Bon's Birthday at Zouk, The Nest

Rushed down to Zouk after wrapping up the Good Charlotte Concert to celebrate Bon's advanced birthday surprise. Her parents got her a table and drinks at Zouk. I wish my parents were as cool hahah.

This is a very weird photo because the composition is weird overall. But nevertheless, here's Ryan, Cass and Ivan

Birthday girl and Cass

Bon and Alyssa

So for a while, since it was so dark, I had no IDEA who was in the nest. I took a picture of our area and realised I do not know anyone in the photo.

Shocked and amazed. Who are these people drinking our drinks!? Found out later that Joshua randomly made friends with them at the bar.

Roasted Chicken + Chocolate Pudding Cake

I made dinner for the family on Sunday night to make use of our brand new oven for the first time. I whipped out a roasted chicken and mixed vegetable and roasted potatoes. I was so happy when it came out of the oven. The skin was slightly crispy and the meat inside was so juicy and tender. YUM. Too bad I couldn't reduce the sauce slightly to make some gravy cos the chicken took about 1h30min to cook and with prep time, about 30min and by then, everyone was already really hungry haha. We paired this large chicken with plain white rice and it was filling enough for 4.

When the bird was cooking, I made use of the time to whip up a dessert as well. I do not have a blender at home or a food processor, so I literally whip the egg whites until my hand was going to break haha.

This was the end result. My very first attempt at baking. From scratch even! I honestly deserve a pat on the back haha.

The center is made up of 70% cocoa dark chocolate that my brother bought back from Australia but has been lying in the fridge. I melted the chocolate in a shot of strong espresso and placed them into ice moulds to freeze while I prepare the rest of the sponge. I didn't have a proper measuring cup or anything so everything was by gut feeling. Except for the flour I guess. I actually used a proper spoon for that cos I think if you mess up the flour, you will probably mess everything up.

My dear tasters have given good remarks about the cake so I'm happy enough. (:

Look forward to more home-cooked food posts because I have a new found goal to become a domestic goddess hahahahha.

David Foster & Friends Concert 2011

Hi guys. I actually uploaded photos for this post a few days ago but haven't gotten down to writing anything about it because my internet was lagging, which resulted in my lack of mood to do so, as well as my ability to be able to sleep in for as long as I want. I woke up at 530pm today so that makes my sleep bank a gain of 12 hours of sleep, which is really really great.

ALSO... I used my new oven for the first time today! I made a wonderful Roasted chicken with lemon, roasted potatoes, roasted peppers, hard boiled eggs with carrots and a lovely Chocolate pudding cake for dessert. It is absolutely tasty and I couldn't have wished for a better advanced Christmas present than a brand new oven! I am in utter bliss right now. But I'll leave the food post for another time. (:

So, a while ago, I was on an event-high period and I managed to work for the DFF Concert which happened in early November organised by IMG Artistes. Here are some photos that I view viable to display to the public. (I generally don't upload photos of my events as I want to protect the confidentiality of my artistes)

They had the Lion King tree where post it's for The Lion King were pasted on it. This was drawn by one of the audiences I think. It caught my eye instantly.

Colleagues for the event. The world is very small because we all have common friends.

I am in love with the ceiling lights at MBS

View of LV Island from the bridge at Arts Science Museum

The post event Meet and Greet at Arts Science Museum

David Foster, Valerie Davis, Ashanti and Ashanti's Mom

We proceeded over to Pangea for the after-party. Awesome ceiling lights as well.

The VIP booth was very near the DJ so I snapped a photo of him haha.

That's all folks!

Teochew Porridge - Home-cooked

Most people view having a good meal as going to a nice classy restaurant, ordering the most expensive or fine-dining selections off a menu and paying extravagant prices for a well-polished plate of food. I'm not against having good food at nice restaurants, but I'm not a big fan of fine-dining. I think paying $40-$50 for a main is extremely not worth it if the plate is going to have a few teeny-weeny pieces of meat.

On the other spectrum, I view having a good meal as one that you can eat to your heart's content and you don't ever want to leave the table because the food is SO GOOD. And, it doesn't have to be an expensive affair!

Nothing beats having a hot piping bowl of porridge on a cold rainy day. And please take a look at that lovely spread on the table which is prepared by my aunt. It had ALL my favourites. And the chili was self-made and it was the yummiest spiciest chili on Earth.

