Category Archives: travel

Back in Singapore for chicken rice

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This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on Instagram

I was here was in January. Then February I was in Hong Kong. Then the following month I was in Bangkok. I will be writing and uploading photos from those trips in the suceeding entries in the next few days.

I just came back from Singapore on 22 June after a week-long team meet-up/training.

Anyway, whenever I am in Singapore, the first thing I look for is chicken rice.

Tong Fong Fatt Chicken Rice. This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

The best one, so far, is Tong Fong Fatt, which can be found in Maxwell and Amoy hawkers centre. And I’ve eaten a number of chicken rice around Singapore since 2014 so that says something.

I find Tian Tian overrated. It’s supposedly the best that Singapore has to offer and it was praised by the late Anthony Bourdain. Boon Tong Kee is blah. Wee Nam Kee in United Square is good but not as good as Tong Fong Fatt.

Wee Nam Kee chicken rice at United Square. This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

Tong Fong Fatt is heaven šŸ’• for less than SGD 5 (PHP 189). I always make the trek to the aforementioned hawkers centers just to have my chicken rice fix.

What makes it magical? It’s supposedly just poached chicken but its meat is not bland. The skin melts in you mouth; it’s so good that you no longer care about the gazillion of calories it will deposit to your hips. I don’t know what they do to make it juicy and savory at the same time… Its umami taste cannot be succintly described by my mere words. There must be some kind of witchcraft going on there. Because I tried steaming, poaching, and cooking the whole chicken in a rice cooker (and all the heresy that comes with it), but it has never come out this way. However I cooked it, the meat comes out dry and tasteless.

And the rice šŸ˜‹—the Tong Fong Fatt rice can hold on its own. Traditionally, the rice is cooked using the broth from the steamed chicken. I’ve been doing that whenever I cook chicken rice at home but I couldn’t bring out the umami taste that Tong Fong Fatt has. It’s already kanin-ulam rolled into one. There must be some kind of witchcraft, alright.

Tip: Go there at 2 pm-ish to avoid the lunch crowd. It can get really hot at the hawkers centre. That’s why I have late lunch breaks when I work in Singapore.

Warning: You can easily gain weight if you eat this regularly. I don’t have empirical evidence to support my claim but at the end of the week of bingeing on that thing, my pants have gotten tighter.

Because of my love for chicken rice, I’ve spent countless hours experimenting how to cook it best. My chicken rice is very far from Tong Fong Fatt level but can help me get a quick fix.

My homemade chicken rice. This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/p/Beeqa7Zl3SC/?igshid=1r4mqfei8gta0

I think I need to be an apprentice at Tong Fong Fatt because the NTUC chicken rice method of cooking that I followed but continue to tweak is… Still so wrong. šŸ¤£

UPDATE: I found Adam Liaw’s version of this dish and I think this is much better and makes a lot more sense. I will try it this weeekend. I gotta get myself those poultry hooks šŸ”

Beauty Review: Prior by Shiseido

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This is not a sponsored post. I spent my own money to test this product.

I was in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Dotonburi shopping district in Osaka last month (more of that in future blog posts), wondering what I would bring home from my 8-day trip. I was suddenly pulled out from my deep reverie when I saw rows upon rows of cosmetic/pharmacy stores dominanting the area. I don’t know why is that.

Then I saw lots of Chinese customers with huge plastic bags of cosmetics pouring out of these stores onto the street. Looked like panic-buying to me.

There you go. Mystery solved.

I went looking for the Biore tinted sunscreen SPF 50 to replenish my stock because I knew it would be cheaper in Japan than in Manila (and yes, they were half the price). The sales ladies in that cosmetic store didn’t speak English but one rep from Shiseido did. I got nervous. Shiseido is expensive and I cannot afford them and I have trouble turning down good sales people.

She asked me what do I need? Uhm something with high SPF but not heavy on the skin because the sun in the Philippines is harsh but it’s too humid to wear heavy sunscreen. Ah! I know what you need, she said.

