Category: Singapore

Categories
Food Review Singapore

Curry Wok

Sometimes we think how friendships are built over food. Just take the example of my dad and the owner of Curry Wok. They met cos my dad was introduced to this place which serves some great food, because he wanted to get some fresh awesome otah. My dad and the owner shares one passion — food. And the owner ain’t stingy about treating my dad to expensive stuff. He just wanted company. So fortunately for my dad, he gets to enjoy some really good stuff.

But of course, we are not people who are unappreciative. My dad brings him business. We eat there as and when we can, and my dad packs for his staff sometimes, brings clients for lunch etc..

Okay.. Really, this blog post ain’t about friendship. It’s about food and what’s a food post without food talk and food photos!?

Curry Wok is famous for 2 things. Curry Fish Head and Braised Pork Knuckles. These are must trys for every visit.

First up the Curry Fish Head.

currywok-fishhead

The curry is rich and creamy but not overwhelming. It’s well balanced in it’s taste, being spicy and yet the spiciness does not take over the fresh taste of the fish head. Proportions are healthy and the fish head is meaty and really fresh. No fishy taste at all.

We had the vegetables up next..

currywok-chupchye currywok-currychye currywok-kangkong

Honestly, their vegetables are just normal. I wouldn’t rave and rant about them but hey! My mom doesn’t eat meat so what are we gonna do? And it provides some balance to the array of meat meat and more meat you going to see later!

currywok-centuryeggtofu

This century tofu dish actually came a little later than the vegetables which I was quite amused. It’s a cold dish which is supposed to be eaten before the rest. And it’s pretty easy to make considering that there was zero cooking involved. XD That said, this is one of my favourite dishes. The Tofu is soft and delicate and the century egg is slightly sticky yet extremely Q. But the saving factor has to be the sauce. Most Century Egg Tofu sauces are extremely salty, to make up for the general tastelessness of this dish. However, Curry Wok’s sauce is thick but not too salty, It compliments the bland tasting tofu yet you can still taste the refreshing taste of cold tofu.

currywok-ngohhiang

Now this is one delicacy. The Ngoh Hiang is 100% home-made and the ingredients used is fresh and really generous. They are not afraid to charge a little higher, because they know that what they deliver is one of the most awesome Ngoh Hiang I’ve ever tried. The outer bean skin is so thin that when it is deep fried, it’s extraordinarily crispy, even when it’s cool. The meat is not too oily and fattening as they try to use as much lean meat as possible. It’s easy to tell that they only use fresh oil to fry this because you do not get those blackened flakes and distinct burnt smell which accompanies dishes fried multiple times in the same oil.

currywok-otah

Now this Otah what my dad used to buy home for us in cartons of 10 (I know, we’re gluttons.) Hey! If it’s good, it’s worth it! Like the ngoh hiang, it’s not cheap but after you sink your teeth into the soft otah and bite some fresh fish chunks, you’ll agree with me that it’s worth every single penny. I always like to keep this till the end to savour it’s flavour and never once has the taste deteriorated because it’s been left out uneaten for at least 20mins. It is still juicy and soft, unlike some other places’ otah, where you really have to eat it up first before it dries up.

Now for the main attraction…

currywok-pigtrotter

Look at the SIZE of the pork knuckle! Really I don’t know where they get their supply but it’s HUGE. Mind you it’s not multiple pieces but ONE GIGANORMOUS piece. Honest to God, you can look at the remnants later. It’s braised in dark soy sauce with garlic, ginger and whatever. To such perfection it is cooked, that the skin and the meat is easily separated, without any trouble. Do not be fooled by all that skin and fats.. It’s surprisingly light and the skin is not overladen with fatty tissue, as with most pork knuckles sold elsewhere. Dig in with not THAT much guilt….  XD

All cleaned up! Look at the size of the Pork Knuckle bone!!!

currywok-empty

We cleaned up every single drop of food. Really every single one. Even the fish head curry… We were just short of licking the plates to get the most out of the sauces…

Personally, I think the food at Curry Wok is so amazing because they put their heart into it and because the owner’s a food fanatic, it is his faith and mission to ensure that what he delivers to his customers is personally acceptable. And not to mention, they do not stinge on their ingredients, which is what makes the difference between good food and great food. The place is small and atmosphere just like your grandmother’s little kitchen, where your family gather together and have a great home-cooked meal, chatting away while you wolf down everything that’s on your plate, thanking God that there IS food on your plate. It’s the kind of simple pleasure at eating great food that makes this place more than just good food!

Be there early or make a reservation! If not be prepared, you will not have any seats!