 

My newborn niece and my mom feeding her milk from the bottle

The two of them looked so excited over the baby that the idea of it is quite daunting and scary. Haha

Jack Daniels presents Good Charlotte Concert

What I'm going to be busy with for the next few days.

Enjoy the concert!

Beautifuladieu

Hi guys, Nuffnang Asia Pacific Blog Awards 2011 is back and you can now start voting! Voting will be through till 27 November 2011 so visit NUFFNANG to cast your votes. Anyway, I will probably not be blogging about this event but I was looking through the finalists for the category 'Hidden Gem' and thought this is definitely mention-worthy.

A photography journal blog started out by Amanda Wong, a SMU student who is passionate about creating beautiful images with natural lighting. I am in no way affiliated to her and I don't even know her at all but I thought people needed to know about this 'Hidden Gem' as well. HER PHOTOS ARE AMAZING!  ♥

This is the image she took on her blog header. I could not link up the photos on her blog so I had to download them and re-upload on my photobucket just to post them here.

Please tell me how are these not Gorgeous?

♥♥♥♥

Visit her blog HERE and do vote for her HERE.

Jack's Place Restaurant

I used to visit Jack's Place pretty often at the West Coast Outlet when I was young. I can remember it quite vividly because it was the one along the expressway, so whenever you are driving past it, you will see it. Also because, it was considered to us as one of the higher end western dining back then, together with Swensens. My family LOVED Swensens.

Jesse had some voucher thing for Jack's Place so we decided to have our lunch at the Anchorpoint outlet since I had to go to Ikea that day. This is also one of those obviously backdated posts. We were super early during lunch time and were the first ones in the restaurant.

I think Jack's Place has created their signature with those green and white checked table cloths.

Mushroom Soup with Garlic Bread

We ordered the Mixed Grill Sizzling Plate which comprises of a whopping combo of sausage, lamb chop, chicken fillet, beef steak, bacon, complete with an egg made sunny side up.

$19.50

Since the two of us don't take beef, we managed to swop it for another piece of bacon. We should have swopped it for a chicken fillet instead because it was SO GOOD. Better than I would have expected it to be. It was extremely juicy and tender and the fact that I can remember how it actually tastes now says a lot since it has been 3 months. Loved the huge dollop of sour cream and bacon bits filling on the baked potato as well. I thought the bacon wasn't that awesome, which was a pity. The lamb was alright and the sausage was not bad. The egg could have looked more appetizing, but I'm just being picky about food presentation.

Seriously, look at the egg. It looks so smashed and mushed. I am obsessed with eggs so it has to look pretty to me. haha.

 

With a mere top up of $8.80, we managed to get a serving of the mushroom soup you saw earlier on and a dessert of our choice which could not exceed a certain price, probably $9? We got a banana split anyways.

Fresh banana with vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice-cream topped with rich chocolate sauce and roasted almond nuts.

I believe I requested to swop the strawberry ice-cream with another scoop of chocolate because I'm not a fan of strawberry ice-cream. They just taste pretty weird to me, with all that artificial flavouring and what nots.

The next time I'm there, I wanna try the Ice-cream Profiteroles. Basically, they are cream puffs with custard and ice-cream filling. The menu states that it is drizzled generously with chocolate sauce. haha. Quite a steal at $6.20 but I'm not sure how many cream puffs will be on the platter.

I don't like cherries either. I don't think I hate the taste of it but I'll rather not have them so J is very lucky cos I don't steal cherries on desserts that we share.

Service was alright when we ordered our meal as we were the first ones there. Tip is to head there before lunch hour starts as Anchorpoint is always swarmed with office staff from the Telok Blangah / Redhill area so it got pretty packed into our meal.

Jack's Place (Anchorpoint) is located at

370 Alexandra Road

#01-09/10

Tel: 6475 9790

Operating Hours: Daily 11am - 1030pm

China Eastern Airlines

This was the day where Co, Xw and I went down to the China Eastern headquarters to make a big fuss. But first, we had a nice lunch so that we don't lose our cool, get angry and have no mood to eat after that haha. I realise all my entries and posts are super backdated. This was probably start of October...

