Busy like a Bumble Bee

Omg I've been so busy! After returning from Bali, I had a wedding to attend with my mum on the following Saturday and left Singapore for Muar, Malaysia on Sunday morning for a Father's Day visit of my granduncle. Recuperating from the hectic schedule, I came to realize that I am finally leaving for summer programme in US in less than a week's time. 2 months to prepare have flown past just like that, and I'm ashamed to say that there are still so many things left unplanned and uncertain! Have been pretty stressed all this while with the packing and planning.

In addition, I brought the DSLR which my uncle is lending me for the US trip to Bali and also, on the several occasions mentioned. The photos are so awesome that I got carried away snapping away. I believe I have taken more than 1000 photos ever since I took over the camera in Bali. So I had been losing sight of my priorities and spending much of my precious time on filtering, editing and uploading the photos on fb! But I shall still reveal 2 of the photos from the last day of Bali here!

When I just woke up from a nap in the coach!

Finally arriving at somewhere high enough to view the active volcano!

Oh well, at least I have started on my packing and will be exchanging currency and tying up some loose ends later today... But I still have no idea how I am supposed to travel from the JFK Airport in New York to my accommodation Hampton Inn Seekonk in Providence! The trains and coach buses in US are under various service providers and the timings and routes are all so inflexible. There was one bus route which I found require 17 hours?! When Providence is supposed to be a 3 hours' drive away from NY. This is all crazy! And I cannot tolerate how nonchalant my travel mates are :(

Okay I have so many thoughts to share on Bali and on marriage & divorce which I have witnessed and heard over the recent weekend. Sharing them now will make me sleep even later and make this post chapalang (messy)! Guess I shall leave it to next time, if I remember! Wish me luck for my US summer programme, may I enjoy myself and be safe and sound.

See you soon!

2nd Visit to Wild Honey

Hey I just met you and this is crazy! But here I am back again, wide awake at 5.30am in the morning when the perpetual sound of the raindrops is lulling me to sleep. Just wanna post some photos of my recent visit on Thursday to Wild Honey @ Scotts Square again! To be honest, I was kinda disappointed that I didn't get to brunch at Prive cafe bakery cos I've heard of the breathtaking view at Keppel Bay and I've never seen yachts in real life. And I guess the all-day breakfast at Prive is more affordable! Oh well, it was fine nonetheless experiencing a different Wild Honey with my cousins and with more people dining, we could try a wider variety of breakfasts.

I enjoyed my first visit to Wild Honey more though, this time round I somehow felt pressured, confused, anxious and a little unhappy while dining. Firstly, my youngest cousin toppled the baked beans from his English Breakfast (Full Works), the most value-for-money one, due to a careless slip of his fingers. Though Wild Honey kindly replaced it with a new pot of baked beans, I felt that the table was still messy and all. Furthermore, I realized that the brioche* (not bread haha) were missing from his breakfast! I had to apprehensively ask the waitress about it and when the waiter served them standing precariously on a small plate, it was totally expected when the brioche tumbled and almost fell off the plate. Such carelessness in forgetting the brioche and serving it haphazardly was quite disappointing.

I recalled how the brioche were standing tall for the English Breakfast during my 1st visit!

Another reason was perhaps that the Tunisian Breakfast which the conservative me adventurously ordered turned out to be not really to my taste and my stomach seemed to be churning after which. Not really used to the Tunisian breakfast style despite me being a lover of tomatoes & onions! It is Wild Honey's signature dish though, you may like it, unlike my family!

"Sizzling pan of shakshouka (tomato, onion, red pepper, chilli), studded with Chorizo sausage, crowned with 2 fried eggs..."

Served with "signature brioche and Israeli salad"

What salvaged the experience was the amazingly good Breakfast Hangover sandwich which my aunt ordered but dared not touch because of the strong cheesy smell she claimed. I gobbled up one half of it. It was so satisfying with all my favourite things, scrambled eggs, cheese, smoked ham, ciabatta and potatoes awwww.

Eggs scrambled to perfection, mingling with the cheese, awesome potatoes at the side!

Toasted ciabatta!

