Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Whoa. Another long post of about two weeks' worth.
Wed 8 Apr
A few of us felt so exhausted by work that we drove out to Old Airport Rd for lunch today. I had a bowl of prawn noodles and fishball noodles, and that felt terrific. Bwahaha. That was a necessary good meal because in the afternoon, I had a really, really long meeting.
Thu 9 Apr
I ended school earlier than my wife today, so using that extra time, I quickly rushed down to Bras Basah to print a banner for next Sat's Open House. Strangely, it suddenly poured cats and dogs when I got to the bus stop, but thank God for Jonathan who was going the same way, so he gave me a ride down to Bras Basah. On my way back to my in-laws' place, I stopped by Laser Flair at Bedok which was having a moving out sale to buy some DVD movies. Unfortunately, among the titles I bought, only one wasn't new and had a discount. Sigh.
Fri 10 Apr
It was Good Friday today! My boys and Collin's boys were having a combined cell outreach at one of the boy's home at Sunset Way. I took a train ride and made a journey to the west early in the morning, and stopped by Clementi to grab lunch by myself at Mos Burger. I actually managed to bump into a colleague there! I really can meet people anywhere.
We entertained ourselves with Wii and some icebreaker games, and I think our guest (sadly, the boys only brought one pre-believer friend in the end) enjoyed himself, so that was good.
In the evening, I headed over to Alvin's place for a short session of mahjong. We played only one and a half rounds, but the games were really exciting. Most of the time, we were all winning at four or full tai, so eventually the winnings balanced out to be in the range of about 1 to 2 bucks, with Alvin's brother losing to the rest of us.
Sat 11 Apr
I was actually back in school today, to be a judge for the THINK challenge, a competition that TJC science department holds annually for the secondary schools. I was rostered to help out with the Physics side, and this year, their competition item was to construct the strongest bridge from ice cream sticks. While waiting for the students to be done, I got together one colleague (relief teacher) and one student to help, and I went to make my own bridge using the same equipment provided. When I tested it, it could hold up to 7+ kg! Consider it my little contribution to the Physics folks. Unfortunately, only after I completed the bridge did I think of a way to make it even stronger.
After the whole THINK Challenge first round was over by evening, a few of us went out to have dinner, and my HOD actually gave us a treat, probably to compensate us for the 'burnt' Saturday. He brought us to this place called Happy Daze in the heart of Opera Estate. The food took a really long time to be served, but the oxtail and beef stew was totally awesome! Quite fatty, now that I think about it, but the taste was really perfect. The ribeye that we ordered came way too rare. I ordered a medium rare, and it looked rare. My colleague's medium well seemed to be medium rare, and she had to tell the waitress to send it back to cook a while longer. The chicken wings made delicious snacks, and the drinks were really nice. I ordered something called Cool Passion, and it had an indescribably unique taste. I had a feeling that my HOD would pick up the tab later, so I decided not to order another drink. We ended the meal with many cheesecakes to share, and once again, I overate in my enthusiasm to finish the (good) food when others gave up. I must be getting fat, because even after eating all this, I didn't need to bankai (my customized Bleach lingo to imply releasing my belt). Sigh. My colleague, on the other hand, said he already bankai-ed, put on mask and had it cracked. If you actually understand what I just said, good for you. Continue watching anime!
Sun 12 Apr
Today was tragic in terms of service. We brought Jadon with us, and we were delayed, but we rushed down to Expo anyway. The queue into the carpark was so disgustingly long that after queueing for a while and making zero progress, we decided to call it quits and headed back to Simei, missing church service (first time in a long, long while). We went for an early lunch at Sakae Sushi, and I must say, their curry is actually not too bad. Can't say the same for the udon and other things. Man, I miss eating at Ministry of Food at Bugis Junction.
Anyway, we took turns taking care of Jadon and eating at Sakae, and also when I met my boys for combined cell with Collin, while my wife had a cell meeting with her cell leader and cell sisters. My mother-in-law had something on till the evening, so we took our own sweet time wandering around with Jadon before leaving him in my mother-in-law's care and then headed to Blk 85 for dinner.
Blk 85 is the place of biggest temptation when it comes to gluttony. Almost without fail, my dinner will include (hopefully shared with others) the superb bak chor mee, oyster omelette, satay and/or chicken wings, and Ah Balling rice balls dessert. I wonder if the people who stay in the blocks around there have a higher tendency to be obese. Hmm.
Mon 13 Apr
I managed to convince some colleagues to go out to Blk 216 market for lunch today. I recommended them the nasi lemak from Hon Ni Kitchen, and after queueing for a while, they found the food worth the wait, especially because these colleagues of mine love spice, and the chilli from this stall is very spicy.
After school, I headed off to Eunos to have my first driving lesson with my instructor. I eventually decided to acquire the auto licence rather than manual simply because I wanted to start driving my car earlier and relieve my wife. And it was much easier to start on auto; considering it was the first lesson, I was already driving off from Eunos to Tampines. The instructor dropped me off at Tampines, and I made my way down to Bras Basah from there. I had to collect the banner I had sent for printing. Anyway, my wife was having a dental appointment nearby, so she came to pick me up after I was done.
I suggested Beach Road's Golden Mile Hawker Centre for dinner, and I was really looking forward to eating the superb char kway teow from the second floor. But it was closed! I'd forgotten that it was closed on Mondays. Sadly, I went to eat the Xing Hua fried noodles from the first floor, and my wife had wan ton noodles, and we ended dinner off with dessert from the Sweet Stone. Nice.
I detoured to my old block to look for cow cat, wondering if he was still alive; from the time that I first befriended him till now was a whopping six years plus, and I didn't even know how old he was then. To my pleasant surprise, he still looked fine and healthy. I made my trademark cat call, and he actually replied and came over to me! I was so shocked that he still remembers my voice after my absence of almost two years now. Too bad I can't bring him home and keep him.
