Lucky to Enjoy Snow for a Couple of Hours

I was very very lucky indeed.  On Saturday morning, there were a few furries.  By afternoon, it became full fledge snow.  Large globes of snow flakes clump together and fall from the sky.  I walk about the outdoor mall in Myeondong.  It is not so cold.  Maybe it is because my breakfast was Ginseng Chicken Soup. 


Some kids just outside the hotel are having so much fun just seeing the snow falls.  It is probably their first time.  Even for me who had experience bad snow storm, like this snow as it is quite nice.  The floor is wet but not slippery or icy.  So it is very enjoyable to walk about and no worrying about slipping.


Yes, I experience Real Christmas!

Its so Christmasy!

The Mighty Chinese Tsunami

Everywhere I walked, the vendors call out in Chinese.  The tourists are all speaking Chinese.  Once in a while, I can hear Cantonese and once I hear Thai.  The Chinese are everywhere and buying up the whole town of Myeongdong street, the no 1 tourist street of Korea.  All the vendors it seems speak Chinese.  During dinner, there are two Chinese girls chatting and they work in the cosmetic retail. 


Japanese use to go everywhere to buy branded goods in Europe and now the Chinese is doing the same.  It is the power of Chinese Yuan.  When you are rich and spending, everyone bow to you.  Hong Kongers used to look down on people speaking mandarin.  Today, they speak mandarin and did not bat an eyelid.

Tomorrow is The Protest

Huge line of Police buses.  Thousands of Uniformed Police on the streets.  They are all getting ready for the protest tomorrow.  It is freezing and the expected turnout is 1.5 million.  An incredible amount of people on the street.  I will be able to watch live.

More Seoul Street Food

Great Street Food of Seoul

Freezing

It is Seoul cold here.  Below freezing.  I am staying right beside Lotte Department Store.  Have not gone to Lotte but the street opposite is for tourists.  Plenty of street food at high price.  I was hungry as SQ has only one meal for 6 hours flight.  No light snack at all.  The service is getting worse.  I enjoys the walk and seeing the different type of street food.  Pomegranate is in season and several stalls selling the juice.  Bbq squids and meats on skewers, deep fried potato in a spiral, sweet and spicy fried chicken, rice cakes in spicy sauce and a few others which I cannot recall now.


Dinner is yaki soba.  It is not bad but cost 20,000 won and not filling.  I had Toffee Nuts Coffee with heart shaped cookies for dessert.

Headache

I am nursing a headache today.  So I took two fast relief Tyernols and it works!  I was surprised as the pills were round and red in color.  Tyernol usually comes in white caplets.  Although the headache is gone but I can feel something not right in my head.


I had been very busy at work these days.  So did not have much chance for cycling.  So my arowana has not been fed for a few days.  It will be a week before it can eat again as I will be going to Korea for the weekend.  My distributor and friend's daughter is getting married and he invited me to go.  It will be my first Korean wedding.

Happy Ending

I start the day early.  Picking up my colleague from the hotel and then going from one office to another.  The day ends well at about 5pm when he left via Uber to the airport.  I had the evening off!  I had great Indian veg meal as my colleague is an Indian vegetarian.  We had plenty of discussion on work matters.


I am happy that the day come to a wonderful end with my distributor positive about our relationship.  It is a nice way to end the workweek except I am working on today.  We are short staff and we need to clear up backlog.  Back to the grind again.

Monkey Planet

No Moon Luck

I just peek out and met with cloudy sky.  The moon is trying to shine through the clouds.  It is blurry bright shadow.  Our weather is unfriendly to celestial events.  I wish I am in Reno where the clear is very clear every night!  Beautiful sight to see all the stars.  No wonder many people in US can spot UFO.  There are no tall buildings to obstruct the views.  Any moving object can be followed by naked eyes for a long time.  In Singapore, we have so many tall buildings it is impossible as any flying objects will disappear from view in fraction of a second.

