Joo Chiat - Fei Fei Wanton Mee & Chezcake Bistro

Dropped by Joo Chiat to have dinner with some of the ktowy guys and girls sometime back... and here are some pictures of what we had.

the most unassuming bowl of wanton mee I've seen

before mixing

and after; not so unassuming after all.

There are two coffeeshops, both named Fei Fei (I'm assuming the owners are different), operating in close proximity and we visited the 24-hours branch. They look pretty decent in the pictures but to be honest, it was too dry and wasn't my cup of tea. The texture of the noodles was actually quite nice, but I prefer to have my wanton mees tossed in a savoury dark/light soya and chilli sauce.

Try the other Fei Fei (non 24-hour branch) if you intend to drop by, it might be a little better than what we had at this branch.

And while we were walking to the dessert place, JM pointed out a Peranakan restaurant that is supposedly good to us. I am definitely coming back to check it out; I hope that'll be where I'm going to have my first Peranakan meal and it'll be great.

Settled at the Chezcake Bistro and we ordered a cheesecake each; there's an alcoholic range, and another non-alcoholic one that changes daily. I somewhat liked the alcoholic ones more on that day. Anyhow, this is the cheesecake place that I visited with Mumsy sometime back! Now I know the name of this place.

Venice - Before it sinks

If you still remember, we ended up in Venice one day later than planned because F got our flight date mixed up. So after spending a night in Bristol, I had a Nando's brunch at Cabot Circus (that's just opposite where we stayed) and shopped a little the next day. Sidetracking, that was my first Nando's meal... and I liked it pretty much!

The shuttle bus took us to Bristol Airport, and after checking in, we waited for my first Ryan Air flight to depart. Passengers are allowed to bring only one hand-carry baggage onboard, and this policy was enforced kinda strictly. The interior of the plane was not exactly what you'd call clean; I spotted some suspicious-looking substance that's been hardened over time on the fold-in tray table surface, and several grimy-looking stains on the back of seats, windows. The stewardesses were plump 40 to 50 year-old ladies who looked rather grumpy in their bright blue uniforms, and once in a while, they seemed to have some problems making their ways through the seat aisles without getting stuck somewhere in between. After this flight, I cannot justify grouses that people make about Jetstar and Tiger Air anymore.

We arrived at Treviso Airport after a 3 - 4 hour flight, and a surge of warm air greeted us (something different from the UK coolness). Oh, along the way, I noticed we'd flew past the Alps, looking postcard-worthy, even from a few thousand feet up in the air. Bought a ticket from the airport shuttle bus counter and finally arrived at the outskirts of Venice 45 minutes later. No land vehicles are allowed in Venice itself, so from the bus termini, we had to cross a bridge that linked mainland Veneto to Venice.

Before we got to Europe, I've been reading about how locals (in Italy especially, not true) don't really give two hoots to tourists and will treat you like dirt if you can't speak the language that they speak. Accounts of mainly disgruntled tourists. Just because you are always smiley-faced towards tourists in your country does not mean that people in foreign lands practise that too; it's really just too bad if you are constantly thinking "These people are so rude, we never do this to visitors back home" instead of taking all those wonderful sights, sounds and smells around you. 

I couldn't help but chuckle whenever communication problems arose due to language barriers; locals start talking louder and gesturing boldly in the hope that you'd be able to understand what they're trying to say. These scenes are quite comical and I grinned to myself (like an idiot) quite often.

Anyway, as no land vehicles are allowed in Venice (I don't even remember spotting a bicycle around), the locals rely heavily on the water transportation system. Boats (including water taxis and police speedboats) and gondolas cruise the narrow waterways as well as the Grand Canal everyday; it's always a busy scene on the waters. Once goods/produce/what-nots have been moved onto land (see above), you'll see good-looking young men (mostly) pushing them around the little walkways in trolleys, towards different destinations.

