food truck dining

food trucks - not the kind like these that bring/sell breakfast/morning tea/lunch fare to workplaces (sometimes known as smoko vans), but the more gourmet versions helmed by the likes of ex-restaurant level chefs, typically selling a fairly limited menu of items. there's one in brisbane that i know of, the bun mobile, but i've not yet tried it. there are a few more options in melbourne and sydney, and when this type of dining option becomes more mainstream, wherethetruck.at (who have recently added brisbane/the bun mobile to its coverage) will probably be the best place to track them all down and find out, well where they're at!

Image source: FaceBook's photos of The Bun Mobile

btw the bun mobile's offerings are essentially what's known in singapore as a kong bak bao (扣肉包 or chinese braised pork burger), but with a twist on the fillings available. well if you have to copy an idea, might as well copy a good one, cos a good kong bak bao is quite the mouthful of deliciousness ;)

here today, gone tomorrow

it's been barely two months since i returned from my last trip to singapore, and i'm gearing up to return. thanks to the ability to take some leave without pay, this trip will be the longest i have ever stayed (and the longest i ever plan to stay) -- 5 weeks. within those 5 weeks i'll be hopping over to hong kong for a few days, catching up with YC, seeing some of the sights and maybe catching a movie or two at the hong kong international film festival. then island and i will also be joining up with noodlez, mellow yellow and slam man for a a week in kota kinabalu, including climbing mt kinabalu.

should be fun :)

i've barely caught up with the uploading of photos since the start of the trip... but here's a roundup in pictures of some of what i've been up to since late december.

• clay caloundra outing
• SWANS christmas gathering at oishii sushi and nza's place
• Singapore trip
• day 1
• day 2
• isabelle (my neice!)
• day 4
• days 5 & 6
• stillfishing DG retreat day 1
• stillfishing DG retreat day 2 + ARPC NYE dinner
• new years day
• week 2 (can you tell i was getting a bit lazy with my albums by this stage? :p)
• sydney pit stop for some nice ribs... hmm... yummm!
• BLT (brisbane leadership training conference)
• NBL finals game 3

phew!

got a few days left to get all my packing and other prep done... i feel quite disorganised and tight on time, so probably shouldn't be sitting here blogging! anyways, gonna go salivate at the prospect of eating some nice nice food, such as the likes of the fare featured on singapore food blogs like ieatishootipost. might even try to tag along as a makankaki if i get the chance :)

chicago's... not famous for ribs!

i can't sleep, so i'm tending to my much neglected blog...

i can't remember if i've been back to chicago's piano bar & grill since my first visit for lunch over a year ago, but in any case i found myself dining there again on friday night when i met up with some clay folk for dinner. this time i sat outside, where a male duo on guitar and tambourine sang some pop songs, thus providing a bit more of an atmosphere than during the day.

perhaps spurred on by the fond memories of the ribs i had last month in sydney (see previous post for pic/details), i thought i'd try it from a local eatery. prior to tony roma's, the only other time i can remember eating ribs in a restaurant was some years ago when i tried some from a friend's sizzler meal... and so i went for the "smoky bbq pork rack of ribs".

well, this turned out to be probably the worst ordering decision i had ever made. the only point of redemption was to get the half rack with chicken rather than the full rack - at least the chicken was ok, and the combo was $1 less than getting the full rack. so i didn't feel quite as cheesed off as ST, who ordered the full rack...

now i'm not an expert on cooking ribs (ok i'm not an expert on cooking anything... except maybe 2 minute noodles??), but from what i understand, the aim of producing good ribs is generally to end up with tender meat that almost falls off the bones. this is certainly what i was served at tony roma's. chicago's on the other hand served a rather antithetical version, with meat quite unwilling to come off the bone despite the best intentions of teeth or knife (ST said her teeth were sore after getting through her rack). the meat was tough, chewy, and just unco-operative to the efforts to tear and pull off the bone and into the mouth. i did manage to cut up the ribs (never mind the tearing apart by hand idea of eating ribs though... you'd be building some muscle if you tried that method!), i tried to cut the meat off each individual bone. bad idea... whatever meat or non-bone matter that was, it wasn't coming off the bone without a fight. in the end i gave up and returned to the more primal means of hand and teeth. honestly, can you imagine ribs that are difficult to cut even with a knife? i'm talking proper meat knife here, not your butter variety.

ok enough ranting. apparently the vast disappointment i had with the ribs was not repeated with the dishes the others ordered, with the pizza apparently worthy of repeat ordering. some say the meat might have been old, and hence my experience an anomaly. i don't know enough about food and its preparation to know whether i got a bum deal, but i know that it was frustrating to eat and i had no satisfaction for my monetary investment. the more i reflect on the situation, the more i think i should have taken the dish back, even if it was somehow meant to be served that way... oh well. live and learn.

a love story not worth pursuing

no i'm not talking about my own life ;) but a movie i watched yesterday. it was a case of fronting up at the cinema, and trying to pick out something to see. of the few options which were deemed watchable, 'love story' was the shortest wait by a few hours. i had figured that it's been some time since i watched a chinese movie, and since i'm in a country where access to such films in the cinema is more readily available, why not take advantage of the opportunity? even when i was informed that it is a local production (which i did not initially realise), i was still hopeful for something passable in the form of a mildly entertaining or touching romantic drama.

how wrong i was.

