Trick or treats ?!?

Well, Halloween is a total reverse of Chinese Ghost Festival where you are encouraged to limited excursion means to stay home. As all the ghosts are wandering around on the streets.

Halloween in SG is purely on clubbing and another drinking session. If you are not a clubbers nor fond of drinking, basically it is just another regular day. Despite the idea of Halloween in the states where aside to party, we practice trick or treats ?!?! visit to haunted house and carving pumpkins... ^.^

Yeah, Halloween Day is my birthday .... so my gangs always said that i'm a ghost ckckck.....

The week before the birthday was welcomed with visiting of my college buddies, Lili and Sherry. We had a great weekend gathering after our graduation back in 2003. Finally, i'm able to forego all the disputes happened among us. We rekindled our friendship and cherish more as we get older, quality time is what we are pursuing. I was also happy for Sherry on her engagement news and her health is actually getting better. The day before their departure, 30th Oct, we were having lunch at Palm Beach for Chilli Crab and dinner at Peach garden

My department mates celebrated with a treat of lunch @ Billy Bombers w/ Lychee Martini cake.
For dinner, I celebrated w/ my college buddies Mon and Nad @ Shimbashi Soba.

On Friday, my foodie gangs celebrated it @ La Forketta @ Dempsey


The dinner is part of our Friday outings in exploring new places, however the restaurant is below our expectations. The food presentation is nice. The appetizer is good but the main dishes is only okay. The restaurant ambience is quite nice. If craving for Italian, i still prefer Pasta Brava where is brings the authentic flavor. I rated ***/5 stars.

Indeed it's still another great outing we enjoyed!

Happy Halloween and wish for more pumpkins next year. ^.^ I'll aim for pumpkin soup and cake next year ckckck....

Sammi's Mi 2k7 concert

After such a long awaited, finally her concert happened last nite. Overall it's a fabulous show with her distinctive style ^.^

Good that she spoke in Cantonese which she clearly mentioned that her English and Mandarin are intolerable, thus the only choice left is Cantonese. She sang mixes of Canto and Mandarin pop.

The gift giving where she teased her fans was hilarious.

Despite not feeling well, she still dance and sing well. If she did not mention it, we wouldn't realize it. She sang lesser songs compared to HK concert and forego Mi and no encore...... :(

After all, well done, two thumbs up. Good to see you back.

Friday Gourmet outings & JT farewell

As Saturday is my teammate, Mrs. World's birthday. Thus, we were celebrating her b-day during friday lunchtime at Tampopo where it's famous for its ramen and kurobuta (black pork) followed by cutting cake session during tea time. She was amazing and fabulous as early in the morning she fashion paraded for us and she was quite high that day. Happy life and wellness to her.

On Fri nite, we had our regular gatherings. Even though it's not end of the month, but we still gathered as we haven't dined for about 2 months due to everyone busy schedule. Main reason being also to hang out with JT before she leaves for Beijing next week.

Well, we didn't manage to book Margarita's, thus we ended up at Pete's Place - Italian restaurant which recently had been revamped and highly recommended by one of our colleagues. I'll make sure to my gang the next stop is margarita's. I'm dying and craving for mexicans......

The place has a nice atmosphere and the dishes are quite good but still it's incomparable to the one in the states. I prefer Pasta Brava at Tanjung Pagar. Well, the restaurant manager was quite attentive. Service was consider ok compared to other places.

We ordered quite a lot of appetizer and there are free flow of breads.


Main Course - ***1/2 out of *****
Appetizer - **** out of ******
Pizza - *** out of ***** (even though it's wood grilled but i think they could be better)


I had a fusili in pesto and olive oil which were quite good and something different.



Lasagna was a bit disappointed as it's too meaty and cheesy.






Steak was quite good as well.




As usual, we chatted a lot on the what's happening and share gossips hot from oven. There are total of 6 of us in this round gathering exclude Rina. As she is happily enjoying her honeymoon in Europe. Indeed Jessica was with us ^^ After dinner, we headed to her house to continue the session and she made us this plum choya with soda water. We didn't leave until 1:30am.

By here, i wish JT all the best with the new start and gan ba de in Beijing. She will survive for sure. We'll always be here when you need us.... hehhehe.....

Caffeine Effects...

