45% OFF Travel Joy Single Trip Travel Insurance!

Looking to get travel insurance for upcoming holiday?

I was looking for and comparing travel insurances online that I chanced upon a forummer mentioning that Tenet's travel joy single-trip travel insurance is going at 45% off! (think it's a promotion they ran 'cause of Natas fair...) However, do note that purchases have to be made by 3rd March 2013 to enjoy the discount!

Mphosis Sale! 50-70% off

Seems like a handful of retailers are having post CNY sales! Spotted Mphosis started their sales when I passed by their store at Junction 8 this afternoon!

Takashimaya Sales!

Spotted the sales ongoing at Takashimaya square. There are shoes, bags , fashion wears, cosmetics and fragrances, sportswear, accessories and timewear.

Watches Clearance Sale (21- 23 Feb 2013)

Odm & Levi’s watches Post CNY Clearance Sales is happening from 21st Feb to 23rd Feb 2013 at the Delta House #05-02A, 2 Alexandra Road, Singapore 159919 with up to 90% discount off retail price! Prices start from $10!

Participating brands includes odm, odm Original, odm +, Levi’s, Levi’s Lady Style, cross collaboration collections with various brands, cartoon characters (Doraemon, Hello Kitty, Paul Frank, Toy2R, Tofu, Husky, Looney Tunes, B.Duck etc) and design units (Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (JCDC) & Michael Young), Moschino, Roberto Cavalli and Just Cavalli timewear; Sunnto Training Heart Rate Monitors, Outdoor Wristop Computers and Dive Computers.

Fashion Clearance & Defective Sale (19-22 Feb 2013)

I was alerted to this sale on Tuesday's late morning and since I had some spare time, I went to check it out. Brands include Naf Naf, Bebe, Ted Baker and some other brands like Shana, Vince Camuto which I'm not familiar with.

The sale, as the banner indicated, is a Fashion Clearance and Defective Sale. Most items have some sort of defects- not just small ones but large ones too - like clothes with big torn/ cuts, missing dropped button, spoilt zip etc, bags had broken handle, spoilt zip, running threads... Nevertheless, these didn't deter people from going to the sale.

Despite the large number of defective goods, I managed to grab a Bebe cotton pant for S$20 (no defect in sight!) and i actually found it elsewhere off Bebe racks. I had eyed some Ted Bakers clothings but the sizes ran big with mostly sizes 3 and 4. The Ted Baker clothings were generally S$40 up.

Besides clothings, there are shoes from Ted Baker, Bebe, and Vince Camuto. There are both men's and women's shoes ranging between S$40-S$70 generally. I saw an A4 poster indicated from S$10 but i didnt see any $10 shoes lying around (maybe i was too late?!). I didn't score any as I didn't want to get any more heels. There are boots too going at S$70. The bebe slip-on wedge sandals/slippers were stained or ran in large sizes. Some shoes were also those last/ only piece type condition.

There are also accessories from SIX and Evita Peroni with Evita Peroni going at 1 for S$5 and 3 for S$10. I managed to get a hair twist, a spring clip and a pony elastic. 

Overall, it was OK. Guess I got to be earlier next time!

大四喜香港点心 (Restoran TaSiXi)

 

Was woken up by someone early this morning to go in JB for a quick breakfast. I suggested to try out 大四喜 since we are early today. We have passed by 大四喜 a couple of times but it is always crowded and difficult to find parking lot. We reached 大四喜 around 8am and were glad that the crowd isn't there yet! But still there is a handful of people "yum cha-ing" there already. The restaurant is spacious and had a non smoking sign which I like!

Once we sat down, a staff came promptly to us to take our order. On and off there are staff carrying trays of Dim Sum to our table for our pick as well. In total, we had 8 dishes and 1 pot of Chinese tea. Each dish averages about RM 3 - RM 3.50 except for the Xiao Long Bao (小笼包) and the glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaf (荷叶饭) which were RM 7 each.

hTop row:

Har Gau and fish cake (on left), Char Siew Pau (on right) 
 

Middle row:

Glutinous rice wrapped with Lotus Leaf (on left), Xiaolongbao and century porridge (on right)
 

Bottom row:

Hongshao Chicken feet (on left), Spare ribs (on right)

Among all these, I enjoyed the glutinous rice (荷叶饭), char siew pau (叉烧包), and the chicken feet (鸡脚). They were cooked and flavoured evenly (just right for me) - neither too sweet nor salty. The steamed xiaolongbao (小笼包) is pretty good too - just enough of meat (not too much) and you get a decent amount of soup when you bite into it (refer to image on top of the post).   

