CUE refresher training + lunch w Gwen @ Buta Kizoku & dad’s 71st bday zichar dinner + Tea Dojo interview & my bday dinner w YB @ Acqua e Farina + PotaTOHs' Europe tour briefing + spending my 37th bday w fam + Gwanghwamun Mijin w Jess, Ahna & LL + PotaTOHs' “Say It Again: The Dialect Comeback” w Fran & bday dinner @ Yayoi w family
12/10/25 Sun: *Not even sure if I got to sleep last night after drinking lemon earl grey tea tsk!* Potato cooked buta don for dinner~ nice marinated pork belly slices with mushrooms, edamame, onions, Japanese cucumber and onions!
13/10/25 Mon: Attended CUE refresher training with Mike at SPH this afternoon. It was more of racing pages moving over to ST Online soon, so we have to create online versions of our news by ourselves too… just more work haiz.
Marinated chicken meat and garlic in oyster sauce and sesame oil, before stir-frying them together with leftover cabbage and black fungus. The taste turned out nicer than I expected, but the cabbage could have been cooked for longer. Forgot to thaw the crabsticks beforehand but luckily, they defrost quickly with water so I could fry them with eggs and bonito flakes, which overpowered the taste of the crabsticks though.
Potato cooked Taiwan sausages with iceberg lettuce, but the highlight of dinner was the clam and cabbage soup with sweet corn, mushrooms, tofu, carrots and dried scallops! He said the dashi packet, dried Hokkaido scallops and clams all contributed to the yummy seafood-y taste in the soup!
I ordered the Fettuccine Nere alla Polpa di Granchio, which was homemade Squid Ink Pasta with Crabmeat tossed in Tomato Sauce with a touch of Cream and I enjoyed it~ quite a bit of crab meat and the tomato sauce was nice. YB found her Spaghetti alla Gricia, which was spaghetti tossed with pan-fried cured Pork Jowl “Guanciale”, Caciocavallo Cheese and Black Pepper a bit too salty and cheesy, especially the cured Guanciale. We also shared the small dessert platter comprising mini portions of Crème Brûlée, Lava Cake, Panna Cotta and Tiramisù. They were all very sweet except for the panna cotta, which was sour haha.
Enjoyed our talk and dinner there, and thanks for the birthday dinner treat and meaningful gift made by elderlies in eldercare home. BY came to drive his wife back, and so I got a free ride home as well hehe.
19/10/25 Sun: PotaTOHs had lunch at People’s Park Centre. We had the prawn noodles ($5 each) which was quite good. Then, we attended LGE’s mass briefing on our Europe tour, which gave us a better idea on what to prepare for our 15D12N trip. Had MOS burger for dinner and claimed my free Koi Wildflower honey milk tea for my bday~ and sneaky Potato also bought salmon sushi for us without letting me know keke~
Potato cooked shrooms aglio olio for our meatless Monday dinner! We had maiitake, shimeiji and shiitake with garlic and spinach to go with spaghetti~ already smell so good when he was cooking! We both thought maiitake works the best with aglio olio because of its unique fragrance and texture.
Also was lucky to find a pair of sports shoes for $15 at the concourse level. I'd seen similar designs at Gombak central but they only had bigger sizes, so glad I got one to replace my worn-out Decathlon sneakers haha. *My first Shinmin supplement also ready for publishing with minimal changes... nice.* 
Also bought a 200ml diffuser from Hooga to try since there’s promotion. I love the smell of soused cucumber, light florals and musk leaves from “Deep Water”. Hope it covers a decent amount of area in the living room!