from the opening sequence to the closing credits, i was lost. and frustrated. so much so that i could not be bothered trying to figure out what was going on in the screen in front me, and at one stage i almost fell asleep -- a rarity in my cinematic outings, overnight movie marathons not withstanding. i really can't even be bothered trying to explain why this movie sucked so much, other than to say "arty farty" (which is so not me), and to quote from the review linked above:

Unfortunately, Tong [director]’s own lofty ambitions in his script, punches a large dent in this curious and often erratic film. His insistence and overuse of highly derivative, metaphysical and experimental story-telling techniques leave much to be accomplished. The plot meanders too much midway and it starts to become a chore just to keep up with the writer’s own extremities in dealing with the abstract boundaries of fact and fiction. It becomes arrogant in its self-consciousness and is devoid of a personality.

yeah. don't bother man. the closing statement speaks thus: A brave and exciting new direction for local cinema, but becomes too much of an effort even for the most willing. i really don't know whether i would use words like brave and exciting if this is the direction in which local cinema here is headed... but i can certainly attest to the "too much of an effort" for this rather unwilling viewer.

- - - - -

speaking of unwilling viewing and falling asleep, i caught 'perhaps love' on the flight over here. well, caught some of it at least. i had heard about this movie when it was showing on the screens at a local eatery back home. this place (coffee square) is a place i tend to avoid, because it feels too honkie for this non-chinese speaking chinese person. i almost feel some sort of reverse discrimination whenever i'm there. the place does not have an english-friendly feel (possibly different if you are/look non-chinese), and i only went this time to follow the crowd, which included two honkies :p

they stuffed up my order (my theory being that the waiter's english wasn't up to scratch and thought i meant "portugese" when i actually said "mexican"), which meant i had to wait extra long for my food. anyways js gave a brief synopsis of the movie as we waited, and so i saw a few scenes and had enough familiarity to be able to recognise it when i saw it in the inflight movies lineup.

another arty offering with bigger budget and more famous actors. didn't have as much trouble following the plot (which was still somewhat confusing), though it certainly didn't help that the small screen meant rather hard to read subtitles. i tried with this one... but tiredness got the better of me and i gave up halfway in, opting to try for some sleep instead.

didn't manage much success with that either, and i'm slowly trying to catch up this week. oh it's nice to be able to sleep in!

clay getaway weekend

spent the weekend out of town with some the clay folks on our first ever getaway. destination: noosa avalon cottages. princejay and i navigated our way there with the help of his GPS receiver and PDA, which i had a bit of fun playing with... it was my first real experience with GPS ware so i took a video clip from our journey just for the heck of it. we ended up off the map.

yup, it was farm land country. complete with the dark darkness of night you never get with the ambient suburban lighting of urban landscapes, cow patties dotting the fields like a heavily mined warzone, the crisp smell of cool rural air and some of the accompanying fauna. a bit out of the comfort zone for some, but we all survived with liberal doses of bottled juices (not everyone was keen to drink the tap water), catered food (thanks to our volunteer cooks), music and song (some pre-recorded, some from our own voiceboxes), bible study, review/discussion on the immediate future of the group, games of chess, cards and cranium, and general bonding/hanging out time. [photo album | slideshow]

(been mucking around with multiply.com, where above album is hosted... might start using it more now that there are no more limits :) site seems to be a bit on the slow side at times though... )

anyways we capped off the weekend with a visit to the sunshine coast chinese christian church, where we sang a song, prayed for them, and shared in a late lunch of curry and rice which chatting to some of the local folk. then it was off to the beach - i don't know whose idea it was to go in the first place but when we got there we just ended up sitting around a table huddling in the cold breeze, with not one person setting foot on the beach itself... (sand on the footpath doesn't count!) so after a while of getting cold we turned to head back home.

most of us met for dinner again, deciding on "shanghai cuisine" when the original choice (a nearby taiwanese joint called "7-8" which i've not yet tried) was full. it's been years since i last ate at shanghai cuisine, and i was glad for the reacquaintance. we ordered the 8-person set meal consisting mostly of a selection of dumpling type foods cooked in various way, plus a dish of veges which some of the girls had been craving (our weekend diet was not high in greens content :p) all for a rather satisfying $9 per head.

much better than the $10+ i paid for lunch the sunday prior when i waited over half an hour for my "com xa xiu" (simple dish of steam rice, char siew pork and some cabbage which would only take 2 minutes to cook/put together on a plate) at the viet hoa chinese and vietnamese joint in west end. verdict = two thumbs down - one for the wait/poor service (most of our table had to wait quite some time for their food too), and two for the lack of value/stinginess -- the dish tasted quite bland, as there was hardly anything with which to flavour the rice. so i had to steal some of the fish sauce from people who had ordered a broken rice dish (a vietnamese staple of mine which i should probably learn to stick to), but even then they were only given a measly looking bowl full (don't even want to call it a bowl cos it's that small) to share between them. same deal (about sharing a smaller portion than what you'd get individually at most other places) with the bean sprouts and veg for those who ordered the noodle soups.

i know which place i'll be going back to in future!

ju-on // mayfest

ever since finding out via my parents a few weeks ago, i had been wondering how (if indeed i would need) to field queries on this. maybe nobody would really care, if indeed anyone would even notice. but i couldn't avoid the inevitable, such as this from a friend of mine:

fom: hey are you going tomorrow?
me: nah i wasn't invited.
fom: really?
me: yeah. the rest of my family was, but not me.
fom: wow she really knows how to carry a grudge...

well i don't know if he's right in labelling it a grudge, but it's definitely something and i know when i'm snubbed. oh well, nothing to lose sleep over.