Tue 14 Apr
My lessons ended relatively early today, but I had to stay behind to host the annual SynTactic competition, which is an inter-class competition based on the chemistry card game I created. After running it for two years already, this time round, the logistics were smoother, and the whole competition ended around 6 pm (compared to 7+ in previous years). Although I know that some of the participants were 'arrowed' to come by their tutors, after a straw poll, it seemed like everyone was having fun and didn't regret coming.
They all seemed to like the game...but wait till they get to try my next card game in the pipeline! Bwahaha.
Wed 15 Apr
After a long day at school, I wanted to prepare for Sat's Open House by setting up an aquarium (which we use in teaching) first. But that failed when we couldn't even locate the fish tank and other accessories. So I just stayed behind and cleared some work, before heading off to buy dinner for my wife and mother-in-law. I was buying economic rice for them at the coffee shop with Aston's Express, but I really couldn't spot anything I wanted to eat, so I bought fish n chips from Aston's. I didn't know if I didn't have my appetite, or the food wasn't nice, but I had a hard time finishing the fish. Anyway, I don't think I'd do takeaways for fish n chips anymore, before the fish always managed to burn away part of the styrofoam packaging. Dangerous chemicals could be released. Hmm.
Thu 16 Apr
Today was a long, long day. I took solace with my wife and a couple of colleagues by driving out to the nearby coffee shop just behind Lucky Heights to eat the delicious roast pork and char siew. Ah, the comfort of food - to be specific, good food - when I feel burdened by too many things I have to do.
Fri 17 Apr
After my lessons ended today, I was busy preparing for the Temasek Academy Open House tomorrow. Other than arranging the tables and chairs, putting up displays and banners, setting up a fish tank in position, we were going around settling the final logistics before calling it a day. Fortunately, I had a good lunch to make me happier for the day when I went to Blk 216 market to eat the nice nasi lemak from Hon Ni Kitchen. But what was most spectacular was the iced lemon tea from this little coffee stall next to the famous kway chap stall. I now hail it the absolute best iced lemon tea I have ever drunk in my whole life. Words fail to describe its richness. You have to try it to know it.
After everything was over and done with, I headed off to my in-laws' place, but decided to stop over at Hair De Vogue to get my hair cut by Calvin. I must say, he's the only guy so far who can cut my hair short with slope, and the hair doesn't stick out like a sore thumb all over the place.
Sat 18 Apr
Yes! One big item had been crossed off my to-do list. Today was the Temasek Academy Open House. I was put in charge of the science booth, so after preparations and all, the student-presenters were good to go. My wife came along even though she didn't have any duty, and we brought Jadon with us. Our colleagues and my ex-students (who came back to help out) were having fun playing with him, and he was quite responsive, and we even brought him around the booth area for a short while until the scorching heat got to us.
By the time I got to eat, the food was cold. But in any case, it didn't taste appetizing. So after the whole event was over, I headed off to Bedok Interchange to buy lunch for my wife and myself, and we had decent char kway teow from Central. We stayed at my in-laws' place till dinner time, and headed off to Downtown East with my mother-in-law, Jadon, and my wife's fourth aunt. Eventually, we ended up at New York New York for dinner. We ended up all ordering the same thing (my wife and my favourite): spaghetti with pork chop. It turned out disappointing today though, because the pork chop wasn't marinated well enough, and wasn't tender. It was hard to chew through, which was a letdown, despite the pasta sauce being good enough. We didn't make a fuss, and when the manager came by with the bill and asked us how the food was, I told her about the pork chop. Here she exhibited good PR skills, and threw in a mudpie with ice cream to 'compensate' us, so we got free dessert.
At first I was shocked that my favourite kungfu milk tea shop has closed down, and now has become the Chipshop. However, when I walked past, I realized that the interior looked identical, and the workers looked familiar, wearing the same old uniform. I also noticed the similar milk tea being cycled in the machine. So I went in and asked the lady inside if that was the kungfu milk tea, and she said yes. Apparently, the shop had changed its packaging and its main menu (from Hong Kong style snacks and meals to Western food, in particular fish and chips), and the name of the kungfu milk tea to super creamy milk tea (or something like that). I bought a cup, and it still tasted extremely thick. Superb stuff there.
Sun 19 Apr
My wife and I rushed like mad, and still only just made it on the last shuttle bus to church. Now, eating breakfast (usually a pancake and soya bean drink from Mr Bean, and topped up with either O Chang Kee curry puffs or pork floss bread from the bakery at Simei) on the shuttle bus has become a norm.
We tried out a combined cell today, with my wife's girls and my boys together. We headed off to Changi Airport for lunch, because we thought the only comfortable place where we could all sit down together to have cell would probably be the viewing gallery at the departure hall. We went to T3's Kopitiam food court for lunch first, and I regretfully bought Qiu Lian ban mian, having smelled the fragrant soup base from the table behind me. That was so wrong a choice. The ikan bilis was so hard and not even crispy. The soup tasted worse than how it smelled. I should have gone to Ye Kitchen and bought the porridge, which at least I knew to be good. The combined cell itself went alright, and hopefully the insights that the Lord showed me would benefit the kids.
Mon 20 Apr
It was a mad rush today, with plenty of work to do. I think I have too many different things needing my attention that I feel somewhat frazzled at times. For lunch, I went out with a colleague to Bedok Central. I introduced him to Teo's Noodle, which is only open in the morning, and sells out typically by noon, and then the stall is passed on to a tenant who sells nasi lemak. Anyway, we both enjoyed the noodles, especially the soup, which is not the typically worthless MSG soup that most fishball noodles and the like offer. The portion was, however, too small for me, so I topped it off with a bowl of curry noodles from the better stall, which I feel is the one with the black bowls (since both rivalling stalls carry identical names).
At the end of the day, I headed down to Eunos MRT to learn driving from my instructor. I will choose to see it from an optimistic point of view and believe I drove well, because my instructor actually dozed off intermittently while I drove from Eunos to Tampines! If I were him, I wouldn't trust my life with a guy who drove for the second time in his life. Strangely enough, I feel that I drove better with him asleep than awake. Hmm...I'll evaluate that observation at the next lesson.
