Monthly Archives: April 2008

Sketches at Robertson’s Walk

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This evening for Friday Foody, we went to Sketches at Robertson’s Walk. They have make-your-own-pasta and make-your-own-pizza. There are two sizes you can choose from, something like hungry size and starving size. Ron and I thought the larger size would have been enough to fill both of us. We also ordered the fried squid, garlic bread, and panna cotta.

We sat outside at a fairly large table of maybe 15 of us and there were a few diners around us but the service was excruciatingly slow… ordering 2 jugs of beer for the table (at $19 a piece) took more than 15 minutes. The food started coming out sporadically as well, the appetizers came after the pastas and one end of the table got served completely before the pizzas came out. Then at the end, the waiter told us there was no panna cotta without offering an alternative.

It’s an interesting idea for a restaurant allowing you to choose up to 3 types of pasta, the sauce, and the extras (peas, chicken, olives, etc). But the portions are quite small in that the large one can feed one person. The pizza took forever to come out. The service was quite poor and this was a Saturday night. I don’t think we’ll be going back there again, I can make this type of pasta more easily at home myself. It was quite a humid and muggy night too, I wish they had fans outside.

Rainy days, Tahu Goreng, and Pharmacists Stress

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It’s been sporadically raining the last few days and I’ve been having to steal… ahem, I mean borrow umbrellas from work because my purse sized one broke last month and I keep on forgetting to buy a new one. I walked home one day in the rain though because it was only thundering when I left work and I thought I could make it home before it started… but today I went to buy myself a cheap-o umbrella to carry in my bag so I won’t be without one again.

But when there’s rain, there usually are rainbows. Yesterday evening, I met up with Ron at INSEAD because it was Dutch-German national week so they were having all-you-can-eat sausages and all-you-can-drink beer for $10 so to show our support, we had dinner there. The BBQ was being held in the courtyard between the school and the residences and the rain had just stopped. Unfortunately I only had my compact digital camera and couldn’t get it to take a very good picture of the rainbow peeking through the clouds… (this is why I need a nice camera and take some classes!)

We stuffed ourselves with the sausages and a few glasses of beer…

We got home around 8pm and I was in bed by 8:30pm. I only meant to nap for a while but ended up sleeping until this morning. I felt quite refreshed this morning!

Today I wanted to share with you a Malaysian dish that I tried today called Tahu Goreng where tahu = tofu, goreng = fried. At our staff canteen, there is a Malay food stall which has recently changed owners. The last month or so I’ve been trying their food to see what it’s like. When I feel like something spicy, I usually go there. You can’t beat Singapore food stall prices, you can get a full meal for only $2 to $3!

Anyways, about the tahu goreng, it’s basically a large piece of fried tofu, about 5″ by 5″ square, topped with this spicy and sweet peanut sauce and also has fresh bean sprouts and sliced cucumber. It’s really good.


(Taken with my handphone… err, cell phone! camera)

It’s pretty filling for just being tofu and this particular peanut sauce was pretty spicy, my nose was watering and my eyes tearing as I continued to eat. They give you quite a bit of sauce so I saved it and am going to try mixing it with some noodles… if you’ve ever had a Chinese dish using cold noodles, sliced cucumbers, sliced ham, and a peanut sauce, I think this will taste good with the Tahu Goreng sauce instead of the Chinese peanut sauce.

Now for pharmacists humor… I think our pharmacists here may work a bit too hard. Even I’ve been having dreams about work. My dream wasn’t very funny though, just stressed about not putting something away and it becoming expires. But I can’t help laughing when I think about my co-worker’s dream that she had last night. So at our cancer centre, we make this pumps that are filled with chemotherapy that the patient wears at home for a few days. The medication is filled into this plastic bag that is put into a plastic casing. From the plastic bag comes a tubing, which is how it runs into the patient’s intravenous line. There are not allowed to be any bubbles inside this tubing or else you’ll be introducing an air bubble into the patient’s vein, basically an air bubble in the blood is very bad. So before the pump is attached to the patient, the pharmacist will do a double check of the tubing to see if there are any bubbles… we get the bubbles out by tapping the tubing until it reaches the end of the tubing so the air bubble can be released. There is a cap at the end of the tubing to keep the drug from leaking out. Any air bubbles at the end will be released before the nurse attaches the tubing to the patient.

The pumps are usually filled with the drug 5-fluorouracil. One of the major side effects of this drug is mucositis, ulceration or inflammation in the mouth or mucus membranes of the digestive tract. My poor co-worker had a dream that she was checking off one of these pumps and trying to move the air bubble out and suddenly the cap of the tubing came off and the drug started to flow into her mouth and she started suffering from severe mucositis. I think it made us all laugh hysterically because it’s such an absurd and inconceivable notion that this can happen and from this, you can tell she is overstressed thinking about work even while sleeping! Okay, maybe it’s not so funny to put it into words but if you heard the ways she tells it, you’d be on the floor laughing too…

If anyone reading this is wondering what’s been going on with Joyce, I can tell you she’s been very busy wrapping up the semester so I’ve only seen her for 10 minutes in the last few days when she came by to visit my workplace. She’s been busy at the school or at home working working working.

