'Joey's Blog'

10th March 2015

Just a day before my flight, my team threw a birthday celebration for the March Babies and both Jael and I got a chance to blow the small little candle together. My pisces partner whose birthday is just a week earlier than mine, I was honoured enough as this was the first time I have celebrated with the team.

Given that my team has two colleagues whom birthday is on the month of August, two from September. That comes to a conclusion that we are able to celebrate one another's birthday. 

Sadly to day that this might be the last year that I get to celebrate with them, who knows next year I won't be joining the team nor moving on to another department. But embracing that my future journey will sail off smoothly to the other end.

This one year journey with student affair department have been a good one although I am located to another campus whereby I only get to see them once a week or maybe twice a week but the communication between one another keeps going and never break down. 

I appreciate how Jasmine and Monica will keep me in the loop on every single things that happened in Campus 1 so that I am involved in any other ways. I appreciate how Jael would drop me a positive text to keep my day going. I appreciate how Ms Shae showed her concern and care about my welfare and being the most understanding supervisor that I have ever met. 

In attribute, everyone in the team means alot to me and no doubt that a part of me will be sad if I have to leave this team. Sad not, I still wish I can embark my career to a higher height, knowing that I have a lot of things to learn from different people. My new job position, on the other hand, was not confirmed or there's isn't any new updates for me but having to keep everything away from them, I don't feel good at all. Just hope that the human resource team could give me an answer, least that I can do it is to show my appreciation to them rather than hinting and then leaving them a false hope.

Press on, just gonna stay positive to my future career,

Thanks team for the simple birthday celebration (:

Till then.

On last Tuesday, my colleague and I travelled far fom AMK knowing that we do not have to work on the following day. We headed to Katong to look for Priscilla as our plan went by singing K at Katong Teo Heng. Just before our K session, we decided to grab our dinner at the nearby place and we were glad to see this "Coffeeshop" along our way,

When is a hawker centre not a hawker centre? Apparently when it is a “Coffeeshop by day and hawker bar by night”. That’s hardly the best joke in the world, but it is how Ali Babar in Katong describes itself. 

Located on the corner of East Coast Road and Joo Chiat Road and directly opposite Katong I12 mall, this little corner food court with just 5 stalls could easily be ignored or dismissed. To do so however would be to ignore one of the most innovative kopitiams in Singapore today. Only one of the 5 stalls serves the usual staples of Hokkien Mee and Prawn Noodles (which it does very well), instead its neighbours include a bar selling beers from all over the world, a Japanese stall, a gourmet burger shack, and a French restaurant! 

While the three of us had Burger bar for our choice. Priscilla being the special one ordered their Japanese ramen. Many of the reviewer would have opted for their Hokkien Mee which cost $5 per plate but me being the Äng Moh person aiming for their western cuisine. 

Each of us ordered different type of meat that was filled inside the burger. I had my streaky bacon cheese burger ($9.40) which includes one beef patty, a small slice of cheese and a slice of fatty bacon. While geraldine had her lamb burger which includes a lamb patty, tzatziki amd red pepper ( $12.90). And lastly, Ying wei had her gigantic tiger prawns with beef patty and caramelized onion ($14.10) which probably could serve a pax of 2.

What's great would be all burger set comes with 2 side dishes ( Fries + coleslaw) with no GST and service charge given (:

Alibabar - Hawker Bar

Add: 125 East Coast Road

Tel: 6440 6147

Hours: 7.30am-11pm daily

Next up, the girls were craving for desserts so we continued to walk down the lane and spotted this wonderfully old-school styled facade of the eatery! It was so unexpected that this old retro turned out to be a cafe which I once saw it from instagram which they sell their Ice Kachang ball.

Sinpopo Brand, a concept cafe by the people of Awfully Chocolate, has undergone a re-branding. 

I love the logo, it was tastefully and thoughtfully designed to reminisce the old and yet looked so refreshingly new and different!

Even the menu give out such a retro feel. I really fell in love with this seemingly humble looking restaurant, yet actually was pretty much painstakingly decorated, even before I tried out their food. 

The main dishes on the menu were good but our aim was to have our desserts so these are the cakes that were sold that night, I was eyeing for their Ice kachang but the assistant told me that they have removed this item from the list. WHY!!! It was so popular back then.

So unwillingly, we got ourselves a Jackfruit pound cake and Gula Melaka cake which wasn't a bad choice uh. We thought that the Gula Melaka cake would come out VERY sweet but no, just a mild of caramelised palm sugar with a light smooth texture. It taste like honey though. The jackfruit was the winner. It was a sweet-smelling fruits that nobody could expect it to taste good too. I mean people don't actually go for Jackfruit cake if given by a choice.

Generally, Sinpopo Brand can easily be treated as a simple dining place for the elders, where they can recollect some old memories of their childhood. Of course, you need not be "that" old to enjoy the ambiance there, but certainly there are some desserts not easily found in other places, which you enjoy popping into your mouth.

Sinpopo Brand

458 Joo Chiat Road

Singapore 427671

Telephone: +65 6345 5034

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/sinpoposg

Finally to our Sing K session that ended off our night! Some songs reviewed for you but please don't judge! We were just enjoying ourselves to the max, screaming and shouting in the room.

Till then.

They said 'It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest god-damned thing in the world.' People come and go, but the important people will stay around you. One of my closest colleague is leaving Pathlight on Friday so a few of us decided to have a farewell dinner with her to mark off the last journey with her. It is sad to see your colleague leave but all you can do is to wish her all the best for her future endeavours! More or less, you can still meet up for a quick dinner in some other days. 

Singapore is crowded with so many Japanese restaurants serving ramen these days. Each restaurant is vying to serve the best sushi or the best ramen in town. The competition between the rivals is heating up and it's healthy because that would mean that customers will get to enjoy good and tasty ramen at affordable prices. Here's one ramen shop you that serve not the best ramen in Singapore but good, delicious and tasted pretty authentic. So on Thursday, we settled our dinner at Men-chi Japanese Restaurant at Nex! We wanted to look for cafes but there wasn't much cafes nearby our area );  

I ordered the Miso Tonkotsu Ramen & Gyoza Set ($16.90++) which includes a chicken karage side dish, gyoza (3 pcs) and the ramen itself! It is much more value-for-money than those ramen shops where one bowl of ramen itself already costs $17++.

Tonkotsu Ramen - I think it is better than average, though not the best. the soup base is savoury but not overwhelmingly salty, and it is very rich and thick! Like it quite a lot and would foresee a second visit for this. The ramen noodles were okay, passable. The highlight was the super delicious soup which is probably the main selling point.

Part of the ramen set, these plate of freshly made gyozas were crispy on one side, oily smooth on the other with a juiccccy yet steaming hot meaty filling.

Work starts at 10am on Friday because the principal wants all the staffs to have proper rest after D&D night. No stress of staying out late and worried about reporting to work at 7.30am. However, I failed to be punctual! I reached my office at 10.30am despite sleeping early last night. Thankfully, its a holiday for all the teachers and students therefore I was not penalized badly for being late. Hehe.

A few of my colleague finally have lunch together on this self-claimed holiday and we decided to venture out of the school to have our lunch. We travelled down to bishan and since most of us are raving for ramen, we settled it at Ajisan for their lunch promotion.

Lunch set was pretty affordable. Our budget given was less than $15 and it hits on it. With a bowl of any ramen, a side dish and a drink costs us around $10.90. After GST & service charge would simply waive off $12.50. 

You may think that most lunch set portion would be small but this bowl of ramen remained the same. Same quantity, same size and most importantly, the taste are still the same ( no drop of any standard!).