Tue 21 Apr
It was a packed day today, but I managed to go out to lunch with my colleague to Bedok. We planned initially to go to Blk 216 market, but the carpark was full so we ended up at Central instead. We also ended up eating the same Teo's Noodle as yesterday, except that my act of gluttony today involved eating mee soto from Inspirasi.
After I came back to school from lunch (we took only 40 min, including driving there and back!), I managed to settle quite a bit of work before I went off with my wife in the late afternoon. We planned to go shopping, since we hadn't done so for a while. We drove to Century Square, and parked there. We window-shopped a bit there, but couldn't find anything we liked, so we quickly headed over to Tampines Mall to the Starhub Centre. Both my wife's (at my in-laws' place) and my broadband subscription can be renewed, so we quickly settled the re-contract so that we could enjoy the promotions. My wife's one was a lower-end package, so she only opted for the discount and got a free modem. Mine was the 12 Mbps one, so I took the package with a free 32-inch LCD TV from Samsung. Not that I was going to have a fourth TV at home, but I was going to give it to my in-laws as their previous TV conked out and they are surviving on a 21-inch TV so far. Well, since I spent every weekday evening there, I consider it a worthwhile investment to plant a bigger TV in their place.
Once we were done with Starhub, we quickly ventured over to Tampines 1 to check it out. We wanted to eat first, so we checked the directory and eventually settled on Kim Gary. I still wonder what happened to Beyond...did they decide to pull out, or just not to advance into Singapore? The original outlets in Malaysia are all called Kim Gary and Beyond Restaurants. Here it's just Kim Gary. I still think the two times I ate at KL were better experiences in that the food was much better. Today, my wife had a pork chop cheese baked rice set, and I had a beef fried rice, in addition to the assorted mushrooms in double cheese appetizer we ordered. These were not bad, although the fried rice could be fried more evenly (there were still pockets of plain white rice). The beef slices were fried to a nice tender crisp, which was excellent. We ordered a mango coconut milky pure (something like that) which tasted fabulously thick and full of fragrant flavour. The peanut butter and condensed milk thick toast was too thick for our liking though. Considering that my wife only ate half of her baked rice and I helped her finish it, I know I overate. The bad about the food was that it made us tremendously thirsty, which might suggest excessive MSG. Anyway, I bought a honey milk tea from Each A Cup, which was alright, but after drinking from the Bedok, Simei, Tampines and Changi Airport branches, I conclude that the Bedok interchange branch has the absolute best drinks. Do try the milk tea especially.
I actually bumped into a couple of colleagues (hmm, they are really a couple...haha) twice, once at Tampines 1, and another time at Century Square. Anyway, we managed to buy some diapers, milk powder, clothes (I bought 3 tees from Uniqlo which were really Jap-looking in design) for myself and my wife bought some too, an extra bumper to line Jadon's crib, two new pillows from BHG (huge discount there currently)...basically by the time we were heading back to the car, we were really obstructing human traffic with our bulky items.
Wed 8 Apr
A few of us felt so exhausted by work that we drove out to Old Airport Rd for lunch today. I had a bowl of prawn noodles and fishball noodles, and that felt terrific. Bwahaha. That was a necessary good meal because in the afternoon, I had a really, really long meeting.
Thu 9 Apr
I ended school earlier than my wife today, so using that extra time, I quickly rushed down to Bras Basah to print a banner for next Sat's Open House. Strangely, it suddenly poured cats and dogs when I got to the bus stop, but thank God for Jonathan who was going the same way, so he gave me a ride down to Bras Basah. On my way back to my in-laws' place, I stopped by Laser Flair at Bedok which was having a moving out sale to buy some DVD movies. Unfortunately, among the titles I bought, only one wasn't new and had a discount. Sigh.
Fri 10 Apr
It was Good Friday today! My boys and Collin's boys were having a combined cell outreach at one of the boy's home at Sunset Way. I took a train ride and made a journey to the west early in the morning, and stopped by Clementi to grab lunch by myself at Mos Burger. I actually managed to bump into a colleague there! I really can meet people anywhere.
We entertained ourselves with Wii and some icebreaker games, and I think our guest (sadly, the boys only brought one pre-believer friend in the end) enjoyed himself, so that was good.
In the evening, I headed over to Alvin's place for a short session of mahjong. We played only one and a half rounds, but the games were really exciting. Most of the time, we were all winning at four or full tai, so eventually the winnings balanced out to be in the range of about 1 to 2 bucks, with Alvin's brother losing to the rest of us.
Sat 11 Apr
I was actually back in school today, to be a judge for the THINK challenge, a competition that TJC science department holds annually for the secondary schools. I was rostered to help out with the Physics side, and this year, their competition item was to construct the strongest bridge from ice cream sticks. While waiting for the students to be done, I got together one colleague (relief teacher) and one student to help, and I went to make my own bridge using the same equipment provided. When I tested it, it could hold up to 7+ kg! Consider it my little contribution to the Physics folks. Unfortunately, only after I completed the bridge did I think of a way to make it even stronger.
After the whole THINK Challenge first round was over by evening, a few of us went out to have dinner, and my HOD actually gave us a treat, probably to compensate us for the 'burnt' Saturday. He brought us to this place called Happy Daze in the heart of Opera Estate. The food took a really long time to be served, but the oxtail and beef stew was totally awesome! Quite fatty, now that I think about it, but the taste was really perfect. The ribeye that we ordered came way too rare. I ordered a medium rare, and it looked rare. My colleague's medium well seemed to be medium rare, and she had to tell the waitress to send it back to cook a while longer. The chicken wings made delicious snacks, and the drinks were really nice. I ordered something called Cool Passion, and it had an indescribably unique taste. I had a feeling that my HOD would pick up the tab later, so I decided not to order another drink. We ended the meal with many cheesecakes to share, and once again, I overate in my enthusiasm to finish the (good) food when others gave up. I must be getting fat, because even after eating all this, I didn't need to bankai (my customized Bleach lingo to imply releasing my belt). Sigh. My colleague, on the other hand, said he already bankai-ed, put on mask and had it cracked. If you actually understand what I just said, good for you. Continue watching anime!
