Cavalock and The Shake Shack Sanctuary

Never dropped by their first outlet here at Jewel and come to think of it, I have never ever even stepped into Jewel itself! Am I a rare breed or what? Anyway, me and the Baker-at-Home found ourselves at Shake Shack's latest outlet at Liat Towers earlier this week. In case you are wondering, the queue along sidewalk is the takeaway queue and it's not indicative of how crowded it is inside the restaurant. Cos when we were there, there was a queue outside but it wasn't packed at all inside. I had the same thing I usually have when I'm at their overseas outlets, their mushroom Shroom Burger. I still remember the first time at it at JFK Airport, I thought it was a mushroom burger with mushrooms and beef patty instead of what it really was, a giant but rather delicious mushroom patty.  The Baker-at-Home enjoyed her Shack Stack, first time having that. The Pandan Shake was meh. We miss the Black Sesame Shake from their Tokyo Marunouchi outlet so much.

Check this out! One of the many retro nuggets I just found at me Dad's house. Yah, been awhile since I did one of these retro posts. It belonged to me late Mom and it dates all the way back to 1963. It's still in damn good condition. Now I can imagine all them classy ladies opening up this here booklet in the salon back in the 60s and pointing to one them pages. Speaking of the 1960s, I'm finally catching up on Umbrella Academy Season 2. So far, so good. I just hope the ending doesn't suck and it makes sense. Having said that, I can live with a cliffhanger. As of this here typing, ah believe ah am in episode six.

Wow, this really made me reminisce bout me living with me aunts and uncles back when I was a kid. We always had Motown, country or even the occasional classical music playing somewhere in that old house. I reckon it's time to open me YouTube mix starting with The Four Tops. 

Cavalock and The Carpe Diem Rallyng Cry

Weekend breakfasts at Starter Lab is starting to be our thing now. The Baker-at-Home likes their menu and I like spending lazy mornings having breakfast outside the apartment with her. Their honeyed mascarpone with walnuts on toast is my go-to breakfast meal. Always liked something extra sweet to start off the day. All that followed by a leisurely saunter to Tiong Bahru to grab some fresh produce before heading home. You know you are old when you just can't wait to be back home even on the weekends. 

Speaking of old, me 86-year-old Dad recently traded in his Nikon D500 camera for a Sony mirrorless A9. Here are some of his first shots with his new toy.

Well, me Dad wasn't the Dad wasn't the only one in the family who went on a shopping spree last week. Check out my Amazon haul! Boardgames that I have eyeing for awhile and was fortunate to grab them when they went on sale on Amazon. From top to bottom, there's the Barbarian Hordes expansion to Empires of the North, Carpe Diem and Rurik: Dawn of Kiev. 

I have read many glowing reviews of Carpe Diem (Seize The Day) and after playing the game several times, I am glad to say that the hype is real and it has become one of my favourite games of all time. Plus I got it at almost half price from Singapore Amazon! Delivery the next freakin' day! This is a tile-laying game where players are rich patricians in Ancient Rome and we are all trying to build a lucrative city district by grabbing tiles in the centre of the board and laying in your area. Tiles would represent various parts of the city such as bakery, fountain or sections of a villa, vineyard or even a chicken coop. 

The rules are extremely simple, you can only move left or right, choose a tile and then decide exactly where do you want to place it. Where you place and how you connect the tiles would determine how many points you score at the end of the game. It's so simple yet deep. With multiple ways to score, I love how it tickles the brain as you try maximise your points. 

Yes, I'm trying my darnest to slip in the Carpe Diem theme into this entire post. Argh....

Cavalock and The Home Tourist Incongruity

So me and the guys decided to do the local tourist thing and ended up in Changi Point for an hour-long morning walk along the coast. Fortunately the weather was on our side, sunny and breezy just the way we like it. It was a good walk, more like a lazy stroll actually. Took our time to breathe in the fresh air, snap some pictures, one of the guys even shot a little go-pro movie of our morning. 