The European Breakfast was as good as ever and my cousin YT loved the egg benedicts with their signature Hollandaise sauce. The portion for the New York Breakfast (forgot to take photo!) looks small for my 1.8m cousin YH but turned out that my aunt loved the bagel and most of us were smearing the cream cheese on all our brioche in the end hehe.

European Breakfast caught my heart at my 1st visit!

Look at the oozing Hollandaise sauce with the egg, ham & mushroom on fluffy brioche

I ordered the Scandinavian Breakfast for mum which looked really sumptuous too with all my favourite things as well (I've too many favourites). It was grilled salmon fillet with Hollandaise sauce on top of crispy potato rosti and asparagus with 2 cute little tomatoes. I think my mum can make us something similar to this at home! Hope she gets inspired and prepare it for us soon yumyum.

Mum fell in love with the tomatoes!

Rosti was really crispy and salmon beautifully grilled!

Of course, I wouldn't forget to snap pictures of this pretty cosy brunch place. And I realized that I have forgotten to try the cakes and pastries on both occasions! They look so beautiful and yummy. I'll definitely be coming back to Wild Honey soon to try more of the breakfasts, sandwiches & desserts!

The strawberry cake is driving me crazy!!! LOL at my aunt's finger!

Interesting use of plates to decor the walls

I love this area, maybe I'll adopt this style for my dining/kitchen in future!

After the filling brunch! (Cute 阿宝色 effect from MTXX)

Ciao!

*brioche:  highly enriched French pastry, whose high egg and butter content give it a rich and tender crumb

Travelling

Yay I'd be flying to Bali tomorrow for a 4D3N getaway! I'm so excited because I haven't taken a plane since 3 years ago to Hong Kong with my girlfriends and it will be my first time on a plane with my aunt's family. I must admit that I have been quite nonchalant about this trip because my uncle settled all the administrative matters and only my mum and I are joining my aunt's family. Wonder how my house will turn out after 4 days with just the guys at home!

From Google Maps!

So, to make the trip more worthwhile, I did some last minute research on Bali! My perception of Bali would be the beach, water games, resorts and perhaps some vague impression of the news on its terrorist bombings (in 2002 and 2005). Some facts to share from Wiki, Bali is an island in Indonesia and the largest tourist destination in the country! The photos of Bali's beaches I found online seem to justify how it could have possibly been consistently attracting so many foreigners.

Incredibly clear ocean & pristine sand!

Looking forward to some sun and thrill at the beach! But I have no idea which part of Bali or which resort we would be going to... After reading up a little, the touristy places are concentrated in the South, perhaps we'll be staying in one of the main tourist areas like Kuta, Legian, Seminyak and Oberoi. Something interesting I found out was that the 2010 movie, Eat, Pray, Love (EPL, LOL at the acronym cos I totally assumed it meant English Premier League in the Wiki article), which starred Julia Roberts and most girls raved about, was filmed at the Ubud & Padang-Padang beach of Bali.

"... Ubud, the hill town and cultural and tourist center that was the focus of Gilbert's quest for balance through traditional spirituality and healing that leads to love." 

Awesome! Gonna watch the film later today and hope that I'll get to visit the film sites! 

Alright, enough with the happy stuff, I have a weird mum experimenting with a random scarf in front of my mirror beside me right now. She is hilarious but I shall still rant about what made me so upset and disappointed just now. I have been spending the past week researching on domestic flights, hotels bookings and travel packages to plan for the most value-for-money trip to Orlando, Florida with one girl and one guy who will be my course mates from NUS for the upcoming summer programme at Yale. Because we have an odd number of travelers, as well as the odd mix of genders, I had to ensure that the hotel room we were booking has 2 separate beds and preferably Queen-sized for the girl and I to share a bed and still sleep comfortably. Due to our international flights arriving in NY at 1pm (Wed) and the need to report to Yale by 12pm (Sun), the tight restriction on the domestic flight timings had to be of great concern as well. Moreover, the location of the hotel, whether it provides shuttle services to the attractions, the transport to and fro the hotel and the airport were all of consideration.