Sun 12 Apr
Today was tragic in terms of service. We brought Jadon with us, and we were delayed, but we rushed down to Expo anyway. The queue into the carpark was so disgustingly long that after queueing for a while and making zero progress, we decided to call it quits and headed back to Simei, missing church service (first time in a long, long while). We went for an early lunch at Sakae Sushi, and I must say, their curry is actually not too bad. Can't say the same for the udon and other things. Man, I miss eating at Ministry of Food at Bugis Junction.
Anyway, we took turns taking care of Jadon and eating at Sakae, and also when I met my boys for combined cell with Collin, while my wife had a cell meeting with her cell leader and cell sisters. My mother-in-law had something on till the evening, so we took our own sweet time wandering around with Jadon before leaving him in my mother-in-law's care and then headed to Blk 85 for dinner.
Blk 85 is the place of biggest temptation when it comes to gluttony. Almost without fail, my dinner will include (hopefully shared with others) the superb bak chor mee, oyster omelette, satay and/or chicken wings, and Ah Balling rice balls dessert. I wonder if the people who stay in the blocks around there have a higher tendency to be obese. Hmm.
Mon 13 Apr
I managed to convince some colleagues to go out to Blk 216 market for lunch today. I recommended them the nasi lemak from Hon Ni Kitchen, and after queueing for a while, they found the food worth the wait, especially because these colleagues of mine love spice, and the chilli from this stall is very spicy.
After school, I headed off to Eunos to have my first driving lesson with my instructor. I eventually decided to acquire the auto licence rather than manual simply because I wanted to start driving my car earlier and relieve my wife. And it was much easier to start on auto; considering it was the first lesson, I was already driving off from Eunos to Tampines. The instructor dropped me off at Tampines, and I made my way down to Bras Basah from there. I had to collect the banner I had sent for printing. Anyway, my wife was having a dental appointment nearby, so she came to pick me up after I was done.
I suggested Beach Road's Golden Mile Hawker Centre for dinner, and I was really looking forward to eating the superb char kway teow from the second floor. But it was closed! I'd forgotten that it was closed on Mondays. Sadly, I went to eat the Xing Hua fried noodles from the first floor, and my wife had wan ton noodles, and we ended dinner off with dessert from the Sweet Stone. Nice.
I detoured to my old block to look for cow cat, wondering if he was still alive; from the time that I first befriended him till now was a whopping six years plus, and I didn't even know how old he was then. To my pleasant surprise, he still looked fine and healthy. I made my trademark cat call, and he actually replied and came over to me! I was so shocked that he still remembers my voice after my absence of almost two years now. Too bad I can't bring him home and keep him.
Tue 14 Apr
My lessons ended relatively early today, but I had to stay behind to host the annual SynTactic competition, which is an inter-class competition based on the chemistry card game I created. After running it for two years already, this time round, the logistics were smoother, and the whole competition ended around 6 pm (compared to 7+ in previous years). Although I know that some of the participants were 'arrowed' to come by their tutors, after a straw poll, it seemed like everyone was having fun and didn't regret coming.
They all seemed to like the game...but wait till they get to try my next card game in the pipeline! Bwahaha.
Wed 15 Apr
After a long day at school, I wanted to prepare for Sat's Open House by setting up an aquarium (which we use in teaching) first. But that failed when we couldn't even locate the fish tank and other accessories. So I just stayed behind and cleared some work, before heading off to buy dinner for my wife and mother-in-law. I was buying economic rice for them at the coffee shop with Aston's Express, but I really couldn't spot anything I wanted to eat, so I bought fish n chips from Aston's. I didn't know if I didn't have my appetite, or the food wasn't nice, but I had a hard time finishing the fish. Anyway, I don't think I'd do takeaways for fish n chips anymore, before the fish always managed to burn away part of the styrofoam packaging. Dangerous chemicals could be released. Hmm.
Thu 16 Apr
Today was a long, long day. I took solace with my wife and a couple of colleagues by driving out to the nearby coffee shop just behind Lucky Heights to eat the delicious roast pork and char siew. Ah, the comfort of food - to be specific, good food - when I feel burdened by too many things I have to do.
Fri 17 Apr
After my lessons ended today, I was busy preparing for the Temasek Academy Open House tomorrow. Other than arranging the tables and chairs, putting up displays and banners, setting up a fish tank in position, we were going around settling the final logistics before calling it a day. Fortunately, I had a good lunch to make me happier for the day when I went to Blk 216 market to eat the nice nasi lemak from Hon Ni Kitchen. But what was most spectacular was the iced lemon tea from this little coffee stall next to the famous kway chap stall. I now hail it the absolute best iced lemon tea I have ever drunk in my whole life. Words fail to describe its richness. You have to try it to know it.
After everything was over and done with, I headed off to my in-laws' place, but decided to stop over at Hair De Vogue to get my hair cut by Calvin. I must say, he's the only guy so far who can cut my hair short with slope, and the hair doesn't stick out like a sore thumb all over the place.
Sat 18 Apr
Yes! One big item had been crossed off my to-do list. Today was the Temasek Academy Open House. I was put in charge of the science booth, so after preparations and all, the student-presenters were good to go. My wife came along even though she didn't have any duty, and we brought Jadon with us. Our colleagues and my ex-students (who came back to help out) were having fun playing with him, and he was quite responsive, and we even brought him around the booth area for a short while until the scorching heat got to us.
By the time I got to eat, the food was cold. But in any case, it didn't taste appetizing. So after the whole event was over, I headed off to Bedok Interchange to buy lunch for my wife and myself, and we had decent char kway teow from Central. We stayed at my in-laws' place till dinner time, and headed off to Downtown East with my mother-in-law, Jadon, and my wife's fourth aunt. Eventually, we ended up at New York New York for dinner. We ended up all ordering the same thing (my wife and my favourite): spaghetti with pork chop. It turned out disappointing today though, because the pork chop wasn't marinated well enough, and wasn't tender. It was hard to chew through, which was a letdown, despite the pasta sauce being good enough. We didn't make a fuss, and when the manager came by with the bill and asked us how the food was, I told her about the pork chop. Here she exhibited good PR skills, and threw in a mudpie with ice cream to 'compensate' us, so we got free dessert.
