Out of snacks

We used to stock up on a lot of snacks whenever we go NTUC. I think at one point of time, there was too many snacks. We have Kinder Bueno and Kit Kat in the fridge. Siew mai, Tang yuan, Taiwan sausages. Maltase, Bin bin rice crackers, chewy candy, Honey Star. Calebee potato chips (6 packets), fried fish balls, Nachos, Lays. We just have a lot of snacks at home. Realizing that snacking isn’t good for health, especially snacking after 11pm while watching tv. It really will help put on a lot of weight. So we decided that we’ll cut down on snacks and not buy any more. That was a few weeks ago.

Suddenly, these few days, when we were so hungry and craving for food at night, we couldn’t find any. They’re all gone. All the snacks, all gone! What’s left is a few Maltase balls and a handful of Honey Stars. As we greedily munch on the last bits of snacks, we realized that we’re really totally out of snacks. Wow… Thinking back, we’ve really ate quite a lot, and probably put on a few hundred grams along the way. Was this a good news or a bad news? Good news becos we’ve been determined and did not replenish our snacks, hence resulting in this snack-less state. Or bad news because we really have nothing left to eat anymore.

I think not much of a debate here, it’s a good news. Health is always number one yo. Besides, being health looks good too, we get to become slimmer and toner. Coupled with our running training, we should be in pretty good shape. Gee… But then, I think it’s also important to have some snacks at home. Sometimes, it’s not the hungry. Or rather, it was never about the hungry. Just feel like eating something, mouth itchy. Otherwise, it would few so uncomfortable that we can’t get a good night’s sleep. So I think the solution to this is to eat healthy snacks at night. Haha… Oxymoron, healthy snacks. Ok, we’ll try to keep a look out for healthy snacks from now on. Quaker Oat Crackers may be a possible start. Yum yum.

-Dear1

Singapore Bay Run in 1hr40min

Phew… Run is over yesterday, and today Dear1 and Dear2 is feeling the effects – aching thigh muscles. This only goes to prove one thing, we lack training! 頑張って！

We woke up early at 4.45am, preparing for the flag off at 7am. Next, we manage to catch the first bus from Bukit Batok bus interchange at 5.30am and arrive at 6.10am at Suntec City. It was a good thing to arrive at Suntec becos the toilets there are quieter, and we can relief ourselves before the actual run. Arriving at the floating platform, the baggage counter is easy to find and well organised. That made us look forward to a well organised race. We decided to consolidate our belongings and deposit just one bag, with Dear2’s race tag. That’s becos the ladies participants are lesser in number and hence we can expect a shorter queue when we collect our baggage after the race. Now, on to the race! The start point is quite a distance away though, so we spent the next 10mins slowly making our way there.

Beeeeeeeep! There goes the whistle/horn and off we go, keeping in mind our target of 1hr30mins. The first 3km or so was pretty smooth, although we were a bit on the slow side and many people overtook us. Actually, the NSF who were running the race irritated me quite a lot, becos they were running all over the place, recklessly overtaking people and squeezing through gaps between people. It can become quite frustrating when people brush pass u, rubbing their sweat on ur arms and finally end up right in front of u, disrupting ur pace.

Next came the dreaded Sheares bridge climb. Oh no… Dear1 and Dear2 has never trained for climbing before so this is the first time we’re running such a long distance uphill. Ok, brace ourselves and start running. It turns out that this is really a never ending bridge. Climb climb climb and yet there’s more to climb. After many many agonizing minutes, we were finally on top. But there’s yet another challenge, the sloping road surface. In the direction that we’re running, the left side of the road is significantly higher than the right side of the road, probably due to the road design to counteract the outward centripetal force of the turning cars on the curved sections of the bridge. But this slope turns out to be bads news for Dear1. I think due to some mismatch in my running posture with regards to the sloping, my right foot was aching badly by the time we descended the bridge.

Dear2 was also feeling tired from the bridge climb and so we sought the next water point where we could take a short break. At around 7km+, we found that water point. Surprisingly, there’s no water point on the bridge. But on hindsight, this turns out to be a logical decision. Since it was a major road, the event organizer would want to open it up ASAP. Without water points, no time would be waste to clean up the road before opening it up again. That’s my guess. Anyway, checking our stopwatch, it’s 1hr02min. If we assume a consistent pace throughout, based on our target, we should be passing the 7km mark at 52min30sec. Oh no… we werer late, but really tired. So we continued walking for a short while and only picked up running around 8km+.

