Sweetheart Confectionary 31 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Food & Beverages.1 comment so far
Sweetheart Confectionary (I’m not sure if this is the actual name) is a chain of bread store in Singapore. They used to have a branch over at Clementi central and Dear1 would always get something from there before heading to school at NUS. I especially remember the time during my second year where I’m faced with 7 hours straight of lectures and tutorials, from 10am-5pm on Tuesdays. Totally no breaks. During that time, I would always buy a pack of 4 red bean buns or cheese buns from Sweetheart and that would last me the day’s lunch. Sadly, it closed down, for a reason unknown to me. I do not believe it is poor business becos their bread were pretty tasty.
Luckily for Dear1 and Dear2, there’s a branch of the Sweetheart stores right here in Bukit Batok. Haha… However, I dun always purchase the red bean bun from this store. Instead, I always always always buy the value-for-money 12 donut balls for $1. Gee… It’s donut ball, not donut ring! Each donut ball is about 3-4cm in diameter subjected to the dough maker’s mood. :D But it’s still very worthwhile, imagine less than 10cents per donut ball. Wow! Dear1 and Dear2 will be ordering this tasty donut balls to treat our friends. Yum.
Also, there’s the 4-in-1-pack coconut bun, also called ya-bao. ‘Ya’ is coconut in dialect, and ‘bao’ is bun in dialect. For some reason, Dear1’s parents liked that ya-bao a lot, even before we bought our house. Haha… So now, they will always buy 1 ya-bao home whenever they ‘pass by’ our place. Or sometimes, I will conveniently buy a ya-bao home if I’m returning home from one of my chalet trips. Well, I personally think the ya-bao is quite delicious too, juicy enough, but not overflowing. The bread is also soft and fluffy but not soaked with coconut juicies. And all for the reasonable price of $1. Hehe… This really is a store for cheap and good food yo!
We get our daily breakfast from there whenever possible. Of course there are other bread shops within the vicinity but by far, Dear1 and Dear2 are most satisfied with Sweetheart’s price and taste. Therefore, Sweetheart is the only non-dominated local optimal solution under the objectives of minimizing cost and maximizing taste. :D
-Dear1
Beard Papa’s Cream Puff 30 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear2, Food & Beverages.add a comment
Haha, reading through Dear1’s post about Sakura Restuarant, about the so many variety of food offered there, makes me wanna talk about food as well. Heehee..
Dear2 bought some pastries for some clients, some cheese sticks and coronet (cream puffs) from Beard Papa @ Bugis. Cheese sticks going at $1.20 per piece, buy 6 get 1 free; coronets at $1.80 (or was it $1.60?) per piece, buy 5 get 1 free. Pretty expensive snacks, but those who had tried it all gave thumbs up. Dear2 was never really a cheese cake fan, but the cheese stick was not bad, not too cheesy and not too thick. Plus, the ‘biscuit’ crust bottom layer gives the cheese cake a soft-and-salty-cheesecake-mixed-with-hard-and-sweet-biscuit. Excellent combination in taste and texture!
Dear2 didn’t manage to try the coronet, but their cream puff (going at $2.00 per piece) was really good – not too sweet or creamy cream within a fluffy sweet puff. Best served fresh and cold from the serving plate. Hmm… Nope. The ultimate taste comes from eating one cream puff together with Dear1, like when Dear1 and Dear2 first savoured our very first cream puff together. Heehee..
There’s other selections of pastries at Beard Papa, but Dear2 always find them too expensive. Of course, the fine quality of their snacks do warrant that $2+ per piece on such a tweeny cake, but perhaps the efficiency of the serving staff can be improved. Out of 5 staffs on duty, 2 were kitchen helpers, 1 was waiting for the pastries to be ready for removal from the baking oven, 1 to attend to other customers, and 1 to attend to a 60 piece order (which was mine). It took 30 min for the 1 staff to finally finish packing my 60 pieces. *Gosh* Luckily the pleasant smiles of the cute young lady saved the day, the reputation and their customers.
- Dear2
Sakura International Buffet Restaurant 29 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Food & Beverages, Nihon no koto.1 comment so far
Recently, Dear1’s boss treated the bunch of us working with him to a very much belated Chinese New Year reunion. Oh well… Anyway, the place is Sakura International Buffet Restaurant at 93A Clementi Road Clementiwood Park for those who might want to visit there. The website can be found here.
Let’s get down to the main business, food! Some of u may know that Sakura and Suki Sushi originated from the same group of companies. Dear1 and Dear2 are a big fan of Suki Sushi. Just by paying that little bit more, we’re treated to much better Japanese food at Suki compared to the relatively not tasty Sakae. Back to Sakura. If u r expecting delicious Jap food there, u will be disappointed. Becos the selection of Jap food at this restaurant is limited and they dun look visually appealing either. Plus, they’re not cold enough. Dear1 happens to think that sushi only taste good when they are cold, not room temperature.
