Zhong Hua Steamboat, 中华火锅, 拉面 @ Bugis

A meetup with the besties like finally! :) Can't believe the very last time we met was at my housewarming which happened last year September. Time really flies and it's 2015!

So this is like our first meetup in 2015. We decide to have the old school type of steamboat because it's been ages since we ate steamboat together. We've been talking about this for the longest possible time but didn't fulfill it.

Esther and I were early so we went to Liang Seah street to look around and decide which steamboat restaurant we should dine it at. We totally lost touch on which are the nicer ones around because they all look the same to us! 

We eventually decided on 中华火锅, 拉面 because the waiter is very welcoming (we went toilet first and asked him to reserve a table for us and he kept his word lol) and the price is within our budget :) 

The front of the steamboat restaurant. It's actually located just directly below beach hotel. Esther is talking to the waiter to ask him reserve seat when I took this photo lol. 

We chose the tom yum soup base and chicken soup base. 

The tom yum soup base is really spicy and we requested for them to add the chicken soup into the tom yum soup when they came to refill the soup base for us. That's to make it less spicy for us.

The variety of the food as below: 

The raw food

More raw food! They do have more but I didn't took more photos of it. 

They served cooked food too.

We took turns to take our food. And this is what it looked like after the first round! 

Clairey and me! 

Some group shots to end this post...

We had a very chilly steamboat that day as the weather was really cooling. Overall, I find the steamboat really nice and affordable. We paid $23 nett each, free flow food and drinks!

I admit that I have not try Jpot or Hai Di Lou before because I find them too costly. I do feel that old school steamboat is still the best :)

After so many years, we still feel happy to be going back to the good old liang seah street to have steamboat. Afterall, I do feel that they are the ones who started the staemboat craze back then. :) We went to have desserts afterwhich and I shall blog it some other day then.

 中华火锅, 拉面 @ Bugis 

95 Beach Road #01-01 s189699 (Beach Road)

Review: Citrus Zinger Flavor Infuser

A short review on the Xmas present from Derp.

We don't have the habit of exchanging gifts for xmas and could probably make do with it (same goes for other events like anniversary and etc). He was shopping for the gift exchange happening on our first xmas home party so he happened to chance upon this thing which I've been wanting for long. And if you're wondering what it is, it's the Citrus Zinger Flavor Infuser! There's too many health benefits around the internet about infused drink hence I'm tempted to try. 

I didn't expect him to remember it because it's been months since I mentioned this to him. 

I myself have already forgotten about this and decide I can made do with a normal water bottle and just throw in some fruits and let it soak then. *cheapo way*. 

I've tried using strawberries for a period of time and I think it work fine without using infuser type of water bottle.You know when you go to restaurants and you are being served lemon water, it's also done using a normal type of water jug/bottle and let the lemon slice soak.

Now I've the Citrus Zinger Flavor Infuser, the first fruit I tried was orange! Since I find it weird to cut a slice of orange and then soak it in ice water because of it's pulps.

The instructions are all printed on the packaging. Basically. 1) Press, 2) Twist, 3) Infuse 

That's how it look like and I do think it's quite big to bring to office to and fro everyday. I might consider dumping it in office and make the infuse drink everyday oh well shall see how it goes~

Till date, I've only tried it with Orange. The very first time, my orange were too big and it couldn't be squeeze in. :( I've to go back and get smaller oranges then. 

Finally able to prepare some infuse drink after getting the right-size orange. 

Before sending in to the fridge to get chilled.

The very next day!

The taste is just what I expected, ice water with slight orangey taste.

I do find the taking out of the fruit after infusing  a little difficult. Very often, I find myself using much force to force the fruit out before washing the whole bottle. This is so especially when the size of your lemon/orange is very close to the diameter of the bottle.

Other than that, the quality of the bottle is very good.

Other than using orange and lemon, you can also add strawberries at the top part so you will get a mixture. Using strawberries is definitely more fuss free as compared to lemon and oranges!

