The past few weeks

I went to watch fireworks on both days (Friday and Saturday - 17 & 18 Aug) and thought that China's fireworks were more special. They had stuff like exploding flowers which I had never seen before. However, the show was marred by lots of smoke which consumed the entire sky, including the fireworks, and made Singapore look like Genting Highlands. I'm not sure whether that was due to the coincidental absence of wind which allowed the smoke to linger around or "ah-hem" due to the quality of the fireworks. I mean, with the recent spate of events like the recalling of made-in-China toys which had too much lead on em made me feel that the latter could be a possibility. Anyways, I enjoyed both shows although I would enjoy it more if I could listen to the music which accompanied the fireworks.

Recently my dad is crazy over karaoke. I think the karaoke session we had during my birthday had sparked the inner-singer in him. He bought like 100 over dollars worth of english songs collections from Mustafa as well as a new dvd player, and has been having karaoke sessions every weekend. Of course, me and Shiqi joined in and thus, we had quite a lot of singing sessions at home the past couple of weeks.

Yesterday, I treated Benson, Chunfa and Lijie to my well-overdue birthday dinner. We were at Carnivore at Chijmes, which was a Brazilian-style buffet whereby the chefs walk around brandishing knives and a variety of meat types skewered on a metal rod. They will come to your table and carve the meat right in front of you onto your plate. Interesting concept but soon enough, we understood why the place was named Carnivore. We had all kinds of meat (beef, chicken, mutton, pork) from all parts of the animal (hump, thigh, rib... ...) on our plates in a span of 5 minutes. They tasted good but after awhile, we got really tired of the meaty stuff and lost track of what we were eating. The starter buffet (yes, starter, don't ask me why I didn't have it before the meat) was a huge relief from the slabs of meat, meat and more meat. The only non-meaty stuff which were carved onto our plates were fish and pineapple. The pineapple was good and refreshing as it helped to cleanse the meaty taste in our mouth. By the time we were done, our tummys were bulging and we had sworn off meat for at least the next couple of days.

After that we went to Dragonfly at St. James Power Station. The place was pretty crowded and it seemed like the re-entry queue was longer than the paying queue. We were going into the paying queue anyway, so it didn't really matter to us. The crowd there consisted of mostly people in their 30s to early 40s, which made us the youngest ones around. We certainly felt a little out of place. Anyway, the performances put up by the live band and guest singers were ok. Sly was there. As was the guy from echo boyz who didn't make it into the Singapore Idol finals. Among the crowd we spotted the careless whisper guy (the guy that whispered an entire song during the Idol contest) as well as Patricia Mok, who looked really happy to be there. All in all, nice music but old crowd.

By the way, the cast from heroes are coming to vivocity next Friday, 31st Aug. Ha! Too bad the really cool heroes will not be visiting our sunny island. The heroes coming include Hiro, Niki, Mohinder and Matt. Oh, and Lijie commented that I look like Peter Petrelli without my glasses on. I totally agreed.

Birthday and Annivesary

On my birthday, we went to some steamboat restaurant behind the 7-storey hotel opposite Bugis Junction. Their crab noodles are supposed to be famous. Their Hainanese chicken too. We ordered a steamboat set for 6 (my dad, mum, sis & bf, me & gf), the crab noodles, and the steam chicken. The crab noodle was good, the steam chicken ok, and the steamboat average.

Me & gf

Sis & bf

Dad & Mum

Dessert after at some shop which has pictures of celebrities (who had visited the shop) pasted over their front window. The almond paste and the mango + jackfruit + dunno-wat tasted really good.

And karaoke...

As for my 4th year annivesary with Shiqi, I forgot to bring the camera... so no pics for that. We went to Wild Rocket (in some hotel at Mt. Emily). We had ginseng chicken (ang moh style) soup, cod linguine, lamb shank and some chocolate lava desert. Every dish was really good... and the ambience was cosy. I would recommend the place to others... but note that the price is pretty steep.

Oh and FYI, I met JJ Lin Junjie at NUH the other day. He was there for some charity with the kids in the paediatrics ward, and he walked past me! Haha... if not for my lab coat and student profile, I would have gotten his signature!

Maria 김아중(Kim Ah-joong)

From the movie "200 Pounds Beauty"

Hey There Delilah

The 1st time I heard this song on the radio, I thought "wow, nice song". The other day on my way home, I was thinking about this song and hoping that the radio will play it again, and true enough, I heard the soothing guitar intro... so here I am, posting this for u to enjoy too