Curry Wok
5 Coronation Road
#01-04 Coronation Arcade
(Next to Coronation Plaza)

Opening Hours: Wed-Mon: 11am-930pm
Tel: 6464 8878
Payment: Cash

 

Categories
Singapore

Sec 5 class advised: Go to ITE instead

There’s a reason why there are so few success stories of bad kids turn good. Or lousy students top the school…

Principal tells students that they are unlikely to do well at O levels

By Sandra Davie, Education Correspondent

CALL it a disheartening start to the new school year.

A group of 27 girls in a Secondary 5 class in a mission school – which shall remain unnamed – were advised by their principal on the first day of school last week to seek transfers to the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), since they were unlikely to do well in the O levels this year.

To back her point, she even flashed the girls’ detailed N-level grades on the board in class using an overhead projector; she also stressed that she wanted 100 per cent passes in her school.

The result: teens with punctured self-confidence and some fuming parents.

The girls, who had done well enough in last year’s N-level examinations to get to Sec 5, were looking to repeat their good performance at the O levels this year and move on to the polytechnics.

Those with strong N-level results had a new option this year: They could have skipped Sec 5 and headed for higher-level technical courses at ITE, but the deadline for applications closed on Jan 2.

Five girls from the class confirmed the incident. They have decided to stay on in the school, but if they choose to take their principal’s advice, they can still apply for ITE courses starting in April.

The father of one of the five, describing the incident as ‘totally defeating’ for parents like him, said he and his wife had been motivating their daughter to aim to do well in the O levels this year.

‘My daughter’s self-esteem had gone up multiple levels just seeing her results and realising her hopes to attempt the O levels.

How are we to motivate our children to do better with second chances when there are principals who are so uncaring and unethical?’

More… His daughter said she is not considering a transfer to the ITE because she wants to go on to a polytechnic after Sec 5.

She added: ‘It is very sad when your principal doesn’t have faith in you and will not give you a chance.’

But having decided to stay on, she said she feels added pressure to do well: ‘I feel quite nervous, and so do quite a few of my classmates.’

Another parent said that after the principal’s talk, he had to do ‘damage control’ to convince his daughter that she stood a good chance of getting into a sports management course in a polytechnic.

A third parent, a mother, is considering writing to the Ministry of Education (MOE).

Saying this was a result of school heads being too concerned with MOE’s annual ranking of schools, she added: ‘This is a mission school at that. Where’s the compassion?’

She said she thought moves to weed out weaker students by urging them to drop difficult subjects were a thing of the past.

When annual ranking of secondary schools was introduced in 1992, some schools were reported to have pressed students to drop ‘tougher’ subjects such as Literature, in apparent attempts to protect or improve their rankings.

MOE has tweaked the system, taking fewer subjects into account.

About 60 per cent of Normal stream students who sit for the O levels do well enough to win places in the polytechnics.

Of the five girls who spoke to The Straits Times, only one defended her principal, saying she ‘meant well’.

Said the teen: ‘My class is a weak class. Some of the girls may be better off in the ITE.’

Wow. I thought teachers/principals are supposed to encourage these kids? Didn’t she study educational psychology when she was in NIE? At least I know that’s a core module for all my teacher friends.

Oh. I’m so sorry. I forgot that being so high up, she’d probably forgotten how to be a good teacher. She just well.. manages.

Being in the N level stream may not be such a disgraceful thing in this time and day, but if the students were to compare themselves to some of the students from the express stream in the same school they might still feel that inferiority complex. Schools are supposed to help them kill that inferiority complex and channel it into something motivating and encouraging. Not talk down to them. And make them feel worse.

No wonder kids have no respect for teachers nowadays.. Not when your principal looks down on you.

And she tries to explain herself:

THE school principal told The Straits Times yesterday she was merely trying to give her girls a ‘wake-up call’ when she spoke to them on the first day of school.

She confirmed that she had used an overhead projector to display the girls’ results, but that it was to impress on them that they would have to work hard to qualify for a place in the polytechnics.

She said: ‘It’s a fact. If a student scored a Grade 4 or 5 for a subject in the N levels, she is unlikely to pass the subject in the O levels.’

N-level subjects are graded from 1 to 5, with 1 being the best grade.

The principal added: ‘Some…who don’t qualify for poly will end up in the ITE anyway, so they might as well go direct to the ITE.’

She confirmed that she told the girls she wanted 100 per cent passes in her school, but that what she meant was that she wanted all her girls to do well in the O levels – not that she did not want poor performers to tar the school’s record or lower its ranking.

Noting that well over 80 per cent of her Normal stream students who sat for the O levels last year did well enough to qualify for the polytechnics, she added: ‘But it takes a lot of hard work and the girls needed to know that.’

When given the principal’s side of the story, two of the parents interviewed said that if all she wanted was to give the girls a wake-up call, she could have done it differently.