Last nite we ended up at Vivo city to meet our high school friends (which my friend called old folks as we known each others since kindergarten). After dinner, we were at Starbucks and i ordered ice Americano as usual.

At nite, i was rolling on my bed and didn't get to deep sleep till 3:30 am. Part of it was also because i was waiting for my bro as he was coming from KL and didn't reach here till 2:30am. He was stuck at checkpoint for 2 hours (it's due to the malay's new year celebration where people are traveling back and forth b/w the two countries).

Caffeine (eg. black coffee, frap, mountain dew) doesn't really have effect on me regardless on how much i drank. Usually, only to certain degrees and time i will feel coffee is useful, however i still slept well at nite regardless on the timing i consumed it.

It's weird, the body just reacted differently....

Well, to certain degree where i need caffeine is when i'm really tired and i need it to keep awake. There was once where we had stayed up for the past few nite in around thanksgiving and we drove down to Chicago. We didn't sleep once we arrived Chicago and staying up early to queue for thanksgiving sale. Thus, by the time we reached downtown to Neiman Marcus, I got myself double shot espresso. Surprisingly, it kept me alert for the whole day and i felt energetic. I was the one driving the whole day and nite for 13 hours.

Another time is after lunch time, i would grab a cup to keep me alerted when i'm really sleepy.

Generally, I am not a coffee addicted but a juice addicted. Generally, i would drink 1-2 juice per day in different flavors. Occassionally, i will drink a coffee and i would just be fine without having one in my day. Indeed, my day must start with orange juice or else i would feel sick. Once i reached office, i opted for green tea.

Brother

I went to watch 'Brother' tonite at Vivocity. It's one of the rare good show from HK. The selling point of course are the 4 tigers, surprisingly Felix Wong lost a lot of weight for this show, you can see that he is very fit.

Maybe because of his role as an assassin as it's not kewl to see a stout and flabby guy running around to kill ckckck.... Pitifully, the whole show he didn't talk a lot and always on his sunglass.

However, Andy Lau just kept laughing in the show for nothing. I think he's trying hard to show his charm. Needless to say, Michael Miu just appeared to be as charm as his character as in his usual roles ckckck...

On the other hand, Kevin Tong has grown fat that in one particular scene while he sat down, i was very distracted and feel like pinching the baby fat on his neck ckckck.......
Aside to 4 tigers, the other main lead is Eason. His acting does not earn him to deserve an award

The show was focused more on Michael and Eason. It's about the relationship within the brothers in the triad and the prophecy which driven you to be superstitious. As the lead character, Eason's role in the show reflected him as a reckless and simple minded guy where Michael is a stable guy who precious family and brotherhood.

As Andy Lau is one of the producer, of course he won't forget to whack all the advertisers he endorsed to input product placements. It's quite obvious for Cyma that they even zoom in to show the brand. On the other hand, suddenly you found a can of Tau Di drink - 道地 (famous Asian Drinks brand in HK) on the fruit parlor.

The storyline is quite good and with the strong casts, it's definitely worth to watch. I rated ***1/2 out of *****

Who owns the Arctic?

Recently, i read an article in Time magazine about "Who Owns the Arctic?"

The shrinking of Arctic seems not to be a major concern for all the powerful and surrounding countries. Despite, the surrounding countries (US, Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway) are fighting on who suppose to own it rather than saving it. What they are eying are the limitless energy resource and possibly of oil resource.

Ironically, the land is being tortured like a ball in the football matched. I am disgusted of what the political leaders opinionated and claimed on Arctic.

It might be correct in a political view of what they had done, still the ecosystem in the Arctic is suffering. The melting ice is part of the global warming where we had caused directly or indirectly.

Even though i'm not an environmentalist or consider as activist in the green movement, i still have my concern on the shrinking of Arctic and how it would affected us. Especially to the ice ecosystem - the eskimos (what should they do and how will they survive) and its animals which are extinct.

I do feel bad for them and feel bad of what we had done. So, i've started to let myself be more environmental and green eco friendly.

Instead of declaring the pieces of land, i think those countries should collaborate with each other in order to save or at least decrease the speed of the melting ice.

