Dinner at MELT

Dad & Mum had dining vouchers that were expiring on 31 Dec 2010. They offered it to us and we decided to use it.

I made a reservation on the day itself and was surprised to be told that I could only get a table for 2 at 8pm on a Tuesday night!

We arrived early and decided to just try for an earlier sitting. The main buffet area was packed, but we were able to sit outside by the mini garden. It was lovely cos it was a cool night and hardly anyone wanted to sit outside. (Honestly, the indoor buffet sitting area was soooo noisy!)


I generally just attacked the sashimi, prawns and belgium waffles. There were tons of other stuff, but I had to be very selective for my not-made-for-buffet tummy! It was nice to slowly have dinner from 7.30pm to 10pm!

On the way out, we found out that the buffet was $68++ per pax! Singaporeans really DO love buffets!

Christmas Day

We usually have Christmas day lunch as a family. This year, we decided to try a new dim sum place instead of our regular Crystal Jade Palace.


Qiang made a booking at Taste Paradise at Ion and it definitely lived up to the good reviews we've heard/read. Special mention must be given to the 'char siew soh'. If Qiang, the 'char siew soh' connoisseur, says it is good, IT IS GOOD!


Almost everything we ordered was nice. Pity we didn't have room for dessert!

Super early Christmas party

Our 1st Christmas party of the year was held on 9 Dec! It forced me to start on my Christmas presents early which helped lessen the stress near Christmas.


The whole party actually came together in 4 days and we packed the house at the Pinnacle! This is what happens when you have a very friendly CG! :)

Cinderel-lah!

I love going for musicals and I had not seen 1 in Singapore all year!

Gurmit Singh was hilarious! Emma Yong and Sebastian Tan's singing was superb!

I was hoping it would be like the last Dim Sum Dollies show I watched and thoroughly enjoyed. However, Cinderel-lah! was more family-friendly and catered for children. Edmund enjoyed it tons! ;p

Hong Kong 2010

Edmund loves Hong Kong. If there was no Singapore and he could choose, he would like to live in Hong Kong. It was a real treat for him to be able to join the family in Hong Kong at the last minute. You should have seen how happy he was when he found out he could actually go!


The weather was lovely in Hong Kong although the skies were always hazy. We spent most of the trip meeting up with family friends. Edmund's only request was that we go to Ocean Park and so we did.


At Ocean Park

The trip was too short and we ate ourselves silly as usual.

Kowloon, Hong Kong

Ever since Edmund found out that he could now join the family in Hong Kong, he has been singing refrains from this old song...



It's so terribly catchy, I find myself humming the refrain in my head every now and then!

Oriental Night

Event: LSBC’s staff family night

Venue: Quality Hotel

Theme: Oriental


It was sort of a mini dinner and dance, and it was the most fun one I’ve ever attended! Everyone was participative and that made it most enjoyable! The program was so well-planned, the night flew by without a boring moment!


Edmund’s “calligraphy” shirt from Malacca came in handy again! It even won him the ‘Male Orient of the Night’ contest! Actually, I think it was his niang-niang poses that won him the title!

Truly a Proverbs 31 woman

A Wife of Noble Character

Who can find a virtuous and capable wife? She is more precious than rubies.

Her husband can trust her, and she will greatly enrich his life.

She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.

She finds wool and flax and busily spins it.

She is like a merchant’s ship, bringing her food from afar.

She gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household and plan the day’s work for her servant girls.

She goes to inspect a field and buys it; with her earnings she plants a vineyard.

She is energetic and strong, a hard worker.

She makes sure her dealings are profitable; her lamp burns late into the night.

Her hands are busy spinning thread, her fingers twisting fiber.

She extends a helping hand to the poor and opens her arms to the needy.

She has no fear of winter for her household, for everyone has warm clothes.

She makes her own bedspreads. She dresses in fine linen and purple gowns.

Her husband is well known at the city gates, where he sits with the other civic leaders.

She makes belted linen garments and sashes to sell to the merchants.

She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.

When she speaks, her words are wise, and she gives instructions with kindness.

She carefully watches everything in her household and suffers nothing from laziness.

Her children stand and bless her. Her husband praises her:
“There are many virtuous and capable women in the world, but you surpass them all!”

Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; but a woman who fears the LORD will be greatly praised.

Reward her for all she has done. Let her deeds publicly declare her praise.

I always thought Proverbs 31 was asking the impossible. Looks like I've been proven wrong by this amazing lady!


