Seoul-full week Finale

On the last day, the ladies brought me to somewhere I think called Apgujeong-dong.

As one of them told me, it's kinda like our Orchard where the top '1%' super rich in Korea lives.

Originally, we wanted to try pasta but guess we couldn't find the restaurant, so we ended up at a korean one, which is just as fine for me.

And then we had 'tea time', complete with pastries.

We had tiramisu, peach tart and grape tart.

The lovely afternoon 'brainstorm' session was good, casual and relaxing.

Thank ladies for the hard work put in and I think you deserve an afternoon break. Couldn't ask for a better way to end the week.

Seoul-full week Episode 6

Besides finally finding my 'perfect' Jajangmyeon, I've been introduced to a new dish which I'd declare as my new current 'squeeze'... Called Jjam bong, and I was super happy to know that it's also available in korean restaurants here in Singapore.

As some of you might know, I was pretty 'obessed' with finding the 'perfect' jajangmyeon as I always see it on korean drama and had the impression (or imagination) that it'd be super delicious.

Unfortunately, the hunt has been disappointing until that afternoon when we had lunch with a business partner, they brought me to the korean chinese restaurant which had it. And it was to my imagination and satisfaction.

Jjam bong doesn't disappoint as well. It's a super spicy dish that is mainly seafood ingredients and is something one will take post drunkard stage to sober up.

Oh, and I think the ladies ordered some fried chicken sticks as well for sides.

Seoul-full birthday Episode 5

We had dinner at an 'expensive' bulgogi bbq place with business partners and colleagues. Apparently, this is the korean answer to Japanese kobe beef and Australia's wagyu.

I must admit, it was super delicious and I've never tasted anything like this before.

Oh, and I had my colleague pose with the soju and mountain strawberries wine.

Chocolate cake and chocolate in a box were from colleagues in office and hotel.

Sweet.

Seoul-full week Episode 4

Seoul-full week Episode 3

Lunch was sam gye tang, but not the one I had last trip. But it was just as good. The restaurant was actually in a 'home'... or rather, the place was formerly a residential place but guess they converted it into a restaurant. So it was like having lunch at a friend's home or something. Pretty cute idea.

Dinner, again, I didn't get what I wanted. Originally, I was aiming for this korean traditional porridge I saw at Myeon Dong area... but I was darn hungry and poor sense of direction, I gave up searching and popped into a restaurant that I think was Chinese.

The weekend when I was in Myeon Dong, I saw a line of people queueing so I assume it must be good. I ordered the signature dish (don't ask me what it was, but it felt like mee hoon kuay, ban mee style) and was overall alright.

Seoul-full week Episode 2

Day 2, I tried to get to Myeon Dong and Ewha Women's University. But I think I exited the wrong stop.

Couldn't find any shop open for breakfast so popped in to CBTL.

Lunch at Myeon Dong wasn't up to expectation. Wanted Soondubu jjigae or kimchi ramyeon, but ended up with some spicy cold noodle.

At night, at least I redeemed myself with a surprise fine at a restaurant near the hotel. Whatever that I had, think it was spicy pork rib soup or something, was good and left me finally satisifed.

Seoul-full week Episode 1

Day 1 of my food escapde - had the my first craving satisfied with Doenjang jjigae, which is a bean paste based soup. Had it at one of the restaurants we went near Dongdaemun in Jan this year.

At night, I couldn't find a restaurant that had kimchi related food. Ended up at this place that had beef broth and cold noodles I think.

Great company, good food and excellent wines! More team building please

Had fun at a colleague's house yesterday. Had fun chatting, eating, joking, drinking and laughing.

Some more on Hoi An

More on Hoi An

Hot for Hoi An

We are back! Boy, much to update about this hot trip. Firstly, it was a tad short. Probably my fault for not checking out the flights as we had wasted about 2hrs taking this flight as it had a connection to stopover at Siem Reap.