Sometimes we as a human being are just nasty and too selfish. What a disappointment and shameless act of us.

concert tixs

i was real in luck, in a week i received 2 pairs of concert tixs. Even though it's category 2 but i don't mind coz it's free.....

so within the coming 2 weeks, i will be attending 2 concerts:

1st concert is the one i'm dying to have it - Sammi 2007 Mi concert on 13th October.
i am very excited that finally she decided to hold on in sg initially sg is not included in her world tour. But i hope that she sings more cantonese than mandarin. heheheehe..... go Sammi, you're still the best.


2nd concert is Black Eye Peas on 22nd October
(this is a real luck as i never expected and a lot of people are dying to get a pair ckckck) my niece was very sad that she can't go coz she has a final exam the next day, poor her.
getting ready to hump......

Both concerts are at SG Indoor Stadium, i hope the sound system is fixed coz it didn't run well on the last concert i attended. quite a shame but again it's free so i didn't feel lost.

woo hoo..... can't wait for it.....

Gems or Germs

Starting last year close to the IMF conference in SG, government had strongly promoted GEMs campaign. Don't ask me why it names GEMs or what it is stand for as i had no idea. The idea is to get the locals especially in the service lines to provide better services. With the slogan of "One Movement, Many Initiatives". It hoped to result in great service begins with me and go for the extra mile. This campaign is especially dedicated to the transportations, retails, dining, and etc. However, recently they rerun the campaign again by stating that certain places that you visited is guaranteed GEMs quality.

Needless to say how effective nor successful the campaign would be, you still get the same quality of services. I have to admit not all of the places offer bad services but majority the services are just unprofessional and below the standard. The worst are the ones in the transportation industries.

How could the GEMs campaign work while the citizens itself are not friendly enough and with the certain attitudes they carry around and proud of. Basically they just like never study any etiquette nor moral. Everybody is just selfish and don't care about the rest. (PS. I am not saying all sgans but majority that is the impression in my mind).

It would be no end if i have to talk about how many problems and the culture shocks i had when i just moved back to here. Slowly, i just adapted to it.

It's right to say that how could you offer a good service or being a well mannered person while your people are not educated enough on etiquette and hospitality. I acknowledge a lady who used to be ex- Ms. Singapore and currently teaching propriety class doesn't even have a etiquette. So you can imagine the results and how the students who enroll the class behave ckckck....

It is such a shame that you live in a city whom thirst to be hub of asia with good image and high quality of living standards but the services and the people have not met the standards.

Basically, when i am pissed of the service, i would just say "instead of promoting GEMs, they are spreading GERMs" ckckck....

Jakarta

After 6 or 7 years not visiting the city, there wasn't much changes as it is more jam. It's maybe due to the fasting season as well. Aside to that, there are more malls built, int'l hotels, better transportation.

Surprisingly, i found the city has improved a lot except for the traffic jam. The malls are even better than SG, probably because of newly built. Basically, you can find all the stuffs from fashion to restaurants in sg as well as in jkt. Some of them, they even had it before sg started with it. The interior, ambiance, atmosphere of the restaurants are better than sg. My cousin told me that ambiance has taken a crucial role recently, those who are actually in interior business has earned a lot ^^ She mentioned as long as there is a nice atmosphere, people won't care whether the food is tasty or not.

So far, i found the services are way much better than the ones in sg. I think they're the worst i had encounter so far.

The visit was quite memorable coz aside to visit Rina's wedding. The other highlights are i got to meet my granny and friends. My granny has aged a lot since the last time i saw her. She is really getting old and weaker. Somemore, i think it's quite hard in her position due to the family feud. Sometimes, i am even wondering if all of these are the results of big family. I could tell that she is very happy to see me again. I wish I could spend more time with her. I could feel her peaceful mind by just having me accompany at her side. I wish her well being and longevity.

Aside to that i got to meet few of my high school friends and catch up with them. 8 years after our graduation, a lot of things had changed. Some of us are married and even with kids. Within this year itself, i think there are at least 5-6 couples who are getting married.

Of course, i would not forget to mention about the food i had while i'm jkt. You'd amaze of the food i ate on the next day once i arrived. I had nasi uduk as breakfast, nasi padang as lunch, and padang food as dinner. heheheehehe...... For the rest of two days, of course i was having delicious food and good time.

On our returned journey, we arrived airport quite early coz afraid of stucked in jam. Thus, we're fooling around in the airport which my colleagues think that the airport looks more like ferry terminal. ckckck......