the maid

a colleague’s Filipino maid ran away leaving her 2 young children home alone and accused her husband of attempting to rape her. horrors! :o

because of the maid’s accusations, they’ll probably have to lodge a police report for investigations. meanwhile, they were told that they’ve to pay for the maid’s return ticket to the philippines and settle her outstanding loan.

furthermore, with the pending investigation, she’ll not be able to employ a maid for the time being. gosh! this is so much trouble…

yhingthai palace @ purvis street

it’s my dad’s birthday today and my brother suggested having dinner at yhingthai palace. haven’t tried the food before... in recent years, the street has become a veritable foodie destination due to the many restaurants that have sprung up on both sides of the street.

wilson placed the orders. we had the requisite green mango salad and seafood salad for appetisers. the pineapple rice and olive rice were well fried and fragrant. my aunties were full of praise for the olive rice.

i had the prawn tom yum soup which was clear but hot and spicy nevertheless. those who prefer non-spicy soups can try the fish maw soup.

the stuffed chicken wings, their specialty, were outstanding. fried till golden brown and crispy on the outside while the mushrooms and asparagus filling is still juicy. the rich green chicken curry simply begs for more rice to be smothered in. the thai seafood otak came in it’s unique clay serving plate.

there were some misses however, a nondescript minced chicken dish that was neither here nor there and pales in comparison with the rest of the dishes. yhingthai palace’s version of the phad thai is sweet rather than savoury. i’m not a connoisseur of thai food but i’ve never tasted such a sweet rendition of the traditional thai fried kway teow.

the limited dessert selection was nothing fantastic. i shared the water chestnut with jackfruit ice with my sis. the tapioca with coconut cream was good and not overly sweet. would have love to order the mango with glutinous rice but was too stuffed by then. :)

burp!

christmas day dinner

primary purpose of today’s dinner is to go and visit mx & kl’s love nest and to view their new zealand honeymoon photos. of course also to present them our “house warming” gift.

it’s just what they needed. yeah! :)

i must claim extra credit because it’s not just my idea to get them a bodum tea set but i had made the special effort to make a trip to town yesterday amidst the christmas eve shopping frenzy to buy the present and waited in line for the gift-wrapping.

bought them the whole works: teapot, mugs, warmer, the new double-walled glasses and a pack of strawberry-lemon tea. the only thing missing is the tea-lights.

for dinner, kl had suggested the claypot rice at block 328. that’s the famous one which cooks the rice from scratch in the claypot with charcoal fire. the waiting time is at least 45 minutes usually. therefore, most people will call up to pre-order.

it’s the first time for thomas and gordon. ky couldn’t make it tonight ’cos there’s more booze at another party. :P haha…

after dinner, we walked over to their flat at block 429. mx & kl’s place is quite simply decorated with clean lines and soothing colours. the only surprise was the fire-engine red cabinets in the kitchen. and the unconventional wash basin outside the master bedroom’s toilet.

we had the log cake [my second in 2 days] together with the ice wine. i quite like the chocolate hazelnut log from emi cakes.

the ice wine was pretty sweet but obviously not sweet enough for gordon ’cos he was alternating sips of the wine with gulps of the yeo’s chrysanthemum tea. duh…

i guess some people are just natural-born teetotalers.

christmas eve dinner

this must be one of the more “drama” christmas eve dinner… john sms-ed the gang at around 1:00 pm to say that he can’t host the dinner as his father was hospitalised for an eye emergency.

after some frantic calls and furious sms-es, the venue was changed to janet & jason’s place at punggol. one of the more exciting prelude to a gathering except maybe for the time when jason cancelled on us ’cos janet went into labour. :P

i had prepared my smoked salmon salad at the special request of janet. i got the biggest tupperware bowl from my mum’s collection to contain all the greens. the preparation took longer than expected and i wasn’t able to meet doris at punggol interchange at 6:30 pm as agreed earlier.

