boss).

PS. What made it worse was this woman behind me who kept gasping "oh no" at every 5 minute interval. Geez, c'mon!

Blue Basil

One of the best Brulees..
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One of our colleagues have finally found her freedom.. she's officially resigned from the Bank and going off to Australia to study soon.. Actually, on our going-away present for her, my message was: Congratulations for leaving the Bank!

Fine, I know I sound heartless here. Well I do feel grateful to the Bank for accepting me and giving me this chance to work here in Singapore. It's just that sometimes, with so much pressure and stress, I can't help but wonder what I've gotten myself into. But again, to set the matter straight, I am and will forever be grateful (.. and complaining. That's human nature what).

Anyway, we decided to have dinner at somewhere special.. My friend found this place - Blue Basil at Cairnhill. I was told that they grow their own basil, so I ordered something with a lot 'basil' in the dish.

Bluebasil lamb shoulder shack with blue basil sauce with siding of blue basil pilaf

The lamb was good, with none of that lamb smell, but I preferred the taste of the meat from the lamb loin (my other colleague ordered that one). Reason for this was, the lamb shoulder had a bit of a bitter aftertaste. The rice pilaf was nice though, I liked it.

The prawn was also good (because it tasted expensive). They said it was a bit overcooked, but I didn't notice. For me prawn is prawn, sumptuous however way you cook it.

For dessert, we ordered the bluebasil lemon sherbet (or something like that) and raspberry creme brulee.

The sherbet was nice, tangy and fragrant. I like tangy desserts..

The creme brulee was absolute perfection. I love love love creme brulee, I love the caramelised sugar, I love the custard.. and the one at Blue Basil was just so good.

Overall, I think the perfect word for our dining experience is Pleasant.

It's not a 'wow' , but it's good enough for 'mmmmm'.

Would I go back? For the brulee, I probably would.

Cost per person: SGD32 (There were 4 of us)

Talking to a Machine

I called this courier company earlier today to follow up on a pick up request.

In fairness, all their people are quite nice and gives good service.

However, they may have been trained too much to be courteous that they overdo it.

Take our conversation earlier..

I said: The turnaround time is one day right? Would you know if we can get it before 12 tomorrow?

She said: I will have to check with our Philippine counterpart..(she said nicely)

I said: Okay...

She said: Welcome

Huh?

My Favorite Birdie

I don't know what bird this is, but there's a lot of them here in Singapore. They're black, with yellow beaks and they have a bushy hairdo.

They're scattered everywhere, and one time, I even saw one walking ahead of a pack of tourists at a crowded Orchard sidewalk. Confidently strutting about and minding its own business.

They're cute! Of course not all of them, but most of them are.

I like them because they don't have a care in the world. They're not afraid of people, they walk about confidently, they hold their heads up high.

I just hope that someday, I can be as free and as confident as them.

It may sound pathetic, but if you actually watch them... you'd understand.

Warning: With Gross Picture Content

The successful dish: Chicken with watercress

Boiling the water for the herbal chicken

The blasted herbs

Chicken from Fair Price - sgd5.70

Sorry chickie

The blasted herbs

What a waste of good chicken soup...

Starting last night (Friday), I had this urge to cook.

Since I still have some leftover watercress, I decided to cook chicken soup with watercress. I bought this pack of chicken breast with bone from Fair Price, more of bone than the meat actually ( I think it's really meant for boiling chicken soup). It's cheap! Not even 2 dollars.

Anyway, I boiled that and added the watercress. It was yummy!

Following this success, I decided to push thru with my cooking plan for today - herbal chicken soup. There's this store called Hock Hua which sells all these medicinal herbs for cooking. They also sell those pre-packed herbs with specific medicinal purpose (to increase chi, improve digestion, promote blood circulation etc), you just need to dump it all into the soup.

Unfortunately though, when I bought the chicken from the grocery, I forgot to ask them to chop it up for me. I also didn't see that it was the whole chicken! With the head and the scary claws!

I had to cut the head off, and watch it resist my blunt knife. Then I had to remove the claws, and dump it into the trash bag.

Anyway, the chicken soup was good, then I went ahead and dropped in the herbs. Big mistake! It was too strong, too bitter, too sharp, too weird.

And it seemed each time I drank the soup, I end up getting a terrible headache. Lesson learned the hard (expensive and time consuming) way, I will never ever cook these herbal soups again!

One thing's for sure, my mom would have been proud to see me dress the chicken. (I've cleaned chicken before, but not this extreme).

Thank Goodness There's Grapes

Yes, it's sgd16.90 for a pack

It's so cute! (My fingers. Because they're

stubby)

I was touched (still am). My friend bought me a pack of the Japan grapes from Isetan, the kind that I like so much but couldn't bring myself to buy. Those small grapes that you can just suck slightly and the flesh will disintegrate itself from the skin.

