Vegetarian Food... Nice but.....

Went to have dinner at this relocated restaurant that served vegetarian dishes. Simple and cosy place. Food was great. However when the bill came, we were a bit shock...... the total is exceeded what we had expected...... Anyway, I will not mention the place in this blog... as others may find the place nice and reasonable...... I will only tell my friends in private.....

Dempsey Hill

This place used to be the Central Manpower Base (CMPB) of MINDEF, where all Singapore male citizens reported here for army enlistment.

This building used to be the SAF Career Centre, promoted to those people who would like to take up army as their career.

This formerly was the enlistment center where every quarterly (called as major intake, mainly during Mar, Jun, Sep & Dec), thousand of young men will come here to report and surrender their civilian IC. After they had reported, the recruits will then be sent to respective training camps to start their 2 to 2 1/2 years of army life.

But now, most of the buildings here had transformed into restaurants and furniture shops.

This building, where I spent my army days, had turned into a restaurant (current owner is serving Thai food). The green field in front the building had changed a tar coated road.

Singapore Botanic Garden (28 Jun 09)

It’s been a looooong time not going to the Singapore Botanic Garden. No specific impression that I had visited there in the few years, the only memory I had it was during my childhood days.

Many changes had been made to the place.

Immediately, after the entrance, we were walking on the Main Gate Road. However, I’m vaguely still remembered there was a pond after you entered the garden…. I still can recalled that I fell into the pond while trying to catch the tadpole during my first visit there with Mom…… But the pond no way to be seen.

Walked along the Main Gate Road, the weather was quite breezing cool….. Many Filipinos are having picnic or gathering on the green…..…

Reached the Swam Lake…… only few swan was observed.

(gazebo next the swan lake)

Ohhhhhh….. why I can’t take any more photos with my camera…… camera indicated memory storage full….. how can it be…… .. Alamak…. SD card not in the camera…. Then I realized I had left the SD card in my notebook after working with it…….

So just walked without taking any photos…… After the Swan Lake, it is the Ginger Garden….. there was a man-made water fall…. Saw a couple taking wedding photos there… Next to the Ginger Garden was the Orchids Garden…. Needed to pay for the entrance…. Since unable to take photos, decided not to go in….. just taken another walking path back to the main gate….

I think I’ll go again to visit the Orchids Garden.

Taiwan Snack

A friend of mine returned from Taiwan and brought back a packet of 铁蛋 and 牛尾巴饼。However, the 铁蛋 tasted extremely horrible ..... despite he mentioned that it was from a famous shop in 淡水....... I felt like biting a rubber ball. I think he could have bought it from the wrong shop..... I prefer the one make from chicken egg than quail egg as I still can taste the egg white.


I yet to open the 牛尾巴饼... I think it may be something like 牛舌饼. Talking about牛舌饼, I make a blunder years back when I first visited to Taiwan.........


在一间台东土产店.......

老板：来尝尝我们店里的特产..... 牛舌饼.... 带点回新加坡给你朋友或同事尝尝
我：老板，不好意思啦！我的同事不能吃有牛的东西啦！

老板和我的朋友笑翻了................ I really want to dig a hole......

Frangipani

Passed by Raffles Hotel and saw there were few frangipani trees outside the hotel.


It reminded me of the road which I used to pass through before reaching grandma's house and to primary school.

Frangipani is the national flower of Bali Island, you can see Balinese .. male or female will wear one on their head... however Singapore Chinese do not like this flower especially the older generation people..... beside calling 鸡蛋花 in Chinese...... Frangipani has another Chinese name...... 死人花.... dead people flower............ because Frangipani in the old days was used to make the flower ring especially for the condolences occasion.

Memory Lane....

As mentioned in my previous post, visiting the museums really bring back some of my childhood memory............

This was the tuk-tuk kueh mobile stall that they will cycle to different areas or streets to sell the kueh..... and nowadays I already hardly eat tuk tuk kueh......

You still able to see this ice kachang machine in the dessert stalls, however now mainly operate by electric. In those old days, planing the ice block is done manually. I still remember, there was a stall down the end of Tras Street where my grandmother used to stay. With 5 cents at that time, I am able to buy a ice ball with colored syrup (those put in the ice kachang) on it........ added another 5 cents to have the red beans in it. Sometime what my friend and I did is to chip out 5 cents each to get the ice ball with red bean and asked the owner to half it for us. We always ended up with sticky hand.

Incidentally, I passed by the areas where I grown up.........

The house where I was born had been demolished years back.... now it just a plot of field waiting for development.

Just on the other side of the road, it was the building where my grandmother used to stay. I also did stay there during my primary school days.

My primary school is just next street from my grandmother's house. In those days, it was rare to have lift in a school. My primary school is one of them which have a lift and the other school that I know was Pearl Hill Primary School.

International Museum Day (31 May 09)

It had been long since I last visited a Museum (you can image, way before the National Museum underwent the major renovation)..... hahahe you should have guessed how many donkey years liao......

Thus, due to the open house in most of the museums (free admission) today, I purposely wake up early this morning to start off my one day museum hopping. I managed to visit 4 museums, namely Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore Philatelic Museum, The Peranakan Museum and National Museum of Singapore. The crowds were still alright. However, the most killing part is to queue up for the Singapore History Gallery in National Museum of Singapore. It took me more than a hour to get in, and before I could slowly look and listen to the exhibit, it was about to close.....

Anyway, it was a fruitful day and some of the exhibits really bring me down the memory lane.