But Dear1 started to feel cramps coming up on the calves, probably rested for too long. After around 1km or so, we stopped at another water point to relax the muscles Feeling better, we picked up running again around 9km+. At this time, Dear2 is in good condition and decided to give it her all for the rest of the distance. And so Dear2 widen her steps and started overtaking runner after runner in front of her. Dear1 thought that the pace was a little bit too fast to sustain for the remaining distance, but after a while of keeping up, also felt that the pace is sustainable. Hence, from that moment, we started to challenge ourselves to maintain the faster pace, overtake many people and finish the race in good time.

The final stretch was mentally straining. Having looked at distance markers after distance markers, we knew we were getting nearer but yet still far away. Probably it’s a mental thing, but the distances just seemed longer and longer. Turning into Raffles Ave (I hope I got the road name right), with the floating platform on our left, we saw the ‘Finish’ arch. So happy. Mustering our tired legs, we pressed on towards the finish line. Suddenly, there’s a sign that pointed us to the left, into the floating platform! Urgh… With the finish line in sight, it turns out that it wasn’t our finish line. But our finish line couldn’t be that far away right? It must be just round the next corner. One left turn and one right turn later, running between the performing platform and seating gallery, we saw our finish line, less than 50 metres ahead. Picking up our pace, we aligned ourselves side by side and crossed the ChampionChip mat under the finishers’ arch together. Good run, Dear2!

Our time turns out to be 1hr40mins, 10mins shy of our target timing. This goes to show that we’re not training enough and in our current condition, we’re still a far reach from the 42km this year end. Let’s work hard together towards the year end run dear. 3 more months and counting.

-Dear1

Epilogue: We’re currently watching the anime series “Hajime no Ippo”. In one of the episodes when Miyata is about to face Jimmy Sisfer in Thailand, Chana asked him, “Why do you box?” “Is boxing fun?” On a similar note, we ask ourselves,

“Why do we run?”

“Is running fun?”

Target timing for Singapore Bay Run

Singapore Bay Run is fast approaching, it’s this coming Sunday, that’s 4 days from now. I think we need to set a target for ourselves dear. Looking back, we completed last year’s StanChart 2006 half marathon in 2hr50mins. That’s about 170mins/21km = 8.09 mins/km, which means we should be able to complete this time’s 12km in (12×8.09=) 97mins or 1hr37mins.

On a more recent note, we completed the Passion Run 2007 in 40mins. That’s 40mins/5km = 8 mins/km, which extrapolates to (8×12=) 96mins or 1hr36mins. That’s surprisingly similar to our estimate using last year’s run. On the bright side, we’re rather consistent. On the darker side, however, that means we haven’t improved at all! Urgh…

We don’t have an estimate from the Mizuno Wave Run 2007 becos of the horrible route condition and route marshalling. So judging from the above estimates and our recently training which hit 7km last week, our target timing for Singapore Bay Run this time will be a modest 1hr30mins.

Let’s work towards this target together dear. First of all, we need a stopwatch, gotta find a working one otherwise we need to buy one. We haven’t been timing our runs all these while, so I think it’s time we start working on improving our timings, and prepare ourselves for the year end marathon event. Fit and healthy!

-Dear1

Some more home living with Morries

Yup, some more Morries. Haha… Interesting mah. Where got blog keep a catalogue of home appliances like this one? Ok lah, this time only got 2 products. Next time, I won’t make any new Morries posts unless I can accumulated more than 3 new product photos.

First up is an oven toaster for $79.90. Picture is taken at Courts at AMK. I was quite surprise when I saw this product becos firstly, it’s the first time I’m seeing it, truly a new product. Second, its a bit of deviation from the usual white background with red spots cover design. This one is border by dark blue outlines and a somewhat more elegent lines and choice of fonts. It feels classier and just a little bit more up market compared to its usual designs. This oven toaster looks like it’s capable of some heavy duty roasting and cooking compare to its smaller cousin from the link above.

Next is a 16 inch stand fan found at NTUC Clementi (again). It’s very similar to this other Morries fan covered in an earlier post. From what I can tell, the only differences are some asethetic changes in remote control and fan body and the price, $49.90, slightly more expensive than the previoius model.

