men's onsen sanraku

now i'm pretty sure this (camwhoring in the onsen) is taboo in ryokan culture but the bath was empty in the morning when these photos were snapped. also, i didn't take them (duh) so judge away while the photographer pleads tourist immunity :) lovely bath, surreal and peaceful. just what the doctor ordered!

would you like to know something funny though? the men's and ladies' onsen alternates every day. so if you're not careful and go by muscle memory instead of the cloth covering the door way, you just might stumble into the wrong bath. not like i have...

happier in bhutan

thankful for some certainty (just heard from the firm about the deferred start of the training contract!), i've stuck my long ears out and this is what might materialise come year end! 

Itinerary in brief –

·                 Day 1 - Fly into Paro and take the 1.5 hour drive to Thimphu (the capital city) for an easy day of exploration (e.g. visit to the local market) and cultural activities (such as making of zsa zsas, a traditional Bhutanese offering) as travelers adjust to the altitude, which – at 8,000 meters, is not bad, but for people from Singapore who are used to sea level, some may feel slightly short of breath if they move around too quickly the first day or two; overnight in Thimphu

·                 Day 2 – Leave early morning for the drive through Dochu La pass to Gangtey, which is a spectacularly beautiful valley in Central West Bhutan where travelers can observe the endangered black neck cranes, who return from Tibet and reside in Gangtey for the winter; overnight in Gangtey

·                 Day 3 – Enjoy a brief, early morning walk through the forests of Gangtey and leave by mid-morning to Punakha to attend the blessing Puja ceremony for the elder housing project; overnight in Punakha

·                 Day 4 – Start the day in Punakha Valley by taking a beautiful walk along the MoChu River - pass rice paddies and chili fields - to visit a new Chorten established by the four queens. Visit the Punakha Dzong, the most stunning dzong in Bhutan; alternatively, one can walk through the fields and visit Chimi Lakhang – the fertility temple. One can also simply relax at the Amankora Lodge, which is a converted old farm house and enjoy a cup of tea in the orchard

·                 Day 5 – Depart for a leisurely five hour drive to Paro, with stops along the way to visit Dochu La Pass and others; the evening will start with a performance of traditional dance and music and will be a black tie affair; overnight in Paro

·                 Day 6 – Visit the iconic Tiger’s Nest, the stunning temple that is built on a cliff face, or visit Kichyu Lhakhang- the oldest temple in Bhutan and make offerings of butter lamps; overnight in Paro

·                 Day 7 – Morning departure home via Bangkok and arriving Singapore in the evening

·                 The trip will be punctuated throughout with lectures on Bhutanese culture and Buddhism, making of zsa zsas and offering of butter lamps, hanging of prayer flags, as well as hikes – mostly gentle - through the countryside, picnics, and finally on the evening before departure, a special blessing ceremony for the travelers held at the Druygel Dzong - an old ruin that is lit up with candles for the night just for the group and a wonderful gala dinner in traditional dress that follows.

Weather – Early December weather is comfortably cool in Bhutan with blue and sunny skies. It’s perfect for walking through the countryside. Most of us are comfortable in a sweater or a light jacket. Night time can be cold but usually we will be cuddling up around cozy fires or tucked in comfortable beds!

Accommodation – Accommodation will be at the Aman lodges.

(is it just me or did that last line give you heart palpitations, too? :) )

one in a million, literally.

spent 11am to 5pm at the expo on saturday, when the attendance was recorded at a record-breaking one million people. it was also pouring cats and downs, so one million people = one million umbrellas threatening to poke my eyes out :( not a happy camper!

but we were very fortunate to be hosted and who else happened to be assigned to us but michelle! michelle whom i've known since primary one, traveled and roomed with in primary five, and stayed friends with through secondary school. small small world! never expected to bump into her in shanghai, at the expo, of all places! but she was posted to shanghai specially for the expo and this chance meeting was such a fun one :) she made all the arrangements and got us in without any queue (the average queue was 4h long. i kid you not!) so i am immensely grateful to her for making our visit happen. with her help, we saw the singapore pavilion (duh), taiwan, china and canada. she also recommended her wonderful masseuse and we went two days in a row for "seven star" foot massages. mhmmm. happy feet after a long rainy day :)

singapore pavilion 

singapore's proud of her water bodies

just because i'm peranakan

taiwan pavilion

alien pavilion

the palm tree topped pavilion on the right is saudi arabia - 9h queue and NO VIP ACCESS :(

heidi and michelle releasing good luck lanterns at the taiwanese pavilion

possibly my favourite part of the expo - old chinese painting brought to life with animation!