so instead, i slept in. then went to get lunch from mayfest. it seemed a lot bigger this year, but that may be because previously i had never really ventured beyond the food stalls. i was actually a bit worried when they weren't where they in their usual spots... so i wandered a bit more and found them (along with lots of other happenings) on the oval. after surveying the food offerings, i walked around a bit more to see the rest of the attractions and took a few snaps before returning to satisfy my original purpose for coming - makan!

besides the roti canai guy who i know and who i've come to expect to see at mayfest, i was surprised to see some other familiar faces at the stalls. the line for roti was quite long and slow, so i bought some satays ($1.50 each!) to keep me company while i queued.


even then the wait was longer than i bargained for... good thing i had time and a vitamin D quota to fill :p a couple who were behind me gave up and walked off at about the halfway (betweeen end of queue where we joined and the point of ordering) mark. but i don't think they knew what they weren't getting - i wonder if people were willing to wait that long because they valued what they knew they would get at the end, or maybe they just wanted to see what the fuss was. either way, it was a well patronised stall. didn't stop the masses from grumbling though - about the sun, the wait, and the seeming inefficiency of the production line...

didn't hear any gripes about the prices, which i thought were a bit steep. but it's not often you get freshly cooked (to order) roti canai in these parts, so i shelled out $11 for one serve of "the works" and one of roti with egg and curry. while waiting for my order to be served an elderly gent came alongside me and asked what the food was, as he had never seen anything like it. maybe i shoud have asked for a discount for the free promotion i gave :p don't know if he queued up later to buy any though. anyway, i couldn't wait to get these babies home and tuck into them... they left my stomach and taste buds quite satisfied :)

see you next month...

said goodbye to my elder sis earlier today, for the 4th time in 8 months. didn't really get to catch up much, not that we do that very often anyway, but i'll be seeing her again in may on my next overseas trip. that's a fair bit of seeing for someone who lives overseas now.

anyways, this was her first visit back 'home' since getting married, and this particular trip also included an entourage of immediate family (the in-laws) for part of the time. it was a good opportunity for the two families (hers being a bit more extended than his, since we have a fair number of relatives living locally) to gather over food, and a buffet dinner was held in a nearby hotel.

i failed to avoid the "when is your turn" question from an auntie who i don't even really know! so i felt a bit of "who are you to be asking me this??" (with an emphasis on the "who the heck are you??" :p okok i *did* say it was an extended family affair right? anyways, i'm pretty sure she's my dad's cousin from his mum's side), but restrained myself and muttered something non-committal and tried to smile/laugh it off.

well thankfully that was the only one... and i spent most of the rest of the night glued to my seat amongst the younger single cousins and second cousins of mine, with whom i shared a table. i think pretty much everyone enjoyed the evening for the chance to meet the visitors and catch up with other family members while enjoying a meal together.

- - - - -

a week later we took them to this restaurant to which dad had recently been introduced by a guy from church - two seasons cuisine (双季林) in west end. it's an asian restaurant but has a very western feel. the food is quite nice and rather filling - i'm not sure if this is their standard serving size, cos dad apparently just asked the owner chef (michael lam) to prepare whatever is good, so we didn't even see a menu that night. i thought we were getting a special meal but on the bill it just said "banquet b". so anyways we had individual entrees followed by rice and 10 dishes to share between the 9 adults and 1 child. lots of leftovers ensued.

every dish was very tasty, and mostly hot :p the duck curry was a little bit too hot for me, but still quite morish. will definitely keep this place in mind for a subsequent visit :)

- - - - -

and i can look forward to lots of tasty treats by the time i next see my sis, hehe. not that life (or the purpose of the trip) is all about food, of course... but i won't be forgoing the opportunity to sample flavours and textures common to the locale mmm yum yum yum, hehe :D

until the next flight...

i'm back... to work, my normal routine... forgive my lack of enthusiasm :p even before i came home from my latest trip i was already entertaining thoughts of my next getaway. is my normal life so worthy of escaping from?? haha. who knows whether such a flight will be sweet reverie or perhaps something to regret. hmmm...

perhaps i'm just too couped up, and bursting to do something crazy, or at least something out of the ordinary. i went out earlier for some dessert at barboo and decided to order the 'pork floss and mayonnaise crepe', which i had previously seen on the menu and thought ewww! about (and yet strangely drawn to! heh) and so, inspired by the flosss breadtalk product i tried in singapore a few days back, i wrapped my laughing gear around this here crepe shown below - can you see the floss in the second pic? :)

other atypical foodstuffs i tried during my recent overseas holiday:

lavender juice, ordered at a HK-style eatery in PJ. don't quite know how to describe the taste, except that it's rather distinctive. and this was a whole jar of the stuff... it was fairly sweet though, and actually not too bad to drink... :)

then there was a mug full of chiku juice i drank at a hawker stall in singapore. didn't take a picture of this... but i have two words: brown, and thick. the people i was with (local singaporeans all) were like 'what is this??' i guess not many people have tried chiku juice before, hehe. i had no idea what it would taste like cos although the name of the fruit sounded familiar, i couldn't really remember how it tasted. oh well... you only live once! ;)

finally this is a thai coconut. not nearly as exotic as the other entrants on this list, but i have a photo of it, and on that poor excuse for inclusion i'll leave more travel tales for another post.

cucina of italy

can you guess what this is? probably hard to tell without looking at the full sized pic, but it's a display of assorted sets of fake nails!

