Unique food

I feel so blessed to be living in Singapore because we have access to all sorts of food. In the supermarket, I managed to buy a box of kiwi berries. Its quite sweet and Danielle, especially, loves to eat it! However, its best to remove the skin as it might sting your tongue (the same kind of sting you get from eating pineapple).



Another unique food I recently ate was duck's tongue. It isnt my first time eating the tongue of a bird-be it duck or goose, but it was definitely my first time eating from a packet!

One of my colleagues actually went China and brought it to school to give away. Since I am rather adventurous with food, I didnt mind trying even though my other colleagues shun away.

In the end, I ate all up though I didnt really like the taste. It tasted like salty glue. I treated it as a challenge and wanted to train my mind to eat it even though my brain tells me that it doesnt taste like food.



My colleague even wanted to puke after watching me eat as I spit out the bones bit by bit into the dustbin! Ha! I had fun grossing them out.

They handed me theirs and I brought home to test CT out and I was amazed at how CT actually liked it.

Maybe because I prepared him for the worse that eventually, when he ate it, it didnt taste so bad.



The next day, I went back and told my colleague, who gave me the duck tongue, that my hubby actually liked it and in the end, he passed me the whole big packet, but it was duck gizzard instead. I preferred the gizzard instead as its chewy and the texture is nicer, though the same 'salty glue' taste was still there.


Eventually, I gave the rest to my mum who absolutely loves it! Hmm..all I can say is, one man's meat is really another man's poison or rather, "it's all in the mind.."

Couple time

This afternoon, we went to my mum-in-law's place for lunch. Caleb left the place with Keelia's sunglasses on. He refused to take it off.

Its strange how he liked wearing it that no matter how the sunglasses keep falling off, he still insists on wearing it.



Even Danielle noticed something strange on Caleb that she kept staring at him.



That's my boy at this stage in his life.


At night, CT and I left the kids at home with Vicky and went on a date to Orchard. We took the train there. Purpose of this date was to eat wagyu beef.

We first went to Orchard Central- a newly opened mall in Orchard. Quite a number of stalls still empty.


They had interesting narrow path ways in the shopping mall.


And took a picture of this gothic looking pot hanging beside the escalator.


We heard that there's a restaurant in Orchard Central that serves Wagyu beef, called "Grill out" restaurant. We went there and I felt the restaurant looked empty and still new. So, I went with my gut feeling and decided I shall stick to the original plan which was to go Angus Steak House for the beef since they had good ratings after doing some research over the internet.


So after a tour of Orchard Central, we went to Takashimaya for our wagyu beef at Angus Steak House.

What prompted us to eat Wagyu Beef is because CT had $250 to spend. His company gave him that amount to spend for a meal with the family to celebrate the opening of their new plant. All along I wanted to eat Wagyu Beef since its the holy grail of beef. So, I had to eat it since after hearing about the money we had given by the company!



We ordered 200g of Wagyu Sirloin and 200g of Wagyu Rib Eye. We chose these because Sirloin and Rib Eye is the fattest part. I love beef that has lots of fats!

It was a 5 course dinner. The first dish was a nicely pan fried cuttlefish ball with horseradish mayo sauce and salmon roe on top of french beans. Pardon me for such a description of the dish as they do not have a writeup of what we are eating and I didnt ask. So I am just describing as how I eat and taste of it! A very light, tasty and delicate dish. Loved it!



2nd course was a cream of mushroom soup. It was rich and tasty, but yet , it feels light as after slurping up the soup, you still want more! Went well with the complimentary bread roll.


3rd course was a fresh and light salad with soya sauce and balsamic vinegar taste to it.


Both CT and I seemed to chow down every dish almost immediately. Our behaviour probably didnt fit in at the nice and classy restaurant as we ate so fast but couldnt help it as the food was just so nice.

And finally, our main dish arrived!



Biting into the wagyu beef was practically effortless! It seems like I finally understood what "melts in your mouth" meant.

This was Wagyu Sirloin


And Wagyu Ribeye


Eating such steak, doesnt require any knives because of how tender it is.


Every bite that I took off the steak, I kept commenting to CT how happy I was to indulge in this and that I could just die now.