No more Morries for the time being. :)

-Dear1

Even more home living with Morries

The Morries products coverage is back! Remember the previous three Morries posts? With NTUC at Clementi topping up their stocks and me going there weekly to buy 4D, I have the chance to take some pictures of some of their new products. Well… the products may not be new in the market, but new in NTUC. Let take a look at some of them now.

First up is the tower fan at $39.90. The first time I saw this, I was like wow! That is pretty cheap for a tower fan, cheap even in the budget range. We’ve went shopping for fans before and tower fans are normally in the range of $50 and above. But then, the design of this tower fan doesn’t really appeal to me and it doesn’t really go well with our decor.

Next is a single hotplate at $59.90. Hmm… hefty price, I wonder what it is. From the picture, I’m suspecting a type of portable induction cooker plate kind of thing. But Dear2 thinks that it’s just a hotplate for keeping things warm, which sounds reasonable as well. Guess we won’t find out until we read the installation guide inside, which just means that we’ll never find out. :P

In the third picture, you will find an electric oven toaster for $36. As the name implies, it’s an oven toaster, meaning that u cannot bake cakes and cookies with it. Not suitable for us. Dear2 really wants a conventional electric oven for baking, which typically costs around $200 and above for a good one. This type of toaster oven is more for heating up overnight food, crispy-ing some nua-ed pastries and probably can be used to toast some taiwan sausages. I’ve seen my mum use such a toaster oven to steam fish though. She wraps the fish with all the seasonings in aluminium foil and put it into the toaster for 10-15mins, and it really works! Seasoned cooks knows how to exploit cookware best. But the thing with this kind of toaster is that u can’t control the temperature.

Now, last on the list is an electric multi-pan at $33. Hmm… Suspicious. If u remember, the 2litre 2-in-1 steamboat cum hotplate costs $45. And I’m sure this electric multi-pan is larger than 2litres in capacity. Why is it so cheap? Maybe due to poor demand. After all, it sports a really typical design and the box art looks like it’s made quite some years back during the electric steamboat pop era, around 2002/2003 or so. So for all we know, it may be leftover stock. The trend nowsdays is more towards smaller but multi function cookers with steamboat and hotplate and steamer.

Until next time.

-Dear1

Our new Grono Lamp

Following our visit to Ikea and purchasing a cracked Grono Lamp, we had to bring it back for an exchange. Sigh… wasted transportation fees add up to about $5, which means that we paid an unnecessary extra amount of money for something that isn’t our fault. Seriously, if I purchased a faulty item from a retailer, shouldn’t it be their responsibility to bring a good item to us, instead of us to them? Or do they expect all their customers to unwrap and open up all the items before paying? Or maybe open it up while standing around the stall entrance just after paying? Especially for Ikea, where many of the items require assembly before any defects can be spotted, shouldn’t they care more about the customers and delivery a replacement item to the customer’s doorsteps? If they’re worried about prank calls, then a photo of the faulty item emailed to their customer service officer should suffice. Anyway, on to the story.

I reached Ikea at around 7pm and went directly to the customer service counter. I took a queue number and waited. Service was pretty fast and that keep my mood up. After some explanations, I had no problem getting my refund voucher at all. But the thing is, the Ikea staff will not bring me a new replacement of the lamp. Instead, I’m expected to go through the entire showroom again and re-purchase a replacement lamp using the voucher that I’ve just received. Ok… fair enough, taking into account that the Ikea spirit is to let the customers do everything themselves (assembly, delivery, self service restaurant, clearing ur own plates), this sounded reasonable enough.

So off I went to collect my new Grono lamp. I paid for it using the redemption voucher and for safety’s sake, I brought it back to the customer service counter and requested that they open it up for me and make sure the lamp inside is a good one. And luckily *luckily* I did that. It happens that this replacement lamp is cracked as well. OMG! At that moment, I was think like how many lamp are broken in a single shipment, how can this happen, where is the QC? So I had to go through the whole process again, get a redemption voucher and walk back in the get yet another lamp. Sianz…

This time, I’m not leaving anything to chances. I went to the Grono lamp shelf and open up 2 lamps right there on the spot to make sure they’re not spoilt before I take the better looking one. As these lamps are hand made (not machine made), each lamp is slightly different, and u do see some difference in shape and thickness if u put 2 side by side. So I took the good lamp along, paid for it yet again (I now have 3 Grono lamp receipts), and went back to the customer service counter. The CSO were there waiting for me as I’m a rather suay customer and they have to treat me well. So the two of them jointly check all the lamps and components for me. And this included testing the bulb holder with a working bulb to make sure the bulb holder is working. One of them even found some bubbling effects that may have been trapped in the lamp during the manufacturing process which I’ve overlooked. Since the previous 2 spoil lamps were also at the counter, there were 3 medium lamps (1 bubbled), 3 large lamps (2 cracked) and 6 bulb holders (2 tested), the CSO was able to mix and match to completely working set of Grono lamps for me.

