ME
Name: aiwaboy83
Age: Old man
Gender: M
D.O.B: Someday in 1900s
Email: aiwaboy83@gmail.com

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卓国龙-_-2008 ganyan demo
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Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Nice sunny weather yesterday! Went for cycling in East Coast Park. Man, the place has been changing ever since, more amenities, more eateries, more sports activities and even new street lamps that would even look good if you take it home. Anyway, saw this wierd color-coated cat on the overhead bridge in AMK ave 5. It has orange, grey, black coats. Strange combination eh? What's even more strange is that it has to choose that dangerous position of sleeping at the corner. I mean, what happens if a naughty kid scares it? Surely it'll fall right down the bridge.

Though it's Monday, there's still many kids running about, teenagers trying to ride in Singapore's pathetic waves and parents running after their kids. I guess, it's the school holidays and I have to expect this. I almost cycled the entire stretch of East Coast Park, gave the side towards the hawker centre I pass because the bicycle seat was so very uncomfortable. My buttocks were numb and pain after 2 hours of cycling. I'm pretty impressed by the newly renovated East Coast Park hawker centre. It looks so nicely designed, unfortunately, the designer didn't consider that Singapore is all-year sunny and hot because he placed some translucent shelters for the seats. What's worse is that he didn't leave a pathway between those shelters and I have to walk a big round before I could reach the stall that I want. Oh yah, guess what I spot next to the hawker centre!? A cable ski area!!!!! So similar like the one in batam. But most probably it's going to be expensive because it's the only cable ski in Singapore and Singapore is crowded and ....... You know the rest.

ANYWAY, time for another episode of

HO JIA EHTM

Well, it's the holidays for me, so that means there's more time for me to go around places to find FOOD again. So most definately, there'll be more of such episodes in my blogs for this month and so until school cycle returns once again.


Kartini Indonesian Restaurant
80 Marine Parade Road
Parkway Parade
#02-31
Singapore 449269

One SPECIFIC thing I must say is that, though their dishes seem cheap and all in the menu, they really know how to charge stuff from other miscellaneous stuff. My bill was supposed to be around less than 30 bucks but due to mineral water, towel, appetizer, rice, GST and Service charge, it added up to abit more than that. I ordered three dishes only. It was WAY enough to fill my stomach. Firstly, the appetizers which came even before you ordered anything. It consists of some really agar-agar-like kuay and some crackers which I shall name it as bitter-crispy crackers. These small amount of appetizers were really a good start as I look through the menu. Please note that they charge money for these appetizers too. :( (cunning people eh?)


Gado Gado

Something I thought was just a simple salad came out rather tasty and amazed me. Somehow like rojak, it's a mixture of smaller pieces of the bitter-crispy crackers, cucumber, potatoes(they were nice), bean sprouts and a generous amount of satay sauce. Okay, I must admit that those crackers really go extremely well with the satay sauce. Yummy.


Mutton Rendang

The lamb meat was just right, tender and chewy. Try not too smear too much of the sauce over the meat, because what I found out if you do that is that the meat would not taste as nice. This is yet another high recommendation by the restaurant itself.

Tahu Telor Jakarta

If you have tried the normal indonesian tahu telor, you should never miss this one. A special version of tahu telor(maybe from jakarta only), the tofu is fried so crispy that as you used that spoon to slice it apart, it can hear it cracking just like breaking some potato chips. Mixed with the sauce just like the normal tahu telor, the crispy tofu really makes all the difference.

One word of warning, since this is an indonesian restaurant, most of the dishes that they whip out are spicy. Those dishes that I ordered were so spicy I had to be forced to drink the bottle of mineral water(which they charge money again and the only water that they offer) that they placed on the table together with the appetizer and towels. However, they were really kind enough if you do not want to drink the water, use the tower or eat the appetizer, they would not charge money for those. Ambience there is great, cosy with a minature house on the table with a candle. Music they played on that day was classical and they even have a fake coconut tree in the middle of the restaurant. Most of the customers there were malays, so it could only mean that the restaurant is quite authentic. :)

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8:30 PM.....ILWXB

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Sunday, December 11, 2005

Well, time to write more about my life you know. Since it's a blog and it's supposed to be more about my life. :)

Went out to Settler's Cafe yesterday. The one at clarke quay. So I took the bus 167 before taking the Northeast line at Doby Gaut. Man! Must I comment on the cleaniness of the trans island bus number 167. One look at it just simply makes me want to puke already. Some buses have spitting uncles; small cockroaches and dusty chairs but THIS! This is the worse! Do they ever clean the buses at the end of the day at all?


Oh yah, back to the Settler's Cafe. The place was kind of cosy WHEN I first arrived and sat down with my friends before pondering upon their very interesting BUT absolutely messy menu which looks exactly like a monopoly board game. It really took us quite some time to figure out what the menu is trying to convey after turning it 180 degrees right and left plus some explanation from the waitress.


