“海南迈”interview + PotaTOHs' 38th bday lunch @ Naoh + “The AI doc: Or how I became an Apocaloptimist” + Farmily outing @ Sentosa

1/10/26 Thurs:  Tower Pilates with Elsie this morning was good as ever~ love the way she explains the moves and how to execute them. I had fun doing jack knife though it was still quite hard to do well. 

Met Jocelyn from All Things Hainanese after her shop closed for an interview and she was very nice to share all about her shop. Gave me some yi bua and an ang ku kueh they made themselves to try. It's the first time I'm eating a Hainanese dessert I think but I the glutinous skin was really soft and chewy. Shared them with my family in the evening.

It was also Potato's actual day of birthday and he must have enjoyed the fried eggs as usual keke~

2/10/26 Fri: PotaTOHs headed to Na Oh, founded by three-Michelin-starred chef Corey Lee and headed by Kim Young-hoon, for our birthday lunch at 11.30am. Had to reserve in advance but not regretting this!

We had their five-course menu at $88 per pax... final bill was $211+ but both of us thought given the detailed thoughts, taste, looks and service (the waiters explain every dish well) put into it, their autumn menu was very worth it.

First was the homemade tofu with aged soy sauce... the tofu was firmer than it looked but I liked how well it went with the soy sauce (a bit sweet and spicy too for me) on top. 

Next was the buckwheat and mugunji jeon with salad of the day's harvested lettuce. Potato had been wanting to try the aged kimchi but in the end, we were both so surprised by how well done the jeon was~ Potato said the maillard reaction/browning was very well done. It went very well with the dipping sauce and the fresh salad were just bonus.

Then, it was probably both our favourite dish overall: chilled rice porridge of king prawn and jellyfish, minari, mountain yam with fresh-pressed perilla oil, and hot mustard on the side. Damn I don't know how to describe this but "heavenly" could be the word haha~

We each chose our own mains among three choices. I went with the half-dried yellow croaker sotbap with Eoran spicy mussel soup with chrysanthemum, preserved maesil geotjeori and gamtae.

Oh my gosh don't know where I should start praising because everything was good, literally. The banchans were great, my yellow croaker had dried bonito roes that they grinded onto it on the spot and to wrap it with fresh seaweed was just delicious.

Potato chose the charcoal-grilled pork bulgolgi, gangdoenjang, golden queen rice, spicy garlic scapes, cockle muchim and steamed green cabbage. We had the same banchans. He "wow-ed" at the first bite of his pork lol! He also loved his main a lot.

Apparently, the dessert was brought back by popular demand. It's gotgam and walnut tarlet with goguma sikhye. I'm never a big fan of such tarts but with every bite, it's sweet and nutty and flavourful at the same time, but strangely, it doesn't taste "doubly sweet" with the also-sweet sikhye! 

Overall, the food pairings were great and Potato said that showed how much thoughts they'd put into their autumn menu. Honestly, we'd love to go back to try every season's haha!

We finished watching “The AI doc: Or how I became an Apocaloptimist” on Netflix. Was keen on it after news of AI possibly “killing humans” floated around recently.

The impact on me wasn’t as great as “The Social Dilemma” maybe because I don’t use AI a lot in my work etc, though I cannot deny it’s very much part of our daily life now.

But we do see both sides of the coins, where some are optimistic about AI in the future while others foresee the doom if it carries on “unregulated”. 

I do agree with the potential of AI for the good of human life, but I hope human greed doesn’t first wreck things and kill their own kind.

Rating: 4/5

3/10/26 Sat: Did my scalp treatment and trimmed my hair length a little this morning. 

Potato cooked tom yam chicken with lady's fingers and enoki shrooms and winter gourd soup with carrots and potatoes in chicken stock base. It was nice but somehow it felt a lot overall haha! We were both very full from dinner.