F, taking a picture of St Mark's Basilica 

Countless tourists in front of the basilica

St Mark's Square; I go dizzy recalling the crazy crowds that we jostled with

I've said this numerous times and I'll say it again, I'm not exactly the biggest fan of crowds, not especially when it's 30-odd degrees Celcius in the day and everyone is stuck on a little island surrounded by water and there's not a lot of places to escape to. But there was no escaping the crowds, because 1) Venice is one of the most touristy places in the world (period) and 2) summer break. Sorry F if I'd been a grumpy bitch (I don't really remember being one, but just in case!) along the way, I blame the crowds, and the weather. But crowds mainly. I'll learn to deal with them better soon, I promise!

ambulanza speedboat

To combat the heat, we had gelato; lots and lots of it. I think Venice was where we had the largest amount of ice-cream/ice-cream-related-food-item in our Europe trip. They were often 1-1.50 Euros per scoop and always delicious. I can't remember how many fragola, cioccolato, caramello or pistachio cones we had in total during the 2-day span in Venice. I love yummy and cheap gelato!

Elderly couple onboard a gondola

In case you're wondering, we did not go onboard one of those gondolas. Shoestring travellers mah, we didn't even bothered asking for the rates. I just did a quick google search and saw that it costs about 80 euros for a 40-minute ride if you were to go on the ones meant for tourists. But there's also the cheaper alternative (0.50 euros only!), a public gondola that the locals utilise; that will allow you to cross the Grand Canal at the many points along the main street. Should have done a little more research before we arrived in Venice, dang!

Rialto Market

another scene at Rialto Market

No great shots of the market stalls because I was too paiseh to stand right in front of them without making any purchases; now I'm starting to hate myself a little for that. I promise I will be a little more buay paiseh and thick-skinned in future! The produce that were sold looked really fresh, and the variety is so much greater than what I'd seen back in Portsmouth's markets. I loved the smells of the fruits, oozing through the skins that's keeping them in and I loved the vibrant hues of greens, reds and yellows.

Typing out this entry's made me realize that I haven't spent enough time here, and now I have a deep yearning to do a few things; namely to get back to Venice, hop on board a water-taxi that would take me to see the colourful houses of Burano, have some sweet shrimp (why did I only have to read about Venetian seafood being one of the best and freshest around the world only now) and seafood for dinner. 

I hope I get to visit Venice again someday..

teeny with the Grand Canal

this is bad

One.


Last night, I dreamt I faked a marriage with a friend because he/I wanted to get out of a sticky icky situation that he/I were/was caught in. We had to show proof for our marriage and there was an E-marriage certificate (no, these things probably don't exist yet) with our names on it. I have absolutely no idea why the certificate required the names of our schools on it, but it did and the wrong schools were printed. Under my name, Innova Junior College in italics was printed and for my friend, it was RHB (bank that's sponsoring his studies at university). We managed to get out of the situation anyway, because no one really paid attention to what's written under our names and everyone believed the marriage crap. 

Then my friend suggested that he'd resubmit our details again so that the right stuff gets printed on the certificate and we can be married for real. I panicked when he made that suggestion because 1) I really did not want to get married and at the same time, 2) my mind (in dream land) was instantly swarmed with images of another guy friend. I quickly brushed his suggestion off by saying something like "no need for that lah, I think they believe we're a married couple now."


My friend was alright with that, and so I thought that would be the end of things. 


But the dream went on and all of a sudden he was giving me a ride on a scooter to an unknown destination. It wouldn't be that weird if I hadn't felt a warm and fuzzy feeling when we waved our goodbyes, hugged and he called me by an affectionate term. Not knowing what to do, I stood there confused until the scene finally blurred into darkness.


Two.


The stairway leading to the flat was dimly-lit. I paused in my tracks when I heard the giggly voices, simultaneously-landing and light footsteps that reminded me of two children playing Tag. I peered through the metal gate, I wasn't wrong. A little girl. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she was in a tie-dyed dress. Her ponytail swung in all possible directions when she gave chase; around the coffee table, up the sofa, until she caught up with the little boy. "You're it!" she exclaimed cheerfully. 


