Farewell Dinners

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Ron has been attending lots of “farewell” dinners this week. It’s the end of the period so some of the students are returning to Fontainbleu so have been getting together to enjoy Singapore’s restaurants and chat before leaving.

Tonight we went to Thai Express at Holland Village. It’s so strange that we’ve been there quite a few times this year after not even having step foot in their all of last year. On this visit, the had newly printed menus, no more dog eared, food stained menus. Quite snazzy.

I tried the Thai Seafood Laksa. It was very nice. It sort of tasted like green curry noodles but with extra coconut milk.

Afterwards, some of us headed to one of the bars down the street. We ended up at Wala Wala which has a one-for-one house pours and beer until 9:30pm. I got to try a different Hoegaarden beer called “Forbidden Fruits”. It’s basically a darker version of the Hoegaarden White with a slightly stronger flavor.

We stayed a bit to chat until I got too tired and had to go home. I think Ron will be going to these farewell dinners all week long.

Surprise Party and End of P4 BBQ

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Today I had an early start at the Ghim Moh wet market buying fresh fruits for today’s party. Okay, not that early but I got there around 8:30am and bough some delicious apples, pears, pineapple, longans, papaya, bananas, grapes, dragonfruit, jambu, blueberries, strawberries, and corn (for tonight’s BBQ).

Joyce, Alex, and I schemed a bit in order to throw a surprise party for my boss and our friend Siew Woon. Her birthday is actually next weekend but since I’m leaving for the US and she’ll be at a conference, we figured that today was the only day that we could celebrate with her. We thought we’d make it a surprise as well. Joyce made up a good story to have Siew Woon come over to her place to have a late lunch so we set up a wine, cheese, fruits, and chocolate fondue lunch for us.

I went over to Joyce’s around 11am to start cleaning and cutting up the fruits and setting out the cheeses. Joyce was in charge of setting up the crackers.

Siew Woon was hapily surprised and very clueless about the surprise. The look on her face when she walked in the room was priceless.

We enjoyed only 2 out of 4 of the wines we got but thoroughly stuffed ourselves with the cheese, crackers, fruits, and chocolate fondue. It was yummy and fun. Afterwards, we still had some cakes from Canele: green tea, lychee, rose, and chocolate.

I had a little nap afterwards with Joyce’s bunny:

And yes, Alex was there too hanging out with us girls:

I got home around 7pm and Ron had already started to the BBQ. He put together this BBQ to celebrate the end of P4. He got some great meats from the Swiss Butcher and BBQ’ed up a storm. Some people brought some food and I contributed the rest of our cheese & crackers, fruits, and wine. We had our BBQ near the front entrance of our condo where there is a set of swings… I love swings and it’s been years since I’ve swung so I spent most of the night relaxing over there… it was too smoky near the grill area and there were too many hungry people…

But Ron really enjoys his BBQs… beer and steak is all you need…

We smell like BBQ now though… and have lot of ant bites! Those ants there are violent, we’re never having a BBQ at that area again, it’s like being eaten alive.

Ah, good day…

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.