The she demonstrated to me how to use Prior, the spray-on BB foundation with SPF 50. Prior is a brand of Shiseido that is cheaper than their premium line, she said. They have several shades of the BB spray-on foundation but she figured my shade is “natural”. She was right.

And she totally convinced me that I wouldn’t be able to live without this product. It’s that good!

It’ JPY 2,300 (excluding 8% sales tax). About PHP 1,150. Oh dear.

I road-tested it the next day when I went to Okayama Castle and wore a kimono. The make-up in this photo session was mine, no touch-ups. To think I had been walking a couple of km that day and had been exposed to the sun before this photo shoot. The BB foundation held up really well (actually, for the entire day).

So now I will demo to you the “before and after”.

I have splotchy fair skin (because of some disaster with my first wart removal). Plus I’m nearly forty years old.

A bit dull

Spray the BB foundation on the sponge (also included) so you can evenly apply on your face.

I now have a freckle-free, glowing skin.

And to show you how little make-up you need with Prior, I just applied Maybelline Color Show eyeliner in black, a little pencil for the brows, and a lip tint for the next photo below.

I’m so in love with this product that I bought two bottles. I hope they last me a very long time because I would only be able to go back to Japan next year.

It’s not available outside Japan, I think. I keep searching for it online but I always end up in Japanese sites.

It has already been a month and it seems like the bottle still has a lot of the stuff inside. Methinks this will last me 6 months since I use the product sparingly to avoid looking like a clown.

I bought also Prior SPF 50 sunscreen in case the BB foundation runs out before I come back to Japan.

BENCAB MUSEUM and BURNHAM PARK

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Death and Resurrection by BenCab

Since it was my kids’ first time to be in Baguio, they had to see what the great hullabaloo is with Burnham Park. Their classmates had been telling them there is a lake/sea in Baguio City, an information that I corrected. “Darlings, Burnham Park has a pond, not dagat,” I told them. And boating in Burnham was a must-do in years gone by when Baguio was “the place” to be before it got swarmed by tourists and clogged by SUVs.

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So off we rode a boat for PHP 150 a trip around the pond. Little Girl 2 cried because she was thinking we were all going to sink.

After the little trip to Burnham, we drove down to Bencab Museum along Asin Rd. When in Baguio, you must visit this Museum. People were raving about it and now that I’ve been there, I was like, “Ok, nice museum.” But it’s not otherworldly or something that defies gravity. But I do appreciate the art.

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View outside, from theĀ  ground floor patio

Here are some art works that I liked. Sorry, I wasn’t able to document who did what. (Bad blogger)

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The following paintings are by BenCab

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And then of course, there’s BenCab’s collection of indigenous art—> sculpture of the bulol or rice god.

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There’s one gallery devoted to the rice gods but I didn’t take photos that much because they were boring without the annotation on the exhibits.

Somebody save this museum from mediocrity! Have it curated well, please.

In the meantime, have to say goodbye first. Next entry is about the traffic jam along Kennon road and why I would think twice about spending Christmas again in Baguio.

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WEANING FROM FACEBOOK and CHRISTMAS IN TRAFFIC JAMMED BAGUIO

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Facebook is toxic. It’s no longer a fun place to be and I realized I can no longer express myself fully there, hence, the need to revive my blog. I plan to do several reviews (I have a number in the pipeline) of products I just acquired or services I availed (and these are not paid reviews, mind you).

Anyway, my family spent Christmas with my mother and sisters in Baguio at Manor Hotel in Camp John Hay (CPH) They have been doing this for years and this is the first time we joined my mom and sisters for the holidays.

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It was a new experience for my girls and they loved Santa’s Village and that kept them entertained for a while. But costly for me since activities like horseback riding, go-carts, and jumping on trampolines are at least PHP 100 per 15 mins (for horseback riding).

