CNY dinner at 波记

It has become somewhat a tradition to gather the few colleagues of ours for a CNY get together at this restaurant at Tiong Bahru called Bo Ji. Two former colleagues Yunqin and Tracy joined us. Wai Mun, who was supposed to attend the dinner as well, could not join in as he was down with the flu.

Here are the photos, fellas.

Netherlands Trip 26 Jan - 4 Feb 08

Hi All, Here's wishing everyone a prosperous Lunar New Year! Gong xi gong xi!




This is my 2nd post on this blog..and I decided to write a little about my recent trip to the Netherlands. On the night of 26 Jan, the PUB delegation headed by DWSN flew off to Amsterdam, marking the start of our 1-week study trip. We stayed in a hotel located at the city of Utrecht, which is ~30mins drive from Amsterdam Schipol airport. On the first day of arrival (which was our only free day), Tzeweng, Yunita and I dashed off to Amsterdam by train as we wanted to make full use of our time to visit Amsterdam. We walked around Dam Square and visited some places of interest like Madam Tussauds Museum and Anne Frank House. When the sky became darker at ard 5+pm, we finally managed to find the red light district, which I think was indeed an eye opener for all of us! haha...^^ Despite feeling quite tired after the near 14hr flight, I suppose the 3 of us had lotsa fun in Amsterdam.


The next 5.5 days was pretty tiring for us...as our schedule was almost fully packed with discussions and visits to water companies. Our host was really nice enough to bring us for some sightseeing though...and we also had dinner at his place! On our 2nd last day, we managed to spend some time shopping at Utrecht Centraal (which is unfortunately the only happening place in Utrecht). We had dinner at the same Chinese restaurant located at Utrecht Centraal for 3 consecutive nights because DWSN missed chinese food so much..haha..But well, I didn't like the food there either. It was always bread with ham/cheese for lunch, and the 'extremely dry' lunch was totally not to my liking!! *Like what DWSN said, no wonder their per capita water consumption is so low!* And Phew heng I managed to buy some souvenirs/food for my family, colleagues, friends and of coz myself.


Overall, I'm glad to have had a chance to go to Europe for my 1st official trip and it was good exposure for me. Although such trips don't come free (ie. there are lots of followups, reporting etc. to do), I'm still happy that I had a chance to go to the Netherlands with my bosses and the 2 very intelligent Tzeweng and Yunita, who helped to ease alot of my load with regards to writing reports etc.! :) Oh Yes...Special thanks to my mentor Mr Tze Weng for helping me take alot of photos with his v gd camera; although he always gave me THAT look when I requested for him to take my photo, I'm glad he still helped me to take quite a no. of nice pics! LOL~ And also thanks to DD(NO), who seemed to like taking my portraits very much. haha...Featuring one of my fav photos below: The Little Pink Riding Hood and the terrorist!

Primary School friends Gathering ( 5 Feb 08 )

Met with my primary school classmates yesterday night. This was the second gathering. The first was almost a year ago. This time I saw two classmates WH and SB for the first time since we left our primary school. Both still looked pretty similar to what I recalled of their faces some 20 years ago. I am very happy to say that they are doing well, especially WH who is now a partner at a leading law firm in Singapore.

Dinner was full of oily and unhealthy food at Lau Pa Sat. J ordered a medium sized plate of cockles, she missed it as she is based in US for her work, so cockles are a treat. Even my doctor friend A tucked in heartily into the still quite bloody cockles.

Our next gathering will be during N's wedding dinner in March. Looking forward to that day.

Hot Porridge on a Rainy Day

It has been raining relentlessly today, so the weather was nice and cooling for a relaxing Sunday alternating between reading and tidying up the house for Chinese New Year.

For dinner, what better meal than hot piping porridge and tasty but healthy steamed fish and simply fried vegetables. Where's this place? This is the hawker centre opposite Bishan Park, near a Caltex Petrol Station. The fish is fresh and nicely steamed, the braised duck is simply delicious and the porridge, so hot and appropriate for a rainy day.