That's the thing, I can get behind all this local tourist nature trips but what I don't get are staycations. I don't get the appeal of it especially if you already have your own apartment. Me and the Baker-at-Home did the staycation thingy back when we were young (and restless) and didn't have our own place yet. But after we moved in, a staycation is the last thing on our minds. Pay a little more and you can probably turn that staycation into a proper vacation. Alright, I guess if you have kids a staycation is something they would enjoy. Cos I remember after me and my folks moved out of the old family home, this was when I was still in primary school, I would look forward to the rare weekends when I would or could stay over with my aunts and uncles, and wake up in my old room. 

Anyway in these coming Endtimes, I'm also not sure if it's prudent to spend on something like a staycation in the first place. Now, free nature walks around the island, that's something I wholeheartedly support.

Spotted this at Isetan supermarket. Really? Can anyone tell the difference between Espresso ice-cream, coffee ice-cream and now cold brew coffee ice-cream? 

Cavalock and The Earth, Wind & Fire September Birthday Post

I was gonna do a collage of my dinner at Esora but reducing all them food pix into tiny little pix just ain't gonna do them justice. The Baker-at-Home and me got in at the tail-end of their Summer menu season, just a week before they switched to their Autumn menu. The last time I was there was back in June of last year. This is another amazing three-hour dinning experience that we both missed immensely  for over a year. We actually made reservations for early this year but the Lockdown started and, well, you know the rest.

That evening we decided to forgo the sake and wine tasting menu and went for a full bottle of sake instead. I'm not kidding when I say the Baker-at-Home has become sort of an amateur sake connoisseur. When we were at Mustard Seed a couple weeks ago, she went for the sake tasting menu while I nursed a cold Japanese beer instead. Anyway, with social distancing at Esora, that meant less patrons but looking at how busy the staff already were that night, it's hard to imagine how much busier they would be with more folks to serve. It's an 8-course meal sprinkled with insightful conversation nuggets with the talented staff, and that's all coming from the Baker-at-Home. I'm the introvert one in the relationship. Hah! 

Grilled Hamaguri - Chiba kujo negi, hanaho

Kue - Nagasaki eggplant, wasabina

Omi Wagyu - Okaki Farm akazu, manganji pepper

Akamutsu Donabe - Fukuoka watercress

Wasanbon Caramel ice-cream, honey truffle, sweet potato

Now no matter what folks are saying bout how beneficial it is to be working out at home, it just can't beat the gym. Yah, I'm back at the gym for bout a month now and after my first gym session, my limbs were aching and sore once again even though I have been climbing 28 floors every other day before that, lifting teeny weeny dumbbells and stretching in my tiny little apartment. All them news articles on how easy it is to be working out at home? Yah sure, it's definitely better than nothing but I think I just can't do without the equipment in the gym. Is that a bad thing? I dunno. I know it's bad for me wallet.

Yes, of cos I'm listening to this classic while I'm blogging this here article. My birthday month ain't without playing this little MTV gem.

Cavalock and The 9% Alcohol Goodness

Always a blast whenever I get to discover a new kind of booze from Japan at our local Don Don Donki. Seems like they are bringing in the pretty strong stuff, I mean we looking at 9% alcohol here. Decided to go for the Suntory Highball instead of the Kirin Sour cos ....er... highball. Have yet to crack it open but definitely will do so this month cos it's me birthday month!

So the Baker-at-Home is out for dinner with her friends and it's one of those rare moments when I'm home alone, left to my own devices and all that. Naturally it's time for a blast from the past with playlist from the 80s, or rather some rock ballads from the 80s to be exact. Watching the music videos, I'm like thinking just how old all the gorgeous big-hair supermodels in the videos are today? When I first saw the videos, I was a kid and they were like the hottest living creatures on the planet. Remember, no Internet back then. I'm sure not all of them have OD-ed ...cos... you know, coke was big during the 80s. Gawd, I'm so politically incorrect today. Hah! No, I'm not drunk yet. And No, I'm not gonna name the videos below cos where would the fun be in that?

Heheh... a little friend dropped by for a home visit in me coffee cup this afternoon. 