I’m still being distracted with the thought of going to visit home at the end of the month… can’t wait!

Level One @ Far East Plaza and Oishi Pizza Delivery

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Well I survived my first Saturday working as the only pharmacist. No big problems or issues that arose during the time I was there… but then I don’t know what happened after I left. Seems like the last few times when I worked with my boss, there were these last minute things that happened and people had to be called back in order to make some more preparations. Guess I’ll hear about it if anything on Monday.

Unfortunately it was raining after I got off work so didn’t really feel like going out so I cheated and caught a cab home. I ended up watching some TV, taking a nap, then just staying home the rest of the night. Ron had class so when he got home, he cooked dinner for us.

Today I had a very nice day. Slept in until 11, had some food, took a nap before heading out to do some shopping. I first headed to “Silk Studio”, my favorite place to shop for pashmina shawls. It’s located near the Sultan Mosque. The address on their business card is 37&54 Bussorah Street. I usually go here because the owners have always been very nice to me and they offer a Buy 4, Get 1 Free deal. My friend Tiff, who is getting married in August, asked me to take a look at the shawls for her bridesmaids to wear during the wedding. Her colors are Victorian lilac, plum/eggplant, and gold. I had a hard time deciding when I was standing there looking at all the colors but finally decided on a two-tone shawl… BUT, they ran out of that particular one. The owner took down my name and number and said they would call me once the shipment is in.

Afterwards, I headed to Orchard to check out Level One @ Far East Plaza (the website is not updated though). Our pharmacy technicians said this was a good place to shop so I wanted to check it out.

I was visually assaulted when I walked into Level One (actually the basement). I didn’t know where to look first. There was so much to see… I was a bit overwhelmed. I started walking around and stopped by the first handbag shop I came upon. It’s directly across from the Korean BBQ Restaurant. The owner was very kind to me, except that he kept on calling me “Madam”. Made me feel old. But I got a cute white handbag.

After my first purchase, it was easier to buy more so I stayed there for a few hours exploring all the shops. There’s a store that sells cute cotton cardigans: long, short, cropped, short-sleeved, long-sleeved, many colors. It’s cheaper to buy 2.

All the salespersons try to be very helpful and they keep on offering you other items, to the point that it almost becomes annoying. But since I was shopping by myself, it helped me to choose things that I wouldn’t normally choose but actually looked cute. I missed my second opinion shopper today.

Also, a lot of them also speak Chinese better than English so I’m sure if you can talk with them, they may give you a better deal. I’m not so good in bargaining.

Afterwards I went to Wisma Atria before heading home. Ron finished with his class around 6:30pm and was on his way home too. I asked him to order pizza from Oishi Japanese Pizza. I really wanted to try their Wasabi Seafood Pizza. So when I got home, pizza came soon after. He ordered a set deal with 2 pizzas and included chicken wings, fried scallops, and fried shrimps.

We shared the pizza with our friends Timo and Elina who came over to eat and we watched Flight Plan on TV.

We had the Curry Chicken Pizza:

Ron likened it to when you have naan and curry except that the curry flavor is more Japanese than Indian.

Here is the Wasabi Seafood Pizza:

The wasabi wasn’t spicy but the pizza overall was pretty tasty. I don’t know why their pizza delivery has such bad reviews online. The following toppings are also provided: crushed red peppers, bonito flakes, and seaweed.

Here are the chicken wings, fried scallops, and fried shrimp.

The chicken wings were good, a bit sweet. The scallops just fried. The shrimp a bit oily.

All this including 1 large bottle of green tea was $44. I think we’ll order again sometime, they have other varieties of pizza like Unagi with Country Greens and Kimchee Chicken that I want to try.

I’m well rested today but I wish I had one more day. Working on a Saturday truncates your weekend. I can’t wait to go home though… I was just thinking, very silly though, it’s going to be nice to wear jeans again in the colder weather.

New York New York at City Link Mall

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I think this is the end to the quiet week of work, it’s going to be busy next week most likely. It got quite busy this afternoon around 2 or 3pm. Many many prescriptions then all of a sudden many inpatient chemotherapy orders… but our staff was very efficient and we didn’t have to stay late. I was a bit exhausted though and was looking forward to just going home, or at least having a good dinner…

Ron and I met up at the bus stop and headed on the MRT to City Hall. I wanted to try the restaurant called New York New York in the City Link Mall. There was quite a long line, more than 15 people in front of us, although one party was like 8-10 pax.

I heard about this place from Alex because of their 8-inch hamburger. Upon further investigation, I found out that they serve chocolate fondue and also have free cotton candy. I keep on promising Joyce we’ll go to this restaurant for chocolate fondue.

The wait wasn’t actually that long, we arrived around 7:30pm and were seated about 5 minutes before 8pm. The frontline staff was pretty attentive and walked through the line taking names and number per party so at least you felt like they were doing something rather than just leaving you to wait.