Direct flights to Danang is available and is about 2hrs plus. Secondly, I can't ride a bike. It was just overwhelming for me, but I love being a pillion rider as long as someone is willing to take my load. It was super fun but I'm sure it'd be much more fun if I had and could ride the bike myself. The feeling of wind blowing your hair and face plus Hoi An is 'deserted' enough to ride quite safely and almost recklessly, it was fun, fun, fun! At first, I had to hold on to Sim but gradually, I mustered up the courage to just hang myself via the back of the bike without having to hold on to my dear life by wrapping my hands on Sim's f(l)abulous shoulders. We wanted to extend our bike rental for the last day but unfortunately, we couldn't come to terms with the prices the store was charging us so we opted to return the bikes and travel by taxi. Taxi wasn't cheap - we paid about VND350,000 (USD20) for a 30mins plus ride from Hoi An to the bustling Danang.

I wish there was more time so I can laze by the beach. It was great that we chose an off peak season as practically the hotel, beach and restaurants were like 'exclusively' ours for the 3 days we were there. But that means, I don't have much people to watch, which is typically what I like to do on the beach - bum oggling as I call it. Nevertheless, we had fun pretending the 'island' was reserved privately for us.

If we had more time, we could explore more places in Hoi An but that would mean poor Sim would have to take me along as his piggyback rider. He must have missed out the joy of riding dangerously by himself if I weren't pillion.

Thirdly, the food was quite a disappointment. Didn't have anything that excited our palates too much. The water spinach cooked in garlic was just about the highlight for the trip. Duh. Even the pho was good to great and not even excellent or maybe we had our expectations set up too high?

Fourth, we figure this area is going to be quite a hot tourism place in about a year's time. When we were there, so many constructions were going on by 'branded' hotels such as Le Meridien, Hyatt etc. Most of the establishment were local branded ones but gradually, you see the foreign forces coming in. This oughta tell you something. We found out that it costs about USD95,000 to own one's personal (retirement) pad in Hoi An. Not a bad idea if you think about it - provided it doesn't become overly commercialized like your Phukets and what nots. We joked around we should consider buying and investing in real estates here... Probably Hoi An is the next retirement paradise? The pace and lifestyle is easy and laid back. It is great if you have dough in the bank and looking for simple and peaceful life.

All in all, it was fun for me. Might have missed out some details here and there but can't wait for next group trip with the rest.

How much beef do you need to eat to equate to bovine based collagen intakes like botox?

I think we ate a whole cow today at Yakiniku Daidomon at Novena. We ordered almost every possible parts and combination of beef except the tongue.

I even ordered the raw beef but er... would say that didn't go too well for my stomach. It was alright, and tasted and felt like those japanese raw octupus except it's red and it's beef. Reminded me of that Mr Bean episode where he ordered from some Russian restaurant and ended up with a raw beef pattie which he tried hard to get rid of. Me, I just cooked it.

All in all, the food is quite nice and service was great. Every time we were just studying the menu, some waiter or waitress would pop by our table to ask if we wanted to order anything.

For $50++ per pax, I guess you can't complain too much. Will come back once I've sold more ESPP shares...

Tea Cafe at Seah Street

Great ambience, great company, great tea and food. Must check out Tea Cafe at Seah Street if you have a leisure afternoon to catch up with friends or your reading. I had hot sour plum tea, tea egg, cucumber sandwich and assortment of snacks. Lovely! Can't wait to come back again.

Narcissist fool

There are no more narcissist ones than you are; but it's a good kind of narcissism which one could find lovable and charming. You also have a great need to please and charm, with a strong penchant for conquest.




Your main flaw is your too great self-indulgence, your tendency to self-satisfaction. If you don't succeed in fighting it, it may prove to be a serious obstacle to the good development of your personality. On the other hand, you've pride and courage. But when you fear being badly judged or appreciated, you won't hesitate to resort to cowardice and compromising.