we have a free weekly suburban paper - there's not much of it that i actually read, but i do usually flick through it scanning for local community information. and mentions of local eateries. cucina of italy was one of these eateries i saw, and it was the dining destination for this evening. it was at the entrance that i spotted these nails, which actually belongs to the beauty shop next door.

i figured i'd kill a few birds with one stone by combining a desire to try out this restaurant, with the desire to take a few soon-to- depart friends out for dinner. i'm glad i made a booking because when i first walked in (and the entrance is a bit disorienting because you have to go past the take-away counter and the kitchen before you really see the tables etc in the restaurant proper, so i was momentarily confused if maybe i had missed the main entrance) the place was pretty much at full capacity. it had a real buzz about it though, a good sign that it's a "happening" joint. the decor looked smart, perhaps helped by the Christmas decorations and the lighting effects - you can see a sample of the result in this next picture, where the wall on the left serves as the canvas for the ever-changing display of colours and shapes/patterns from ceiling mounted light machines.

i quite like this photo. yoonta was sitting across from me and i wanted to capture the table flowers looking along the wall. the distance is perhaps too great to really notice the flowers from the tables behind her, but the colours go well and the foreground flowers are nicely out of focus - my digicam doesn't provide any depth of field control so i couldn't really get a more exaggerated effect.

the food was nice and quite filling, though IMHO a bit on the pricey side at an average of over $20 per head for mains alone - no drinks, entrees or desserts (speaking of which, i find it hard to accept how one of the dessert choices, which looked from the description to be no more than a glorified ice-cream sundae type affair, can be worth almost $12, no matter how good it may taste). we decided to share our meals so that we could maximise our tasting opportunities. first up was a "feed the man" pizza, then (about 50 minutes after the pizza was served) our 3 pastas: the penne romana, linguine con gamberi, and tagliatelle con pollo somethingorother. my favourite was the third dish, whose full name i couldn't remember - there's a menu on their website, but it's not exactly the same as the one we saw in the restaurant itself.

[as a bit of a side note, while i was checking the names of the dishes, i saw that the website has the tubular pasta dish listed as a rigatoni romana, whereas i'm sure we ordered a penne romana. not being well versed in things pasta, i tried surfing to see what the difference was. after doing some brief checking (see the list of pasta at wikipedia) think what we had was the penne... but i digress (from this digression). while surfing for an answer i came across this totally wacky paper on how Penne Rigate will spontaneously insert itself into Rigatoni (order pasta) under liquid to gas transition conditions of H2O to create the previously unobserved species Noodleous doubleous!!! how weird is that? lol. and that page then led me to discover the DHMO.org, website of the DiHydrogen MonOxide research division. if you don't know what dhmo is, you'd better find out, read the FAQ, and maybe even check out the material safety data sheet, cos your life very well depends on it! ahhh dearie me, some people have too much time on their hands :p]

ok so back to cucina... actually the main reason i was attracted to this venue was that they had a piano bar. italian restaurants are a dime a dozen, but how many of them have a grand piano in it?? it's a nice hook, and one that convinced me to check it out. the website says it only plays friday and saturday nights from 10pm till late (up to 2am??), but the music was already flowing when we got there at 7:30pm - maybe because they had a full house? most of it music actually came from the keyboard/synthesizer rather than the piano though, and i for one would have preferred pure piano for the classier effect and feel. still, it was a positive contribution to the ambiance of the place, though i was a bit disappointed on two other points. firstly, i had the image of a slightly separate area of the venue dedicated to this "piano bar" area, but in reality it's right next to the dining area and the only seating in this section is a sofa that could fit 3, maybe 4 people. and that right next to the piano... i'd feel a bit too up close and personal an arrangement to be sitting, enjoying the music, and having a bit of a chat with the pianist a mere 2m away! secondly, we tried to request some songs without success. tekken suggested on bended knee by boys II men - i was doubtful whether the pianist would know it, and my doubt proved right. i thought we'd have better luck with some of the older artists, and tried "anything by lionel richie, elton john or phil collins" as our round two offer, but he didn't know any of them either! oh well... it was still a nice night out where we chilled and chatted, including some discussions on my recent post about the down syndrome detection test article (tekken being a known reader of this blog - *waves hello*), enjoyed some good food in an agreeable venue, took some silly photos (more pics available on my msn space album), got some free lollipops on our way out, and even had the owner take a group shot of us with the piano bar dude :)

so, will i be back? i don't know... i guess if i want "sophisticated yet affordable" (their own words) it's a venue i'd consider, but while i had a pleasant time there on my first visit, i don't think it makes in into my list for "must eat here again" places. still, it's probably worth checking out at least once if you've never been before, and i'm not against the idea of coming back at a later stage to see if the piano bar thing has taken off any... maybe as an after-dinner/supper-y type of thing. we'll see...

rip(ped) off

one of the stereotypical "how do you know when you're an asian" traits is that of bargain hunting/stinginess, and i think i do display that every now and then... or more :p with that, i present a few things to avoid:

1. dine at the golden fortune chinese restaurant in surfers paradise.
   went with my family to the gold coast last night to meet some overseas visitors (my very first neighbour ever from my childhood days, and his family). dad asked me to pick a chinese restaurant nearby to their hotel, and i struck out with the entertainment book, so went with the old google fallback. didn't manage to find out much info apart from names, addresses and phone numbers, so i just picked one. spotted it while droving past on the way to the hotel, and soon the whole troupe came back on foot. it looked nice enough, fairly grand/posh looking, and certainly very much in keeping with the "golden" part of the name - all the seats even had covers, which is something i've previously only seen rolled out for weddings and such. really should have looked at the prices before coming in though, cos it was a shocker. i mean, would you pay nearly $170 for this spread? just to clarify, that's 7 dishes in total: 1 vege dish, 1 tofu dish, and 5 reasonably standard meats, of which only one is seafood (prawns). that plus tea and steamed rice, and complimentary fruit and egg tarts at the end... at an average price of over $20 per dish - and that's for "small" servings too - you really don't want to know the price of the set banquets they were pushing (which, although it includes what sounds like an abundance of seafood, is still pricier than some seafood buffets i've had at hotels... and worse of all, the food wasn't even that good. like... quite normal, nothing special whatsoever, nothing at all to suggest/justify the exhorbitant cost. plus i think they actually mucked up one of our dishes. oh well... was too embarassed to walk out after seeing the menu/prices, so felt bad about sticking the parentals (and guests?) in the whole situation of having to order from a grossly overpriced menu. meh.
   
   
2. ok well the restaurant was one i'll have to learn from. here's one i just know to avoid... flybuys has been going the big guns on promoting their new reward - fuel discount vouchers. sure, hop on the bandwagon of savings at the bowser in these times of rising/high petrol prices, but is this really delivery value for money? a quick scan of the other offerings in the rewards catalogue puts the points per dollar's-worth-of-reward rate in the range of about 115-135, with 135 derived from 13500 points needed to get a $100 shopping voucher. using 135 as the conservative rate for calculations, the fuel discount voucher costs 1000 points to redeem, which means it's "worth" about $7.50. but to actually get that much real value out of using the voucher (which entitles you to 10c/litre discount off your fuel purchase), you would need to fill 75 litres. we're talking the entire tank, from empty to full, of something like a commodore or tarago. i'd put the average fuel tank capacity of the cars out on the road to be closer to the 50-60 mark. using 115 as the rate would require you to fill over 85 litres to make it "worthwhile". my advice? skip the hype, get a shopping voucher where you can be sure of getting 100% value. if you were a cynic you might think this is just a strategy for flybuys to get people to spend their points in a way that won't cost flybuys as much as other rewards... (disclaimer: i don't actually know how the all the costs associated with running the flybuys program are borne, i'm just being cynical :p)
   
   
3. i was going to put this one down as a win, but unfortunately that's somewhat inconclusive at the moment. i've been looking for a replacement digicam for some months, and was half set to buy a canon ixus 50 on my last trip overseas. i almost bought too, but for the dodgy salesman who tried to pass a 6 months labour + 6 months parts warranty off as a 12 month warranty. i know that buying locally gives me a standard 12 month warranty, so i didn't want to compromise on this respect just to get cheaper prices overseas and suffer a shorter international warranty. and so i returned home empty handed on that trip. then i found out about the updated ixus 55 model, and have been tracking prices for a few months. found a huge variation in prices, but thanks to staticice managed to find a best price of $479. slight hitch: i could choose between paying for shipping to get it from an interstate store, or pay 3% extra to use my credit card (my card allows me to get up to an additional year's warranty on items purchased with the card, and i want my warranty!) at the local store with the same lowest price, but which has no actual stock anyway. then i was inspired by another guy's success in getting his local store to match competitor's prices, so i gave photo continental a call, and lo and behold they are able to give me a quote for $500! (boo to all the suckers who pay the retail/sticker price of $588, and raspberries to union shopper and apesma electrical who are supposed to help the end consumer get lower prices, but couldn't even come close to the prices i got from my own research). PC also have no surcharge on credit card payments, and they have plenty of stock. schweet... PLUS i found out (not that it's anything new, but i just didn't make the connection before) that i can buy it "duty free" since i'm heading overseas again in a few weeks. thus i popped in there this afternoon and got myself a smaller, lighter, and generally better spec'ed machine than my current ixus 330 (which is still actually going quite well). anyways, happy with my purchase, i start playing with the actual hardware, and give the battery the initial charge. this is when i discover that the battery sit somewhat loose in the charger slot... definitely prone to move about if bumped. and in certain positions (still fully within the slot) it won't charge, or in one instance alternates between charging and not charging, accompanied by a feint ticking sound. some other positions come with a high pitched sound. now i'm very glad i bought it from a physical store nearby, but i still need to find time to get back there during business hours...
   
   
4. oh and speaking of digital cameras and going overseas, i also had to get some passport photos taken so i can apply to renew my nearly expired passport (which, by the way, will be a new variety of epassports). i found out last time that singapore might not let me in with less than 6 months left on my passport, but by then it was too late to do anything about the matter(it was the night before my flight) , and thankfully it didn't turn out to be a problem. this time round i've only got about 2 months left, and don't want to push my luck. so i went to a photo lab place, asked to have passport photos done, and the guy whips out a digicam. shouldn't really have been surprised i guess... though the last time i had to get passport photos they used a specific camera that took 4 shots of your head simultaneously. this time it was with a normal digicam, single shot, touched up and replicated 6 times on a standard 6x4. 10 minutes and $9.50 later, i'm thinking that i could have done it myself and gotten the photo printed for 30-40c at any self-service printing station. another potential rip off job... but then there are quite specific requirements for the photos used for passports, and it might have taken a bit of tweaking to ensure conformity. ah well... the price of "instant"... though it wasn't quite fast enough to prevent me missing my bus.
   

