Goodbye my friends

Helloooooooooo ladies and gentlemen... what's up?!?!

"Holy crap u son of a..! Where the hell have you been?!"

Relax.... I'm still here. Well, at least alive physically, after being gone for er... 5 months? oops!

Annnnyways, life has been good.. awesome.. hectic.. busy.. up.. down.. hungry.. full.. satisfied.. sad.. angry.. happy.. a mixture of emotions and events. I really have to apologise that the Singapore trip update didn't really come. I guess that somehow along the way, I just placed down my pen (or keyboard) and decided to move on with other things in life. Blogging was good, but it already served it's purpose for me; getting through my damn boring NS life. Taking from Geneen Roth's book; just because a canoe got you across the river, doesn't mean that you've to carry it with you. It had served it's purpose, so lay it down, and move on.

Nevertheless, it's been an interesting journey. Writing about food was fun, but tasting food was definately more fun. Although one thing bad about having a food blog is that you'll tend to obsess about food all the time. I mean, food is great; it's such a huge component of our daily lives, celebrations, health and satisfaction, but if it occupies your mind almost 24/7 of the time, you're not gonna have time to enjoy the other things in life. Take a breather, walk out to the garden, smell the roses, look at the sunset and enjoy life. Life's a funny thing; it's not ridiculously short or annoyingly long but it sure flies by fast and by the time you know it, you wouldn't have time to do most of the things you want to do.

Enjoy life.. take my word for it. You don't wanna be 60 years old, taking out photo albums on entire your life and all your travels to reminisce, and be staring at pages and pages of pictures of food and go "What the fuck...".

So if you're one of those people who is thinking of laying down your blog/food blog, let me just say that it has done you good, so now look up, move on and don't look back. Don't waste your time obsessing about how many hits you have on your blog everyday, how many blogs link to your site, or checking back every 15 seconds to see how many comments you've got on that latest post. When it's all over, it doesn't matter. Unless you're earning some kind of money for blogging now, it doesn't matter how famous you get because it's only 15 seconds of fame. After 5 years, who the hell will remember you anyway? So get out there, stop staring at the computer every second in your life, and enjoy the things that you'll regret not doing if you don't get to it.

And if you're one of those people who is perpetually on a diet; life is short, and one day when you are at the last few minutes of your life, you may think, "I really regret not having that slice of warm chocolate fudge cake they got me for my 18th birthday, I've always wondered what it tasted like". So if you walk past that dessert shop with the chocolate cake you've always wanted to eat. Eat it. And don't regret it. At the very least, the words on your gravestone will write "I lived my life" rather than "I was skinny".

Phoo.. well, okay where was I? Sad to say, this will be the last post for Yummiedummies. Its been a nice journey meeting other floggers, getting to know the Singapore flogger community and getting comments from readers. To all those who have supported this site and still pop by occasionally; my deepest thanks. To all other floggers who have been or are still flogging, good on ya and keep up the good work.

Goodbye my friends. Good luck to everything you do and have an awesome life. :)

Away for a little while my friend

Assignments.

Projects.

Tests.

Geez, I really can't squeeze out any time to stuff in a post. But I promise I'll be back soon when the exams are over.

I'll blog more about the good food in Singapore soon. *hint*

Red Nano - The new Google?

Remember long ago it was Yahoo that dominated the search scene? Then of course Google came along and everybody relied on Google like monkeys relied on bananas.

Need to find data. Google.

Need to find images. Google.

Research for project? Google.

But sometimes you can't rely on Google for everything; say, for something more specific like Singapore-related stuff. I know how many of you had typed in "good nasi lemak in Singapore" or "best mee goreng" in Google and came up with frustrating and hair-pulling results.

And that's where Rednano comes in. Rednano is SPH's new version of Google, and it's catered to Singapore, or at least, around the region. Meaning, you type nasi lemak like I did and you'll find most results on blogs blogging about various nasi lemak stalls. Not bad, I'd say. I know how many times I wanted to hang myself using Google for that sorta thing.

And check out what's cooler than that. Click on the images on the left and most pictures are nasi lemak stalls from Singapore!

They also have maps, news and directory on the sidebar to cater to specific needs and a mobile rednano link; which I haven't figured out is about yet.

So if you really need to satisfy some cravings today, yet don't know where to, why not click on the Rednano link above and give it a go? You may be surprised at it's usefulness. :)

Cross apples & Japanese food

Hold on a minute, I haven't yet covered any Jap food stalls in Perth yet have I?

Bother bother, getting a recommendation from a friend, we decided to pop by Applecross to check out a Japanese food stall. I wonder how the name Applecross originated? Like.. perhaps they had a farmer who grew very angry apples.

..or not.

Anyways, this place is fairly small, yet fully packed with a long waiting line for takeaway. It's got a good variety of dishes but the creativity is in that you could choose a main dish (eg. Katsu) and there are 5 sets which you could choose from. So you could have set A which comes with a soup and rice or set C which comes with 8 pieces of sushi or set D which is like a bento. I'm sure you get the idea.



Aah, this is the bento, which comes in a box for you to take home. Just kidding, you can't take it home, although my friend did.