I feel terribly sad because I can't imagine the feelings of loss her husband must be going through now. They spent 63 years of their lives together deeply in love with each other, supporting each other.

MM not only had foresight in building up a nation, but he had great foresight in choosing a wife. Not many men would marry a lady smarter or older than them. Most men are intimidated by that, but not MM.

MM looking really handsome in this photo

1st stayover guest

Our Thai friend we met in Dallas is the 1st person to stayover at our place.

Edmund must be pleased I was forced to clear the tornado-struck room (which is usually my "overflow" room) for our guest.

Comment from our 1st stayover guest: Edmund is the cleanest guy he's met.

God knows Edmund needs some balancing up. That's why He placed me with Edmund. I am one messy dudette!

It's a pity it took me only 15 mins for the room to start looking like a war-zone again after our guest left.

Ending the celebrations at Sage

It was hard to find a date everyone in the family could make it for my birthday dinner, but we finally found it before September officially ended.

Based on a recommendation from an ex-colleague who usually celebrates her extra-special occasions at Sage, and many good reviews online, I decided to have dinner there.

Since there were 7 of us, we could try almost every main course on the menu. We opted for 1 set dinner since dad wanted the lamb and ordered ala carte for the rest.

For appetisers:
Foie gras
Mushroom soup
Caesar salad that came with the set dinner

Reviews all seem to rave about the foie gras at Sage so we had 2 portions of it. I may be prejudiced, but I prefer the foie gras at Osia.

The mushroom soup was really really good although the eggy thing that came with it was a little strange.

The caesar salad with smoked salmon, walnuts and apples was really refreshing. I enjoyed that!

For main course:
cod
duck confit
black angus beef (portion for 2)
lamb shank
aglio olio (Edmund requested for mushrooms and smoked salmon instead of their usual seafood aglio olio)

While the food was good, it wasn't fantastic enough for me to want to eat there again.

For dessert:
Peanut butter panna cotta with raspberry sherbert (came with the set dinner)
Lavender bread and butter pudding with coconut sherbert (birthday complimentary)


I really enjoyed the panna cotta and bread and butter pudding by itself but I didn't see how the taste of the 2 sherberts complimented each dessert at all!

In my opinion, I'd rather eat at Osia.

(Btw, the best bread and butter pudding with coconut ice cream I've had is at Margarita's at Faber Avenue. Unfortunately, they don't serve the bread and butter pudding anymore. You can still try the coconut ice cream with their other desserts though!)

Bangkok

We went to Bangkok with the excuse that we were celebrating our 1st year wedding anniversary. We took quite awhile deciding on the date, the airline and the hotel, and if you ask me, I might have changed all 3 decisions on hindsight.


We ended up going the weekend the red shirts decided to have their peaceful protest. Thank God it was really peaceful but that also meant the shops in the area were all closed that evening, and for some strange reason, the hotel reception adviced us not to go to the Suan Lum bazaar that wasn't anywhere near the protest site. Nonetheless, it was quite cool to see the sea of red shirts from the train we were in. (Just imagine all the shopping centres along Orchard Road closed and the whole road just packed with people dressed in red instead of motor vehicles.)

This was my 1st time taking a budget flight out of Singapore. Faith & Boon Yeow calls Jetstar 'LATESTAR' and it sure lived up to it's nickname. Our 9.20pm flight home ended up a 1.10am flight. No more LATESTAR for me if I can help it.


Another 1st for me was taking the train from Bangkok airport right to the doorstep of the hotel. Previously, I've always taken a taxi. But with the notorious traffic jams and the fact that we had a lot of time on our hands (we landed at 9am), we decided to take the train. I would highly recommend this mode of transportation if your hotel is within walking distance from a BTS station. We took the airport rail (15 baht) to Phaya Thai station and then took the BTS 1 stop to Ratchethewi to Asia Hotel (15 baht). All this in under 1 hour.

Asia Hotel was great for it's proximity to the BTS. It's one of the few hotels in Bangkok that is linked directly to the station. The hotel is terribly old but I was banging on getting a newly renovated room. While we got upgraded to a premier room which was huge and probably really classy in the 1980s, it was too run down for my liking in 2010! ;p But at the end of the day, it was just as well that we didn't pick a hotel near the peaceful protest area which many well-known and popular hotels are situated!


Biggest purchase for me: Wacoal underwear
Biggest purchase for Edmund: a pair of spectables with transition lens


Due to the protest, we had less opportunity to shop... a blessing in disguise for Edmund! haha!