Overall, we are satisfied with the Dim Sum we had. The bill came up to RM 38.70.
If you are the type particular of the environment, you can consider this restaurant.



Where: 大四喜香港点心, Restoran TaSiXi (Since 1994)
Address: 141, Jalan Simbang, Taman Perling, Johor Johor Bahru Town, 81200
Hours: 7am - 5pm (daily including PH)
Note(s): Non-halal

Fishing Trip!

Yesterday was fishing day! Met my sis and BIL at Lorong Ah Soo Market for a quick breakfast before heading down to Punggol Marina where the boat is docked. My BIL's father is bringing us out to fish!

Getting ready for the adventure!

The baits bought by BIL - live prawns!

Chilling out first as we set off!

 

 

Waiting for 愿者上钩.....

 

 

BIL with his freshly caught grunter!

 

Part 1 - when is it coming up?????

 

 

 Part 2 - My hands are tired after this exercise!

 

  

 

My BIL reckoned that this catfish is about 2+ 3kg!

What did we do with it? We actually released it back to the sea - alive of course!

  

My sis's turn!

Catches of the day are grunter fishes. We could hear the gruntering sounds made by the fishes (not so pleasant actually.....)

Fish porridge cooked with one of the grunter fishes. This is yummy!

Thanks to uncle (my BIL's father), sis and BIL for the invitation on board! Truly enjoyed the trip!

(Looking forward to the next one! :D)

Prosperity/ Fukubukuro Bags

Got to know recently that that there are prosperity bags (more commonly known as Fukubukuro bags in Japan) being dished out during New Year.

I had actually wanted to check out Isetan's but totally forgotten about it on the day it was launched! Guess got to wait till next year then.... meanwhile hope to see more stores dish out fukubukuro bags in the years ahead. This will add excitment to welcoming the new year!

Here's the retailers/ brands I've gathered:

In Year 2013:

Isetan
S$88 Lucky bag (worth 5x value), S$28 Fukubukuro bag, 12 Feb, 10am

Shu Uemura
S$88 (mystery products worth $250), 12 Jan, 9am



For those who have purchased any of these fukubukuro bags, could you share with me what's in your lucky bag? Please drop me a message with photo of the items so that I can update the page and share with everyone. :D

 

OPI Skyfall Collection - On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Added this polish to my collection  after a visit to Robinson at Centerpoint recently. It was hard to resist as there was an ongoing member's price for OPI polishes then. And best of all, there were testers available! (but definitely not helping my wallet!) And this was one of my picks.

The OPI "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is a somewhat mysterious colour, or so I feel. It's greyish, blue-ish and has multi-colored shimmers in it. It is not loud but yet eye-catching. It is a little sheer for 1 coat so you might want to do 2-3 coats. It's hard to capture the colour on iphone camera because of the shimmers and the colour definitely looks prettier than that in my above image.

(photos of the polish taken with and without flash)

National NOTHING Day?

Today, I've learnt that there is a National Nothing Day in US from Ellen DeGeneres Show on television. Apparently it was proposed way back in 1972 and is supposedly observed annually on 16th January.

I wonder what would it be like to have such a day in Singapore and everybody (literally everyone) stops working. Would we learn to appreciate one another better?

OPI: Limited Edition Mariah Carey Collection by OPI - Stay The Night

This is the other polish I bought together with the Skyfall collection polish.

The "Stay The Night" is one of the 4 liquid sand polishes in the collection. I've tried all 4 and chose this over the others as I find that this colour is more wearable on a daily basis compared to the others.

The first coat is rather sheer with colour turning out like grape/ berry. Adding a second coat changes it totally to a dark red/ black base with pink like glitter. Reference to the image above on left bottom. I did a strip pattern to show the effects of single and double coat polish.

After applying the second coat, the polish looks very shiny. However, eventually it would dry up to a matte, sandy texture finish. The sandy texture does feel a little strange though... hmm just like sand paper.

Pineapple Tarts Recipe

This year's Chinese New Year, I've decided to make my own pineapple tarts instead of buying from the shelf.

As usual, I approached my best friend "Google". Gosh, there was an overwhelming loads of recipes. I (tried) diligently go through as many acclaimed recipes as I could and chose the ones with the most positive feedback to try out. Then I saw a friend posted on facebook on baking pineapple tarts and there were positive comments from her friends on how much they loved hers. Needless to say, I approached her for her secret recipe and she gladly shared it with me!