You've a profound esthetic sense and don't do anything which could harm beauty. You're very much gifted for music, dance, writing, artistic criticism, material exploitation of beauty, and can make a fortune in such branches. You easily attract helps and supports.



You couldn't live without being loved and surrounded. Your amorous successes can be numerous. Prestige plays an important role in your attachments you're interested only in those of whom you can be proud for one reason or another. Furthermore, you need a scene of beauty and refinement so as to live your sentimental or conjugal life satisfactorily.

Personal QBR... 3/4 point review

How the year of the OX is turning out for me thus far:

Jan: It was a good start as I went to Seoul for shopping with friends. Spent more than my usual as the girls had fun with my 'makeover'. Best part for me was the food of course... I miss the sam gye tang. I think I'm still the slob that I am but as Mdm Coco Chanel had said - "..it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny". Point taken though may not be fully adopted at all times.

Feb: Missed that 'exciting' Phuket trip and a bunch of stuff that made me think a lot about issues I've never quite thought about and how I have been treating me, myself and I. Health and possibly 'life and living it' took an exceptionally important focus that I hope will continue to be key point for many more years to come.

Mar: House Arrest and keeping sanity; I'm a home person but being couped up at home 24/7 is no joke. I wonder how Ms Aung San Suu Kyi survived... but then again, maybe she is living in a big house that has a big garden and backyard for her to wonder around?

Apr: Gathering at my house to celebrate my 'release' - it was quite fun but unfortunately we had to end the night early as my place had a curfew to adhere. Did my 5km JP Morgan Run for second year running - which I'd shamelessly say I am yet again the most unfit person I know where even men older, fatter and 'balder' outran me effortlessly. I was panting like mad and barely made it to the finishing line. I know I've never been a long distance runner before but this was quite outrageous.  Set myself to 'correct' this blip in following months by training... resulting in me setting myself up for this objective by signing up for Standard Chartered 10km. Crazy but true. Went to Bangkok for eating and shopping with parents which was quite fun and I hope next year, we can do something with brother in tow. Went to HK for meeting and met our new dynamic CMO. 

May: My favourite month because I was in New York. I love the place; it has its quirks and is all messy and chaotic and all, but it does have its magic. Wish I could have spent more time there and if only H1N1 wasn't so prevalent, probably could have gone to Queens, Brooklyn and so many other areas of the great city. Well, I brought something extra when I came back and once again, I found myself under House Arrest. The whole H1N1 experience was painful - I'd tell anyone you won't die from the virus but you'd probably die from being couped up in isolation first before the virus gets to you. 

Jun: NY withdrawal - I miss the place. Found out CK was a closet moonwalker and that he was also a Kevin Kern fan. I enjoy irritating him and I think he secretly enjoys being irritated too.

Jul: Night at the museum (not the movie but the real gig) - one of the most interesting event I've ever been to and thank organizers for putting up such a nice idea. This is also the month where I start putting goals for 5km run, which eventually extended to 10km. Dreaming of more getaways as I suddenly crave for more holidays...

Aug: Got my Nike+iPod and started looking at distance running like Bay Run 6km and RunNUS 5km to sign up. Eventually booked myself for 10km which was something I didn't plan for... kinda fell into it, thanks to people like Daniel, Sim, Beni, Andrew, Sri.... all culprits in making me swallow more than I can bite :P But it really pushed me to train myself up and thankfully with support from my boss too :)

Sep: This is the month where we head off to Hoi An getaway with colleagues. I hope it'd be fun as most of the CEOs (chief entertainment officers) are not coming. Planning for a gathering with colleagues-in-crime at somebody's house and hopefully it'd be just as fun as the Apr one. Hope everyone who comes will have a good time. I'm going Seoul again, but for work purpose although I have planned for some personal R&R as the week I'm there would be my birthday week - I usually take PTO on my birthday but not this year :) I'd be by myself but I've always been great at self-entertaining so I think I'd do fine exploring on my own as usual.

