Tiong Bahru Bakery

Headed down to TBB because YK wants to eat a croissant, so I brought him for a bout of pastries! I never knew he loves croissants until I mentioned I was eating one so I wanted to bring him someplace nice to eat a good and nice croissant!

Tiong Bahru Bakery
56 Eng Hoon Street
Opened 8am to 8pm daily.
(There’s another branch at Raffles shopping centre)
Directions to go there: there’s buses from Tiong Bahru and Outram but we went from Outram.

From Outram MRT, head out via Exit A from EWL, not NEL and cross the bridge or road to get to the bus stop opposite the MRT stn. You can board any bus to get to this bus station that’s just right infront of Blk 55. Almost every bus goes there except for 174e or 174. Alight one stop later and walk straight down, and probably 1-2mins later you will see TBB. Good to have GPS with you. Another cafe that’s beside TBB is Orange Thimble.

I love this door that hinges in the centre, kind of like a swiveling door

My idea of TBB is much bigger and I wasn’t expecting a smaller place. But yet it’s still kind of cosy despite being more commercialised because of the fact that they made use of sunlight streaming through the glass wall to outside. But the glass wall extended until midway, thus with somewhat poor lighting (I wouldn’t use for ambience), it appears to me that the lighting at the back was too dimmed for daytime. Opens from 8am till 8pm! 8am is seriously early!

coffee menu painted on a wall

the fame croissants

We ordered pandan flan ($6), original croissant ($2.80), iced capppuccino ($7.50) and apple crumble ($6)! Free flow of water at the side, with free flow jam and butter for your bread! Haha awesome right! We were like 0.0 at the croissant because it’s our first time eating such a hard croissant. Not very sure how to tell if it’s the nice kind but I guess it is, since it’s quite famed and yes, it’s buttery. It’s very different from the ones we buy at confectioneries where it’s softer. Lol, this one was harder. The flakes, as I jokingly put it, seems like potato chips.

Iced cappuccino was just normal? I just wanted a cold drink because it was a hot day. It tasted pretty normal. It came with brown sugar syrup as well! Apple crumble was the bomb!! Totally loved it the first bite I took, crunchy! But it’s quite big so I would suggest sharing among your friends. Pandan Flan was…hmm just not our type of pastry. It’s jelly like and I don’t really like it. Would have gotten the squid ink bun with salmon but yk is not a huge fan of salmon, actually neither am I but it’s rather unique.

croissant

pandan flan

We spent $22.30 in total, not too bad considering we ordered 4 items, though we were rather disappointed with the pandan flan.

Pizza Hut Student Meal!!

Don’t mind us and the fact that we’re so cheapo, always nearly going for student meals because it’s probably the last year we can exploit this special privilege until we start to climb the corporate ladder.

23 April 2013;

That tuesday happened to be a day off from school for me and majority of my classmates as well since we don’t have to retake a paper. Yay for us! 🙂 Visited the kittens at yk’s house, so unbelievably cute hehe, will do a post on them soon! 🙂

Had lunch at Pizza Hut since got student meal! Their student meal I think it’s either 12pm or 1pm till 5pm! We went there around 4pm and surprisingly the place is a little more than half full! Service was okay and rather efficient because our plain water keep getting refilled. Student meal consists of a main course, a side and a drink (free flow if you take the normal one, like ice lemon tea is not free flow and you still got to top up $1). There’s also non-student meals, meaning for the working professionals, it’s quite cheap also, think $1 or $2 more for them as compared to the student meal.

Pizza Hut
Tampines Mall
#02-02
http://www.pizzahut.com.sg (check out other locations around singapore!)
As seen from the menu, it’s cheaper to order pan pizza as compared to the pastas or baked rice. Yk got a Hawaiian Pan Pizza while I got chicken pomodoro spaghetti! 🙂 We both got root beer for our drinks!

