Hot in the City

I took part in the 6K fun at the Safra Bay Run and Half Marathon this year. My last run was in Oct last year so I was a little apprehensive about running the 6K.

SK couldn't join me as planned because he had an important family commitment that day. I was ok with that since I had planned to run anyway. The weather was lovely that day and the sky was clear. The run started on the Esplanade bridge. It was so refreshing to run on Shenton Way. We then proceeded onto the ECP, then a little of the Sheares bridge, before turning into Suntec and then lastly to the floating stadium. It was shorter than I've expected. I took about 40 minutes to complete the run. Now, I have more confidence to prepare for the 10K run come October, which is a day after my trip to South Africa. Yikes!

One of the setbacks of dating is eating out more and getting fatter inevitably. I'm trying hard not to be part of that trend. It's tough though.

Just the other day, Big and I had planned to just have a simple dinner but we ended up at Buckaroos at Sembawang. We have both heard about this BBQ restaurant and we felt like having some ribs and it was near Sembawang beach so off we went.

The restaurant is really one of its kind in Singapore. It's quite laidback, very nice. We ordered a bread-bowl of mushroom soup. It was creamy and delicious. Then we ordered a full rack of ribs. It was huge! We couldn't finish it. However, the texture was mediocre. I thought Cafe Cartel had better and cheaper ribs!

But it's a great place to hang out and have some wings and ice cold beer.

Today in between my SMSes with my old pals from school who were planning a gathering at one of the girls' place, I got this SMS:
" M & S cannot cum, how about you? "

...erm...not sure about you, but i seriously didn't know what to reply...i guess the word "cum" just...erm was a bit raw for me esp in this SMS...and i understand most singaporeans like to use it mostly in the context below:

Cum [preposition]
with; combined with; along with (usually used in combination): My garage-cum-workshop is well equipped.


I guess after being in the United States for so long, I am used to how it's been used in the US (and Europe too...actually in many countries!!)...just can't help it...

Cum [noun]
Slang: Vulgar, sexual pornographic context...

In my opinion, I thought this context is quite globally understood, perhaps people should take care when using this word, you know what i mean...much embarrassment could be avoided. How should i present my case to my friend, who, in my terms, is still very sheltered from such vocabulary.

H E L P!!

Read in the papers about the upscale NTUC joint in Bukit Timah and we were craving for some yummy procuitto and mozzarrella, so decided to drive out to get our hard-to-find ingredients.

Young Master says i am mad, when in New York i cook Asian food, and when we are back i want to cook Italian and those ang-mo food which ingredients are hard to find here. He says i should be making food that has ingredients easy to find in the locale we live in. Oh well...whatever...

Anyways, so hopefully NTUC the Posh version will not disappoint us...the place is still brand new. Staff are dressed in brown and orange-collared uniforms, quite pleasing looking. The place is not over-crowded like the usual NTUC joints...since everything is supposed to be higher-end, there's evident effort that NTUC has put in arranging and presenting the products. I kept seeing the cubical watermelons...maybe that's the only special item in the house? uhm...

In any case, we got our procuitto and cheeses but still think the selection isn't all that great. I guess our search is still on, for ingredients and YM's cheeses. Nonetheless, we had a terrific dinner, check it out:



BURP

Labels: food

SuperStar & Young Master were checking out East Coast Park this morning. I think it must be at least 15 years since i last went to East Coast. WOWZA~~! there's this huge establishment called Marine Cove that housed all the eateries and supposedly cool hang outs. We had brunch at this place called C_Nai Hong Kong Cafe -- food was whatever but there was this huge crowd...uhmmm. Anyways, there were many tents out there on the beach, seems that it's a trend to camp out in East Coast nowadays? Even just for the day? Reminds us of the Latino folks BBQing out in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, kekeke, quite funny.

Later we headed to Parkway Parade to complete our tour of duty. I needed some sports bra so this girl was helping me at one of the name-brand store. She was very helpful in her lian-ish Engrish. i was very happy with her service so I decided to take note of her name...uhm...and noticed her name tag says "Kinky Lian"...uhmmm...erm...do people ever check up the meaning of words before they christened themselves?? In this case, i thought was hilarious but had to pretend to look normal as i paid for my stuff. As usual, i SMS Miss Mo immediately of my funny experience...

Miss Mo went to the first concert since her return to Singapore with Superstar, Musa and Mr Musa. It was the Gwen Stefani concert. I like her songs but don't know too many except for those popular ones. Nevertheless, I thought she would be fun during the concert.

The dancers at her concert looked as if they performed at those TCS variety shows. The dance moves seemed so dated, very last century. The female dancers were quite bad actually. Apparently, they were from Japan.

Gwen sang most of her songs from her solo albums. She seemed to be full of energy. She even went down the stage and to the audience. The highlight was she came so close to where we sat. It was worth the $150 we paid for each ticket.

I had my first fine dining experience with Big at the Olive Ristorante at Labrador Park. The restaurant is al fresco and situated on the hillside. It's quite a romantic spot. We both ordered pasta dishes. My spaghetti carbonara was pretty good too. Yummy!

After dinner, we then toured the place around and discovered there was a spa and resort on top of the hill. The spot was lovely. We would check it out the next time.

Yeah, that's the motto for this year's National Day Parade. Singapore is the City of Possibilities. I find it amusing.

Anyway, I got tickets to the National Day parade this year. This is the first time it's held at the floating stage by the Marina Bay. The military show was spectecular but the performances by those cultural groups or schools were kind of boring. Big and I had a good time nonetheless!

Two thursday ago, I went out to reconnect with US past by having some drinks with these 2 American Californian dudes. The funny thing was they are not the typical Americans. Rene's Latino and Mike is Jewish. We decided to meet at Dempsey Hut.

I've not heard of Dempsey Hut even though Dempsey Road, aka Tanglin Village is now the hottest hangout area in Singapore. From the reviews on the internet, Dempsey Hut seems like a laid back chillout bar.

I arrived late and was surprised to see that we had a bigger party. There were these 3 big fat Americans (it's been some time I've seen big-sized people). Apparently, they all work at the US Embassy. The first thing that came across my mind was that they maybe the nasty consulates that I've heard so much about.

They are actually a bunch of friendly Americans and they were funny too, you know the usual American humor. I had lots of fun laughing at them and they had lots of fun making fun of Singaporeans too.

I would definitely go back to Dempsey Hut again. It's a very laidback relaxing outdoors bar, totally different from those pretentious trendy bars found further up the hill.