For the next and final three months, I can't really point down what else would be in stored for me but I hope it'd something colourful and exciting.

MOS burger

MOS burger at Velocity @ Novena. Fast food the Japanese way. It was tasty and good. Plus it's got pippin' hot soup which we love. Wanted minestrone but only left with cream of corn.

Those interested might want to know there's a promotion for 'hot' teriyaki chicken set.

Oh, and they are giving away uchiwa, the japanese fan.

Chicken rice

Lunch today was at Boon Tong Kee, but we went to the 'high end' one at River Valley road.

This is the one they'd go out all on presentation to impress the tourist.

We had guest today so we figured that's reason enough to eat here, instead of the usual suspects like Kia Hiang and Thanying. As usual, whenever we have guests in town, there are a few local food they'd have to be introduced to. Yesterday night, our guest had already 'met' our famous chili crab so today, we introduced her to Hainanese chicken rice which can't be found on Hainan island but only in Singapore. Just like a colleague who rightly pointed out, you can only find Singapore fried noodle overseas which you'd never find it here.

Liked most of the selection, except the ribs which our guest liked most because of the sauce. I wish there's more chicken to go around but all in all, it was good.

Waraku, oiishi desu!

After some belly shakin' tonight, we had to settle our stomach.

So we went to Waraku at Starhub Center. It's been a really long while for me to eat here as I remember the last time was probably about a year ago or so when I was still 'cramping' for my weekend masters courses and would come here with team mates Shal, Lydia and Dawn for lunch.

Tonight, the place doesn't disappoint either. We had udon, Marilyn had soba and shared side dishes like tonpei yaki and agedashi tofu. Heavenly.

This undoubtly is still one of my favourite Japanese restaurant. Two thumbs up.

Back to The Mussle Guys again

Lunch time shopping - we went to Challenger at Vivocity as Ah Sui needed to change his keyboard from the store. I ended up buying a pretty neat webcam and can't wait to use it for the next team web conference as it's got this cool avatar application. Which means, I can look like almost anything without having to show my real face!

Anyway, we ended up at Mussel Guys for lunch and this time around, the food is a whole lot better.
I had the wild mushroom spaghetti which was what Jac had the last round.

Compared to the horrid pasta experience at Sketches last month, the pasta here was great and well done. No sipping water to dilute any sauce of any kind. Even the cream of mushroom was a whole lot better than the last round and was indeed creamier than previous occassion.

Only bad thing was the set allowed you to choose a complimentary cool drink but we were told it was not available and could only choose tea or coffee.

However, other than that, it was really good and won't hesitate to come back again.

Prelude to Hoi An

Dinner tonight was divine. Simple and soupy, it was healthy (relatively) and flavourful.

We went to Pho Hoa at Suntec (yes, they have a branch there now) and it's been a really long while since I had Vietnamese food.

They used to have a branch in Siglap years ago and glad to see they have made a come back.

I had steak & flank as well as the salty plum soda. We shared 2 rolls of fried 'popiah'.
Nicely done.

9.68 happy that I made it feeling

If you haven't already heard, I met my objective on Sunday covering a total of 9.68km (if you believe the accuracy of the nike+ recording) at a pace of 6'42"/km. The best thing is I could still breathe and walk after that (and my legs aren't terribly sore today post-run). I didn't meet my pace goal of 6'30"/km but hey, I'm just happy I covered the distance I wanted and came out of it... alive!

Jack's Place

Jack's Place is really the place for dinner sets. We usually go to the outlet at Novena.

The food was quite alright but today, because we had dinner earlier than usual, we think the quality and 'freshness' was a lot better.

The soup was pippin' warm, not stale cold, the chicken and fish sets were smokin' hot and the dessert was... cute.

By the time we finished our dinner, the crowd was pouring in, so we had to remind our table server that we were still waiting for dessert. All in all, it was good. We'd come back but provided we come early.