Mum promised to cook my favourite mee hoon kuey for dinner at night. She said she'd started preparing the ingredients at 4pm. There were also abalone slices, fried chicken, crispy ikan billis and prawns!I'm grateful for her effort but damn, I ate too much mhk and didn't sleep well at night lol. *I think my digestion is not that good, so I must avoid heavy dinners as much as possible.*
And who would have thought Ahna'd appear the moment I wanted to go out at night! I'd bumped her at the lift and she drove here to pass me Chateraise chocolate and this handmade bouquet set from Cakebar~ it's so cute! Thank you~
Met Jess, LL and Ahna at Gwanghwamun Mijin for my birthday dinner. The place was packed at that time. Ahna had already been there once, so she recommended us what to eat. We had their signature buckwheat cold noodle, 30 pieces of pork belly slices, the kimchi seafood pancake and fried perilla leaves dumplings sort of. The latter was okay for me I guess, with the tofu and carrots stuffed in it.
14/10/25 Tues: Went to my usual TCM massage with HL and the "crack" she did for me at the end for my upper back and neck area was shiok! I felt an instant relaxation in my tensed areas there after the sudden cracking lol. *Thanks to Potato for making his way to JE's moneychanger and changing SGD1.3k to Euro 860 for us.*
15/10/25 Weds: Tried Cardio Fit class with coach Emma this afternoon and I thought it was easy at first before the reps got to me haha. Sweated but not over tiring, which was good I guess.
16/10/25 Thurs: Worked with foam roller on the mat and jumpboard in intermediate class with Elsie this morning. Wow her sequence on the jumpboard is non-stop one lor haha~ Then, Gwen treated me to lunch at Buta Kizoku. I had the unagi jowl bowl, but sorry to say the jowl was too chewy and it's hard to break it... not going there again.
I bought myself an alarm clock ($8.3) at Nitori before we sat down for drinks at Starbucks. Bought her the hojicha latte Grande while I tried their yuzu oolong tea Tall ($14.5 for both)... mine portion was small with a lot of ice lol, but taste quite nice. We had such a nice chat until Lionel came and brought her for beer at Buta Kizoku since they have the promotion of a glass for $5 after 4pm haha~
Ordered zichar from You Le Tian Seafood for dad’s early 71st bday dinner. The seaweed soup is a bit saltier, but I thought the hotplate beancurd and bitter gourd omelette was not bad, albeit bro thought everything’s salty. The two types of fishes were okay la, but I find zi char, in general, their portions on Grab are getting smaller and they don’t usually offer different sizes for the food too, and I don’t like that because it’s not enought for five of us. I will prefer to bring them to the place to eat, if not buy double the servings next time.
17/10/25 Fri: Went to Tea Dojo for my interview with Jenson this morning. They condoned off Sprout@AMK because of the pruning of trees, so Jenson showed me his shop quickly, before we did the interview at the market beside. Good one-hour chat understanding the innovations he used to help with his bubble tea business. Came home to transcribe my recording and angle the story.
Met YB for my birthday dinner at Acqua e Farina. Nice ambience in that Italian restaurant~
18/10/25 Sat: Potato brought home a free yuzu matcha cake for my birthday in advance haha~ still sweet but we shared the calories haha! Thanks mao~
He cooked japchae and kimchi pancake for dinner, albeit the pancake was too soft. Still, thankful for Potato's effort.
20/10/25 Mon: I am publishing the the racing news to ST Online starting from today and it was a bit more work here and there, but together with Zdin and Zwan, we managed to not spend too much extra time to do it.
21/10/25 Tues: Began my birthday morning by picking up 13 bento lunch boxes and apples from Hong Kah North CC for delivery to the elderlies. It was only a short walk home but my left shoulders were aching already haha. Rested for half an hour and began my "exercise" at 10am. One old uncle was visually impaired, so I was instructed to hand the bento over to him personally, and he asked me to "wait" outside the door. I thought he wanted to go get the key to open his metal gate but he actually brought me a packet of Chrysanthemum tea! I rejected him at first but he insisted, and because he can't see me well, I decided to take it. That little gesture from him already made me feel happy and touched... and the drink did come in handy later because I thought I needed some sugar after walking for an hour or so, albeit the weather this morning was already quite nice.
Took me 1.5 hours to finish the delivery, and just before the cut-off at 11.30am phew. Enjoyed a bowl of Ron Sheng batang fish soup ($8.3+) but the fish was really nice. The soup had a bit too much of pepper though haha.