Bright Bigger Moon?

We have no luck at our home.  The moon is always shrouded by the clouds.  It is exciting to see the pictures on the internet.  Maybe it is special effects.  It looks too big to be true.  Likely to be from a telescope.  I look up a number of times but unable to see it.  It is not bright enough to shine through the clouds.  Now that it is high up in the horizon, it is difficult to see if it is really bigger.

Maids Can Hurt Your Child

I was cycling to Punggol Point as usual.  Sometimes, cycling back the long way through Punggol New Town.  Along the canal, a toddler girl wanted to do something and the maid taking care of her refuses and toddler sat on the floor.  The maid was angry and jerk the little girl up by grabbing her 2 forearms and yanking them up violently.  The poor girl started to cry.


I told the maid off loudly to stop hurting the little girl.  She just pretended not to hear and tell the girl loudly she will bring her back to her mum.  The maid walk off with the crying girl.  I glare at her for a few seconds and continue to ride home

Peach Garden T2

My colleague is flying home, so we have lunch in airport.  I like Penang food but he chose Peach Garden instead.  The oolong tea is fabulous.  The food is above average but not even close compared to Hua Ting.  We had char siew soh, siew mai, XO fried carrot cake, chicken feet and bean curd roll in soup.  The meal is pretty good.  The bill comes to $80.

The place is not so crowded as it is pretty pricey for tim sum.  I think Imperial Treasure is better value as the price is slightly lower and food quality is good.

Chillis Clarke Quay Central

My colleague is staying in Holiday Inn Express.  So after work, we went to Chillis for dinner.  The service crews are mostly Indian.  Maybe they are short staffed.  But the attitude of the service crews is horrible.  I do not like to waste food.  So I asked for them to take away my leftovers and he gave me a nasty look.  I will not go back to this Chilis again even though I love their food.

I may go to the one in Tanglin mall as I have not had a bad experience in there yet.  Now I know why the Chilis resturant in Central is always not full unlike Tanglin Mall.

Gyu Kaku in Velocity

Gyu Kaku is our favorite Japanese resturant as I loved bbq meat.  We usually go to UE Square.  It is quite pricey.  However, lunch set menu is more reasonable.  We saw a branch in Velocity yesterday and went there for lunch today.  The food is the same quality as in UE Square.  The whole lunch cost $109 for 4 of us.  We had two bbq sets, two bento sets and one pork belly don.  B2 and B3 enjoys the meal very much and they finish off with Baskins Robbins for dessert.  It is like we are on holiday in a different country.

Bak Chor Mee Moonstone Road

We went to Kallang Bahru for lunch but the hawker center is under renovation.  So on the way back, we decided to try the Bak Chor Mee at Moonstone Road.  We ate and I thought it is not bad and bought two more home for B2 and B3.  B2 did not think too highly of the ingredients.  He feel they do not taste good.  Unfortunately, the noodle had chilli even though I request no chilli.

Kian Seng Seafood AMK Ind Pk 1

We eat out most of the time, so B1 check out good eating place and found Kian Seng recommended.  So we go there to try.  The food is quite good except too salty.  The price is also reasonable.  We had pork collar, chai po tofu, dry fried french bean and salt baked kampong chicken.  B1 likes the food.  I like them too except for the salt level.  It is a canteen and very well patronised.  Many people eat there.

The speciality is roast piglet.

Going After My CPF

After my morning adventure, I was quite happy there is a young woman who want to make friend with me and told the story to my colleague whom I was meeting for lunch.  He says she is after my CPF.  I think he deduce correctly that she may be after my money but CPF is impossible nowadays.  Every month after 65, you can draw a few hundred dollars only.

Divorcee Making Friend with Me!