At first I was shocked that my favourite kungfu milk tea shop has closed down, and now has become the Chipshop. However, when I walked past, I realized that the interior looked identical, and the workers looked familiar, wearing the same old uniform. I also noticed the similar milk tea being cycled in the machine. So I went in and asked the lady inside if that was the kungfu milk tea, and she said yes. Apparently, the shop had changed its packaging and its main menu (from Hong Kong style snacks and meals to Western food, in particular fish and chips), and the name of the kungfu milk tea to super creamy milk tea (or something like that). I bought a cup, and it still tasted extremely thick. Superb stuff there.
Sun 19 Apr
My wife and I rushed like mad, and still only just made it on the last shuttle bus to church. Now, eating breakfast (usually a pancake and soya bean drink from Mr Bean, and topped up with either O Chang Kee curry puffs or pork floss bread from the bakery at Simei) on the shuttle bus has become a norm.
We tried out a combined cell today, with my wife's girls and my boys together. We headed off to Changi Airport for lunch, because we thought the only comfortable place where we could all sit down together to have cell would probably be the viewing gallery at the departure hall. We went to T3's Kopitiam food court for lunch first, and I regretfully bought Qiu Lian ban mian, having smelled the fragrant soup base from the table behind me. That was so wrong a choice. The ikan bilis was so hard and not even crispy. The soup tasted worse than how it smelled. I should have gone to Ye Kitchen and bought the porridge, which at least I knew to be good. The combined cell itself went alright, and hopefully the insights that the Lord showed me would benefit the kids.
Mon 20 Apr
It was a mad rush today, with plenty of work to do. I think I have too many different things needing my attention that I feel somewhat frazzled at times. For lunch, I went out with a colleague to Bedok Central. I introduced him to Teo's Noodle, which is only open in the morning, and sells out typically by noon, and then the stall is passed on to a tenant who sells nasi lemak. Anyway, we both enjoyed the noodles, especially the soup, which is not the typically worthless MSG soup that most fishball noodles and the like offer. The portion was, however, too small for me, so I topped it off with a bowl of curry noodles from the better stall, which I feel is the one with the black bowls (since both rivalling stalls carry identical names).
At the end of the day, I headed down to Eunos MRT to learn driving from my instructor. I will choose to see it from an optimistic point of view and believe I drove well, because my instructor actually dozed off intermittently while I drove from Eunos to Tampines! If I were him, I wouldn't trust my life with a guy who drove for the second time in his life. Strangely enough, I feel that I drove better with him asleep than awake. Hmm...I'll evaluate that observation at the next lesson.
Tue 21 Apr
It was a packed day today, but I managed to go out to lunch with my colleague to Bedok. We planned initially to go to Blk 216 market, but the carpark was full so we ended up at Central instead. We also ended up eating the same Teo's Noodle as yesterday, except that my act of gluttony today involved eating mee soto from Inspirasi.
After I came back to school from lunch (we took only 40 min, including driving there and back!), I managed to settle quite a bit of work before I went off with my wife in the late afternoon. We planned to go shopping, since we hadn't done so for a while. We drove to Century Square, and parked there. We window-shopped a bit there, but couldn't find anything we liked, so we quickly headed over to Tampines Mall to the Starhub Centre. Both my wife's (at my in-laws' place) and my broadband subscription can be renewed, so we quickly settled the re-contract so that we could enjoy the promotions. My wife's one was a lower-end package, so she only opted for the discount and got a free modem. Mine was the 12 Mbps one, so I took the package with a free 32-inch LCD TV from Samsung. Not that I was going to have a fourth TV at home, but I was going to give it to my in-laws as their previous TV conked out and they are surviving on a 21-inch TV so far. Well, since I spent every weekday evening there, I consider it a worthwhile investment to plant a bigger TV in their place.
Once we were done with Starhub, we quickly ventured over to Tampines 1 to check it out. We wanted to eat first, so we checked the directory and eventually settled on Kim Gary. I still wonder what happened to Beyond...did they decide to pull out, or just not to advance into Singapore? The original outlets in Malaysia are all called Kim Gary and Beyond Restaurants. Here it's just Kim Gary. I still think the two times I ate at KL were better experiences in that the food was much better. Today, my wife had a pork chop cheese baked rice set, and I had a beef fried rice, in addition to the assorted mushrooms in double cheese appetizer we ordered. These were not bad, although the fried rice could be fried more evenly (there were still pockets of plain white rice). The beef slices were fried to a nice tender crisp, which was excellent. We ordered a mango coconut milky pure (something like that) which tasted fabulously thick and full of fragrant flavour. The peanut butter and condensed milk thick toast was too thick for our liking though. Considering that my wife only ate half of her baked rice and I helped her finish it, I know I overate. The bad about the food was that it made us tremendously thirsty, which might suggest excessive MSG. Anyway, I bought a honey milk tea from Each A Cup, which was alright, but after drinking from the Bedok, Simei, Tampines and Changi Airport branches, I conclude that the Bedok interchange branch has the absolute best drinks. Do try the milk tea especially.
I actually bumped into a couple of colleagues (hmm, they are really a couple...haha) twice, once at Tampines 1, and another time at Century Square. Anyway, we managed to buy some diapers, milk powder, clothes (I bought 3 tees from Uniqlo which were really Jap-looking in design) for myself and my wife bought some too, an extra bumper to line Jadon's crib, two new pillows from BHG (huge discount there currently)...basically by the time we were heading back to the car, we were really obstructing human traffic with our bulky items.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Sun 22 Mar
I had service as usual, but today I decided to give my boys a treat, since the performance bonus had come in. I brought them to Canton Kitchen at Eastpoint, which I recalled had quite good food, and I thought it would be nice to eat something different, so I ordered a 6-course meal which had sharks' fin and cereal soft shell crab. The bill was higher than I initially projected, but since this year's end of year bonus should drop to negligible portions, I figured this was likely the only big treat this year.