As for dessert, we had a cake with fruits and chocolate and butter sauce which once again tasted rich but light! Its quite an oxymoron because most rich dishes end up making you very full. But the texture was so light and fluffy that it didnt make me feel stuffed.


Oh, forgot to mention that I actually met one of my ex-students during our dinner. Guess I should get used to it since Singapore is so small and I will probably stay in teaching for some time.

After a satifying meal, we walked to another new mall-Ion Orchard to take a look. Initally, I felt unworthy to enter since it was all branded shops, but considering how often we come to Orchard, I felt, I might as well drop by inside to see.



The shops in Ion Orchard were very interesting. They even had a Christmas shop. When I saw it, I felt like I was in the streets of London during a cold winter night, glancing at the windows of this shop that sells Christmas ornaments, trains etc.

We spent time at the art gallery as well as the supermarket. I usually make it a point to explore new supermarkets because I always feel it would be an eye opening experience to see what interesting things they sell and yes, I was right! I managed to see not only the usual green, red and yellow bell peppers but black, purple, white and orange ones! Also saw them selling Japanese grapes which was royal black and I understand from the sales woman that the taste is just like red wine! If I was shopping alone, I would definitely buy some of it to try!

Went home straight after our tour of Ion Orchard. Really enjoyed my date with CT! Wonder when will be the next time...

Humbling Experience

Just a few days back, I was down with a bad sore throat and running nose. I quickly took anti-inflammatory pills (Danzen) and cold medicine. It was effective but the healing process was too slow. So, I quickly bought the big bottle of Florida's Natural Orange Juice for me to gulp it down. It helped but though not fully recovered, I went trekking at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

I have been waiting for this day as we arranged a while back already. So as not to disappoint myself and my colleagues, I still agreed to go and was even pretty excited.

Went with 3 of my colleagues, 1 of whom is 50 over years old (Mrs Chan), while the other, is almost 70 years old (Mr Thoh)! Both of them walk in Bukit Timah Hill every Saturday. So you can say, there are lao jiao (meaning, an experienced person). The day before the walk, I asked Sarah if we would be able to keep up with them and Sarah said, "of course because of pride as we surely do not want to 'lose' to our older colleagues. Hehe..


Sarah and I were first timers to climbing Bukit Timah Hill and so, we didnt know what to expect.

We started at 2pm. The climb started off all too easy, even though the slope was quite steep.I even thought to myself, "This isnt so bad..I can do this. Mr Thoh and Mrs Chan aint that fast. "


Sarah was even leading and walking ahead of us

as the rest of us were admiring the trees and even the monkey with her baby which we happened to see.



But as Mr Thoh slowly overtook us and led us into the forest, he seemed to be in Gear 5 all the way, despite how dangerous the walk was and how many slopes and stairs there were!

Do you know how when you are in City Hall or Orchard MRT where everyone is shuffling their feets real fast, moving from place to place, or trying to catch the train? That was exactly how Mr Thoh walked throughout the whole climb! He seemed to be flying or using the skill of 'qing gong'-walking on air.


There were many occasions where the path was so narrow and if you slip, you might just tumble and fall down the cliff! So as we were trying to handle our stamina, we also had to be wary of not falling off.



So throughout the walk, Mr Thoh was way ahead, while I was behind him always trying to catch up with him and even running at times as he walks just to catch up. Sarah would be tailgating me while Mrs Chan was behind. All walking in a single file.



I remembered clearly how Mr Thoh prepared us in the middle of our climb that the worse is yet to come. When he made that comment, I was already panting and sweating like a pig. "What can be worse?" I thought.

Steps after steps...


after steps, after more and more steps...


Until..Sarah surrendered and said, she needed to stop. Initially, I didnt want as I felt more tired stopping as my heartbeat was so fast and I just needed to keep it moving. If I stopped, I would feel like fainting. So I carried on slowly climbing the huge giant looking steps. But eventually, I also had to sit down and rest! Sarah and I both thought we were going to die! hehe.

Mrs Chan overtook us and Mr Thoh waited with us. Oh man, it was a very humbling experience to be beaten by our much older colleagues. Hehe...



