Don't tell my mother

Was Channel surfing last night and chanced upon this on NatGeoTV – Don't tell my mother I'm in North Korea. It's a ten part series that covers world news in a different way by Diego Buñuel.


"For the past ten years Diego Buñuel has been a foreign correspondent for French Television covering all kinds of countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Congo. Every time he left for one of his stories, he would tell his production crew in the Paris office, “Don’t tell my mother I am in Colombia, it makes her really nervous.”
After a few years of traveling repeatedly, Diego realized that the international news coverage, of which he was part of, only focused on the worst headlines possible.
So Diego embarked on a rather unusual effort; to talk about countries that make headlines, but instead on focusing on the same three basic stories, he extended the reach of his eye to look at a more subtle vision of these countries, full of culture, people, interests that rise high above the daily news reports."

Pictures and text from NatGeo

Hotels, hotels and hotels

Every time when mates are coming to visit, one of the first question is: where to stay?

Unfortunately my studio apartment does not have extra bedroom and black leather sofa is not designed for sleeping either. Additionally its located at East Coast, so you need approx. 30 min by bus to get to the city.

So here some nice suggestions where to stay in Spore during your stay:

Gallery Hotel (boutique)

Park Hotel – City hall/Clarke quay

New Majestic Hotel – Chinatown (boutique)

Naumi Hotel – City Hall (boutique)

Quincy Hotel – Near Orchard Road (boutique)

Pan Pacific Orchard – Near Orchard Road

Gallery Hotel - Robertson Quay

Studio M Hotel - Nanson Road/Robertson Quay

All of these are pretty centrally located, so its more about your feelings and wallet who makes the final decision. Feel free to suggest more and/or share your experiences!

My boyfriend, Mr Herring

While the boy was away, I got him these because my friends nickname him Herring, umm or Fish.

And the next day, my partner at work chanced upon this and sent it to me. She said "Hey! Your boyfriend!"

Weekend with Sami, Sami and Sami.

We ate, drank, drank some more and ate more.

We started with dinner on Saturday at Bella Pasta at Robertson Quay. The food was generally good, except for two unlucky boys with raw pasta (big boo boo there). I had my usual spaghetti vongole which somehow was a little lacklustre compared to the last time I had it, but still yummy.

We then proceeded to Camp Pong for loads of beer. We managed to catch a couple of guys in costumes in a ping-pong tournament, which was quite cool. After we got pretty loaded, we proceeded to velvet and zouk to load up more. I remembered at one point in the cab with David, he said to me "Hey Evonne, that cab behind us, is full of Samis!" I just could not stop laughing. Everthing's funny when I am happy. Then it was all pretty blurry from there...

This Sami seemed quite happy to be a flower!?!


It's been a while since I had a hangover. I blame it on old age and the healthy dose of beer and the sudden pop of champagne. The next morning started with a nightmare of a headache, that's when my trusted Berocca came to the rescue, then back to bed again. The real day started at about 2pm. And the second cure was of course greasy food at Oriole cafe. Poika had a big fat juicy burger and I had the fish and chips. Burger was tw0-thumbs yum, fish and chips only gets half a thumb.

The guy who's afraid of light.

Yummy burger, crappy chips.

Crumbly fish and same crappy chips.

A few hours after our greasy fix, we met the Finns from last night for more food! It's no wonder why we both have such nice curves lately. We had steamboat and grill at Chuan Yi Pin at 530 North bridge road. For $20 per person, we had a table full of meat, fish, prawns, balls, etc. Arghhh too much food, not enough space!

Evidence of the other two Samis. The one with the chopsticks on the left, and the other one with the mouth wide open. And the last one has fat fingers. Too bad I didn't get a picture of three of them together.

Our 3 minute post dinner entertainment was from a pair of rainbow glasses that I got from work, which you can buy from here. Lights look awesome like these pictures through these lil paper frames.

Buko Nero

Jason reserved a table at Buko Nero a month ago. It's one of those small boutique restaurants where you'll have to make a reservation weeks in advance. Run by a husband (chef) and wife team (plus wife's mother?). We all had their 4-course set dinner plus an a-la-carte Tau-kwa Tower with Sauteed Vegetables to share.