My work is done and I can happily go home and enjoy our romantic lighting with my dear now. It’s already 8.15pm, the whole process took 1hr15mins. Back home, we assembled the lamps and restested with our own light bulbs. Yup, everything is working. Now, the medium lamp is at our master bedroom, on our night stand in a corner at the window. The light is really quite romantic and we’re enjoying the ambience whenever we can. The large lamp goes to the living room, on our tv console just on the left side of the tv. We try switching it on together with the tv but it doesn’t really work. The intensity from the lamp is too bright and resulted in washed out images from the tv. I guess this means tv is unromantic, and romance demands that the tv be off. Gee…

-Dear1

A relaxing super long weekend

Hahaha… the past weekend must have been the longest holiday’s Dear1 and Dear2 have had for a long long while. Starting on Wednesday evening, our weekend began. Thursday is National Day. Friday took leave. Plus Saturday and Sunday. 4 days weekend, so relaxing. Actually, I think many Singaporeans must have taken leave on the Friday to enjoy their 4 day weekend too. 4 days can easily support a short trip to Hongkong or Taiwan. Alright, let’s document what we did these past few days.

Wednesday: Dear1 decided to leave office early so as to visit Ikea to exchange our damaged Grono lamps. The exchange process is pretty eventful, but I talk about it in a separate post. Meanwhile, Dear2 has got some last minute work to do and is delayed. So, instead of meeting for KFC using our coupons (yum yum), we decided to eat at our nearby market instead. Dear1 went home first to put down the Grono lamps and take a short break from carrying the lamps all the way home. Surprisingly, those 2 lamps are ridiculously heavy. Following that, Dear1 and Dear2 met at NTUC to shop for groceries to last us the next few days. We bought green leafy vege, fish, siew mai, toufu, yum yum. After that we had dinner at the coffeeshop, but it wasn’t very delicious. Dun ever eat mee goreng there again. Upon reaching home, we put our bedsheets to wash. We intend to clear all our laundry over the 4 days. And that’s it for the night, time to sleep.

Thursday: What a relaxing morning! We didn’t set any alarm clock, so we sleep and sleep and sleep and woke up at 11am. Haha… First time in a long while that we lai chuang so much. Woke up, feeling hungry, we went downstairs for a late breakfast, or rather an early lunch. This time eating at the more crowded and more good food coffeeshop. After a short walk around the market, we went home, and started to feel sleepy again due to a warm and full stomach. What to do? Take afternoon nap lah. Gee… So we went to sleep at 1pm and woke up at 2.30pm. So relaxing. The rest of the mid afternoon is spent doing some admin stuff and clearing some things from work. Come early evening, we started our food preparation, we’re going to have steamboat for 2. Here’s what the spread looks like.

Nice ya? That’s the free mini steamboat pot we got from subscribing Simply Her by the way. So we watched the NDP parade 2007 as we enjoy our personal size steamboat. Come to think of it, this is the first time Dear1 and Dear2 actually watched the NDP on tv together. For the past many many years in our courtship, National Day has always been something special for us and we’ll be out most of the years, chasing after romantic fireworks. This year, we eat our mini steamboat in our new home and watch the parade together, something simple yet feels so heartwarming. Gee…