a visit to chicago's

not the city across the ocean (i wished!), but a local eatery by the name of chicago's piano bar & grill. i'm not actually sure if the piano in the picture is a real one... but i thought the dancing blues brothers figures on top were kinda cute :) this is where i lunched today with an old friend, and my verdict is that the food was ok but overpriced at double digits for burgers and fries. maybe it would have been better at night with some live entertainment. might consider trying something else from their menu another time... when there's some music happening :p

after lunch i wandered around the shops a bit to do a spot of window shopping - something i haven't done for a while. also went to an ATM to withdraw some money. that might seem too insignificant a thing to blog about, but the last time i got cash from an ATM was more than 2 years ago!

then i dropped into my previous workplace to say g'day to some of the folks there. a lot of things haven't changed, and i'm glad it's not something i need to worry about any longer. might use my next flex day to do lunch with my old teammates.

ok time to see if i can claim some more $$ from mr tax man...

big day out

no sleeping in today - it was up at 7:30am, head out ~8am to paddington flowers and cafe for a breakfast with the SWANS crew. the claimed "city views" weren't that great, so i don't feel we missed out on too much with our indoor seats. after a bit of a feast (their big breakfast was of filling proportions), general laments about the loss of childhood in today's society, playing spot the politician look-a-like and trying to scare i mean warn yannie with stories of pickpockets and assorted scammers she might encounter in her upcoming trip, we parted ways and i caught a lift with the hebrew judge to join the chews in their brisbane pit stop + brunch do. more food (this time consumed at a slower pace) and conversations. 'twas good to see some people i haven't seen/talked to in a while (i still feel like i've been out of it for ages with my recent block of being away), but also a reminder of the distance that continues elsewhere. after giving yung some impromptu mando tutoring, and loitering around until the last remnants of the guests, i left with the nenes and hung out with them for the rest of the afternoon (lol... that was an unintentional pun, but only appreciable if you know the real people :p) to run a few errands before coming back to my place for a sit down and wander around the backyard. watched GITS-SAC over dinner and i understood it! unlike the first episode which i had to rewind and watch a second time, and am still a bit hazy about... anyways the website has been redesigned since i last visited, and there's a funky backing track to which my leg is shaking along as i type... but i'll probably get sick of it very quickly and in any case my net connection has been patchy all night so i think i'll get off now.

breath of a hog

so i've heard some things about these hog's breath cafe joints over the years, but have never ever actually been to one. that is, until tonight.

took the day off work (i like having flex :D) to attend the day session of BBT, and had dinner with my team (plus some partners, and our team manager) at a local hoggies to celebrate the end of our probation period.

had myself a medium steak (i'm never very confident about ordering steak) which turned out to be quite nice :)

found out that my team manager is only a few months older than the youngest person in our team! that made me feel old...

went to a nearby bar/club after dinner, and i got carded. that made me feel (or at least feel like i still look) young :p

lettuce eat pizza :)

"lettuce" is the name of our bible study group. we got together for our first social/outing tonight, and ate some...
homemade gourmet pizzas! the first of which was a "hawaiian plus" affair by mellow and fei-lo, and rather nice with the sweet tasting pineapples. but i forgot to take a picture, so... this is the third pizza (yeah i didn't get a pic of the finished product for pizza #2 either... which was a tandoori chicken one) - it's a salmon special i think... both #2 and #3 were by dook
the pizza that quop made! haha... a half and half with chicken, ham & mushroom topped with cajun spices on one side, and pepperoni, sausage, onions & cashew nuts topped with a sprinkling of thyme on the other. don't ask me how the chicken tasted cos i didn't get any...
jesske's super 4-in-1 combo featuring gluten free pizza base... it's a pizza in a pan cos the base kinda got stuck...
designer chinese pizza, featuring hoisin sauce base, bits of char siu pork, some lap cheung, mushrooms, cashews, sweet chili sauce?, and a dash of soy sauce and sesame seed oil. it actually didn't taste too bad (except for the uncooked grains of rice someone threw in!)
last but not least, it's the pingster's meatasaurus monster - we were all quite full by this stage :)
during the night, we also shared our stories of how we came to Christ, and ended the evening with a few rounds of the card game masters and slaves. ironic that the one who brought the game to the group never made it out of the slave ranks :p

open louvre

i have been following the current series of my restaurant rules since about the second episode (having never watched the first series), and had been looking forward to checking out the brisbane entry, restaurant louvre.

i had tried to organise a group to go because dining out is always more fun in the company of friends, but i encountered an 80% pike rate with the friends who initially were keen on the uptake. nevertheless, one person stayed true to his word, and together with another late ring-in, our party of three arrived in milton to a small queue - thankfully so because we had feared that getting there too late would mean a 2-3 hour wait for the first lot of customers to finish their meals.

there was some delay getting in, but only because francesca (left) was personally greeting each diner and showing them to their seats - a nice personal touch i thought. and thus we were seated and perusing the menu a half hour after the scheduled opening time. the atmosphere was moderately buzzing, and soon the place was filled to capacity - save one table of 4 (more on that later).

the first waiter who attended to us gave us some recommendations. we only saw him once or twice more the whole evening, but that was fine because the waitress who we did see more of was pretty friendly and chatty. anyway, we decided to start with the harissa and palm sugar cured ocean trout, cucumber sorbet and sea salt tuile. besides not having much of an idea of what this dish would be like (let alone having ever come across some of the words in the name!), i was just a bit non-plussed at just how small a $19.50 appetiser could be when it arrived some 15-20 minutes after ordering... anyhow, we picked at the small mounds of food and were very pleasantly delighted at the reception our taste buds gave to the combination of the trout and the sorbet. who knew cucumber could be made into a sorbet! hehe...