Times are really bad when civil servants also get their pay cut.
Mon 23 Mar
My wife and I drove out to have a late lunch after lessons at Hong Kong Street Restaurant off Bedok Camp (can't remember the name of the building). Since she hadn't eaten there before, I let her try their signature dish, the san lao hor fun. It's light-coloured hor fun with fish and bean sprouts, and it was as good as I last remember it. My wife then decided to bring her family here for a dinner treat. We had ice cream at Ice Cream Gallery just a few shops down, but we both didn't like the ice cream taste as much as Scoops at Parkway Parade.
After that, my wife dropped me off at the Kaki Bukit driving centre. I needed to apply for PDL and book an advanced theory test date. I originally planned to take the advanced theory in June, but apparently, the slots available for choice were just within a month away, so I had to choose late April. Sigh. I don't foresee having much time to read this one either.
Tue 24 Mar
I took a day of Paternity Leave to rest, since most of my one-week break was robbed from me. In the morning, the part-time cleaner came over to help clean the house. I think despite the fact that my wife and I do the chores, we don't have the luxury of time to do a thorough job. Most of the time, just doing laundry and baby-related cleaning up take up quite some time already.
Wed 25 Mar
It was a long day in school today. I went back home first to drop off some stuff, and on the way out, I went to White Sands to buy a few things, and stopped by POSB to replace my ATM card. I'm not sure if the problem is unique to me, or I shouldn't keep too many cards in my wallet, but regularly the cards in my wallet get warped/bent/cracked.
Thu 26 Mar
Another long day again, made a little less dreary by lunch, which a group of us went to Old Airport Road to eat. I had intended to eat two things for lunch again, but one colleague ordered kway chap for everyone to share, so after the prawn noodles and the kway chap, I was sufficiently satisfied to not want more. Except dessert.
Fri 27 Mar
I think my stomach must have expanded back in size again because lately I keep wanting to eat double portions, even though I already took a full breakfast. Today's gluttony included the Hill Street char kway teow (and I was the first customer of the day) and one bowl of laksa from the adjacent stall.
Jadon was particularly cute today. He was talking (baby-talk gibberish, of course) non-stop and very excitedly so. I think my wife will probably upload the video to her account one of these days.
Sat 28 Mar
My sister-in-law's computer suddenly died before I went to reservist, so this was the only day I had to try to get it fixed. My initial diagnosis suggests that the power unit had died, and after going to Sim Lim Square, that was verified. While I was there with my wife, we went walking around. I bought a casing for my ipod nano (the one I got in a lucky draw), and some other stuff. I was very much tempted to buy a Kohjinsha touchscreen mini laptop when I saw it, but I resisted the temptation. Maybe next year's LDS can be used for this, provided the policy is not scrapped due to financial crisis.
Sun 29 Mar
I had a combined cell with Collin's boys today at Burger King. Service today was quite powerful, and Ps Khong gave us an impossible challenge - to grow 8 times in number essentially. For altar call, he summoned all the cell leaders forward to be prayed for, and God spoke to me certain things that I shared with the boys, hoping to inspire them. This will be an exciting year ahead for the church, if this were the direction.
After some consideration, I decided to go and buy the DVD box set of the currently-showing she diao ying xiong zhuan. I think the series is quite well-done, even though some special effects are quite sucky, especially backdrops, but at least the ones for the martial arts are not bad. Anyway, I've always preferred the story of she diao to shen diao. Originally I didn't want to spend money, and I was contented with watching it only on the weekends, but the issue was with the timing, not the frequency. As it is, if I wanted to watch it, I either have to watch it at my in-laws' place till it ends before heading home (quite late) or go home very early to watch it (can't spend time with Jadon around). Furthermore, although I tried watching it on tudou, the bandwidth was so slow it was painful. So I thought the money for this case was not worth saving.
Mon 30 Mar
This was originally my short day, but this week was when the cohort was doing SPA skill B, so in my college, we always deploy a second assessor for fairness' sake to supervise more accurately a smaller group of students. Therefore, on average, we each had 6 extra hours of lessons added to us this week.
Man, that was tiring. Especially since the job came with smelling the organic compounds.
Tue 31 Mar
Today was made dreadfully long because there was a meeting in the afternoon that I had to attend, which dragged on till 6+ pm. Argh. It was a little irritating to note that technically, the last hour of the meeting did not actually need my presence there.
Wed 1 Apr
My colleagues wanted to eat something different today, and were willing to drive out, though not too far, so I recommended them to try out Hong Kong Street Restaurant. They loved the food there, so my reputation of having good food recommendations is still maintained.
In the afternoon, I had yet another meeting that lasted till evening time again. This week turned out a lot more draining than I would have imagined.
Thu 2 Apr
I met my vice-principal in the morning and he tasked me to do up a set of powerpoint slides for us in roadshows to secondary schools by the following Monday. Considering the many things going on in this month, I am seriously, seriously stretched in terms of time. I only barely managed to start on it a little bit today while waiting for my wife to end lessons.
Fri 3 Apr
For lunch, some colleagues wanted to drive out to eat, so I suggested going to Block 216 market (at Bedok Central) for lunch. I was struck by a bout of gluttony again, so I had a bowl of ban mian and a plate of Ipoh hor fun, concluded with sugarcane juice with lemon. That was satisfying.
We were back in time for the annual Track and Field meet. As usual, I was based at the AV booth, but this time round, considering that I would be there for many hours, I brought my laptop there to work on the roadshow slides. After three hours of work, I got it 75% done by the time the meet ended. Hehe.
Sat 4 Apr
My wife and I went down to the Honda service centre at Kaki Bukit to get our car checked. It was the first official servicing after clocking 1000 km! It felt so recent that I acquired the car. Anyway, the service centre was pretty cool. Other than the seats and tables available for people to rest, there was an auntie there serving free hot drinks and there was a counter with free biscuits. It was a thoughtful, customer-centric design, since some appointments were set early in the morning like mine.
