'Went a little Gashapon crazy'

It started raining again during the week, pretty much the whole afternoon. Is the heatwave over? I doubt it. It won’t rain everyday and the nights are still as humid as ever.

Went a little Gashapon crazy last weekend. Been awhile since I turned those dials for little 'toys' like phone straps and anime figures. Saw a couple of new ones and blew S$10 on them, each turn of the dial cost me S$2.First up were the mini Gatsby moving rubber hair wax phone straps. They look just like the real thing! Comes in 2 sizes. The bigger replicas (Big G) are ofthe kind you can find here at our local drug shops. The smaller ones (small g) are the little jars that I found only in Japan. Total of 14 different ones in the collection. Blew S$6, turned the dial three times and got 2 of the same small pink ones (wat are the freakin’ odds out of 14?!) and one bigger blue jar.






The remaining S$4 was spent on two turns, each S$2, for some cool figures. This has got to be one of my best Gastapons ever! For only S$2, she’s damn detailed and with a really nice, unique pose. For something like that, most are often about S$4 each.



Oh so and I was back at Rose Veranda and my usual Malt Tea today for lunch. Believe it or not, this here is my very first beef wellington. Always reminds me of an episode of Hell's Kitchen with Chef Ramsey screaming bout someone ruining his beef wellington.



A small section of the dessert spread and a little of what I had later.

'You can't go home again'

Was busy buying tickets last weekend. Got me my Indy 4 tickets for this weekend and tickets to my latest musical (since Mama Mia) Avenue Q for a Saturday nite performance in October or was it November (geez, I gotta go check, anyone else watching this?). It’s a little over a hundred bucks a ticket and once again like I mentioned in my last post, I been feeling a little guilty whenever I spend big bucks (anything over a hundred) on stuff these days.

Funny thing bout Ave Q is that I heard bout the musical years ago but it was only like last month that I managed to listen to the entire soundtrack, thanks to the office’s itunes network. Someone else had it on her itunes playlist and I managed to play it. And like, the next week after listening to it, they announced the show’s coming here later this year. Weird huh?

I’m not really expecting much from Indy 4. I’m gonna approach it like Die Hard 4. I think I have mentioned bout my love affair with movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. Like Indy 1, the original was perfect and also, I guess it’s cos I watched the first ones as a little wide-eyed kid and nothing can really top that first-time exhilaration. So you are older now and you kinda expect more from the latest sequels and I think you’ll be disappointed if you expect too much. I guess you can’t go home again.

Speaking of not-so-good movie sequels, I got the new Darth Maul Kubrick figure on Thursday during lunch, not to be confused with those crappy Lego figures. It’s a lot cooler than I thought it would be. Got a ton of Kubricks on display at home, like my Kellogg cereal ones and Star Wars, but thankfully they been making a lot less these days. I would have run out of space if they continued with the Marvel heroes series.

'Drinking cow piss'

This is actually a little continuation from the last post bout me eating some Brad Pit… I mean black pig. Now seriously, what do you follow up with a black pigmeal? Drinking cow piss of cos! It’s my new favourite Japanese soft drink right now. Well, it’s called Calpis but to most English-speaking folks out there, it’s pronounced ‘cow piss’, or at least that‘s what wiki tells us. Geez man, I never thought of that ‘pronounection’ until I read the wiki article. ^,^

It’s pretty much a sweet, light yogurt-flavoured soft drink, if you like the Indian yogurt drink lassi, I think you’ll like this. Got the peach-flavoured one atthat Japanese grocery shop at the basement of Central.I really like the drink, only problem is that it’s real expensive (for a soft drink), like over S$7 for a mere litre bottle. These days, with the inflation and all, I do feel kinda guilty blowing my money on stufflike that…and then I tell myself it’s like blowing more on a bottle of booze, I enjoy the different taste of both drinks and it’s just that I don’t get a buzz from one of them. I think that’s why I haven’t been to Tomo for an omakase meal. Man, methinks I think too much…

Another thing I got was 2 cans of Royal Milk Tea. Was like S$2.30 a can at the shop… was only bout a little over S$1 from the vending machines back in Japan, if I remember correctly.

'Black pig or Brad Pitt'

It all started with this post by Danny Choo on German food that gave me a craving for sausages on Saturday. So after grabbing some stuff from the Kinokuniya sale at Takashimaya, I headed down to the Swiss German Sausage Bar at Basement 2 for lunch.

