we sat inside, but he just wanted a picture of the exterior

He was telling me how he had been wanting to visit Little Ox for the past few weeks, and I suggested to go early tomorrow morning before service, but he said otherwise:

V: Let’s go with a bunch of friends, like to farewell A since she’s going away next week.
S: What are you talking about? She’ll be coming back in like 4 days. 
V: Oh. 

He thought she was going away for more than a month. Bimbo moments like these happen from time to time, and it injects some humour in the relationship. Though I’m glad it’s not at my expense! Ha.

On a totally different note, I love yum cha, and it’s funny that I only ever yum cha in Melbourne and not in Singapore where it’s probably cheaper. Then again, I don’t know any yum cha places back home, except the one my extended dad’s family had for reunion lunch earlier this year.

Dragon Boat Palace on Lonsdale St offers an All You Can Eat Yum Cha for $22 pp on weekends, and I think $16.80 on weekdays. 

We were a bit lazy to take photos of all the individual dishes plus my hair wasn’t in its greatest state, hence there’s only 2 pics of our entire yum cha experience.

first wave - crispy tofu skin with prawn, eggplant, siew mai, scallop rice rolls, prawn dumplings, beef balls

desserts - mango puddings,3 jellys (coconut, strawberry and the really colourful one), sweet beancurd, and some other beancurd with fruit

This is my first experience at an all you can eat yum cha which comes in the push carts. The only other one (besides the made-to-order reunion lunch @ Marina Mandarin Hotel) was a self-service buffet, so it didn’t really feel like a ‘sit down and choose from the cart’ yum cha session.

We ordered heaps of food, I dare say this is the most I’ve ever eaten at a yum cha. I think the beauty of all you can eat yum cha is that you are more willing to try so much more without thinking of the cost. Usually when we go for yumcha, there’s only a handful that we order because it’s our favourites. Today we ordered at least 23 dishes (from what I counted on the circled sheet, but not all of them circled the items). 

Overall, it was a good experience in terms of the variety they had and the speed of service. The last time we went there for yum cha some time last year or so was quite a bad one, because service was poor and food wasn’t good. But when we went at noon today, there were lots of push carts going around and that’s why we were hit by so many in the first wave (we usually only have 2 or 3 on the table at one time). 

As for quality of food, most of the dumpling skins were too thick (had to scoop out the contents most of the time) especially the scallop rice roll. Other disappointments included my favourite stuffed eggplant (not the one in the pic), which was not as flavourful as other places I’ve been, and many of the dumplings were quite dry. There were some nice surprises like the crispy skin tofu with prawn, the century egg congee and one of the pork rolls. This is a personal thing, but I wished they had the milk with the mango pudding.

Special (unhonourable) mention goes to the colourful jelly (in the pic) not because it tasted nice, but because it really surprised us. Firstly, when I tried to use my spoon to scoop a portion, my spoon just slid off the surface and I just couldn’t cut it. Of course I did eventually, when I really steadied my spoon and exerted more force usually required to split a piece of jelly. And then, when I ate it, it had the most solid tasteless texture, I just couldn’t bear to eat anymore of it.

S: (poking the really springy colourful jelly) This is like the mother of all jellies.
V: It’s an industrial strength jelly.

For some reason, I was very amused and spat out bits of beancurd that I had just put in my mouth. On hindsight, it really isn’t that funny, but we both had a good laugh.

Great day out today. Ok, back to study time!

We haven’t been to the Little Cupcakes near Queen St, so we visited there this afternoon.

iced coffee and cupcakes

red velvet, carrot, orange jaffa, cherry

chow time

new little cupcakes

And the favourite pic of the day : )

escalator ♥

Is it too much if I added my friends in your facebook? 

Get your own facebook account man.

“… the experience of falling in love is invariably temporary. No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say that we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterises the experience of falling in love always passes. The honemoon always ends. The bloom of romance always fades.” – Chapter on ‘Falling in ‘Love’‘

The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck

I have an old book which I pick up now and then. There are many quotable quotes, but I thought I’d just give one today.

The book is separated into four major parts – discipline, love, growth & religion and grace. It’s written by a psychiatrist who depicts life and its major issues with examples from his patients. In no way did I intend to pick this book up again just because I’m in the midst of my Psychiatry rotation, in fact I had forgotten that it was written by a psychiatrist. But I pick it up and read it now and then when I feel I need to re-examine the way I live, the way I behave and how I treat others. I am reminded of about discipline, of independence, of responsibility, of love and growth. And as always, I am reminded of simple facts which you don’t instinctively think about, but really ring true when you give some thought to it.