It was hard for us to find time to go down to complain to China Eastern since Xw has started teaching and her hours are basically, school/office hours. I believe it was a children's day holiday that day so we made use of it. Also, saw a groupon deal for Manhattan's seafood platter! I went ahead and bought 3 thinking we could finish 3 portions. Actually, I usually eat an entire plate on my own *guilty* so I thought the 2 of them could as well. Turns out the last coupon that we didn't use, I totally FORGOT about it until a day before so I tried to frantically ask people online if they're interested to eat at Manhattan the next day. #fail

On to China Eastern, the lady at the counter was so poor thing cos she thought we were 3 very harmless girls until we sat down and told her our problems and when she couldn't provide a solution, we started lashing at her HAHA. (Better don't laugh so soon, they have yet to send me my E-ticket) It had to do with Co and I not putting our FULL STATUTORY name on the Zuji website because they didn't state it and then, since it was such a small matter involving the addition of our hanyu pinyin names in the E-booking, China Eastern didn't allow! They say the system doesnt allow it and that we have to CANCEL the entire flight, (which will incur a fee of $150) and RE-booked the flight at the HIGHER price which was probably $200 more. So all in all, it was a friggin $350 difference! That's not all. Because, even if we were to pay the $350 difference, there are no more seats and we can't book it and all they can do is just say 'We are sorry'

WTF

Honestly, I was downright pissed off at this because we booked the flights a while back and I found out about this problem so I tried calling Zuji up first and their calling system tracks our calls all the way to INDIA. And you have to deal with waiting on the phone for extremely long for inefficient people with inefficient answers. It was really a pain in the neck ): I thought I was the only one with this problem until Co texted me one day, 1 month later, telling me she has the same problem too.

Anyway I was just pissed that they have no brains to think out of the box regarding this. Okay, fine. Your stupid outdated system does not allow you to have a change in name. But we are there physically showing you our E-tickets and confirming that it's US and you still can't do anything about it? And if we were to CANCEL the flight and REBOOK it, how come there's no more seats? Even if your airlines website doesn't show it, your internal website should have shown 2 seats just cancelled, hence, 2 seats now available what.

We managed to settle it HALFWAY and found some gleam of hope before leaving. They said they will call us and do something about it. Better than nothing, even if the 'help' still involved footing a fee. -_-' I blame this incident for my increase in Stress Level. Please go apologise to my body and to my doctor.

 

We accompanied Xw to town to shop for accessories for her brother's wedding after that. Found it amusing that Co was trying to study inside Chanel. So happy for her that she's finally rid of this studying life. YAY! (:

Eventful November

My sleeping schedule has been really odd lately as I'm always only sleeping for 3-4 hours or so. November probably marks the most number of times I have visited the airport. Today's the 12th and I would have already visited Changi 12 times. Previous week I was handling the David Foster's artistes. Last week, I was taking care of The National. If you read this and are a fan of them, please do not be jealous or anything. I literally had to reject fan's proposals of taking pictures with them while I've been hanging out with them for 4 days. They're an awesome bunch of musicians. Next week, I'll be handling Good Charlotte and I'm actually not too sure of their fan-base in Singapore. Hope it isn't crazy.

Other times have been allocated with visiting the doctor and scheduling appointments. Having meetings with myself on certain stuff. Looking up on courses to attend and hunting for winter wear. I hate Sephora for launching ALL their Christmas products at the same time. (I say this with a very sad voice because I really have to save money) but I can't resist! Visit Sephora @ ION and you will know why! I feel like buying everything! ): 

Make up Review: Bourjois Paris Ombre Eyeshadow

I got myself a set of these during the ASOS sale. I have seen this brand before in John Little and I have always thought the colors were pretty awesome but didn't really wanted to buy them because they were slightly expensive and most of them are very shimmery, which I hate.

This set was going for 9.5 pounds if I didn't get it wrong. which basically means 1 eyeshadow pot would have been less than SGD$7? Pretty good steal as they are retailing for $19.90 locally.

The set came in 3 different neutral shades which I am a huge fan of. I just can't seem to get enough of the brownish and taupe shades. Most versatile shades ever!

08 Beige Rose (a pink tone neutral, frost finish)

05 Brun Irreel (brown taupe shade with tiny golden sparkles)

54 Marron Glace (reddish copperish brown with golden sparkles)

I think these have extremely good color payoff and I don't mind trying out their baked blushes too if I see any on sale on the ASOS website. By the way, I was slightly worried in getting powder products as I had the impression that they would smash into smithereens before it even got to Singapore. (which is also why I got the 3-pack and not individual eye-colors) But they actually came bubble-wrapped so that provided pretty good cushioning.

I actually went to check out the shades at the airport a few days ago. Was surprised that they didn't stock these shades that I've received. Well, it's usually the case. My favourite products from Maybelline can't be found locally. -_-