No idea how long I will use this for and I won't be surprise if I go back to making infuse drink via the cheapo way. Because it's easier to just dump fruits into the water bottle straight as compare to using the infuser bottle.

Oh well, no matter which method you used to get infuse drink, I believe all are beneficial to your body so keep it up :) Yay to healthy living!

Xmas Home Party 2014

#throwback to Xmas 2014 when I had my first xmas party at the new home! 

It was a fun filled night with yummy food, gifts exchange, log cake and alcohol. This group of Derp's friends have been with him since the good old army days, helped him out in his proposal and also attended our ROM. And the soon to be customary wedding!

They have witnessed our major life events and now our housewarming cum xmas party. Our first xmas party was held on the weekend before Xmas. 

This is the red wine and white wine we bought prior to the event. 

All of us finished the bottle of red wine that night because it was oh-so-good (one of the better ones I drink to date, easily beat those I drink at weddings). Derp and I settled the white wine on the actual xmas eve and new year eve. I'm so gonna hunt down the red wine again :)

On the xmas party day, we went to had our lunch and also to get a log cake for the event. A Christmas party is not complete without log cake!

I started prepping to air fry the fries and also nuggets 1/2 hour before the expected arriving time of the guests. But most of them were late! 

My cajun fries. 

I bought the cajun spice (in a bottle form) on the day itself to test it out. It's really yummy and I've been making cajun fries since then. It taste good even without having to dip chilli sauce. 

The spread of food on the table. 

Derp ordered 100 pieces of chicken wing/dumlets Four Fingers from Food Panda. They were prompt in delivery and it arrived half an hour earlier (Derp ordered the food in advance and gave them instructions to deliver at a specific time). As expected at every housewarming (after having 5 housewarmings), we hardly have any guests that are on time. 

The chicken wings/drumlets got quite soggy by the time most of the guests were here. 

Derp and I decided to throw it into the airfryer and re-fry it to see if it's crispy again. After putting it into the airfryer for 8 mins or so, it did turned out better. In the end we send in batch by batch to re-cook the chicken wings/drumlets. Those who were came even later (close to 10pm) were the lucky ones!

Another food pic!

The xmas tree at our house is finally filled with presents :) 

The guys chilling around our room with full blast air con before the gifts exchange session. I do admit that night was quite hot! 

The exchange present session started quite late and it started because one of them has to leave soon.

Derp is the first one who star the ball rolling 

All the gifts after unwrapping! You can spot some really lame stuff there lol.

And it's time for logcake :) 

We were deciding between this red velvet cake or the traditional log cake and they are priced the same. But we eventually settled on this as we hardly get to eat red velvet cake :) The decoration is very cute too. 

2 of them left first and the party continue till midnight. We drank Bailey's Hazelnut which doesn't look like alcohol at all. It looked exactly like milktea lol. We also ate Pat and Stick's sandwich ice cream which were bought by 1 of them. It's soooo nice and everyone had different flavour. There were some leftover for us to slowly indulge in it hehe. 

So so nice but it's really expensive! $6.90 each and it's only sold at Providore. 

One of the leftover ice cream flavour were the Peppermint Chocolate Chip and this has got to be the nicest peppermint ice cream I ever ate. I'm never a fan of peppermint but this is probably the only one I accept till date.

The aftermath of the party. 

Last photo of this entry has defintely got to be this..

A group picture with everyone! 

I'm definitely more than willing to organize a xmas gathering again for this great bunch of friends. 

Not sure we will be jetting off to our honeymoon at the end of the year, but even if that's the case I still hope to organise a early xmas meetup with the same group of people again :) More than okay to do all this before the arrival of additional family member!

Afterall it's your own place, and friends can just chill out till late as long everyone is happy.

Next event happening at the new place has got to be CNY :) Have already start prepping for it because it's offically less than a month from now. Looking forward to it!

