hunting down Japanese restaurants

heard from Jeannice that there are quite a few Japanese restaurants at Cuppage Plaza; and decided to check it out today after work. Unfortunately didn't get to eat Japanese food in the end... finding Cuppage Plaza was easy enough (though Joyce and I initially walked past it without even knowing)... upon entering discovered that there were not only quite a few non-chain-looking Japanese restaurants, but Japanese bars and lounges as well... so this is where many Japanese hang out...? well unfortunately most of them were full and had to turn us away. We even stumbled upon one Japanese restaurant with tatami mats and customers sitting on the floor... was really thrilled, but alas! we were informed that they had no seats available... oh well. I shall return one day :P anyway, so we hungrily gave up our search at around 8pm or so and walked out to the row of restaurants opposite Cuppage. Cuppage Terrace, it seems. And settled for Indonesian food at Ricetable, a buffet-style restaurant. For $19.80 without GST/Service Tax etc (around $23.50 if you add all those) you get to sample around 20 dishes of Indonesian food, laid out elegantly on a heated 'metalboard' in the middle of the table (to keep dishes warm). Since there were only 2 of us, we had bite-sized portions of various dishes... a good spread but a little wasteful too cos you're served what you might not like too. unfortunately, even with the small portions we were unable to finish... hai. (to think that we initially thought about getting refills!) guess buffets are never very value-for-money for girls. and quite silly of me to have wolfed down two egg tarts 2 hrs earlier at work haha. mmm.. food was decent, but yeah... not very worth the money for girls, lah. :) after that went walking around at Centrepoint and discovered the new? Haagen Dazs, which was having a one-for-one ice cream offer... quite happily ordered the ice-cream even though i was super-full... and felt extremely lucky cos the store manager removed the sign soon after we ordered and told his staff that we were the last two... :P and so in 3 hrs or so i went from super hungry to super-full.... whatever; it's a Fri night!

one week ago I complained about feeling somewhat 'cursed' at work; this uncanny 'curse' has not been lifted and things are only getting worse! Just a few weeks ago I was wondering why i haven't exactly been given much responsibilities; today i feel overloaded! a couple of not entirely work-related type thingies have also been finding their way into my overflowing inbox these past two days... generally, my mailbox has been and is still so full that I dont even bother saving things i send out :( hehe, perhaps also need to do more housekeeping on my part; but find it hard to find time to! then end up archiving all the old mails (some unread) work life is however getting a little more exciting and varied, despite the unavoidable 'busyness'... have to learn how not to let work overtake my life!!! on a different note, 2.5 months later i'm finally 700 pages into Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina... aaah. 100 pages more to go. at this rate, i can only read like 4 thick books a year :( so pathetic.

i'm really becoming old and forgetful. My mum has been commenting that I appear so nonchalant about many things after returning from the States. I apparently ignore mosquito bites and can't be bothered to apply ointment on the sore bumps. I apparently have delayed reactions when she asks me questions; like frequently repeating her questions before giving her unsatisfactory answers... just this morning, before I left for work, she told me to hand my dad (waiting in the car to fetch me to the MRT station) some grocery list that included some items for dinner. AND I cleanly forgot the existence of such a grocery list until 745 pm or so when I was preparing to leave the office... was quite horrified upon realizing that the white sheet of paper fished out from my bag covered with neatly-penned Chinese characters was my mum's forgotten grocery list... called home immediately to apologize...

i suppose even though life goes on and stuff, I do have some huge things deeply bothering me and I have no idea what to do about them. perhaps the subconsciously preoccupied mind has "sucked up" some of the vigilance of the conscious...

Strange fruit

this is a really random post - stumbled upon this red hairy fruit during my site recee yesterday morning. Looked quite like the rambutan, but it's more cone-shaped. What on earth is this? its light-pink flowers were quite pretty though. my colleague has seen these plants around, but i'm positive i've NEVER seen these curious looking things around... wonder if they are edible.