thankfully, only johann and family was there. so i quickly enlisted help to make the finishing touches and dress my salad. 3 of jason’s friends joined us too.

food were takeaways from a nearby coffeeshop stall and the ham ordered by johann. and we had a log cake from some hotel for dessert.

the kids behaved well… janelle was running around with joshua while cayden was in a good mood fascinated by all the sights and sounds except for jerrell who seemed less than happy to see us probably due to his interrupted slumber. he only settled down when he saw his favourite activity play thingy which janet had bought for cayden recently.

we didn’t count down to christmas together ’cos janet and jason were rushing off to catch narnia at great world city.

dinner @ 378

serene and her friend, poh ling wanted to try out the food at hong kong café since i had mentioned to them that the food is better than central or tong shui café.

since my regular yoga class had been re-scheduled due to the year-end festive season, i decided to join them. jeanette came along too.

from street directory web site, i found out that the best way from my office is to take a train to kembangan station and transfer to sbs service 32.

the café was surprisingly not very crowded, we even had one of the semi-booth seats. i guess everyone’s doing last-minute shopping in town.

i ordered the instant noodle with soup as usual. while the girls ordered the dry version. we also shared 2 bo luo bao, salt & pepper deep fried squid, tofu and a bowl of Sichuan hot & sour soup. i had a iced honey lemon drink which was nothing special.

this time round, we had room for desserts. i tried the golden fantasy while the gals had mango showhand. for my dessert, the pomelo pulp is a refreshing contrast to the mango puree and is not overly sweet. mango showhand as the name suggests is an exercise in mango overdose. the only complaint that we had was that the desserts were not cold enough.

overall, the gals enjoyed their dinner very much. in fact, serene actually ordered takeaways for her parents!

free dinner @ 5759

doris asked me join her for the audit of the in-room dining at thomas’ workplace. and i asked janet to come along.

the questionnaire that we were required to fill out is quite comprehensive, starting from how the call was handled, the grooming and friendliness of the serving staff, ending with the quality and presentation of the food.

service standards are very stringent since it’s a 5-star establishment. the staff are expected to greet the guests by name, have good knowledge of the menu and also be able to accommodate simple off-menu requests.

i pretended to be alan teo and ordered a smoked chicken salad, steak, fish & chips and seafood "hor fun" to share between the 3 of us. the salad was nice and the main courses were ok but not as hot as we would have liked.

the only "failure" were the missing lemon slices from the iced water that we’ve requested. the other minor quibble that we had was only 2 glasses were provided even though 3 main courses were ordered. otherwise, we had an enjoyable dinner, chatting and watching tv.

free lunch

pat sent out a full technicolour email invitation for today's lunch. he and deric will be buying us lunch at swensen’s at the airport.

quite unexpected since we usually order takeaways or have food delivered to the office for a simple christmas lunch. i would say it’s unthinkable 2 years ago ’cos it’s just not his style.

swensen’s was running a full house today and we had to wait for our table of 9. had a great lunch of teriyaki chicken pasta.

as usual, the trio of deric, alann and darren provided the most laughs during lunch with lots of teasing of the gals… especially for elyn and monica who bore the brunt of it since they had the bravado of sitting across from deric. :P

i managed to take a bobbing heads video starring deric, alann and darren which is really funny. they should have just let me take a photo. :P haha...

god's debris

had a bit of time to surf the web since i was holed up at home... 'cos i was too afraid to venture out to town since the malls are expected to be jam-packed with christmas shoppers.

was reading scott's blog again... check out this blog entry that he wrote about his book "god's debris" which he published in 2001. i didn't know about this book.

i had just downloaded it for free, he's conducting a marketing experiment by the side. just read the introduction, rather intriguing i would say.

this book in 2 words: thought experiment

the target audience: people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls

not recommended for: people under the age of 14 as he feels that the ideas expressed by the characters are not appropriate for young minds

download it here if you're interested.