Rochor Original Beancurd @ Selegie Road

Saturdate with Derp to run errands for our wedding prep! A need to go to Art Friend to get some art related stuff. I used to frequent that place very often during the good old uni days and same goes for Derp. 

Nothing new for us and Rochor Original Beancurd @ Selegie Road is always part of the itinerary whenever we are near that area :)

#OOTD - Wearing a old piece from FMTP for a casual day out

The Art Friend @ Peace Centre close at 4pm on a Saturday hence we rushed down upon knowing that. We gotten our stuff quite quickly and we cross the road to have tau huay! 

They are just 1 road apart and the Art Friend @ Peace Centre used to be located at the same building as the bean curd. No idea since when they shifted though. The very last time we went there was in 2012 for a photoshoot @ Cheezz Studio.

The shop front. 

There wasn't much people on a late afternoon hence we manage to get a seat outside the shop front. They have more seats on top but to take your food and climb up and down the stairs is pretty risky. I do remember the steps of the stairs is quite steep.

Our orders which is not little at all! It was meant to be a high tea. We ended up having our dinner pretty late that day.

I definitely prefer the tau huay here over the one at Jalan Kayu. Not sweet and it's very 'q'. But oh well, both of them are traditional tau huay so I like them all :) 

Rochor Original Beancurd @ Selegie Road

2 Short St (Selegie Rd), 188213

Review: Xiaomi Mi Band

Xiaomi's Mi Band has been added to my collection of Xiao Mi gadgets. I bought my first Xiao Mi phone and portable battery last year and just lately I bought their Mi Band. 

It was meant as a Christmas gift to Derp. I also bought one for myself since it's not that expensive as compared to those similar bands produced by big brands. A Mi Band only cost SGD $19.99. No harm trying it out :)

I told myself if I wear it for one month consecutively it's already considered as good enough and value for money.

I will first talk about the hardware of this Mi Band.

It comes with this USB cable for you to charge the mi band to your computer. The battery lasts up to 30 days after every charge.

After wearing it for a week (I took it off during bathing time even though it's water resistant), the back of the band start to turn white. 

It can be scratched off quite easily and the reason behind my band turning white is due to sunblock! No idea why too but oh well, at least stains can be easily removed so I think it shouldn't pose much a problem.

The recommended number of steps to take each day is 8000 and so I set my daily target to be 8000. You can set up to 20k steps if I did not remember wrongly. They have this light indicator to indicate how far you are from your goal everyday. You can set the color of the light too and I set mine to pink! 

2 lights means you are almost reaching your daily target.

And this will means I've reached my daily target.

When you have reached your daily target, it will vibrate and the lights will blink to inform you. It's not difficult to reach 8000 steps and achievable whenever I go for a more than 2km run after a day of work. 

Anyway, I wore my Mi Band to my yoga lesson and I do wonder how it will turn out. So here's a screen shot of it..

19:44-20:00 is the time I walk to my yoga lesson venue. I didn't took that long to walk because it's around 5 mins away only, rest of the time I'm probably hanging around and it's being recorded. 

From 20:15 to 21:08 is when I'm doing my yoga. Before that I'm probably warming up hence no much walking about too. Can't believe that just walking from front of the yoga mat to the back of it for that 1 hour I walked nearly 373m. lol.

After which, I walked home again and the steps are being recorded.

I bought the Mi Band mainly to track my sleeping pattern. I've always wanted to find out how much sleep I'm getting and whether are they deep sleep or light sleep. Did some research and found out if your alarm rings when you are in deep sleep, chances of you finding hard to wake up is very high! No wonder some days I feel extremely tired the moment I open my eyes.

Moving on to the downside of the Mi Band. There's one downside of this Mi Band which I think it's common among other similar type of bands in the market. If I leave It there too long, they will think I went to sleep and start recording my sleeping pattern.

Forgot to wore it after I bathe and this is what happen. -_-".

