Today I finally got some must needed rest and slept in until noon. In the afternoon we went to Vivocity to do some shopping and I got some more clothes from Nichii Fashion City while Ron got some khaki pants from Bossini.

Afterwards we met up some people to have dinner at a food centre on 51 Old Airport Rd. I bought this book called “The Popular Food Guide @ Singapore II” which has listings of some of the hawker centers and restaurants in Singapore, listed by different regions. So Ron thought we’d try out the one of 51 Old Airport Rd. It’s a bit out of the way but can be accessed by bus (or taxi).

I highly recommend sugarcane juice with lemon. The lemon makes the juice more refreshing and less sweet. Sometimes I can get really sick of drinking sugarcane juice because it is too sweet.

The food center has other things like carrot cake, wan tons, omlette, curry noodles, fish noodles, satay, tofu dessert, and the list goes on and on. As most people do, look for the longest queue and you’re likely to find the best food in the food center… but you have to be patient.

Take a look at what we had to eat:

http://www.ahmengcafe.com/

Friday Foodie has started up again so tonight was at Ah Meng Cafe on Orchard Rd. I looked briefly on their website before we headed out and they seemed like they had a large selection of food. When we got there we were a bit overwhelmed by their many menus. The service was a bit scattered though because there were four tables of us and they couldn’t keep straight which order was for which table… but it eventually sorted itself out. The food itself wasn’t spectacular with to have all that variety in one place and in an air conditioned space makes it a convenient place to eat. It’s also open until 3am so if you have the midnight munchies, I’m sure it’s a hot destination.

Check out food pictures here:

After work and another talk tonight, Alex, Joyce, and I headed to Bugis to have dinner. We headed to a steamboat place which I don’t know the name to 😛 but before that we were walking through Bugis Village and there was a mass of girls waiting in line. According to Joyce, they were waiting in line to see this group called MayDay.

The lined snaked around and around all the way down the block. After letting Joyce check them out for a few minutes, we headed to eat steamboat 🙂

It was all you can eat and we stayed until after 11pm. We ate our fill… but still had dessert at this place down the street.

They ran out of ginger steamed milk so I had the mango instead. It was kind of cool as you started eating into the steamed milk, the mango puree made it look like a parboiled egg.

Alex with his “Ying Yang” which is black sesame and almond.

Joyce with her shaved ice dessert.

Happily full but ready for dessert 🙂

Ah, what a day…

We had an early morning lecture that ended early so we had a free day to enjoy. I went with my friend Alex to run some errands and we ended up at IKEA. At IKEA we had lunch at the restaurant. At IKEA here they have a “Friends of IKEA” program where at every visit, you’re entitled to 2 free beverages (either coffee or soft drink) plus 2 special priced meals. Today’s meal was 10 Swedish meatballs plus potatoes for $5SGD. Unfortunately I didn’t know you needed to collect the tickets for the free drinks at the front so I ended up having to go all the way back to the front and return to the cashier. A bit inconvenient, I don’t know why they don’t just put it onto the membership card they give you.

Anyways, we decided to splurge on a dessert called “Semla”.

The description on the IKEA site:

The delicious Swedish semla is a wheat bun, lightly cardamom-spiced and partially filled with smooth almond paste. The bun is crowned with fresh fluffy whipped cream and almost floating on top of the creation is the cut-off bun lid, sprinkled seductively with fine powdery icing sugar.

In Sweden, the semla was traditionally eaten as dessert topping up the festive meals that was taken in preparation for Easter fasting. The Swedes would indulge in rich food on the last Tuesday before fasting and this last Tuesday became known as Fettisdagen – literally means Fat Tuesday. Today, the semla has became a traditional dessert between Fat Tuesday and Easter. And each Swede consumes on average five bakery-produced semlor each year, in addition to all those that are homemade.

The semla has also had a historic impact on Sweden: King Adolf Frederick of Sweden died of stroke in 1771 after consuming a luxurious banquet which was topped off by 14 servings of semla.

I don’t know how a person can eat 14 servings of it. That big dollop of whipped cream and the sweet almond paste in the middle would be overwhelming after a while. Those glutinous kings!

Maybe it was too much sugar for me because I had a headache during the evening and only felt like sleeping. I missed out on going to “The Clinic” and dinner, instead I stayed home to rest.

http://picasaweb.google.c…RestRafflesCity

To cap off an educational afternoon at NUH, our guest presented almost 5 hours of material, we went out to dinner at Shahi Maharani North Indian Restaurant at Raffles.

The restaurant had a trio there performing music and singing. It was quite relaxing listening to music that we didn’t understand the words too.

The food itself wasn’t extraordinary but was still quite good. The garlic naan was yummy.

We went shopping for a bit at Raffles and the Citylink mall before calling it a night.