I'm falling behind in my blog!! I have so many things to write about the current life, about now, about the past week, about everything! I have major whinge sessions to let out (like someone at work being a total prick and complaining to the manager, just because she had to do a little bit of work, whereas everyone else probably does ten times what she does in less time! Just fire her already, please!!) and food recommendations (new supermaket meal [unpaid advertisement]- Sunrice's Thai curry with jasmine rice made from all natural ingredients, comes with lunch box, plastic spoon, and only takes two minutes of microwaving! Awesome~), and a wonderful birth day to write about... but I should really finish off my Singapore entries first... been too lazy =( I guess I won't elaborate so much then, and quickly put day 5 and 6 together tonight... if I can~

Day 5!! Sentosa day, so pretty much, we wandered around Sentosa the whole day, went on the luge rides a couple of times, went up the merlion... oh wait, photos....

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Yay, mcdonald's big breakfast. I don't know why they decided to discontinue it in Sydney, it was good!! Scrambled eggs, chicken sausage pattie that's absolutely delicious (I think Sydney was beef pattie, but they taste exactly the same...) and English muffins~

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Went straight to sentosa after breakfast and went up the merlion, this lion and mermaid creature that represents Singapore. We got this coin that was drop into the lion's mouth and you get a free gift, which turns out to be a fan. It may sound dodgy, but it came in useful!!! I brought them back to tackle Sydney's summer~

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Wee, glowy shoes

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Lion's teeth~

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Some scenery from atop the merlion. The sea~ cos Singapore is an island.

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Really like the palm trees, or are they papaya trees... I think that was a resort that my sister was chilling at the whole day while the two of us went around sight seeing... nothing she hasn't seen before afterall~

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Sadly, sentosa was under construction. Would have wanted to ride that crazy-looking roller coaster =D

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This is the merlion. It's not the actual merlion which sprouts out water, that's somewhere else. This was just a replica that people can climb.

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Lunch was at this Japanese restaurant in the middle of Sentosa. We were really relieved to sit and finally have lunch in an air conditioned place, being all sun burnt, hot, sticky and grouchy. Did a few rounds of cycling in the scorching sun and got really hot and uncomfortable, so sitting in a cool restaurant sipping tea was such a blessed moment. I think the thing that puts me off Singapore most is the humidi ty and the heat.

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My sister's drink~

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Cooling lime drink I think~ shaved ice!! Imagine how great it is sipping this after a hot day outside, walking around getting sun burnt!

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My sister's meal, she wasn't hungry and was after something small...

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They put mango in everything! These hand rolls had mango in them, except for the soft shell crab one, and I must say, they were very nice~ I've seen mango and salmon sushi in Sydney (Makoto I think it was) before, but not in hand rolls...

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More sushi~ need refreshing, cold food!! There are a couple more photos of this dish close up, just click on the photo and press next in the Singapore picasa album... new account btw, my other one reached its limit.

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Headed to underwater world next... and argh, seriously, I don't mean to be racist, but I still get mad thinking about those I***** tourists who 1) take forever in the toilet while there's a queue waiting and manage to leave the toilet in the most gross state and 2) shove and walk into people as though they do not exist without so much as a murmur of apology. So aggravatingly rude!!

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Fishie~

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Sea monster! Octopus? I think this was a squid... I don't know...

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Gigantic crab!! yummie~

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I would love to eat even just one of those legs... and they got so many!!

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Jelly fish are good to eat too~ in chilli sesame oil.

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Dewgong... no wait, that's the pokemon. Dugong, I think the real life ones are called. They're heaps uglier than the Pokemon.

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Leopard spotted stingray! So cute~

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(.__.)

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They've got such foolish faces XD (sorry, I'm kinda in a bad mood after thinking back about those I***** tourists, I think it's being reflected in my writing.... am usually not this mean)

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Metal armoured stingray with spikes... So many kinds of stingray actually, it's quite interesting... I wonder which one we ate (we did eat a stingray, but that's in one of the later days)

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._. I... don't know what they are.

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Awww~~

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Don't look at me like that... I ate your relatives, but they were doomed to die anyway, it was either us or someone else.

