my off day! (:

Jie and I went to the F3 fashion bazaar today. They're having a warehouse sale till next Sunday but don't bother wasting your time going down there..

Not only was the place super ulu, but the selections were super limited and all in the larger sizes like size 16-20. The clothes were all thrown together, some inside out, some out of the packaging, and the accessories were exceptionally tangled up. Jie and I spent a good half an hour trying to unravel a mess of accessories all knotted together..

We ended up spending $15 total on 2 necklaces, 1 top & 1 panty.

Here's my cute turtle necklace!

It was a little long, but i super loveee that the legs of the turtle can move~! haha

After shopping, we went to Papa Palheta for cappuccinos! I wouldn't recommend going there on weekdays though, they only open one side of the shop, and it's all zi ji ren. So we were like outsiders intruding on their personal space..

our drinks.. their designs are getting boring. :(

When i got home, there was a parcel waiting for me! (: (: (:

I bought this LB dress from another seller.

IT'S SO CHIO RIGHT?!? :DDD

WIW

Love Bonito Galilee Dress in Blue sz S

New Loots

After a blogshopping hiatus for more than a month, I succumbed when LB launched their most recent collection..

The peplum trend is really going strong.. I got the below dress and skirt. I'm so excited for them to arrive~!

I also had a one to one exchange for my iphone coz there was something wrong with the headset.. So i got a new phone heehee!

And i went to queensway today to get it blinged up! Screen protector for $5, and mint sticker covering for $15! I know I could get it cheaper online, but I couldn't possibly put these one myself.. =/

Anyway it's damn chio right?!? =D

Credits:
Love Bonito Pieret Peplum Dress in Black S & Miranda Skirt in Crimson S

Martin Yan in Singapore!

Are you familiar with Martin Yan from the show "Yan Can Cook"?

I most certainly am!

At an age where I had nothing to do in the afternoons after school, there really wasn't much on tv except his television series. Whilst I don't remember being particularly interested in cooking, I sort of grew up watching his shows.

So when Tom told me that he was holding a dinner event at Capella, I thought it would be interesting to go.. And my whole family decided to go as part of my dajie's early birthday celebration.

You know, I wasn't really sure what to expect.

The event was held at the beautiful Cassia Restaurant and we even had this huge VIP room to ourselves! First was a cocktail reception followed by a small speech by Marin Yan himself before we were served the first course. Following which, we got to see him showcase his cooking techniques and cutting prowess and was treated to a very entertaining session. The below video of him deboning a chicken is really funny, if a little long.. You should watch it if you have the time.. =P

If you are still tickled, click here for another short segment of him cutting ginger and other stuff!

We were then seated again to complete the rest our dinner before Martin Yan came into our room in the middle of our 4th course! (there were 5 courses in total) He was so warm and personable.. and he signed messages to all 3 of us and my mum~!

In all honestly, I didn't think very highly of the food in retrospect to the amount we paid.. BUT getting to meet Martin Yan, talking to him and being so entertained by his live performance, it was really really worth it! We all had so much fun last night.

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So pictures..

His worktable..

The view of the restaurant from our VIP room :D

The menu for the evening..

zipai shot while waiting..

us..

jie & tom

Here's the chef himself in action..

food.. Crispy Beancurd Skin Rolls. the mushrooms inside were super yummy!

Dragon & Phoenix.. Don't understand why it's given this name, but it could have been warmer.. =/

Beef Stew with beancurd sticks & chinese chestnuts.. yum! except for the slightly tough beef =/

Smoked Marinated Squab.. sadly the meat was too tough. I'm never eating squab again..

Wine Poached Pears.. everyone (except me) loved this!

this was turning out to be a rather sad dining experience for me. :(

To end off the dining experience, we were given complimentary in house capella mooncakes. They sell at $280 for a box of 4! =X

This was their standard mooncake with cinnamon inside.

and these were tea-infused.. both not bad.. but not worth $9 apiece. =/

So he came into our VIP room to say hello..

and here we are like groupies crowding him for autographs..

Group shot..

and thick-skinned me asked him to take this zipai shot with us =D

best photo of the night!

What a wonderful event! :)

Gold Coast Day 3

It was a bright and sunny day on our third day there, perfect weather to go to the first of the theme parks - White Water World (referred to as www henceforth for easy blogging)! Days 3 & 4 were blocked out for www and dream world respectively.

