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Duk Bok Kee and China One

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We are leaving in 2 days for Siem Reap, Cambodia to visit the temples and explore the city. Unfortunately, visitors are still a risk of getting malaria from the mosquitos, I had to go today to buy some long sleeved shirts to cover up.

Gladys and I rushed over to Holland Village after Aqua Gym. She showed me the air conditioned food court there and I was so happy to discover they had duk bok kee at the Korean place.

This dish reminds me so much of college, I loved these chewy “rice pinkies” at a place called KoKo House (although it’s no longer open) but it’s been so hard to find here or anywhere for that matter. This dish was a little different though because the noodles weren’t round but, rather square. It also needed some fish cake but otherwise, it was pretty good.

After lunch, we headed to Song & Song to look for some long sleeved shirts. I found two for myself (from Gap for $5 and Abercrombie for $8) and one for Ron (from BR for $5), so cheap!

Then I rushed to NUH Retail Pharmacy to get some medicines for our trip, just in case. I’m not sure if I mentioned before, but they have three classes of medication here: general sale, pharmacy only, and prescriptionn only. It seems the only general sale item here is paracetamol (= acetaminophen). From the pharmacy I picked up some ibuprofen (for inflammation/pain), loperamide (for diarrhea), cinnarizine (for nausea), and loratadine (for allergies). They were overall pretty inexpensive, ranging from $1 to $4 for 10-20 pills.

Afterwards, Ron and I headed over to the Dover Clinic to visit the doctor for malaria prophylaxis. You can actually buy mefloquine (Larium) at the pharmacy and it’s a once weekly pill but I fear the side effects. Malarone (proguanil/atovaquone) is another pill but it costs $8 a pill! plus I also fear the side effects. So we went to ask the doctor for doxycycline which has much less side effects and is also one of the drugs recommended for malaria prophylaxis. The combined cost of the doctor’s visit and the medication was only $30.

Since it was Wednesday, of course there was Bar of the Week. However, most of the MBA participants were busy writing a paper that was due on Friday and since many people were leaving for travelling, they needed to finish tonight to turn it in tomorrow. Ron finished so we headed to the Bar of the Week:
China One in Clarke Quay.

The place was pretty empty when we arrived around 10pm but the live band was pretty good and they had pool and a video game console to play on.

I tried their lychee martini:

Those lychees were pretty refreshing. Plus Ron and I shared this huge Hoegaarden beer:

Here is how we’re looking these days:

One more day till we leave for Cambodia!

Malay Heritage Centre

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Today after the weekly’s Partners Lunch, a group of us headed to the Malay Heritage Centre located near Arab Street. The centre is a 2-story colonial style building and it was $4 for adult entry. It contained information and artifacts about the first Malays in Singapore. From the exhibits, I gathered that exploration and mapping of this area began in the late 1500s. It was rather amazing that the maps were very close to modern day maps. They had an interesting exhibit highlighting the first HDB apartments. Actually it wasn’t that interesting, just kind of funny because the furniture was very 60s and the TV was an antique.

Although we found out that the road we live on now used to be a pineapple farm. Here’s my poorly taken picture of the black and white photo:

After our visit to the heritage centre, we headed out to look for pashminas near Arab Street. There’s a small street leading up to the Sultan Mosque that has some very affordable stores. These pashminas aren’t like the really expensive 100% cashmere you’d find elsewhere but the fabric is still very nice and the patterns pretty. They’re labelled as 70-80% cashmere and 20-30% silk. The stores carry a range of colors and patterns. We ended up buying six of them so she gave them at a discount, instead of $10, each was $8.

The color I bought was, of course, my favorite blue:

Here’s a close-up of the pattern:

After our brief shopping, we tried to find a coffee shop and ended up at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Raffles Hospital. We relaxed there a bit before heading back home.

When I got home, Ron was taking a nap. When he woke up, it was already 7:30pm and we were lazy to go out for dinner so we ordered KFC Delivery. Lucky for us it was “Super Tuesday” so 8pcs of chicken with 6 chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes w/gravy, and cole slaw was only $19. And yes, it wasn’t just me and Ron, our flatmate Justine also shared with us. We’re not pigs!

It was delivered in a box:

Yum Yum!

Thank goodness I have Aqua-Gym tomorrow to work off the fried chicken 😛

Next delivery to try is: Sakae Sushi!

Tonight I am contemplating malaria prophylaxis for our trip to Angkor Wat this weekend…

Malarone or doxycycline?

Definitely not mefloquine or chlorquine.

Or not needed at all?

CDC information makes me so paranoid… and more…

Ron’s 30th Birthday

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Today was Ron’s 30th birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUBBY!

Unfortunately Ron had a meeting from 11:30-12 and class from 2-6:30pm today then I had my first Chinese class from 7:30-9pm so we couldn’t really have dinner. So instead we decided to go have lunch. It started pouring really hard around 11:30am so we took a taxi to Holland Village.

We made a little video to show how hard the rain was pouring. I originally was going to walk to INSEAD to meet up with Ron after his meeting but I got so soaked just walking to the front of our apt building that I turned back and that’s why we ended up taking a taxi 😛

See if you can hear how loud it is on this video I uploaded to YouTube:

There were quite a few restaurants across the street from Holland Village. It’s a bit of a secluded street but there were Italian and French restaurants plus bakeries and other stores. We decided on Bistro Petit Salut.

They had a very affordable $22 set menu including appetizer, main dish, dessert plus coffee or tea. Here’s our lovely meal:


Of course I had the 1/2 dozen escargot


Ron had the seared baby bay scallops with potatoes and black truffle vinagrette (his knife is pointing at the baby scallops)


Crispy chicken confit with mashed potatoes


Seared beef fillet with mashed potatoes and shallots. Ron is still went from the rain outside.


