I thought it’d be a quiet day at work but I was wrong. It was very very busy up until the last half an hour. We had a few last minute orders that had problems so it took a while to clarify things but everything got done in time so that we could close at 1:30pm and everyone could go home to spend time with their family on CNY eve.

Here is our Cancer Centre crew (missing a few people who are on leave or working in the lab downstairs). The girls arranged to have everyone wear red today, I swear that I’m wearing a red skirt 🙂

Ron arranged to have our own Chinese New Year eve dinner at our apartment since there were quite a few people staying in SGP for the holidays and didn’t have family here. He did most of the cooking, I only helped where I could.

Our menu included the following:
Roast duck
Pork bone soup with turnips and pork balls
Lemon chicken
Sweet & sour shrimp
Fried rice
Vegetarian vermicelli
Fresh vegetables with dip
French beans
Kang kong with garlic
Taiwanese style sausage with raw garlic
Steamed fish
Yu sheng with salmon
Fresh fruits
Ice cream
Chinese snacks

We ate quite a lot. See here:

We did our own home “yu sheng”. You can actually buy the ingredients at the grocery store and then add the salmon (or any type of fish). The ingredients are things like fried won tons, pickled ginger, peanuts, sesame seeds, and many other little packages of things that I didn’t recognize. Ron’s classmate Jackson suggested we add some other fresh vegetables because it was pretty colorless so we added carrots and cucumbers and celery.

I hope that everyone enjoyed.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Even as the new pharmacist, I was invited to the Chinese New Year dinner hosted by the Cancer Institute. Their office is located on the 2nd floor of the main building at NUH and we attend meetings there but most of the involvement of pharmacists is with clinical trials. I’m not completely authorized yet to do much with clinical trials but help with double checking things once in a while.

Anyways, the dinner was held at the Majestic Restaurant located in the New Majestic Hotel. Our “big” boss (= manager/director of pharmacy) gave us a ride to the restaurant, very lucky for us because it was a bit rainy. When we entered the restaurant, it was quite interesting, very contemporary looking near the ground but when you look up, it looks quite barren with concrete beams and interesting lighting.

We came at the right time when they just started serving although we missed the “show” at our table. Here in Singapore for the CNY they have a traditional dish called “Yu Sheng“. It’s sort of a raw fish salad that is tossed with chopsticks by everyone sitting at the table. The higher the dish is tossed, the more prosperous their year will be… or at least that was the way it was explained to me 😛

It was quite tasty though, lots of peanuts!

I took some pictures at another table to show you what it’s like, aka salmon lo hei:

Next dish was shark fin soup with crabmeat:

Steamed fillet of sea perch with light soya sauce:

Fried lobster with creamy milk and lime sauce:

Abalone with fish maw, tendon, and garden greens in oyster sauce:

Sauteed fresh scallops, prawns, and squids in X.O. chili sauce:

Steamed rice with Chinese preserved sausage:

Chilled mango puree of mango with sago and pomelo:

Traditional brown sugared glutinous flour cake:

Fresh watermelon juice:

The staircase in the middle of the restaurant:

Also, a pretty cool thing about the restaurant is that in the other part of the dining room, the ceiling has circular openings which allows you to see into the pool. Although it was dark already, it’d be pretty nice during the day I think.

Dinner was quite filling and we had good conversation with everyone at our table. I got some good recommendations about what type of fruits to buy now and where so I’m going to go tomorrow to buy some fresh fruits for the CNY. Can’t wait.