Kawaii forever! A day with cutesy encounters.

Went to the MPH book store at Parco Millenia Walk today and along the way I got distracted by the cutest cup ever! So tada!!! I have a new coffee cup!!!!

My awesome kawaii coffee cup!

Now isn't that the cutest thing?!? It comes with a silicon cap (In case I'm jumping around with my coffee perhaps?) and a sweet silicon jacket that will keep my hands safe from the heat! It also spots a slogan that says "Smile Everyday". Awwwwwwww.... I simply cannot resist such level of kawaii-ness. Lol. I guess it will really cheer up my work desk! Many designs available too. Total damage? $16.90.

Meowie and her perfect cup:

That's not the only kawaii stuff I came across today. Check out my young colleague's gelish manicure:

Super kawaii gelish froggy:

Now wouldn't you like that?! When I was schooling I used to love froggy stuff a lot and collect all sort of Japanese made frog related cutesy stuff. Sort of grew out of it due to age and switched to cats.... Wait, is that any more mature? Hmmm.

Anyhow, doesn't pretty things brighten your day? These two items really added a little sparkles to my day! I also came across a pretty picture online:

Isn't that beeeeeeautiful?!? Awesomeness!

Now, cutesy, kawaii and pretty things aside, I bought a book for self-improvement! See? Not all play and no brains! Hope the book will help me do even better at work! Have you ever admired those successful peeps who seem to have it all? You see them chatting confidently at social parties and business meetings. They are the ones with the best jobs, nicest partners and most interesting friends. And they may not even be awfully smart or gorgeous! So communication skills is so so so important! I think I'm decent in my work. But sometimes I wish I'm stronger at my PR skills! Wish me luck!

Food review! ~ Sumiya Japanese Charcoal Grill @ Orchard Central

Okay, before my part 2 on Phuket I thought maybe I will squeeze in this Japanese Grill review. Kekeke. Yep, another food review - Fat die me... 

Some of my colleagues decided to have dinner together. One of the rare occasions. One suggested a Japanese Yakitori concept restaurant at Orchard Central. Frankly, I think I didn't give enough foodie credits to Orchard Central! Maybe I will spend more effort to explore the restaurants there. 

Anyway, the place is called Sumiya. It's located on the top floor (roof level) of Orchard Central. Ye, my colleague managed to find this place through random googling on a totally different topic. Anyway, the place spots a sweet city view. Something like this:

*My apology for a shaky shot but you got the idea. It was going to rain and it was turning dark outside hence the overcast.

Okay now abt the food. I say the concept is pretty fresh to me. You have a whole menu of items with minimal selection of mains. I guess the focus is on bites that would go well with Sake or something. Here's a look of the roll-out style menu. A whole scroll of items mainly in text that make it hard to decide what to eat. Lol.

We decided to stick with trying out the Yakitori. Basically there is a wide selection of meat you can choose, coupled with the type of seasoning - salt, teriyaki sauce or miso flavour. Each stick is roughly $4-5. Here are our selection of beef, pork belly , salmon, asparagus & bacon and truffle oil fries:

 

I ordered the teriyaki salmon and salted beef. I think the beef is good while the salmon was so so. The fries was great although the serving pretty small at $6. We only managed a few fries each among the 4 of us. Haha.

Next we ordered a "main" each except the restaurant only offers light version of the full dish. So imagine a smaller size ramen, udon, etc. Here are our ramen, cold udon, curry rice and garlic fried rice, all at $7 each.

My order of ramen was great. It was small, but the two big slices of cha shu was just nice. $7 is quite cheap too.

The restaurant setting is not bad. Simple but nice:

My total damage for a stick of salmon and beef each, a mini ramen, a 1/4 serving of truffles fries and a refillable hot ocha works out to $22.40 including service charge and tax. Given the ambience, taste of food, services and price, I will give a rating of 8/10. The price is alright, the food is not bad (except the salmon) the ambience is nice and the restaurant service was great. :-D

Phuket weekend getaway part 1: Review of Holiday Inn Resort Phuket

Just back fr a weekend escapee! All thanks to le bf for an anniversary pamper trip! ;-) Feeling really rejuvenated even though it was really short - 3D2N. 

Phuket is really near by flight. Only abt 2 hrs. It has became somewhat over-commercialised with the influx of tourists from the Middle East and China. Still, it's worth a short holiday getaway! The cost is reasonable too. Perhaps $300-$400 could get u 2 nights and a budget round trip flight, depending on what sort of hotel you stay of course.

Le bf travels a lot for work. Due to this, he attained platinum status for the Holiday Inn chain of hotels for all those work trips he attended. Staying at their hotels allow him to clock points for free stay. The resort threw in a free upgrade after assessing his membership status. This gave us a free upgrade to their Busakorn Villa from... Studio room or something. Lucky me! 

