This morning I finally hunted down a Japanese cafe cum bookstore that I've been wanting to visit ever since I saw it in CityScoops some 6 months ago. This Japanese cafe (see pic below) is strangely named Bon Gout (which I understand is French) and sells no-frills homestyle Japanese food. The food is not particularly tasty, but I like the atmosphere of the place. You can pick any Japanese book/mag/comic to read while or after having your meal... And it's right by the Singapore River (Robertson Quay), so one can easily take a stroll by the river after his/her meal. I shall return some time to sample other things on its menu.... or when my Japanese actually becomes good enough for me to browse the mags/books with ease haha. hmm... that one must wait long long.

I alighted at Chinatown station before walking over to Robertson Quay. The place was really re nao, even at 12pm on Sat... guess I shouldn't be surprised, since Chinese New Year is but 2 weeks' away. Saw this flower stall upon emerging from the station...

Liked how my zhu jues came along, one almost clad entirely in white (hair too!) and the other in black... provided some nice contrast to the sea of red, pink and orange flowers :)

went for a health screening yesterday morning and had my height measured. am supposedly 167cm tall now!!! erm, but perhaps it was a mismeasurement but I prefer to deceive myself hehe. I shall not take my height again till some other health screening :P hehe, of course weight is a sensitive issue which shall not be disclosed on this blog. not like anyone would be interested, anyways. am stressed by various tasks at work this week; and feel rather unproductive. when things keep coming (which in turn prevent you from concentrating on any one thing you need to do), I get rather flustered and end up being not so efficient. i esp dislike doing very routine things like preparing info folders whereby you have to go and dig up info from eons ago just to give it to someone for reference.... aside from work-- I have a mini Japanese test tmr evening, which i've done NOTHING so far to prepare for... hopefully I wun fail too miserably. also got an email from National Museum; since I signed up to volunteer there a couple of weeks ago.... hmm. prob have to reconsider given how busy I'm getting...!

My tiny collection of baby-doll high-waisted tops has quietly but steadily grown over the past few months, to the extent that a couple of more observant colleagues have started associating me with these good-for-concealing-fats-yet-cute tops :P so today one colleague came in with something like that, and came to me to say that it's a "Shi Min-inspired" top... hehe thought it was really cute of her. sigh, I certainly shop a lot more than I used to in the States... and the ready availability of relatively more affordable clothes doesn't really help. There are many ugly things around; but I somehow still manage to find a few nice things every month... Self-discipline, pls!

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.

i can't help but feel a little 'cursed' this week; cos one thing cropped up one after another at work leaving me hardly any space to breathe... and though the weekend has finally arrived I still have work stuff to attend to tomorrow morning. hai. just when i thought i was relatively free compared to most of my friends at other stat boards and Ministries... oh well. i am not really sore or anything cos I really very much prefer being kept busy... just that too much work really saps up all your energy, leaving you with very little to do anything else. nonetheless, also feel that keeping positive and not practising self-pity over my recent 'plight' also helps quite a bit; such that even though i come home tired everyday, at least I dun feel horrible... wish for a more leisurely week next week; but i know that's not going to happen... :(

my stomach was making rumbly noises yesterday afternoon in the middle of Japanese class, cos I had left my wallet at home when I was actually supposed to dine out for lunch. and so had to try hard to keep attentive despite being rather hungry. turns out that it wasn't all that difficult, because the sheer amount of time/effort I was expected to put in for my JLPT 2 prep class soon made me quite intimidated and worried. and so after a semester and half or so of relaxing Japanese lessons, I now have to memorize tons of Kanji each week and practise all that we learnt in class on my own, too. This course basically tries to squeeze in 2 yrs of Japanese study into 1, such that by the end of the year all conscientious students would be well-equipped for the JLPT 2 test. I so look forward to the end of the year... cos I dreamily forsee that my Japanese should be waaay better than it is now... but on other hand also fear that I don't have enough perseverance to pull through! oh well. we shall see :) in conjunction with my accelerated Japanese study starting this month, I have also resolved to check out more independent Japanese restaurants from this year onwards. have been relying so much on chains and have been eating the same kind of Japanese food all the time... it's time to be more adventurous with Japanese cuisine too! only that it might burn a small hole in my pocket...