9.66 mixed feeling

Tomorrow, I'd have to run 9.66km and I'm both nervous and excited. Hope the weather would be great and I'd be all charged up to go. Report in tomorrow on my results.

Sakae Sushi

Nothing great about Sakae Sushi but I couldn't resist being trigger happy and snapping away with my camera phone.

How many user error incidents can one have in a lifetime?

What was suppose to be a 'good' Friday for me turned out to be a bummer.

I was suppose to run today, according to my nike+ coach but I had program tonight plus I know I won't be able to make it for morning run as I have a 9.30am call to make. So, I'm already feeling somewhat inbetween the whole day. Thus, I decided I'd lunch in, get back to work ASAP then target to go home around 5ish to do a quick run before I set off for the night.

Now, here is the user error incident yet again with me. When I logged in to my nike+ site, I forgot there is the US version and the SG version. What's the difference you ask? Well, the difference is that one of them calculate distance in miles and the other in kilometers.

So, silly me just logged in to the 'default' one, without checking carefully if it is miles or km they were recording and just blindly took down the distance I was suppose to cover according to the 'training plan'.

Somewhat happily came back from run and load up reading only to find that I am 2km+ short of target because what I had assumed was 4km was actually 4miles.... So that meant I was suppose to cover 6.43km or so today but I had only completed 4.12km.

But I was quite disappointed with self today also. I had set target for 5km but at around 3ish, I was feeling tired and sore already. Don't really know what's wrong... too much focus on my foot landing I lost my focus to push myself on? Am I coming down with something?

Anyway, next target on Sunday is a holy 9.53km... longest ever distance to-date. I hope I can make that one in time and in one piece... don't want the cookie to crumble, do we?

Runner, runner, wherefore art thou?

The plan was simple. Meet at 5pm at east coast and we'd do a 'quick' run and then have dinner. Mr Ong said he'd send out the invite but since he didn't, I took the initiative to send it. But as my dumb laptop died last Friday, I was working off a spare machine the last few days. So a lot of contacts and info aren't with me and I sent the invite to the wrong email address to one of our comrades and she didn't get the invite. Mr Ong, lagi best, accepted the invite but around 3ish, sent an SMS to say he can't make it as his boss asked him to do something.

Mr Sim, on the other hand, got the invite but couldn't confirm if he could make it but did say he'd try to join. So today, at 4.45pm, he said he'd run but it was a different stretch from what I had in mind and he'd be running a totally different direction and distance to what I was planning to cover.

So, I was once again the lone ranger runner for our group run. Duh! I did pretty well but not good enough. Managed 8.3km at a pace of 6:51/km in 56mins 56sec. Still can't hit my 6:30/km target.

I did the same stretch as covered last Saturday. Today the weather was better as by the time I set off, it was about 6.07pm. But the wind was pretty strong. So although it was cooling to have the wind but I could feel its resistance as I ran against the wind's direction. Guess, there can never be the perfect weather. Still have some way to go to achieve my target, but I think I can make it. I know I can try harder. Keep on!

Love thy greens

Guess what I had for lunch today...? Wendy Lang's stable daily dosage - (Hakka) Thunder Green Rice.

I've tried it before but decided then that I'm no cow to be grazing that much greens in a single day or month for that matter. But today, since it was raining and I was lazy to move my stumps, plus I'm starting to 'live healthy', I thought I'd give this one a second chance since Wendy was lunching in - so I piggy back on her order.

Lo, and behold, it was better to the taste than I last remembered. Even the 'weird' green soup mix tasted somewhat nicer. All in all, I quite enjoyed my packed lunch today and felt good that I wasn't ingesting any unnecessary fats and saturated oil for just one meal.

My twiike report card

It's a pretty cool site this twiike.com. Go get one all nike+ lovers. Here's a sample: Check out cindylow's run from @Twiike - http://bit.ly/8pxD1

I'm also pretty proud with http://my.nike.com/cindylow and enjoy looking at the bar charts and trend lines...

What can I say? I love data and looking at stats.