We drove down to Bedok for lunch, and I ended up at 216 market once again. Today I decided to try out the nasi lemak from Hon Ni, which my wife said was featured on TV recently. The queue was disgustingly long, but I decided to try anyway. What I didn't count on was that most of the people in the queue were packing 3 to 4 packets! So the queue moved very, very slowly. When it was my turn, I ordered the chicken wing, luncheon meat, fish cake and ikan bilis to test their frying skills. To be fair, all the fried stuff were really crispy, tasty and well-prepared. What I didn't like about the nasi lemak though was the rice and chilli. The rice had too little coconut milk taste, but at least they were the small-grained kind. The chilli had so many chilli padi seeds and didn't taste like what I expect of nasi lemak chilli, but this is a contestable point. In any case, the food is cheap. Considering what I ordered (3 things + 1 chicken wing), it was a mere $2.50. So for that price and the fried stuff, I'm willing to relent on the rice and try it again some other time.
Sun 5 Apr
Early in the morning before my wife and I headed off to church, I was playing with Jadon, and he managed to sit up on his own! He was not too stable yet, so he remained sitting up for maybe ten seconds, but it was still progress. Anyway, even though we woke up by 7.45 am, by the time we got ready, settled Jadon down and sent him to my in-laws' place, we were still late for the 10 am service. We parked at Simei as usual, but we missed the last shuttle bus. So we took a cab to church, which was somewhat ironic considering that we have a car.
After service, my boys and I had lunch at Eastpoint's food court, and we headed over to some void deck nearby to have combined cell group with Collin's boys. I was shocked and angry that no one remembered the points I said the previous week and told them to pray over, so I went into disciplining mode. Sigh.
Mon 6 Apr
My short day today ended up dreadfully long because of a training session for the Content Management System that the vendor designed for the school to manage the school website. The people from the company were really interesting to chat with, and the training session went well in itself, but unearthed some sentiments that I had to handle, since I was in charge of the website revamp project. Yep, the 'secret' big project that ate up my Dec holidays that I was grumbling about.
Tue 7 Apr
I managed to spend some time chatting with some colleagues in the midst of my busyness, and the only reason why I could do that was that I completed the roadshow slides on time as of yesterday evening. Heh. In the evening, my wife and I went down to the wake of blood brudder Zhenxing's grandmother. I could tell that he was quite close to his paternal grandmother because he looked quite affected.
Anyway, the shock of the evening came when he was telling me the cost of the wake. Although the whole setup, coffin and etc costed a whopping 20+ grand, the scary part was the monk hired to perform the rites. He charged a whopping $40k!!!! So for those people out of there who can't find a job, maybe it's not a bad idea to join a temple/monastery. Looking at this staggering sum (for three days of service), I wonder why the New Creation pastor received that much flak on Straits Times for the amount of money he earned.
I had service as usual, but today I decided to give my boys a treat, since the performance bonus had come in. I brought them to Canton Kitchen at Eastpoint, which I recalled had quite good food, and I thought it would be nice to eat something different, so I ordered a 6-course meal which had sharks' fin and cereal soft shell crab. The bill was higher than I initially projected, but since this year's end of year bonus should drop to negligible portions, I figured this was likely the only big treat this year.
Times are really bad when civil servants also get their pay cut.
Mon 23 Mar
My wife and I drove out to have a late lunch after lessons at Hong Kong Street Restaurant off Bedok Camp (can't remember the name of the building). Since she hadn't eaten there before, I let her try their signature dish, the san lao hor fun. It's light-coloured hor fun with fish and bean sprouts, and it was as good as I last remember it. My wife then decided to bring her family here for a dinner treat. We had ice cream at Ice Cream Gallery just a few shops down, but we both didn't like the ice cream taste as much as Scoops at Parkway Parade.
After that, my wife dropped me off at the Kaki Bukit driving centre. I needed to apply for PDL and book an advanced theory test date. I originally planned to take the advanced theory in June, but apparently, the slots available for choice were just within a month away, so I had to choose late April. Sigh. I don't foresee having much time to read this one either.
Tue 24 Mar
I took a day of Paternity Leave to rest, since most of my one-week break was robbed from me. In the morning, the part-time cleaner came over to help clean the house. I think despite the fact that my wife and I do the chores, we don't have the luxury of time to do a thorough job. Most of the time, just doing laundry and baby-related cleaning up take up quite some time already.
Wed 25 Mar
It was a long day in school today. I went back home first to drop off some stuff, and on the way out, I went to White Sands to buy a few things, and stopped by POSB to replace my ATM card. I'm not sure if the problem is unique to me, or I shouldn't keep too many cards in my wallet, but regularly the cards in my wallet get warped/bent/cracked.
Thu 26 Mar
Another long day again, made a little less dreary by lunch, which a group of us went to Old Airport Road to eat. I had intended to eat two things for lunch again, but one colleague ordered kway chap for everyone to share, so after the prawn noodles and the kway chap, I was sufficiently satisfied to not want more. Except dessert.
Fri 27 Mar
I think my stomach must have expanded back in size again because lately I keep wanting to eat double portions, even though I already took a full breakfast. Today's gluttony included the Hill Street char kway teow (and I was the first customer of the day) and one bowl of laksa from the adjacent stall.
Jadon was particularly cute today. He was talking (baby-talk gibberish, of course) non-stop and very excitedly so. I think my wife will probably upload the video to her account one of these days.
Sat 28 Mar
My sister-in-law's computer suddenly died before I went to reservist, so this was the only day I had to try to get it fixed. My initial diagnosis suggests that the power unit had died, and after going to Sim Lim Square, that was verified. While I was there with my wife, we went walking around. I bought a casing for my ipod nano (the one I got in a lucky draw), and some other stuff. I was very much tempted to buy a Kohjinsha touchscreen mini laptop when I saw it, but I resisted the temptation. Maybe next year's LDS can be used for this, provided the policy is not scrapped due to financial crisis.
