Shoot me

Ok I know this sounds pathetic but it's only been 6 days and I'm already having a serious case of intense longing for some tongue-numbing, gut wrenching jolt of super hot CHILLI. I don't care if it's sambal balachan (i'll just scream if i ever find this here) or fresh cut chilli padi or chicken rice chilli as long as it's tongue-numbing, gut wrenching jolt of chilli......er ok i said that already, think the dire lack of chilli is having it's effect on my brain.

Actually, there do sell chilli padi here. I almost died and gone to heaven when i saw those cute lil red things but believe it or not, I didn't buy it. 

2 reasons:

1. It's called Chilli Bullet.

My immediate thought was "Er, hot or not?"

2. It's FRigging 4 bucks for like 15 pieces!

So combine the sceptic in me and my singaporean sense of how much chilli padi should cost, i simply couldn't bring myself to get it.

This was 3 days ago but i confess right now, I'm seriously tempted to give in to this daylight robbery just to get my chilli fix. 

Then again, I think i'll wait till C comes then we go marketing at the Chinatown market where asian foodstuffs prices are alot more sane. I might just buy myself a chilli plant! 

Anyway this is gonna be one of the many boh-liao post you'll be reading here. The little details in life we take for granted: LIKE CHILLI!

Finally

Yes, having arrived in Sydney last nite, I've officially crossed the over to the new frontier.

The excitement didn't really hit me till I was on the plane and having nothing to do, i had alot of time to daydream & dwell on this new chapter.

Today's my first day here and maybe because I'm fighting a flu and maybe because the apartment's too comfortable, I've not gone out or done much yet. I'm staying at a really nice studio apartment along bondi road, just 10mins walk to bondi beach. The owners are a young couple who are currently holidaying in India. It's amazing how they've kept the place so clean and neat, it looks better than some of the service apartments I've stayed in! 

I guess it's alot less dusty n humid here but still, it's been one day and "signs" of my mess around are already quite apparent =) and I've not even unpacked yet! 

Gonna see some houses for rent tomorrow morning and probably head to the beach after. Can't wait to take my favourite bondi to tamarama beach walk, am determined to lose at least 2 dress sizes while i'm here. 

Well, now that I'm finally here I just have 2 things to worry about. Raindrop and Business. 

Everytime I think about this 2, my mind goes into a frenzy. I'm gonna church to pray for both haha, need divine intervention. Coincidentally, there's a church just 2 mins away so really no excuse not to go. The best part is i made a wrong turn and stumbled upon it so I think it's a unmistakable invitation back to church. 

Ok that's it for now, will keep updating my adventures in the land of OZ.

Klee

I was writing a long raving post about the cocktail bar Klee 2 days ago but got wiped out when the blog page crash on me &!*#$^!(!

So here's the long-short of it: 

Go try it! The drinks are amazing and deceivingly healthy. The experience very novel & fun.

Ever since Klee, all cocktails pale in comparison.

And oh, go with a girlfriend. You get more attention from the bartender that way =)

The next frontier

In less than 19 days I'm about to embark on the greatest adventure of my life or at least that's how i feel. I've been dreaming about this for the longest time but now that it's really happening i'm both excited and afraid. In fact, for the past few days I've been bouncing from one extreme emotion to another, one of immense anticipation and excitement and the other, fearful & anxious about the unknown.

I really hope once I've cross the threshold, things will just fall in place and work well for everyone who has a stake in this. I hope next year this time, I'll look back and be amused with the anxiety my silly mind put me through. 

Well the big plus side about this move is my 2 darlings will be with me and I'm sure we'll have a wonderful time exploring a new life, a new place together. 

I'm thankful that I've been able to experience so much diversity, adventures and fulfillment in my life. I'm thankful that I'm never content with the mutiny of routine that many people I know have grudgingly embraced for fear of "trying something new". Finally, I'm most thankful that God has blessed me with the courage and faith that He will always be by my side, smoothening out my journey for me. Even where there're obstacles, it's just Him playing prank and working in his usual mysterious ways. 

So guys, stay tuned and find out what happens once I've taken my leap of faith on the 19th =)

Fleur de sel

My swedish neighbour at portsdown just came back from a trip home and got us a jar of fleur de sel. (It's terribly sweet of them cos we sorta off handedly mention once that we find really good salt in Singapore overly expensive.)

I couldn't hide my glee when I got that lil pot of goodness and couldn't wait to try it out on a good recipe that just relies on good salt. I stumbled upon a roast chicken recipe from chubby hubby and it couldn't be more perfect. This recipe was so simple that I was initially doubtful. It only calls for good lug of olive oil, the best salt and some fresh thyme leaves but it was perfect to give my fleur de sel a good test drive. 

