NEW Cheap eat near HDB Hub

Lunched out today with wx at Toa Payoh Central, and found a new Chinese food store called Origins (aka 元庄). It's right behind the row of shophouses facing the HDB Hub/SPH Buzz pod. Features Laksa, Curry/Vegetable Rice, soups and desserts! Not bad and is cheap.

We ordered:

Hainanese Curry Rice - curry chicken, cabbage, bean sprouts plus a sunny-side-up. This is so-so.

Katong Laksa - Tastes quite good, my favorite. :)

Watercress Soup - Okay. A good amount of ingredients used, but I would prefer using ribs than chicken feet as the soup base. :x

Beancurd with Ginko Nuts - The beancurd is not bad, but ginko nuts were a bit "old" (not soft enough) and not fresh.

Almond-flavored Soya Milk - Not too sweet, which is good. A little bit dilute, but still much better than what we can get at most hawker centers these days.

All for under $15!

Rating: ★★★ for the laksa!

NEW Triple Prawn Burger!!

Went to J8 to pay my Singtel bills after work today, and bought MOS Burger back for dinner. Try their latest addition:

TRIPLE PRAWN BURGER!

Three deep-fried prawns topped with XO and tartar sauce plus shreds of lettuce.
Ermm didn't look as glamorous as this eh?

IMO not really worth the 40cents "upgrade" from my favorite fish burger. Although the prawns were fresh, I couldn't taste much of the XO sauce which was also a highlight of this dish.

Rating: ★★

Nevertheless, MOS Burger remains to be one of my favorite burger place locally! A little small portioned and expensive, but love the fat fries, croquette, and minestrone soup! (I give high ratings to those :D)

& Oh! New Scallops Rice Burger... wx might just like it :)


PS: MOS Burger needs delivery service in Singapore :x

Office Tea-time!

Yum yum yum~ Don't know where exactly these came from, but we've had a nice little tea-time (minus the tea) in office yesterday!

A whole box of cute and soft chocolate cupcakes. :D
(Someone ninjaed one before I took the picture T_T)

A poodle. (or sheep?)

A bear.

A butterfly.

Which is your favorite?
I like the poodle most. :)

The deco tastes a bit like dough but is candy sweet! And the chocolate cupcakes (base) were made just nice - not too sweet, soft, and not too dry either. Truly delicious! - I sneaked one out for wx in the end. hehe

PS: Gave me some ideas for next cupcakes session with my niece... :p

Feifei Wanton Mee @ 72 Joo Chiat Place

I think no Singaporean who enjoys good (& not necessarily expensive) food would not know about FeiFei Wanton's Mee (aka. 飛飛雲吞麵). But beware, because like other food chains, not all Fei Fei outlets taste the same or as good.

I was highly recommended by wx to this particular 24-hour outlet at 72 Joo Chiat Place. I finally went with rather high expectations. :)

Rating: ★★★ to ★★★★

This was my type of noodles :) and FeiFei takes pride on that being handmade. The wonton was superb! Soft, thin and smooth skin, and makes a *slurping* sound when you eat it!

Disappointment #1: Noodles were not as QQ as I thought. :x

Soup! wx was telling me how you need to finish your noodles before going to the stall front personally to get your soup. The case here is, soup is not served with noodles by default. You need to ask for your soup. Wow (so dao), I thought the soup must be DA LEET!

Disappointment #2: And a rather big one. The soup was...tasteLESS. :o

Well, at least this side dish (prawn roll) was pretty good. I would visit again for their silky wonton skins but skipping the soup part hehe :D

Personally, I think I'm quite picky with the type of wonton noodles that I eat. The HK style (noodles and sauce) is just not my type! My favorite wonton noodles still remains - after my visit to FeiFei - to be in Malacca. :p & The closest version found in Singapore so far is either FeiFei's or Pontian's. But I'm not a fan of Pontian's fried wontons. Well, rather subjective pertaining to the style of wontons, noodles and sauces for different individuals.