Last Yunnan post

though i still have many pictures to show, i think one week of blogging about my China trip is enough :) and so this shall be the last entry. wondered what i should show... eventually selected a spot i had tea at, which had superb view; and a picture of a local in Dali washing up in the morning just outside his shopfront. This was actually a series of 4 pictures- from his spitting; to gargling; face-wiping... and a final one showing end of all 'commotion'; with only harmless-looking stools and water remaining. alas, thought it wasnt too nice to publish someone else's washing-up routine (i wouldn't want anyone to do that to me; but then again, i also don't wash up in the middle of a street :P)It might not seem that high up from the picture, but we were really above almost everything else. Basically there's this pavilion where you can go for a bird's eye view of the old town... but it was overpriced and we decided that we've had enough of exorbitant and not-value-for-money tourist destinations. As such, wandered down from peak into the little streets and stumbled upon this inn! basically they are situated near to the pavilion and thus enjoyed almost equally good view. and tourists need only pay 2 RMB to go in to enjoy the view (with tea provided). So there i was, sitting above almost everything else :) I really really liked this place. imagine doing your readings up here! it was a little chilly, but still comfy enough for me to stay up there for close to an hour hehe. was also fun peering down at rooftops below you and watching human activity down there.

on this morning set off to the city wall with hopes of capturing the sunrise. but it was too cloudy. so instead wandered around on the city wall, looking down at locals preparing for the day's activities/business. this guy caught my eye... and using my ultra-zoom, i managed a pretty close-up from maybe 30 meters or so away up on the wall. tried to be discreet too; cos i was ultimately sneaking a picture of his daily washing-up routine! :P

Yunnan (4) - Of kitties, dogs and chickens

Before heading to Lijiang from Dali, we had a Tibetan-style lunch at Jim's Tibetan Cafe. Across the street was this book/DVD store whose exterior looked like a place I would like. And so i entered. They had a really great selection of books and DVDs... but what really distracted me for the first 10 min or so in the store was a nicely decorated corner for ppl to chill out. There was a curious kitten pawing the chess pieces on the chessboard... highly extremely unresistably cute. By the time i whipped out my camera and tried to capture the endearing scene, the kitten had unfortunately jumped out of my imaginary frame and down onto the floor. :(

There it is, looking really cute and innocent but perhaps really just eyeing my camera quite suspiciously. The curious/playful creature bounded off soon after I took this shot.

There it is once again, on the other side of the chessboard. Waited quite long for it to look up into my camera, but it never really did. Anyway i really loved the entire arrangment of chessboard, flowers and other random objects on this table. The person who did this must be a genius!

There were two dogs on the roof of a certain wing within the monastery grounds. Have never seen dogs wandering on rooftops before and they (perhaps unfoundedly) felt a little 'celestial' to me :P
The chicken seller with his caged-up chickens at the market at Xizhou, near Dali. I think maybe some 10 years back we could still see similarly caged-up chickens in wet markets in Singapore... remb mini outings to wet markets with my aunt/grandparents as a kid when living at my Grandma's place. not sure about today though. hehe i suppose we can definitely see some if we visit poultry farms :P

Yunnan (3) - Food

There was a huge variety of Yunnan (at times Tibetan) cuisine as we moved through the different cities. The best culinary experiences were in Dali and Lijiang. Didn't manage to sample all the local food; but think i still did a good job overall :) Most of the ventures were worthwhile, with only a couple of 'bad eggs' :)

Yak butter tea in Sakura Cafe, Old Town, Lijiang. It actually comes in two flavors- sweet and salty! The salty tea sounded too weird to me and so opted for the sweet version. Tasted interesting but pretty good!
Tibetan bread with honey for breakfast in Lijiang, at a cafe called Lamu's House of Tibet. The bread was soft, chewy but a lil too greasy. However, it went pretty well with the rich, sticky honey. Yummy.
A Naxi sandwich-- a fusion dish i think, with Naxi-style bread and 'western' fillings, including cucumbers, tomatoes, pan-fried breaded chicken and pickles. Huge portion, but quite delicious.
A local snack termed fried Dali Cheese in the restaurant menus. Saw it in many places along the street and thought... it must taste quite good? bought one 'cheese fan' to try; but on the contrary it tasted quite HORRIBLE. expected this to taste sweet and milky; but instead it was dry and sour... bleah.
Lastly, halved pig heads, pig trotters and a packet of pig brain right in the middle. Well, don't think this counts for food - least not in my case. however, i couldn't really categorise it under 'animals' either, since it's really just slaughtered and disfigured parts of the pig. erm... saw this in a local market in Xizhou, some 15 km away from Dali. was rather grossed out actually, but it was interesting nonetheless. The man who was hawking this was really friendly, and quite proud of his pigheads, too.

