Sydney | Joe Black & Madam Char Char, Surry Hills

SYDNEY DAY 1

Hey everyone! Finally unpacked most of my luggages, (I say most because I'm too lazy to even open my carry-on luggage. Should probably do it soon though cos it has most of J's food stuff inside including Durian and Mango chips which are awesome! And Red Rock Deli chips (: Hope you're excited about them dear)

So anyway, I've had a great time in Sydney. Really thankful that I got to bunk in at Ivan's (treat you to Swee Choon when you're back!) and having him to show me around. I literally did zero research on Sydney, except for the time when I decided to flip through some books in the library cos I had the time. Took a 2am flight out to SYD on Scoot!

For most of you who are interested in Scoot, I thought it was not bad in my opinion. The leg space was pretty decent since the aircraft are basically SQ's and taking off and landing were pretty smooth. The landing was so smooth when we touched down at Sydney, I couldn't even feel a jerk. That was pretty surprising and awesome (: Although I must say, the stewardess aren't very pretty oops. When I landed back in Singapore on my flight back, the girl at the intercom went, "Hope you had a lovely time flying with Jetstar, I beg your pardon, I meant, Scoot!" #EPICFAIL.

Tip #1: If you're flying to Australia / New Zealand, YOU NEED A VISA! (omg I totally had no idea, so did 20odd other people on the same flight. We had to get instant visas at Changi that cost $50 as compared to the normal $20+ fee) ):

Tip #2: There are $2 per day Unlimited calls and data via Optus, one of their mobile services there. I have no idea why I had to place a base cover charge of $10 but it's also for a certain amount of data and it's not bad a deal. I had withdrawal symptoms from Social Media, mainly Instagram/Twitter/Whatsapp so I was dying to run to an Optus store to get a new SIM number, which I only managed to do so on the 3rd day.

Tip #3: Always check that your glasses (if you're wearing a pair), have their screws secure and intact. This is not the first time it has happened, but my glasses BROKE just 15min before we were about to land on the plane. I was in the toilet slapping on loads of moisturizer and brushing my teeth and one of the screws on my glasses went missing and it broke into two at the handle. I'm literally blind without them so I couldn't even bother looking for that tiny screw in that tiny bathroom so I had to open up the overhead compartment, pull out my contacts and wear them just before we landed. Thank god. Had to search 3 days for an optician there to help me fix it.

This is one of the first few photos I took when I reached Ivan's apartment in UNSW. Just thought the tree looks so amazing and cool! lol. Looks like some tree you would see in Avatar or something

First thing I did after dropping my bags was to visit Joe Black, a hidden gem of a coffee joint. Australia's nightfall is rather early around 5pm so most of the places will close about 5pm! (I had no idea how crazily short their days are until I experienced the first nightfall) We had a short conversation with the barista and he's coming to Sg for F1! They have really aromatic coffee and great brunch grub.

We both got ourselves a cappuccino and I ordered poached eggs with sour dough toast topped with bacon. The portions were really humongous but extremely filling at the same time. Definitely enough to last you a full 6 hours if you don't crave for food every second of the day.

I really enjoyed their eggs and bacon. The bacon wasn't the crispy sort but it packs a punch of flavour. Their eggs were poached perfectly with the right touch of runny yolks. Even the toast was commendable! I like the toast since I like my bread lol

The meal cost us about $15 Aud each. Yes, sadly enough, food in Aussie is pretty expensive. However, during my entire trip there, I don't think I've tasted something that isn't delicious. Might have been because I was visiting the famous food haunts, but the rest of the random meals were really great as well!

Definitely worth a visit if you're there.

JOE BLACK

27 Commonwealth Street, Sydney, Surry Hills NSW 2000

Tel: (02) 9000 0000

Opening Hours:

Mon - Fri: 7am - 5pm | Sat 8am - 2pm

We ventured to the city area after that just to take a walk. You really have to walk a lot in Sydney and I'm not kidding about that. Transportation is expensive and bus stops do not come often usually within the city area so people just tend to walk. A LOT. My leg muscles were aching by the 3rd day. Thank god for my really comfortable boots if not I have no idea how I was supposed to survive walking in Sydney after day 2.

A pub that Ivan and I eventually visited one of the nights because the bar we wanted to go to was CLOSED.