I've been invited to dinner but I hadn't realized there was going to be company. I wasn't looking forward to additional company and was almost leaving but it was too late. The little girl looked up, saw me and shouted "There's someone at the door!". My host opened the door and welcomed me into the flat. A delicious smell came from the kitchen. I tried to sniff out what that was... but all I saw was Her doing the cooking. My heart sank.


Zero.


Post-dreams scare me, sometimes. I should really be making better use of my time, but whenever dreams occur, I can't help but think about them quite a bit. Even if they don't really mean a thing. I wish school would start soon.  I want to get busy with assignments and stop wasting my time on these unproductive time lapses. On an entirely separate note, Phuket with G was fun. Pictures soon.

"your positivity is scary"

so is that a good or bad thing?

Wii are idiots.

Thanks to the ktowy guys, I learnt of a new place to hang out at. The next time I get caught in a situation where a group of us meets up for an awesome dinner with no concrete after-dinner plans, I'm going to suggest we play Wii.

 

Met up with the bunch last Sunday and we had dinner at Old Airport Road Food Centre; there's a new train station (Dakota, along the circle line) that's just opened nearby so it's much easier to go there these days. Over dinner, we discussed how many times we've been to this food centre and everyone's answers were mostly below expectations, considering that CCHSM was just round the corner. But with the opening of the new train station, I wouldn't be surprised if we're to visit this place more often now than before we graduated from high school.

Right... so like I mentioned at the start, the dinner and company was great, but we didn't really have an after-dinner plan. After some last-minute decisions and votes-taking, we decided that we were going to Clark Quay. To play Wii.

And that was how we spent the next 3+ hours.

After looking at these photos, I'm convinced that anyone would think the objectives of the Wii makers were to make people look like idiots when they're playing it, doing obscene actions... and still be able to laugh at themselves after their Wii sessions are over. Oh... along with providing a lot of fun, bonding opportunities and solid entertainment of course.

Who's up for Wii soon?!

school daze

Growing up, Mumsy never forgot to remind me what a bad girl/student/daughter I was whenever she could, and that always made me feel like the worst kid around. I know exactly what's it like to feel as though you've self-esteem issues but I also now know she probably didn't mean it back then and she's just behaving like most other Singaporean Chinese parent; always ready to lecture and never giving enough credit to the kid. 

Anyway, the stipulated 5-week teaching attachment of my second year ended 2 weeks ago. Like last year, I had to take time out from our long mid-year break to spend at my allocated schools. But unlike last year, where we merely observed lessons at a primary and secondary school for a week each, I stayed put for 5 weeks at a primary school and got to interact much more with pupils this time round. 

And learnt what an angel I was. So, I went back to Mumsy, wagged my finger and asked her, "Why were you so unhappy about me back then?"

I mean, how could I be such a bad kid when the naughtiest things I did in school were merely throwing tiny chunks of erasers into the front of my classmate's (notice I didn't say "friend") blouse to shut her up when we got into heated arguments about who should give out worksheets, and sticking fallen feather-dusters' chicken feathers into some girl's ponytail because I got bored of the teacher's monotonous droning during big-book reading.

And I guess to Mumsy, academic results = good/bad discipline. Not exactly the best equation you can put together and I shall not go into the things that I had to go through when I scored something less than a perfect 10 for spellings in my lower primary school days, but you can be assured that they didn't leave very pretty marks on my arms/legs/other-unfortunate-body-parts.

So... enough digressing and back to the teaching attachment. I was made to observe two Primary 3 classes, one a higher-ability class and the other a lower-ability one (and yes, pupils are still separated into classes according to their learning abilities) for about 2 weeks before I decided "NO. No more observations or I am going to fall asleep in class with the kids." And I got to teach for the first time, finally. 