PS: Not sure of the location in Malacca, will update later once I ask my parents. Photo first!

Last eaten: Jan '09

Father's Day dinner @ ChongQing Hot Pot

Happy Father's Day
to all fathers in the world!

Rating: ★★★

Went for a dinner celebration at ChongQing Hot Pot in Tanglin Shopping Centre!

Not bad at the start, it really has the 麻辣 ("numbing spicy") taste to it!

And look at all the ingredients we have! All included in the buffet. Approx. $38 per person, comes with desserts (eg. sticky rice cake, water chestnut jelly, ice-cream) and some special snacks (eg. spring roll, dumplings, 1-slice abalone and salmon)!

One complaint:
The place is quite small and cramped, and the soup base is bit too salty. I didn't get to enjoy the soup in the end. :\

Just Noodles @ Suntec

Simply cheap and yummy :)

Rating: ★★★

[prologue]
So I thought I could grab some ice-cream waffles at Gelare (Tuesday's 1/2 price offer) then head to a Singtel store to fix my mobile plan upgrades...

Happily cabbed to Suntec (bearing $2 ERP cost), found out that Gelare is closed from June 16-18, and realized that the Singtel stores there are only "dealers" NOT "Hello Singtel". Change of plans. So what's for dinner instead?
[/prologue]

Came to Just Noodles in B1 - the fountain area. If you've never heard of this name, Just Acia might just ring a bell to you. (There's a huge chain at the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station..) The food may not look very appetizing at first, but don't run! If you are not so picky, this restaurant will serve you the best food at the best bargain!

1) Great value.
Free Flows!! If you love free flow drinks, how about some free flow ice-cream!? XD It's self-service, like the drinks, with 6 flavors to choose from. Definitely try mango and vanilla! Be surprised, they don't taste as cheap as they appear to be. Set meals include both free flow drinks & ice-cream. For ala-carte, you can also add $2.75 for the free flow offer. Entrees range from $6-$18 approx; side dishes from $1-$6 approx.

2) Decent food.
If the ice-cream is good, the entrees can't be too bad right? A mixture of korean, japanese, and some chinese style, their kimchi soup is actually much better than those you can get at food courts. Although not the highest quality, it's definitely good enough considering how much you are paying for. Also try their Unagi Kabayaki and prawn rolls!

3) Fast service.
It's really a come, eat, and go place. Well maybe stay longer for the ice-cream :p but guaranteed low waiting times. Since drinks and desserts are self-served, it helps with reduced serving time too. You can change to a different drink and a different flavor of ice-cream anytime you want.

I would definitely go there again. :)

Read more reviews here.

@ IMU, June 15-22

Now that the ad:tech show is over, I've got something even more exciting in store for me, starting next week. :)

A 1-week free training program at
Inbound Marketing University (IMU)!

I can't believe it. This is like the ultimate opportunity I can get to learn all about this whole online marketing thing at once. & it's FREE! The best thing about online courses is how everything can be archived. Makes it very convenient for people from different countries and time zones to participate. Students and professors can come together to form "study groups" on the forums and even use Twitter during class time to live-stream their questions, answers and ideas using the hashtag #IMU.

Have very high expectations for this program. A great training experience, and a chance to "interact" with industry experts like Chris Brogan. Also has a certification exam which adds immense value to this program.

Class schedule online.

Will blog more about the process when the courses start.

@ ad:tech singapore, june 9-10

update:

• Thanks to @misenscene for sharing his Twitter analysis on the ad:tech show. Go here to download!
• Found @mashable's 8 Ways to Create Paperless Business Cards. Exactly what I needed! I could have made use of this at the show. ><

The ad:tech Singapore ended after two days of keynotes, panels, and workshops, touching on the hottest trending topic in the digital marketing world. There were a number of interesting topics I wanted to join in, but unfortunately, it's still a normal work day for me and I only hold a free visitor pass, so I'm usually out after the first keynote presentation of the day. :\

Don't know what the ad:tech show is? Visit www.adtech.com.

