World of Taste and Sluurrp! - Taipei 2

-At Dan shui Old Street-

Fried Octopus (Japanese Hua Zhi)

Xiao Zai Mian

(Native Taiwanese Noodles, resembling our normal yellow noodles)

Clams cooked in Native Gingerish Soup

Yam and Sweet Potato Riceball Dessert

-Native Taiwanese Eatery near Ximending-

Lu Pork belly (Native taiwanese style)

Lu Pork (Native Taiwanese style)

Lu Bean Curd (Native Taiwanese style)

Wun Dun Mian

(Taiwanese rendition of Wanton noodles with Flower Egg. The ancient saying, or rather the genuine Chinese saying, of wanton is actually wun dun.)

Flower Egg with Noodles

(the egg was supposedly cooked in boiling water to achieve the smooth pale yellow texture and flowery appearance - interesting dish)

-Ancient Cuisine - (old Chinese style)

Sweet and Sour Pork - Vintage style

(Really queer and vintage. Looked steamed, but it is not. The sauce is sweet and sour, but it is not cooked in the modern way. Something very ancestory about this dish.

Beancurd fried with Bean Pate and Lard
(Queer taste - yet delicious. Every ingredient was well mixed to bring out the overall flavour. Though such a dish is nowhere near modern style.)

Little Buddha Jump Over the Wall

(Queer taste - but also delicious. Nothing like a modern dish. Bits of dried shrimps wer found, and the golden round thing is actuall fried pigeon egg (resembling "tie dan" or metal egg))

- Yong Kang street-

Black Sesame Paste Pastry
(The pastry layers are really soft and slightly crisp, and the roasted black sesame paste is really fragrant with its original taste well-kept to reach your taste buds at every bite)

- Back to Night Market at Ximending-

Japanese Crepes

Taiwanese Chicken Cooked in Rice Wine

It's a "wait, wait..." society

Everywhere we turn to people are asking us to wait. Different languages spoken to ask for the same thing from us. "Wait a moment, please." or "Wait ar." Or even "Qing shao deng yi xia.". How long is that "moment" actually going to be - well, who knows? Not even the person who had asked you to wait.

Sick and tired of waiting, Singaporeans developed a culture of "kiasuism". Because waiting consumes time, and time is precious, it cannot be retrieved no matter what, therefore to reduce the extensive waste of time, they become "kiasu". To the world outside, this may seemed a bad reflection of their principles of life - they are desperate not to lose out. But is it really just that?

Although not a native, but living in Singapore for so many years, I too feel the need to be kiasu sometimes. I came to realise that every corner of this country is requesting for the same thing, and such a request is possibily one of the reasons that cultivated an intrinsic "kiasu-ism" in every native. If we miss a bus or a train, we might have to wait for another ten to fifteen minutes for the next one, so why wait? Why not die-die get on this one, so I don't have to do the waiting? (I might also escaped the terror of getting marked for being late.)

There are also other things that required true blue waiting. If I need to process an important legal document, I need to first take a half-day (or maybe, a whole day) leave from work, then proceed to the building to do the processing. There, I have to first wait in line for about twenty minutes to get my queue number, and the brief information about which counter I had to proceed to. After which, I had to possibly wait for another hour, before the number on the screen finally revealed the number on my queue ticket. Then, when the moment I've been waiting for has arrived, but after a brief audience with the consultant or officer, I noticed that the actual processing of the document took only ten minutes. Shortly afterwhich, I'm back to waiting for another hour (worst case scenario - maybe two) to make payment, which, needless to say, took only five minutes. As the number of processing stages increases, my waiting time increases, and half of my day's time (worst case scenario - whole day) will be exhausted. When I leave the building, there is just enough time to go home for dinner.

Yes, our voices are heard. Our pleads are well-received. The solution? Customer service hotline, and online services. Good or bad? You decide. For me - the customer service is just another portal for the same request. "Our care consultants are busy at the moment. Your call is important to us. Please wait, and we'll attend to you shortly." And of course, I was attended to after waiting for one hour, with the phone tightly tugged to my right ear. I bet many users of such supposed solutions to longer waiting time might have provided their heartfelt feedback to the "customer service people", but so far, the wait goes on.

Of course voicing out problems is one thing, finding the appropriate solution is another. As customers, we do expect the people servicing us to "solve the problem". But often people wonder - how? Well, there are countries on the globe in our vicinity who has set pretty good examples. They might not have entirely solved the problem, but they provided solutions that actually better the situation; not make it worse. They promised to reduce the frequency of asking customers to wait, and they did. They ensure that waiting time will be shortened, and they did. I mean seriously, if the best you can do is this, us, being on the receiving end of your service, would truly appreciate the effort, as there are signs of improvement.

So much for yapping on a bad experience with customer care service hotline. I mean, frankly, they do care - I can definitely feel the sincerity. But unfortunately, maybe they are busy caring for so many people, they sincerely needed you to wait a moment, please, before they could shower you with the same attention.