Love the clouds in Australia. There was one night I lifted up my head at night and I saw stars everywhere! Something you definitely will not see in Singapore ):

Dropped by QVB for some shopping. This is a non-functioning type-writer in one of the many boutiques. I wanted to include my name on the list but the typewriter wasn't working properly I guess

St Mary's Cathedral by night

A really cool salon! I wanna cut my hair in that sort of environment too.

We popped by Winery, which had some pretty lights outdoors. Wanted to try out their food but their dinner area was fully booked so we could only get snacks and drinks. Decided to search some place else for food and leave this for next time.

Tried chocolate licorice that tastes extremely horrible!

Then, came dinner time. Decided to just grab a bite near the Winery at Surry Hills since we were too lazy to walk anywhere else. Spotted this really cute chicken and salad place called Madam Char Char a building away from Winery. They serve spiced rubbed roasted chickens, some of the most irresistible salads, braised dishes and juicy burgers. I really like their concept and the way they display their salads is just absolutely tempting. (and I'm not even a huge fan of salads to begin with!)

As you can tell, these aren't your typical green salads but they had salads like cous cous and sweet potatoes, carrots etc.

Basically, you can order just the chicken either quarter chicken or half chicken with chips OR you can order chicken with your choice of any three salads. A quarter chicken with 3 salads would cost you $14.90 and a Half chicken with 3 salads would cost you $17.90. I went ahead with the half chicken but regretted otherwise cos the portions were so huge. I think Ivan ended up eating a quarter of my chicken.

Doesn't it look absolutely delish! I heard that chicken is actually very expensive in Aussie since their chickens tend to be free-range chickens. Another thing that I've noticed about Australia is that their food mostly come in gluten-free content. If you have no idea what is 'gluten', it is basically a protein found most commonly in wheat, barley, rye, malts and triticale. In other words, they also technically mean low carb. Don't really understand why they're so big on 'gluten-free' though..

For Salads, I got the:

1. Roast pumpkin and cous cous with feta, barbaries, walnuts, lemon and minted yoghurt dressing

2. Sweet potato with preserved lemons and peas

3. Peas, beans and broccoli with mint, feta, currants, pinenuts and za'tar with black olive dressing

Really like the cous-cous! They are super yummy!!

We sat right beside the window sill facing the street

Ivan's The Foodie Burger consisting of Wagyu beef, caramelised onions, crispy proscuitto, gruyere, green apple and beetroot relish & aioli $14. It was a pretty huge burger but since I can't take beef, I was latching on to his fries. They were crispy and yummy. (:

MADAM CHAR CHAR

285A Crown Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010

Tel: 02 9380 4411

Website: www.madamcharchar.com.au

A collage of all that food loving that day.

Wanted to have hot chocolate here whilst on our way back but I was really too full to even have any other beverages so we skipped on that.

Hope you enjoyed the first post on Sydney! Probably 5 more posts to come... (:

Packing Sydney in my Luggage

I decided to do a very impromptu post since I am currently unpacking my suitcase from my Sydney trip. So, if you know me in the events world, you will know that I have a weird hobby of packing stuff. Must say that I've been complimented on my packing skills quite a fair bit and even I'm sometimes impressed at how great I can pack many things into one tiny space or literally, one toyogo box since that's always what we pack with during event days.

Here to give you some tips on how to pack loads of stuff into one tiny space! Although I'm not exactly the best at packing FOR the trip because I usually throw in a lot of extra things. You'll know why if you keep reading on. For my trip to Sydney this time, I seriously only brought 5 pieces of clothing articles. Got slightly antsy on the 3rd day as I haven't really bought anything much to wear for the next few days without looking like I'm wearing the same few things for the rest of my stay in Sydney. Totally wrong about that. I went crazy and possibly bought the whole of Sydney -_-

This is my dad's medium-sized luggage. Okay, honestly, I'm not sure if it's the medium-sized luggage or a compact sized one so I googled it HERE. Seems like mine is the compact sized one. It's not the large one as I'm worried it will be difficult to transport around especially when taking buses and flights on my own. (I travelled to and fro alone) Look at how much I could stuff in it! 

The suitcase is divided into two compartments and I'm actually quite thankful that you could zip up one side of the luggage. Makes things more organized this way when you're packing since it will not spill over to the other side.