We had originally aimed to reach the theme park when it opened by 10am, but first we were late, and second we got stuck on the highway due to a 4 car pileup. It was pretty cool being in a foreign land and we were like "shit how come now still got peak hour jam?" -checks twitter- "oh there's been an accident just before exit 57!" -looks up- we just passed exit 59 en route to 57. =P

We ended up reaching the theme park around 11.30am. =S But it wasn't so bad as the theme park turned out to be pretty deserted. I guess nobody is really interested in water rides in the middle of winter.. Even if you have the Australian sun to contend with.

We tried the Super Tubes Hydrocoaster first. It was one of the bigger and scarier rides to start with. Since we had bags, cameras and all, we had to take turns on all the rides. 3 of us went first, and it was soooo good, we came back and chased our parents off to ride it as well. I have not seen my parents in swimwear in eons, and it felt really good to see them get all wet and laughing and enjoying themselves despite the cold weather hahaha. =D

We tried another 3 rides before stopping for lunch.. We were so hungry! I think it's coz our bodies had to work harder to keep warm in the cold. Especially when we were all wet it takes even more energy!

Lunch was overall very ordinary except for the fact that THEY SOLD CHURROS THERE ZOMGGG~!

Best lunch everrr hahahaha!

We completed the remaining 2 rides in quick order, before going over to dream world to complete the 2 wet rides there. After all, we were already in swim wear and all wet.. Doesn't make sense to come back the next day dressed for dry rides and get wet again right?

We saw this super chio tiger cub and took a picture with it. Dammit if you see the picture.. my eyes were closed.. ;"(

Sadly the wet rides in dream world were so-so only and we left soon after.

We got back around 4+ and decided to try the heated pool. I mean i've never swam anywhere in winter before, not to mention a heated pool so we excitedly rushed down to the pool. 

To our surprise, it was freezing cold! We weren't so easily thwarted though. We had chatted with some other guests the previous day whilst in the lift, and they had just come back from swimming at 9pm from the heated pool. I mean they couldn't have been so garang to go and swim in the cold pool, in the middle of winter at night right?!

After some exploration, we found this teeny tiny pool in a stuffy room with super blurry windows. Not exactly an inviting place, but we could feel the heat in the room. =D

After a day of cold water rides and even colder winds, the pool was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Even better was the Jacuzzi! We just nua-ed there a good half an hour before going back when the sun was setting. 

We washed up, went downstairs to get a little shopping done before meeting Dion & Tiffany for dinner. They were bringing us to the only Ramen place in Gold coast and needless to say, it wasn't very good since it was the only ramen place around.

That's all for day 3! (:

woohoo~ I got my blogging mojo back heehee. I have been very unmotivated to blog for quite a while (1 blog entry for august!) and I'd rather spend my time sleeping or dating my super handsome bf hurhur. =P

Beef Buffet at Barossa

We had our 10th month celebratory dinner at Barossa Restaurant today. (: (: (:

Eric had bought a groupon for Beef Buffet + complimentary red wine for ~$60 total and we've been planning to come here to try out the buffet for a few weeks now. Unfortunately I've been sick for quite a while, hence we were unable to come earlier..

Hungry boy.. =P

Me..

The bar (: The ambience was really nice.. with my kind of music haha.

ah the fine life! (:

Here's the menu.. taken with my iphone. (:

The sauces: Blue cheese, Mushroom, Red wine & Bearnaise. My favourite was the Truffle Bearnaise! (:

it was sooooo goood!

My Australian Ribeye. It's the best of all the 5.. And oh-so-succulent!

I forgot what was this hahah but we tried 4 out of the 5 different cuts - T-bone, Prime Rib, Ribeye & Wagyu Rump. Eric enjoyed his T-Bone, but I felt that they were all too tough. :(

Sauteed Mushrooms om nom nom nom ;D

Grilled tomato with cheese.. I didn't try this..

Cream Spinach.. Another awesome side. =D

Barossa Salad.. I also didn't eat this lol.

Overall it was a very pleasant experience except that some of my steaks came a little too well done. :( But the service staff there is really nice, and they understand the importance of getting the beef right. I had to send my second round ribeye back to the kitchen twice!! Coz it was super overcooked. Like medium well, instead of medium rare.. yuck. But it was definitely worth the wait and Eric and I left the restaurant as happy fatties. =D

Last shot in the restaurant (:

zipai outside wahahah..

zipai myself too lols.

thank you dear for the super yumsss dinner!  ♥♥♥!