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Then we walked out and saw this peacock!!

A couple of metres down, we saw this pack of photogs surrounding an area... and look who was taking a bow~

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all fluffy and white~

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A peacock that opened his feathers!! This was the first time I ever recall seeing a peacock open its feathers, and it was just strutting its stuff while all these people snapped away with their cameras, but there weren't even any female peacocks around to impress, just... humans. Hm...

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A bridge to a small island. Sentosa has many little islands around.

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Sunset~ we sat down at some wooden bleachers to watch a show.

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With lasers~ and water sprays~

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The story was super lame (who did what? Lee did it! Lee did what? *pause* We did it! Who did what? Lee did it! Lee did what? We did it! x100) but the effects were great. Funny how my sister just blogged about this today AND specifically remembered this song too, haha~

Another super annoying man from C***!! (No, really, I'm not trying to be racist, but I guess I am... against my own kind even) who fully shoved past me to get a seat on the mrt. Seriously, the gap between me and the wall must have been about 5cm wide, or not even that, and he squeeeezed past me to get a seat, and he wasn't even old or disabled! Just queue up like everybody else, seriously... =_= it's as bad as cutting a queue, not to mention awfully rude to push past people. His wife tried to squeeze after him, but didn't manage to make it (the guy was scrawny... I reckon I can win a fight with him if it really came down to one). Hmph!

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It was around 9 or 9:30 when we finally had dinner~ at... none other than Carnivore! The meat buffet we saw from Day... 1 I think it was... or 2.

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We were given these signs at the table. My sister explained that if we got too full and were unable to talk anymore, we can simple flip the signs over to indicate whether we want more food put onto our plates, or whether we've had enough.

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To counter all the meat, they had a self service counter of salads~ The fruit salad was really good, and their sundried tomato mini octopus were great.

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A healthy dose of meat and veggies~

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The concept of this meat buffet was that several men will come to each table, bearing a huge skewer of meat (or pineapple in this case), straight from the grill or barbecue... didn't get a chance to see the kitchen, so wasn't sure... but they'll come and when you indicate you'd like some, the man will carve it straight to your plate using a sharp knife.

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They're heaps funny and like to joke around a lot. They even master poses for cameras! 10/10 for service, they were all so friendly (though sometimes you could tell they just want to get rid of all the meat on their skewers and try their best to convince you to have some, even when you're full)

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Meatttttt!!!!

I must had killed around 10+ chickens that day and ate their hearts. Even stupid rude tourists cannot ruin my meals.

Shall leave day 6 for another time~ I think I need sleep...

I suppose I should do Day 4, since it's been so many weeks since I came back from Singapore... it'll be quite hard to recollect everything now that so much time has gone by, but.. let's go~

Day 4~ not quite the middle of our trip, but close, and at this point, I think I was starting to feel a bit of a flu coming... it happens when the weather is warm and humid outside, cold and dry in shopping centres, and sleeping with the air-con and fan turned on all night~ like my sister said, the two seasons in Singapore are summer (when outdoors) and winter (when indoors, because the aircon is so strong). So it was another bright and sunny morning and we had breakfast at...

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A kaya place! For those who don't know, kaya is a jam made out of coconut milk, eggs and sugar. It takes forever to make, and I've failed at it quite a few times (to my mum's frustration, because each time, I waste heaps of eggs ^^''). It takes a few hours of standing in front of the stove, stirring at low heat... and if you turn the flame up out of impatience (.. am guilty of doing such thing), the whole thing just fails and you have to start all over again.

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It comes with teh tarik, which my sister had, or cold milk tea, which we got, as well as two soft boiled eggs. Apparently, all you have to do is to boil the water, turn off the heat, put the eggs in for a few minutes, and then crack it into a bowl. Serve with soy sauce and pepper~ what I don't know is how many  minutes to submerge the eggs in the hot water for, but that's experiment for another day. I recently tried to experiment with the soft boiled eggs that are served on top of most good ramen. Needless to say, it was a failure (it's starting to sound like most of my cooking adventures end in failure, but that's so not true) because the less cooked the egg, the harder it is to peel. And I was never good at peeling eggs =_=

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And the toast itself. What's so special? Starting with the bread, it has been sliced super thin and toasted evenly. Because it's half the thickness of usual sliced bread, it's super crispy~ then there's the thick coat of kaya, and right in the middle, a big slab of butter- not melted. I don't get why people like melted butter on their toast- you might as well pour oil on there-, because butter that's not melted taste so much better. Of course, the guilt of biting into butter is enough to put off a lot of people, but not us =)

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A mini soup spoon rather than teaspoon. Who can be bothered with dainty teaspoons when you can get a soup spoon to stir your teh tarik? =P

Wandering around a shopping centres (I've long forgotten the names of the many shopping centres we visited~), we stumbled upon a tea shop. Hoping it'd be better than the tea shops in Sydney, we walked in and took a look. I've been wanting to get this tea:

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for ages, but haven't had much luck in finding it. They did have the same type of tea, but not the same brand.

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We tried out the tea and had a mini tea ceremony- Chinese style, in the shop.

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The tea is poured from the pot into the tall cup before being transferred over to the smaller cup. The scent is left in the tall cup, so you take a whiff of it before sampling the tea in the small cup.

Bought the tea, but realised it's still not as good as the one I had... =(

Lunch was at "Soup Spoon"~ a chain restaurant in Singapore that serves... well, soup. They had a whole range of soup there, from the typical cream of mushroom and minestrone to Asian double boiled chicken soup.

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Served with a bread roll with each bowl of soup, this was tt's minestrone soup.

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This was my clear soup with chicken, melon etc inside. Felt like something a little less heavy on the stomach since we've been practically eating nonstop the past 3 days, needed some veggies too, so this soup was really good. Except it doesn't go well with bread roll because... you just don't dip bread into this kind of soup.

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This looks like pumpkin soup, but it's actually tomato, basil... I think? My sister's~ I dipped my bread into her bowl of soup since I can't do it to mine~

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After a rather small lunch (though we were never hungry during this 10 day trip- ever. Unless you count mornings before breakfast, but throughout the day, not once were we hungry, and I really don't think one can go hungry in Singapore, not if they have a least a dollar in their pockets) we walked around and found this cute shop, the Chocolate Research Faculty... uni should have this faculty, I can imagine quite a lot of people will enroll.. they had all sorts of weird flavored chocolates there, but in the end, we bought a lychee one. Generic, I know, but a safe choice.

Next, my sister went to go pay some bills and we waited in a Japanese restaurant. My sister used to work there when she first went to Singapore and was looking for a proper job~ a very nice restaurant called... Sun and Moon? Can't really remember, it's something to do with moon =|

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My sakura fruit drink.

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Their sweet potato dessert plate~ Love the mont blanc~ they had sweet potato chips, parfait-like dish, and sweet potato covered with toasted sesame seeds.

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Close up on the mont blanc =) Yet to taste a good one in Sydney. Still looking, I think Azuma has it. Might go check it out soon~

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Think this was their float~ looks like lime based with vanilla ice cream? (or is that cream?) I think my memory is fading fast... =(

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My sister came a while later and order this cheesecake. It comes in a cage, and apparently, when she was working, she used to fold origami cranes that comes inside the cage along with the cheesecake, but after she left, there was probably no one who knew how to fold cranes, so it now comes bird-less. I want my money back! The picture on the menu had a crane!

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She also ordered dango, because apparently Sydney doesn't sell this kind of Japanese dessert. I'm sure it does though, just not sure where... maybe... Wasaby...

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The cheesecake without its cage. Very nice, I must say. Like tofu.

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Oh, this must be the day we went walking along Orchard Road- a whole big stretch of quite high-end shops. Not really my thing, because one can really only window shop and look at things that are ridiculously overpriced (they probably get it made for 1/10 the price and use the "brand" as an excuse to up the price for brand-chasers and guys with high-maintenance girls), but it's a popular place to look around in Singapore.

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All these high-rise buildings around~ Singapore is a little island afterall, build up instead of wide~

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Shopping centres are huge and absolutely stunning in their interior designs. This was within a shopping centre... it's a freaking big bright fountain!

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After all the junk we ate, in dire need of detoxing~ so we sat down to rest our feet and had some... turtle herbal jelly. Whether there was real turtle inside, we'll never know. As M and my sister like to say during meals, "Don't think, just eat." Wise indeed... attention all fussy eaters, heed these words!

We met M for dinner (think he went to work, but my sister took the whole 10 days off for me [thank you jie!!] so while we shopped around Orchard Road, he was at work, poor guy) and he took us to an Italian restaurant for pizza. It's not really Italian, but it does have some pretty special pizzas.

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Started off with some vietnamese rolls~

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Followed by a pekking duck pizza~ having never tried this before, we were a bit skeptical. I mean, hoisin sauce plus cheese?! o O'' but nevertheless, you can't really go wrong with duck... so yup, we have here a pizza of cheese, hoisin sauce, duck pieces, long strings of spring onions, and flakes of... I don't know what you call it, but it's like deep fried pastry. Like... cornflake...? It's really good! I've been tempted to make it at home... with... lebanese bread as base. Might... one day~

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Oh, they had mushrooms too...

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Sausage and capsicum... seemed like a good idea at first, but I suppose we could have made a better choice. Onions =( Lots of onions...

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Something safe- spaghetti bolognese~ with extra cheese on top~

We went walking around after dinner~ and went into ToysR'us. They had those... machines, where you put coins in, turn the dial, and a ball comes out with toys inside... and I have no idea what they are called in English, but as a kid raised in Singapore, we call it the "tikam machine", in Japanese, the "gashapon" machine. Anyway, there was a yuyu hakusho one (that's an anime, very old, but epic) and we tried it...

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and managed to get the two that we wanted most! That's Kurama in his human and youkai form, the fox. The fox one is hanging off my phone now =)

Even though after dinner, we were really full already, we managed to squeeze in one last thing: dessert~

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M recommended it as the best egg tarts of all times, not just Singapore. Apparently, even people from Taiwan wanted to take this back to their homes, but it's unlikely to survive any plane trips, since it' extra-crumbly pastry will probably break with a car trip, much less a plane trip.

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My sister had a custard pudding instead~

Thus concludes Day 4!

Lack of updates due to panick for masters interview, but this came in the post today. Yay! I've graduated! Now to see if I can make it into further studies..

Ok! Back from work and had a quick dinner (canned eel, veggies, noodles and the chilli sauce from Singapore). Received an email this morning about my application for Masters and there's an interview/audition in a month's time. Haven't called them back yet to set a time, but... I feel so screwed =(

ANYWAY! It was rise and shine to... Day 3 in Singapore =D

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Breakfast was at this hawker centre, introduced to us by MV. It has the best wanton mee and sure enough, it was really good~ the chilli paste was not extremely hot, but hot enough to send us sweating, especially in the Singapore heat that early Sunday morning =D It was close to church, so we went there the following Sunday morning too, and requested for some of the chilli paste so we could bring it back to Sydney. The lady knew MV well because he always went there to buy  food for his family, so she obliged.. but usually, the recipe for the chilli paste is top secret and only she holds the knowledge to it, so the chilli paste is not for sale.

After church, it was lunch at another shopping centre. I'm actually not too sure where we went this time, there's so many shopping centres. Have to say though, we didn't go to many "touristy" places and stayed mainly indoors where there's aircon.

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We had lunch at this Thai restaurant my sister recommended. She really only just liked the desserts there =P This was tt's pad... something! (It wasn't the non-existent-in-thailand pad thai was it?)

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My tom yum hor fun. I was after something that wasn't dry (been eating wayyyy too much "heaty" food(or [yang]- as opposed to "cooling" [yin] food) and non-spicy, but they only had hor fun with a soupy base in tom yum flavor... but they did say they can make it less spicy for me =D

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My sister's pineapple fried rice... it didn't come in a pineapple shell! But it was still quite nice, she did finish most of it =P

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Prawn toast! This was really really nice, and the sauce D= Prawn toasts are always good, whether it's at yum cha or at a thai restaurant.

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This was what my sister was after. Their dessert of sticky rice and mango. I don't think I've ever tried it before, but it is nice~ goes well together.

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Walking through the shopping centre, we saw this huge banner for OSIM and it's the cutest thing ever. OSIM is pretty big in Singapore, though I haven't seen a shop of it in Sydney before. It sells massage chairs and all sorts of massaging equipment. I tried on one that massages the head, it was like putting on those head sets that sends people into virtual reality. Once switched on, it tightens around the skull and for while, I thought it was going to crush my head... (and it wasn't just me, my sister tried it before and felt the same, and so did tt) I guess I'm just not the sort to relax for a massage...

I think for the rest of the day, we were strolling through the shopping centre and enjoying the aircon... or I just can't remember what we did that day because the next photo...

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was dinner. =D Any guesses on what kind of porridge this is? (Yes, I call it porridge, though some people like to call it congee. =_= Porridge can be savory too!)

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A closer look... hm... what's that hanging out? A... leg maybe? ^^

While the idea might seem kind of gross to some people [who do not know how to appreciate good food], it's really just a frog. Frog porridge. The famous description of frog tasting like chicken is very true. I used to eat frog legs all the time in Hong Kong, but once in Sydney, they don't sell it =( Considering how frogs are such pests, we should just eat them =D Eat them all!

This is strange. We ordered two pots of frogs- one that was just in plain porridge, and the other was in a spicy sauce... but I don't have any photos of the other pot of frog!! Must have been to busy eating to take photos =D Oh well, just imagine it- bits of meat with legs sticking out here and there covered in a thick gooey brown sauce ^^~ Hm.. delicious =P

I think this was the day that the Formula 1 event was ending, so we rushed dinner and went to a bar, right in front of their big tv to watch the F1 race. I never actually knew much about racing cars or the F1, but MV, being a huge car fan, explained as we watched all thirty-something rounds. It was quite relaxing, just sitting there, sipping mocktails, watching the race and eyeing the pool table right next to us, where an elderly man was fully beating everyone that challenged him. Apparently, he goes there quite often, and since the rule of the bar was that you pay $2 for a game and the winner stays on without paying until he loses or quits, he goes there, pays $2, and pretty much stays the entire night (we were there for around 2 hours, and he won every round, though after some time, he exhausted the line of challengers and settled to having a drink behind us)

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After watching Lewis Hamilton win (on the tv, because even though the F1 event did happen in Singapore, we didn't actually go... who would want to sit on the bleachers with thousands of people in this heat and get deaf from the racing cars??) we headed to a durian cafe =D

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Many many durians~ it was a cafe that only sold two fruits- the King and the Queen~

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Yummmm~

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The queen of the fruits- Mangosteen! Fact: Durian is a "yang" fruit, and the mangosteen is its queen because it's a very "yin" fruit and is meant to counter the heatiness of the durian with its cooling properties.

Sure learn something new everyday! =D We had two durians and quite a few mangosteens. One durian was bitter but really nice smelling, the other was sweet, but didn't smell as strongly as the other.. both were really nice and sure beats any that are sold in Sydney because they freeze them here =(

Because durian has a very strong smell,and my sister isn't exactly a big fan of durian,(though, good on MV for getting her to try a bite! I've never, in my whole life, ever seen my sister even put a piece of durian close to her mouth, much less bite into one!) MV said that by washing our hands in water that's rinsed in the durian shell, it will get rid of the smell on our hands, and if we drink some of the water that's in the shell of the durian, we won't get durian breath. Doesn't sound very plausible, but we tried it anyway, and surprise surprise, it worked.

So feeling quite full of durians, we headed back home, sleep and it was soon.. Day 4 =)

Blogging at work ^^" was having a very busy day at work and am finally on a break. JT just gave this to me! (Thank you so much! J never fails to brighten up a bad day at work) Tamarind paste and shrimp paste for making rojak and the recipe for it! Can't wait to try it out soon, considering how disappointing the one at Mamak's was.

Anyway, haven't been blogging about singapore, been too busy, but will hopefully get Day 3 posted tonight. For now, it's back to the battlefield of work =(