Cavalock and The Return of The Courtroom Drama

After ordering their omakase meals via delivery more than a couple times during Lockdown (three actually), we finally made it down to Mustard Seed the restaurant for dinner recently. Their dishes are all top notch and when we had them at home, they naturally arrived together. So there isn't much of an omakase feel to it, know what I mean? Well, we managed to grab some seats earlier this month at their little restaurant for a delightful culinary experience. It really warms my heart to know that there are such talented local chefs. 

Been way too long since we had a good decent courtroom drama TV series, it's almost criminal. Well, that drought is over with the release of Perry Mason, an 8-part mini-series on HBO Max. I just finished binge-watching it and its got pretty much all you would expect from a classic noir detective, murder mystery. If the name Perry Mason sounds familiar to you, it's because this is a reboot of the 1950s TV series based on the novels by Erle Stanley Gardner. 

I really enjoyed it. We need more of these big budget detective shows. I was a little apprehensive about it cos crime mystery shows like these, sometimes the big reveal can be kinda disappointing. * cough cough True Detective cough *. Looking back now, I don't think I got any major complaints about the show. Set in the 1930s, a baby is kidnapped and then found murdered, the subsequent court case grips Lost Angeles as it slowly reveals the dark underbelly of the city. This first season also showcases the origin story of how Perry Mason went from being a gumshoe (private detective) to a defence attorney. Yes, the show was huge ratings hit and there will be a second season, likely next year.

And now a random otter eating an early lunch just cos my 86-year-old Dad managed to take these pix.

Cavalock and The Cuckoo Bird Switcheroo Syndrome

Another blog post, another Japanese beer shot. Got this at Raffles City Marketplace supermarket. Haven't drank it yet. Says it contains 'hints of cypress and lemongrass', I have always had a thing for lemongrass so I'm hoping this is something that I'll like as well.

One of the things that I have kinda neglected doing during the lockdown and this post lockdown period is my notebook journaling and calligraphy. I was really into it and I was taking it out with me to write stuff, then the lockdown happened and I kinda lost the mood to write bout stuff since ... nothing much happened anymore! Well, I finally started journaling again and of cos the first thing I gotta do is fill up my empty fountain pen. Now I bought this demin color ink on a whim a while back and it turned out pretty good. 

So me Dad was out taking more wildlife pix recently and found this rather interesting pair. What you have here is a smaller tailorbird feeding a larger baby cuckoo bird. So what happened was a mother cuckoo laid an egg in the tailorbird nest and then flew away. These are known as 'parasitic cuckoos'. 

Female parasitic cuckoos sometimes specialize and lay eggs that closely resemble the eggs of their chosen host. Some birds are able to distinguish cuckoo eggs from their own, leading to those eggs least like the host's being thrown out of the nest. Parasitic cuckoos that show the highest levels of egg mimicry are those whose hosts exhibit high levels of egg rejection behavior. Some hosts do not exhibit egg rejection behavior and the cuckoo eggs look very dissimilar from the host eggs. Other species of cuckoo lay "cryptic" eggs, which are dark in color when their hosts' eggs are light. This is a trick to hide the egg from the host, and is exhibited in cuckoos that parasitize hosts with dark, domed nests.

- Source: Wikipedia

So the dumb tailorbird didn't know any better and has been raising an illegitimate child every day ever since. Anyway both birds have since left the area and hopefully the poor tailorbird isn't still feeding the cuckoo bird.

Cavalock and The Flypast Foto Flash

This is probably the Baker-at-Home's current favourite Japanese grill joint right now. It's me third time at Osaka Yakiniku DonDon at Tanjong Pagar and I honestly lost count how many times she has been there with just her friends. They are (were?) fully booked for days ahead but we got in with a very early last-minute dinner seating for two. From our experience, odds of getting a table are always in your favour if it's only a table for two.  Our go-to picks are the coriander salad, potato salad, ox tongue, wagyu ribeye and the (tenderest) tenderloin. 

Well, me 86-year-old managed to camp at the Marina area during the National Day flypast rehearsal morning couple weeks ago as well as the actual day itself. During the rehearsal, he was balancing his camera on a monopod as the tripod was too heavy for him to carry on public transport. But he managed to do just that on National Day morning all by himself.