Vinda...

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Yup, mission vindaloo accomplished!

Me mum went to the wet market today and got me the spices I need. Unfortunately we couldn't get any methi seeds (also known as fenugreek), so we had to make do without it. Followed the recipe from The Professional Chef, 8th Edition, by the Culinary Institute of America and published by John Wiley & Sons.

Didn't follow the recipe exactly since we didn't have a very accurate weighing machine, but it turned out to be really good. Glad I made it myself, because then I can control the heat (the recipe calls for lots of chillies). My vindaloo isn't very vindaloo-ish though, because it's supposed to be spicy as fuck, and I fucked up the recipe and forget to add vinegar in the spice paste but oh well! Here's a picture:


Apparently vindaloo tastes better as it ages because the proteins absorb the flavour, so I'm gonna wait till tonight before I finish the rest up.

The Privateer

Good evening.

Went hunting for food today with Clement so we can start on our culinary science assignment. Met him at Aljuned and took a bus down to Ceylon road in search of the Eurasian Community House. We were looking for a restaurant called "Quentin's" that has pork vindaloo on it's menu. Got to the place, saw the restaurant, there were people in there eating and all, but the staff tells us "it's closed sorry". Okay, whatever then.

Left the place since they were so unpleasant. Took bus 30 from there all the way down to Pasir Panjang road, close to Redwood West (serviced apartments). Looking for "The Privateer", found the place, the entrance to it is on the second floor, gotta climb up a narrow stairway. Entered, greeted by a pleasant, smiley faced waitress who showed us to our table. Really relaxing atmosphere, super comfy, large seats that you can literally sink into. Nobody else was around except the owner and the waitress. The owner of the joint came to chat with us, very friendly. She told us about the beers they had and recommended a light lager called "Wychcraft" from UK (her favourite beer, she says). We ordered a pint each ($14), the beer came in frozen mugs which was really awesome, keeps the beer ice cold. The beer was really, really great, definitely alot better than the crap they sell at supermarkets. They also have a nice spirits menu and a very extensive selection of wines.

The Wychcraft.

I ordered the roasted lamb shank ($24) while Clement ordered a beef wellington ($26) for his assignment. Food took a rather long time to get to us but it was okay. Think the owner did the cooking herself. Ordered bread sticks with garlic cheese sauce while waiting. Delish.

Food was served. The lamb shank was ginormous. Really didn't expect anything like it. First time trying lamb shank and it was really good. Meat was very tender, tasty. Served with carrots (yum), baby corn (double yum), broccoli, some long vegetable I didn't recognise (probably green onions) and mashed potatoes.

Shiok.

Clement's beef wellington looked awesome too. Meat (beef ribeye) was moist, pink and tender on the inside with this really yummy, butter puff pastry on the outside. Fortunately Clement was able to find this place, not many places in Singapore serve it. Other wise he'd have to make it, and the recipe from the recommended text (The Professional Chef, Culinary Institute of America) calls for pâté de foie gras and sliced truffles. Don't know where to get, and sure to be extremely expensive as well.

Unfortunately, no foie gras or truffles in Clement's beef wellington haha. Otherwise it wouldn't cost just $26 anymore would it?

Beef wellington.

By the time we finished we were stuffed! Friendly waitress asked us if we wanted dessert but we were too full to take another bite so unfortunately we had to skip it.

Overall a highly satisfying experience. Good place, good beer, good food, hot owner and cute waitress, what's not to like? Definitely going back again.

Damnit!

Damnit!

Finally decided to call the curator of the National Museum of Singapore since I couldn't put if off any longer but she was busy! I knew I should've called her when I received that e-mail. I really need to apologize to her tomorrow.

My plan to start on my Festivals and Events Management report today, thwarted! Looks like i'll have to rely on whatever (bullshit) I can think of for now.

Not gonna mention names.

A: "Why you like Korean boy band? What's so nice about them?"
B: "Because handsome."

That's funny, I thought people liked bands because of their music.

Underwater World

Originally planned to visit Mandai Zoo today, but weather was horrible. Started to rain while halfway to Aljuned to meet Clement so change of plans, went to Sentosa's Underwater World instead.

Lunch at Vivocity Thai Express. Had the Pad Thai with beef. First time trying Thai cuisine and I must say I loved it.

Underwater World was a blast. Been there before a long time ago but can't remember anything about it, except for the long underwater tunnel. Quite a small place but full of really cool stuff. First thing you notice when you enter the place is the "Touch Pool", where you get to touch (obviously) some of the marine life there. There're pufferfish, archerfish, starfish, bamboo sharks and blue-spotted stingray (the rays were really cute).

Bunch of other pools. There's one with some rather large rays in it. You can pay $3 for a bowl of feed to feed the rays during specific hours, although unfortunately there were none left by the time we got there. Apparently you're supposed to hold the feed in your palm and dip it in the water for the rays to suck off your hand, pretty neat!

There're also two aquariums with holes in them for you to stick your hand through and feed the fishes inside. It's called the Mystical Anti-Gravity Interactive Concept Tank, or Magic T for short, because the water doesn't gush out when you stick your hand in there. This is what it looks like:


There're two tanks, one for freshwater fish (pic above) full of blood parrot cichlid and another for marine fish. Purchased feed for the freshwater fish ($2) and proceeded to feed them. You don't even need to stick your hand all the way in because those greedy things will come swimming out for the food. Couldn't get feed for the marine fish unfortunately, the capsule dispenser wasn't working.

Another pool, this time with sharks in them. Obviously you can't stick your hand inside (becuase it's full of sharks), but you can still feed them for $3. You're provided with a bowl of feed consisting of a few chucks of fish and a plastic skewer thing. Stick the feed on the skewer and lower it into the pool. The sharks weren't all that hungry though, but it was a really cool experience.

Some other small exhibitions around, aquariums with beautiful harlequin shrimp, nasty looking dragon moray eels, super cute garden eels that live in holes in the sand. There's even a display that shows the different stages of development of bamboo shark embryos (the sharks lay eggs), you can even see the unborn babies wriggling in them. Pretty incredible stuff. Here's a video I found on Vimeo so you can see what it looks like.



The "Living Fossils" part of the Underwater World was pretty interesting, featuring some cool marine animals like Horseshoe crabs, American Lungfish and Birchirs. The highlight was this massive tank full of giant, giant fish. Catfish, Alligator Gars (really small when compared to the rest of the tank's residents), Spotted Stingray and Arapaimas, one of the largest freshwater fishes in the world. These things can grow up to 2 fucking metres long!

Next up was the cephalopod exhibition. Saw Giant Pacific Octopus, Pharaoh Cuttlefish and this interesting creature called the Chambered Nautilus. This is how they look like:


There were a few crab aquariums too, with Decorator Crabs (they attach bits of seaweed and stuff to themselves via hooks), Coconut Crabs, etc. Highlight were the Japanese Spider Crabs. Giant monsters. There was also an aquarium with two Leafy Seadragons and Weedy Seadragons each. Really cool stuff.

Then of course there was the Tunnel. Saw Eagle Rays, Nurse Sharks, White tip Sharks, Black tip Sharks, Silver Trevally, Giant Groupers (fucking crazy monsters that can grow up to 2.7 metres long!). Unfortunately (again!), no Dugongs. There was a sign saying they were upgrading the exhibit so oh well.

Stopped by Dolphin Lagoon for a short while, couldn't see anything because of all the people so we left. Don't like dolphins much anyway.

On the way out, saw this Indian mum sticking her hand inside the Shark Pool, smiling away like an idiot, and all I could think was "What a fucking stupid bitch". Just because the other pools are Touch Pools it doesn't mean a pool full of fucking sharks is safe. Maybe she could try reading the gazillion signs around the pool saying "For your safety please keep your hands out of the water." Or maybe take a hint from the plastic rim that's SPECIALLY DESIGNED TO KEEP YOUR HANDS OUT OF THE POOL.

Stupid tourists.

Shakira - Las Caderas No Mienten (Hips Don't Lie)

Ohhh Shakira Shakira.

Funny video time.

Cannibal Corpse - Priests of Sodom

Always lots of people reading their newspapers on the train in the morning. Saw some interesting things.


First: "Singaporean scholar caught downloading child porn in Britain."

Lovely. And look at this.

"The Press said Wong's offences came to light after fellow students alerted the campus authorities about suspicious audio files being uploaded onto the university's intranet."

So he was downloading child porn using the University's internets? He's just begging to get arrested.


