A Big Hole in my Wallet

After postponing the Father's Day + Father's Birthday celebration for abt a week, we had decided to visit Ippudo@Mandarin Gallery on Tuesday (24th June) for a meal, which also served as the celebration. Since the restaurant doesn't accept reservation, we made arrangement to meet there at 7pm and informed my dad to come home earlier from work so that we can make our way there on time to meet my sis and bro as they were heading there straight after work.

On Tuesday, Ivan came down to my house early and then we would drive down to Orchard Road. We waited for my parents and my mum finally came back at 6.30pm, which was nothing unusual. The unusual thing was that my dad wasn't back home yet. He usually come home at 6pm+ if he's not working OT. I clearly remembered that my mum reminded him to come home early the day before but why was he not back yet? I gave him a call and it ended up that he was still working, at 6.45pm. He complained that we didn't tell him what time we were going for dinner, but I was like, "What?!? We told you to come back early already right?"

"How I know your 'early' refers to when?" he replied.

There's no word to describe his absent-mindedness and/or absurdness.

We ended up ordering our food and were given a seat at 8pm+.. In my opinion, the ramen there are quite good, but the pancakes are the ones that I like most. My bro commented that Ippudo's ramens standard are somewhat similar to Ramen Keisuke Tori King's (can be found in Tanjong Pagar/Bugis) ones, however the latter is much cheaper, got more sides in the soup and they offer free flow eggs and beansprouts. My parents also thought that the ramens were too salty for their liking. Clearly, they didn't really appreciate the food even though it was a whopping $210+ in total.

"We should have gone Ajisen instead," my bro said jokingly.  

I think we should just bring them to some hawker centres like Chomp Chomp which sell good Hokkien Mee/ Satay/ Stingray etc... just kidding.

Personally, I don't think that I will initiate to visit Ippudo again. Ramen isn't the type of Japanese food I like best, that's why I don't think it's worth paying $20+ for one bowl. If I'm paying $20+ for one super good Chicken Chop or Fish & Chip then maybe I might consider.

  

Ice Skating at GEM

After fetching my aunt to Golden Mile to take the coach bus back to Malaysia, we headed down to J Cube for ice skating. It was one of the activities that we wanted to try out since long time ago and we were finally not procrastinating it anymore as Ivan is going to become "car-less" by end of this month. The skating sessions only come in a 2-hour block and we chose to go for the 5.15pm-7.15pm session. Before the session started, Ivan wanted to stand around the ice rink to observe so that he could try out what he had observed later in the rink. 

When it was time, we queued to buy the entrance tickets and boot rental voucher at $17.50 per pax. We bought our own gloves and socks so that we didn't have to spend more. I don't think that the gloves are necessary though. It will be good if you have it but it doesn't kill if you don't. It was definitely cold in the rink but Ivan still perspired while skating.. I didn't know how was that even possible.

I know how to roller blade, but the first time experience of stepping on ice felt very foreign to me. Initially, I was skating near the side of the rink fearing that I would fall. Subsequently, I got the hang of it and was skating more freely. Ivan fell a few times though. The sadist in me thought that it was a pretty funny sight the first time he fell, but after awhile, I just got used to it.
  

I risked bringing my phone into the rink to snap pictures instead of putting it into the rented locker ($2). Ivan was holding on to my phone for me at first, but I figured out that my phone would have a higher probability of survival in my hands since I was more stable than him. 

Ice skating was really fun and the scorching heat from outdoor won't be there to irritate you. It's also cheaper than roller blading on a weekend since the rental fee for roller blading shoes is $10/hr and there's no buy-1hr-free-1hr. We will definitely go back there again next time, probably on a weekdays so we don't have to fear that we will knock into others if we skate too fast.  

On the same day, we went to Ice Cream Scoopz at Upper Thomson Rd for supper. That is one of the cheapest ice cream waffle place around I think. 2 scoops + waffle at $7.60. We ordered jackfruit and rootbeer ice cream. When I was trying the jackfruit ice cream, the initial taste of it was quite disgusting but the after taste was nice and I ended up choosing that instead of durian. The place wasn't very crowded as well so it will be good for gathering. I had gone to Salted Caramel on a weekend night before and the noise level was so horrendous that it was difficult to talk to your friend sitting opposite of you. Unless I feel like eating salted caramel ice cream, I will visit this shop instead of Salted Caramel or Udders along the same street.    

Project Sunflower

I have recently embarked on a "project" to grow sunflowers. The inspiration came when WendyK, Zixian and I were having a conversation during a lecture break. Another reason why I wanted to do that was because my grandmother used to plant sunflowers at the "backyard" of my house when I was young (my house was on the ground floor before I moved to my current one), so I just feel like doing the same, probably as a form of commemoration, or maybe to relive those moments.

Although I wanted to do it, I had no idea where to get the seeds from. As such, I passed on this difficult question to Ivan and he was helpful enough, putting his 100% into helping me look for it despite his attempt to talk me out of it by saying that it's difficult to grow sunflowers in Singapore etc..

so TAAADAAA~ we managed to get the seeds from a nursery in Bedok, spending $11+ for the pots, soil and 3 packets of sunflowers seeds of different species. As I just finished my last paper that day, we went ToGather Cafe for lunch and tried the ice cream at Honey & Milk Gelato before heading off to catch a movie.