Sun 29 Mar
I had a combined cell with Collin's boys today at Burger King. Service today was quite powerful, and Ps Khong gave us an impossible challenge - to grow 8 times in number essentially. For altar call, he summoned all the cell leaders forward to be prayed for, and God spoke to me certain things that I shared with the boys, hoping to inspire them. This will be an exciting year ahead for the church, if this were the direction.
After some consideration, I decided to go and buy the DVD box set of the currently-showing she diao ying xiong zhuan. I think the series is quite well-done, even though some special effects are quite sucky, especially backdrops, but at least the ones for the martial arts are not bad. Anyway, I've always preferred the story of she diao to shen diao. Originally I didn't want to spend money, and I was contented with watching it only on the weekends, but the issue was with the timing, not the frequency. As it is, if I wanted to watch it, I either have to watch it at my in-laws' place till it ends before heading home (quite late) or go home very early to watch it (can't spend time with Jadon around). Furthermore, although I tried watching it on tudou, the bandwidth was so slow it was painful. So I thought the money for this case was not worth saving.
Mon 30 Mar
This was originally my short day, but this week was when the cohort was doing SPA skill B, so in my college, we always deploy a second assessor for fairness' sake to supervise more accurately a smaller group of students. Therefore, on average, we each had 6 extra hours of lessons added to us this week.
Man, that was tiring. Especially since the job came with smelling the organic compounds.
Tue 31 Mar
Today was made dreadfully long because there was a meeting in the afternoon that I had to attend, which dragged on till 6+ pm. Argh. It was a little irritating to note that technically, the last hour of the meeting did not actually need my presence there.
Wed 1 Apr
My colleagues wanted to eat something different today, and were willing to drive out, though not too far, so I recommended them to try out Hong Kong Street Restaurant. They loved the food there, so my reputation of having good food recommendations is still maintained.
In the afternoon, I had yet another meeting that lasted till evening time again. This week turned out a lot more draining than I would have imagined.
Thu 2 Apr
I met my vice-principal in the morning and he tasked me to do up a set of powerpoint slides for us in roadshows to secondary schools by the following Monday. Considering the many things going on in this month, I am seriously, seriously stretched in terms of time. I only barely managed to start on it a little bit today while waiting for my wife to end lessons.
Fri 3 Apr
For lunch, some colleagues wanted to drive out to eat, so I suggested going to Block 216 market (at Bedok Central) for lunch. I was struck by a bout of gluttony again, so I had a bowl of ban mian and a plate of Ipoh hor fun, concluded with sugarcane juice with lemon. That was satisfying.
We were back in time for the annual Track and Field meet. As usual, I was based at the AV booth, but this time round, considering that I would be there for many hours, I brought my laptop there to work on the roadshow slides. After three hours of work, I got it 75% done by the time the meet ended. Hehe.
Sat 4 Apr
My wife and I went down to the Honda service centre at Kaki Bukit to get our car checked. It was the first official servicing after clocking 1000 km! It felt so recent that I acquired the car. Anyway, the service centre was pretty cool. Other than the seats and tables available for people to rest, there was an auntie there serving free hot drinks and there was a counter with free biscuits. It was a thoughtful, customer-centric design, since some appointments were set early in the morning like mine.
We drove down to Bedok for lunch, and I ended up at 216 market once again. Today I decided to try out the nasi lemak from Hon Ni, which my wife said was featured on TV recently. The queue was disgustingly long, but I decided to try anyway. What I didn't count on was that most of the people in the queue were packing 3 to 4 packets! So the queue moved very, very slowly. When it was my turn, I ordered the chicken wing, luncheon meat, fish cake and ikan bilis to test their frying skills. To be fair, all the fried stuff were really crispy, tasty and well-prepared. What I didn't like about the nasi lemak though was the rice and chilli. The rice had too little coconut milk taste, but at least they were the small-grained kind. The chilli had so many chilli padi seeds and didn't taste like what I expect of nasi lemak chilli, but this is a contestable point. In any case, the food is cheap. Considering what I ordered (3 things + 1 chicken wing), it was a mere $2.50. So for that price and the fried stuff, I'm willing to relent on the rice and try it again some other time.
Sun 5 Apr
Early in the morning before my wife and I headed off to church, I was playing with Jadon, and he managed to sit up on his own! He was not too stable yet, so he remained sitting up for maybe ten seconds, but it was still progress. Anyway, even though we woke up by 7.45 am, by the time we got ready, settled Jadon down and sent him to my in-laws' place, we were still late for the 10 am service. We parked at Simei as usual, but we missed the last shuttle bus. So we took a cab to church, which was somewhat ironic considering that we have a car.
After service, my boys and I had lunch at Eastpoint's food court, and we headed over to some void deck nearby to have combined cell group with Collin's boys. I was shocked and angry that no one remembered the points I said the previous week and told them to pray over, so I went into disciplining mode. Sigh.
Mon 6 Apr
My short day today ended up dreadfully long because of a training session for the Content Management System that the vendor designed for the school to manage the school website. The people from the company were really interesting to chat with, and the training session went well in itself, but unearthed some sentiments that I had to handle, since I was in charge of the website revamp project. Yep, the 'secret' big project that ate up my Dec holidays that I was grumbling about.
Tue 7 Apr
I managed to spend some time chatting with some colleagues in the midst of my busyness, and the only reason why I could do that was that I completed the roadshow slides on time as of yesterday evening. Heh. In the evening, my wife and I went down to the wake of blood brudder Zhenxing's grandmother. I could tell that he was quite close to his paternal grandmother because he looked quite affected.
Anyway, the shock of the evening came when he was telling me the cost of the wake. Although the whole setup, coffin and etc costed a whopping 20+ grand, the scary part was the monk hired to perform the rites. He charged a whopping $40k!!!! So for those people out of there who can't find a job, maybe it's not a bad idea to join a temple/monastery. Looking at this staggering sum (for three days of service), I wonder why the New Creation pastor received that much flak on Straits Times for the amount of money he earned.