So, what’s served is, of course, international buffet food. That ranges from various fried rice, fried mee, many many styles of meat, fish, beef and much more. The variety is definitely overwhelming. And I think the fried rice is pretty good too. Then there is all the finger food like potato wedges, nuggets, french fries, etc. And there’s dim sum as well. And surprisingly, the dim sum is not bad. Well.. not wow delicious, but not bad. Then there’s the standard desserts of ice creams (no less than 12 flavours to choose from), cakes, fruits, jelly, pizza, pasta. There’s sashimi as well, but seeing their room temperature sushi, I dared not take the sashimi. Anyway, cakes, I didn’t try the cake due to an upset stomach but a friend of mine who tried the cake claimed that it’s of low quality, but he still finish a big plate of easily 8-10 cakes. Hmm…
Ok, here’s the thing I find quite special about the place, as least it’s the first time I’m seeing it. Each table come with these little pegs numbered with ur table number. U can use these pegs to order cooked food. Their selection of cooked food includes beef steak, fried piece of salmon, grill dory, lamb chops, stir fried vege, herbal chicken soup, satay, bbq prawn, bbq various seafood types, more stir fried other vege types and so on. There’s so many to choose from and each serving is so tiny that u can eat over and over again. For the record, one peg = one stick of bbq prawn = three sticks of satay. I have to say the cooked food really taste quite nice. For those seafood lovers, I can’t comment much since I don’t really like seafood hence I didn’t order much either.
Looking at all these, I’m sure u got a picture of the variety of food that they offer there. Like I say, the variety is overwhelming. Food quality wise, I think it’s not bad. As of any buffet style restaurants, u can’t really expect top quality food for the masses. But I still say the food quality is above average and worth eating again. I do have a major complain though, that is the hygiene of the utensils. This is terrible. I frequently find oil stains on their plates and have to swap many plates before finding a suitably clean one to start gathering my food. Yucks! So I suggest u keep a look out for oily plates too.
The price is around $20 I think. I’m not paying so I dunno the prize. The buffet time is lunch at 12-2pm, yes, just 2 hours. It was pretty crowded there when we were there but we made a reservation earlier. I believe they have enough space to accomodate walk in customers. The place is just a little bit ulu. It’s located at the end of a small road just next to the Japanese Primary Sch across from NUS.
-Dear1
Cost of a Family 28 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Around the House, Dear2, Slice of Life.2 comments
Dear2 has mentioned this earlier, that the cost of setting up a family is indeed not cheap.
Let’s take a quick look at the typical monthly expenses incurred in a family:
- HDB loan $263
- SP bills ~ $50
- Telephone bill ~ $10
- Broadband bill ~ $50
- Conservancy bill $38
- Groceries ~ a few hundreds
Gosh, the typical expenses of a twosome family starts from at leat $1,000. And if you notice, even if one excludes that of groceries expenses (variable component), the bills and loans charges still rolls, that is these become the fixed expenses.
It’s high time Dear1 and Dear2 move into our flat to fully optimise these expenses.
- Dear2
First post from new house 27 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Around the House, Dear1, Internet & Blog.add a comment
This is the first post from our new house. Hohohoho… Since we successfully set up internet connection in our new house, we still dun have time to properly use it yet. Today, Dear1 and Dear2 are here in our new house on one of our ‘chalet’ trips. Really very homely here now that majority of the equippage are up. We even switched on the fridge, so now we can have an icy cold drink any time. Of course, that also meant we can buy cakes and chocolate and ice cream to store in the fridge. Yum yum.
Although the internet connection is up and running, funnily, the fixed line isn’t working. The other day, we bought an okay-looking telephone for $11.90 from Sheng Siong Supermarket for our new place. But when we plug it in, there’s no dial tone. Weird. After testing the 2 telephone plugs in our place, it’s still not working. Swapping the connection cable doesn’t help either. Since the Singtel man had already visited our place to do the line testing and everything is fine, I first suspected that the telephone itself is a faulty unit. That night, I brought the faulty telephone to my existing place and decided to give it a second chance. Surprisingly, it worked! So it’s the line problem and not the telephone problem. Looks like we have to ring up Singtel to ask their technician to come down here again.
-Dear1
Internet is up in our home 26 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Around the House, Dear1, Internet & Blog.1 comment so far
Finally, we’ve got the internet connection up and running. This an important step towards live-ability in our home because both Dear1 and Dear2 comes from an IT intensive workplace. So from now on, the study room is completely function with tables and chairs. Only thing lacking now are book shelves.