A few days later, we planted those seeds together, 3 seeds in 1 small pot. Fortunately, 2 seeds sprouted within 4 days! I was really delighted to see the shoots as germination of the seeds seem to be the hardest part to get through. As of now, the seedlings seem to be growing well and we had also changed it out into a bigger pot as the roots of the seedlings had already penetrated the bottom of the small pot. We planted 2 different species in separate pots. It seemed that the germination process of the seeds in the other pot failed entirely. We restarted again with new seeds, planting it deeper this time. Hopefully it will work out fine this time :)  

Batam 8-9 March 2014

I had always wanted to go Batam because it's pretty near Singapore and seemed like a rather inexpensive place for a short getaway. The feel of wanting to go overseas only intensified after settling my grandmother's funeral stuff and I told Ivan about it. As usual, the reply he gave me was "soon". Before I got together with him, the idea I had of "soon" was really soon, like within hours for small matters and few days for bigger ones. After some time, I have gotten accustomed to his idea of "soon" instead, which is almost equivalent to "you just wait, for months maybe..". So I just waited for that "soon" to come and gradually forgot about it.

This time, the "soon" took about 1 month to come and it surprised me when he told me about it. Initially, he wanted us to go on 2-3 March so it would be an anniversary celebration, but I've got Sociology prelim the following Monday. In the end, we had a post anniversary celebration instead and all were paid for by him.

On that day, we had to wake up very early and I only had 2 hours of sleep due to my body clock. The lack of sleep really made me felt cranky at the start, but slowly, the feeling disappeared as the tour began.

We visited the Ralph Lauren Polo Store first. The tour guide said that the Ralph Lauren stuff there are authentic and one polo tee costs about 50SGD only, however as we only brought about 200SGD worth of rupiah, 50SGD is considered a lot. We also bought some food from their factory outlet and local snacks store. Kueh lapis is also considered as their specialty so we each bought 1/2kg of the mocha flavoured one.

We visited the temple too. Aren't the statues cute?

A seafood lunch was also included in the package, but the food was just so-so. They served flower crabs, super small crayfish, very strong veggie-taste veggie, fish and some other things which I don't eat. We also went to the BSC or BCS mall but there's nothing much there as the tour guide explained to us that all the goods there are imported from Bugis Street so it will be cheaper to buy at Bugis Street instead. We chose to skip the massage so we had to stay in that mall for an hour. While waiting for the rest, we came to this cafe and ordered a drink. Just like what the tour guide has said, the locals like to drink sweet stuff, so the frappe we ordered ended up being very sweet too.    

The tour ended at about 4-5pm (Batam time is one hour behind Singapore time) and we arrived at the Nongsa Point Resort. It's a much nicer place to take pictures as compared to the places we had visited throughout the tour. 

  

The next day was just packing up, had breakfast and coming back to Singapore..That's the end of our 2nd overseas trip together..

Goodbye ~ My Dear Ah Po

I had always thought about it and mentally prepared myself for this, but in fact, no amount of mental preparation has helped to lessen my grief.

My grandmother passed away on 29th Jan 2014... 1 day before our Reunion Dinner, 1 day before eve of Chinese New Year. She passed away on the day we were going back to Malaysia, and we didn't make it in time to see her for the last time. She suffered a mild stroke on that Friday. Everyone thought that she would recover, even the doctor said so. She could be discharged a few days after but her blood pressure and sugar level was high thus the doctor recommended not to discharged her first. We were expecting her to be discharged from the hospital on the day we were going back, but her condition turned for the worst suddenly on the very same day. She suffered a second stroke in the afternoon and slipped into coma from then onwards...

The news came when we were about 2 hours away from Ipoh and my heart turned cold the moment I heard the news. My aunt kept calling us to check our location as she said that the staff wanted to move her to the mortuary already. When we reached the hospital, we saw that she was already being wrapped up. My uncle unwrapped it and let us see her for the last time. All blood seemed to have drained from her face and made it turned yellowish. That totally didn't look like the grandma I had always known.

That night, my siblings and I went to my cousin's house to sleep over for the night. Although I was very tired, it still took me quite long to fall asleep. Memories with her kept on coming back. I'd try to distract myself from it but it didn't work. The phone conversation we had 2 weeks before she passed away also kept repeating in my mind. 

Our phone conversation was something along this line (we conversed in Hakka and it's impossible to direct translate it, so I just put it into a more comprehensible form):
Grandma: 阿婆没用了咯，现在走一下就觉得累，累了又去睡一下。
Me: 那你走累了去休息也好啊，起码有做点运动，好过一直躺着。你觉得累了就要休息。
Grandma: 对咯，在老屋的时候我收拾一点，累了就到房里睡，睡醒了又继续收拾。
Me: 是咯，这样好嘛。。你慢慢一点一点做, 到我们回去就刚刚好。
Grandma: 那你们几时回？
Me: 星期3。那天我有上课，下午放课后就回去了。。
Grandma: 哦，那好。。 就这样咯。
Me:喔，byebye, 你早点睡。

That was just a normal conversation we had almost every other month, but I didn't expect it to be the last...

Recalling everything about her and typing this post still hurts..but I will still continue to post more though... I want to use this to note down as much things as possible so that when I look back in the future, I will still remember the times we had together.



...Not being able to see her for the last time before she passed away will always remain as a regret for the rest of my life...