We started with a simple spinach salad, tomato soup with crab, rigatoni with meat sauce and a really beautiful chocolate cake with caramel. Poika promised me his dessert, but of course went "Oops it was so small I finished it. Umm sorry." It was more like it was super yummy, you forgot you don't like sweets!

We loved the food, the wine and the price. Paid about $85 per person. The set dinner was at $48++ which was really reasonable. I want to be in Jason's good books so I that I'll be guaranteed my spot in his Table-for-6 booking next month.

Sorry no pictures. Forgot.

We're kinda lagging in posts lately coz we really haven't been doing very much together. Poi was away in Tokyo two weekends ago for work while I was here catching up on home stuff (and trying not to be too jealous about not roaming the streets of Shinjuku). Poika did make me feel a whole lot better when he spoiled me with many many gifts. And last week, I was sick therefore could not join him while he partied away at Stereolab :(

But we did manage to squeeze in time for the very much talked-about movie, Inception, with a few friends. It was a good movie. Very much worth getting my ass to the cinema for, so catch that if you haven't.

And what's getting us excited the past couple of days is our China trip in September. Our friends, Gloria, John and David should be joining us and we are really happy about that! Gloria and John used to live in Beijing and they are totally in love with it, so we are looking forward to loads of great food and sights. Plus I am really glad that I'll be taken off the role of being the lead 'communicator'. My mandarin is a disgrace, so yay to Gloria and John. And yay to David as well, greedy boys are always good to have around, especially when we are eating chinese :) So excited! excited! excited!

Oh and I just realised that we are going to see a couple of famous dead bodies in the next few months... Ho Chi Minh's in Hanoi and Mao's in Beijing. Pretty cool spooks!


And to get myself more excited about the trip, I am reading this...

A world without lies

We both have been sick for the past few days. Poika's quite a bit sicker than I am, so the only 'fun' we had really was this movie we watched in bed, The Invention of Lying, a film with Ricky Gervais and Jennifer Garner. The funny thing was, we had a really long chat over the weekend about God and religion. I can't help but think that this film is a response to our long discussion.

Oooh crabs!

Greedy souls: Jason, David, Sancia, Li li, Sami, O2 and Evonne

Yesterday's dinner was part 2 of Eat-with-Jason Food Tour. We met up at 5.30pm at Eng Seng Restaurant (247 Joo Chiat Place), you run a risk of the crabs being sold out if you go any later.



We stuffed ourselves silly with yummy black pepper and chilli crabs, Mee Goreng (spicy seafood fried noodles), pork ribs, sweet and sour pork, venison, dough fritters stuffed with seafood paste and vegetables with scallops. The black pepper crabs were indeed deserving to be the star dish. It's very sweet and spicy and somewhat creamy and smooth, like caramel. It's totally unlike any other black pepper crab I had tasted in Singapore. Super yumz and very pocket friendly!

Sancia could not resist cleaning dirty Jase

After our very satisfying dinner, we proceeded to a bar by the beach, 1twentysix, for some relaxing Sunday night drinks, and not so relaxing but highly entertaining conversations about procreation with Jason.

Underdogs rules!

World Cup 2010 has been the tournament of the underdogs so far. Lot of "big" countries are out, including my favorite Azzurri. Personally I like this coz matches are more fun to watch and lot of drama involved. Specially in newspapers day after.


Friday evening. Holland - Brazil. Beer. Noisy bar. Perfect set-up. We dragged ourselves to Chijmes where huge old courtyard was packed with orange people, underdog attitude and right atmosphere.


Bye-bye Brazil. Welcome 20 bucks.

Lots of sweaty men caged up, running after a ball

A group of boys have decided to gather every so often to kick a ball in a cage at East Coast Park. Seems like fun for them coz they are intending to do this on a weekly basis for 2 hours each time. Boring as hell for me, coz they they are sweaty, smelly and so not very cute. While waiting for Poika, I just go for my long run by the beach...blah