Yunnan (2) - the people

Yunnan is home to several ethnic minority groups, two of which I had personal encounters with. Around half the population in Dali are from the Bai ethnic group and Lijiang is home to the Naxi ppl. I usually don't take pictures of ppl, just cos it's usually hard to get ppl to agree to pose for pictures. However, this time round, i managed a couple of portrait-style pics of the locals :) I strongly believe that human subjects add a lot to photographs.

These old ladies are from the Bai minority group. The first day in Dali we decided to visit a market across Erhai lake. and so we made our way to the pier... after some haggling we finally managed to get the ferry fare down to 80 RMB from 130 RMB. Unfortunately, 1/2 an hour later, we found ourselves on an island in the middle of the lake; and were informed that it would actually take 4 hrs to get to our intended destination. Not only were we conned to visit this island, we were also made to pay compulsory island admission fees of about 3 RMB, which in turn entitled us to these old lady tour guides. i did feel rather cheated, but decided to make the best of situation and tried interacting with them... and also tried sweet-talking them into letting me take their pics. hehe, so here they are!

Having been deprived of the market experience the day before, we made our way to another one closer to Dali the following day. This jolly dumpling mold vendor was actively marketing his dumpling molds by giving live demonstrations and an ongoing commentary; repeatedly producing fake, entirely dough-filled dumplings :P However, I was taken in and bought one :) and when i took my mold to examine yesterday evening; i realised that it even had a 'fu2' 'embossed' on the mold!

Some old ladies at the same marketplace. I was very intrigued by the "basket backpacks" that majority of the population carried. Not the most aesthetically pleasing, but certainly very convenient!

Just as Lonely Planet predicted, Doctor Ho spotted us outside his clinic (in Baisha Village) and extended a very warm welcome to us. He's apparently world-renowned; and this fact was repeatedly impressed upon us during our 15-min-or-so stay in his clinic. :P Got some free healthy herbal tea, while incessantly given various write-ups (from BBC, USA Today etc) on Doctor Ho by the man himself. I forgive his slightly excessive egoism, taking into account all the good he has done for the poor :) BTW, he encourages medicine students to visit him for learning pointers.

Last but not least, Naxi ppl dancing in the Sifangjie square in Old Town, Lijiang.

Yunnan (1)

I covered four cities in Yunnan Province on this trip. Flew into Kunming via Silkair; trained overnight to Dali and bused to Lijiang and subsequently Zhongdian (aka Shangri-La). Bus rides in China are amazingly 'informal', as the driver picks up ppl on the way, as long as there are seats in the bus! and so it appears that anyone can try flagging down a bus on the road and check if it's heading towards his/her destination; pay a discounted fare and will then be on his/her way! drivers are generally quite skilful at navigating windy mountain roads... though i had my fair share of worries initially :P my heart jumped during the couple of times when drivers honked furiously, only to realize that it wasn't really at cars in the opposite direction, but at innocent lambs/ pigs/ dogs loitering in the middle of the roads :P Weather-wise, it was generally good, esp in Dali and Lijiang. Zhongdian was a little too chilly for me, coming right from hot, tropical Singapore. it certainly didn't help that i didn't stay at very expensive hotels... and so quite a few didn't have any heater at all... but all of them had electric blankets under the sheets, and the best solution was of course to hide under covers once one was done showering. harsh reality of dealing with the cold in less developed places was impressed upon me-- you just have to bear with it; wear more clothing; or generate heat with lighted charcoal/a fire...

anyway, some scenes from the diff places i visited. will blog separately about the people, food, animals and other random things that caught my fancy :)

View of the Tibetan Monastery in Zhongdian from the spot where we alighted from the bus. It's also the only proper 'tourist destination' i visited in Zhongdian, cos as night fell it just got unbearably cold for me. and thus ended up hiding in bed, skipping dinner and watching TV.