Inconsiderate people

After I finished walking my dog, I sat down on the ledge at the void deck, both to read the morning's newspaper and to let Dana rest before heading home.

I noticed a few scraps of cloth were being thrown down. When I looked up, I noticed some activity on the seventh floor, the owner was probably clearing up the ledge below the bamboo holders.

Suddenly, a whole package flew down and dropped to a loud "Thud"! Alarmed, I walked out and looked up at the seventh floor. A middle aged auntie looked down and me and apologetically said "Sorry. I will go and pick this up later."

I waited for around 10 mins and no one appeared to remove the offending package, which I saw were a pair of sports shoes tied in a plastic bag. Even later after I finished my lunch and came back home, the shoes were still there.

Really, like MM said recently, a gracious Singapore will take a long time to come.

Chinatown - CNY spirit

My family and I visited Chinatown to get a sense of the imminent Lunar New Year. I used to remember my parents used to bring my brothers and me to immerse the new year spirit, browsing the many makeshift stalls selling wares and goodies. Now that Chinatown has shrank and modernised (sanitised in my opinion), the atmosphere of old is no longer there, although the streets are cleaner and better laid out.

Here's a photo of the Hong Lim complex which I frequented (almost daily) for lunch when I temp-ed at OCBC after my A-levels. One of my favourite stalls was the dumpling noodle stall. Despite its age, the HDB flats still look rather welcoming. Many of the malls and skyscrapers present now were not present in 1993!

This is Waterloo Street. On the right of this street is Chinatown.

To cater to tourists, one of the streets earlier passable to road traffic has been converted to a padestrians only street, akin to Mongkok in Hongkong. It is called Food Street now but I say don't bet too much on the quality of the food. When we passed by the street in the early afternoon, there were not many people.

But when we passed by it on the way home around 7pm, it was brimming with people. There was even a traffic police officer stationed at the roadside.

This is the recently constructed Buddha Tooth Temple. Even though I am a Buddhist, I cannot concur with the overtly commercialised nature of the temple. But it is still an interesting place to visit, especially for tourists.

See how busy Chinatown is! I recall the streets were even more crowded when I was a young boy. Maybe the day is still young and the crowd will increase as the day wears on.

Dinner at Whampoa

Dinner was at Chang Cheng (loosely translated as Great Wall) Porridge at a coffee shop near Whampoa hawker centre. Yup, this is a branch of the famous porridge joint at Chinatown. The taste of the food is say 80-90% of Chinatown stall, but the main benefit is that the coffeeshop is more spacious at Whampoa and there is practically no queue.

I had fish porridge ($2.70) and a huge plate of sashimi ($4) topped up with a plate of Xin Zhou Mi Fen ($3) from the zi char stall.

After dinner, we took a stroll around the newly renovated Whampoa hawker centre. As it was near Chinese New Year time, the shops have started selling related items, decorations and plants.

American Idol is back!

Seven 7 has started! The start of the season is audition time and is the best time to get a few laughs at the William Hung wannabes.

One of the most memorable auditees was a big sized man all covered up in a dark cloak. He opened it once in the audition room and revealed that he was wearing something equivalent to a bikini. When Paula remarked that his chest hair was distracting, this chap actually went to get his chest hair removed in the most cruel and direct way -- using sticky tape! Yicks!

Char Siew Rice at Pek Kio

Pek Kio (white bridge in Mandarin) or Cambridge hawker centre is one of my favourite places for lunch. It has a few good stalls that sells tasty food and it is clean and spacious. Parking is also easy as there is a large open HDB car park just opposite the road.

The Adam Road prawn noodle is recommended but I suspect that the tasty soup is due to the liberal amount of msg and other seasoning the auntie adds to the soup. Order the $5 version for larger prawns. The most expensive version costs $10.

The other recommended stall is the roasted meat stall run by two sisters. The roasted duck, char siew and roasted pork are all very good and affordable. Today, I ordered the roasted pork and char siew rice which costs only $2.50. I ordered the fried vegetables at an additional $0.50.

Why the difference?

Have you noticed that the number pads on your telephone and on your calculator are designed differently?