Potato whipped up sake chicken with Swiss Brown mushrooms, shimeiji shrooms, cabbage, carrot slices and onions with rice for my birthday dinner! He got the idea from one dish he cooked for me a long time ago, but changed from white wine to sake this time. It was nice. Thankful for my thoughtful hubby! *我不需要全世界的生日祝福，有心的就足矣。*
22/10/25 Weds: Felt the weights definitely this morning in Metabolic Plan class. Started with resistance training, then core and lastly cardio sets. Squats and bicep workouts with 3kg dumbbells in each hand is my limit for now lol. Cooked tom yam somen with dumplings, mushrooms, iceberg lettuce, egg, mushrooms and onions for lunch but it was quite probably because my ratio of tom yam paste with msg seasoning is too much lol.
23/10/25 Thurs: Only three students in Jac's intermediate class this morning, and Linh got to try jumpboard for the first time haha! I was on the heaviest spring all the while, which made my legs quite sore, but apparently even if the spring changes, we will get to work on other parts of the body more, say the core. Jac joked and said "Pilates is always 'either or'... you'd always work either this or that part more lol."
Linh's so nice she bought me a candle and treated me to Thai chilli sotong and bok choy sets as my belated bday lunch~ The sotong was not bad! We had a nice chat and I'm happy to hear she'd go back to "blogging" again haha~ let's keep at it!
24/10/25 Fri: Went for Ice's earlier Barre-less Barre class at 9am because the one I booked was cancelled due to insufficient sign-ups. After class, we spoke and I heard about how she wanted to teach more dance classes to the elderlys but most organisations are unwilling to pay haiz. She's very open and even shared the minimum number of students for a class to start at TNP is four. If there's three, instructors take half the price ($25). An instructor cannot teach more than three classes a day there too. Heard the boss Jack is a Malaysian businessman and the Korean facial salon next to TNP is owned by him too. *But seems like they had bad reputation for closing down their old studio at Kallang without proper compensation...*
Went down to Chinatown to change some Euros and make payment for two extra activities that PotaTOHs want to go for in our Europe tour package. Ate fried chicken karaage lor mee ($4) at hawker centre on B1 of People's Park Centre and it was not bad.
But the dipping sauce for the noodles was really nice. It had a sweet base, and we were instructed to add in seaweed, spring onions, grated radish and wasabi sauce.
Ahna drove us to Macdonald's at Jem and we continued to chat till 11.45pm. Had to trouble her to drive us all home after that. Always appreciative of this group because we're all very willing to listen to each other!
There were five stations related to food, map, songs, clothes and chess, and hints were more or less given in Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese. Potato was irked at the song section where they printed one of the notes wrongly, which affected us when guessing the correct song the melody corresponded to haha. The hardest station was the one where we had to guess the whole set of outfit that the different dialect groups wore to work because the recordings were quite long and purely in dialect! Took us more than an hour to complete the game and Fran had to leave immediately for her facial session. PotaTOHs went on to claim the free Mojitos. My osmanthus yuzu one was a bit bland, and his Singapore Sling was sweet.
Went up to the roof garden and saw a free open microphone karaoke session for public. After that went to meet in-laws at Tanjong Pagar MRT. We decided on Yayoi for dinner at 100AM mall.
The hokke was nice, saba was not bad. Unagi was nice but a bit sweet too. The chawanmushi and miso soup was too salty though. Tamago and salmon were okay. Was a treat by FIL for PotaTOH’s bday, so thank you! <3
25/10/25 Sat: Potato made hamburg with baked potatoes and Swiss shrooms for dinner~ the red wine sauce was a bit sour but all's good, especially the burger!
26/10/25 Sun: PotaTOHs and Fran went for the “Say It Again: The Dialect Comeback” escape room at Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre. It was organised by the 17th batch of Ngee Ann Poly CMC students omg… to think I was the pioneer batch… what a huge gap haha!
Brought Potato to the Singapo人 exhibition at level 2 which I brought Gideon to many years ago. Not much changed but it was nice to explore it again with Potato!
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