Hawaiian Pan Pizza

My set meal 🙂 that costs $8.90

Yk’s side dish, criss cut fries

sorry that all my posts are not in order. Er, I actually met abigail and sq after that for dinner and that will be another post -.- don’t worry! I’ve uploaded the pictures, just got to try and remember the names of the dishes :S

NeLi’s Icecream at Thomson

20 April 2013;
Finally visited NeLi’s Icecream at Thomson! It’s a travel themed ice cream place and it’s very quirky and cool for travel enthusiasts where you can spend maybe an hour there reading up on travel tips left by other patrons in the notebooks and you can leave your own tips there as well! I wanted to write something in it but unfortunately the books were filled up. It’s categorized according to continents 🙂 They also have a book shelf on the “second” level of the cafe where the owners display the ornaments they brought back from their overseas trips and many guidebooks as well. Really interesting concept of the cafe, wouldn’t mind going there again for the good ice cream, nice ambience and fantastic reads. We went there around 5pm so there wasn’t much people around, weird timing ya but we had ice cream before dinner because all the other dining places werent opened yet.

NeLi’s Icecream
233 Upper Thomson Road
http://www.neli-icecream.sg
We took 130 from AMK and alighted before the church opp Longhouse. There’s also buses from Bishan I think, but it stops opposite.

We ordered 2 scoops of premium ice cream because I really wanted to try something different and richer. So we ordered stout chocolate (yk choose it) and Butterscotch nuts. Both of the flavours contain mild alcohol with the former having some stout beer and the latter having whiskey in it. Even if you don’t like beer, I strongly recommend stout chocolate as the beer smell/taste was covered by the chocolate, but yet they complement each other. Butterscotch Nuts was nice as well, tasted somewhat like Rum and Raisin kind yet with a buttery and vanilla aftertaste.

some of the premium flavours

I like the “Travel” words on the wall

Stout Chocolate and Butterscotch Nuts

Bookshelf of guide books!

We wanted to have dinner at thomson too but eh due to some factors we forgo that idea and went to Bishan J8 to eat instead. More on that next time 🙂 we had like 3 meals that day including the ice cream!

Iron Man 3

Caught Iron Man 3 yesterday and it was awesomeeeeee!! I didn’t watch Iron Man 2 due to time constraint but after watching avengers, Iron Man 3 was not to be missed!! Basically the whole thing was he threatened a terrorist by the name of “Mandarin” and in the end they blew up his house because he gave them his address as well -.- oh wells, enough spoilers, go to Wikipedia to read if you want! But the class of Starks was there, flashy cars, equipments, and I really love Starks technology, JARVIS (Just A Really Very Intelligent System)! Stay till the very end, even after credits for some Starks thoughts! 🙂

We used passion card to purchase our movie tickets and got a free small popcorn. You have to purchase at least two tickets to get the popcorn. Lol. If we used our student cards, it would have been 2 small cokes. Both ways are $7 as well.

Headed to Xi Men Jie for some Taiwanese delights instead of our usual Pontian wanton mee because we wanted to try something new!! It’s been opened for quite a few years already but ytd was the first time I’m trying!!

Xi Men Jie
#01-42 Westmall
(Next to subway, facing Bukit Batok MRT station)

We ordered the crabmeat and chicken mee sua ($4) and I really like mine with some vinegar and pepper, adding spring onions beefed up the taste as well. Halfway through, we ordered fried chicken to go with our meal, hehe super alot we took quite awhile to finish. Decided to get some gongcha because I was thirsty! Lemon Kumquat 80% was really too sweet -.- and so it’s like sweet + sour and we were still eating our fried chicken -> salty and spicy, we got all 4 different tastes covered.

Okay! That’s all peeps, I just started my study break today and exams starts next Friday 😦 tomorrow’s labour day yet it’s study break -.- so no difference!! boo.

Ciaos people, study hard!

Afternoon Date at Clementi

All the posts you see from now on are all not according to dates. Lol but all recent in the mid month of April! 🙂

24 April 2013;
School ended at 3pm! Lol it’s early because I started school at 1pm. Talk about just going school for two hours huh -.- and yk ended at 1pm so we headed for a really really early dinner!! Fish & Co had student offers from 3-5pm (weird timing IKR) and I’ve been wanting to go for the student meal since I know about it, or maybe it’s been there for a long time but my friend just showed it to me recently.

Fish & Co
The Clementi Mall
#04-33/34

Apparently they have two different kind of offers, one is with main course plus a drink, the other one is main course, drink, dessert (top up $1 I think), also got soup of the day but slightly pricier by a few dollars. We picked the former because I was craving for fish n chips and I wanted to go for blackball after that, so no need for the dessert or soup of the day to make us full.

All NETT prices!