Another time was after I woke up in the morning, I brushed my teeth and took out this band before bathing. The Mi Band recorded me as going back to sleep -_-",

In short, whenever you are not doing anything or just leave it there, it will record you as sleeping.

Below are some of the other interfaces of the Mi Band app which I installed onto my IPhone (yes Mi Band do work with iphone and at least ios 7 if I'm not wrong)..

You are required to key in your weight, height and age at the start so that they will be able to count the calories you burn through your activities. Not bad eh, I burned 404 daily lol. In order to lost one Kg you need to burn 500kcal a day! 

The app has a page to show the battery life of the Mi Band

Earlier on I was talking about setting your daily steps goal and the color of the light indicator you want it to be. This is the page which you can set your daily goal, and the color of the light indicator all on this page too. 

That's all for my review of the Mi Band.

All in all, I think it's a good buy and it is value for money. The app for the Mi Band is very user friendly and not difficult to use at all. It may not be very precise because Derp tried moving his hands, the steps count did increase even though he was seated while doing so to test the Mi Band.

We wore it out for our run before and it's actually quite accurate in counting the amount of steps we took. If you are looking for something not complicated, you can try out the  Mi Band :)

For more information about the Mi Band, you can go to http://www.mi.com/sg/miband/ Do note that only the black color Mi Band are being sold here for the time being. 

Nene Chicken @ Seletar Mall

I first tried Nene Chicken @ Star Vista in 2013 and I didn't really had a good experience back then. It was mainly due to the very little seats they have at that outlet. The food we ordered that time was so-so and I didn't really look forward to going back there again. 

Just recently, they opened a outlet @ Seletar Mall which is so close to me. I went to take a look and to my surprise the outlet is actually quite big. Much bigger than the one at Star Vista and could probably sit up to 20 people or more. 

One of the weekends, Derp and I decide to give them a chance again. We had a late lunch there after our weekly grocery shopping.

The menu

I don't understand why they didn't print this menu up and place it on the board on top so that everyone can see. Instead, you can only see this detailed menu when you are about to order your food. Some people will take a long time to decide what to eat as it's their first time having it which in turn jam up the queue. 

This time round we ordered something different from the other time. The other time we ordered the 2 piece chicken (freaking hot) and I couldn't finish it because it was too spicy! We had the tenders meal this time round. Tenders meal is for those who want to eat boneless chicken meat. 

The flavours we choose were Green Onions (the one on the top which has little wasabi taste in it) and Spicy (more towards sweet and spicy) 

We also changed the side dish to coleslaw. The default side dish is pickled radish which we find it not really nice or maybe we can't appreciate it haha. 

This tender meal cost $9.95 each. I think it's not bad, the chicken is soft enough but perhaps if you are a love spicy chicken then don't go for this because none of them are spicy enough. It's more for the non-spicy lover to enjoy some Nene Chicken.

On one of my off days in December, I was out for some grocery shopping and I packed Nene Chicken back home for lunch.

I only came to know they have the 6 pc double fried wings and sticks meal which is somewhat similar to that of four fingers not long ago lol. No idea why I didn't notice it on the menu when I were there the very first time.

They provided me with gloves but I still use my bare hands since I'm at home. :)

I ordered the Hot double fried chicken.

It actually taste very yummy! Slight spicy but good enough for me as I can't take too spicy food.

Though the concept is similar to that of Four Fingers, but one can still tell their difference. If you are one who always think Four Fingers queue is very long and never ending, Nene Chicken's double fried chicken is not that bad too.

Just don't order the 2 piece chicken (freaking hot) because it's really spicy! Unless you are out to challenge something spicy.

They have a on going promotion for passion card holders. I was entitled to 10% discount which in turn my meal cost less than $9. Cheaper than Four Fingers!

I will definitely go back there to have (or pack home) 6 piece hot double fried chicken again in the near future.

Nene Chicken (The Seletar Mall)

#B2-10/11, The Seletar Mall, 33 Sengkang West Avenue