But at that point in time, we didnt care. We just needed to catch our breath. After a long flight of stairs each time, Mr Thoh would tell us exactly how many more stairs to go next. It didnt sound really encouraging as each time after walking few hundred stairs, Mr Thoh would then comment,"Oh, there would be another few hundred coming up. But its easier..so no worries." We didnt really hear the last part of his sentence. But we were definitely more sensitive to the words, "few hundred more". We kept having to push ourselves and go for it! Who knows, we climbed the fastest and hardest during our last hundred over stairs! Sarah was surprisingly fast and caught everyone up by being ahead. Way to go!



Finally, we made our way down by exiting the forest and going back to the main road.


We were all looking forward to a nice cold 100 plus after the walk!


I felt really accomplished and proud that we survived! hehe. I felt so pathetically weak. I had a phobia of stairs right after the walk as we were making our way down to our lockers. Sigh.

Eventually, I asked the Nature Reserve guy behind the counter about the distance we covered and he said that we covered almost 6 km and we climbed about 400 over stairs!! I was quite amazed at how much I actually accomplished. All that within 1 hour 10 mins!

There's Sarah all smiles definitely since we all felt that we almost died in the forest and now we're alive!



Feeling so accomplished and satisfied for such a good workout, we went to a coffeeshop in Sin Ming for some food as we havent had lunch.

The homemade yam cake was delicious! Especially with the special gravy!


And also ordered kaya toast as well as fried hokkien mee. Everything taste so yummy. Probably because we were all hungry.


Well, all I can say was, "So much for the earlier workout!"

Will I do it again even though it seemed like a near-death experience ? Well, yes I would still go. Reason is because if I give up going, then what happened today was kind of a wasted trip as I know that if I keep persisting and climbing that same route, eventually I would be 'flying' like Mr Thoh! So, in order to be able to reach that 'qing gong' stage, I have to go back!

Late happenings

Both children have been growing up well.

Both of them are intrigued by the guitar and the sound coming out from it. Caleb always begs me to allow him to play. So, I took out my cheaper guitar,which CT bought for me when we were one year in US to kill my boredom, for Caleb to play.




Usually, Caleb would play it upright since he is still too small to know how to carry it properly.


But because he sees me playing with the strap over, he kept asking me to help him strap as well. Sigh. He's really at the 'monkey see, monkey do" stage.



Then CT sometimes joins in and amuses both of them.


As for Danielle, she loves anything with music and dance. She can dance to the music by bobbing her legs and head up and down excitedly. She can also stand on her own for quite a while.



So because she can walk now with one hand as support, we decided that finally, it makes sense for her to wear shoes. So here's her Mary Jane shoes which CT got for her when he was in US a while back.



Danielle is also as active as Caleb when young, or even more so I feel.

Here's Danielle rummaging through my things below my study table. Sigh.


All I can say is that I have 2 very active, playful and cheeky children. They have really made my life more interesting!

Mid-Autumn Festival 2009

Mid-autumn festival should be more fun for the family as the kids get older since they can get to play with lanterns and get involved with fun activities with other children. The night before, I went to my mum-in-law's place for a celebration down at her block.

Caleb excitedly ran to join the rest of the kids in front of the stage as there was a guy telling stories and making balloon sculpture.



The next day, had lunch over at mum-in-law's place as usual, after church service.


My mum-in-law's style of cooking is very clean, straightforward simple dishes- A vegetable dish is just a vegetable dish with garlic and maybe fish cake. On the other side, my mum would add a lot of ingredients in one dish. So if she cooks a vegetable dish, you would find carrots, all kinds of mushrooms, fishcake, roast pork all in one dish. Haha.

Frankly speaking, I like simple, traditional food. So that is probably one reason why I eat lots of rice at my mum-in-law's place. I like my mum's cooking as well but because she cooks a lot, I do not usually eat rice at her place. I just drink her cantonese style soup and various dishes which would be enough to fill me.

In the afternoon, CT and I took the children for a walk to a nearby shopping centre.


After that, there was a nice playground on the way home and we dropped by to let Caleb have some fun while we sat down on the benches and ate our Old Chang Kee curry puff and fried squid heads, with bubble milk tea!





There's Danielle trying to escape from her pram.


At night after dinner, we had our mooncake with Pu Er Chinese Tea. Just a small, simple tradition which I have kept so far. Look how pretty the mooncake is. My mum gave that to me. Its not only pretty, but tasty.



I really do enjoy and treasure every minute with CT and the children. Thank God for bringing them into my life.