Passionfruit soda and Kola Tonic

As seen from the menu, the prices indicated there are already NETT, so don’t worry about having to pay for service charge or tax. There’s quite a variety of fisn n chips to choose from, there’s even a singapore version one! But it looks spicy to me so I picked the swiss one while yk picked the best fish n chips. Actually there’s not much difference between the both, just the sauce that is poured over mine (swiss one). I can’t tell what the sauce was, but it’s really nice, very herb-y, and that’s probably the $1.50 difference. Too much fries for the mains, we could actually do with some greens, like salad! 🙂 Overall, service was quite good, asked for warm water and extra sauces.

Swiss Fisn & Chips

Best Fish & Chips

Been seeing many many instagram pictures and raves from my friends about blackball grass jelly. So I jumped on the bandwagon as well, to find out what the fuss was!

Blackball Grass Jelly
#01-19 CityVibe (first shop if you enter from the left entrance that’s nearer to the bus stop direction)

We stood infront of the counter for like 1 min before deciding on what to get; Blackball Signature. It had to be good right? After all it’s termed “signature” so we anyhow picked! Anyway there’s warm, hot and cold. I can’t remember which one we picked but our grass jelly was the solid one. Yeah there’s the water kind also… Need to eat a few more times then I’ll know. *noob* Download PERX on your smartphone to get chops for every $4, that’s everything on the menu right? I didn’t really see the menu but everything looks above $4 :S

So when we got our desset, yk was exclaiming, why only grass jelly?? Lol. So I mixed it! There’s taro balls, bubble tea pearls and some other which I don’t recognise. But my advice is to share among your friends. We were full afer eating just one bowl of this between us. Everything inside was jus very chewy. Chew, chew, chew like jellies.

When it first came….

After mixing

Tampopo

13 April 2013;
Looking for some comfort food for the week like steamboat type and the thought of shabu shabu makes my mouth water. Having been to Tampopo twice, once in 2010 and another time in 2011, the thought of the black pig pork for shabu shabu is so tempting so I had to drag yk to go tampopo with me as we walked past. It’s rather pricey though but worth it. Pricey because one meal per person can easily set you back at around $20, worth it because it makes you so full, yet it’s quality food.

Tampopo
#B2-33 Takashimaya Shopping Centre (Ngee Ann City)
Mon – Sat: 11:30 – 22:30
Sun: 11:00 – 22:30

I had the black pig pork for my shabu shabu instead of the white pig one, idk why but the previous time I came I had black pig as well and it was nice? Anw black pig seems to be a pricier option ($24.90++, there’s a price increase over the years) so I supposed it’s better? Yk had japanese curry chicken cutlet set ($21.90 I think) and it comes with a free one time refill of rice and salad, but only after you’re about to finish then can you ask for the refill.

One major tip for eating shabu shabu; I didn’t realised that the soup can’t be refilled for free and I literally took my own sweet time cooking the meat (it’s quite alot) as well as the other veg. When my soup was half gone, I asked for refill but the person say I must pay additional $2 😦 BOOOOOOOO ya so faster cook your meat. Guess what I did? I poured the warm water from my glass so my pot had more water to cook the meat. I threw in carrots from the shabu shabu and tomatos from yk’s meal to make it have more flavour. DIY soup when there’s no more soup left. Oh, the sauce for the meat was super duper nice! But actually it’s just japanese soy sauce with spring onions.

As for the japanese curry, it’s the bomb!! It’s really quite nice but I think yk keep reserving it for the last until he was damn full, end up he didn’t finish one third of it!! Waste max! The plate of curry with carrots and potatos was small yet rich in flavour! The chicken cutlet came with big shrimps 🙂 which was very nice as well!! Actually the food at tampopo was super worth it because yk told me he was full. A meal that can make him full is worth the price, just like at Everything with fries. Of course it came with a price tag too.

my shabu shabu 🙂

Walked past candylicious after dinner and realised that they have the original Kinder Surprise that no longer sold in Singapore for quite awhile until the recent Easter season where they brought it back with limited quantities! 🙂 but a tad pricey at $10.** for 4.

We wanted to go have some nice art latte coffe kinda thing but Carpenter and Cook was super super crowded despite being located at such a ulu place with very few people randomly walking past. So in the end, we went to mccafe and LP happened to be on shift so I ordered a mochachino (dunno how to spell)! Her skills def improved over the years, she did such beautiful art.

Food for thought III

Sharing some photos in my phone that can’t make up to a few posts due to its randomness.