Friday: Friday is our East Coast day plan. Morning woke up a bit late, but nvm. It’s the holiday for us and waking up late is the way to go. We prepared some iced Ribena and homemade mashed potatoes for our trip. We first made our way to Parkway Parade and had lunch at the hawker centre just outside. Actually, the food there really quite nice. We had hokkien mee (quite nice), yong tau fu (only 25 cents per piece, quite nice also) and a famous soya bean milk and soya bean curd. Then I realized, and I think this applies to most ppl as well, we only remember food stalls by their location, not their names. Oh yah, we bought a Michael Buble CD too! Anyway, we proceed to shop shop at Parkway Parade first since it’s early afternoon and the sun is really hot. Who knows, while we were shopping, it suddenly started raining heavily, we almost wanted to abandon our East Coast plans. But weather is on our side and the clouds cleared at around 4.30pm, just nice for a cool evening. We made our way to East Coast park and rented a twin sharing bicycle. Gee… So interesting. Dear2 likes twin sharing bicycle, Dear1 too. It’s $8 for 2 hrs, I wonder if it’s reasonable since we dunno the market rate also. Anyway, we ride the bike up and down East Coast, taking turns to ride in front, taking turns to rest our feet, and making a few stops just to enjoy the cooling sea breeze and to share our home made mashed potatoes. Soon it was dark, and we decided to take a walk along the beach. Dangling our shoes from our fingertips, we strolled along the wet sands, sinking in every time the waves washed across our feet. Yet another first, I don’t think we’d walked along the beach in the dim evening sky in this manner before. It feels a little cinematic, and we are just enjoying each other’s company.

Saturday: Yup, we went home on Friday night, we didn’t camp over at East Coast. In the morning, do a bit of work and made an appointment with our favourite hair salon, Shirley Mah. At 2pm, took a bus down to the salon for our haircut. Phew~ It really feels much fresher after a haircut, feel re-energized. After that, have lunch and went home. In the afternoon, just simply relax at home, do our own things, take a afternoon nap, cook dinner, and started watching a new show. In the evening, we went jogging, to prepare for our Singapore Bay Run. We initially planned to run about 4km and we ended up running about 7km. Yeah… So proud of Dear2 for overcoming the hurdle. Last year, we only managed to clear 7km close to our StanChart Run. We must jia you jia you together yo!

Sunday: Pretty much relax at home and doing housework. We did manage to clear most of our laundry, it took 4 rounds of washing with the washing machine I think. Thanks to the mostly sunny weather, all the clothes manage to dry! We continued watching our show and spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon in our living room. Later, we went out for dinner with Dear1’s family. It has been quite a while since we went dining with the family, so it also offered a good time for us to just chit chat and let our parents see their children properly, other than the tired looks we bring back from work everyday.

Yup, that’s our relaxing super long weekend (which is why there’s no post for so many days). Today’s post a bit overrun, but I really really so enjoyed being in company with Dear2. Gee… Let’s continue to do many more things together dear!

-Dear1

Ikea Grono Lamp to be exchanged

Last weekend, we went down to Ikea again, to look for furnishing ideas. We’re really lacking the sofa bed in our study room, nearly everything else is already in place. But then, owing to some horror stories about Ikea sofa beds, we decided that we shall not buy a sofa bed from Ikea, but rather just there for ideas. Additionally, we’re also looking out for shoe racks. But again, owing to some horror experience of the Ikea shoe rack at my old clubroom, I’m unwilling to buy any shoe rack from there. So basically, we’re just there to look for ideas, not really keen on buying anything. But it’s the Ikea annual warehouse sale, so there’s definitely something worth buying, right?

In the end, we came back with 4 fold-up cardboard boxes to help us organize our cupboards. A magnetic notice board. A set of 4 small squarish mirrors. And a pair of Grono Lamps, medium and large size. When we were paying for the goods, we suddenly realize that Ikea isn’t giving out plastic bags. Oh yeah… they’re supporters of the environmental friendly bag program. But I find it quite unreasonable for them to just scan-and-ignore. The cashier that served us simply scan the barcodes for our goods, put them aside and collected the payment and promptly moved on to the next customer. I think the least that she could have done is ask whether or not we require a plastic bag. But that was not the case. We had to ask her for a plastic bag, with which she gave us a stare and reached out her hand, saying, “5 cent for small one, 10 cent for bag one.” -_- We paid 10 cents for a big one. Money is not the issue, it’s the poor attitude.

Upon reaching home, we eagerly unwrapped our Grono Lamps. The idea is, the medium on in our bedroom on the bedside table. The large on in the living room on the Tv console. This way, we can create a continuity that extends from the living room to the bedroom and make the whole house a coherent theme. But alas, that was not to be. The large lamp was broken. The lamps were wrapped in cupboard boxes and we did not checked them after paying for it. But seriously, not many people will take out their large item goods to check until they reach home. This episode taught us to check items whenever possible to avoid the hassle of making another trip down just to exchange the item. Luckily, Ikea boasts a 30 day exchange policy. So I guess I’ll be making another trip down there sometime soon. Until then, the romantic bedside lamp will have to wait.

-Dear1