Visit to Botanic Garden & HortPark

Thanks to the hot and humid weather, we were being forced out of the house again today. Brought our son to Botanic Garden for lunch and a short walk around the sheltered facility.



Nicely renovated shelter


Botanic Garden has become more and more attractive after the much-awaited makeover took place.



Nice Pond full of lotus.




Wooden Sculptures of various shapes and sizes








Our son never fails to feel very excited whenever he sees lot of fishes inside the pond.


We tried walking out to the park for a while, we ended up perspiring so much after 10 mins that we decided to leave for a cooler place.

But in actual fact, we 'drove' right into another inferno - HortPark. HortPark is a one-stop gardening hub that brings together gardening-related, recreational, educational, research and retail activities under one big canopy in a park setting. It is a knowledge hub for plants and gardening and provides the platform for the industry to share best practices and showcase garden designs, products and services. This 23-hectare regional park in South-Western Singapore is also a park connector, connecting Telok Blangah Hill Park to Kent Ridge Park. It was officially opened to the public on the 7 December last year.





Main entrance


Good for evening chill out...


Wow..so much enclosed plants...


Hort Mart selling most of the gardening tools and plants..


Nice combination of colors.


So much greeneries inside air-con room, is it really neccessary?


Looks like the enchanted Garden in one of the fairytale I have read during my childhood days.


There is so much to see, will definitely drop by again during cooler part of the day.

-SGFemale

Accelerating expenditure

Did some research on recent year expenditures and was amazed to find out that our entire household expenditure has been rising 10-15% year on year. This shows that Singapore is really getting to become a more and more expensive place to live in..

It becomes worse when you own a car, why? When there is a new shopping mall opening, new place for prawn fishing etc...the urge and temptation to get out of the house never fail to pound on us especially when the weather gets hotter these day, staying at home on a saturday afternoon seem like mission impossible for us.

Of course, taxi is always the replacement if one does not own a car but it is never as convenient as owning a car when you can choose to leave the house and hop on the car anytime of the day.

As petrol prices has risen towards the $2.50 per litre mark, SGFemale and myself resolve to stay at home more often now especially during weekends. Difficult as it is, we shall give it a try and find out this weekend..hehehe;)

-SGMale

Hoegaarden Beer

Was in the mood for a drink and I decided to try out HoeGaarden White Beer for the first time. Our friend A recommended it to SGMale long ago but I have not got the chance to try out till today.
We saw it on promotion at the supermarket last Sunday and SGMale decided to buy a pack of 4 bottles to try it out.

Its a belgian white beer with a light blend of 4.9% alcohol. Not too strong for non-beer lover, It's the tastiest non-ale I've ever enjoyed; looks light but tastes solid. It's also an ideal introduction to non-beer drinkers. Nice!

-SGFemale

Scratch It Again!

The "next time" mood dropped by today! So I bought another 5 SCRATCH IT tickets when we passed by the supermarket.

My 5 pcs of "hope"


Example of my "hope" (just win one time of the below will do!)



I scratched the tickets one by one, slowly and carefully! Done with the 3rd pcs, but still no luck!
Then I told SGMale, is it so difficult to even win $1? SGMale laughed at me for having such small "hope".

Ignoring him, I continued scratching till the last ticket. Oh....my god! I shouted again!
What? What? SGMale asked. You won the big prize of $10,000? He asked. I replied, no lah, just got a damn $1 that I "hoped" earlier. SGMale congratulated me and said that my dream had came true and my prayer has been answered. He also said today is my lucky day as it's Mother's Day and I should have "wished" for a higher prize!

My 1st winning ticket, $1. (the smallest winning amount of all amount!)

Winning ticket and "rubbishs"<--fate for non-winning tickets.

Nevermind, I won't be defeated so easily! I will try again soon!
Wish me luck!


-SGFemale

Mother's Day - 11 May

SGFemale gets to celebrate Mother's Day for the 3rd time today. We went over to IMM and got a cake from Crystal Jade Bakery.






As usual, our 26 months old son could not wait to blow the candles and cut the cake.

SGFemale rarely cooks. But she did it today since she was in an extremely good mood. ;)

- Grilled cod fish, steamed prawns and butter baked potatoes

She was very moved and touched while she found the below card when clearing our son's bag from Childcare centre. It was made by our son during one of the Childcare activities for Mother's Day. She was especially moved when our son gave her a heart-warming hug after that.

This year must be the best Mother's Day for her.

-SGMale

Dinner at Sunset Grill Restaurant

Since this place was recommended by Makansutra website, we decided to give it a try. And thanks to the below address, it took us almost 2 hours to find this place. The actual address is 140B, Piccadilly, Seletar Airbase, East Camp <-- the KEY WORD to finding this palce.
Nice Ambience, perfect for first dates..;)

Very packed even though the place is so "ulu" and hard to find.

Nevertheless the food was great and it was worth the journey.

Striloin Steak

Calamari

Buffalo wings - "level 2 " (available from level 1 to level 10 of spicyness)

For 1st timer, they recommened us to start with level 1 or level 2.

No GST & Service Charge here..

-SGMale

Marina Country Club

Wanted to make a second attempt to JB today but was again forced to abort the trip due to heavy jam despite going via the 2nd link.

While deciding where else to go, we saw a van advertising about prawn fishing at Marina Country Club. Since we have nowhere to go, we decided to go there to see see look look.

Even though I use the GPS to help navigate our way there, it took us sometime before we reach our destination.




Old building


Yacht repair & maintenance facility


Lots of yacht..average price : S$700,000


Prawn Fishing - Was tempted to try out...but did not have the mood to do so


Punggol Seafood Restaurant is also here


Nice view at the pier over seeing Coney island


Parking fee was $3.15, would probably be our first and last time here.