Now, we finally decided to sign up for the Singnet 1500kbps unlimited place after much consideration. The mio plan sounds problemetic from verbal feedbacks from people who signed up for it. I can’t tell for sure since I didn’t sign up for it, but it could be technical problems on the consumer side as well. Maybe it takes a more IT savvy enduser to fully ultilize the potential of mio?
So, we’re currently using a wireless modem setup in our new place. Surprisingly, we received the mio modem as the wireless modem package eventhough we signed up for the 1500kbps plan. This implies that Singnet is generally giving out mio wireless modems to anyone who signs up any boardband plan with them (minus Jetpack), regardless of mio or not. Thinking in reverse, this also implies that the mio wireless modem is no different from any ordinary wireless modem prior to the introduction of the mio plan. Which also implies that the entire implementation of the mio infrastructure requires minimum changes on Singnet side. So mio is really a new packaging of existing infrastructure and services. Haha… I think everyone knows it by now, this is old news.
Irregardless, Dear1 and Dear2 believes in getting what is more value for money and also most suitable for ourselves. No point paying for technology that u dun need. And oppotunity cost is a cost as well. If we get tied up for 3 years, and an ultra cheap plan comes along, we stand to lose. Of course, this may backfire, that’s why a critical assessment based on available information is important. I recently received an offer for upgrade for my 1500kbps plan in my old house. At the same price, I will get 3000kbps for a 2 year contract. It’s sorta like a ‘free upgrade’. Same thing applies to 512kbps -> 1000kbps for the same price. That’s why, I speculate that there will be a new price plan that will phase of 512kbps and 1500kbps, hence we signed up for 1 year contract for now.
Let’s see how this turns out.
-Dear1
UOB Wedding Show 25 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear2, Shop till you drop, Wedding.add a comment
What better way than to spend the Sunday afternoon at a wedding show? That’s what Dear1 and Dear2 both thought. Hence we decided to sign up for the UOB Card Wedding Show for this afternoon. Altogether, think there were about 3 different shows organised by UOB this season, and Dear1 and Dear2 signed up for the Swissotel Merchant Court one, cos this sounds like a probable place that we might want to hold our banquet at.
Registration starts at 1pm, and the event is expected to end at 5pm. A 4 hour showcase, so there should be something worthwhile to take back, for the $20 fee we paid as cardholders. (And I’m talking about getting more ideas about what Swissotel has to offer) Alas, eager couples were left waiting for 1hr 15 min before the emcee finally appeared at 2.15. Ok, fine… The first item was a presentation by a holiday planner. Cruise at Alaska or a 3 week scenic Europe tour. Looks like the perfect holiday plan for retirees, people who can afford to take that kind of time off work just to go for a long long holiday. The presenter had the same thinking as Dear2 obviously, cos she had to hurriedly clarify that this sort of trip is really not meant for retirees. There’s an increasing thrend of honeymooners going for such trips. Duh.
Next on the itinery, gowns showcase by Satine. Seriously, Dear2 always believe that for such public appearances by retailers, you have better bring out ALL the best that you have. How often does a retailer get to showcase his products to so many POTENTIAL buyers all at one go? But…. The gowns that were displayed looked passe… Leftovers maybe? Duh.
Next, is high tea reception time. The menu – high tea lor. After the snaking snaking queue, Dear1 and Dear2 finally had the chance to enjoy the high tea. The food was not bad, but… what about sampling the culinary skills that one can expect out of signing the wedding package?
Next on the list will be a lucky draw, but Dear1 and Dear2 didn’t even bother to stay for that.
It’s the first time that Dear1 and Dear2 attended such wedding shows, and there’ll surely be more to come. If the next wedding show is gonna be of such standard again, I’ll rather stay at home and do my online research rather than taking the effort to attend such wedding shows again.
- Dear2
Fees go up at some polyclinics 24 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Dollars & Cents, Slice of Life, Sports & Health.1 comment so far
Fees go up at some polyclinicsBy Sheralyn Tay, TODAY | Posted: 22 March 2007 1131 hrs
As hospital bills increase, some polyclinics have been raising their consultation fees as well. The hikes range between 30 cents and 80 cents.
So far, five polyclinics have revised their fees. They include four of the nine polyclinics under the National Healthcare Group (NHG) and SingHealth’s newest polyclinic at Sengkang.
At the NHG’s newly renovated Jurong Polyclinic, a consultation will now cost $8.80, up from $8, which some other polyclinics are still charging.
According to the NHG, rising healthcare costs due to inflation and increase in manpower costs, together with increased demands on the primary healthcare system, have led to the rise.
“It is a daily challenge for us to meet the demand with limited resources. It is inevitable therefore that we raise our fees gradually and after careful consideration, to ensure that we continue to provide good and affordable healthcare to Singaporeans,” said an NHG spokesperson.
Currently, SingHealth’s Sengkang Polyclinic is the only one of its nine polyclinics to increase fees.