Supposed to be shared in the last post, but too random. Actually this news is still a shock to me.

“Shock is when we realised we’re going to Germany in October instead of January.”

Yes, the bomb Zara dropped on us after we asked. We had sort of adjusted to the fact that we’ll be heading to Munich in Jan and was already mentally prep for that. Suddenly it was dawning upon us that no, we’re going to fly off in less than hald a year, with no accomodation and no flight. The pressing issue here has to be accomodation. We are due to arrive in the midst of Oktoberfest. Yay and Nay.

Yay ->
get to see yk and will only miss him for the month of January.
OKTOBERFEST.
Some travelling with class peeps (however how much I don’t see eye to eye with some) or with the bf.
I’ll do my internship in January and head to USA and maybe Korea which is a much better schedule than internship first, then munich, then USA. That I’ll actually have some money from internship to cover some part of my USA trip.

Nay ->
Accomodation finding’s a real bitch.
Nathalie actually asked me to stay longer so I can stay with her in uk and then netherlands, but, sis’s wedding on last saturday of the year.
That I’ll actually need to experience the start winter.
No more skiing or paragliding or any forms of extreme sports I intended to do during late winter or spring.

I’M TOTALLY NOT PREPARED. NOT EVEN THE MIND.

I’m a 100% travel buff, but due to school’s tight schedule and limited hols, I’ve been subjected to just some short holiday trips. I don’t say NO to travelling with my friends unless it’s related to school and I can’t getaway. I’m always up for an adventure. But this sudden news, I’m still coping with it. Feel like there’s so much to do, and so much to take in and time is not on my side.

Anyhows, meanwhile, see the photos below instead of me ranting.

Ben and Jerry Free Cone Day 2013 🙂

While queueing for our free cone… it was just 20mins queue time.

Green tea latte while waiting for WF

Starbucks 1 for 1 every wednesday at SP with WT 🙂

Mickey easter egg that YK bought for me after some searching haah

Kuku him bought kinder JOY instead of kinder SURPRISE.

BALIthai Cafe

Our dates have been subjected to just saturdays due to school so last Saturday, YK and I met up at town, eh actually quite a bad choice to meet in town for lunch on a weekend.. but because I wanted to have some tea at perhaps one of the cafes so we headed to town reluctantly. Guess what, we didn’t go in the end anyway. So wasted trip to town.

Because we have probably never ending of capitalmall vouchers to use and they’re expiring in 4 months’ time (yikes) so we headed to BALIthai Cafe! It’s actually just a more affordable version of BALIthai, with lesser items on the menu, more pocket friendly meals but with quality. When we went in, there wasn’t much people but after ordering our food, suddenly the whole place was packed and even with queues.

BALIthai Cafe
ION Orchard #B3-24 (one level up where foodhall is located at B4, you’ll see alot of restaurants etc.)
Opening Hours: Daily 11.30am – 10.00pm

We ordered the same thing, Prawn Pad Thai ($10.80). There’s actually a section where you can “make your own noodles” kind of thing. You get to choose which type you want, seafood, beef, chicken, prawn etc. Then choose type of noodles, kway teow, pad thai etc. And lastly, the sauce, which I saw Pad Thai, BBQ I think and a few more. Ordered a Chai Tea ($3.80) as well. The Chai tea was just ok ok only, so I will suggest you order the mango sticky rice or some other food instead.

But the pad thai was really good!!!! For $10.80, the serving size is much better than Thai Express’s and of course, much nicer according to taste. Plus, there’s a generous amount of prawns!! It was just really good!! 🙂 One of the better pad thai in singapore! 🙂

Chai Tea

The super delicious pad thai! 🙂

Weekend

Hello all!

Finally analog circuit design lab is over yeahh!! Was super worried and nervous for my presentation because I was never a good presenter. Either I stutter, go through the slides very fast or no eye contact with the audience. And it reminded me so much of my OP back in J1. Horrid. But last friday’s one went quite well because in the midst of our presentation, Dr T went out to receive a call and the class just told us to skip to the last part which is the results slide and then Q&A session. I guess it’s rather boring for everyone as everyone did the same circuit -.- Q&A part.. tsk got quite a few unexpected questions and even though we kinda prepared for it but still the answer came out….errr. Okay. ‘Nuff said.

