Takoyaki dinner with Fran + 海底捞dinner with Ian, Mel & PY & 《我们滚烫的人生》+ Surprise dinner by Potato + PotaTOHs’ visit to YB’s with WL & WS + Familial hypercholesterolemia genetics testing @ Yishun Community Hospital + Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore with Potato + LL’s bday lunch @ Sushiro + sake & seafood night with Farmily +《슬기로운 의사생활 2》

14/4/22 Thurs: A new creation for dinner by Potato: Spaghetti alle vongole (and scallop in white wine) woohoo! Very delicious! He added in some butter as well, and the whole meal costed less than $6 a person according to “my personal chef” hehe~

15/4/22 Fri: It’s Good Friday and Fran brought her Takoyaki-making machine and some of the ingredients she bought from Don Don Donki over to ours in the evening. PotaTOHs air-fried some chicken bites and edamame to go with the Takoyaki balls. We put sweet corn, snowcrab meat and tako as fillings~ it’s quite fun but man the device heat up fast, so one has to flip the Takoyaki once it solidifies.

Potato ended up as the one serving us because he’s quite intrigued by the mechanism lol. I’m not a fan of Takoyaki, but eating at home with the family felt nice. And omg we each ate about 18 of them! Of course, one’d get sick of it after a while. *The Suntory lemon and yuzu seasonal drink Fran bought was very nice!*

16/4/22 Sat: Ian drove PY and Potato home after his class. We chatted a bit before going over to IMM to meet Melissa and queue for海底捞. What’s shocking was that the manager told us we’d have to wait four to five hours for dinner! Swopped to plan B and went to JCube instead. At first, the branch manager told us we’d have to wait about two and a half hours, so we went shopping at Daiso and思佳客, but we were lucky to get a call not long after!

Craving satisfied for Ian haha! Eating at海底捞is not cheap, but their services were indeed good. *Thanks for the treat Ian!*

Finished watching《我们滚烫的人生》, where the hosts try different jobs like being a fireman, SWAT team police officer, village teacher, pilot, legal counsel and traffic police.

I enjoyed the variety show a lot! Gained new insights to these jobs in China too.

Rating: 4/5

17/4/22 Sun: *Received my pretty snake earrings from Wherebilly yay!* After a long day of race day work, I came home to a simple dinner cooked by Potato! It’s napa cabbage soup with carrot and taupok, as well as grilled and salted saba.

18/4/22 Mon: Was almost late for my Pilates reformer class with Chisa. I did not sweat much today but I have to say that “hugging the moon” in a table-top position was no joke!

I chopped the broccoli, carrot, king oyster mushroom and potato before going for tuition with Triston. Came home and saw that Potato has helped cooked the udon and lentil already! I was left with cutting the onion and then deciding on how much Japanese curry roux to mix with the pot of boiled carrot and potato.

My version of (vegetable) Japanese curry was more “watery” and less savoury than Potato’s usual style but I liked it too!

19/4/22 Tues: Ended up doing a phone interview with Clements because I was hesitating whether to take a buggy over to his stable which was more than halfway across the tracks! *Sometimes, I cannot stand my indecisiveness. Wasted me a lot of time.*

Tried mee hoon kuey ($3.50) from阿壹手工麵粉粿*魚湯at Marsiling hawker. I liked the handmade kuey, but the overall taste was only okay. *Shall go for their dry version next time.* Moved everything from my current workstation to my new cubicle (technically my “old office”, only a different area) late afternoon and much as I miss my current workspace, I will have to head into the new one from Thursday onwards!

I found some of the poses in aerial yoga class tonight elegant!

20/4/22 Weds: Signed up for HPB’s Cardio HIIT class at 11.30am. One can sweat a lot from these classes but I just find the reps boring. Treated myself to shio ramen ($8.80 thanks to VIP lifetime $1-off discount) from Ramen Taisho after the workout.