crazy queue to enter the china pavilion

well done, one child policy.

worth the discrimination

let me first qualify this post by confessing that i am a maggi goreng addict. i've been smitten since my first taste at a beach shack in tioman. stayed at a charming resort with great character (read: budget) but somehow managed to make space for a midnight snack of the good stuff just beyond the resort's boundary after dinner every night. let me also admit to being the biggest chicken-heart ever but buoyed by the prospect of maggi goreng, i'd willingly brave all manner of night evil as i faithfully made my way in the pitch dark, along a dirt path more pothole than dirt, to the ramshackle hut each night. and since leaving tioman (oh this was years ago!) i have never passed up an opportunity to sample what i consider better than pasta fresca fatta in casa even.

went to mustafa in search of sarongs and found out that the single item they don't stock is a tongue-scraper (don't ask) oh, and neither do they have lady gaga's blonde bow wig. but other than that, the dizzying array of everything and anything under the sun never fails to get me. plus there's something adventurous about going to mustafa past midnight, when all the other shops have long pulled down their shutters. gotta love the hyper-efficiency that is a 24h store.

tonight, i also learnt of my tolerance for bad manners and poor service. tried CMK instead of sakunthala's because the latter is disgustingly overpriced ($25 for 2 pratas, butter chicken and mango lassi???! are you kidding me???) and placing an order at CMK was an exercise in supreme patience. took half an hour (no exaggeration) after constant signaling, going to the counter, physically obstructing the walk way, asking loud enough to be heard yet being blatantly ignored by all but the chinese table cleaner (the only other yellow skinned in the establishment apart from us three), who even then seemed reluctant to talk to us. was tempted to throw in the towel and cross the road to sakunthala's but the sight and smells of what the kitchen was offering kept us going that five, ten, fifteen minutes more. finally, with great reluctance, the boss man took our orders and after another long wait our maggi goreng and prata waltzed out of the kitchen.

and ohmyword, it was the mother of all maggi gorengs, the holy grail of the maggi kind.

one bite and it was worth the discrimination, possible delhi belly and a small price to pay for enjoying the subconscious comfort that comes with being the majority in the country - unless you're at a roadside stall in little india past midnight.

too cool for school

way to go, singapore! 

how nice to see an ad campaign that doesn't take itself too seriously.

word from the wise

It’s generally a terrible idea to rush romance (or commitments) for the exigencies of real estate.

-yes, i've probably taken it out of context but this is oh-so-apt about singapore.

(the new york times)

day 36

sunday 13 june 2010

nothing made me feel more welcomed than being included in the family fold. mama M had all her children back that weekend (J's brother and his family were visiting from munich) and she went to great lengths to ensure that everyone was well fed. she spent hours preparing the feast and by early afternoon, we were nicely settled in the pool house sipping chilled rose and tucking into the armenian skewers she served. mhmmm! just thinking about the (not) shish kebabs makes my mouth water...

happy campers in the pool house - mama M commented that she had an international family, and she really did! i try not to play the nationality card but i must admit i find people from unusual backgrounds extremely exotic so bear with me in my ignorance. papa M's armenian, mama M's was born in algeria and her parents were from a country that no longer exists. J and her brothers are french. big brother's married to a beautiful spanish lady and they live in munich with their son. middle brother's going out with a lebanese lady. also at lunch, were J's aunt and cousin and his +1. so J's aunt (mama M's sister-in-law) was the only one who was 100% french at lunch. her son's +1, incidentally, is sardinian and a (james) bond girl. teehee. 

isn't their home beautiful?

i could see the cezanne mountain from my room!

oh and after the very satisfying lunch, J and i went to watch sex and the city 2! had a brief flashback to summer 08 when i'd wanted so desperately to watch SATC the movie in lyon but it was dubbed in french. that was actually what sparked my desire to learn the language. fast forward 2 years, i was very blessed to be back in france, staying with a french family, immersed in french (although they very graciously spoke anglais to include me) and watching SATC 2. life has a funny way of turning out :)

something for the singaporeans

looks like someone's been pretty on the ball with the post world cup job apps.

day 9

monday 17 may 2010 around bibona

you've not had breakfast until you've had a farmhouse breakfast. we'd organic, free-range eggs (from ida's organic, free-range hens) and the yolks were so yellow they made me almost delirious. there was also the freshest, fluffiest apple cake that she baked earlier in the morning. ohmyword, an apple cake like no other (apples from her own trees, of course). i suppose the recurring theme this tuscan holiday was to eat local and save the earth, nevermind the belly. i ate so much local produce that in my head, i was single-handedly offsetting my otherwise giant carbon footprint. green substitutes and the like, you know? like if i ate eggs from ida's hens, i wasn't eating eggs that had been produced by grumpy battery hens and transported millions of miles to my plate. oh no! i was saving the earth by eating. and who can argue with that logic? :) but seriously, local produce is my new religion. it took every ounce of self-restraint to stop me from quitting before i even start and uprooting to live like a hermit farmer in tuscany, sustenance farming and making the extra cent from city slicker tourists who've never seen a vine in their life.

and what's almost better than eating local produce? shopping for local produce to bring home!

day 3

tuesday 11 may 2010 rouen (normandy beaches)

Because of Normandy’s proximity to the sea, it has been the site of many conflicts and battles, including the famous D-Day Invasion by the Allied forces during WWII. Before visiting the beaches of Normandy, you’ll be taken to Bayeux, where you can appreciate the Medieval depiction of the Battle of Hastings on a tapestry dating from the 11th century. Afterward, you will visit places that are haunting reminders of the Allies’ hard fight for freedom—the American Cemetery at Colleville sur Mer, the Allied landing sites at Omaha Beach, and Mulberry Harbor at Arromanches.

the most emotionally heavy-going day of the cruise. i'm the last person to be interested in military history and visiting the DDay beaches were a horrendous eye-opener to the atrocities of war. the tales of wanton sacrifice and indiscriminate killing saddened me to the core. sometimes ignorance is bliss and i wish i could turn back time and remain in oblivion. the soldiers were so young, so unwillingly, and so brutally exterminated. awful awful awful. so we drove 3h to the beaches, and then 3h back. returned to the barge totally drained.

wound down by watching the sunset from the dining room. how novel to be able to tan over dinner!

the swedish take on asian awkwardness

Hahaha! We all think you're being a bit nut! :-D I mean she'd love to stay there for a night with you! :-) Hehehe...kind of fun to watch the two being so polite to each other not to make the other inconvenienced and uncomfortable and in so doing making everything worse.. ;-)

context: i only wanted to stay in a corridormate's room if she was travelling herself and the room was unoccupied i.e. didn't want to stay with her for fear of being an inconvenience

trust the swedes

to elevate porn to an artform.

must be all that sex tourism to south east asia.

E for equality

don't you just love how 50marks on an exam is an E for everyone except swedish students?

record-breaking dinner

C, the very kind swedish gentleman that M put me in touch with, invited us to dinner in his lovely home last week. dinner had been in the pipelines for months, since soon after i arrived in stockholm, actually, and C generously organised dinner for us to meet his (much younger) swedish friends.

in true swedish fashion, we all arrived promptly at 6pm and had a few glasses of petroleum-scented riesling (apparently a good riesling's supposed to have notes of petrol o.O) as C ran through the menu. didn't take any photos, unfortunately, because i thought it might be rude. me and my prison of good manners :( but let's see if i can describe dinner the way it was.

C served an antipasti of fermented herring (i call it the antisocial herring because it smells so bad!), parma ham, bruschetta with chopped mushrooms and olives. i've probably left something out but in a nutshell, he served an italian dinner with swedish elements, like the herring and later, moose. after we polished off the antipasti, C served capellini with a sauce of crushed roasted pine nuts and truffle oil as the primo piatto. delicious! and for il secondo he did a beautiful entrecot of moose with steamed vegetables and a delectable sauce made from wild mushrooms. mmmm :) i'd never eaten moose before that and it was rare and gamey. i love my meats red! and it was truly exotic to be in the guest of a swedish host, eating moose in his cosy kitchen. C then served a selection of french and swedish cheese and while i can't remember the names, i really enjoyed his pickings. and the dolce was a delightful marsala sabayon that he whipped up on the spot and served in martini glasses with a berry on top. absolutely gorgeous! it feel so festive :) and i'm a big fan of pretentious foamy-thingums so the sabayon was up my alley all right. he made it look so easy as he whisked away and stirred the delicate creation in its bain-marie. more wine, coffee and sweets followed the marsala sabayon and riveting post-dinner conversation till 3am.

and because i really enjoyed getting to know C's two other guests, here's an excerpt from an email to my mother about dinner.

C had two Swedish gentlemen for dinner too. Guessing they were in their 20s and with fascinating backgrounds, one is a consultant with Accenture in Stockholm but spent his childhood all over the world (with his diplomat parents) and only just moved back to Sweden for good. The other's with Capital Management in Private Equity. Big words that unfortunately don't mean much to me right now. I'd to google 'private equity', embarrassingly enough. To cut a long story short, we'd a lovely 9h dinner (is that common???) from 6pm-3am. Learnt early on that the Swedes start their evening engagements early but I didn't realise we'd only be done at 3am and C was a gracious host.

Over the course of the evening, I realised that i knew SO MUCH about Sweden and Swedish law! Even though the other guests didn't have a legal background (one studied Economics at LSE and the other business at a Swedish business school) they knew a fair bit about Swedish law and we spent most of the night in lively discussion about the peculiarities and unique characteristics of Swedish law. I shared my fascination with their communitarian underpinnings, the public right of access, no duty to maintain wife after divorce, the absence of a trusts and the subsequent creation of foundations, their lack of testamentary freedom, tax evasion (their contribution, not mine!) while I'd enjoyed the Swedish law lectures and was intrigued by the material (what? no protection of negative right of association???) I didn't know how much I'd absorbed and subconsciously thought about until dinner when talking about it! Discussing the unique Nordic law model with true-blue Swedes reminded me how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to be immersed in system so different from the one I'm used to. Suddenly the otherwise dull lectures came to life and I was truly grateful for the background and foundation my introduction class gave me.

O and M, C's other guests were such gentlemen and i'm glad to have gotten to know young swedes in a social, civilised context (as opposed to being elbowed by drunk swedes in a throng outside f12). it'd be sad if i returned to singers not knowing a single 'local'. although neither O nor M are truly 'local' in a restrictive sense of the word. M's from the south and O's spent more time outside sweden than in. but happy to have met them all the same!

and, seriously, 9h dinner. no wonder C plied us with coffee after midnight :)

confused cuisine

was feeling adventurous and against our better judgment, we decided to try a japanese restaurant in ostermalmstorg. i say 'against our better judgment' because some guai lo had raved about it and called it authentic, which means it probably wasn't. so as we tried not to turn up our stubby asian noses at the prospect of pseudo-authentic japanese food, there was also niggling doubt at the back of our minds but figured it was worth a shot all the same. the result: cuisine of the most confused kind.

problem #1: asian-looking lady boss who didn't speak a single oriental language. at the door, i'd asked for a table for 2 in japanese, only to be met with a blank stare. i tried again in chinese, same reaction. giving up, i resorted to sign language and held out two fingers, she got the picture. granted, i can't say she didn't speak a single oriental language because i only speak chinese and a smattering of jap, plus malay but she didn't look malay. so maybe she speaks korean or thai. maybe.

problem #2: it was not japanese short-grain rice and hence it was not sushi by any stretch of imagination. have you heard the one about how each piece of sushi should have exactly 99 grains of rice and how expert sushi chefs train for years to get it right with one graceful swoop and shape? yeah. well these little monsters had about 200+ grains each. fake sushi FAIL.

(not) problem: this was the only dish i liked. spring rolls are cheap asian food and they seemed to accept that they were cheap asian food. simple. no pretensions, not trying too hard to be japanese (cf pseudo-sushi above) and upfront about its humble origins. cool.

problem #3: mystery meat dish machiam united nations. there was the mystery meat, which the restaurant can be forgiven for. even closing one eye and letting the meat pass as japanese, what in the world was the kimchi doing on the plate? and my national flower???! it was probably unintentional but i don't go to a japanese restaurant expecting to have a tri-nation plate. good in theory, bad in practice.

but the mysterious origins of the lady boss were later revealed when i recognised the obscure chinese dialect she was speaking and spoke to her in mandarin (why didn't she understand my initial request for a two-top?) and then she became noticeably friendlier and even offered us tea! so we scored some free tea (hey, it was the good stuff! the type mixed with rice grains that you can only find in japan!) and she even refused our tip because she mistook us for poor students. which was sweet :) so hmm, chinese solidarity > my prejudice towards non-japanese run japanese restaurants? the food was passable if you're not too discerning, or if your idea of asian food is kung pow chicken and co. but sorry, my atas palate was none too pleased, the only thing i liked was the tea.