The "villa" is actually a unit of a row of two story building. There are 2 blocks of these villas, with a private pool in the middle, restricted usage to the villas' guests. If you stayed on the first floor's unit, you can walk out to the pool. There are other room types in Holiday Inn Phuket Resort at the main wing and a side wing that have more units than the villas' section.

Here's an image from my 2nd story unit of the private pool below. You can roughly tell there are not that many villas. My unit was the first unit at the starting end of the block.

We also got a welcome fruit basket and unlimited free minibar drinks:

The room has 2 "sections", mainly the bedroom with a day bed and balcony, and a section with the washroom, the toilet, a dressing table and a washing basin (much like a walk-in wardrobe). 

Pictures of the Holiday Inn Busakorn Villa room:

King bed:

Day bed at the other end of the room:

Basin area with shower room at the side:

Vanity table with toilet at the side:

One of my main highlight for the trip is my  spa treatment at The Aspara spa, located right at Holiday Inn. According to my half day tour guide, the spa is regarded one of the best Spas in Phuket! The Body Bliss package I had consist of a 30 mins scrub, a 60 mins Swedish massage and a 60 mins heavenly facial. And guess what? There was a one-for-one promo when I was there! So this package for one person works out to only abt $84 for a 2.5hr treat, which is an indulgence at a steal!!! Lol! I'm a fan of overseas spa indulgence experience!

A side note - you don't have to spend a bomb on lodging to enjoy Phuket. This is the third time I'd visited Phuket. I had stayed in budget boutique hotel and 3 stars unknown hotel in the past and those trips were equally memorable.

I will blog more abt stuff at Phuket in the next entry.

DIY nanoblock Daruma doll for good luck

I had always been eyeing those "nanoblock" kit in the market as I'm such a DIY fan. Okay maybe this is not strictly classified as DIY? But hey, it's building urself a toy! Sounds legit as DIY somehow. 

I came across this Daruma set at Changi airport the other day. I'd always seen the fortune cat kit (which my colleague already has one) and this is the first time I see Daruma. Being such a fan of Japanese culture and stuff, I wasted no time to sink in my $13.90 for the toy! So Daruma is officially my first mini bricks toy! Awesome. 

Daruma nanoblock - 180 pieces

Isn't it cute? I think most adults are familiar with Lego being part of our childhood. nanoblock's micro-sized building block just make the concept of bricks building even more fun for adults as a challenge. Plus we can display the finished product with mini space constraint. 

What is nanoblock?

I thought most people should have an idea of what is it already. Just in case, the above is self explanatory.

What's inside the kit?

It's sensible that the company had sorted out the tiny bricks according to similar size and colour packages for us. Also come with a clear instruction. ;-)

Enough said. My finished product after some errors and rectification:

Isn't it so omg freaking cute? Haha! I think I will go get the fortune cat set too! This will be displayed at my office desk soon. ;-)

What's a Daruma doll?

Ok, seriously I think this is worth elaborating. I had always known this red bearded man toy is popular with Japanese as a symbol of good luck and it is the kinda toy that will always stand upright no matter how u push it (不倒翁）but I just dunno the actual history of the toy. I did a wiki search and it revealed that Daruma doll is modeled after Dharma, the founder of Zen sect of Buddhism, which is the main religion in Japan. It is typically red because it is believed that the highest ranking priest in the past wears red. The good luck notion is associated with Dharma's past writing of New Year's charms that is supposed to bring prosperity and happiness and ward off accidents and misfortune. Now how's that for a little bit of cultural education?! :-)

Sunday leisure & dinner at Porn's Thai Restaurant @ Mt Faber SAFRA

Spent a leisurely Sunday doing random cheap (relatively) stuffs.

Went to Island Creamery at McDonald's HQ along Bukit Timah (Not really sure what is the building name lah!) and had a soursop sorbet (Sorrt no pic, but it's nice!). The wall deco there was simply awesome, plastered by creative doodles by their young customers. Simply cannot resist taking a snap: 

Isn't it freaking cool? I especially like the unicorn one if you can spot it, which reads "Unicorns love ice cream". Ha!  It's adapted from the unicorn toy in "Despicable Me" if I'm not wrong. If you can spot the unicorn, you may wanna look to its upper right on a funny picture of a fat boy that says "I actually have a girlfriend". Totally hilarious. I'm assuming it's the boy himself saying he is fortunate to have someone. 

Was lazing at le bf house in the afternoon watching CSI and NYPD on cable tv. Awesome free entertainment and crime shows are my fav! ;-D At the same time, cleared some work emails sent off to le boss. I'm so hardworking I brought my laptop out to work on a Sunday? I know. 