another 20 minutes later and our mains had arrived. by this time, so too had the MRR judges - turns out the spare table was reserved for them. i'm sure this lifted the buzz/atmosphere a notch or three :) but back to our table... our three choices here were (from L-R above) the oven-baked kingfish, fennel puree, lychee and citrus salad, the stockyard short bone rib, red onion tarte tatin and cafe de paris butter, and the moreton bay bug and chorizo risotto, cress and lemon oil. all rather scrumptious and well received by the happy diners (we shared a bit so we could sample as much of the menu as possible). our first side dish (the truffled mash potatoes) was served with the mains, but the other side dishes (the rocket, pear and walnut salad) arrived 10 minutes late (after we chased its whereabouts), and also came with the fork (handle) nestled against the salad itself - i thought this was a bit below par, as one normally expects to use the fork to dig through the salad, not dig through the salad to get at the fork.

earlier in the night i had inquired as to whether francesca would be singing at all, and she indicated she may do requests. not being all that musically cluey, i couldn't really think of what song to request. in the end i settled on "moon river", and she promised she would sing for me after i finish my main course. true to her word, she came by our table as we were thinking about dessert, and gave a little private performance - i had hoped to hear her voice filling the whole restaurant, but hey... a little private session has that personal touch :D i'm not sure if she gets badgered much to sing, but i appreciate her willingness to fulfil my request and to do it all with a smile. unfortunately i didn't manage to get a nice shot of her in action... oh well.

an hour after starting on our mains, we were staring at a vacherin with banana parfait, banana beignet and roasted cinnamon ice cream for dessert, which was again shared for taste testing. the vacherin was already falling off the ice cream by the time it arrived at our table, and you can see from the photo evidence of it having been repositioned (by us) prior to the shot. this was, as with pretty much all of the food we had, quite nice. the only real exception was for the rocket, for which i didn't care much, but then again i've never been into bitter tastes...

our bill arrived shortly after, along with some chocolates, a postcard (complete with a recipe on the back for their signature dish which was way too technical for us culinary simpletons!), and a $30 gift voucher redeemable at a neighbouring beauty salon - this we unanimously consented to leave for the sole female on the table to enjoy :p (i was pretty surprised at the "size" of the complimentary gift... and even though it's not something i could really use myself, receiving it does take a bit of the psychological sting out of our bill). we stayed chatting away while waiting for someone to collect our payment, which none of the staff seemed in any particular hurry to do, and finally left the venue satisfied with an enjoyable night out :)

other miscellaneous thoughts/comments:

• there is quite a mixture of styles of seating, which i found slightly odd. so where you got seated determined your level of comfort (whether your seat has a back, and whether it is cushioned). there is also a communal table in the middle of the main section, so you could well end up sitting next to some complete stranger(s)! could be a good thing, or could be a bit off-putting if you want some privacy/personal space/elbow room...
• the storage unit for the cutlery/linen is quite funky! irregularly shaped surface, with unconventional and stylised knobs. interesting piece. didn't think to get a photo...
• the toilets (which we didn't actually go use/see) are apparently very small/crampy.
• also didn't get to peek at the kitchen, for fear of getting in the way of the staff and tv crew.
• there's another side section which we didn't know about until we left and saw it from the outside! quite separate from the main area, so probably good for more private group dinners etc, but you could also feel cut off from the front.
• forgot to look for the confession booth and record some comments! darn... miss out on my 5 seconds of fame (assuming it would have made it to air :p). now i have to settle for looking for myself in the background when francesca was standing between our table and the cameraman, while talking to the judges table...
• speaking of the cameraman, boy he was literally dripping sweat! must be hot and hard work... :o
• i'd swear that the original pitch for the restaurant included todd in the kitchen, and francesca out front, occasionally singing (for the entertainment of diners). but there's really no dedicated space for her to do this, as far as i can see. this was a bit of a disappointment, as it was part of what i expected of the complete louvre experience.
• the food, while delightful to eat, is rather on the expensive side (if not completely over the border!) maybe i don't fit the market they're targeting, but take away the tv (show) and the novelty factor, and i don't think i'd ever consider dining at a place like this... maybe once every few years at the most, for very very special occasions??
• on a related note, the servings are not what you would describe as "generous". i've heard it said that the food is designed to be consumed as a 3 course meal. that would make it a $70+ per person affair (for food alone) if you all had the full 3 courses and a side.
• it's good having friends to share!
• it's disappointing when they pike.
• i had fun :)
  

crumbs... foiled again!

the day passed in a relatively pain-free manner... broken up in the middle by a ~1.75hr lunch at the garden grill restaurant of the glen hotel - the pork fillet with sweet potato and cranberry juice/sauce went down quite nicely :) but, as murphy's law would have it, a flurry of work came to me soon after coming back from lunch... nevertheless i'm now finally finished my "tour of duty" at work, and can look forward to new battlefields ahead. it may mean waking up earlier / being more disciplined with my sleeping habits (which i should do anyway), and it will mean business shirts and ironing (the everyday wearing of which i am not a fan).