They really have what they stated, almost 120+ board games and card games for anyone old or young. However, we had a really hard time finding a 7-player board/card game for ourselves. Most of their games only restricted the number of players to 5. So during that 4 hours we had in the cafe, we only got to play 3 games of which only one was more entertaining. Service was bad after 2 hours in the cafe as more people came in and ambience went straight down to zero with screaming working-class ladies at the next table. We got so bored with our third game that we kept pondering what they were playing. -_-"

Overall, I think it's best to visit the place during weekdays. Weekends seems like a no no as there will be so many people going and due to their lack of manpower, the customers will be due to suffer. One thing I had to respect is that the waiters and waitresses really have a broad knowledge of every game they have in the cafe. I mean, it's 120+ board/card games! How to remember everything? I guess maybe they went on a crash course and played every single game available. Another thing to comment is that the guy who explained to us the three games that we played simply doesn't know how to use a digital camera. He pressed the button so sharply and didn't even wait for the camera to focus! I mean, analogue cameras also use double-pressure buttons! Man, the group photo he took was really blur. :( One more thing, they seemed really poor at keeping track of our orders and miss a couple of things in the bill. LOL Heard from ZR that they always do that. Wonder if that's on purpose.


Had a REALLY cosy steam boat buffet in Chinatown after Settler's Cafe. How to explain to cosiness..... Hmmmz, I think this picture should explain it better than a million words from me. Well, you see, I am really poor at writing stuff. So here it is.


The place is the upstairs of the steamboat restaurant. It just looks so much like as if we were eating at someone's house(in this case, Mr anonymous's house because throughout dinner we were asking whether he could on the hifi and tv in his house which was just next to the table). The food was okay, some meat balls, tofu skins, prawns and occasional usual stuff which you always find in steam boat buffets. Drinks like chinese tea and cordial were free-flow, but I must warn you to add more ice because their cordials are so damn sweet! We have yuan yang steam boat, which was a simply two different soups in one pot, namely the Ma la(really spicy stuff) and the chicken soup. The auntie was rather nice to us, mixing seven bowls of her "SPECIAL" sauce (which tasted spicy sour, which was nice)for us. Only after which she exposed her fox's tail for her "special" treatment when she tried to persuade us to eat the fried ice cream which she was earning commission for in the restaurant. 7 of us as kind-hearted souls of course didn't reject her offer and order 6 assorted flavours of the fried stuff as dessert. Well, since there were 7 of us, the moment dessert came, we armed ourselves with forks and plunged into a fried ice cream battle. One thing really funny is when ZR tried to poke AND slice that yam flavoured one. The moment he poked it, the melted yam ice cream oozed out from what looked like the A** of the fried stuff. It was so funny that the 7 of us laugh so hard our bloated stomaches were about to burst. Chinatown has never been the same anymore. There were many tourists around and even techno music filling the streets. For a moment I thought I was back in boat quay. But nevertheless, it still has the shophouses outlook and some nice sceneric to take photos of.

7:23 PM.....ILWXB

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Public Apology
Sorry I ate all the drum stick and thigh meat. What is done is absolutely, 100% out of coincidence and not done on purpose. Please accept my apologies and deepest regrets. :)

7:10 PM.....ILWXB

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Friday, December 09, 2005
Well, first posting in this new and foreign-to-me server. Hope my blogs gets better from here on. Anyway, to begin my this first posting, I decided to begin it with nonetheless, an episode of......

HO JIA EHTM
This time around, didn't caught hold of the particulars of the place, so here's the only detail I can provide - the route which I took to go to that restaurant. Hahaha.

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I took bus number 317 from the Serangoon Interchange. In fact, I took the Northeast line from Plaza Singapura(typed this name instead because I have forgotten how to spell the name of the station near PS) and alighted at Serangoon station. From which, I walked to the Serangoon interchange that haven't changed a bit since my primary school days. I still remember going there for tuition and getting my PSLE results slip photocopied in one of the small shops at the rear of the interchange. Really, nothing has changed much of Serangoon central. Here's a picture I took on the bus.

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Getting back to this episode of HO JIA EHTM before I drift further into my history 10 years ago which could go on and on and on and then I'll forget what I was suppose to type in the first place. Ok ok, alight at Serangoon circus and the restaurant called PO SING RESTAURANT will be on the left if u face the country mana resturant just in front of the bus stop.

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The restaurant is famous of its Bai Zhan JI(Hainanese Chicken Rice) which was delicious. Going for a standard price of $4 per person. The meat is juicy and tender, soaked with enough sesame oil and soya bean sauce to tandalized your tastes buds. Though they only provided so little cucumber underneath the meat, which was the only bad point.

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Other than their zhao pai chai(dishes that the restuarant is famous for), they also sell dishes like Shark's fin, chicken cooked in many different ways, fish, pork, sea food, soup and vegetables. Hence, it's become more of the kind of Zhi Cha restaurant which you can find in coffee shops. I tried this sambal kang kong, it's not really good. Too much chilli oil and the vegetable seems to be chopped up as if the chef thinks that he was chopping garlic. Fortunately, he didn't chopped it up like the chilli sauce they provided on their tables.

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Udang prawn. Really spicy stuff, should have stick to another type of cooking because the kang kong was already a spicy dish. The prawns were nice, heads were all suckable(if you know what I mean) and the shells could be chewed and swallowed WHEN they first arrived. Well, simply because after a while, the shells become soft due to the mixing of the sauce.
This restaurant seem to draw the usual crowd with some tai tais and some families coming in to dine. Please don't mistake the coffee shop in the same block as country mana selling kampong chicken. Their chickens look so scrony and sucked dried that I was surprised that there were at least three tables filled in the shop. LOL. Well, you never know until you eat them right?
Ok, that marks the end of the first post of my fresh new blog. Shall be looking forward to the gathering tommorrow. Going to the well-known Settler's Cafe in Clarke Quay, some place that probably EVERYBODY in universities know EXCEPT me.

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8:21 PM.....ILWXB

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