I tried the new Pork Bockwurst instead of my usual Farmer Mushroom sausages. Felt the bockwurst was a little too dry, not as moist as the farmer ones. Think I'll stick to my usual next time.

Dinner that nite was another new experience. Had the famous black pig or kurobuta in Japanese at Central Tom Ton. Was kinda funny hearing the waiter repeat the orders and his black pig sounded like Brad Pitt, was black pig or Brad Pitt? Hah!

Gotta have mu usual sashimi set. Next was the Black Pig with Soba. That black bowl where you dip the soba is filled with juicy pock slices. First time trying it and it was very nice.

'Brown sugar goodness'

Picked this up last week at Royce. Brown Sugar chocolates with brown sugar from Okinawa. It’s new and there are 40 pieces of goodness in the box. Very thin slices (I guess that’s how you pack 40 of them in a little box) and they are sweeeeet. Not when you first pop it in your mouth, the brown sugar goodness kinda explodes later on when you are almost done. Might not really be for fans of rich dark choc, I think.

Oh yah, wanted to put in a word for one of my favorite blogs, Lunch is Served. Saw one of her entries bout looking up old exes on Facebook. Well, I did try that out last time and found two. Both are married and are young hot moms now. No big surprise there. I couldn’t find any others cos of two simple reasons, they either don’t have a Facebook account and I can’t remember their last names. I remember all their first names, but their last names are all a blur. Ok, I guess if there's one thing worse than looking like a cad (which I'm not!), is looking like a cad with bad memory...

'A nite at the theatre'

With my good bud Matt, we headed to the Esplanade for some nite shots on Saturday. It's a good distraction of sorts for me. No point in worrying bout stuff that's completely out of our hands, need to continue living life.

So two guys shooting night scenes sounded like a good idea. We had dinner at Thai Express at the Esplanade cos we wanted something fast. Gawd, it was awful. They got my friend's order wrong and my lemongrass tea tasted like regular tea. At least we didn't have to wait very long for our food, not like the table next to us.

Anyway, we never knew there were so many other people taking shots at the roof of the Esplanade too. Ok, not exactly the roof cos that's not possible with the spikes and all but you know what I mean. He had a tripod while I tried to balance my camera using the ledge so it's a little fuzzy. Here we go, some shots from a nite at the theatre.

For these couple of shots, I tried to play with the light reflection in the river.

'One week in Sillypore 3'

It's a special edition of 'One week'. Why? Cos it's all taken with my new Sony Alpha 200! Yup, I finally bought it. Got it during my lunch break at bout S$100 less than the official retail price. Still trying to get the hang of it. It's pretty heavy so I guess I'll still be using my other little camera most of the time. I really can't see myself wiping it out in some restaurant. One of the reasons I'm taking up a new hobby is to stop me from worrying bout certain stuff. Worrying is all in the mind and it's not helping the situation at all, and one way to stop it is to keep the mind busy with something else.

As you can see, it's a freakin' heatwave we having right now. Cloudless skies, blazing heat, you get the idea.

Japanese pasta lunch at Waraku. I always get a kick outta that display. It makes you hungry yet you wanna just stay outside and admire them more instead of going in to eat....

LG, life ain't that good if you got four busted screens.

Chinatown in the middle of another very hot afternoon.

Favorite black sauce chicken rice stall along Hong Lim.

A little peek at my Episode 3 Clone Troopers collection.

Where I grew up. Definitely changed a lot since then. There used to be a newstand here where I would run down in the afternoon to get my comic books.

Crowds along our prime shopping district Orchard Road and also a reason I try to avoid the place on weekends.

Strange-shaped buildings. The one in the middle of the forest was built to detect alien lifeforms approaching the planet.

Teppanyaki ice-cream at the famous Raffles Hotel. Lots of flavours! But I have yet to try any of them. Everytime I pass the place, I tell myself I'm having dessert there right after lunch/dinner. But I'm always stuffed after the meal.

Ok, now for the grand litmus test. We see how the camera works with my little figures. I haven't got the lighting done properly yet. Which means I'm still using the single Ikea desk lamp as a sole lighting source.

The figure is the newly accquired Amami Haruka from the XBOX 360 game The Idolmaster. She's part of Revoltech's Fraulein series featuring posable female figures.

Anyway, here are some of the pix. I used the camera flash in most of them as the lamp wasn't giving me the lighting I wanted.