Once seated we noted that there were lots of staff in the restaurant, there was always at least one or two in your line of sight, bustling around from table to table, taking orders, cleaning up dishes, bringing food, etc etc. We were impressed by their attentiveness.

Now to get to the food. We ordered the spicy buffalo wings with cheese.

Where’s the cheese?

Well, this we had to ask for because they didn’t bring us anything to dip or the promised cheese.

The cheese ended up being this really thick bleu cheese like spread. It was a bit weird, almost like a butter or cream cheese consistency. Not like the salad dressing like consistency of the sauces they usually give your in the US. The buffalo wings were fried nicely but weren’t really spicy. Itself did not have sauce but more a dry seasoning. But, as Ron said, the sauce is very addicting if you like bleu cheese.

They also have different types of floats, root beer with vanilla ice cream, sprite with vanilla ice cream, coffee with vanilla ice cream, and Coke with chocolate chip ice cream. We ordered the last one.

The glass was as big as my head!

It was actually quite tasty even though a bit weird sounding being chocolate ice cream. But if we order again, no ice and change to vanilla ice cream. The ice gets in the way and the chocolate chips are dangerous to suck up too quickly through the straw.

We ordered the 8-inch burger, which is supposed to serve 4 persons. Ron was like, “do you think it’ll be enough for us?” He asked this BEFORE the burger arrived. It was seriously huge.

The burger was the size of my head and I have a big head! It was served with French fries and nicely cut into 4 pieces.

Inside was the meat patty that had onions and cracked peppercorns mixed into the meat. Plus standard lettuce, tomato, onion, ketchup and mustard. The bun was pretty thick and of a different texture than regular hamburger buns. More like focaccia bread. My only complaints are that the peppercorns were a bit bitter and maybe a bit too coarse and the bread a bit too thick. Ron ended up eating 2 of the 4 pieces. I only ate 1. We brought 1 home plus all the fries.

Also, they really should provide wet naps for that type of meal. It was not comfortable to have sticky hands after eating.

We didn’t have room for dessert so I’ll have to come back with Joyce for chocolate fondue and with Alex for fried banana split!

I’m thoroughly stuffed now and look forward to having that burger for lunch tomorrow… it’s my turn to work this Saturday (of course with 2 fabulous technicians) and this will be my first weekend as the solo pharmacist (I usually work with our boss). I’ll let you know how it goes.

I also just booked by ticket to visit home! Ron is heading back to the US at the end of April to attend a course in Silicon Valley. I’ll be tagging along on a different flight to see my family, friends, and kitties. We only have a week… but I’m really looking forward to going home, even if just for a short period.

Ah, can’t wait.

It’s already Thursday…

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Wow, this week has been going by really fast, I can’t believe it’s almost the weekend again. I’m looking forward to sleeping in on Sunday. I will be working on Saturday morning. Poor Ron has class all day on Saturday and Sunday.

Tonight I finally had some time so I wanted to let you know all about our trip to Bintan the past weekend. It’s so close I don’t know how we’ve never gone before. But it’s also a bit expensive and the food is only average but it was nice to relax and I had a nice massage.

Check out our travels and pictures:

Friday, April 4th – Ferry to Bintan, Indonesia

Saturday, April 5th – Day 2 Bintan Resorts

Sunday, April 6th – Last Day in Bintan

It’s been a good week at work though. We’ve actually had time to take lunches together and not have to be doing ten things at the same time. My only worry is that next week will be crazy. But I guess we should enjoy it while it lasts.

On Tuesday, we went to the new Mr. Bean at NUH. There was a soy drink and snack place there previously but it closed. I heard because of a rent increase. Mr. Bean is also a soy bean place so they sell soy bean milk, soft tofu, soy ice cream, pancakes, and other snacks. They have a deal for 6 pancakes for $5. They have tuna, cheese, chocolate, blueberry, peanut, and red bean. There were 3 of us so we each had 2 pancakes. I tried the tuna and blueberry. The tuna was a bit fishy but I needed something salty. The blueberry seemed like it was canned so I didn’t really enjoy it. I was quite stuffed afterwards though, surprising because they weren’t that big. I also tried the soy milk with grass jelly, yum! We also all got ice cream afterwards, again yum!

I only had my handphone (oops, I mean cell phone!) to take pictures:

Yesterday I went to NUS again for the afternoon. Joyce’s students had their final tutorial, better known to me as a case conference, where the students do a presentation on the cases for the week. They’re pretty fancy in that they have a Powerpoint presentation and sound effects then they act out the case in front of the class. It was pretty entertaining, much different than what we did at our pharmacy school.

Today I was at NUS again but this time to enjoy a good lunch. We went to the cafe there called Mega Bites where they serve “Western” style food. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before but I went there a few months ago and had a roasted chicken sandwich, it seemed like I was the only one who wanted a sandwich, there was no line. It was the same today. I guess people here are just not used to eating sandwiches for lunch. Today though I had the chicken chop which is served with veggies, mashed potatoes, and soup, all for $3.50… seems so cheap and I expected it to be a small portion but it was pretty filling and tasted pretty good. I hope we can all go out to eat more often like we’ve been able to this week…