Imagine having thought through so much and being considerate to everyone on the trip, yet when you were collating their personal details to book the stuff online, the female acquaintance has to pull out! And to inform me only now, after we have confirmed that we would be travelling together 5 days before our programme, after all my tedious planning, after the guy and I purchasing our international flight tickets to arrive so much earlier. Do you think an apology will suffice? But I'm more or less not as agitated now but troubled as to how I am supposed to spend my 5 days in US because I REFUSE to alter my flight to a later date! After so much trouble and effort to maximize my utility for this trip, it has to be ruined by an irresponsible person... I almost went ahead booking and paying for all 3 of us before re-confirming with them again. I would be even more screwed up if I have done that. So much for putting in so much faith and trust in people I barely knew.

Sigh, thinking of alternatives now but everything seems bleak. 

Goodnight world.

Bus Ride to Holland Village

Hey guys, did you miss me? Haha I've been wanting to write a post on TWG Tea at Ion Orchard after visiting it for the first time last Friday with my mum & aunt! After always walking past the place where you can see couples or tai tais romantically enjoying an afternoon high tea through the glass panes and wondering how the tea, desserts and ambience would be like in there, my dear aunt simply led us through the entrance and before I knew it, she has already asked for a table of 3 and that was how my first ever high tea session at TWG Tea started out. I procrastinated writing on TWG because the photos we took are in my aunt's phone and despite having sent them to me via Whatsapp, I realized for the first time that Whatsapp greatly reduces the resolution of the photos! :( Oh well, so you gotta wait awhile before I get my aunt's phone plugged to my lappie for the pretty pictures.

Oh man, it's really late now but I just had the urge to share some words and photos here. I've recently discovered this awesome photo-editing app on the iPhone, it's called 美图秀秀! It seems complicated to use at first but after you find a few of your favourite effects, it really makes your photos more gorgeous than before without readjusting their sizes, like how my other favourite photo apps e.g. Instagram do. So if you're proficient in reading Chinese, download 美图秀秀! Or if you're not, just download and explore, maybe you'd find it useful too.

Today I realized how relaxing it feels to be taking a bus down to Holland Village on a weekday evening when the rest of the population are heading home in the opposite direction during the peak hour. And wow, I guess the bus fleets for Bus 75 are all recently revamped, or perhaps it has already been for quite awhile but I wasn't observant enough to notice. The seats are so new, clean, comfy and in really vibrant, nice colours. Haven't felt so great about a bus ride for quite some time, so here are some photos taken during the bus ride!

My beloved primary school!

The lovely seats :)

The happy passenger!

I was unexpectedly early for my date with YL! Walked around Holland V aimlessly, wanted to try Everything with Fries but there was a long queue as usual (even on a weekday?!) and so, ended up at Wendy's for dinner. First time eating Wendy's without him, so I spent some time looking at the menu properly and ordered the Beef Baconator, which I remembered 987FM intensely promoting when it was first introduced. The baked potatoes were screaming for me to choose them from the Sides menu, as they knew I would easily falter and give in to my love for potatoes. However, after much deliberation when YL had yet to arrive, I decided to go lenient on my body and ordered a slightly healthier Caesar salad for a dose of veges. Turned out to be yummier than expected!

Photo not giving justice to the juicy beef patty and savoury bacon slices hugged by the toasted buns with melted cheese

YL must be really full to resist eating when I'm enjoying myself in front of her

It was my first time having my meal at the Holland V Wendy's outlet too! (So many first times in this post) We sat beside the stairs on the 2nd level and the environment was peaceful with dim lighting, best for catching up with old friends over fast food which incorporates more authentic and fresh ingredients than others.

On the wall along the stairs

And lastly, when you're here at Holland V, a chillax session with friends gotta end with either some alcohol like a mug of beer at the coolio Wala Wala or some desserts at the lovely ice-cream joints and Coffeebean! We eventually settled on sharing a large Black Forest frappuccino and slice of Tiramisu YUM :) Okay, and so all the hesitation and giving the butter baked potato a miss at Wendy's was kinda redundant. I can never escape from the clutches of food... Oppps I think I'm overusing personification in my writing!

Black Forest frapp & Tiramisu <3

Gotta make my own tiramisu with the ingredients I bought before flying off!

But where to get rum? RUMMM

Gonna sleep for like about 5 hours before waking up for Brunch at most likely Prive bakery cafe! Finally!!! Stay posted for more updates on my food escapades! Good night!