One parent said: ‘I would have preferred it if she had called the parents in and given them the hard facts, instead of destroying the confidence of the girls.’

Maybe all teachers and principals need a crash course in psychology. Mean exactly what you say.

I firmly believe that if the other party misunderstands you, it’s your fault for not explaining it properly in the first place.

Categories
Singapore

Unbelievable Singaporeans

I can’t comprehend the thinking of Singaporeans.

What is so important or attractive about a seat in the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) or public bus that propel Singaporeans to do one or a combination of the following:

– Stick their faces to the glass train doors.

– Attempt to pre-empt the exact spot where the bus door will be when it stops.

– Let their butts be attracted to empty seats, like metal to magnet.

– Pretend to sleep when an elderly person / pregnant woman gets on board.

– Let their young kid sit on a sit next to them while the rest of the bus/train is packed like sardines

– Instruct their kids to dash for any empty seats and make sure they cover another one for them.

– Implant a thought in their minds that the only thing that they can think about right now, is to get a seat.

 

This would make for a good psychology study.

“Public transport and it’s effect on normal human behaviour”

Hypothesis: Human behaviour will take a backward turn when they are faced with the possibility of standing in a public transport. The effect of this is that they will go through excruciating pain just to ensure that they are able to secure a seat. If they are unable to get a seat, there is about 0.19% of them who will fall down to the ground, convulse and vanish.

Categories
Singapore Videos

MDA Top Management visions for Singapore

… in a rap video no less. Artshub we are. Gotta show it.

I watched this video with a mix of horrific fascination and utter disgust. Not that it’s much of a difference. I don’t know. On one hand, I guess we have to give some rotten brownie points to these top dogs for trying… but on the other hand, I wish they hadn’t.

Such an irony though, that we’ve just classified a video game as M18. For one lesbiany scene. And the CEO raps about media choice. Choice of whom? The MDA? That’s not really ‘for everybody’. He also talks about ‘Singapore-made content to be number one’… And may I ask, what ‘Singapore-made content’ do we actually have? Considering how our locally made TV shows are utter crap, and of even lower quality than the already low quality Taiwanese ones.

Michael Yap seems to have a vision for ‘I.Jam, I.Rock’.. Hmm.. I see a similarity to Ipods and Ishuffles and Itouch. How… creative & original. I love Singapore.

And Amy Chua says ‘We classify media to give you a choice’, which is a policy of MDA I never understood. By restricting the options available to all age-groups, how is that giving us a choice? So presumably restricting 17-year-old kids fro watching Lust, Caution (AFTER THE CUTS) is giving us a choice. Awesome logic. I totally see it their way.

Man Shu Sam wants to put ‘Singapore content, on an international stage’, please, don’t. Not until we up the quality of our content. I don’t want to go on a vacation and be embarrassed to say I’m Singaporean. Already I am a little embarrassed when I haggle and they ask “OH! Singaporean??” and give me one of those looks.

My biggest pain was this:

‘Nothing but the best service for our customers
Fees and fines, we make it all the easier
This for the industry & public licensees
You can holler at us 24/7’

They make FEES & FINES easier. Sure, of course they do. But do they make the LICENCES application easier? Getting us to PAY PAY and PAY is what they try to improve on all the time apparently. But they can wait till 4 days before a show to REJECT the license application. 4 days my dears. 4 friggin days. Pffffffft!

All in all, if you are taking the video as it is, a marketing gimmick, I guess it works. Very well indeed. It’s gotten the attention from almost the entire blogosphere, even though it’s generally negative, maybe that’s the plan? Bad attention is better than no attention at all!

It is a try.. though I wish they hadn’t tried at all.

Watch the atrocious-ness in its entirety here:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc9cLNU1YdQ&hl=en&fs=1&]

If you’d like to sing-a-long, please check out Agagooga‘s blog here. He has kindly put the lyrics up.

Edit: If the embedded youtube link doesn’t show, the MDA version is here. And the actual YT link is here

Edit2: We have made it to The Guardian’s Viral Video Chart. Here.

Categories
Singapore

Final post on homosexuality stand

This gay vs anti-gay debate is starting to get ridiculous. The same “arguments” are being brought up over and over again.

A recent commentary made by Ms Yvonne Lee, a Law lecturer at NUS (ha!), in The Straits Times as linked from Yawning Bread here. I had to link from Yawning Bread because I couldn’t find a more neat and comprehensive reproduction of the original article. I suppose her views are, though very much flawed, typical. She did serve as legal counsel for Temasek Holdings and a professor at NUS. Singaporean universities are very apt at hiring people who have no references & no publications under their belt. Other than those published by the University Press of course. Boo. Those who do actually do research have moved elsewhere..

Her views are really extremely typical of the run of the mill arguments that anti-gays put across. And since there is a multitude of links tracked by tomorrow.sg, I suppose its pretty pointless for me to argue against HER points. So i’m going in generals.

This post is the LAST time I’m going to make my stand on homosexuality & its criminalising. As well as the religion / moral POV that anti-gays take.

All thanks to MM Lee’s fleeting mention that he thinks the authorities must take a “pragmatic approach” to what he sees as an “inevitable force of time & circumstances”. Source from Asiaone news. He also mentions that “Singapore should not actively pursue homosexuals who engage in sex.” There is a sudden unwelcome increase in unwanted attention to the homosexual community in Singapore.

For so many decades, homosexuals have lived in peace and harmony with the rest of the community every where in the world, Singapore included. So why is the spotlight on them right now? Before this incident, I am almost 100% sure that nobody even knew of the existence of the Penal Code section 377A.

The most common arguments against legalising homosexual activities are more often than not, on moral & religious grounds. Religion is inherently good and teaches their believers to serve the less fortunate and champions world peace (sic!) It is the people who thwart religion and make it into something that champions what they themselves believe in and want to achieve, some evil plan that they conceive. God is always the black sheep that people blame for their misguided deeds.

Which is why using religion as an argument for being AGAINST someone is plain bullshit in my opinion. B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. Stop defacing the sanctity of God (in general terms) and all that He stands for. Stop using Him as a mask that you cowardly hide behind in your futile and disgusting way of defending your un-religious views.

Did religion teach you to be intolerant of those who are different from you? I seriously doubt that. Then why are you being intolerant? Isn’t that against your faith? Isn’t that against all that God has taught you to be? Then on what grounds can you stand up and tell dissenting people that they are ‘immoral’, and what they are doing is ‘against the nature of mankind’.

Homosexuality is present in mankind since the Greeks and the Samurais were born. Japanese history tells us that Samurais have sex with women and marry them for the sole purpose of procreation and letting the blood line continue. Their real love comes from the brotherhood. It is a culture for seasoned samurais and novice samurais to have sex and love each other. An article about the history of samurais confirms this. Homosexuality wasn’t that deviant in those days, in those cultures. Asian for that matter. In fact it was a necessity for the Samurais, who were the highest class of beings in Japan, second only to the ruler.

So if it was natural then, how does it not be natural now? Did the definition of natural change over time? Has God somehow altered the natural state of things in this world somehow?

On the same thread of natural, it is also argued that homosexuality goes against the institution of marriage, which is reserved for one man & one woman. Who said it? Who decreed that marriage is only for the man-woman combination? Yes, God created Adam & Eve and not Adam-Adam or Eve-Eve. But they had to procreate so by fact of nature, only a sperm & an egg can fuse to create a baby. They had nobody else anyway, how are they to know if they actually love the opposite gender? They might have been gay/lesbian/bi-sexual for all we know.

Marriage is a commitment of two people who are in love and are willing and committed to spend the rest of their lives together, happily ever after (ok, this is cliche). If two people of the same gender can do that, what right do we have to go against it?

Procreation. Many heterosexuals are not giving birth right now. So I will be right to say, from the “homosexuals cannot procreate, therefore population growth will decline” POV, that we should criminalise the following:
– Infertile men / women
– Heterosexuals who chose not to have a child
– Heterosexuals who are too poor to afford having a child

Why are we not doing so then?

Another popular argument is that gays are more promiscuous and thus they are the reason why there are more AIDS cases. Oh. My. God. How imbecile. It’s akin to saying we have to criminalise all SARS carriers, all Hep B carriers, all Bird Flu carriers etc etc.. Our jails will be extremely over-crowded. More jails need to be built. Are these people willing to say give up their houses to make way for more new jails?

These people argue that it is intrinsic that heterosexuals are more committed to relationships, especially women. Right. Maybe I should put out some stats for the number of abortions being carried out, the number of single moms there are.. Since gays & lesbians can’t procreate, these instances must have been committed by heterosexuals right? There goes the commitment theory. Flying out of the window.

And that their sexual activities are more prone to AIDS? Wherever did you guys get that from?? So we should BAN all sex activities then? Nobody should have sex at all. It harms others. Oh and those who make such propositions might have never heard of the term ‘oral sex’ or ‘mutual masturbation’. I doubt either of these will cause AIDS. Maybe we should ban them as well. No masturbating and no oral sex. Na-dah.

Oh that note, maybe we should criminalise sneezing, coughing, spitting, yawning (who knows what air-borne germs might come out of the person’s mouth). We should all wear a spacesuit out. Because, everything you touch can be a breeding ground for germs. We should all eat space food too!

We have intelligent people living in this country.

I am so proud.