Went to one of my fav Thai restaurants in the evening for dinner - PORN's Thai restaurant at Mt Faber SAFRA. Why do I like the place? Well I'm not sure about the other outlets but the one at Mt Faber SAFRA is very spacious and it has a freaking tall ceiling (Oh, have I ever mentioned I have a fetish for awesome tall ceilings, especially decorated ones?), the food is decent and it's less rowdy. Anyway, it's worth blogging abt simply because of its signature Thai Prawn Cakes.

PORN's is a restaurant chain by Pornsak, our local tv host/celebrity. It brands itself with the slogan "Sexy. Thai. Food", although I'm not sure what that means lah. Maybe it means good food is sexy? Sounds legit. Haha.

The restaurant's logo featured the cute backside of an elephant, the sacred animal in Thailand. Always felt it's cute and witty, like the restaurant owner. (Oh yeah, I do like Pornsak as a tv host.) 

Feeling quite camwhorish today. Here comes the photos!

Wall feature at PORN's restaurant that's quite random and cool:

 See, plain white boring walls can become designer with some creative thinking! 

Random shelf with old toys at PORN's restaurant:

There are more than one such shelves with such charming old toys but some of them are placed too high up and hard to take a pic.

Next are the food! -

Phad Thai ($9.90, excl taxes) @ PORN's restaurant

The taste of PORN's phad thai today is a bit poorer compared to my previous visits. Usually it's quite good. But it's still edible and nice lah. Maybe there is a change of chef or the usual one is on leave.

Le bf's Pineapple rice ($9.90, excl taxes) @ PORN's restaurant.

First time we try pineapple rice here. There was too much of some spice in the rice and it tasted like some sort of curry rice instead. Fail.

Thai Prawn Cakes ($8.90, excl taxes) @ PORN's restaurant

This should be a must try here. The prawn cakes are really good and they are stuffed with fresh prawns. Succulent! Nice! 

Coffee addicts (like me) should try their Thai ice coffee ($3.90, excl taxes) too:

Ice water is not free here ($o.50 charge) so I prefer to take the coffee. It's delicious, not too sweet or milky, and had a tinge of bitterness. 

Next is IKEA window shopping in the evening at Alexandra. Spent about 2 plus hours there with zero purchase. (Windows shopping is free! Yeay!!!) And even though I heard a bit about their furniture being not lasting, I really like their designs! I especially like their "squeeze everything into a mini showroom" concept, showing how we can decorate our living space creatively. I can spend hours there admiring the displays and not buying anything. 

Here's le me at their toys section: 

(Camwhoring is free too!) I used abt 4 apps to create this combi effect. Nice right? I'm talented. Haha! 

This sort of concluded my leisurely Sunday. Yeay!!! Happy Sunday!!!

Supper! Prata & Maggie Goreng @ Al Ameen Eating House, Upper Bukit Timah Road

If you are hungry in the middle of the night and crave for some local favorites, you can consider Al Ameen Eating House at Upper Bukit Timah Road. It's 24 hours and offer a mind boggling menu of local delicacies including stir fried seafoods, all sort of pratas, mutton soup, all sort of goreng carbs (rice, Maggie, bee hoon etc) and all sort of drinks including the awesome local style milo dinosaur.

So here's my Friday supper, after a light dinner earlier on.

Le bf's tissue prata:

Verdict: A little sweet as the underside of the thin "bread" is coated with sugar. Good for sharing though. 

My Maggie Goreng:

Verdict: A little too oily but is damn satisfying. ;-P 

We also ordered 1 hot milo and 1 ice milo. The total cost works out to $9, which I think is reasonable considering that the place is 24 hrs. 

Al Ameen Eating House

I recalled the eating house used to be bigger, at a corner of the stretch of shophouses. It's currently in the middle of the stretch. There's a construction site blocking the shophouses from the sight of the main road. Maybe that affected the  customer number and they shifted to a smaller unit. Overall I will give it a rating of 7/10 considering the variety on the menu, the ready availability 24 hrs, reasonable pricing, price and fairly friendly service personnel.

Location of Al Ameen, courtesy grab from google map (don't we love google?):

Parting with a goofy fish eye effect (quite fugly, but damn funny) photo taken by le bf and my adding of random cartoonish stickers. Haha!

Comfort food!!!!!

What's your comfort food when you are down and out? Chocolate? Fried chicken wings? A thick slab of delicious steak? I'm sure you have something to crave when you are down! Today I'm gonna blog on some of my favorite but low cost comfort food! Some are even considered healthy! 

My no. 1 nemesis in sinful binging is Ruffles potato chips! Not just any Ruffles! It must be sour cream & onion flavour! I cannot resist them, and I crave them esp when I'm having PMS or am sad for whatever reason. But I do sometimes crave them when I'm happy too. I recall there were times I clawed out the comfort of my bed to comb my neighborhood for the flavour that I want. That's less than $5 for total comfort. Nevermind the waist line. Sometimes you just have to let go and give yourself what your soul wants! Wakakaka!