According to SingHealth, the fees were revised since the beginning of March to reflect the polyclinic’s “enhanced” facilities for patients. These include a wider and more complete range of laboratories and X-ray capabilities as well as in-built infection control measures.
Consultation fees are now $8.70 for Singaporean adults, and $4.50 for children and senior citizens — up $0.70 and $0.50 respectively compared to all other SingHealth polyclinics.
SingHealth did not comment on the possibility of further fee increases, but indicated that they would review polyclinic fee charges over time.
Already, public sector hospitals such as the National University Hospital, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital and Alexandra Hospital have increased hospital fees and Singapore General Hospital (SGH) will follow suit from April. At SGH, subsidised in-patients in Class B2 wards will pay an extra $3 — or $53 a day — while Class C patients will pay $26 or $1 more.
It is the first time SGH has increased fees since 1993.
Fees of polyclinic going up. Haiz… How many fees increase have we seen since last year? Bus fare up, postage up, ERP up, tsk tsk. Sometimes I don’t really get it. We as consumers are the money payers. So shouldn’t we pay more when we see better services or better products? This whole thing is being reversed right now. I don’t see the unreasonably long waiting time in polyclinics improving. Instead of getting consultation and some medicine and then going home to rest to recover from whatever sickness, patients often spend half a day waiting time. And now we’re suppose to pay higher consultation fees so that their services can improve? Shouldn’t I pay more *after* they have proven to me that their services really can improve? Elusive logic they have.
-Dear1
Let’s talk about Windows 23 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear2, Reno & Furnishing.1 comment so far
Dear1 and Dear2’s cosy nest is a three room flat in Bukit Batok. As of any three room flats, it is a corridor unit. In fact, almost half of Singapore’s HDB dwellers stay in corridor units, cos that’s how you save on not having to maintain so many lifts versus the inconveniences resulting from non lift-stopping levels.
The problem with corridor units is that, privacy is very much reduced, with your neigbours passing by your windows everyday. It doesn’t help if your flat belonged to the older model of corridor, where your unit is elevated from the corridor level so that the passerby’s eye level is lower than yours inside the house. The awkwardness is even more enhanced when your unit if the one nearest to the stairway. The type of windows you use become crucial then.
There are three common types of windows – the casement type, the sliding type and the louvers type, neglecting those hybrid windows such as bottom fixed and top sliding. Obviously, casement type windows are not applicable for corridor units, cos you wouldn’t want your swinging window to hit either the passerby nor yourself. Seemingly, most Singaporeans like to have sliding windows. Now, I’m talking about using that for the windows lining the corridor. Though sliding windows are considered pretty safe, but having a sliding window means that the maximum space that one can open to is only 50% of the entire window space. Not to forget that is it 50% left-right. Imagine when a neighbour walks past, “Hi” “Bye” becomes inevitable. Most flat owners then puts up midway curtains to reduce such acquaintances, thus effectively reducing the total window space to less than 25%.
The louvers window seem to be the most efficient way to optimize window space. One can close out the bottom part to retain your privacy, and leave the top louvers open to allow air movement. Depending on the panes’ configuration, the air permeability may be as high as 40%.
HDB gave us the louvers type windows when we purchased our flat, and we didn’t change it cos we wanna cut down on cost. Till now, no regrets. Even our fellow neighbour agrees that louver type windows is the most suitable kind of window for corridor units. Cheers
- Dear2
Dinner at MacDonald’s 22 March, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear2, For Him For Her, Slice of Life.add a comment
Modern people tend to work very hard during weekdays, and play very hard during the weekends. How not to do so, when the basis of life requires one to work (hard), and still necessitates an outlet for release of those pent up stress? For Singaporeans, we were lucky that our government mandated the 5 work-day system since end 2004. Work for 5 days, rest 2 days, sounds like a much better and balanced lifestyle to our already very fast-paced society.
Thus, for the working couple now, week days become chong chong chong, and all other play and relax is saved for the precious weekend. But then we encounter the dilemma of Monday Blues – days when you dread going to work, days when you start to look forward to Friday again… That sounds like a pathetic lot.
Mindset. It is very amazing how powerful can the power of mindset be. When you choose to dwell on the blue Monday, it really appears very blue indeed. But on the other hand, if you choose to enjoy and breathe in every breath of your everyday, bingo, your life becomes so much brighter and cheery. Which choice would you adopt?
Dear1 and Dear2 had a quick dinner together just now. Both Dear1 and Dear2 coincidentally knocked off at 10pm today, and by chance happened to be able to meet each other for dinner, so we went for a simple dinner together. The meal was nothing fanciful, the venue was not fantastic, but it’s the being together with Dear1 that is all that matters.
Till Saturday is here, meanwhile we’ll cherish the moments we have together.
- Dear2
