But like any good Singaporean, I have been completely spoilt when it comes to food.  I must admit that an unhealthy number of hours have been spent trawling some very well-photographed Singaporean food blogs for dining ideas when I get home.  It’s quite a mental vacation, all that blog-surfing, but for now I’d like to remember how enjoyable my meal at Wo Peng was.

This meal was enjoyed quite a few months back so pardon my vague and possibly erroneous descriptions, but I assure you the use of “good” and “very good” are very accurate.  We started off with the fried fish skin which came with broth that I assumed was for dipping.  I preferred the crunchy skin without the dip.

I had come with the intention of trying the much raved about goose but unfortunately it was not in stock even though I called in advance.  The smoked duck was a pretty good substitute; I seem to recall a light tea fragrance but don’t bet your penny on this.  In fact all thanks to my hazy memory, my descriptions from this point onwards will probably rely heavily on “good”, “very good” and “yummy” so I might as well just let the pictures do the talking.

We all loved the springy sea cucumbers.
My personal favourite of the night – name-of-fish and bitter gourd.  Very well done.  My dad loved it as well.

The much-anticipated pig trotters mee hoon.  I was stuffed by the time this dish arrived (I think it was the eighth) but it was packed with so much flavour that I had to make space.  Some said it was on the salty side but I thought it was just right.

The other dishes of vegetables, egg yolk prawns, fish, and desserts were all very satisfying.  There isn’t much of an ambiance to speak of over here but it’s the food that I came for.  This is one heck of a place for well-executed and unpretentious Cantonese fare.

Now that I’m back in Singapore, there really isn’t any excuse to not give it a shot.  So, I signed up for Run350 a month ago without second thoughts.  Even if I didn’t show up on race day, my participation fee would add a small drop to the pool of funds meant to cut down on carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere.  It was a win-win situation, a deal I could not refuse.  I set a goal to finish in 52 minutes.

Fast forward to 6am on race day.  I snoozed my ultra loud alarm clock.

6.10. My mum walks into my room.  “Aren’t you going for your run?”  In my drowsiness, I think she followed up with, “But you don’t have to go if you’re tired.”  I went back to sleep.

6.15.  “If I don’t make it today, I’d be such a failure.”  With that thought I pulled myself out of bed, washed up and jumped into the bright orange Run350 vest before grabbing the car key.

7.30. Flag off by DPM Teo.  Having arrived at the starting point later than the other runners, I had to run hard from the tail of the pack to overtake the joggers on the outside before the path got congested.  It must have been the easy overtaking that gave me a false sense of confidence.  Armed with complacency,  I adjusted my pace to come in under 50 minutes.  Tall order without much training, but not impossible as I ran by the 1km mark at 4:29.

I breezed through the first three clicks in under 14 min even though I had just fought off a flu.  Four and five were ok, I didn’t stop for water.  My watch read 24:01 – good pace at the halfway mark.  At six I gave in to a few sips of 100 plus when my chest felt heavier than usual.  Breathing wasn’t as easy as I had expected and my sweat tasted of the sea.  Poor hydration prior – not good.  Seven – I stopped to walk.  Until that point, I had never stopped to catch my breath in a race before barring cramps.  With just over 15 minutes and 3000m left, I had lost the mental battle.  To motivate myself, I pushed back the goal to the original 52 minutes which I thought wasn’t a shabby timing after all.  It was around that point in time when a female runner who pushed off much later overtook me at a steady pace.  Helpless, I could only watch her disappear into the trail of male runners stretching far ahead.

At 8km, I began to pick up the pace when I realized 52 minutes was in sight.  Before I knew it, I was giving my all in a desperate bid to finish the race against myself.  I crossed the line at 50:41, half of me happy that I’d somewhat achieved my goal and the other half already beginning to plan for the next 10km race.  As I cooled down and stretched out, I did some calculations and became quite confident that with proper training and good health I would surely be able to clock a better timing.  My next goal?  48 minutes!

Nestled somewhere in the Dempsey clusters of dining establishments is a restaurant-bar that houses a German microbrewery and serves Thai food.  It may seem like an odd pairing initially, but there is no denying that good beer always goes down well with flavourful comfort food.  The three of us shared the crispy yet moist pork knuckles, the very fragrant pineapple rice served in a carved-out pineapple, a surprisingly tasty cabbage dish topped with crunchy bacon bits, barbecued squid accompanied by a delightful green piquant dip, and some juicy grilled sausages.  All of that was washed down with the popular Lager brewed in-house.

What completed the whole experience was the energetic live band who belted out not only popular English tunes, but also cheesy and cheerful Thai pop songs that had some of the Thai diners joining in the boisterous merriment.  All that on a Thursday evening?  I’m definitely coming back for more.

P.S.  If, like me, you believe that the Singaporean arts scene needs more support, W!ld Rice is one company that really deserves your attention.  For more info, look here!

At the recommendation of a foodie friend, I proposed Basilico as the venue for a birthday lunch for my brother a few weeks ago.  Because the birthday boy wasn’t available on Sunday, we settled for the Saturday lunch buffet.