Next: "(Taylor) Swift's songs are such sizzlers."

Allow me to correct that. "Swift's songs suck much."

Much better.


Lastly: "大S大赞老公帅"

Which roughly translates too "Dà S (what a stupid nickname) praises husband for being handsome."

Some Taiwanese celebrity says her husband is handsome. And it ended up in the papers. Oh, how absolutely newsworthy!

Local media is so fucking lame.

3 Inches of Blood - 'Battles and Brotherhood'

Huhhh.

Wish I picked a darker pair of jeans instead of light blue. Oh well, i'll make do until next year. Luckily I still have my pair of Edwin jeans (dark blue yum).

Feel like shit. Like there's something I ought to be doing but I don't know what. Hate to admit it but if I don't pull myself together I'm going to fuck up my GPA big time.

Maybe polytechnic education just isn't good for me. I'm lazy, clueless, disorganised, lack direction and motivation.

Guess I'll work on my accounting notes or something.

The weekend.

Hello.

New blog, after a short affair with Tumblr. It was fun at first, until I slowly realised that every Tumblr blog looked like a clone of the next, with everyone reblogging images and whatnots, and of course how Tumblr seems to be down all the time. Decided to move back to Blogger, which according to the Internet, sucks. According to the Internet, everything sucks, even the Internet.


Saturday, November 13th
Day was spent outside visiting museums for my school report on events in Singapore. Stupid teacher gave us a list of events to choose from, half of those were already over. Not much of a choice left, eh?

First stop, the Peranakan Museum, which you can tell by the name, specialises in Peranakan culture, and is an extension of the Asian Civilisations Museum, forming a part of Singapore's national museums.

Looked at a bunch of Peranakan artefacts before going down to the main attraction of my visit, the Ramayana Revisted special exhibition.

The Ramayana is one of India's two great epics, the other being the Mahabharata (have no idea what it's about), and is an important part of Hindu canon. There are adaptations of the epic, such as in Thai, Malay, and Burmese.

Basically, Vishnu incarnates in mortal form to protect the world from demons. Yah. It's an epic so I shan't bore you with the details. Exhibition was very interesting, but also very empty, unfortunately (the Peranakan Museum isn't all that famous).

Next stop was the National Museum of Singapore, but first I stopped at the Singapore Philatetic Museum, which is about... stamps. Main reason I stopped there was to see the Iron Man collectibles they had on display. Exhibition was tiny, main attraction was this really badass life size statue of the Warmachine.

After that I looked at the stamps, left for the National Museum, got my ticket, entered the exhibition straight away (no time for the other galleries unfortunately). Gallery was about ancient Pompeii, a Roman town that was completely destroyed by a volcanic eruption by Mount Vesuvius back in 79 CE. Some coins, statues of Aphrodite and Dionysus (the Romans call them Venus and Bacchus), bits of armour etc, as well as resin casts of victims of the eruption. Really cool.

Made my way down to 313@Somerset, hoping to purchase some jeans from Uniqlo, turned off by the crowd, left. Cooked half of dinner, burned my hand with hot oil (ouch!). My mother had to finish cooking for us.


Sunday, November 14th
Museum day again, this time brought my mother along so I could get a different opinion. Weather was horrible.

Stopped at Vivocity first, again to hunt for jeans. Diesel was having a sale with discounts of up to 70%. Unfortunately when I got there there was almost nothing left to choose from. Disappointed.

Brief stop at Peranakan Museum before heading down to TripleOne Somerset, a really sad, dismal place in my opinion, houses mainly for offices, as well as Singapore's first (and so far only) Applebee's. for dinner at Imperial Treasure Windows of Hong Kong.

Paid a visit to Mandarin Gallery, still hunting for jeans. Went to The Denim Store as well as Bread and Butter to take a look. Expensive (S$300-400), so I didn't get anything.

Brief stop at TampinesOne, finally got a new pair of jeans at Uniqlo. Easily affordable, good quality, pretty happy with my purchase. Denim from Japan is undisputedly the best.


Monday, November 15th
Feeling like shit, skipped school. Went to see the doctor, got some meds and antiseptic cream for my burns. Found out today about this place in Orchard that carries Edwin (EDWIN!) jeans. All of a sudden my Uniqlo purchase didn't seem so great.

Hello.