tell me about it

Liverpool absolutely kicks ass! Beat Toulouse 4-0 with our second sheet team :D Take that Man Utd!

Hairspray is awesome toooooo! Listening to the soundtrack now heh. Zac Efron! James Marsden! *drool* :D

Okay just wanted to say how much these two things rocked my world :) Pool and Hairspray!

I watched The Simpsons!

Is awesome!

Germain warned me that I’d end up laughing at jokes that the rest of the audience wouldn’t get and he was right :P

There was this scene where they were jumping into the sandbox -

Bart: GERONIMO!
Lisa: SACAGAWEA!
Me: AHAHAHAHAAA!! HAHA! HA!
*embarrassed silence*
Me: Cough.

Guess I’m just about the only one in Singapore who read about Native American heroes as a kid :(

The movie’s totally hilarious though. Nonstop laughing and a joke every second. Lots of brainless fun and worth every cent.

The company was really good too :)

Watched 男儿本色with Kaixin yesterday at sleazy ol’ Beach Road Prince theatre.

Wasn’t expecting much beyond the excited “Want to watch free movie? Got cute Hong Kong boys!” SMS that she sent me so I went in without much expectations.

But WAH…I really, really, really loved the movie. Hong Kong movies are actually damn good when you come to think about it. Their fight scenes are so much better choreographed, for one thing; the men are much more attractive (Leo DiCaprio compared to Andy Lau? Please), they aren’t afraid to kill off major characters, and bad sometimes triumphs over good.

What I really like is that HK movies often explore the duality of good and evil more convincingly than any Hollywood movie ever could. There’s so much ambiguity. In the movie, you have cops brawling bloodily in restaurants, pursuing ‘justice’ for their own selfish reasons (revenge and reputation), while the bad guys are bad because they grew up in poverty, without parental influence, and grew up believing in a dog-eat-dog world. Who’s to say who’s good or bad? Nothing’s black or white.

The fight scenes are amazing. They jump all over rooftops, smash into buses, roll around on a floor covered in burning gasoline. The explosions are graphic and you get heavily invested in the emotions and feelings of each character, whether good or bad. And of course it helps a lot that all of them are total hunks. Giggle.

Shawn Yue (yummy), Nicholas Tse (yummier), and Jaycee Chan (surprisingly cute in a good-boy clean-cut way; KX you’re right, he looks much better now with that decent haircut) are the good guys; Wu Jing as the bad guy (and some of his seven brothers are cute too). It’s a major drool fest for the girls and packed with bloody fantastic action for the guys.

There’s also a gratituous scene where all three men strip their shirts off and massage liniment into each other’s bruises. Teeheesqueegiggle.

It opens officially on MY BIRTHDAY which is TOMORROW wooo! So this is definitely twenty thumbs-up (if I had twenty thumbs); go watch go watch go buy tickets is NICE.

Even better than Infernal Affairs.

I WATCHED IT FIRST I WATCHED IT FIRST!

Xiaobin gave me a great great pressie today :) We had our favorite dishes at Fish & Co and then…we went to catch Harry Potter on total impulse - we didn’t think we’d actually get tickets on short notice BUT WE DID WE DID AT LIDO WOO! THANKS BIN THANKS THANKS SO MUCH :D :D :D

But…the movie wasn’t great.

:(

SPOILER ALERT. Don’t read past this if you don’t want me to spoil the movie for you. Oh what the hell. The movie’s already spoilt, and not by me, but by a completely inefficient director and his incompetent screenwriters.

Actually, David Yates broke my frickin’ heart. The movie felt poorly constructed and rushed, like they were trying to get through all the specific plot points in a certain amount of time (i.e. not enough). The movie was hardly about the Order of the Phoenix; it should have been retitled ‘Harry Potter and the High Inquisitor’ because the movie was all about Dolores Umbridge.