It's so cute! It always makes me go 'heehee' inside whenever I feel the flesh pull out from the skin. =)

Never Ending TO DOs....

This was my 'To Do' pile at 9PM tonight. Gosh darn gee.

Reviewing my day, I couldn't understand where the hours went. What I did for the whole 8 hours and why the paperwork piled up. I swear, it was non-stop action from my end from the time I got to the office, that I couldn't even leave my seat to get a cup of water..

It must be the lack of people in the office, super slow computer, continuous incoming calls, three inboxes to check, continuous incoming emails, continuous instructions, continuous investigations, super slow computer, super slow computer and hair tugging slowness of the computer!

At 11pm, my scalp was already bleeding from excessive scratching, I was just about to cry, and already cursing one of the clients for being such a pain.

The Sandwich Diet

Sandwich for me and my friend

I'm trying to lose weight, yet again, because of all the weekend grubbing (plus the ice cream buffet!) that I've been doing ever since I came back from my Davao trip.

So, I've decided to eat sandwiches for breakfast and on some other meals too.

My first sandwich for this sandwich-diet: Smoked turkey with lettuce, tomato, low fat cheese and almond flakes in toasted carrot bread.

Sounds healthy, and I liked it! Not bad for my first attempt at creating a gourmeish sandwich.

I'll be having another gourmeish sandwich tomorrow, care of my friend, who also prepared an equally gourmet sandwich of alfalfa sprouts ham and cheese for me this morning. I'm so grateful =).

Meet Mangosteen

Meet my new keychain for my home key. Not-so-fresh from Cameron Highlands night market. Mmmm... I love mangosteen.

Ice Cream Buffet, Animated Movie Up and Ginseng Chicken

In fairness, the wantons were crunchy

with super fresh prawns inside.

Crispy and tasty, only missing was a good dipping

sauce

It's sugar and wasabi something, I want

hoisin!

Damage I think was about 25 per person..

They only look appetizing

So many to choose from! Too many!

First round ...

The gooey lemon pie.

Second round. A mixture of wrong choices

See.. I couldn't even finish

Eat all you can side dishes

Lettuce, to wrap the barbequed meat

Droooool... the ginseng chicken soup

The rice filling. Drooool....

Damage here was sgd 30
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Aside from my Saturday work, what's memorable about my weekend were the following: (Repeat enumeration of what's in the title) Ice Cream Buffet, Animated Movie Up and Ginseng Chicken.

I wanted to try Swensen's one for one ice cream buffet at ION, so I invited my food buddy, who's just about game to eat anything (except for curry dishes) to have it after dinner. We met up before dinnertime and window shopped. For dinner, I suggested Canton-I. I've been there 3 times now, and while the food is good but not extraordinary, the service is lacking and food quite expensive (after all the ++ computed in), I like to go there simply because of the ambience. It makes me feel, well, posh.

We ate wanton noodle soup, stir fired veggies and crispy pork belly.

We were a bit full from the full meal so we decided to walk around. More window shopping to digest the food. But actually, there wasn't really a need for that, since it was quite difficult to locate Swensen's. We were doing the blairwitch thing, where we ended up exactly where we started. It's located somewhere you wouldn't expect it to be.

The waiting time (20 mins) made me so anxious, that when I stepped into the restaurant, I wanted to just run around and get as much ice cream as I wanted. Which, I did, but without the running part. First round, I got chendol, something-chocolate, something-berry, strawberry and green tea with some maltesers. I also got a lemon meringue pie (eeew). Second round, I got raspberry, lychee, kiwi banana and black sesame peanut. I was just about bloated up after that.

End of Saturday night.

Sunday, my friends, who suggested their blog names to be malnourished girl and chubby girl, met up to watch 3D version of UP (I was late!). I love the movie, especially since I have a thing for animated films (I've previously blogged about it), and everything was cute!

As previously decided, we went to Crystal Jade in Centerpoint, since it's the Crystal Jade branch serving Korean dishes ( I was told there's also one in Ngee Ann City.). Since my friends knew I love chicken soup, we ordered their ginseng chicken soup. We also ordered their barbeque set and kimchi fried rice.

The barbeque (beef and chicken) were good, the side dishes were also appetising and refreshing, but I absolutely loved the ginseng soup. It was almost perfect! Mmmmm! It was just too bad that I had a headache (from wearing that 3D eyeglasses) and couldn't enjoy it fully.

After dinner, we walked again for a while. Saw some cute tops, but I've just about busted my budget so I had to divert my eyes away from them. Siigh.

End of Sunday. Then it's Monday again. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh!