Nana's Green Tea Cafe

30 January 2013

Met up with Julie for dinner last evening and we tried one of the new restaurants located on the new wing of Plaza Singapura - Nana's Green Tea Cafe!

I read reviews that this is the first outlet outside of Japan!  Decorated in zen style, the use of wooden frames as table that kinda creates a private space between the diners in an open concept cafe (somehow the wooden frame made me felt like visiting a prisoner, without having the glass panel in between and missing the talking phone...  drama drama... heh).

Menu has wide selection of Matcha drinks and desserts.  Julie ordered the Ebi Fried Curry Udon and I had the Gyu Shabu Goma Dare Udon that is served cold!  It contained all my favorite bites - cherry tomato, corn, cucumber, udon and best of all - their special seasame sauce as "soup base"!  Minus points are the sliced beef that are abit over cooked.  Overall still yum yum.  :)  If I have a choice, I will order again, minus the beef.

Requested to have our drink served after meals so that we can catch up alittle before we both head home for an early night.  My Matcha Latte was served very thick and has this 'powdery' after-taste and I had to add sugar plus more sugar syrup (kooped from Julie's as she preferred to have less sweeten stuffs) otherwise it will still taste bitter...  My preference is still Starbucks'.  I'll come back for the desserts next time!

Dining at Brasserie Gavroche!

27 January 2013

I was feeling alittle under the weather for the past two days and am so glad that I dragged myself out for the dinner date with ah Thiang, Yeo嫂 and her dining companions (Limin & Serene) at this local French place located in one of the charming conversion shophouses along Tras Street on Friday evening.

In fact, this restaurant was sooo recommended by the Yeos (who recently dined days before our dinner date) to come and try again!  Oh.  I loved how my Angus flank steak was grilled into perfection - medium well, and the 'soup base' from the Grandpa Henri’s pork hotpot was simply souperlicious.  够味！  I must say, prices on the menu are on the high side and I won't come back anytime soon unless I have special occassions worth celebrating.  (heh... then again, I already have plans in mind where to go for our 1st wedding anniversary lo!)

Oh, notes aside... the server who took our orders looked pretty much like Dr Carlisle Cullen from the <Twilight> movie!  (... and Serene agrees with me!  *wink*)

Baking CNY Goodies!

21 January 2013

It was a working weekend for ah Thaing (last last weekend, last weekend and this weekend too!)!  So.  Me as a good daughter & daughter-inlaw, spent my weekend with the family!  #bonding

Kick-start my weekend with a mahjong session with my folks after our lunch at Pizza Hut while waiting for the husband to knock off from work.  We started late but managed to clear 1.25 rounds cos baby bro fetching his GF so we tongbang-ed his car ride home...  Well, it was a 一家输三家...  :(  Fred not, this weekend I go back (for by-election)... and I will win back all my loses!

Then Sunday afternoon at home helping out my mama-inlaw, she's baking her CNY goodies - pineapple tarts and chocolate chip cookies!  Bascially I did nothing much lah, just 'supervising' her at the process, 搽搽这里，抹抹那里 and helped her to cut the big pack of walnuts into smaller pieces (she is baking walnut and fruit cakes this weekend!).  Can't wait to start feasting on CNY goodies!  Heehee.

Sashimi & Dim Sum Weekend!

14 January 2013

Simple weekend; Just the two of us.

Feasting yummy food and watching series epsoides of Running Man together over the weekend.  I am missing my nap times...  :(

We are back again for nice and fresh sashimis at Sakuraya!  Kick-started our Saturday with a yummy sashimi brunch at 4pm-ish as ah Thiang is working (and for the next few Saturdays too).  Then a 'lil shopping around the mall and end our Saturday evening with a foot massage (overheard the masseuse attending to me won the lottery first prize!  it's worth a 10grant leh!).  Life's good.

Then on Sunday, we had dim sum breakfast with the papa-inlaw at the newly opened 陆羽茶楼 in Chinatown Point!  We are the first customer at 10am (they opened at 8am on weekends and we actually booked the table in advance just in case it gets crowded like Yan Palace) but in the picture, we like booked the whole restaurant!  Haha.  Crowd only started to come in like after 11am...  I liked the deco especially the wall with full of chopsticks and was told that they operates under the same management as Kenko Wellness (what a diversement of investment!).

Well, the 皮蛋粥 was the worst I ever had.  Not sure if it was my taste bud or what, very super bland and I thought I can salvage the taste by adding soya sauce but it just got worser... yikeeees!  Not cheap you know, cost S$5.90++ per serving/bowl.  Any other porridge stall would have served much tastier bowl at S$4.  Aside from the poor-tasting porridge, it was siew-mai-licious and they served not-too-bad dumplings and pork-ribs too.

Our spending last weekend, coughed up to S$400... my poor husband needs to cut down on his expenditure in the next coming weeks... *cough cough*

Dinner Date with ex-DDs!

09 January 2013

Last week, Mr Daswani called to wish the newly-wed, Mr & Mrs Arthur Tan post-new-year wishes... recollecting how long it has been since we last met (last meet up was at our wedding lah... almost a year liao.).  So.  Being always the unofficial organizer of all dinner dates, I made an impromptu arrangement with just a few of us (Jean, ah Thiang and myself) to reminiscing plus bitching about the good 'ol days at DD!

It is always a challenge to find dinner venue when you have peers with special diet, therefore finding a pizza place is definitely a good-est choice so that he/she can has vegetarian pizza or pasta all by themself, then we can has all the meat to spike them off over the whole dinner date.  We just did the same thing (had pizza) when we had our post-new year gathering at SC's place last weekend.  ;)

Anyhoots, Yesterday's dinner was a fast one as he has 'curfew' over being home by 9-oddish.  This time his excuse was his home was infested with bed-bugs therefore he has tons of housekeeping stuffs to do before he starts to travel for work in the next weeks.  And ah Thiang, as usual always making racist comments about him, how dirty ah nehs are and always have ku-tus, blah blah blah and so on...  HAHA!

My review on the menu we had: some corn soup was too sweet for my liking but I loved their lychee rasberry thingy drink.  Yummy.  So regretted didn't change my drink, rootbeer with ah Thiang (he offered to change with me leh...).  This was on Alex's (Jean's BF) treat so no complain har.  HEHE.

Nice.  So, I've just received news that we will have a post-CNY dinner coming up with Hwangs when he is back from his Xi An trip with the wifey.  Have to start planning where to lou hei coz they sure ask me to think one!  Tsk.

Sim Cik's Advance Birthday Celebration!

07 January 2013

Jessica and Andy are back from HK and we decided to do a post New Year gathering at Sim Cik's place... and a surprise pre-birthday celebration (the earliest advance celebration ever, quoted from the birthday boy...) Yesterday!  We pot-lucked sashimi, sushi from nearby J8 and ordered pizzas and Jessica was in-charge of getting the surprise birthday cake.

We had a long chat on some religious stuff (about the bible classes that SC is now attending...) and also the couple's upcoming wedding preparation in two months time!  Can't wait for the couple to tie the knot soon!  Our next date will be CNY... hang it there, gonna be in a spiffy 4 weeks time!

2012 New Year's Eve

02 January 2013

Our post Christmas gift-exchange with the HXDA was postponed to New Year's Eve and the Quahs' hosted the party at their humble adobe - The Peak!  The host whipped up a wholesome yummy feast for everyone of us, Nigel sponspored the Christmas logcake from Awfully Chocolate and the lovely weather on the 27th floor of the Peak was extremely cooling and shiok which made the party awesome-er!

The fun part begins...  Thomas prepared us to draw our number by using the mahjong playing cards.  Everyone of us was skeptical about getting the gift-exchanged from Nigel due to his ultimate level of creativity to preparing of the gift exchange, and every year the ban list gets longer and longer.  But this year, we have two outstanding gifts that we will bitch about for the rest of 2013...

Nigel's past records:-
Year 2009 - piggy bank filled with 1-cents of coins (Munic)
Year 2010 - heaps of 武林密集 writing notepads (... still Munic)
Year 2011 - CT Girls CD (the curse was passed on to Helena)
Year 2012 - *roll drums* (scroll down to see the new winner!)

TADAAAAA!  Announcing champions by the level of creativity...

Second runner-up was Helena ---> she wrapped up the gift box filled with styrofoam balls and when XY opened the box (also due to the strong winds), the whole atmosphere feels like snowing!  She was made to open her gift at one corner of the house!  Aftermath was the host to clean up the balcony platform!

Runner-up was Thomas ---> inspired by the axe brand medicated oil advertisement, he gifted a dozen of them and the lucky guy is Joe!  Joe shared his fortune of medicated oils to us a bottle each and some super lucky ones got two!  HAHA.  (maybe next year, don't know who will gift pampers or 如意油!)

Champion still bagged by Nigel, fourth year running! ---> this time was all about efforts.  Our 大哥 printed his very own LV wrapping paper and gotten the gift to be wrapped in A4 paper carton.  Gerine was so curious in what was the biggest gift, she took the biggest risk (by saving all of us...) and chose his present - a cartonful of wet tissue & tissue papers worth S$15!  Munic almost went crazy the moment she finished opening the carton!  gua gua gua.

So this was our year-end gathering we had with the HXDA and always looking forward to the following years of fun together!  :))

After the gift exchange, we quickly hop onto the streets and get a taxi to head downtown and meet the Yeos' for 2013 countdown!  Traffic was smooth and we are in time to catch the fireworks at Pan Pacific Hotel!

We had finger food and tea at the alfresco cafe at the hotel level 4 while waiting for the countdown and played some 'continuation of guessing and some naming games' with Serene, the BF, Limin and the Yeos' of course... ended the night with a glass of Moscato in the room and a game of Monopoly deal (I won of course! it's sure a sign of good start to 2013!!!) before we head home and hit the sack (it was like 3am when I KO-ed!).

2012 was Beautiful.

01 January 2013

Decided to pen down one of the MOST beautiful moments in 2012;

 

I got married to my ah Thiang and that was the most beautiful thing that has happened in my life.

 

2012 was indeed beautiful.

 

May 2013 be another year filled with warmth, laughter and lots of love for all!  :))

Happy 2013!

01 January 2013

In year 2013, may God gives You...

12 Months of Happiness,

52 Weeks of Fun,

365 Days of Success,

8760 Hours of Good Health,

52600 Minutes of Good Luck,

3153600 Seconds of Joy...

and that's all!  Huartttt ahhhhh!