Potato had steamboat for dinner gathering at his friend’s place, so I wondered and wandered for a bit by myself to look for dinner. Settled for Yong Heng Fried Baby Squid Prawn Mee ($4.50) from blk 155. I tookaway one packet and only ate after a shower, so the hokkien mee was only warm when I ate. There were two prawns, some sotong and pork meat. It’s the drier type, but their sambal chilli was quite nice… so good to eat once in a while. *Signed up for a HSBC Revolution credit card to get an Apple SE watch for myself hehe!*

21/4/22 Thurs: It was raining at the trials, but luckily, LL passed me one big umbrella before that. Talked to Daniel Meaghel and Danny Beasley after Lim’s Lightning and Lim’s Kosciuszko ran. They were nice.

Enjoyed Feng Feng Hainanese chicken rice at Marsiling for lunch. Had their roasted chicken drumstick ($4) rice because they ran out of drumstick for steamed chicken. Returned to office and took the afternoon to write the story. Very happy with the “end-product” haha.

My husband decided to “surprise” me for dinner, and he even pasted a “Do Not Disturb” sheet at the kitchen entrance to prevent me from spoiling the surprise when I get home lol! *My hubby very cute la~*

Turned out he wanted to try the poaching method using salmon, which I said I wanted to have for dinner. His newest creation is the poached salmon in mushroom miso broth~ the broth was very delicious with kick! He used chicken stock, miso soup, one chilli padi and mushroom and enoki to go with it. Our carbs was the mashed potato with yellow cucumber and lettuce. *Really looked like one of the dishes in restaurant menus keke~*

Fran brought over the冻顶乌龙croissant ($6) from Brotherbird Bakehouse for us at night. The filling is nice but the croissant was not really crunchy. Fran suggested we eat it at room temperature or chilled, but I reckon the filling would taste a lot sweeter if it’s heated up, meaning it probably has more sugar than we think it does.

22/4/22 Fri: Second session of virtual Piloxing class at 5.15pm and though instructor Stephanie’s moves don’t require the wearing of Piloxing gloves, I still wore it and woo I guess that meant more work for my arms! I liked how detailed she was with moves and the reminders on where to pay attention to, but I’m still more used to the other instructor’s style now (whose virtual class is at 6.15pm on Fridays) because they are more of the usual Piloxing moves I used to do in ActiveSG classes.

23/4/22 Sat: Busy race day as usual, but I managed to finish a little earlier than before. *Happy to receive the candle diffusers I won from a lucky draw on NTU School of Humanities’ Instagram.* Came home to bok choy, carrot and sweet corn soup cooked by Potato, as well as stir-fried chicken meat with mushroom and tamago!

24/4/22 Sun: Headed to YB’s after tuition with Rayne. Potato, WL and WS came later with lunch from Unicuz Chinese Cuisine from Le Quest. We all thought their carrot cake and fried rice were nice, but other dishes were only okay. Ethan woke up during our lunch and entertaining him became our main task thereafter lol.

PotaTOHs cooked tomyam刀削面for dinner.

25/4/22 Mon: Potato accompanied me to Yishun Community Hospital for the Familial hypercholesterolemia genetics testing I’m participating in. Had to draw two tubes of blood but when the nurse coordinator drew blood from my right arm the first time, nothing came out! It’s the first time it happened to me, so she thought I must be dehydrated from fasting, and hence I drank some water before a second nurse came and try to draw blood from my left arm. She said my veins were not obvious, so she might have to draw blood from the dorsal vein instead. I recalled mum saying it’s painful drawing blood from there, so I told her to try the vein on my left arm first… phew blood flowed out lol.

The blood samples would be sent overseas for testing for some 26 genes to see if there are any mutations that could have been the cause of my high LDL levels. I pray it doesn’t come back positive in four to six months’ time of course. *I can deal with stricter diets and exercising, but medication is the last resort.* The assistant also drew up my family tree and asked a lot of questions about my relatives which I thought I handled not bad.

