Cavalock and The Plastic Permeability

It's all things plastic as I found myself at the Toyogo warehouse at Toa Payoh this morning. Been told that it's THE place to go to for all things plastic, and they are all much cheaper than their regular retail prices.

Geez ... can't believe I actually snapped more than one pix of plastic boxes. The bigger ones in the above pix are almost 10 bucks cheaper here.

Anyway, spent bout S$70 there and took a cab home. Time to start packing those old books and game boxes away. And speaking of games (and still on plastic stuff), here are two new boardgames I bought a couple of days ago during a sale at P.I., a local gaming shop.

Ingenious is a really, really simple and fun game for two to four players. Finalist for best boardgame a few years ago. Kinda like dominos and Scrabble cept using colours instead of letters. Score points by matching colours on a board. Got it primarily to try to get some non-gamers gaming. Any takers? <^;^>

The other game is Carcassone: New World, a spin-off from the popular Carcassone series. Little harder than Ingenious but still fun.

Well, I still managed to find time for a fancy Chinese dinner at Min Jiang at Goodwood Park Hotel last nite. First time there and I enjoyed every dish cept for a weird mixup, ordered black pepper beef and was served black pepper pork! The waiter insisted that it was beef until we asked him to bring it back to the kitchen, turned out we were right. Wasn't his fault, mix-up was in the kitchen I guess, they took the wrong slabs of meat. I believe there was no black pepper pork in the menu in the first place.

Two of my favourite dished that nite were the giant herbal prawns and mee sua with crab meat and egg. With those huge prawns stewing in it, the soup was really rich with the usual strong herbal flavour you would expect from it.

The crabmeat mee sua was something new. Very smooth and so good that you just wish you had another serving.

Well, after peeling the prawns, my fingers were in no condition to be touching my iPhone. So those were the only pix I managed to take of dinner. <^;^>

Cavalock and The Ootoya Expedition

Went to Ootoya a couple of weeks ago after reading all those reviews but there was a really long dinner Q so I figured maybe lunch would be a better idea.

So I was there last Sunday bout 12.30pm and got a seat almost immediately. Now you gotta forgive me for this cos I forgot to take down the names of what I had, so ....er.... I'm gonna just wing it here. :P

Alright, this one's easy. The mackerel here was perfectly (charcoal) grilled. It came real fast too, unlike the dessert later which took forever.

A very tasty pork soup dish here with veggies thrown in, its the kinda fatty pork that you usually find in your ramen. Always wondered if they use MSG or not?

A very delicious set meal with ... I think it's chargrilled pork, I can't remember, I know it's pork! And in case anyone's wondering, no, I didn't order any booze. Kids, this is not how you do a food blog or even attempt to do on ... try to remember what you ate if you are gonna write bout it later...<^;^>

And finally we come to the dessert that took almost a half hour to make. Was it worth the wait? It was alright. There were other kinds of dessert that I would like to try next time. Yah, even though the service wasn't as polished as I would like to be, I'll still give the place another shot.

Cavalock and The Raisin Butter Cookie Reaction

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

So on Christmas Eve morning I finally got my hands on the much talked about Marusei butter sandwiches. I missed the earlier sale a couple of months ago, they were sold out in a flash. This time, there were available on 23rd and Christmas Eve at Takashimaya.

They were S$12 for a box of five, and limited to 3 boxes per person. It's from Rokkatei, a famous confectionery from Hokkaido. The sandwich is made up of a yummy smooth and creamy sweet spread, mixed with equally sweet raisins. And the cookies is light and heavenly too. I'm like having two or three every nite after dinner! <^;^>

Check this out, Christmas ain't over yet but Chinese New Year decos are already on sale at Waterloo Street. I forgot, what animal is front and center next year? BTW, all the pix here were taken via my iPhone with the Snapture application. Thought they turned out pretty good.

Cavalock and The Office Christmas Party Phenomenon

Goodbye wild drunkard office Christmas parties. Hello sober afternoon office Christmas lunch. Hey, not that I'm complaining at all. I had a great time but it's just such a big difference. In my old industry, all those stories about folks getting drunk and doing stuff they shouldn't be doing, all true.

Free flow of booze. Individuals who shouldn't be kissing certain people caught on film tongue wrestling. People throwing up or passing out drunk on the dance floor, in the loo or even on the steps of city hall * ahem*.