"My hand is holding one's hand, yet my heart holds another's - who holds the greater pain?"

A show that explores in detail about revenge and forgiveness. Guy on the right killed the elder brother of the guy on the left, 12 years ago, when everyone was still in their teens. The death coincidentally caused another death - the mother of the guy on the left. Unfortunately for him, the two deaths wiped out his entire family, and in addition, brought down the reputation of his family name. Thu, naturally, he vows to get even with the guy on the right, in due time. So, using 12 years, he single handedly planned his revenge.
Like all shows of this genre, as the story goes, the guy on the left gradually falls in love, and hangs onto the little piece of human soul still left within him. He is torn between fufilling his supposed destiny and acknowledging the existence of the only person who understood his pain.
A very common plot about revenge and forgiveness, but what makes this series unique and outstanding is the details.
The people needed to be killed for revenge was murdered under naturally occuring incidences and accidents that were cleverly maneuvered. There were no traces of anything that will evidently point towards the mastermind or threaten to surface his name. By the middle of the series, when every event starts falling into place, you'll realise that his plot for revenge moves like a chess game, and with each brilliant flawless move he makes, he gets closer to checkmate.
However, the director also captured the emotional parts of the series in an intrinsic fashion that makes the audience feel for the characters and what they would likely experience at different stages of the plot - especially for the guy on the right and the left. For example, in the early episodes, you will enjoy the victories with the guy on the left as his plot succeeds, but in the later episodes, when the plot starts involving more lives, and you see the guy on the right repenting deeply for his past actions, you start wanting the guy on the left to stop his plotting. I guess the collaboration between the director and the acting cast accurately displayed all the emotions through the different parts of the series.
I really enjoyed every bit of this show.

Oldies?

Here are the list of songs which I shall aim to revisit and listen to again:

Take That - Back for Good, How deep is your love, Relight my Fire, Babe

NKOTB - By my valentine, Please don't go girl

BB Mak - Come Back

O Town - Liquid Dreams (Hahahaha... I use to despise this song, but I have to concede it is nice and groovy. Something special when it was first broadcasted.)

Human Nature - I Wish, Last Christmas

Bossan - One in a million

These songs really remind me of the late night radio listening sessions with my roomate, who is also my favourite cousin (I use to reside with her family because I was enrolled in a school far away from home), and the hushed up midnight video watching on TV sessions with her.

We use to creep downstairs to the living room from our room, and switched on the TV just to catch the top 10 videos listed in the US, broadcasted on channel 5 (then known as SBC something). Everyone, especially the ruling adults of the household, was fast asleep in their beds.

These midnight sneaks eventually came to a standstill when my cousin advanced to college, and then university. During her absence, since she moved to the hostels in her uni campus, I don't really enjoy the company of the others, thus I decided to stay in my room, listen to radio till late in the nights.

Those were the comforting times when I was away from home. I'm glad I could still remember =)

Oldies?

It never crossed my mind that the songs I loved and enjoyed years back have stopped playing frequently on the radio. Even if they were played, people would've forgotten that they were once well-loved by the masses.

A conversation about boy bands, NKOTB and Backstreet Boys, The Hansons and The Moffats, came up unintentionally today, and it also spurred me to check on the list of once popular, now forgotten, boybands online.

Guess what - the brief research led me to back to the songs which I've loved, and sad to say, have forgotten all about (since my first computer crashed and burn, and all the hundreds of songs I've collected from friends were never revived).

It's even sadder to learn that some of the songs I remembered enjoying can't be found in music search engines - I can't listen to the mp3 versions of them. So I went to YOUTUBE, and got the music videos. Thank god!

It seems rather warming to listen to these music once again. Makes you truly feel the changing times, and how many years have passed us by.

LFO (Check out their videos "Girl on TV", "Summertime", "I don't wanna Kiss you Goodnight" on YouTube - really missed them!)

Let Loose (Only one song I enjoyed from them - their remake of "Make it with you". Very romantic and weddingly)

Belle Epoque

Every heard of "Coffee Prince"?
A korean drama centred around coffee beans and cafe.
I've always yearn to live in the soft, natural, and earthly atmosphere captured in the show. So to kinda bluff myself into believing that I'm truly living in it, I tried to get my hands on the music that partly created the mood in the drama.

My sister and I bought the soundtrack, and we waste no time listening to it.
I especially love the light-hearted, warm and fuzzy mood of the tunes by 'Tearliner' and 'Belle Epoque'.

Tearliner doesn't exactly draw your tears out, but they do make you feel what they intend to with their rhythms. The ones by Belle Epoque, albeit only one available in the soundtrack, will more likely lure you to the dreamy mood felt when the first glimpse of light ray hits memories of droplets left behind by a crazy storm, and you miraculously hear the first note sung by a chirping bird. You might even start to picture Paris, a city of romance and love. (Well, I guess Italy might be a better analogy, but you know what I mean.) Yup, the soft melodious chimes in Belle Epoque's "May" does do such wonders.

