Great Deals in Metro

We went to Wisma for lunch and we needed to change some cash for our trip next week.  B1 want to make shirt for his workwear but mummy insist on ready-to-wear or make to measure locally.  So B1 relented and go with mummy to check out the shirts in Metro.  There they found office shirt going for $10/ piece.  The quality is quite good.  So B1 tried them and decided on 5 which will help in his wardrobe as he will be starting work after we are back from holiday.

I bought 2 shirts even though I really don't need anymore. 

The cool weather makes it nice to walkabout along Orchard Road and the mood is quite festive with the decorations.  I am relax about the new year.

B2 in Montreal

It is good that B2 went to explore another city during the yearend break.  He took viarail train to Montreal and then travel by subway to the city center.  His apartment is right downtown and cost only $35 per night.  What a great deal.  I am not sure if $35 is his portion only or to be shared with is friend.  I am glad he is exploring the country.  In fact, he goes much further than my wife and I on our tour trip there.

B2 in South Commons

I just called B2.  He is having Christmas dinner in a friend's home.  It is good that he has a family style meal during Christmas.  South Commons mall is near the Mississauga campus of U of T.  He is quite lucky to have White Christmas as it snowed the day before.

Best Weather

It is nice and breezy.  Best of the all the air is cool.  I wish we have this kind of weather all year round.  Otherwise, we should 4 seasons.  I love the seasons especially fall.  The world turns into a myriad of colours and then all the leaves fall out leaving only bare branches.  Only cone shape trees are left with their spiky green leaves which looked beautiful when the snow falls on them.

I am enjoying the cool breeze floating into my living room.  It is relaxing.

Progress in Programming

Now I am making more progress with Python Programming.  My B1 tells me to go to the video and also use the StackOverflow or Github.  I realised my mistake and slowly making more progress.

It is a hard road ahead as I am still unable to get some basics right.  However, it is getting more fun as I can get some programs to work.

Electric Toothbrush Repaired

Last week, I send my toothbrush for repair and was told to replace with a new toothbrush as it is usual for the battery to wear out after a couple of years.  So I paid $75 for the replacement brush and then found that it is the charger that is not working.  However, I had already dismantled the old toothbrush which mean it is totally destroyed.  I took the charger back last Friday and they repaired it back for free.

I hope it will last me for a few more years.  I loved this toothbrush and it has served me well.

Lai Heng Fried Kway Teow

Lai Heng is a better known fried kway teow.   I have not eaten it for long time.  I tried it for lunch today.  I find it is not as good as before.  Like the fried kway teow in Marine Parade, the standard has dropped.  The price is still reasonable at $2.50 and $3.00 per plate.  The cockles are basically uncooked and there is a generous sprinkling of sliced lup cheong or chinese sausage.

The best fried kway today is Outram FKT in Chinatown hawker center.

Man Man Unagi

I had unagi takeaway last Saturday from Tampopo in Ngee Ann City.  So B1 reminds me of the place where the unagi is freshly slaughtered and grilled.  I had told him when he first tells me about this place is that I tried in fresh unagi in Japan and it did not taste good even though it was quite expensive. 

Today, he brought me to Man Man and there is a long queue outside the resturant.  We had to wait for at least half an hour.  We got lucky and sat on the counter seats.  So I can see the grilling.  I did not notice until B1 points out to me the fish is still moving.  Then I saw the mouth gasping for air and the fins are still moving.  It is a little gross even though the fishes has been split and left in the basin for a few minutes before being skewered.  It is probably moving about for more than 10 mins after it body was split, backbone removed.  

The unagi tastes pretty good.  The problem is the price.  It cost $38 for one bowl of rice topped with unagi.  It is quite a nice experience.  I do not thiink I will go back.  I prefers the char siew from the famous char siew wanton mee on Keong Siak Street.

Breakfast at Intercontinental Hotel

A friend from Korea is in town and invited me to his hotel for breakfast.  I had French toast.  The salad, fruit juice and cut fruits are self service.  The fruit juice is quite good.  The breakfast is quite high standards although I think it is better in Seoul.  I stay in Intercontinental there most of the time.  I also like Chosun Westin which has huge stretch of tourist foodstalls and market across the road.  Intercontinental has the Kuan Yin temple and underground mall.  The underground mall is not as nice since the upgrading.  The bookshop is gone as well.  However, the resturants are still familiar such as Friday's, pho and Outbacks.  Plenty of coffee chains like Starbucks, Coffeebeans and Korean brands.

After breakfast, I went to the library to borrow books.  Library has also been renovated.  No more librarians sitting at the counter.  It is now converted to a event hall.  So library services are automated and it is not easy to see a walking librarian anymore.

Programming Frustrations

It is really not easy.  There are so many ways to do programming wrong.  The smallest mistake such as not having ":" or no tab in the line or extra tab.  These quite easy to fix as it is visible compared to "attribute error" which may have something to do with my software setup or my file not downloaded properly.

Then there is version difference.  Even the simplest command such as "print" tripped me.  For python 2, print does not need "()" but it is needed in Python 3.

Slowly, painfully slowly, I am making small progress.  The joys is discovering the mistakes I made or the setup tuning I need to do.

Last Day of Exams

Today is B1's last day of his Part B exams.  He went out with his friends after the papers.  I am so glad he is done for now.  He has been working hard studying for the exams.  He deserves a break!

B3 is learning wonderful stuff like genetic engineering in Biopolis.  He is doing experiments and pipetting bacteria, making agar to culture them.  He is quite excited learning how to do the experiments.  He learn to splice the DNA and using eletrophersis and centrifuge to separate the DNA strands and insert different DNA into the spliced DNA.  After which, he has to culture the bacteria and ensure they mulitply.  It is very interesting and advanced science.

B2 is also studying hard in Toronto.  He is doing well in essay questions but not good with multiple choice.  MCQ papers, he barely clears but essay papers are 23/25 and 28/30.  He is good in articulating his thoughts and understanding of the topic he is writing about.

Sin Kian Choon Trading

The fruit shop that I was patronising and very impressed with in the past week is Sin Kian Choon.  I have taken a picture of the signboard which also give it address.

It will be a great place to visit if you have a party to impress.  Orange colored passionfruit, Japanese Premium Musk Melon, Fresh Cranberries, Fresh Blackcurrant, Beautiful Strawberries and regular fruits like R2E2 mangoes, Harum manis, longan ($3.50 vs $5 in Fairprice), jackfruit at $5/kg, watermelon $3 each.  It is fruit galore!!

Bukit Ho Swee Fruit Shop

I really like the fruit shop.  Not only the fruits are reasonable priced, there are exotic fruits.  B3 followed us this morning.  He loved it and bought blackberries, blackcurrent, white dragonfruit, tomatoes on a vines and was also keen to get more if not for the fact it was getting costly and we will be unable to finish.  Yes, I forgot!  Also Korean sweet strawberries.  I bought persimmons - Korean and Spanish, Japanese sweet potatoes from Vietnam and black organic raisins. There is also Japanese melons which until now I saw them in Meidiya only.

I am happy with the amount of fruits we have at home now.

Redhill Wet Market

My wife is taking classes beside Tiong Bahru mall.  So after dropping her off, I go to the Redhill hawker center.  The fishball noodle there is quite good.  It moved from Holland Drive market.  I also like the wet market.  There are some exotic vegetables sold there.  It is exotic to me as they sell different types from the supermarkets.

The prawn noodles is quite popular as well.  I like the fruits sold in that area.  It is quite competitive in price compared to Yishun.  For example, watermelon is $3 each, longans at $3.50/kg.  So it is a good place to stock up on fruits.

Beautiful Full Rainbow

Scary flashes of lightnings and followed by booming thunders this afternoon.  After the thundershower, there is a beautiful and complete rainbow.  I am so lucky to see it!  B1 was up at the roof garden with me as well.  B3 is sleeping as he just finishes his "O" level yesterday.

Foodie Market

We send our Epson printer for repair yesterday.  The service center is in Golden Agri building in Pasir Panjang.  We decided to go to Tiong Bahru for lunch.  It was very crowded with no parking.  The Loon Hainese Curry Rice has super long queue.  We went a couple of rounds including the multistorey carpark and decide to go to Foodie Market instead.

The meat in Foodie Market came be customised in thickness.  So I bought one slice of ribeye and one slice of striploin as they are the more value cut.  Each slice is just below $20 as I asked for one and half inch thick cut.

After grocery shopping, we went carpark hunting again and finally got lucky when a car just left but the carpark is near the porridge place.  So we ate porridge instead.  After lunch, I ta-pow curry rice for B1's lunch since the queue is more reasonable as it is almost 2pm.

In the evening, I bbq the striploin and use our meat thermometer until the core is about 140 degree Fahrenheit.  This will be medium heat.  The meat was tender and both B1 and B3 love it!  B2 is in Canada, so now I have to cook less.  I love having more to cook as it is fun to have variety. and the time taken is almost the same as cooking smaller portions.

Learning Zhichar!

My wife signed me up for Dry Heat Grill and Roasting Class.  She told me it is grilling steak.  However, when we attend class yesterday morning, it was not.  We feel cheated!  There are 4 types of cooking - Chinese, Thai, Malay and Western.  So we had a Chinese Chef teaching us yesterday.  We have to fry the fried rice and cut up some vegetables.  The chef do the charsiew and fry the green vegetables for us.  We have to eat up own fried rice.  It does not taste good.  The wok is hard to handle as it is heavy.  Then we have to flip the rice which only one or two managed to execute.  The fire is extremely strong.  We also learn tp deep fried chicken wings, squirrel fish mostly by observation. 

I am disappointed to go to class not to learn how to cook individually.  To add insult to injury, it is not what we thought we signed up for.

Learning Breadmaking

Today is day 2 of my bread making class.  My wife convinced me to joined her in this class.  Making bread is interesting.  However it is not so good business anymore due to heavy competition.   We have 14 other classmates totalling 16 in our class.  The dough is done by machine.  We get to measure as a group.  So if you are aggressive, you get to do a bit.  It is more learning by obsevation rather than doing.  So I am not so happy.  I rather we do less bread and do each bread myself.  Today, we get to bring back 5 different types of breads - sandwich, rye, country, somewhat and baguette.  The bread is quite nice but I love to do from start to finish instead of just forming the bread.

High Water

This morning I was at Punggol Point during high tide.  The water level is very high.  Tomorrow it will be higher as it will be the full moon and we have spring tide. It will be the next highest level at 3.0 metres.  The highest will be on Monday at 3.1 metres. 

The water is very dirty with oil slick on the surface and the hue is dark.  So no fishes are around.  It is tough when the water quality is bad.

By the way, on Thursday night at about 10pm an Indian man disappeared after going to the water to disentangle his fishing line.  He was drinking and decide to swim to the bouy nearby.  His girlfriend was purchasing something from 7 eleven and when she is back, she asked the kakis where is her boyfriend.  They had continued fishing and were disinterested until the girl friend started questioning.  They report to the Cisco police and there was a search with frogmen.  But he was not found.  Yesterday morning, SCDF ship was patrolling to search for the body.  So far no news in the net, so he must be still missing.

Tony Romas

B3 finished his papers at 10am.  After, we pick him up we continue our journey as B1 has an errand to run in Suntec at 11am.  So we go to Tony Romas for lunch.  We had the 4 types of ribs, deep fried shrimps, potatoes skins,  Tony sampler and a salad.  It is a wonderful meal.  My boys like the potato skins.  It is my favorite as well.  B3 likes them so much he had 3 while the rest of the family had one each.

I think the ribs and the potato skins are the best of all the dishes we ordered.  It is a nice party and I am glad we have both boys for lunch.