- - - - -

sometimes i think of myself as a sniper - not that i *really* know anything about the art and skill involved in being one, and not that i have any desire to kill anyone with a high-powered rifle or similar weapon... this is purely an analogy vehicle, ok? right... disclaimer over :p

i think of myself as a sniper in the sense that sometimes a sniper waits... and waits... and waits... for that perfect shot. or at least a shot that's good enough for them to take, and be confident of making "one shot, one kill". sometimes it might be trying to line up a target, but you can't get a good look so it's a negatory to 'do you have a shot?' other times a target might be lined up in the crosshairs, and you're tracking and tracking, on the verge of pulling the trigger... then last minute someone steps in to block your shot. that's what/how i feel about an incident earlier tonight.

at the risk of stretching the analogy too thin, i've been trying to manoeuvre myself into position for a good shot all week, and kept finding my potentials whittled away due to one factor or another contributing to unsuitability. but then i found a good spot, and tracked my target for a few days, awaiting the actual shot window tonight. and it looked like it could be a good, clean shot. so of course over the last 24 hours or so i've been psyching myself up to pull the trigger, and tonight i was poised and about ready as i'll ever be.

then an unexpected hindrance surfaced, and i lost my shot! that shot could have made this day much more momentous and defining. alas... Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand. (Proverbs 19:21)

not chinese enough!

had dinner at a chinese restaurant on the weekend, celebrating my parents' wedding anniversary. they left before us to attend a meeting, and us 'kids' then strolled to the counter to settle the bill. the lady gave us a bit of a discount, though we weren't really sure why. maybe it was because she didn't approve of our choice of dishes, cos my sister thinks she made a bit of a face upon looking at our bill, and then she told us something to the effect of

"the dishes you chose weren't very good/nice, next time you come, speak to the waiter in the black tie and ask him to recommend you some authentic chinese dishes..."

-_^

guess i'm a bit of a fake then eh? lol...

SWANS @ the Indian Taj Mahal

an every-so-often meeting of the SWANS at the Indian Taj Mahal in new farm. according to the man who's recently had his share of authentic indian fare while in england, this was not quite up to scratch... it's about the fourth time i can remember that i've been to an indian restaurant - and i don't think the rate will quicken any. not that i thought it was bad, but just not my favourite taste i guess.


we had the deluxe banquet, and these were the entrees to start


the SWANS


(most of) the mains - the food certainly looks nice and colourful - and we were all quite full at the end... with leftovers remaining.

hello photoblogging! yeah!

hooray! i've got photoblogging happening!

here are a few selected photos from my recent trip to sydney... click to see larger.


the entree: upon arrival, a quick pit stop at a newly opened krispy kreme doughnut shop... here you can see part of the 'conveyor belt' of doughnut production happening behind a perspex(?) wall. if you stand near the front counter long enough the staff usually offer you samples, so i contemplated just taking the samples we got given, and leaving! after all... i only wanted to try a sample... :p


the main course: watching the lion king at the capitol theatre. what a treat! pity they didn't allow photos inside the venue...


the dessert: a mid afternoon snack at the cho dumpling king in chinatown. this place was quite packed for 2:30 in the afternoon - we waited nearly half an hour to be seated. small, very cosy, and yeah pretty nice food :)

- - - - -

man i don't know if this is just the novelty speaking but this photoblogging thing is so cool! i love it :D suits me almost to a tee... if i'm still feeling keen later on i might go and post up some other stuff from the last few months, although doing too much post-dated stuff feels somewhat at odds with my perception of the spirit of blogging :p

turnstiles

a bunch of miscellanea...

• just realised that this is/will be my 200th post!
• dates for the miyazaki showcase sessions in brisbane are up, though i've seen most of them so not sure if i'd pay for a repeat viewing
• the 13th brisbane international film festival kicks off next week! it starts the same day as my annual leave - taking a few days off for some r&r, though i'm not sure how much of the former i'll be able to have! hope to fit in an APAC movie or more during the festival's season.
• went to a newly opened restaurant last night, the malaya corner. some observations/comments:
• not long after we sat down there came the sound of dropped dishes from the kitchen
• one of the drinks we ordered wasn't actually on the menu, so the waitress came back to change it... but ended up adding a valid drink and not cancelling the invalid one
• then a drink and two or three dishes came to our table that we didn't order
• another dropped dish just next to us, with a decent chunk of a broken plate not picked up for a good 5 minutes (it took the boss to pick this up)
• one of the diners at my table works for the city council, and had a hand in approving the kitchen facilities at this joint - the boss recognised her and promptly served up 3 additional complimentary snacks for her
• one of our dishes (the place serves individual meals and snacks) still didn't come a good while after everything else was served, so we had to chase this up
• then another dropped item - waiter clearing up a table to our side dropped a drink, spilling the remaining contents and ice. he wiped the table top, but not the side where the drink had run over to the floor. then when he came back and bent over to pick up the ice from the floor, stuff fell from his pocket. he went to pick this up, and more stuff came out. and a third time... oh and he kept pulling up his pants like they were falling off!
• when we went to pay, the cashier wouldn't do a split bill. i think she said they were too busy. one of waiters came to divided up the bill for us while we waited on one side. this took ages because he couldn't get it to tally, partly because of the invalid drink that was never cancelled, and partly because he miscalculated a subtotal. after i stepped in to correct his sums, it was all good. the cashier was still arguing about some point or other, but in the end we paid our money. in all that time i think she served one other customer/table (which is not to say that the place wasn't busy - it was well patronised - but it wasn't like there was a rush of people to pay, and just about every other small-medium eatery are happy to do split bills without kicking up a fuss...)
• having said all this, the servings were huge (both food and drink), and i think everyone enjoyed their food. i'd go back again, but hope that their service lifts a notch.
• my car wouldn't start this morning... don't know what's wrong yet but probably the battery... i suddenly feel so much less independent without a car to get around. have i been too spoilt by this luxury?
• i'm getting fat. i don't like it!