Now I don't wanna jinx anything but office Xmas parties' lucky draws seem to be my thing. Here's this year's loot. Oh, every pix in this post was snapped by my iPhone. Wanted to see how clear the close-ups were.

Most of us thought it was kinda weird that it doesn't come with one of their famous pens but I'm cool with it.

I used to have an organizer but traded that in for a couple of Palm handheld organizers. Now it's the iPhone and I guess, an organizer again. So how's it look with my British Museum pencils?

Some more random pix I took with iPhone. Yup, I like my Carl's Jr Lemon tea really, really lemony! <^;^>

The cold drinks' section in a *gasp* Korean grocery store. One of the few times anyone will ever catch me having anything to do Korean stuff. :P

Next up are a couple of great Christmas log cakes from The Patissier. Both taste as good as they look!

Cavalock and The Kissing Formulation

It's that time of year again! A time for year-end office parties and plenty of snogging. Well, I came from an industry notorious for wild office partying. It ain't exactly like Mad Men but I think it was close enough. Man, the stories I could tell, I think I wrote something bout it in one of my earlier posts...

Anyway, saw these couple of kissing polls from What Japan Thinks and I thought it was pretty funny, especially the one bout getting getting both entangling glasses.

Hey, feel free add to the list or even share your own experience! <^;^>

What was your worst ever kiss? (Women, sample size = 738)

Rank		Score
1	Someone I didn’t like suddenly kissed me	100
2	Partner had terrible bad breath	72.4
3	Was drunk and kissed anyone	62.2
4	Got rubbed by his whiskers and it hurt	49.6
5	Bumped teeth	43.3
6	Unnecessarily long snog	33.1
7	Was a dare in a “Truth or Dare”	31.5
8	Family saw us	27.6
9	Was kissed in front of people	21.3
10	Partner had heavy nose breathing	19.7
11	It was a parting kiss	19.7
12	The guy I really fancy saw me kissing someone else	17.3
13	Partner had protruding nose hair	17.3
14	Partner was watching the television	16.5
15	Partner’s rough lips hurt	15.0
16	Got a static shock	13.4
17	Our glasses got entangled	11.8
18	Partner got a nosebleed	11.0
19	Partner didn’t close his eyes	10.2
20	Stranger interjected something while we were snogging	9.4

What was worst ever kiss? (Men, sample size = 418)

Rank		Score
1	Partner had terrible bad breath	100
2	Bumped teeth	86.2
3	Was drunk and kissed anyone	67.2
4	Was a dare in a “Truth or Dare”	43.1
5	Partner’s lipstick, lipgloss was all sticky	41.4
6	Someone I didn’t like suddenly kissed me	37.9
7	Partner didn’t close her eyes	36.2
8	Family saw us	22.4
9=	Partner had protruding nose hair	19.0
9=	Partner’s rough lips hurt	19.0
11=	Got a static shock	17.2
11=	It was a parting kiss	17.2
13	The girl I really fancy saw me kissing someone else	13.8
14=	Was kissed in front of people	13.8
14=	Our glasses got entangled	13.8
16	Partner had heavy nose breathing	12.1
17=	Partner was watching the television	10.3
17=	It was dark and I missed her lips	10.3
17=	Stranger interjected something while we were snogging	10.3
20	Needed to go to the toilet mid-snog	8.6

Back to food, still hanging out at Orchard Central which really doesn't have anything or shop worth visiting 'cept the eating places. Had dinner last Saturday at this joint called Grilled Out.

I'll try to make this brief ... see that plate up there? That there's the S$39++ Dinner Combo B. From the top, you got your US Kurobuta pork cordon bleu, that was pretty bad. Middle piece is your US black angus ribeye, now that was good, done just right and very juicy. Bottom two round pieces are the US beef roll, that's wrapped with bacon, how were they? Meh.

Total score, one out of three. Thank gawd I had this to wash the bad stuff down.

Cavalock and The iPhone & Ramen Expansion

Swear to gawd, at least a quarter of handphone users in this country are using iphones right now. And yah, I'm one of them too. Most folks here would have already seen or heard the stories bout the crazy long Qs last Wednesday nite. Well, I was told I had to stand in line for 5 hours when I showed up to collect my reserved phone. So I figured since the office is closed tomorrow Thursday, I'll just come real early the next morning to stand in front of the line.