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If I can have my way, I would just have stayed in bed and savored the 15-19 degree C temperatures. But if you have kids, you can’t. Sigh. Procuring food is a bit of a hassle since stores and restaurants in CPH either run out of provisions or are closed, since, hey it’s Christmas! Give the Baguio people a break. I recommend that you bring lots of food with you when you get there because it’s nearly impossible for you to go downtown because of the horrendous traffic jam caused by tourists like us. The traffic jam inside CPH is already que horrible.

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Families listening to live Christmas carols early evening.

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Rooms overlooking the garden

 

Otaku paradise

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I am writing about my last Japan trip in a non-linear/non-chronological way because…just because. I have been busy with other aspects of life i.e. job, hence, the gap.

So I already told you about my non-eventful six-day stay in Yokohama where I spent four days going back and forth my hotel and the convention center. Then the fifth day I was locked up in my hotel room writing non-stop and then it was only on my last day I was able to go around for a bit. In the morning before going out for a little bit of sight-seeing, I decided to try a fastfood chain: Mos Burger.

Mos Burger in Yokohama

Of course I shouldn’t be surprised but still I was when I took a bite of this burger. It was good, better than the blah version I had in Singapore (because of my Singapore Mos Burger experience, I stayed away from it). And it has to be good since it is a Japanese food chain.

After my walkathon in Minatomirai, I decided to have lunch in the restaurant across my hotel.

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For JPY 850, it was ok, I guess. Did not rock my world, really.

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In the afternoon, I took the train from Kannai to Kanda, which was about 45 mins. Then I used Google Map to locate my hotel from the Kannai station. It said I should come out of the South exit.

It was a bit of a walk but not that bad. The location is perfect because it’s walking distance from our Tokyo office (the receptionist said it was about 4 stoplights away, I just go straight). And considering its location (it’s within or near the financial district), the price was reasonable.

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And the room and the bathroom are bigger than the one I booked in Yokohama (which was more expensive)

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After checking in, I went straight to our Tokyo office since I had a teleconference at 4 pm (3 pm Singapore time).

I had to take note of the path I was taking since because it’s me, I may get lost. Even if the receptionist says just go straight.

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I don’t know what to call this. Working holiday? I was supposed to be on holiday and yet I worked. I must be nuts. This our Tokyo office.

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After the conference call and bit of a chit-chat with colleagues, I went back to the hotel to ditch my tablet-laptop hybrid (more about that later) to go to Akihabara. Yes, the land of the otakus.

But before that, I had to go to Lawson to try my luck in buying a ticket to Studio Ghibli Museum.

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Nope. Fully booked on my days off. And on the days available either I’m already back in Manila or I will be in Singapore. Lesson learned: book a month ahead.

After leaving my laptop in my room, I decided to walk since the map says my hotel is just near Akihabara.

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Oh, elevator parking slots. They should have these in Makati and BGC where finding parking slots is a nightmare.

So I walked and walked.

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The little streets that I took were lined with little pubs that were still closed. Probably they open for the dinner crowd of office workers/salary men/women.

I realized I wasn’t getting near to where I’m supposed to be so I went back to Kanda station and took the JR and just jumped off the next station (I can’t remember what that is) and took a gamble. Hehehe. It turns out it was also Akihabara, but I had to walk farther to get to the stores I must go to.

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And I was running out of time. I learned the stores close at 8:30 pm. My girls are asking me to find them Attack on Titan stuff.

anime at Akihabara

Look at the prices…enough to give me a heart attack.

anime at Akihabara

My brother would freak out at these Gundam toys.

Sailor Moon FTW!

Pokemon love

And…there it is, Attack on Titan. But they’re sooooo expensive!

I have to find cheap ones or second-hand toys. No way I will buy them toys this expensive.

I was sooo tired that I forgot to have dinner. I just grabbed one of those convenience store dinners to bring to my hotel.

This is my neighborhood in Chiyoda at night.