Had laksa with Potato and MIL at this laksa stall he quite like for lunch. The press release of Singapore Turf Club’s opening was released this morning, and I had to rush to post it on our Racing Portal, translate and do the banner announcement. Later on in the afternoon, I discussed about the weeks’ work with Larry Foley, a freelancer writing stories for us starting this week. *It’s my off day but I worked till late!*

Dinner was comfy home-cooked meal by Potato~

26/4/22 Tues: Was busy the whole day at work. Spoke to Larry, Stephen Gray, 马丹, Aik Hong, LL, Mike etc all for work. Had dinner at my mum’s and bought home her yam and green bean soup dessert for breakfast the next morning~ shiok!

Sweated a bit and took me a few tries to get the aerial pose tonight.

27/4/22 Weds: Did a short session of Pilates workout before having Potato’s homecooked cold soba for lunch. My bravo husband also cooked meatless alio olio with spinach, mushroom and lentil for dinner!

PotaTOHs caught “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” at West Mall at night. So long since we stepped into the theatres!

Very clean-cut story on the “secrets” of Dumbledore, Grindelward and how Scamander helped them with the Qilin. *Newt’s “dance” when he was on the way to save his brother was so cute!*

Rating: 4/5

28/4/22 Thurs: Went for a spin at the stables with Ah Long because I want to know exactly where each trainer’s stables are located. Leslie Khoo was sharing about his travels to Tibet and Bhutan with us… cool. *The stables at the “kampong” areas enjoy such serenity I’m almost jealous of lol.*

Treated LL to a birthday lunch at Sushiro with Tracy. We were complaining about work to each other lol.

Potato cooked lotus root soup and pork belly meat in bulgogi sauce, but he thought he was “off-form” tonight because the soup was on the saltier side. *I still enjoy the meals he cook no matter what!*

29/4/22 Fri: Attended the half-day MCP division gathering with some ice-breaker games, brainstorming session and celebrating LL’s birthday haha. *Different divisions have to work together to make racing work alamak. Talk, people.*

Did Pilates workout with instructor Stephanie while Potato was cooking scallop fried rice. James and Ian came with sake, nihonshu and raw oyster, yellow tail sashimi, ebi katsu, sotong youtiao and fried prawn cracker! I’m not a fan of raw oyster, so I only had one but this was fresh. We all enjoyed the sashimi and sotong youtiao a lot! Their ebi katsu and prawn cracker were only okay. *We were all pretty surprised I could drink that much sake lol~* I was working as the boys talked into the night, of family and relationships, work, investments… until the two PotaTOHs got very sleepy. The other two fell asleep on the sofa and floor in the living room lol.

30/4/22 Sat: Long work day as usual and we finally see the public back at STC after two years. Good for jockey Ronnie Stewart getting his first win in Singapore aboard Charger at this new stint.

Came home to yummy winter melon, carrot and sweet corn soup, tom yam chicken and enoki, and bok choy with mushroom cooked by Potato! It has also been some time since the three of us ate dinner together like how we did when Ian stayed here. *Work stresses me out at times, but I’m glad I don’t brood over them as much nowadays. Meditation helped probably.*

2/5/22 Mon: Attended Pilates reformer class with two other classmates this morning and I was late by five minutes because of the inaccurate bus notification tsk. Met Jess at Sufood and we ordered their six-course set for lunch. I quite liked their starter and warm rosemary breadstick, button mushroom with garlic and burdock-maca stew. The king oyster mushroom charcoal tagliatelle I had was so-so. 

Jess had their 5-grain rice with black truffle and mushroom as the mains and miso-kombu soup with shimeiji mushroom and lotus seed. We shared the yuzu potato salad. Costed about $40 a person. However, I thought it still paled in comparison, overall, to Elemen.

Bought my neighbour Angela some egg tarts from Tai Cheong for her birthday. We walked around Capitol Piazza and Citylink wanting to have desserts but even Hoshino Coffee required at least 20 minutes of queue to get in. Both of us decided to call it a day then.

I cooked hot soba with mushroom, onion and egg for dinner! Had celery, lentil and enoki as a side. Then, PotaTOHs caught the last episode of《슬기로운 의사생활 2》!

Still loved their band performance at the end of every episode, their dorky friendship and the different medical cases they come across. The way the actors rattle medical terms off their tongues is impressive. And, it’s great that everyone’s relationship has kind of a good outcome to it!

Rating: 4.25/5