SPG*-in-the-making

(when i asked why she'd a thing for angmohs)

"and OBVIOUSLY i have a thing for angmohs, have you SEEN the faces on singaporeans??! oops not talking about the love of your life. but ALL THE OTHER MALES."

so i've warned her to be careful and if she absolutely must, date one who's independently wealthy. because cross-cultural marriage is the surest guarantee for disinheritance. teeheehee. more for me then :)

to my white, male, independently wealthy readers, any takers?

p/s N's already dating a guai lo girlie so projecting 20 years into the future if the status quo and cultural preferences remain, my full-blooded offspring will be the firm favourites and sole heirs.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarong_party_girl

just in case

i turned swedish. good to know she's found a use for extra prints.

life-changing pasta

M & L

the eagerly anticipated lunch

mmhmmmm :)

indecent swiss roll

decent swiss roll

now i've had the privilege of dining at many good italian restaurants and i like to think i know my pasta. but, one of the best pasta i've had to date, was at M's on monday. the odds were against the pasta. i'd already eaten (and was relatively full at that!), i arrived late (more pasta than ingredients left) and the pasta was cold. ever the gracious host, M brushed away my paltry protestations of having had dinner already and dished me a generous helping. and boy, am i glad i took it!

after trying M's pasta, i was convinced that if i was a guy, i'd want to marry her. it was that life-changing. because marriage and consequently securing a lifetime of amazing pasta is, unfortunately, out of the question, the next best thing was to impose on M for a lesson which she very kindly gave.

so i went over today, laden with the ingredients and armed with my trusty camera to photograph the process every step of the way. M's meticulous without being overly particular and i really enjoyed watching her work her magic with commonplace grocery items that usually constitute my superbly unspectacular collegiate specials of lazy person pasta as i like to call them. she was truly in her element as she washed, chopped and stirred. appreciated her patient explanation and she even told me the secret ingredient to a good pasta.

we were joined by J and R and the 5 of us had a right royal ladies lunch. M's pasta was superlative, even better hot than cold (duh) and J brought dessert while R made real italian espresso. it was such a treat! thoroughly enjoyed the yummy pasta, then swiss roll doused with molten chocolate and traditional espresso. and, of course, it was great talking to the girls. put five girls together, stuff them with comfort food like creamy pasta, cake, chocolate and coffee and it's recipe for mid-afternoon bliss. digestion took awhile and we lounged around M&L's apartment talking about everything under the sun. they're an engaging bunch with fascinating personalities and i enjoy how we're switching from berlusconi to sarkozy to carla bruni to social security to who L's mum used to date to heidi samuel nee klum and then to our respective apartments back home, bali and tahiti, inter alia.

it's great to have good girlfriends on exchange. thank you ladies!

punch and judy

after class yesterday, J had the brainwave to do a mini punch party over at his place as a warm-up for the rest of TGIF festivities. in pragmatic aussie fashion, we were each assigned an item to bring. i lucked out with lemonade! the others very generously contributed the vodka, wine, fruit juice, cocktail fruit, candy and ginger ale. the beautiful thing about punch is that it evolves as the night goes on and the taste is ever changing yet constant. of course, J was the ever-vigilant punch pourer, making sure our glasses remained topped up and the punch bowl never emptied. funnily enough, punch and its varying taste reminded me of steamboat stock and how its taste is also developing along with the night. i think anthony*bourdain used the word 'living dish' to describe hot pot because the base gets tastier as more food is cooked in it. similarly, punch is a living drink of sorts because it never emptied but was topped up and kept its basic flavour while each mix was a interest-piquing concoction, different from its predecessor.

good time reconnecting, S and N just got back from their jetset trip and we were trading notes, hellsinking for bratislava, vienna and budapest. am incredibly envious that they went to vienna. it's on my hit list but i'm probably not going to make it this time :(

impressed by the attention to detail - greeted by tealights as we entered J's room

the central feature sitting irreverently on the star spangled banner. possibly what we think of the most recent nobelpe*cepr*ze , possibly... pretty absorbent tablecloth J had over there, no need for napkins.

and thank you, gentlemen, for the most enjoyable evening. props to J for having us over and letting us mess up his room :)

singapore boleh

perhaps unsurprisingly, being away from home has made me more in love with my tiny red dot.

and, i'm glad that they seem to agree.

it's a good read, thank you lovely men.