Then I found out that teachers do not merely impart knowledge to their pupils. They also have to complete many administrative tasks, break up fights/squabbles among pupils, take charge of CCAs, sit for endless meetings, finish teaching the syllabus even when there's a lot of interruptions in the forms of workshops/concerts/celebrations/etc, speak/complain to parents about their children's attitudes/work, mail out good behavior cards, be in charge of concerts and celebrations, account to the principal and vice-principal when pupils misbehave or do poorly in tests/exams, bring pupils out for excursions/field-trips, put on a fierce front even though you are really at your wits' end and crumbling inside/dying from suppressed laughter, and of course, have trainee teachers come into your class to disrupt the flow of lessons.

But all thanks to my CTs (teachers whose classes I'm crashing) and the two classes, I now know slightly more about teaching, managing and engaging primary school kids than what I used to (basically zero knowledge). I learnt that the same trick may/may not work for 2 classes with different learning abilities, primary 3 pupils love it if you can include games and videos (something interactive) in your lessons, there are only two favourite colours (pink and blue) and this is reflected in their choice of schoolbags, they react strongly to the words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", lowering your tone gets their attention and signals an ominous occurrence, bimbotic behaviour starts at 9 years of age, some children speak faster than they can think, some children stand up to answer questions even before they thought about the answers, boys can have higher pitches than girls when they are 9, the points-reward system works quite well. 

No other term would be more apt than "eye-opener" to describe my 5 weeks at the allocated school. Apart from all the nitty gritty teaching-related/classroom-management bits, I also heard about different 'horrors' that some of the permanent teachers had went through. When my CT told me of pupils who would hit teachers or throw chairs at them, I thought she was kidding. Only she wasn't. I've heard of such things happening in secondary schools and ITEs, but primary school, aren't the students a little young here for furniture-tossing? Oh... and if you're interested to know what you can do if you ever get caught in such a scenario, don't laugh now... sit on the chair quickly before the kid can raise it! Apparently it works quite well.

And this is probably the Nth time I'm saying this, but you know how some teachers threaten to call parents occasionally when the pupils misbehave? That doesn't work so well in this school, but threats to call the police work like a charm, most of the time.

On my last day, I had lunch with my CT and two more colleagues at Holland V. We ate and talked about the pupils, and their parents. And then I felt a deep sense of dread, knowing that I am definitely going to be stuck in some helpless situations in the near future when I finally have to deal with parents... I need to start racking my brain for solutions to them. Anyhow, you will not believe how irresponsible some parents can get. Parents who are drug addicts, pedal contraband cigarettes, receive financial assistance from the school but drive big cars to collect the money... just to name a few examples. In such instances, it seems totally irrelevant to be angry with the kids if they are the ones giving you problems in class. You really won't be surprised to find out why they ended up the way they are. I can't help but feel sorry for them, and right now, I can't help but not do anything else. 

All that sharing by my CT and colleagues made me realize how lucky I've been, growing up. And it also made me realize how little I know about the world of students. I won't be wrong to say that I've been leading a very sheltered life in all the schools that I've been to in my life, but not witnessing any traumatic bloody fights doesn't mean that they don't happen... and this attachment's shown me what an ignorant twat I've been. I'm looking forward to my next attachment, and since I definitely will not be posted back to this same school, I'm going to look forward to facing an entirely different set of problems in the next one. Till then, I hope the kids that I've worked with in this school will study and play hard!

ps: I miss being called Miss Chang... a little.

better late than never

I know I turned 22 some time back, and I'd almost forgotten about these pictures that we took... But I didn't; should've posted them a little earlier but I just started watching The Big Bang Theory and now it's just about all that I want to do online :x

from my zhu peng gou yous.

<3 and thanks for the great time!

Everyone agreed to indian food (even Siao who can't take spicy food) when I suggested it so we had dinner at Big Splash. That was my first Indian buffet and we had a good time; the ambience was nice, and we had free-flow yummy naans and butter chicken! Looking at this picture makes me realize (again) that we've come such a long way from our Cedar Primary days, and it makes me wonder how many more birthdays will we be celebrating together. I'm sure not that many people are still in such close contact with their primary school mates but I'm really glad we've only become closer over the years as we grow. As much as we'd like it to go on infinitely and as much as we hate to admit, friends and their priorities change and there's possibly just going to be one point in time when these things finally come to an end huh? Until then (and hopefully nowhere in the near future), I guess I'll just continue to enjoy their company and loveeeeee. Lub all of you deep deep.