My experience

Considerably my first "official" attendence at a conference, which I went in Cellcity's name but didn't have any name cards to exchange! ><; Yes, so the one thing that I failed most at this show is networking. & What a great opportunity to meet lots of people with the same passion! Definitely need to get my cards made for the next show.

* Many of the tweeps I was following were there too, like @claudia10 and @belindaang, but didn't find a chance to say hi. :\

Part of the reason was probably because my attendence was a "last-minute" thing. I only learned about the show a week ago. It was much related to the online/social media direction that Cellcity is going into, so there wasn't much of an "agenda," just listening in to see what can be learned. I took more of a personal interest attitude to the show, but it did help me to rethink certain issues of Twitter and of social media/mobile marketing in general.

The two keynotes I attended were:

• Digital Consumers & Interactive Marketing in Asia Pacific - The State Of Play by Steven Noble, senior analyst at Forrester Research (jun 2)
• The Power of Digital Branding through the Lens of the Obama Campaign by Scott Goodstein, external online director for Barrack Obama's presidential campaign (jun 3)

My thoughts

Digital Consumers & Interactive Marketing in Asia Pacific - The State Of Play
As the opening keynote of the show, I was a little disappointed with the quality of the presentation, to be honest. While it might have been a good statistical introduction to businesses outside of this trade, I think the insiders would expect a little more insight on the future trending of digital marketing. Steven also appeared to have a specific focus on China and Australia, rather than Asia Pacific in broad, throughout his speech. Perhaps a quick comparison with the trends in North America or the Europe might be an interesting addition to the presentation? Or so I thought..

Still, there were some interesting numbers and consumer profiles to share. And the discussion session (interview + q&a) was a lot more exciting - specifically on the use of social media and mobile marketing! I always enjoyed Don Knox's (VP of ad:tech Global) interview sessions, where he posed key hot questions displaying his clear understanding of the audience and the objectives of the show.

You can download Steven's presentation here.

The Power of Digital Branding through the Lens of the Obama Campaign
I'm sure you've heard a lot of talking about the success Obama Campaign by leveraging the online media, social networks in particular. Much expectations were generated around this talk, and I thought the outcome was a satisfiable one. Scott talked about various key factors in engaging social media and mobile in campaigns, the evolution of online marketing and where it's headed to, using his experience in the Obama Campaign as core case study. In the q&a, he also gave strong advice to young businesses who were still rather new in social media marketing. My favorite word from Scott - tastemakers.

Read about @bleongcw's interview with Scott here.

There was another small talk by the Global CEO of Acronym Media (one of the sponsors) - Anton Konikoff. Real straight to the point, Anton gave his audience compact but valuable and insightful overview of the search marketing revolution(-ing) and the impact of social media, based off their Global KDM (keyword-driven marketing) Officer's - Mike Grehan - new whitepaper New Signals to Search Engines.

The whitepaper is available for download here.

Twitter intervention
Now here is a real-time great example of the power of Twitter and microblogging. The best of ad:tech Singapore were live on Twitter! All thanks to @claudia10, @uniquefrequency, @summerisque, @danielgoh, @youareonvisual, and @armchairdude for filling me up on the discussions I missed out on. :)

You can still read the old tweets on #adtechasia. Other great tools life streaming are TweetGrid and twazzup. Try them out the next time!

Dinner @ Manhattan Fish Market

(Another overdue post. ><; Actual day: June 2 - the night I bought my Monopoly Deal.)

Rating: ★★★★

This was my first time at Manhattan Fish Market. Not bad!

Soup of the day was Seafood Chowder. My only complain was too much of tomato taste (bit sour) for my preference. I would try their Cream of Mushroom or Clam Chowder on next visit.

I ordered black pepper grilled salmon with chips. Salmon was fresh and the fries were tasty too. Anyways, I felt this was a little too expensive or "not worth it" (~$18) when I saw wx's platter for 1 below...