Kreacher gets a two-scene cameo. Luna Lovegood was hardly loony (not a word from her about her father or anything really loopy, really), the kiss between Cho and Harry was brilliant but the rest of their relationship barely a blip on the radar. Grawp was an absolute teddy bear of a giant and not at all terrifying. Harry never got really upset about how he was being left out of everything (Ron and Hermione’s appointments as prefects have been cut out of the film).

In fact, Yates never made my emotions run high (except in the beginning; a delicious thrill and shock ran through me at the sudden appearance of the Dementors. I must say the movie started out very promising but degenerated rapidly into so much fluff) and the climaxes aren’t even worth mentioning because nothing rocked my world in this movie.

The Thestrals are beautiful yet when they ride on them to London, not one peep out of the rest of the gang about how THEY CAN’T EVEN BLOODY SEE THEIR MOUNTS, CAN THEY; Bellatrix Lestrange wasn’t given enough screen time because Helena Bonham-Carter could have done so much better. Cho is two-dimensional. The revelation that James Potter was actually a sneaky little bully back in Hogwarts is received by Harry by a perplexing amount of disinterest.

The prophecy gets about two seconds of screen time without anyone knowing quite why it’s so bloody important in the first place. Sirius’ death - eh, boring, and Harry doesn’t really look very upset. The movie ends abruptly and without any sense of closure, which didn’t really matter to me anymore because I was just feeling so bleh about the whole thing.

I did like some of the little sidenotes, like Ginny’s discernable jealousy when she turns back to watch Harry approach Cho, Ron’s jealousy when Grawp gives Hermione presents, and the interesting side headlines on the Daily Prophet.

Those and the fact that Daniel Radcliffe is all grown-up and purty now are the only plus points in the whole film.

Sigh.

That’s the sound of my heart breaking. They’ve done no justice to Rowling or the series and I’m just going to have to wait for my ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ and my owl plushie to repair the damage done.

Ocean’s 13 was a cop-out.

Everything seemed too easy, no spectacular tricks, no women (except for Ellen Barkin, who presented a most pathetic specimen) and no fun. The premise was shaky without a proper denouement, Al Pacino was hardly hate-able enough and the discovery of the double-cross was a terrible let-down.

Ocean’s 11 was spectacular because of the mishaps, evil Terry Benedict (yummy Andy Garcia) and the cleverly clever ending. Ocean’s 12, a bit of a cop-out because of the Julia Roberts bit, but the suave, slick François Toulour saved the movie with his gorgeous dancing segment and his immense cockiness - plus it had Catherine Zeta-Jones in it and who doesn’t love her?

Ocean’s 13 was just…blah. The only saving grace (okay, two saving graces) was the eye candy. Brad and George - how could I ever resist either one?

Awesome. This is the first promotional picture out of Heath Ledger as the new Joker in the upcoming Batman movie. They’ve really moved away from green wigs, haven’t they? Heath Ledger looks bloody terrifying here. I’m really scared of the Joker now.

I watched Pan’s Labyrinth last night, too. It was so violent that I had to occasionally pause the movie and go cuddle my cat and lament that people are terribly, terribly, twisted, kitten, and don’t you love me and cootchie cootchie coo I wuvs you too baby cat! And then I could go back and watch a little bit more of Pan’s Labyrinth.

Let me tell you, that Pale Man is downright terrifying. But I wish they’d focused more on the fantasy and the fantastic than on the real-life violence, because the faun and the Pale Man could definitely have gotten more screen time than that horribly psycho El Capitane who sliced the poor rebel’s hand in half and smashed another’s face in repeatedly with cold calculated blows with the back of a flashlight, and I need to go cuddle my kitty again.

And just to wrap up the movie talk, I’m catching Pirates of the Caribbean later with my brothers and Yu Hsien and Leanne. Arr, me mateys! I sincerely hope the theatre is devoid of any noisy children.

And then later tonight is not quite a movie but definitely something that’s in the arena of a heartstopping thriller - THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, ALL RIGHT BABY! I’m ready for Liverpool to win it for the sixth time, oh yeah, oh yeah, LIVERPOOL!