Anyway I’ve been spending half the weekend doing up report and the other half just relaxing, chillax, watching my GSZL drama, playing candy crush (at level 147 already OH YEAHHHH!!)

So on Friday after school, yk and I went out to have our one and only date for the week, yeah I don’t get to see him alot during the past week due to lab and him having minor lab as well. Headed to JP!! Every food place was damn crowded la, initially we settled for MOF but there’s queue and I suddenly didn’t feel like eating it so after walking one super big round up and down JP I and II, we decide to go for Din Tai Fung!! Partly to satisfy for XLB cravings and actually nothing else already. Anw while we were queueing, since toast box was beside, yk told me he feel like eating laksa -.- actually me too but we already queued for the food at DTF.

Din Tai Fung
Jurong Point Shopping Centre
#B1-68
Closed at 10pm.

So we ordered one fried rice with egg, one basket of 10 XLB and a bowl of vermicelli with pork? Not sure what the latter is but it looked really unique when the food came. We had a good waitress in the area we were sitting!! I’m not sure how to elaborate but she seems to be nice and attentive, she came by to refill our tea quite alot of times. Total cost of meal is $30.

XLB!! YEAH!!! I still prefer Paradise Dynasty’s one though. The fillings taste much better?

The vermicelli. Weird right. We were like O.O when the food came. I was wondering where the noodles was!! it’s all hidden below. Actually the noodles is dong fen. Glass noodles, the transparent one!

Hope everyone have a great weekend because mine went well!

Oh wells, back to reality tomorrow -.- Digital Circuits Design Lab Course. 😦 Good luck to all of us.

Beautiful Saturday

Hi Peeps! Just thought I’ll do another update tonight since I’m free again. We finished up our transistor characteristics!! Like fast only, but haven’t do the report yet! It’s definitely another load off our shoulders. Quoting Alfred, “I don’t think I feel so much heart attack-like when waiting for the simulation results until I do lab.” LOL. True that, we always feel damn nervous when waiting for simulation results.

Since we wrapped up quite early, met up with YK to go for IT show! -.- we came out after about 15mins in the crowd. Too many people. Asus computers seem to be the most hot selling brand though. We saw quite alot of booths. Anway walked around MBS looking for food but everywhere has a queue, after we skipped all the atas and fast food like places. Lol. We really wanted Din Tai Fung but the queue was crazyyyy. So we headed to marina square!! Walked along helix bridge and yk told me that it shook. OO. Bought the old school kind of ice cream from the cart at the other end of the bridge and the queue was long as well. Boo.

I love it with bread!!!

We headed to marina square with the intention to dine at rock and ash, but we walked for 20mins and couldn’t find it. We really wanted to give up sia, but yk said it’s probably at Marina Link so off we went!! Don’t be fooled by the directory that says it’s at B1-03. It is but just not at Marina Square itself. Go to Marina Link direction from Marina Square okay!!

It’s a really tiny cafe and yk kept telling me how small that place was. I guess it’s because there’s too little space to walk about and the tables are kinda small. But the food was rather affordable and tasted okay. Somemore free flow of soup of the day and drink with every purchase (except for pasta). Free flow of soup of the day, where to find?!?! It’s my first time coming across this other than free flow of drinks or at buffets where everything is free flow. Lol. And on top of that, there’s 20% off if you sign up to become a fan of Rock And Ash!! Yes, you can do it on the spot!! Our total bill came up to $20 for 2 mains, and 1 medium fries (2 dips).

Yk had grilled fish and I got spaghetti bolognese because I got cravings for it! And ordered fries with nancho cheese + spicy bbq dips! Nancho cheese dip is just cheese lor, but not so cheesy kind. Spicy BBQ was the dope!! It’s not as spicy as it sounds, just a tinge on the surface of your tongue and has a sweetness to it. Our mains were okay, yk’s grilled fish comes with some mushroom marinated rice, rather unique. I wished my pasta was abit wetter, I like mine with more sauce. Soup of the day was pumpkin soup and then when it was finished, it was mushroom soup!! Haha. My pasta did not come with the drink and soup so we shared. We had 3 bowls of soup altogether. Super worth it!!

But rock and ash has quite little variety but we’ve made a mental note to be back there again for other mains. I want to try the roasted spring chicken set though! And yk wants to try the grilled chicken! And the 20% discount is quite enticing too. Lol. Though I think we shall be back when there’s lesser crowd!

Pumpkin soup