The width of the clothes you see in the picture above is about 3/4 of the length and 1/2 the width. I could fit 10 pieces of clothing articles in that space LOL. What you do is you basically fold and you compress everything as you go along. I did not even make use of the air compressing sheets! I find that those are more suitable for packing winter wear, where it's hard to get the air in between the folds out of the coat before putting it in the luggage.

Above is how much I managed to stuff into half of the luggage. There is possibly about 20 pieces of clothing in there, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 clutches and some accessories including the real chunky ones. Not all of them are newly bought in Sydney, but most of them are. Some I did bring over but did not get to wear them. The booties were bought from Shanghai so those didn't originate from Sydney :D Brought them along just in case of a fancy meal that Ivan wanted to plan.

These are what I managed to place in the other half, which actually isn't a lot as I had to work with a bulging surface from the other half of the luggage. Managed to fit in another pair of shoes, some pretty shopping bags I brought back (haha), brochures and all. The rest of the brochures and magazines are kept in my bag when I went on board the plane. I also needed the purple bag to put all my make up stuff, eyelash curler and all that jazz. Black and pink bag to place my extra lenses and saline water. The green bag is to place all my wash stuff like my toner, shampoo, conditioner and all. I must say that despite the color of the bag, it's been one of the handiest washbag I've had for travelling! I'm amazed at how much that bag can fit actually.The agnes b bag is actually to place my scissors and nail clippers and all that. I always bring a scissors with me on my trips because they have proven very useful.

*Okay, I realise after reading it the next day that I didn't exactly give any tips at all! Sorry.. was kinda blogging whilst half asleep.

TIPS TO PACKING:

1. Lay your shoes in the best possible space-saving manner as possible and stuff your lingerie or smaller stuff like accessories or such in between the nooks and cranny of your shoes. (only manage to do that cos the shoes that I bought were brand new so I didn't have to worry about it being dirty or somethin)

2. Fold your dresses and tops and shelf them in vertically depending on the depth of your luggage space

3. Sometimes, some luggage has uneven spaces where you can stuff tiny stuff like sweets and such in.

Another tip is to make sure that you have sufficient baggage weight on your flight home. Despite stuffing it to the brim, this luggage only weighed 17kg and I topped up my baggage weight to 25kg before I flew off. Managed to check in my carry-on luggage as well. I used my carry-on to place all my food items as well as porcelain fragile items. Took all the fragile items out before I checked in the luggage as well.

How much can you stuff into your luggage space? (:

Harry Potter Exhibition + Andy Warhol

A few days before flying off to Sydney, J and I went for the HARRY POTTER EXHIBITION! Yay. I was pretty excited for it because it's been a great series and I'm quite obsessed with anything magical-like. This is the grand entrance to the ArtScience Museum at MBS.

J was working nearby so he made a trip down to MBS a few days prior to buy the tickets as they were discounted if you bought them from the MBS counter itself. Pretty good deal if you ask me. This offer is only entitled to Singaporeans only unfortunately.

We aren't exactly allowed photos in the exhibition so I didn't take any. I TRIED to take ONE photo of the awesome Quidditch display in one of the shelves but I got caught by one of the 'elves' lol. She was actually being pretty rude about it and talked to me in an extremely demanding tone. She insisted to see all my photos I have taken as well before the Quidditch photo and I had to delete them in front of her. (too bad it was really only the Quidditch photo I took) Felt like I was being put in detention for a moment or so. I mean, okay, I'm probably at fault for sneaking a photo, but do you have to be so rude about it?? Sheesh!

I did manage to take a photo of this cute owl though at the 'Gringots' shop. It's so adorable! You can even move it's head 360 degrees. Pretty pricey though if not I would have totally gotten it. Kinda regretted not getting a wand as well.

The photo they took of us before we entered the exhibition. J bought the photo for me even though he looked weird cos the scarf was too short on him LOL.

Also made it to the Andy Warhol exhibition which I was expecting a lot more than what I got to see in the exhibition hall. ):

It was a pretty good experience. The props were impeccably displayed although I'm doubting the authenticity of some of them (if they were direct from the show itself). Definitely an exhibition worth visiting. And if you're intending to get yourself lots of paraphernalia, be prepared to bring lots of cash with you.

These are what I got though:

A chocolate frog and 'Dobby is a free elf' mug. Loved the drawing of Dobby on the mug so I couldnt resist despite having tons of mugs at home already..