-SGMale

SCRATCH IT!

Bought 3 SCRATCH IT tickets yesterday during lunch time with SGMale. I got excited when I saw it on sale again, it's back after 2 years or so. This time, it's only $1 for a ticket, I remembered clearly that it was $2 last time. Anyway, isn't it better when it's cheaper now! Hee...;p

Below are some information for the SCRATCH IT! :

SCRATCHIT! - TICKETS: THE RACE QUEEN (RED) SERIES
The Race Queen (Red) Series Scratch on the game panel to reveal 8 symbols. If you find 3 matching symbols, you stand to win up to $10,000!

I scratched the first ticket, oh my god..... I shouted! Got chance, got chance! I told SGMale who was driving. I then told him that I have got two "$2000" value on the first line, and if I got another "$2000" value then we will win $2000. Yeah! Then I scratched the second line, but there's no value of "$2000" at all, very disappointed! I went on scratching the other 2 tickets, no luck as well!

1st ticket - with two "$2000" value


2nd ticket - with two "$40", two "$500" and two "$10,000", why?


3rd and last ticket: with two "$40" and two "$10,000".


3 pcs of "rubbish" now!!!


Hopefully I can have better luck next time.
Cheers!

-SGFemale

Son had a fall!

Our 2 years old had a fall today at the childcare centre. He got a bruise on his left cheek, making him less cute and handsome now.

His grandma noticed that when she fetch him and she went back to the centre immediately and confronted the teachers. She was told that our son fell when he was running about. How could they let it happen? How could they let a kid run about without due guidance from the teachers? Moreover, they didn't even inform the parents about it! What kind of childcare centre is this? This is simply outrageous!!

When SGMale learn about it, he was very mad! How could the centre be so irresponsible! Anyway, we are thinking of changing to another "better" centre once I got a job. Meantime, just have to bear with it for another 1 or 2 months.

-SGFemale

Mother's day pre-celebration

In order to avoid the crowd, we had our Mother's Day dinner tonite at Choon Seng Hng Restaurant with both my parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece and my sister.

I chose to have our dinner here because this restaurant was recommended in TV by Makansutra not long ago. As both SGMale and I are food lovers and we loves to try new food, we came to try their food 2 days after they air the show. However, we aren't lucky that day, the restaurant was very packed. And we waited 1 hour for our recommended crab bee hoon, but luckily it's worth the wait.

We were lucky that the restaurant is not pack today unlike the last time we came. In order to feed 9 hungry tummies, we ordered cereal prawns, sweet and sour red grouper with green apples, fried asparagus with scallops, fried beancurds, coffee pork ribs, chilli crabs and buns.

Another highlight is their corn juice, too bad it's not available today!!! I wanted to recommend it to my mum. Aiya... nvm, there's still "next time"! Giving me an excuse to ask SGMale to treat me and my mum here again.

As for my son, of cos, he was enjoying himself, he ate a lot even though he had one big bowl of "home-cooked porridge" before we set off.

The bill came up to $185 with fully satisfied customers leaving the restaurant with big smile on the face and bloated tummy below. Hahaha....;p

- SGFemale

Job Agencies in Singapore

I never know there are so many job agencies in Singapore until I did a search today. SGFemale has been a 'Tai-Tai' for a few month's now and it is high time for her to return to the workforce. ;)

The following URL [http://www.jobs.com.sg/career-jobs.php] kind of link up all job agencies in Singapore and it is a great resource for people seeking employment opportunties out there.

When it comes to interview, it is always good to go prepared for both the interviewer and interviewee. The following URL [http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/docs/25mdq.html] will link you to some of the typical questions asked during job interviews. Hope this will provide some tips to those going for job interviews.

SGMale

Air-con compressors are faulty

The weather nowadays are getting so hot and humid that it is almost impossible to sleep at night without turning on the air-con. And it so happen that most of our air-con units at home are already not in use due to a faulty air-con compressor. Even the barely working ones are getting from bad to worse, we could hardly feel any cool air coming out from it recently.

Since my brother-in-law works for an air-con repair company, SGFemale arranged for his people to come down and a check was conducted. We were told that both the compressor units need to be replace as well as there could be a possible leakage of cooling gas somewhere and also most of the air-con units need a full-body cleansing and all these amount to almost $1.5K.

Still hesitating whether to get them repaired or to leave them as it is since we are planning to sell the flat soon..probably in 2009...still considering the options..

SGMale

Dinner at Suki Village

We decided to have dinner at Suki Village since SGFemale needs to collect some brochure for a friend at the place where this Japanese restaurant is located.



There was quite a fair bit of crowd tonight, not sure if business is this good everyday.



Apart from the usual sushi on conveyor belt concept, this restaurant has a unique concept for food ordering. They have all drinks and food names written onto ice-cream sticks and customers just need to pick up the ice-cream stick for the food and drink they want and place them onto the black color container on their table and the waiters or waitresses will pass by and pick up all the ice-cream sticks [orders].

Below are some of the food we ordered for tonight and you will notice most of the dishes are seafood/squid related as they are SGFemale's favourite! ;)







SGMale

Visit to 'Qian Hu' Fish Farm

We decided to drop by Qian Hu which is located at somewhere Sungei Buloh since we have an hour or so before sending our son to my mum's place. Our son was very happy and amazed by the wide variety of fishes over there. We almost wanted to get him a mini-fish tank and get a few fish for him but decided not to after considering the fact that he is very very mischievous and we are not sure how long the fishes can survive under his 'care'.














There is really a huge varieties of fishes over there and we manage to take snapshots of a few. Depending on the type of species and it's rarity, price of the fishes range from as cheap as $2 to almost $5000.




Northern Pike - $15


Luo Han - $500


Hunchback JinLong fish - Not For Sale




-SGMale