4/10/26 Sun: Met Farmily in Sentosa at the Splash Tribe at about 10+am. James and his family, PY, Ian and Mina were already there. It was so hot I decided to go into the waters near noon because I literally dripped sweat man!

Lazed around and chit chat till 2pm or so before we ended our session at 2.30pm. Spent about $60 per pax for food and beer~ and also everyone left with a more tanned skin lol.

James and his family left while the rest of us went to Universal Studios because Mina wanted to snap a photo at the entrance. 

Weather was rather unforgiving so we headed straight to Paradise Hotpot at Vivo for tea-time cum dinner with the buffet hotpot. 

There were quite a variety there and I was so full from the meal. The mushroom soup base was good. Because there’s 30% discount from Anthony, it was less than $20 per pax so it was a great deal.

5/10/26 Mon: Barre-less sculpt with Esther this morning was especially tiring because she said she's going away for two weeks omg~ my hips and gluteal muscles were very achy and I couldn't push through with the moves haha.

6/10/26 Tues: Did大光明meditation this morning after pausing for a while again. I was quite distracted and towards the later part, I felt cold, was hungry and sleepy omg. 

Cooked tomato egg soup with enoki shrooms for the first time for dinner and it turned out quite nice. I enjoyed the texture. The shimeiji shrooms with bok choy was good too, but my pan-fried dumplings were burnt alamak! I should heed Potato's advice and use the minimum time recommended from the packaging and check on the dumplings as and when instead.

7/10/26 Weds: Went for my first trial facial with YL at Ma Beauty Skin Studio at Gombak this morning. I love the place the moment I stepped in because it was very clean and spacious. I haven't done facial in years so there's obviously a lot of issues with my skin haha, so YL recommended the needle-less aqua glow treatment ($158) to target cleansing mainly and also to remove some of my milia seeds. 

The whole process took 2.5hours and she was meticulous and explained the steps and the purpose well. I like how I can pay per session, even with member price in future, and she will assess and decide what I should do every time depending on my skin condition. 

For dinner, Potato made nori cold miso with oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, egg yolk and sesame sauce, but he thought he could have gone heavier with the soy sauce. The pan-fried mackerel was nice~ and he fried the egg white too. He said he learned that miso paste should be added to water at the end after boiling and did that today to the shimeiji, enoki shrooms and water mix and yes, the miso taste does stand out more but to me, I wouldn't have minded either ways.

8/10/26 Thurs: Tower intermediate class with Elsie this morning was rather fulfilling again... "magician" on the tower was hard. I also tried "horse riding" on the reformer for the first time.

9/10/26 Fri: Potato marinated the cod fish slices in mirin, sesame, sugar and miso paste yesterday and cooked them for dinner tonight! It tasted sweet and the cod flaked off nicely~ the spinach with mushrooms and wolfberries were good too! He also added the mushroom water to the vinegared-rice.

10/10/26 Sat: Interviewed physician Shen at Blessed Health TCM clinic this morning. It went quite well and she keeps studying and is quite a role model and perfectionist haha. She treated me and her shop manager to zi char for lunch afterwards and I was so full!

11/10/26 Sun: Potato baked and grilled pork patty with onions on top of mini portobello shrooms, and paired them with zucchini and tomatoes tomato pasta for dinner~ I love how juicy the shrooms and meat were~ yummy!

12/10/26 Mon: Attended Anna's wheel yoga class this morning and it was an easy stretch class I felt. Paired up for hamstrings' stretch too. 

Potato came up with a really nice meatless dinner creation tonight! He roasted the cherry tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, zucchini for 30 minutes before grilling them for three minutes to get the chars, before blending the tomatoes, onions and pumpkins to make the sauce to go with the penne. He also seared the king oyster shrooms with butter~ everything went very nicely together. I especially enjoyed the sauce, which was more on the sweeter than sour side. It was quite a bit of work but we both loved it hehe~ <3

13/10/26 Tues: I decided on tiger prawns and tamago don with bok choy and some king oyster shrooms for dinner~ not bad.