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Bryan phoned me to ask me if I wanted to go out to eat dinner. I said ‘No’ (haha. I actually said NO to food. ) because I was a bit sick of eating out and also because I’m trying to avoid unnecessary expenses. He tried to convince me to change my mind but I was still saying no and in the end, he had to tell me the truth: My cousin (who is also Bryan’s friend) was coming to Singapore for a few days on a business trip and told Bryan not to let anyone know. He wanted it to be some kind of surprise. =_= I had to say yes in the end. I haven’t seen my cousin since 2005. Bryan told me to contact Diana about the dinner plan. She is another old friend of mine and she is also currently living in Singapore.

When I first saw the name of this restaurant, I did a double take. Manhattan Fish Market. Fish market??? I was like ‘huh?What’s this?’ It turned out that it was really a restaurant. In fact, it reminds me a lot of Fish and Co.

Diana and I used to be very close during our high school days but we eventually lost touch with each other. I think that the last time I saw her was in 2004. Is it possible to revive an old friendship? I didn’t think that it could be possible in our case but it seems that I was wrong.

Diana took this photo of Bryan.

Manhattan Fish & chips.
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My Indonesian classmate told me about the Food and Beverage fair (Suntec Singapore Level 4, Halls 403 & 404) and I wanted to see what it was like. He said that maybe they will sell ‘fried durian’ there and that’s why I was so eager to go. (Unfortunately there was no such thing at the food fair. I was a bit disappointed but I still had fun eating other food.)
I went with Lisa and Colas on Saturday.
What I think of the Food and Beverage fair : so and so only. There were a few stalls which looked like they didn’t belong there, for example, the manicure stall.

Some photos:
People walking around

People queuing up to buy food

What we ate:

Okonomiyaki, also called the Japanese pizza. This one wasn’t very good. I prefer Desmond’s homemade Okonomiyaki.

Some kind of takoyaki but with chicken instead of octopus

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Hendrik(from Indonesia) took us to eat Indonesian food at Surabaya Restaurant (Lucky Plaza) the other day. It was my first time going to an Indonesian restaurant and I was really looking forward to it.

Hendrik had this. It was good. It was the first item on the menu. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of this dish.

Vani and Natasha ordered this. Again, I have no idea what it is. It’s difficult to remember the Indonesian names.

I had the fried chicken. I wanted to order something else but they didn’t have what I wanted.
I thought that the fried chicken was a bit dry but I loved the chilli! Yummy!

This rice was good.

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Apart from the friends I live with, I rarely see other people unless there’s a special occasion like birthdays, Christmas, New Year etc. I’m busy during the week days and only free during the weekends. Soon, I might be busy during the weekends as well.

During the weekend, I went out to meet an old friend of mine. We had dinner at Azabu Sabo (Marina Square).

I love Japanese food.

I chose the tempura bento. Yummy-looking right? It was good. I thought that it was just a little bit too oily. I had already finished eating the pickles when I took this photo.

Dessert was good too. Apparently this restaurant is quite famous for its desserts. I saw something called ‘hot balls’ as well as other unusual items on the menu but after 10 minutes of looking at the menu,I finally decided to order something more normal. We asked the waitress if it was possible for us to choose the ice cream flavors that we wanted but she said no. This one was chocolate, green tea and black sesame(it cannot be seen in this photo. It was under the chocolate ice cream). I love green tea ice cream! :love: Black sesame ice cream probably sounds weird to many people but the taste was alright. I’ve eaten black sesame desserts in Shanghai before and I’m used to the black sesame taste.
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This is a part 2 to the entry ‘2nd time at Central,Clarke Quay’ but I hadn’t finished resizing the photos at that time and it was already around 7 a.m.

It has been more than a year since I had BBQ ribs. The last time was when I went back to Mauritius in July & August 2007. We went to Hooters the other day and I chose to have the BBQ ribs. Come to think of it, I don’t remember if they were any good. I was too happy because I was finally eating BBQ ribs again. :cloud9:

BBQ Baby Back Ribs

I won’t be posting the photos of what the others ate but I want to mention the fried pickles even if the only photo we took of it is blurry. Lisa and I chose this dish.