And while we're on the topic of Indian food, I just want to share a place that serves great and cheap Indian vegetarian food at Suntec (and post some pictures from a meet-up :p). It's on the same level as Kushin Bo, and right opposite Toys R Us and it's called Pangaat Indian Cuisine. My new friend who loves eating (too) recommended this place when I asked him where should I go for cheap and yummy indian food. So far, I've been here twice; once during dinner and the other lunch.

Lunch's what you see up here; it comes in a set of 2 chepatis/parathas/can't-remember-what's-the-last-one and you get to choose three different dishes from a set of pre-cooked ones (like the chinese chap chai png or malay biryani). Dessert comes in the set too; the fried little colourful balls that you see in the bottom-left in the picture above, they're sweet, but not overly and still rather pleasant. And as for dinner, it's a la carte. I tried the vegetable wadas (aka vadai/vada) and they were yums. 

Indian food ftw!

my friend shows his affection for this vintage (is it old enough to qualify?) camera by calling it his laopo. but I shall not make fun of him any further because he was nice enough to let me try it and it was just so cool to see the aperture ring moving in the viewfinder!

teeny checking the vintage cam out

Anyway, I've come to observe/realize that my friends sometimes hold my camera more than me when I bring it out. Everyone loves "little red" like it's their own toy so I'm really hoping that they wouldn't mind me posting pictures that they've taken using my camera; ownership of pictures does get a little blurry here sometimes, so just drop me a text if you want me to take anything down okay.

And you might/might not have seen these pictures that I've posted on Facebook, but I think I'm just going to leave what I have to say about my practicum this time round in another entry because it's late and I have tutoring later!

 

Yes, I know my pupils are sweet.

One day in Edinburgh

After spending 4 long days by the countryside, it was time to head back to the city. While it was nice idling, trail-walking, having yummy fruit scones for tea and not doing anything of utmost importance, being a city-girl at heart, I was glad to be back in the city hustle and bustle.

I liked Edinburgh the moment we set foot on its streets. The architecture was charming (not to mention spooky too), the people were friendly and the food... was pretty good! Sad to say, we only had a day to explore the city; heading back to London the next. And we didn't manage to visit the lochs that Scotland's famed for too; better luck next time.

No time for lochs, so we headed to Camera Obscura and the Scotch Whisky Museum instead. Looked at more mind-boggling optical illusions, learnt what the term 'camera obscura' means, and we tried to 'pick up' random people who were walking on the streets. 

this is how I'd look like in the anime world

and F. 

somewhere along the Royal Mile

whiskey-tasting

they all belong to the same collector

The weather was awesome during our time in Edinburgh; it was warm, but we had the occasional breeze to cool things down a little. Most of the skies in my pictures are overexposed though :( 

Scottish bagpipe players; F dared me to ask one of these men in traditional costumes if they were wearing any underwear beneath. I was too chicken so I said "wait until we come across a handsome one la"

sauces, finally!

haggis, neeps and tatties. doesn't taste as bad as it looks; quite yummy in fact.

steak and ale pie

abandoned

The days got longer towards the end of the UK leg; it was probably around 10p.m. when the sun set everyday so we always seemed to be out for only a short while when in actual fact, we've been out for nearly an entire day. Super tiring please. 

Anyway, Edinburgh was our last stop for our UK travels. We boarded one of those Megabuses back to London for the cheapest price F could find, and took a train back to Portsmouth when we were finally back in London. That's been almost 2 weeks of non-stop travelling, and while we didn't get to spend enough time at each stop, I guess we both saw enough to decide which are the places we wouldn't mind visiting again.