Tummy ache

I always feel that no one understands me. No living person in this world can grasp the full meaning of a twitch of my brows; or a crease on my forehead. Only I know. Only me.

Well, I guess it's just a reason I use to excuse myself from learning to communicate effectively with people around me. We (well, people who are like me) enjoy making up stories, realistic ones, to console ourselves when things go terribly wrong, and thus allowing us the calmness to move on with our lives.

When I graduated from university with a major in Engineering, not Literature nor English, both of which I have interest in, I automatically thought back to the days when my parents made plans for my future path. I figured that their plans were the reason to where I am standing now, which is not truly what I had in mind. I begin lamenting their efforts and guidance, believing that they were the ones responsible for my destroyed hopes and dreams.

But... was it really their fault? I never really thought about what I really want to be until I become a full potential working adult. It never crossed my mind what I need to do to get to where I want to be. It certainly never came to me that I need to stand up for myself, make my own decisions to live the life I wanted. I let them make plans for me. It has always been me.

If I really knew that I wanted to be writer, I would have studied hard for my English papers, and insisted on taking Literature as one of my majors during my education path. No... I simply let nature takes its own course; and nature, having too much in its agenda, decides to just listen to my parents' ideas and suggestions. Naturally, I became an Engineer on cert - someone my dad would love to be when he grew up, maybe.

It is really wonderful if you start paying attention to your future, and give it some thought; and not just any thoughts spurred by wild fantasies, but those which stemmed from constant observation of the society we live in. The sooner you wander about it, the better you are at taking control of your life. Then to take the lead in your life effectively, and live your dream life eventually, of course, we must not forget to make wise decisions, knowing full well that such a privilege comes with expensive consquences.

I slowly figured that to make wise decisions for ourselves, we still do need to take in advices, suggestions, ideas, and warnings from those around us who possess more experience. We are the rulers of our lives; and we govern with the guidance of our wise advisors (who also happen to be our full-time welfare officers).

Touching views

Lazy morning and afternoon

They are not playing dead - they are taking a good nap! These cats of the ground-floor neighbours of my block really know how to live life to the fullest man. Everytime I walk pass them they show me a new way to sleep on the cool ground in style. (And they do really sleep like humans.)

Hong Kong Cafe

Very very delicious and tasty! I ate the chicken chop cheese baked rice - FORGOTTEN TO TAKE A SHOT OF IT!!! Darn...

And thanks to my beloved mum, I'm now an official member of this restaurant! One of my favourite eateries! Love the food here (except the Pork chop papaya soup noodles - the combination of milk and pungent porky taste in the soup gives a weird feeling to my taste buds), the music they play and the friendly ambience.

Used to be packed with people even until the eleventh hour in the night. Guess the opening of a new branch at Ion Orchard really dispersed the crowd.... we have more chances of taking the private couch seats!

National Geographic - clothing line?

Saw this in Vivo many times, never thought it is a shop that sells not only magazines...I mean it is National Geographic right? The magazine right?

But when I walked in, there were so many clothes on racks prepared nicely to be sold to a traveller or someone with passion to travel once in a while.

Of course there are still books and magazines from N.G., but there are also collecticbles from them - antique tables, bookshelves, vases and chinaware - on sale.

A different Japanese 'Marche' in Tampines

Just visited Tampines 1 today - yes, it has opened quite sometime ago, and I only visited it NOW. Well, frankly, I only patronised VivoCity 6 months after it first opened; and Ion Orchard - 1 month after it first opened. I have yet been inside Orchard Central.

So today I brought my parents and sister to Tampines, and we just stroll into Tampines 1 unknowingly. Only inside then I realised that we're in one of the new malls in Tampines.

We haven't had lunch yet, so we walked around to browse through every restaurant. Then, we discovered this marche conceptualised Japanese restaurant. There were samples displayed outside the restaurant, and one look at them, without a second thought, we went in. Man, were we awed...

This is very delicious. Something I've never tried before - it's potato and cabbage mashed together into egg and fried. Toppings are mayo, cheese and a brown japanese taste sauce

Love everything in this bento - except the salmon; it's a bit too dry - and a must try. Especially the chawan mushii - its appearance does not keep up with its unique delicious taste. There's lots of stuff in the steamed egg - not just the usual crabstick and ginko nut. The greyish look has a reason - a genuine example of 'don't judge a book by its cover' - don't judge the taste of a chawan mushii by its colour and appearance.

Superlicious dessert - ice cream on top of cornflakes. Right is vanilla ice cream with black honey poured delicately over it. Left is mixed vanilla-green tea ice cream. The ice cream has a very smooth texture, like that of Mcdonald's, but is very sticky, just like Ben n Jerry's. Must try.

Seafood Omurice - sauce is not very appetising, but the rice is really richly flavoured with tomato sauce. The sotongs and mussels were rather overcooked and not soaked with the tomato taste, as it looked like it should.

Family Style

My new yellow rubber slip ons from UniQlo