Barossa
22 Lorong Mambong, Singapore 227681
Opens daily: Monday to Friday 12pm – 3pm, 6pm-1am (Fridays 2am); Saturday 12pm – 2am; Sunday 12pm – 1am
Tel: 6468 4688

Samsung EX2F

I bought a new camera. =C

I didn't really need one.. My old one was working just fine except that the light sensor is a little bit faulty for the manual modes. =/

I first saw a picture of this last week and I was very tempted by the F1.4 feature. I loveddd the F1.8 on my old camera and was so excited that this was further enhanced! 

I actually went to the Comex IT fair to check out tripods, and thought of going to the Samsung booth to play around with the camera and check out the price. I was wow-ed away by the new features such as the wifi connectivity. And I was really really really glad they kept everything good about the previous model, exactly the same! The super convenient swivel screen, dual knobs, more smart filter modes and post picture editing on the camera.

And get this, the Comex IT fair was selling the camera $100 off the original retail price of $699! When I first bought the older model, I couldn't even get such a good offer! I went to 3 stores, and decided to buy from the one with the best offer: 8GB C10 sd card, 32GB C10 sd card, extra battery, mini tripod, large tripod, power bank. And when I paid with my posb card, i redeemed a $10 H&M voucher heehee. =D

I'm super pleased with my purchase! Been playing with it non-stop these 2 days. And I decided to give my old one to my Jie since she doesn't really have a camera of her own to use.

(: (: (: 

If you are interested to find out more about the EX2F, check out this review! (:

Gold Coast day 2!

I'm suffering from the I-have-too-much-to-write-so-I'm-not-blogging syndrome. Lol! Seriously, I have way too much to say about everything that we did in Gold Coast.

As we were so tired after our flight, not to mention the minor 2 hour jet lag, we were unable to get up bright and early to go to the Arts & Crafts market at Kurrawa Park, Broad beach.

We had yummy home made eggs & bacon, toast and baked beans for breakfast. It was the start of many home made breakfasts to come (which I would grow sick of by end of our trip).

The Arts & Craft market was interesting at first, with so many things atypical of your usual fare on sale. Most commonly spotted were shops selling handmade scents, soaps & candles. Apparently it's a lucrative business there. Other interesting shops included the fudge shop (which Jie bought 3 diff flavours at $4.50 apiece!), leather accessories (where Tricia and I got 3 for $20 :D), and really cuteee butterfly decorations! ♥

After the Arts & Craft market, we went straight to Harbourtown to get our outlet shopping onzz heehee. We stopped by Optus and topped up Tom's sim card, as well as get another card for dad to download data on his ipad.. And suddenly we were connected to the rest of the world! =D The stupid hotel charges a bomb for only 2GB of wired data. So stupid right?! Especially in this era of readily accessible free wifi.

We first grabbed a quick meal in Habourtown.There was a restaurant selling Western Lunch specials for $8.90 only! We shared 3-4 sets I think. The portions are huge in Australia... And after lunch it was 1.5 hrs of shopping to cover the WHOLE Harbourtown area. Seriously not enough time. I picked up a map and went circle-circle-cross-cross on the places that I wanted to go, and the places that I would give a miss.

All in all, my shopping was not so successful. I bought biscuits from Crabtree & Evelyn and one top for A$9 from esprit. (I didn't bring enough clothes so i desperately needed a spare top!) And it was time to go.. :(

We were headed for SpringBrook National Park. Mum, however, elected to stay and have Tiffany send her back later at night. It was a such a long drive there! And we were stuck behind this slow poke with no chance of overtaking him! >_<

After asking for directions and getting additional maps from the local fudge store, we finally made it to the "Best of All Lookout". You'd think they could come up with a more interesting name right?!The view was pretty spectacular and we could see really really far! I have no sense of estimation of distance so really really far basically is the farthest description I can think of heh.

As it was winter, the sun would set really early and dad wanted to make it back before dark. He didn't want to get lost in a foreign land in the dark. So we only managed to go to 2 lookouts before rushing back to Surfers Paradise. =/

We got Dion & Tiffany to bring us to this place called "Peter's Fish Market". Eric had researched gold coast already and found a lot of good reviews of this place. Tricia and I opted for the simple Fish & Chips, and mum and dad ordered those mixed sets + a lot of fresh cold prawns. Unfortunately, I didn't think the food was any fantastic. The oysters though, were gooooood. We had to pay 60cents for an additional lemon coz they gave only 1 tiny slice for 12 oysters. So ngeow right zzz..

My blog entries are getting shorter and shorter coz I've forgotten most of what happened hahah. May eventually do a few quick summaries then upload the pictures. Like i said.. Shit loads of pictures. X_X