I had no regrets turning up on Thursday morning at 9am as I was able to get some work done before the shop opened two hours later. Came up with some decent storylines and plot ideas while standing in line. Anyway, the shop opened at 11am and I was out with my phone in less than 10 minutes.

Finally I got a chance for some much-needed new dining experience. Saturday lunch was at the latest dining hot spot, Ippudo at Mandarin Gallery. Started off with a nice cool glass of Calpis.

Had the pork buns and gyoza for appetizers. Top marks were given to the pork buns and for only three bucks, a sweet and savory reward with every bite. Was told by the maitre d that it's a best-seller in their New York joint. The six very tiny gyoza pieces were great too, only a little too small for six bucks a plate.

Take a close look (sorry for the blurry shot) and yup, that's mayo in there.

I was told the spicy Karakamen ramen wasn't spicy at all, very nice springy ramen too. Although the tamago (egg) was most yummy, it wasn't that soft runny type that I kinda prefer with my ramen, it's more like the 'normal' hard boiled kind. But like I said, still tastes great.

This here is the Akamaru ramen that I had. Cleaned up the bowl in no time at all, thanks to the rich porky broth and excellent ramen.

Cavalock and The Star-Crossed Decay

Saw this at a greeting card stand and I went WTF?!? before cracking up. You know how there are greeting card categories for different occasions or folks, well, here's one for star-crossed lovers trapped in a Romeo Juliet situation ... or maybe it's a card for the next Republican candidate?

I forgot to snap a pix of the card but it's just a long boring love poem on the cover that continues inside. Does this make me an unromantic person?

Oh, and from something funny to something nasty. While dining at Tonkichi, there was this lady who made her maid sit outside the restaurant while she ate at the table! The restaurant had no problems with the maid or anyone else eating there, it was the maid's employer who was being a dick.

Cavalock and The Gaming Paradigm

Tonkichi at Takashimaya has a Christmas Kurobuta Set out. Had it for lunch instead of my usual, and I kinda liked although some might find it a little too oily.

Remember to grind your sesame seeds, pour the sauce on your pork cutlets before dipping them into the seeds.

Got another day off on Friday and that meant a very, very long overdue as well as overnite, weekend gaming session with the guys. Last time we had one of these big sessions was like, four or five years ago. And a big gaming session to us is a gathering of at least 10 guys and that means it's gonna be too big to have it at any of our apartments.

If anyone is interested, the game below is Endeavor. Great new game (cos first time playing it and I won!) bout world exploration and empire building. You represent a European empire colonizing the Mediterranean and shipping stuff around the world.

Anyway, finding a suitable place for gaming the school holidays is also tough cos it's the school holidays but one of us managed to book a chalet waaaaaaaay out in the east. So there we were on a Friday afternoon, dragging more than a dozen heavy boardgames through the light rain and into a little room in the middle of nowhere.

It's not easy to get 10 guys to agree on a suitable weekend of 3 days and 2 nites of gaming. We are all working and half of us are married with little kids.

At any one time we had at least two boardgames up and running in the room. The game above is our ever popular Citadels and the one below is one of the current best-sellers, Small World.

Here's something we found out. Never ever play the Battlestar Galatica Boardgame with people who have never watched the show. It's no fun at all! "...er...what's a Cylon?"

We had over 20 boardgames, three notebooks (yay for free WiFi!) and the plan was to game from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. Well, I stayed till after Saturday breakfast. No one slept on Friday nite, we gamed right through the nite.

Cavalock and The Takashimaya Saturation

Well, it's that time of the year again. With sales at Takashimaya and Kinokuniya, yours truly went on a much needed shopping spree. Ooooo ... what's in the bag will be revealed at the end of this post. <^;^>

Other stuff bought are more Nespresso capsules since I started drinking them daily instead of weekend-ly. This can't end well.

The famous cookies from The Cookie Museum has a little booth/stall at Basement 2. Got the strawberry cookies at $36 instead of $40, thanks to the Takashimaya card. Was it as addictive as I was told it would be? Nope. It was good but not something I can't live without.

The Kinoshimaya loot included the latest two chapters to the best-selling Oishinbo manga series, Vegetables and The Joy of Rice. I wrote bout this series before. If you like Japanese food and a good light-hearted story, give it a try.

Heh, here's what's in the Taka shopping bag, Kenwood handheld blender and mixer. :P