I gave a 1.5kg chicken a good rub down with the salt, left it in the fridge overnight and popped it in the oven for dinner the next day. (i was really careful not to waste a single grain of this rather expensive salt) 

The chicken came out AWESOME! The salt gave the juicy meat a tangy sweet savoury note, with the scent n flavours of fresh thyme....*drool* And oh, i threw in some whole garlic cloves at the side cos I know C loves roasted garlic. 

 It was my best roast chicken yet and it was so friggin simple. A perfect lazy tuesday night dinner meal. 

Ok here's the photo from chubby hubby's site. Mine didn't come up as brown n pretty, i still don't know how to get my chicken to that even goldish brown color. Mine always ends up charred in some parts n not very brown in the others. But oh well, bet it was just as  yummy =)

Gross & Rotten

It was a Friday and I wanted to dish up a good load of high carbo and high fat meal in anticipation of Con's home-coming after leaving for a very last min trip to Bkk. 

After starving myself off carbo for almost 2 weeks, I was literally smacking my lips dreaming up the most carbo-ladden meal I could whip up. 

Unfortunately, as it was a last minute meal and I had very little hope for getting sufficiently fresh ingredients at my nearby supermarket so I decided upon a simple but yummy dish of Aglio Olio. All I needed was a good dose of Bacon & green beans. Bacon as you know is preserved so high chance i should be able to get them decently "fresh" right? Green beans are hardy veg and have long shelf life so it should be easy preasy. 

So off I headed to Colds Storage.

Here's what I found:

The white stuff you see on the green beans is not light reflection but a serious case of  white fungus like mold growing on it. The bacon was a gross greyish brown color. I couldn't resist snapping the pork ribs, which was again that gross sickly brownish color of rotting meat!

While I know Singapore's food stuff are all mostly imported so one cannot expect "fresh-off-the-farm" quality but is it TOO much to expect at least not being sold ROTTEN food? 

This is not the first time I've had such a appalling & disappointing experience with Colds Storage. Just a few weeks back, we were unfortunate to have bought a completely rotten watermelon. Have you ever smelt a rotten watermelon before? OMG, I still feel nauseous recalling that godawful scent. The irony of it was, we were really cheesed off so called Colds Storage to complain. They got their staff to hand deliver another watermelon to us. That watermelon when cut open was equally rotten! We thought this was their idea of a sick joke and called them to thank for sending us another rotten fruit. In response, they were kind enough to apologise and sent us ANOTHER rotten watermelon! 

Suffice to say, I've not had watermelon since then.

Anyway back to my carbo-ladden aglio olio, I did still manage to whip it up but had to gingerly pick thru a packet of green beans for edible ones and had to buy a imported pack of bacon. 

The dish was yummy enough to put me back into a good mood. 

As for COlds Storage, I've written in to NEA. NEA apparently has recently set up a "hotline" for you to call if you encounter less than fresh foods being sold. For them to have a dedicated hotline, there must be alot of unhappy & equally grossed out customers out there.

Snap out of it

I really gotta snap out of my Lembek mode. Ever since Christmas I've been on a super-holiday-don't-feel-like-working mood.

Didn't help that the 5 days cruise on the Royal Caribbean was too damn relaxing. Been a long time since I spent 5 straight days of no internet, no calls and literally not really needing my brain (other than the few times i had to beat conrad at Chua Dai Ji). The moment you board the ship, everything is taken care of. You don't need to think about what to do to entertain yourself, don't need to think about where and what to eat, don't need to think about where to go. We didn't even disembark the ship when it was in KL, mostly because the taxi fare to the city was a total rip off! The taxi drivers charged a flat fee of US$65 to get to town! 

Anyway, we did get off at Phuket. I think we're the only ones on the ship that didn't get any sand in our shoes...that's cos we didn't even step on the beach! All we did was going to a real hideaway spa on a hill (in case got tsunami again), had a 2 hour long luxurious massage, drank freshly made pineapple juice on the villa's veranda, after that we headed for a early dinner. Again ontop of a hill overlooking the sea, watched the sunset and had the most lovely (but in very tiny portions) thai food dinner. Oh yeah, I didn't bother shopping at the pasar malam. The prices were really ridiculous for cheap looking, poor quality stuff. Imagine, a long sun dress that looks like something you can get at This Fashion for 30 bucks was selling at $70 there! The particular dress I picked out was literally falling apart at it's seams.

This was officially our first real vacation together. Even though we travelled extensively in the past, none of it really qualified as a real vacation since we usually had to get work over n done with first. But for this cruise, we made it a point of not talking or even thinking about work.

Ok now we gotta make it a point to really snap out of it and get in gear for business to resume...soon....after chinese new year....sooon.