At 27

So I turned a year older over the weekend and I thought, life is actually pretty all right now. I have many things to be thankful for, a family, a loving boyfriend, sweet old friends, a job which allows me to do meaningful work with some of the smartest and kindest people ever, friends in the office who always have my back. I still hit the gym weekly and enjoy a drink every now and then. I indulge in food all the time. I also took up yoga this year which taught me to breathe deeply and let it go. So I thought, maybe I have reached a stage where I have matured and grown so much that I have got things sorted. 

But obviously that is not true. While I am immensely contented, there are always things I can learn or continue learning. Certain events recently taught me that resilience is important. Things were tough, are tough, or will be tough. But I have the strength and the attitude to continue on ahead. I may not be the brightest, prettiest or most courageous. But I have a backbone of steel. You can trample over me and I will rise again undefeated. I will keep rising and we will see who has greater will - you in walking all over me or me in continuously rising each time I fall. I may trip and fall, I may lie in the dirt for a bit, but nothing, absolutely nothing will keep me down. 

To borrow my favourite phrase from E, it is all in the mind.

It IS all in the mind. And my mind is stronger than you can ever believe it to be. Fuck yeah. 

J's Restaurant and Tom's Palette

It was a long day at work and I was running late to meet Stef and W. We wanted to try an eatery on the Entertainer App and eventually picked J's Restaurant for its Latin-American food. Tucked in one of the shop houses along Purvis Street, J's was crowded when we arrived and thankfully Stef managed to secure a table on the second floor. I was late again as usual and was counting my lucky stars that we were meeting at Bugis which was not too far from work!

Poppers ($17) - breaded jalapenos stuffed with mozzarella. I'm not too big a fan of jalapenos since they can be a bit too spicy for me but the Poppers were very interesting with thick mozzarella oozing out.

Chicken Quesadillas ($22). Tortilla stuffed with chicken, tomatoes, cheese, onions and guacamole.

Paella with marinated chicken, salmon and tilapia. This was so different from the usual paella that I was used to. The rice grains were moist and mushy, not the usual crispy grains found and it tasted a little like nasi briyani. 

The food was decent but I guess Latin-American fare was not really my kind of thing. We left J's after we were done with dinner and headed to Tom's Palette for ice cream! I had my favourite salted egg ice cream and Granny's favourite! Tom's Palette is always good and I am so glad that this ice cream parlor is still around after so many years!

J's Restaurant

7 Purvis Street #01-01

12 pm to 2: 30 pm, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm

68874787

Tom's Palette

100 Beach Road
#01-25 Shaw Tower (opposite Ah Loy's Thai)
Mon-Thurs 12-9.30pm Fri-Sat 12-10pm 
Sunday 1-7pm

Chick and Ken, Lorong Telok

Another Korean fried chicken store and this one is in the hood! Our office hood, that is. After Kko Kko Nara, Choo Choo Chicken and Chir Chir Chicken, I have to say that I am rather addicted to korean fried chicken. They definitely do it better than the usual Kentucky Fried Chicken and Popeyes.

Chick and Ken has a $9.90 set lunch which allows you to choose one flavour of chicken and one side. All meals come with a complimentary ice tea. Most of us wanted to try both the salted egg and soy and garlic flavours so we formed pairs and ordered one each so that we could share!

I am convinced that salted egg anything is yummy. The salted egg sauce was good and went well with the fried chicken. That said, the sauce and fried chicken tasted separate and the chicken meat itself was not well-marinated. 

The soy and garlic flavour fried chicken was different. The chicken was well-marinated and absorbed the soy and garlic sauce well.  

We ordered rice with kimchi as our sides which was normal white rice with a small serving of kimchi. For some reason I was expecting something similar to Choo Choo's kimchi and tuna rice burger. Oops, wrong expectations! Furthermore, both wings were somehow more tender and juicy as compared to the drumlets which were a tad dry. 

Truffle fries!

The fried chicken at Chick and Ken was not bad and I would come back if I was craving for korean fried chicken during lunch. However, Chir Chir still remains my favourite korean fried chicken shop now. 

21 Lorong Telok (we walked along Circular Road and took the right fork)

+65 9652 0905, +65 9295 9309, +65 9150 7257

Reservations were not allowed during lunch but it was not too crowded anyway.

Teppei Japanese Restaurant, Teppei Syokudo Millenia Walk, Teppei Syokudo Ion

I heard so many awesome reviews about Teppei's kaisendon and their extremely famous omakase dinner. Before trying their main restaurant at Tanjong Pagar, I pulled my boyfriend to Teppei's takeaway outlet at Millenia Walk (Teppei Syokudo) for dinner after work. Small tables lined the back of the small shop and people sat on stools finishing their kaiseidon hurriedly. Everyone was mindful of the queue at the door and nobody lingered longer than they should. We waited for about 15 minutes before securing a table and dug happily into our delicious kaisendon. Chunks of marinated salmon, tuna, scallop, and whelk! Even though it was served in a simple black plastic bowl, I did not mind and devoured it happily. I thought this was cheap and good, until I visited the main restaurant...

And realised that Teppei Syokudo was perhaps 80% of the power at Teppei Japanese Restaurant. After a dreary morning this week, TT and I made it to Teppei Japanese Restaurant (also known as the real deal or the adult offender version to Teppei Syokudo's juvenile offender) at Tanjong Pagar. Thursdays are for Negitoro Kaisendon! Wah this was super yums. I totally get why everybody is in love with Teppei. The salmon sashimi was super fresh and tender, and omg the chopped tuna was perfect! Thank you for bringing me along :D

UPDATE: So I heard that there was a new Teppei Syokudo at Ion and went over excitedly one Saturday evening. You get to customize your chirashi don at the Ion branch so for those of you who prefer some types of sashimi over others, this would be the perfect place for you. I picked the usual kaiseidon without customising. BUT the portions here are really very small as compared to the Millenia Walk outlet. The amount of sashimi doled out was so pathetic that I felt so unsatisfied after my dinner and was truly upset for a while! I went back to Teppei Syokudo at Millenia Walk one week later to satisfy my sashimi craving instead and this week I returned to Teppei Restaurant. Teppei Syokudo at Ion seriously has to buck up or risk being the weakest link in the chain!

Teppei Japanese Restaurant
#01-18 Orchid Hotel, 1 Tras Link. Open 12:00 to 14:30, 18:00 to 22:30
+65 62227363

Teppei Syokudo
 #01-105 Millenia Walk. Open 11am to 9pm daily.

Teppei Syokudo Ion
#B4-57 Ion Orchard

Food for Thought, Botanic Gardens

Rainy Sunday morning with the boyfriend and his friends and we had brunch at Food for Thought in Botanic Gardens. I ordered the Full Works ($22) with the boyfriend which came with scrambled eggs, bacon, butter brioche, garlic mushrooms, chicken sausage, hash browns, and cherry tomato salad! My favourite? Has to be the garlic mushrooms!

So nice to have a warm and cozy brunch with my boyfriend and his friends. I don't meet them often but it is always nice when I do, to hear about their lives, interesting stories, and to know more about the friends my boyfriend enjoys hanging out with. We headed to Orchard after brunch where my boyfriend went shoe shopping and bought a pair from Isetan at Shaw. After shoe shopping, we went to the Gundam fair at Taka! Wanted to buy the SG50 Gundam but was about 10000 steps too late since they were sold out way earlier. How is it that so many people came down during the weekdays to buy Gundam!

1 Cluny Road, 

Tanglin Gate, #B1-00, S259569 

65 6338 4848

Mon  -  Sun 8 am to 9 pm