What's in it? You've got fried tofu, a sesame chicken salad, sliced up vegetables with some dressing, two pieces of sushi and your main dish.

To rate what's best, I'd say the tofu; with a nice crispy outside, soft innards and tastily drenched in sauce. The sushi is surprisingly good too; of course, not Singapore-styled but more OZ-styled, that is, a little sweet overall.Sorry, didn't try this main course which was the teriyaki beef.



What I did have was the chicken katsu. It didn't come in a large chopped up chicken piece but in small nugget-like pieces, which I wasn't really enthusiastic about, and they were kinda oily. I loved the sushi though (in a sweet kind of way).



But on a lighter note, the teriyaki salmon was awesome. Soft yet tasty, a pity the portion was a little bit small.

Did I also mention that they have free flow green tea? Not something you can commonly find in OZ.

Overall, the price is a little higher than average (thinkg 14-16 for the bento set), but the food is not bad and definately worth a visit.

Hop

Are you feeling guilty about that chocolate ice cream.

Feeling like a whale?

Feeling... FAT?

Go workout on sanitary pads. Umm, at least that's what Jackie Chan recommends.

Muscle spasms

I'm seriously trying very hard not to cringe while typing every letter of this post. Oooh... my forearms.. Thing is, yesterday I spent like 3 hours squeezing and gripping and pinching and the bottom line is, I was hanging on for dear life.

Ah comon, it's only rock climbing. Only my ass, now even my back is sore.. And when you have a fear of heights, you look down halfway up and you feel like peeing.



I've never done rock climbing before but it was hell load of fun. Of course, it's necessary that you risk yourself looking like a spastic idiot with muscle spasms while trying to drag yourself up that wall. Well, at least I think that's what I look like.

All in all, you get a fantastic workout; basically your arms, fingers, legs and face doing all those expressions and it's only 13 dollars! (Well, student price, sorry!) If you need a harness it'll be an extra 5AUD and an extra 6AUD for shoes as well.



This is what it looks like; a pretty huge place actually, and loads of people!



I sure am going this Sunday too, anyone wanna come?

If you're interested, check out www.rockface.com.au

Collins road

When pictures start getting blurry, and your camera takes 10 seconds to focus, you know something's not right. Alas, I guess that's what happen when you drop your phone too many times. Well, at least you can still make out the pictures.

Mmm mm! Hawker food today! I'm always in the mood for hawker food aye? Just around the corner of Collins Road at Willeton, a small restaurant always buzzing with people having their meals.. Big meals, that is. The portions here at Taurus is so large, that you can actually ta pao for dinner as well. Check this out, the plates (some of them) are more than 30cm across! And not half empty, if that's what you're thinking, they really stuff you well.



Apparently what was recommended here was the yee mien, which came in an astonishingly huge portion and it was fairly good as well. Stringy noodles snapping in your mouth accompanied with a light yet sufficiently savoury egg sauce, with a good amount of chicken pieces and other condiments. I'd say it's a darn good deal for $8.



I had the mixed meat rice, an entire serving of chicken thigh and BBQ pork, for $8. That's a good deal! At least here in Australia. You know how people complain like how Australia food is expensive? I seriously don't think so, because you pay 8-10AUD on average, but two people can share the amount of food. Alas, the BBQ pork was thin and overly dry, the chicken was not too bad though.

Oh well, hop across to the next stall called Asian food or something and you'll find a smaller shop selling things like Bak kut teh, mee siam, satay, prata and claypot rice; very Singaporean, or Malaysian, considering how similar those two both are.




Here, I ate the best claypot rice in Perth, considering it's the only claypot rice I've ever had in Perth. Nah, it's alright; not fantastic or whatever, but tasty enough (I'm actually hard pressed to find a satisfying claypot rice in Singapore). A good portion of chunky chicken thigh pieces with lup cheong and salted fish pieces, drizzled over with loads of dark sauce and a fair bit of oil I suppose. Quite tasty, but don't think you can finish it all (too much!)



So if you ever need some good asian food, hop on down to Collins rd. On weekends, they serve nonya kueh, curry puffs and rice dumpings toos. Oops, I meant dumplings?

A picture post

Aaah, bugger me, I've left this blog half dead again. Don't place the blame entirely on me though, I've been really busy with school work!

Well, anyways, we went to this korean restaurant in Northbridge located near Billy Lee's. I'm really busy so I'll just pop the pictures up. Hmmm, I also wouldn't say the food is that great but here goes.



"Steamboat" w/ beef, rice cakes, mushrooms, sausages. (AUD13 per person)



Chicken bulgogi (Not bad, but looks really spicy/oily)

Beef bulgogi (Same sauce as chicken)

And some vegetables from the garden, as well as check out this super huge potato and watermelon we got from Canning vale market!



Potato (never seen one so large)


Watermelon ($5 only)


Cucumbers and long bean




This super small cantaloupe we grew and accidentally "dropped" is actually quite sweet.

And I've got to show you this place we have lunch at in school. It's this huge grass area with loads of tall trees and everyone just sits on the grass and lie down/relax/have lunch/chit chat. And there's a live band/DJ every Wednesday as well. It's really awesome (yes, come to Curtin).



And the view from our physio common room. Best view ever.