until next week..

i’m off for another bout of ‘cultural immersion’ next week, and hope it will be uneventful and less dramatic than the previous round.

a colleague asked me the other day if i were an only child – apparently i give off ‘only child’ vibes, whatever that might be. i’m not sure how to take that comment either; is it a good thing or a bad one, and what might have triggered that question?

and really, i hope to get no more last minute stuff, and wish for a greater respect for deadlines. something that’s due on a friday can only, at the very latest, be given on the following monday. not after working hours the following thursday!

i’m not good with last minute stuff and when i rush things at the eleventh hour, i tend to make lots of mistakes – lo and behold, i spotted several; nothing too major but things that could have been avoided had there not been a bottle neck further up the production line.

i’ve also realised that i’m not cut out to be a PA. that job requires a meticulousness which i do not possess.

chinatown escapades

i was missing playing with my instax camera and decided to bring it out with me when i went to chinatown.

chinatown’s a good place to go with an instax as there’re so many bright, bold colours there – provided you remember to press the “dark” setting, which i forgot to do for most. all my photos came our overexposed, but fortunately still more or less okay.

this one probably didnt need the “dark” setting – and was the only one i remembered to turn it on for :P interestingly i’ve never noticed the half-mask on the side of that building, despite having gone up this street many times:

i was attracted by the variety of colours at the Sri Mariamman Temple, but unfortunately the colours didnt turn out so well here. i wish the sky came out as well though..

I was also surprised by the sheer number of white people at chinatown today. i’ve never seen so many caucasians in chinatown, and they were all gathered at this one particular place – the corner kopitiam. except they were, of course, drinking beer and not kopi:

and here’s my favourite picture of the day. i was surprised – so many surprises today – to see the rainbow flag hanging off a building in chinatown (of all places?), which i noticed while admiring the picture of an emperor on the wall next to the upper storey balcony.

i was trying to snap a shot of it when these two blokes walked into the frame and just stood there while they looked down the street trying to get their bearings. it was such an awesome coincidence and they seem like poster boys for the rainbow:

100 books

So there’s this 100 books meme was going around on facebook, referring to the BBC having said that most people would have only read about 6 of the books on that list.

i found that an interesting statement, because why would the BBC make such a statement, and how were the books in that list chosen? In the first place, many people i know don’t read; that they’ve even read 6 would be a surprise in itself.

So i went snooping around on the internet. Though i never managed to find out how the number 6 came about (isn’t the answer meant to be 42? – and i don’t think i even finished that book!), it turns out that the list on facebook is actually an edited list of the BBC’s 2003 poll where people nominated their favourite books (i don’t know how the edited list came about either).

In the spirit of things – and as one who currently doesn’t have nothing much better to do – I decided to join in. I’ve bolded the books i’ve read, and underlined the ones that I’ve started but never finished – or can’t remember if i’ve finished them, cos i wasn’t very impressed by the book. The Facebook list comes first, then the original BBC one.

Facebook list

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (and Through the Looking Glass, if I might add)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I’m actually reading Anne of Green Gables as an ebook on my phone, and I have to say that I dont understand the appeal of this book. Perhaps i’m a little too old for it, but my is Anne a tedious little child.

BBC Original List

Note: Notice that there are actually FOUR terry pratchett books on this list? :) Terry Pratchett is awesome; unfortunately the facebook has none of his books up there. Instead, there was David Mitchell, who is a less logical choice.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Free International shipping on ASOS

As part of the christmas celebrations, ASOS is offering free international shipping!

it’s such awesome news that i went and browsed the website and decided to get a necklace.

i also spotted this top here, which i think is really pretty.

it’s a little expensive to spend on something i can’t try on though – not many things i’ve bought without trying have ended up well..

christmas present, anyone?

recruitment

it has been revealed that many employers (not sure about mine, but probably mine too) google candidates when their resumes are received or before shortlisting them for interviews.

searches are done for their blogs, on facebook and so on to gain more information about the person. one of my colleagues who used to be involved in recruiting wondered why people would put their personal information (like their full name) on public sites on the internet – probably because they didn’t know that information would go towards this purpose..

so i googled my name out of curiosity, and thankfully what came out was….?

my placement on the Dean’s List! woohoo! :)

orchard road

i think these are meant to resemble waves, and for the moment i like them :)

Domani, Ngee Ann City

Domani describes itself as a “Spanish Italian Cafe”, although it’s more of a restaurant than a cafe. It’s located at Basement 2 of Ngee Ann City, and is part of the Pokka Group which also owns Tonkichi and Rive Gauche Patisserie.