This visit, I think, marks my first buffet meal in Singapore in years.  I had never been a fan of eat-all-you-cans because there was not once in my younger years when I found a buffet spread to be delicious.  The last time I recall going to a buffet was about 10 years ago when I was a juvenile secondary school boy.  That visit was to The Line and I remember being clad in my white school uniform during dinner with my parents.  Although I probably couldn’t quite appreciate good food then, I’m certain I could tell awesome from good, and good from average, and so on. 10 years on, I remember the dining experience as rather elegant because there was no crowd on a weekday and the hotel was nice. My memory leaves no trace of the food.

The trip to Basilico, however, has made me a buffet convert. Well, somewhat. I mean, I was honestly impressed with the overall quality of the spread. The cold seafood was sweetly fresh, the hams were nicely cured (although the variety was tiny), the pastas were delicious and the leg of lamb was very well-roasted. And guess what? Even the Chinese selection offered more than a handful of choices and the fried sea bass was surprisingly well done.

But, as it is with every wonderful meal because according to Thomas Keller there is no such standard as perfect when it comes to food, there was one letdown – the pizza station! I was really disappointed that there were only the Margherita and Vegetarian flavours. My brothers’ poor reviews of the former told me to leave space for other yummy looking objects. No, I was not about to try a vegetarian pizza for the first time in my life.

By the time I was done with the mains, I had to pack in stomach to finish off with dessert and cheese. Both were excellent considering this was a reasonably-priced buffet. I downed a single espresso along with cookies (of course) to stave off food coma. Looking at my watch, I found that two whole hours had passed me by unknowingly. I’ve sat down for four-hour long meals, but never a two hour buffet without feeling restless or disgusted. This was definitely something.

My only regret was not trying the Sunday brunch which, according to the telephone receptionist, comes with freshly pan-fried foie gras and roasted wagyu for just a few dollars more. I cannot believe it – I think I just had the best buffet in town!

Even though his recipe called for only 12 minutes of baking time, what I had hoped to take about an hour ended up to be almost three hours of work. I fought the butter, sugar, egg, flour and hand-chopped dark chocolate (50% and 70%) into submission because I was not equipped with any kind of an electric mixer. Then, because I only had one small baking pan on hand, I had to divide and conquer the dough. I estimated it would take me about two to three rounds of baking but the first batch of cookies proved me dead wrong.

Conjoined cookies. Oh yeah. I admit I did chuckle when I first spotted them growing towards each other in the oven, but there was another problem which wiped the smile off my face. An underlying problem – literally. Not only did I have to perform separation surgery on the siblings, nearly all of them were glued to the pan and refused to budge so I resorted to cutting them out with a knife. Now, anybody who has ever baked cookies would have noticed the missing parchment paper by now. I’ve only ever made cookies twice before (both times with some sort of lining between sheet and dough), and I totally underestimated the problem of stickiness.

Chewy on the inside cookies turned out to be empty on the inside. The only good thing about dividing the dough into a few batches was that I could avoid making the same dumb mistakes. Smaller balls of dough, greater separation between cookies and aluminium foil did the trick subsequently. Now that the small box of unevenly-sized, bittersweet deliciousness is sitting on the kitchen counter, I cannot wait to dunk the contents one by one into a bath of cold milk and savour them.

A friend asked me last night about my recent trip to Dallas with the International Student Division at Fort Sill. The conversation went like this:

S: So, how was Dallas? Was it fun?

Me: Well… Yeah. Kinda. It wasn’t as fun as I hoped. But the hotel was nice! And so was breakfast at the hotel!

S: -Laughter- Breakfast? Wasn’t there anything else?

Me: Uh… They took us to the museum which was interesting-ish…

And so ended that short exchange about Dallas. In full honesty, I thought the ISD really made the effort to make that field studies trip as enjoyable for us as they could. They took all 70 of us to the food bank where we were actually volunteered to clock in some work to help the working hungry (yes, they made us! but it all turned out well and happy), we checked out the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to see money being made which was quite cool, and basically looked around town. Overall, the trip was more educational than fun, which I guess was really the whole point.

My point, however, is that there is no better way to start the day than to have a full-blown American breakfast – I realized it really made all the difference for me over that three days. But then another revelation came to me earlier just as I was cutting up that slice of Hickory smoked ham and lavishing it with delightfully runny yoke that flowed out of my perfectly-cooked over easies. I am utterly convinced that the best way to begin any day is to first punish yourself with a kick-ass workout and then rewarding yourself with that giant serving of eggs, hashbrown, crisp and fatty bacon, buttered toast and an ice cold glass of orange juice.

I found that out only because I dragged my sleeping body out of bed at 340am to subject myself to a PT test which I was not required to take. S thinks I have OCD but I just like to balance out all that eating with a healthy dose of exercise. The good thing was that I performed quite satisfactorily and I figured out exactly which aspects of my fitness need more work. I guess knowing that I have the next five days off just makes everything even sweeter. As my American counterparts will say, “Hooah, Memorial Day weekend!”