On the menu, it was written: ‘Caution: Fried pickles are very very addictive’ . That’s true. I felt like eating more and more.

We chose the deep-fried cheesecake as dessert. not bad. I prefer normal cheesecakes but this one was good too.

Audrey posed with the deep-fried cheesecake but she didn’t eat hers. She says that she doesn’t like cheesecakes! She’s the first person I know who doesn’t like cheesecake.

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I remember when I was a kid, I talked my mum into buying a Christmas tree even if we didn’t celebrate Christmas at home. Kids love Christmas. Decorating the tree was fun and getting Christmas presents were even better. When I grew older, I no longer got excited about Christmas. We still don’t celebrate Christmas at home and I’m fine with that. My parents are Buddhists but for some reason or other, they got my siblings and I baptized at church when we were kids. In primary school, there was the First Communion and Confirmation. I went to church a few times when I was younger and went for confession also. When we were young, we didn’t really have a choice. We just listened to the parents and the teachers. Luckily, I’m the only one in the family who doesn’t get called by my Christian name which starts with a K. No one calls me like that. I send New Year cards sometimes and I write Merry Christmas and Happy New Year inside. That’s only because my friends celebrate Christmas. When someone wishes me ‘Merry Christmas’, I smile and say ‘Thank you. Merry Christmas to you too’. I don’t want to say that I don’t celebrate Christmas because I don’t want to explain the reasons why. People all over the world celebrate Christmas nowadays and many don’t even realize that Christmas is supposed to be a Christian celebration. Many non-Christians say that they celebrate Christmas but the truth is, it’s only the gift-giving part which appeals to them. They don’t do anything except give each other gifts. It can’t be helped. Christmas, just like many other celebrations is very commercialized and it’s not surprising that many people all over the world ‘celebrate’ Christmas. Even in Shanghai, I saw Christmas decorations, Christmas trees, people wearing Christmas hats and they were even playing Christmas songs in the supermarkets. During my 4 years in Shanghai, my non-Chinese friends invited me to a few Christmas parties and our faculty even organized Christmas parties for the International students. It was fun to see how people from other countries celebrate Christmas.

Yesterday was my first Christmas eve in Singapore. Lisa, Audrey and Nicolas usually celebrate Christmas and they planned a Christmas dinner with the other Mauritians at their place. I’m staying at Lisa’s place so I ‘participated’ in the celebrations as well but I’m not sure if there will be a second time. Not doing anything on Christmas eve is fine with me. Still, it was an interesting experience. Lisa, Audrey and Nicolas worked really hard in the kitchen as well as getting the tables ready in the living room. Last year they ordered food but this year, they did everything by themselves because it was too late to order anything,esp the turkey. I didn’t go to sleep the night before and yesterday, I went to sleep at around 2p.m after helping them in the kitchen for a short while. I woke up 3 1/2 hrs later and it was time to shower and get dressed. I was so sleepy. :faint:

Some photos:
(note: weird color in some photos because of the dim light)

One of our first photos of the night. Lisa, Audrey and me. I had to force myself to smile. I was too sleepy.

The 3 of us decorated the Christmas tree. It’s a bit small but I like it.

A photo taken with the tree.

Group pic minus Hanssen who hadn’t arrived yet because he was working. Nicolas was the one behind the camera. The turkey didn’t look like what I had imagined it to be but it was delicious.
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Zhongchen’s brother gave us a box of doughnuts from Mister Donut. I never liked doughnuts much when I was a kid. Those I had back then were very sweet. The ones from Mister Donut are alright. They were surprisingly not as sweet as I expected them to be. I had one doughnut and one petit chou before I took photos. I didn’t know what the small ones were supposed to be but the website says that they are petits choux. I didn’t bother to take a close-up photo because they didn’t taste like petits choux that I’ve eaten in Mauritius. They tasted just like the doughnuts. Nothing special about them. I had another doughnut a couple of hours later and Desmond still won’t eat the doughnuts. Why? Because he doesn’t feel like eating doughnuts right now. Argh. How can anyone resist? Then again, he never liked sweet food. I told him that the doughnuts aren’t as sweet as they look but he still won’t eat them. Guess who will eat all the doughnuts? Well I’m not complaining.