His plate was that much fuller than mine - 2 jumbo prawns and a catch of the day, dora fish, plus both fries and baked rice! Only $3 more (~$21)

On second thought, I should have ordered baked rice - which tasted a bit like the garlic rice from Sakae Teppanyaki. I even DIY-ed and added more garlic to make it "asian"! :D

Where to find crispy waffles in Singapore?

Rating: ★★★

Yum yum yum. Went to West Coast Plaza with my family and found this great waffle place:

the Waffle Place Cottage!

Ordered strawberry ice-cream at Qiqi's request (I was sharing it with her). $6.80 for single scoop. Wanted to add strawberries, but was told that they ran out of them (there's a Cold Storage right downstairs you know!) >

• West Coast Plaza, #02-27
• Suntec City Mall, MY PLAYground, #03-05G/071A
• SMU, School of Economics & Social Science, #01-74
  

Their website is in the making.. Hope to see their menu and pictures of their delicious waffles soon!! XD

I recommended Gelare's waffles to @nikipaniki sometime last month. Personally, I prefer the Gelare's waffle type - the softer and fluffier kind, or if you still remember, the A&W waffles kind.

There are 4 Gelare locations in town:

• Citylink Mall, #B1-26B
• Far East Plaza, #01-23
• Plaza Singapura, #05-20
• Suntec City Mall, #02-084
  

Visit their website for a full list of outlets in Singapore.

And while surfing their website...

Look what I found!
TUESDAY! That's tomorrow!!! :D

Monopoly Deal

Ever since krisandro blogged about this card game, it has been my #1 wishlist item! (I'll talk about why this variation of the classic Monopoly is so great later.)

And what a great opportunity it was last night when I went to J8 for dinner...

A Monopoly Party!

Hmm, seemed like there was going to be a public game play or something. Just look at that big Monopoly board on the floor.. & the huge dice too!! It got me really excited, like a child in a dreamland. :D

The event (sponsored by BHG) actually featured a number of Hasbro's all-time favorite "family" games: Risk Reinvention, Jenga, Cluedo, and Game of Life, just to name a few. Monopoly seemed to be the star of the show :)

Around the human-sized Monopoly floorboard were 4 mini booths, showcasing Connect 4, Pictureka, Jenga, and Monopoly Deal. You could actually join in and have a game right on the spot!

No doubt, I took this chance (dinner first) to get my hands on my own Monopoly Deal card game. There were 2 options: 1) the "traveling" version - compact, all-you-need for S$11.90 and 2) the "shuffler" version - complete with a Shuffle Shaker to help you shuffle your cards easily!

The Big Game

The Monopoly Deal card game is essentially a super-condensed version of the classic Monopoly board game. And I meant it in a good way! I've always loved to play classic Monopoly: I think it's fun and very engaging - lots of laughter in the process! But people whom I approach to play with often complain that it's "too long" "never-ending" or "not fun with just 2 of us". Monopoly Deal is a perfect counter to these blatant comments! It's never too long - you can win (or lose) a game in 10 mins - certainly not never-ending, and it is great fun even with just 2 players! Definitely a must try.

Woohoo~ at last!

*Shake shake shake* The Shuffle Shaker!!

I played 10 games straight with wx, and *doh* I lost 9-1! I feel it's my luck. T_T He always drew good cards. So to prove my hypothesis... (that he won by luck not by skill)

I set up a game experiment where I will play his cards and he will play mine. We had our own rules too: loser will shuffle and winner gets to start first.

Independent variable: I shuffle the cards, assuming that I had lost the previous game.
Dependent variable: When dealing, what was supposed to be wx's cards were now mine, and vice versa. While playing, what was supposed to be drawn into wx's hand were now drawn into mine. So theoretically, I should have wx's "luck".
Hypothesis: If I win, "luck" played a key role in wx's triumph. If I lose, wx did probably perhaps could be possibly by chance had better skills and strategy than me.

And I won. :) Case closed, it really is the "luck". LOL

-----
More coming on game play and rules...

je t'aime my love

我最爱的女人
你会不会爱我和我过这一生
难舍又难分