Domani, in a nutshell, is good-tasting, really good value for money. On the menu are the usual suspects: tapas ($3.90 - $5.90; $9.90 for grilled lobster), salad, soup; pastas, pizzas, mains; drinks and dessert.

They offer an extremely wide range of pastas at really low prices: $17.90 - $18.90 for most seafood pastas and only $8.90 for Aglio Olio. They also have grilled lamb at $24.90 – nowhere have I seen lamb this cheap. (View full menu online here)

All of us in our party of 7 ordered the set menu for weekends: $24.90 for starters (soup/salad) + pasta + mains. The menu can be seen here, and unlike many restaurants, the actual food matched up to – or even exceeded - the pictorial representations. I was also rather doubtful of the quality and portion size when browsing through the menu, given the exorbitant restaurant prices and substandard quality of food in Singapore* these days, but thankfully my doubts were put to rest when the food arrived.

The mushroom soup was thick and flavourful, complete with mushroom chunks which i consider necessary for any mushroom soup to be considered ‘good’. The calamari salad was dressed with a light, sweet and spicy sauce. The calamari, fried in a coating of tasty batter, was springy and easy to chew. Two thumbs up for these starters – i knew then that things were gonna be good.

Next were the chicken wings. They really did look like these in the picture from their website below:

While the wings had only a very mild garlic flavour, they were juicy and meaty. The accompanying sweet Thai-style chilli sauce went well with them too.

Then arrived the mains + pastas on a large, rectangular plate. The portion was bigger than we expected: here’s Boscaiola - spaghetti with mushrooms and chicken sausage, dressed in olive oil - and Chicken M&M – chicken, mushrooms and cheese covered in a tomato cream sauce:

 

The pasta was a bit skimpy on ingredients, but done just the way i like it – neither too al dente nor overcooked. The olive oil would go well with those who prefer a lighter tasting pasta. The mushrooms accompanying the chicken were very juicy, and beneath the chicken was a portion of baked, sliced potatoes which went really well with the yummy sauce.

My grandma had pork ribs with her pasta. There were actually three long, thick ribs in the serving – more than the 2 in the menu’s picture – and the delicious meat melted in the mouth. My mum’s hamburg had a meatier flavour than most of those done Japanese-style but retained the mildly burnt bottom you get in japanese hamburgs.

I ordered Carbonara and sea bass (originally 2 slices of fish):

Believe me, that was indeed a mound of carbonara – the portions are generous – complete with delicious bacon strips, ham slices, juicy mushrooms and lip-smacking cream sauce. i like heavier pastas and the carbonara was a pretty good. The sea bass came with chopped spinach and the pan-frying gave the skin (my favourite part of a fish) a slightly crisp, burnt aroma.

I was so full that i couldn’t finish all my carbonara – and i’m a pretty big eater. Bearing in mind that the entire set was only $24.90, Domani is a restaurant where one’s dollar goes very far. While the food doesn’t taste that refined, it was good, hearty stuff – refined food, after all, comes at a far steeper cost.

 

NB: In the interest of full disclosure, do not, under any circumstance, order their cafe latte (drinks come at an additional $3 to the set). I think it was made with skim milk – which i feel isn’t worth drinking at all – as it tasted really thin and weak; horrible horrible. The hazelnut latte was okay though. Also, my order was actually forgotten/missed and only arrived when some in my party were nearly done. However, this oversight was noticed by the staff without me having to ask, which makes it less bad. We originally ordered cafe mocha but got the bad latte instead – should have changed the order upon hindsight – but the staff are otherwise polite and professional.

 

*: I honestly feel that Singapore definitely can no longer be considered a food paradise – not when it comes to restaurants at least. It’s so expensive to eat out these days; restaurant dining in Japan is cheaper than it is in Singapore relative to wages earned and most importantly the food is amazing. Most places I’ve been to so far are either so-so, overly expensive (hence i haven’t actually tried them cos i’m deterred by the prices i cant afford) or a combination of both. Modestos, which i went to recently, came up to $27 per person and we only ordered pizza/pasta that merely tasted not bad. In fact, $27 = 1700yen, which is MORE than what I used to pay at my absolute favourite, amazingly awesome, heavenly delicious Italian restaurant Pomodoro Fresca in Japan. Who says food in Japan is more expensive than in Singapore?