Is blogging about food Freudian?
Hmm, yes, my latest posts have been about food.. lots of it. More updates: my favorite nearby carrot cake stall was commended by Makansutra! My brother and I feel vindicated. The stall-owner is constantly slaving away from from 6pm-1am, but he always has a cheerful smile and seems genuinely to love his job, making heavenly carrot cake to soothe the savage belly. Sadly, he is facing some new (and stiff) competition in the form of a char kway teow/fried hokkien prawn mee stall 2 stalls down, also recommended by Makansutra. I committed food adultery last night by ordering from the char kway teow stall. It was good!!... but I felt black on the inside afterwards. Ooer.
Food. Freudian? The reason I say so is that I have been guilty of soothing myself with food, which is bad and heinous and affects health negatively. Yars. Like last night, I skipped dinner to be somewhere on time, and only had two slices of fruit (kiwi and papaya) which interacted with my empty tummy to produce bloating. No I didn't pollute the air around me, it kind of got lodged in my tummy and made me really uncomfortable the whole evening. So after I got done, I went with my parents to Ang Mo Kio St 11, to that yummy coffeeshop with 2 Makansutra-recommended stalls. There, we indulged in bee hoon soup (Dad), roti prata (Mum) and char kway teow (Me). See our family culture? Yup, and in my family, food is associated with family time. Dinner and supper (and often breakfast) are the times we haul butt to the nearest market or kopitiam and sit over food, tea, and talk. So, food soothes discomfort, and it is also the cement (or grease) that gels our family together. Wah.
Something soul-searching. Ok. I've realized that worry is horrible, and I have a horrible habit of worrying. Lots of people I know don't really have a problem with this, but I know others who incapacitate themselves ( e.g. freezing during an exam which they have spent hours mugging for) by worrying. For me, I worry about the past, or I get wound up hoping, wishing that things right now will go right, and worrying over the things that could go wrong right now. I worry about the future too - for example, what am I gonna do after I complete my Master's at NUS?! In my worst moments, I gnaw my fingers and chide myself for choosing this path, and I start thinking that a Master's by research is sort of an academic no-man's land. It doesn't get me an academic position (except maybe as research assistant) and it doesn't give me skills or qualifications to become a psychology practitioner. Sigh sigh moan moan. Then again, I think I'll trust in God's plan and provision, that I'll have a happy life and productive existence, that choices will become clearer with time, and I should just enjoy the moment. Or so I (and my good friends) keep telling myself ;)
Rochor Road Beancurd
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Originally uploaded by Phuazzie.Wow.. had a really retro (and yummy) experience last night at Rochor Road eating Tau Huay... very old style coffee shop that looks just like it must have in the 60's. Their beancurd really is something special, smooth and pillowy-soft.. great, unique texture. Yum! They serve great Portugese-style egg tarts too. It was a pretty cool experience, sitting at a rickety folding table and idly reading my book as I savored my tau huay, watching the strong aunties heft large, clean pails of their heavenly tau huay to feed the hungry hordes... Sometimes I fear for these cheap (60cents a bowl!) yet oh-so-yummy delicacies which require so much hard work. Why don't these aunties just leave with the profits and go retire in the Maldives? Hmm, or maybe the real bosses are already enjoying themselves in the Caribbean, and these aunties are merely employees, left to slog to satiate our appetites. Hmm.
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Originally uploaded by Phuazzie.Ya kun kaya toast and tea.. Ze best!
Makansutra Legends Food Tour
Makansutra Legends Food Tour
Originally uploaded by Phuazzie.For the die-hard foodie... 15 hawkers have been named legends by the renowned Makansutra, experts of Singapore's good hawker food. Check out the site for ideas on mini-food tours to sample these legends.
Oh yeah, yet one more food recommendation from moi: Golden Mile Claypot Rice, #01-65 Golden Mile Food Centre, 505 Beach Road. Yummy! But beware of a)long wait for food and b)crazy cleaners who want to clear your half-full pot of rice away. 5pm-10pm daily, closed on Wednesdays.
Taiwan Porridge Buffet
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Originally uploaded by Phuazzie.Porridge!!! Buffet!!! *Swoon* I love porridge! Yums... if I'm not wrong if you go after 11.30pm there's a promotional rate... Any takers??? Haha...
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031-Cafe-LEspresso-Delight
Originally uploaded by Phuazzie.Free advertisement for Goodwood Park Hotel's English High Tea...!!!
English High Tea anyone?
Hmm, I shall cheat by splitting my posts into two!! Haha... well it's legitimate, they're on entirely different topics. Yes, well, I buy 8 days on occasion, and many times a big reason why I buy it is for their food recommendations! Bizarre but true... anyway, there are two recommendations in this week's issue that I want to try out. One is Goodwood Park Hotel's English High Tea. The scones are supposed to be scrumptious (as they should be) and they even serve cucumber sandwiches! Those in my secondary 1 class should know that cucumber sandwiches bear fond memories for me... if you want to know why, ask me when you see me. So high tea is jolly good in my dictionary... The only problem: it's quite frankly overpriced: $30+++??? Why are there 3 '+' signs?? Sigh... food in Singapore... I shall see if I can find any compatriots to go with me to have hazelnut scones, tea and cucumber sandwiches.
Another mouth-watering recommendation is the kaya toast at Tong Ah kopitiam on Keong Saik Rd... apparently the toast is toasted and re-toasted
4 times to make it super crispy... my mum says bad for throat but who cares.. Hahahah...!!!! Well.. the next time I pass through Chinatown... you know where I'll be! ;)
Another honorable mention is Marche Suntec.. do they really have a different menu from the Heeren branch? Anyway, they have a fried dory fillet with spaghetti set that is delish.. the spaghetti is tossed with your choice of cream or tomato sauce along with carrots and leeks... yum. Ok, why do I keep talking about food? Food is bad in a way... good food entices you to eat more than your day's portion of calories, and eating out eats up my money... well can't complain, it's precisely the food I miss when I'm not in Singapore!
Resucitation
As the title suggests, this blog is in dire need of a new breath of life... or at the very least some updated posts... Anyway, just thought I'd update with a few thoughts of the day...
Well, I'm 3 months into my Master's program at NUS. It's pretty different from undergraduate life in the sense that the focus is more on research than on coursework. I'm actually doing only 1 module this semester.. good huh? The trouble is, this module is a cheem statistics module and we have homework and a quiz every other week... Other times, I'm testing (torturing) participants on their performance in cognitive tasks in an extreme environment - the cold magnetic resonance imaging scanning room. Wahh!!!! For more information on fMRI or functional magnetic resonance imaging, check out Columbia University's
fMRI website. Better yet, check out my lab's
website! I'm officially part of the FBI - Functional Brain Imaging Lab to be exact.
It might seem weird that I belong to a lab; after all I'm not a chemist. But actually, any group of researchers who collaborate on research of similar theme and methodology can band together and call themselves a lab. The great thing is that we have our own space to conduct experiments and do work on computers, not all the psychology graduate students are so lucky. And I like this lab, everyone's supportive and quite fun. My supervisor's really nice to work with too - he relates with us more as friends and colleagues than as teacher-student. I also like the fact that his family is really important to him. He's really sweet to his wife (she works in NUS and comes over often to have lunch with him) and is really patient and fun with his 3-year-old son Hugo, who comes over once in a while to charm us all with his impish smiles. All in all, this Master's scholarship was a great thing to happen to me.
