Hi everyone! Happy Doggy Year! Good food, money, plenty of food, money, food that I only get to eat during this period, ang pow, money, gambling, catching up with everyone.. Fabulous! Photos coming soon.
Wishing you guys a prosperous and wonderful year!
Went to Apple Store @ Orchard with Seb today to try out the new Apple Products - iMac Intel Core Duo, MacBook Intel Core Duo and iLife’06. Too bad the iMac and MacBook will only be in SG after Valentine’s day. But I did get my hands on iLife’06, Photo Booth and FrontRow.
I was very impressed with iLife’06, especially the iPhoto. Full-screen editing is pure magic, more so when done on a 30 inch Apple Cinema Display! FrontRow is neat and I like it a lot. It goes to show again how Apple is able to take exisiting technology, re-package them, add a few bits of goodies, make them more consumer friendly and come up with a wonderful product.
Pic taken with Photo Booth
Recently there’s been a craze in Singapore’s F&B industry. Quite similar to the likes of the Taiwan Bubble Tea, BreadTalk-led bakies and RottiBoy coffee buns crazes. The latest trend is Chong Ching (Qing) Ma La Huo Guo. It started in one place, become very popular and then spin-offs were everywhere. And me, being a trendy guy who likes his food a lot, is recently “addicted” to it.
I’ve only begin my conquest of tasting all the various variants. The counter so far stands at 2.
The place is ran by some Mainland dudes. The shop itself is rather small, but it has 2 floors. The thing is, though they have 2 floors, they only have a food counter located at the ground floor. The to make things worse, the food counter is miserably small. Worse still, it’s located at the entrance/exit of the kitchen. It does get really annoying.
The service level is acceptable, bearing in mind that we pay no service charge. But one thing I noticed is that the people there treat those ang mohs way bettter than locals. Offering to take food for them, mix the sauces and even cook for them. One may argue that they foreigners and they know nuts about steamboat besides fondue. But still, they do not have to go to such extend.
Bad points aside, food was their highlight. Their homemade meatballs are just heavenly. I can eat a whole tray of it! The rest of the items are standard feature. Fresh and always re-stocked. Another thing worth the mention is their bean paste sauce. It really enchances the taste of the food. The fish however, was full of bones (even the fillets!). They are always untouched. (Maybe it’s the shop’s cost cutting technique?).
- $20 nett
- Free flow of drink
- Food fresh, cooked + uncooked variety
- Speciality: Meatballs
This one is more no-frills. The food counter is bigger, service level was impartial. They even have a box of tissue for us to wipe off our mucus and sweat.
The raw items are very fresh but there’s no cooked-food variety. Their speciality is the dumplings. The fillings is a combination of “jiu cai” and minced meat. And they have real fish fillet, without the bones.
Another cool feature of the shop is that they play popular “K-songs” over the air. So as we eat, we would inevitably sing to the song, using our chopsticks as mikes. Actually if one guy is to come up with a shop where people can eat mah la steamboat and sing karaoke at the same time, I think it will be an instant hit! haha
- $15 nett
- Drinks @ $1/can
- In-house karaoke
- Speciality: Dumplings
We’re supposed to go to Singapore Expo for Zouk’s Mambo-Jumbo, but the cover-charge really put us off. So my buddy, Nyan, whom beat his jet lag from NZ, suggested that we join his friends - Zhihao, Kenneth, Risshe,and his girlfriend - over at China One.
We were there about 9.45pm (to waive the cover charge of $25!!). My first impression was “Wooow.. nice decor”. So we ordered our booze and chatted along while waiting for the band to finish fiddling with their equipments and start performing. Penny and her friends happened to be there too. The band performed mainly cover numbers, but they did a good job. And the best thing was Risshe, got a table that was right smack in front of the stage. Then we ordered more booze, and things started to warm up from here.
After the break, the band played a Mambo song - Gimme Hope, Joanna by Eddy Grant. The DJ also spinned some retro songs. Then the 3 of us, under the great influence of alchohol, began synchronising ourselves to the songs hahaha. Then I thought, we need more. So the 3 of us, each had a Waterfall. China One’s Waterfall is the true full version, where they will stack the glasses/bottles real high up. Zhihao had another shot on the house because his flames didn’t really lit up. So after the Waterfall, we were really heated up. Went back to the table and ordered more booze! hahaha!
Somehow or rather, the DJ knew that there were 3 desperate Mambo-ians who were yearning for some retro hits, he started to play more retro songs! Then this is when the 3 of us took turns to request classic Mambo tracks from the DJ, and the DJ promptly played them. There’s this one time the DJ told me: “Man! you really made my night dude!”. So effectively, we made our own Mambo hahaha. But the 3 of us gotta be awarded the Dudes of 2006. We were the only 3 guys doing the synchronised moves down there, and we were right in front, middle of the whole bar, we were damn prominent hahaha!. But hey, others did tried to followed us!
Just as we thought we could not drink anymore, the waitress brought 3 bottles of beer - On the house! Up till now we still don’t know why we got the free booze. Maybe someone the the bar find one of us cute and deside to buy us drink (YEAH RIGHT!). So the 3 self-proclaimed Mambo ambassordor got more drunk and did more crazy stuffs. We had a great time and met some nice friends from our neighbouring table. hehe
Hope you guys also enjoyed your NYE and wish everyone a Happy 2006! Cheers!
Juices we had
2 jugs Erdinger
1 bottle of white wine from Jacob’s Creek
3 Waterfalls
6 bottles of Asahi
3 half-dead dudes.
[Photos]
China One is located at Clarke Quay, near Hooters. As its name suggest, China One has an oriental theme. The interior is decorated with exquisite Chinese antique furnitures. However, it’s not all old school. The bar counter is every bit modern as it should, plasma displays were all over, 2 pool rooms equiped with high grade tables flank the main area. A good balance of modern and nostalgic feel. The crowd is mostly working class adults, expats and foreigners. Drinks and food are quite reasonably price. They have live band performance too! We had EIC last night, man they were good. China One is definitely worth visiting. Check out their website for more info.