My second comfort food is something I only started eating in recent years. I mentioned - I love yogurt! I love it as a dessert and I love it as a treat after a day of hard work. I had at times, walk quite a long distance to eat yogurt on my own. And the best thing is that it's supposedly healthier than ice cream for a snack?

My third comfort food is something less commonly termed a comfort food. Oh what the heck, I can't even decide between 2 items - orange juice and grapes. But I know why they are my comfort food. When I was a kid, my nanny would buy me these when I'm sick. So overtime they became the symbols of comfort. 

Today I had a large Sogurt yogurt (blogged before how good it is) in lychee flavour. And I bought Ruffles and grapes home on standby.

Haha! I hope you have something healthy in mind as one of your comfort food! Otherwise, you are lucky if you are skinny! Bless you. And stay happy.

A wacky picture before I sign off: 

Watami Japanese restaurant - chicken katsu @ Raffles City

Just a quick post on my fav chicken katsu. If you like Japanese katsu, you may wanna try one at Watami (if you haven't)! It's really my fav katsu in Sg. Why? It's delicious and reasonably priced! I'd tried other fancier restaurants' katsu priced over $20 per serve and I would say Watami's doesn't lose out in taste at just $12.80 (excl tax). If you go at lunch time, the lunch time set is even cheaper! The pork version is equally good. And they serve free ice water.

It comes in a hot plate/pot over a burner. You are given an egg to crack, beat and pour over the seasoning and already pre fried katsu in the pot. Let it sits for just a little while for the egg to cook. Your delicious big fat katsu is served! Perfect when you slogged through a whole day of meetings and utterly famished! 

The branch I usually visit is at Raffles City.   Quite a big outlet hence less queue. Only issue was foreign labour who was not adequately trained to take orders. Ended up my colleague ate her soba that was served without the tempura. By the time the tempura finally arrived, she had already finished her soba. Lol. 

My katsu rating: 9.5/10!!!

Foodie post: Au Chocolat @ Marina Bay Sands

Ok ok. This post will be flooded with images of a lot of food ate by 4 women. The individual item cost is now a blur. But each of us paid $40 in the split bill if that is of any good reference to you. This is a back dated post of my girls night out last month.

Presenting you with the Au Chocolat review!

Cute menu

  

The restaurant puts in a lot of effort in presentation so I consider it one of those fancy imported eateries with mid range pricing. Be it menu look, restaurant setting and food presentation, they have mostly covered the look section. The restaurant is located on level 3 of MBS, at the very end where the skating rink sits below. It can be roughly said to be split into 3 sections - One for drinks and gelato with some chairs and tall tables, one for their pastries and merchandise with no seating & one serving sit down ala carte food. The price range for ala carte dishes are roughly in the $20 range.

Here are the food we ordered: 

Truffles Fries (Price forgotten) - chunky fries with truffles seasoning. Big serving that's good for sharing. Comes with 2 dips, mayonnaise and BBQ.

Creamy chicken and mushroom crepe ($18, excl tax) - succulent chicken served with sautéed mushrooms, bacon, garlic & sour cream. It may not be visible from this picture but it's actually a very big crepe. I think girls should share it. The portion is too big for one. My girl friend said the taste is not bad.

Smoked Salmon Crepe ($20, excl tax) - Norwegian salmon with apples and cream cheese. My girl friend said it's good.

The Great Carnivore ($20, excl tax) - ham, mushrooms, cheese with eggs, sausages, hash browns, bacon and bread. This is my order. Other than the perk of it being a giant serving, I find the taste itself average. The hash browns were already slightly cold when it first arrived. Unlucky me! Anyway, the serving of 3 eggs is simply too much. Haha.

Burger ( price forgotten) - ok I forgot what exactly the burger contains and it's official dish name. It looks like beef, bacon, cheese, mushroom and fries. Actually this looks the most delicious of the 4 mains we ordered. My friend said its good too.

We went to the other section to order the pastry desserts for share. 

Calamansi Merengue (price forgotten. I think it's abt $8-9). This is extremely sour but my girl friends seemed to enjoy it much more than me. I guess it's an acquired taste! This tart looking thing is actually quite big. Like a small cake.

Apple pie slice (I think it's $8) - No doubt my favorite of all the dishes. Not that it's exceptional, but it's good. I love apple pie.

We each order a coffee too. My mocha (price forgotten) tastes ok ok only. It looks like this:

My overall verdict: 7/10. I think you can go for the overall ambience. The food was in my opinion - so-so, not exceptionally good. For the same price, you might get much tastier stuff. But no doubt the overall atmosphere do give you a pampered tai-tai feel and is worth the occasional indulgence on weekends.