Yummy creme brulee with hot (strong!) coffee.


Kiwi shortcake with mango sorbet.

By the time we finished the rain stopped and Ron had to get to school. I headed back with him and headed to the library to get some guidebooks for our upcoming trips.

Ron apparently was made to sing Happy Birthday to himself during class today but everyone kindly signed a card of well wishes. I would’ve felt so silly singing to myself 😛

Chinese class was fun. Some of the things I had learned in classes I’ve taken before but it’s more fun taking it with people you know.

We’re going to be celebrating Ron’s birthday again later this week as his class schedule was kind of kooky for the beginning of the week. So I’m sure we’ll have more to share later in the week.

Mandarin and a Movie

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Today was mostly a stay at home day. We ordered Pizza Hut delivery for lunch and stayed in to watch Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer.

I went out in the afternoon to the Dover Community Center which is just right down the street to sign up for Mandarin Conversational Classes which are to start on Monday. Apparently there are 7 people already enrolled and I am the only one of Chinese ethnicity. I get mistaken all the time for understanding Chinese but I hope this won’t be the case this time.

In the evening, we went to VivoCity to watch this Korean movie called “Legendary Courtesan: Hwang Jin Yi”. It’s a movie about a woman who was raised as an aristocrat but once she discovers a secret about herself, she becomes a gisaeng. A gisaeng is similar to the Japanese geisha in that they provide entertainment for men, they are not prostitutes. The movie itself was very moving and the story quite sad. I’m not sure how true to her life the movie is because the short explanation I found online differs a bit. I recommend watching the movie if you like dramas with a little bit of action mixed in.

Birthdays, Chin Chin Eatery, and Loof Bar

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I think I’ve probably been shopping and eating out too much lately. Although I was good and went to Aqua-Gym this morning and had a really good workout. Afterwards I headed to the IMM Building (for the second time this week) with Gladys and Neha.

First thing we went to get something to eat. We ate at a place in the corner of the food court called Cafe Red Ginger. I tried the Lontong special for $3.50 a bowl. It’s slices of pressed rice with a curry vegetable soup served on top. The rice itself is very bland without the curry but I enjoyed the curry very much and the dish was very filling.


Close-up of the lontong (pressed rice cake)


Lontong served with curry veggies and one boiled egg.

I visited the store Daiso again and bought a few things now that I knew everything only cost $2 each. I especially wanted to buy a new knife since the ones provided by the landlady are not sharp at all.

Afterwards we headed back down to the food court to buy some goodies for Ariana’s (also a partner and famous chef) surprise birthday party tonight. I ended up buying these Japanese snacks called konnyaku. The chef said they are made of yam powder, sugar, and fresh fruits.


Pretty, eh?

I also got some breakfast for tomorrow. At eDonuts they had these that looked like it was made from donut holes in the shape of a flower. I bought strawberry and kaya flavors.


Strawberry

At a place called Roti Mum, I bought a coffee bun since I read about it in that sweets book I got from INSEAD. Apparently it has a pat of butter melted in the middle.


Coffee bun (with pen on the right for size reference).

We left IMM around 3:30pm and arrived home around 4pm. I had a bit of time to rest before heading to INSEAD for the surprise party at 5pm. She was really surprised too. Gladys told her a good lie to get her to come to INSEAD. She made up some story about her credit card being rejected for the trip she was taking this weekend to Malaysia for scuba diving. So she said she needed to give her new credit card to pay before she could leave tonight for the trip. Ariana was shocked to see us all in the cafeteria waiting for her with chocolate cake and candles. It’s fun to participate in a surprise.

We stil had more to do tonight as it was Friday Foodie Night as well. The plan was to visit this place called Chin Chin Eatery on Purvis St for their famous Hainanese Chicken Rice. The place is near City Hall MRT on this small side street. The restaurant was pretty large itself as it was able to fit 4 large tables of INSEAD students.


This sign made me laugh: No Smoking Unless you are on FIRE!


Plain old boring rice? Just wait… (but actually it’s not boring, it’s cooked with chicken stock so is quite good by itself).

Starting from 12 o’clock: ong choy, prawn roll, Hainanese steamed chicken, kailan, Hainanese pork chop

I highly recommend this restaurant. The chicken was really tender, even the white meat which I usually don’t like. The sauce for the chicken and the rice was really good too, a little sweet and salty. We were really stuffed but still had another birthday to celebrate, so we headed to the rooftop bar down the street called Loof.

They had this really cool tea cup by the entrance of the bar.


I had Krishna stick his head in the shot for reference

They had some cool drinks like the following called “The Tom Yum”. If you’ve ever had Tom Yum soup, you’d recognize the spice right away. The drink description is: Vodka infused with Tom Yum spices, calmed by fresh lime juice and a dash of coconut liquor. It was quite refreshing because of the lime juice but had that little spiciness. It was served with a red pepper though (I didn’t eat it, I was afraid of the hot seeds!).

Another of their cocktails is the “Poached Saffron & Pear Martini”. Their description is: An ethereal mix of vodka, Swedish pear cognac, poached pear juice, twirled with vanilla and saffron spices. It was a bit odd tasting as there was a cinnamon stick in the glass and it tasted a bit like a gingerbread cookie. Someone said it tasted like Christmas.

Many of us left when the birthday boy had enough as it had already been a long day for the students with early morning class and an evening review session.

I can’t wait to try my donuts in the morning.