I tried her recipe and while I loved how the baked pastry "melts in your mouth" but I find the pastry kind of too soft and hence harder to work with for me (following her mixing method, and considering I am working on this project alone!). So I adapted her recipe - modified the flour portion, add in a little corn flour, and "kick out" the egg yolk (another friend told me that she didn't add any egg yolk at all for her tarts except for glazing! How interesting I thought!) So I began experimenting and came up with this adapted version:

Ingredients:
(makes about 100-120 tarts)

• 380g all purpose/ cake flour
  (you can also use 370g of the above and 10g of corn flour for more melty taste)
• 2 tbsp of full cream milk powder
• 250g unsalted SCS butter (do not melt the butter!)
• 55g of icing sugar
• 1/4 tsp vanilla essence/ extract
• Pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter)
• Pineapple jam/ paste

Method:

1. Sift all the flour, milk powder and icing sugar together, add in the salt.
2. Put the block of butter into the flour. Here, I used the rub-in method. However, instead of fingers, I used fork and spoon to break/scrap the butter into smaller bits and coat with flour. Coating with flour will help prevent the butter from melting. (I find that the butter won't melt as fast compared to using fingers.). Do it till they look like bread crumbs. (Add in the vanilla essence during this process.)
   
   The pastry may look a little dry like crumbled biscuits/ bread crumbs. It's alright. When you handle the pastry later, on contact with our hands, the pastry will become softer, dough-like pretty quickly under Singapore's hot, humid weather.
3. Cover the pastry with a damp cloth and leave it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile you can start clearing your utensils or roll the pineapple jam into small little balls.
   
   (Can start preheat oven to 160 degree celsius)
    
5. Take out the pastry from the refrigerator and take a small portion, make a ball out of it and flatten it like bowl shaped. Put a ball of pineapple jam/paste at the centre, wrapped around it and roll into ball shape. Put the rolled pineapple tarts onto the baking tray.
6. Once you've filled up a tray, put it into the pre-heated oven of 160 degree celsius, for 15-20 minutes.
7. After 10 minutes, you can take out the tray and do glazing on the pineapple tarts. Once finished glazing, put the tray back into oven and continue baking.
8. When the ready pineapple tarts are removed from oven, let them cool down first before putting them into airtight container. They usually can be kept for up to 3 - 4 weeks (if they are not finished by them  :P).

Notes:

• Am using a Bosch fan-assisted oven with 3D setting.
• It is advisable to experiment with 1/2 recipe first as the result may differ for you due to e.g. different oven brands' settings. Some bakers have used as high as 200 degree celsius to bake but 200 degree celsius in my oven caused my tarts to burnt! Hence you need to experiment with your oven temperature and determine the suitable required time to bake your tarts for optimal result!
• If the pastry becomes too soft to work on, put it back into the refrigerator. If you are working on a large amount of pastry, suggest you take out a portion to work on first and keep the rest of the pastry in the refrigerator.
• You would/ might find that this pastry be a little too soft to work on for open-face pineapple tart. You may try increase the flour portion up to 400g. (I won't suggest anything more than that for a start as I've tried a few times going beyond 400g in my earlier trials but they didn't turn out that satisfactory and I haven't experimented further due to time constraint!)
• All ingredients can be purchased from Phoon Huat in Sungapore except the SCS butter (somehow Phoon Huat dont sell this particular brand of butter).
• For pineapple paste, I go for the one from Ailin Bakery House (location: Tanjong Katong Complex #01-48, 845 Geylang Road, (S)400845; take Exit A, Paya Lebar MRT station circle line).
  
  I have tried both Phoon Huat's premium pineapple paste and Ailin's and Alin's came up being the only favourite among all who eaten both versions of pineapple tarts. It is less sweet and has more fibres like real pineapple (they uses sarawak pineapples from what I've gathered). I personally also like Alin's better (even though it is a little more expensive than Phoon Huat's premium version).

Bobbi Brown Pot Rouge for Lips and Cheeks

Got this not too long ago. Loved the colour - not overly red which is just perfect in my opinion. I like that it does not feel creamy/ sticky after application which some lipsticks have.

It comes in a flat pot with mirror on the inner side of the casing when you open up. The only flaw I thought was that there is no lip brush in it (certain Givenchy's lip gloss has a mini lip brush for the lip gloss pot in the casing). Unless you are using your finger to dap (which is not that ideal really- hygiene reason) you got to prepare/ carry a separate mini lip brush along with it for application which is really troublesome.

Nevertheless, I still like the colour.

Verdict: 4/5