My sister returns to Singapore today. Yesterday, we spent the whole day with her, going first to adriano zumbo's, heading to St Mary's Cathedral, to various places in city, Ten Ren and finally, dinner at a new place that opened in China Town.

High school friends actually planned to go watch movies in the Overflow... something like that, but had to ditch friends for family, as usual. I'm sorry ^^''

From Week 2, 2010

We left the house at 9:40am, caught the city bus to Town Hall, caught another bus to Balmain, and visited Adriano Zumbo's cafe. This marks my third visit there! Even though we got there before lunch time, the tiny cafe was full, so we had to wait a few minutes for a table. All worth it! Their macaroons of the day: Passionfruit and milk chocolate, and mint, though we only tried the passionfruit one. Looks perfect, tastes just as great.

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Their hot chocolate. My sister said the first time they went there, the hot chocolate was really thick and actually stuck to the back of the spoon. Not the ones I've had- though not as thick, still rich and good =)

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I chose dark, but this is tt's milk. So pale in comparison =P

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There were two new dishes in addition to the usual 4. Thinking it would be interesting to try them out, we tried to order it, only to be told it wasn't available. =(

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I've been there three times, each time, we got Miss Marple Deconstructed, the mascarpone cheese filled crepes with strawberries and orange sorbet.

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Another dish revisited. The Younger Days, as delicious as I remembered it to be, with the raspberry chocolate syringe, molten larva cake and peanut brittles atop of peanut ice cream.

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This was the last of the 4 desserts available that we haven't tried. "It's a Macaroon, not a Hamburger" ^^'' cute name. It's a gelato filled macaroon with banana caramel rice pudding. Not a huge fan of rice puddings, but it was alright. Still think Miss Marple and Younger Years are the better two out of the four.

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Guess who we met as we were finishing our morning brunch? =D Adriano Zumbo himself~ didn't want to appear too fob, so I took a sneak picture of him from a distance. I don't personally know the girl he was talking to, so out of privacy reasons, she's been blurred.

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New selections from his cake shop just a few doors away~

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Looking very interesting, with just as funny-looking names to them.

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I think kids are going back to school next week, so Adriano Zumbo's patisserie has a few really cute cakes in the form of snacks and sandwiches.

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We bought a Clancy, the rains are coming.

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And one of the lunch boxes. Look what's inside~

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It's a cake made into a form of sandwich, complete with a tiny bottle of tropical juice and an apricot- very healthy! =D Ok, we really only bought it based on appearances, but we were so full that we didn't manage to fully appreciate its taste. These kind of cakes should be eaten straight out from the fridge, and when there's plenty of time to slowly sit on a comfy chair with a cup of tea to enjoy, definitely not... on the steps of a random building on a hot summer's day out in the open beside a drain like we did, right after a filling brunch. How unglam~ =P

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Next, we visited St Mary's Cathedral, because my sister's never been there and she's a tourist ^^'' There was a wedding going on there, so they closed off the front part of it, but the wedding guests really only filled a tiny section at the front, so I guess us strangers at the back added to the crowd, made it look a little less empty, though we left almost as soon as the bride made her way to the front.

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Went to the anzac memorial building near Hyde Park. I always go past it, but never actually entered it.

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So while we were deciding where to go next, wandering from street to street, tt suddenly stopped me and pointed in some obscure direction. My siblings didn't notice and continued walking far ahead of us. Confused, I looked at him... and then saw what he was pointing at.

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Will Cole's doing. Though he's not exactly famous, his work has been on display in various exhibitions, like sculptures by the beach at Bondi, where he made a giant taiyaki. He's been making these concrete remote controls, television sets and various other electronic gadgets and sticking them everywhere around the CBD area of Sydney, Newtown area, Melbourne, etc. A few thousands at the very least in the past decade, but so far, I've only seen two. This is one of them- the first one we found was a wii control while waiting at the red light traffic at some random street, China Town.

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Next stop- Ten Ren. We actually only went there because my brother got this really strong tea (for free) the last time he went. Apparently, it was so bitter, his mouth tasted sweet after taking a sip. Unfortunately, we didn't get any this time =_= This was his jelly.

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I know, I know, Ten Ren is really only good for its teas, but we decided, what can go wrong with ordering a jasmine-infused (or so it said!) xlb? A lot apparently.

XLB Rule 1: DO NOT place the dumplings together so they stick to each other. Overcrowding it not only makes them stick together, it also makes it obvious that the xlb is not freshly made in store, but comes frozen. What's the point of having xlb if they break before getting into your mouth??

XLB Rule 2: Do not oversteam- the soup inside the dumplings will dry up.

XLB Rule 3: Do not put false information along with the description. Ie, do not put "jasmine infused" if there's no jasmine used at all =_=

Follow the damn rules!!

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For dinner, we went for a Chinese barbeque on Dixon Street. It's quite new and opened in this secluded shopping centre. We went past it a couple of times before and despite its rather isolated location, it was very busy and the smell of people barbecuing meat on the stove is quite enticing.

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The menu.

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We could choose between a few sauces, like satay, dry, chilli etc. We chose dry because apparently it's the most popular choice. This is similar to the meat marinating salt from Braza.

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So each table has a stove which you can adjust, a small teapot of oil, chilli powder, salt and you order meat/ veggies to be barbecued. We were also given some onions to fry in the oil, giving it extra fragrance, and a small side dish of chilli pickled vegetables. We only planned to eat a little, so we ordered chilli beef, special beef (don't ask me what they mean by special), pork belly, chicken hearts, mixed mushrooms and eggplants.

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Our mixed mushrooms =D

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Beef~

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Pork Belly! This was really good. There's nothing like frying those fat-laden pork slices until the oil sizzles out, and then biting into it while it is still hot.

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Our slab filled with food~

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A must-get whenever available: chicken hearts~ ok, they look gross when raw, but once cooked... yum =)

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Of course, after a barbecue dinner, all that frying and barbecuing causes sore throats and other heaty symptoms, so get a can of:

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refreshing cold herbal tea. It's like Jia Jia Liang Cha (that we kept drinking in Singapore because everything was so heaty), pretty much the same, China version.

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We walked around the shopping centre at Dixon Street and saw this new little stall set up that sells oden items.

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We didn't try it, yet. There are night markets out every Friday night, so we prefer snacking on night markets when it's there. Maybe next time =)

My sister just checked in. Have a safe trip, Jie!! See you in, um... half a year? Haha~