The box of doughnuts.

The address and website url was on the box. According to the website, there are 5 Mister Donut in Shanghai. The addresses & mini-maps are all on the website which also mentions which bus or metro line to take. However the website is in Chinese only.

The doughnuts. (minus the doughnut and the petit chou that I had already eaten when I took this photo.)

I never knew that ‘doughnut’ could also be spelled ‘donut’ too. I’ve always written it as ‘doughnut’ since I was a kid. While I was eating, I was looking at the box. I know that doughnut is 甜甜圈 (tian tian quan ) or 炸面圈 (zha mian quan) in Chinese but what caught my eye about the box was the Chinese name for Mister Donut,美仕唐纳滋. Doughnut/donut=唐纳滋(tang na zi) as well?

I wrote this 2 days ago but then my old computer suddenly froze and restarted by itself a couple of minutes later. I didn’t save a copy so I’m now writing the whole thing again. -_-
The weather isn’t very good today and I’m feeling a bit sick because of the sudden drop in temperature. I have nothing to do today except for watching 6 (or is it 7 already?) episodes of Heroes 3 and munching on an egg tart but first, I’m going to finish with this blog entry.

So far, I went shopping only once since I came back to Shanghai last month. Well I bought a few things online as well but that doesn’t really count. Nothing beats going shopping in person.

One of the places where most people in Shanghai must have gone to do shopping at least once is Qipu Road (Qipulu). I’ve been in Shanghai since 2004 but I still don’t know the names of the buildings there. Everyone just know this area as Qipu Road. If you know where to look, you can get anything (clothes,shoes,bags,hats,belts,etc) ranging from very bad quality to very good quality there. Girls like to go there but the guys I know don’t really like the place. Most of the things there are for girls.
Deenoo’s wife,Rosie is in Shanghai since September and she will be here for a few years I guess. Anyway, she wanted to go shopping at Qipu Road and Karina was taking them there. I went along too.

There were many people buying bags outside. The quality is so and so but if you like to change bags very often, then those RMB 29 bags are great.

I didn’t take any photos inside the buildings. After getting my purse stolen there last year, I’m very careful with my things now.

One of the things I like to do there is to eat. I’m always famished after walking around there for hours.

Those two girls were having some kind of noodles.

Karina and I bought squid skewers. It’s one of my favorite street food in Shanghai.
I want to try baby octopus skewers one day but I’m a bit scared. haha

There were people cleaning but the place was still a bit dirty. After years here, I don’t mind eating in such an environment but I know some people who refuse to eat in ‘dirty places’.

Deenoo, Rosie, Karina and me.
We saw some African guys from Tongji University there and Deenoo happens to know them. One of them kindly took this photo for us. My blue AF top looks weird here. I was in a hurry to leave and just wore the first top I saw. It is supposed to be off the shoulder but it won’t stay horizontal & kept slipping down. That’s what happens after too many washes in the washing machine. Rosie kept pulling my top up but it kept falling down again. I told her not to bother with it. That’s the RMB 29 bag I bought. Rosie bought the same one too. I bought it because it’s big and I was going to put all the things that I buy inside but in the end, I only bought around 4 or 5 things. That’s a first for me.

I had dinner with Biliana, Asif,Aki and Desmond that evening at 1001 Nights restaurant. Nice food but the place was too dark for me to take good photos of food. The only photo I took is of Aki’s stitch. Desmond reckons that it doesn’t look anything like Stitch but Aki likes it.

I like this photo because of the candle. There were candles on each table and Desmond lit this one.