I was at the Punggol Point in the morning catching fishes as usual last Friday.  A female cyclist saw and later start talking to me.  I am a friendly guy and loves to talk to strangers.  I decided to go and she wanted to cycle back together.  I told her I have to go toilet to wash up.  She said you can leave your bicycle here.  No, I need to wash the bicycle as well and left.  After I finished washing up, she was waiting for me outside the toilet and we cycle back together.  Along the way, we started talking.  She asked if my wife is working and I told her no.  We talked about other things like her kid...she has a girl 8 years old.  Then I realized when someone asked about something, it means that the  people wants you to ask back.  So I ask about her husband and  she told me he is a sales engineer selling PCBs.  Then she says they don't  live together.  That is where I found out she is divorced and I ask if she has boyfriend.  Her response is sometime it is good to be single.


So we chat all the way until we reached Sengkang CC where we split and she goes to gym there and I go home.

Amazing Tui Na

I fell from the bicycle  a week ago and has been nursing backache since then.  Today I have to go to office for lunch.  My office is near to Jurong East.  My wife queue for me and I managed to get treated.  The relief is immediate.  I do not know if the relief is temporary or not, it sure feels good to be pain-free.


After tui na, we had lunch at the Teochew Porridge coffeeshop.  The food is good but quite expensive.  At night, I also ate Teochew porridge in Whampo.  Now Teochew is so expensive, it used to be poor man's meal.  For a stewed cabbage, minced pork, braised pork and chaipo egg together with a bowl of porridge for One person, the cost is $6.50.  The food is salty but tasty.  I love teochew porridge as it is what I ate for lunch growing up.  Dinner is rice.

TCM

Today, I go to TCM for followup.  Doctor wants to prescribe me 14 days worth of medicine and I was reluctant.  So finally he compromised on 10 days and asked me to take 3 days and 1 day off.  He understand I do not like to take the herbal medicine.  It tastes terrible.

 After TCM, we bought satay from Chomp Chomp and AMK Ave 5.  I like side by side tasting.  Both are ok.  I thought the AMK sauce is good although diluted.  The Chomp Chomp satay sauce is more robust and sweeter.  It has more peanuts as well.

Fried Kway Teow in AMK Ave 5 is pretty good and the quantity is substantial for the $3.50 pack.  My boys like it.

Massive Traffic and BLK 473 Fernvale Coffeeshop

I was going to the market for my usual tea but massive traffic jams on Yio Chu Kang Road on both directions changed my mind and I go to look for the coffeeshop Boh Tong blogged about in Fernvale.  This time I found it!  It is quite convenient as there is a multi-storey carpark right beside.  I also like the fact the season lots can be parked during the day.  I find it inconvenient as we park up a few level up in the visitors parking lots.  Now we can park at ground or level 1 before 7pm.

The Western stall is not open in the morning.  The breakfast set is $2.50 with two soft boiled eggs and a kaya toast together with tea or coffee.  Tea is acceptable but the soft boiled eggs are cold.  The kaya is just sugar paste.  There is a fried beehoon stall, the price is competitive.  I bought two packs for my family but did not eat it, so have no idea if it is good value (meaning taste quality is good).

I will have to try out the western that my friend rave about one day.

Meeting Classmates

It is amazing to meet up with all our old classmates.  It is hard to recall who is who.  I am very happy to catch up with them.  One lives in Thailand, One in Melbourne.  A number have regional jobs and travel a lot.  We have a few doctors.  Most of our kids are in the early twenties.  A couple have kids below 10.  The range is pretty wide.  Two have passed on.  We had a minute of silence observed.


Only the female classmates looked young.  Most of us did not do up our hair except for one.  He still look very neat like before. 


Many of my classmates are senior in their jobs.  Managing Director, Partner, Director, Urologist, Dentist, Specialist in Dentistry, Cardiologist, Consultant or Business Owners.  They are all doing well in life.  Some have remarried, one remained divorced.


It is a wonderful experience.  Our host is very warm and he sponsored the whole dinner.  He is a Partner in big 4.  He did not go to university like me.  He studied while working.  He did ACCA.  It is an amazing climb.