That 70's Lot pizza

There was a flyer in the postbox from Flemington Dominos Pizza, which offered 1 free large traditional pizza! The offer ends tomorrow, so why  not make full use of it today. Got ‘That 70′s Lot’ which I think had bacon, capsicum, mushroom, beef and olives. Not a fan of olives at all. I’m starting to like meat a lot less than I used to which is a very strange revelation. I used to go to the meat section in Vic Mart and take big breaths of the raw meat smells (sounds gross I know), but now I’m just thinking how to cut down on the meat and inject more fruit and veggies.

shu poppins

fitzroy garden

James is a good man after God’s heart, and we’re very happy he’s found a wonderful partner to settle down with.

More pics to come at a later time probably on facebook because I don’t have all the pics in my camera.

We had a conversation over morning coffee today:

V: Yesterday’s garden wedding was beautiful.
S: Food was great- if my feet weren’t hurting, I’d have eaten more.

We had a really good laugh after at how there was such a distinct male-female role reversal with us.

super zeros collection

We left Myer without them then because he was still contemplating about cost. But he returned, and after a solid half an hour of picking and choosing from 6 characters, it came down to these:

the final three - zipo the hippo, zaza the mouse, zola the koala

I already had two hippos (one from him, another from Joan) and he didn’t want to give me another one, but these were the best looking ones out of the lot. Or as I say, least weird looking.

They all have their own character profile on their tag which is funny. Even the cashier girl said “they’re so strange, but so cute”. They’re now sitting on my bedside table. I wasn’t the most enthusiastic about them, but the more I look at them sitting beside my bed, the more endearing I think they are.

heart-shaped durian

Durians are half-priced now compared to their most expensive time (which is still considered expensive in Sg/M’sia land), but how often do you see a durian shaped like that? Needless to say, he bought it.

mmm

Because it was still frozen then (and we had plenty of experiences with half-frozen durians), we left it out for a a couple of days and the result today was yummy tender bitter-sweet durian flesh.

Newsflash- my baby bro got offered to go into the Commando unit in the army.

(btw to avoid confusion- this is not my bro!) pic credit: herbertholeman.com/para/images/sing4.jpg

I’m with a consultant Dr E (who’s probably around 40 years old or so) in the inpatient ward who is just a clown sometimes. I was talking to the shift leader, who’s also Chinese, about how to write our last names. Dr E then chipped “I know how to write your name in Mandarin!” and started scribbling away on this piece of paper in his hand while I continued talking to the shift leader.

Then Dr E interrupts and shows me his paper “Here, I wrote your name in Mandarin!”

He drew a picture of a shoe.

One of the older consultants Dr S in the ward was retiring and Dr E was throwing a farewell party for him, suggesting a gentleman’s club, getting Dr S drunk, etc etc etc. And when one of the nurses asked if he knew who was going to replace Dr S, Dr E replied that Josef Fritzl was going to be the new psychiatrist. Josef Fritzl is that Austrian man who held his daughter captive for 24 yrs and sexually abused her. According to Dr E, Fritzl was “a psychopath in Austria but is coming to Australia to be a psychiatrist”. He was making a stupid joke of course.

And then during ward rounds (which in psychiatry just means sitting around the table discussing patients) he was joking about everything and sometimes leaned over to another nurse’s patient review sheet and randomly doodled something on the side.

Apparently last time he was the one who filled in the patient review sheets during ward rounds, but one of the nurses got irritated because he was always ticking random irrelevant stuff in the sheet and so he was banned from filling those out.

When one of the nurses asked if Dr E will be in the unit in the afternoon for a family meeting, Dr E said “I’m going to the sleep fest at (location)”. It was actually a case presentation educational program. Somehow, I was the only one who laughed. Everyone else just looked puzzled- I don’t think they knew about the academic program and that he meant it was boring. (I was there a couple of weeks ago, and saw Dr E sitting right in front and thought wow he’s so enthusiastic, but halfway through, I saw him nodding off.)

We’re in the midst of changing residents at the moment and so there was no resident with the consultant today, which left Dr E having to make all the phone calls to the family, talk to patients when otherwise the resident would do it. At the end of the ward round when he was summarising his list of things to do, he kept sighing after each one, and one of the nurses commented “Oh, you don’t have a resident today!”

“My medical student here has been promoted to registrar. I’m training her now and by next week she’ll be conducting ward rounds.”

So many more funny stories, but I’ll leave it at that now.

On another note, after receiving an email about a comment on my previous post, I realised that it’s a default setting to moderate comments and having to approve them before it appears, but I really don’t mind anyone leaving comments or saying hi or anything like in my old blog, so I’ve changed the settings now.