At Osia with cousin Grace

I was asking Grace for restaurant recommendations since she’s in the F&B industry (sort of) and she brought up Osia at Resorts World.

It’s been awhile since the 2 of us caught up outside of an extended family gathering, so we decided to catch up at Osia!

We made it just in time to have the pre-dinner set menu at $38++. For every course, there were 4 choices.

For appetizers:
We had the carpaccio and burnt potato broth. Both were great! I enjoyed the tender angus beef bits in the broth.


For mains:
We had the sea bass and duck. Both were very yummy! Grace asked for extra sauce for the duck.


For dessert:
We had the valrhona hot chocolate soup (over-rated) with black pepper ice cream and macademia nut tart with a berry sherbert (loved it!).


The portions were just nice for me (which are probably too tiny for guys). Grace suggested the foie gras on top of our set and it was exquisite! The winter melon (i think) complimented the foie gras so well. It wasn’t over-powering like some other foie gras I’ve tried.


Thank you Grace for the wonderful dinner! I so enjoyed hanging out with you over good food! I can finally say I’ve been to Resorts World even if I didn’t explore it much! I can't wait to go back to Osia to try out other items on the menu!


On the way out, we were each given 2 paper Resort World lanterns!

Travelling ahead of us

Edmund got us invited to Andy & Yumin's place at Simei for dinner because we wanted to see their new temporary place!

We attended pre-marital classes together. They got married in June 2009 and are expecting their 1st-born in Dec 2010! (We got married in Sep 2009 and are not expecting anytime in 2010! ;p)

Andy and Yu Min were so sweet and thoughtful to bless us with a wedding anniversary present (Kathryn Scott's 'We still believe' CD) and a little birthday present for me!

1st year wedding anniversary

How the year has flown by! God has been so good to us and Edmund has been very good to me! If you are wondering if he still writes me a card every month, HE DOES!

My anniversary present from Edmund:


This time last year, we were in church getting married.

This year, we also spent it in church! Edmund had to preach while I was on backup vocal duty.

After 2nd service, we had a Thai lunch together.


While I got to go home to rest, Edmund had to go back to church all the way till it was time for dinner at Chikuwa Tei at 9 Mohamed Sultan.

Chikuwa Tei is well-known for it’s chirashi don and cod fish hot pot. I was still feeling very full from lunch, so 2 of us ended up sharing a $39 set meant for 1. Unfortunately it wasn't fantastic. I must go back there to try their 2 specialties.

Just in time for our 1st year anniversary were the words of advice and blessings that were written to us at our wedding. Jasmine got them bound up in booklets and decorated them really prettily for us to read through! Even though we only got our hands on them 1 year later, it’s fun to be going through them now!

Overeating in the name of my birthday

The highlight of my birthday was getting to hang out with Edmund and friends eating WAY TOO MUCH!

Pig-out 1: Yamada Restaurant & Sushi Bar at The Sail @ Marina Bay
The cut of salmon sashimi was so generous and fresh. I got a complimentary scoop of my favourite sesame ice cream because it was my birthday!


After that, Edmund and I explored the area, walked around Customs House and into The Fullerton Bay Hotel.


Pig-out 2: Margarita’s at Faber Avenue
I had my favourite catfish dish (only available at Faber) and got a complimentary brownie with a scoop of coconut ice cream!


Pig-out 3: At home
Jasmine, Faith & Yeow came over to chat over Long Flat Moscato wine, Port Salut with Sky Flakes crackers, Awfully Chocolate rum and cherry cake and bak kwa! Haha! They only left at 12.30am cos we kept talking and talking!

Teochew Gals at Ma Maison

What was meant to be a catch up with my teochew gal friends ended up also as an early mini birthday celebration at Ma Maison at The Central.

A lot of people rave about Ma Maison. Because their restaurants are small, there always seems to be a queue. Forget about trying to make a reservation for a Fri/Sat/Sun only 1 or 2 days before. I kiasu-ly made the reservation for 4 of us 2 weeks before!

This is my 2nd time to Ma Maison, and I still don’t find the food memorable. The escargot, tonkatsu set and paella was nice, but I didn’t appreciate the hamburger steak or the beef stroganoff with omu rice. The brownie was quite awful (dry, accompanied by low-class ice cream)!


The girls gave me a really pretty card made by Ivy, surprised me with Taka vouchers (Irene asked me over msn what is a good voucher to buy for a friend and I totally didn’t suspect that it was for me!) and gave me a dinner treat.


The night flew by and I’m looking forward to the next time we catch up... especially now when I'm not in the same church and CPU as them!!!