'House' in Baisha Village, around 10 km north of Lijiang. The clear blue sky and orange-brown of the doors made it picture-perfect. This is also where I met the legendary Doctor Ho (more on that later)

View from the Black Dragon Pool Park (or Heilongtan Gongyuan) If the sky were clearer, the snowy peaks of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (Yulong Xueshan) would have been more visible. A very peaceful and scenic place :)

Flowering cherry trees against the Cang1 Shan1 range in the background. Cos it's winter; really didn't expect the entire street to be lined with flowering cherry trees. made wandering around quite pleasant!
Elephant on a platform rock formation in Stone Forest (or Shilin), about 1.5 hr's drive away from Kunming. Unfortunately it was quite rainy, which made navigating the slippery labyrinth of stone formations slightly more challenging. also didn't leave me with many decent pictures :(

I'm back!

took many interesting pictures on this unexpectedly smooth and pleasant trip so don't really know what to post for time being. decided to use this one, since this year's technically the year of the pig; and also cos trip was surprisingly animal-ful... what with dogs, kitties, pigs, lambs, goats and yaks! and i've come to conclusion that more obscure destinations can be quite charming too :)

i thought i could escape from the bad weather in Singapore, only to land in even worse weather! it was cool but sunny in Kunming yesterday when i first arrived, but it's extremely cold and rainy today... terrible weather for travelling. am now sitting in a cold unheated 'bar' with slow internet... and blogger interface is interestingly in Japanese! haha oh well. but shouldn't be complaining, since it's free :) there seems to be more street food hawkers here than on the east coast, with ppl baking sweet potatoes, frying omelettes and bbqing skewers of meat at seemingly random spots on the streets! felt very tempted to take pictures; but cos i wasn't buying felt a little bad to exploit them as photo ops. have taken my meals mostly in restaurants, but have to admit that the food here is somewhat too oily and foreign for my liking :P everything has gone fine though, cept for cold unheated hotel rooms and phenomenon of 'unpowerful' flushes in toilets; which has indirectly led me to cut down on number of times i go to the loo each day... the cold is still tolerable though, but will get increasingly worse as i move inland... pray hard that the next two hotels i booked have heated rooms/bathrooms!

flying off to Kunming tmr morning for a week long holiday. also planning to go to cities like Dali and Lijiang on the same trip... shall hope hard for a smooth enjoyable journey. barely half-packed now and am attempting to squeeze all my barang barang into pretty small duffel bag and backpack to remain mobile. let's hope that i wun freeze when i get there... though it's only about 5C in Kunming; it's been a while since i've been in that kinda weather! so a 20C drop in temperature might take a while for me to get used to and comfortable in :) it'll also probably get colder as i get to Lijiang. in any case; will try to blog once or twice when travelling... if not, I wish everyone who faithfully reads my ramblings a very Happy 2007! :)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate Christmas! have to admit that it really is just another public holiday for me... I am perhaps the most unhappening person; cos just spent Christmas eve sorting out some pictures on laptop while watching Love Actually on Channel 5. Though this is my 3rd time watching it, some of these stories touch me again and again... too bad no nice atmosphere to watch show. also visited IKEA earlier in the afternoon to look for wardrobe and bedsheets... it's crazy cos though weather was rainy it was crowded all the same. and mum commented that it resembled a 'marketplace'... with children running around and ppl sitting on display two-seater sofas at the entrance! look forward to a Christmas lunch at Jacqui's place tmr afternoon :) goodness; hardly accomplished anything and my long weekend is going to be over :(

It's my first time celebrating Christmas in office and was pleasantly surprised that colleagues were pretty 'on' about giving gifts etc. Also had an intra-unit gift exchange and received a cute little bracelet from fellow colleague. yay! Christmas has never really been a very big day for me; since my family never celebrated it and I am really not big on buying gifts for ppl; nor receiving them, for that matter. However, felt an urge to reciprocate colleagues' kindness and thus went last min shopping earlier this evening. shops were totally CROWDED with ppl and didnt feel like getting anything in the end. doesn't help that I am a rather fussy shopper and can spend hours walking around without finding anything that really catches my fancy. oh well. boss is flying off tmr morning to US to spend Christmas with fiance.... then rest of us gathering at colleague's new place to meet up with old boss, who flew back for winter break. time flies! have worked for 5 months without really realizing.

The Garden Festival at Suntec was somewhat disappointing, but the orchids at the 4th level still managed to save the show a little. but alas, most of my attempted close-ups turned out rather blur. perhaps my hands are really too shaky. in any case; i'll need to practise taking pictures a lot more frequently if i want to improve! the last time i laid my hands on this camera was in mid Oct, when i wanted to take some pics for a certain competition... anyway; thought the yellow ones above still turned out somewhat decent, albeit not as clear as they should have been!