Joel recommended Tao’s to me the other day. I’d heard about it before from another friend who’d been really enthuasistic about this newfangled cheap seven-course meal, and N* had heard that the service there was brilliant. Joel came back and corroborated all this so we headed there on our monthly sojourn for good food.

It’s located at Paradiz Centre, and just a short walk down from Dhoby Ghaut MRT.

Unfortunately I forgot to take lots of photos. Took just a few. I was too overwhelmed by the good food and fabulous service. The staff are over-eager to explain their menu to you and are equally ready to recommend the house specials. We didn’t always pick the house specials, sometimes going with our own gut feeling (my gut feeling was “hungry”) and sometimes it was a hit, sometimes an only-almost-there. But altogether pretty darn good.

We started off with a sweet mango sorbet to whet the appetite, followed by a lovely bacon and mushroom gratin which was hot and wasn’t too savory (a good thing) and came with the cutest little utensil to spoon it up. It soon disappeared. Sigh.

The thing about Tao’s is that the servings are pretty darn small. This is a good and bad thing. The bad thing is that the food is so good that you feel awfully upset when you realize you’re scraping the bottom of the plate and there’s none left; and you sit there and stare at the empty plate disconsolately (until the next serving comes and you perk up again). The good thing is that if the servings were any bigger, you’d run out of stomach real estate by the time you reach the main course. Which I almost did.

Ahem. I get ahead of myself. The second course - a tantalizing “Farm Boy Splendor” (pictured) and a fruit salad. The “Farm Boy Splendor” was a recommendation and it was a hit. It was a salad tossed with balsamic vinaigrette topped with slices of cold chicken - the vinaigrette was tart and the veg light and fresh. The fruit salad was crab stick salad atop chopped fruit in a creamy dressing. While not a house recommendation, I absolutely loved it (I love anything fruity yum). Again, a feeling of grief passed over me when the plates yawned back emptily at me. Sniff. Such loss. I had to start pacing myself and stop inhaling down my food.

The grilled mushrooms were next - strips of I-don’t-know-what-mushroom drizzled with teriyaki sauce. Tasty but not spectacular; the mushrooms tended to be a tad rubbery, but the teriyaki sauce covered its inadequacies which weren’t enough to call the dish anything less than not bad.

There will never be a pumpkin soup that matches up to the heavenly brew they dish up at Giuseppe (incidentally just across the road from Tao’s) but that doesn’t stop me from trying. The pumpkin soup (pictured) was actually pretty darn good, with a drizzle of cream that perked me up happily. The bowl was cute too; a ceramic pumpkin. Kitsch, but had me cooing over it. The shark-fin melon herbal soup (which, we were heartily assured, did not contain any real shark’s fin [as if it were a good thing :P]) was forgettable. What shark-fin melon herbal soup? What? See, I’ve already forgotten it. Nothing special.

For our main entrées we picked the house recommendations, the slow-cooked baby pork back ribs (pictured) and the marinated lamb. I’d gotten rave reviews about the ribs from my brother so I’d already expected it to be good and it didn’t disappoint. The meat was so tender and soft it fell away easily from the bone in brown strips of yum. The tiny pitcher of sauce was excellent to go along (not the pitcher but the sauce). The lamb was also yummy though not quite on the same level as the ribs, and the mint sauce suited it perfectly, as mint sauce and lamb are wont to do. After eating 3/4 of my ribs dish though I felt a bit gelat having eaten too much meat and I couldn’t finish it. My server teased that he would refuse to serve my dessert until I finished every mouthful, so I snuck it onto N*’s plate and beamed cherubically at my server when he came back.

I got my (just) desserts. :D

The crème brûlée was recommended and was a definite yes, with the requisite (perfectly) caramelised top. We forewent the recommended sesame pudding though and decided on the poached pear instead - I do so love my poached fruit. Pear compote, apple compote, stewed peach…I love, love, love cooked fruit. And this pear came drenched in tart cinnamon sauce with an extra pitcher on the side. I nearly died, so transported was I into rapt ecstasy at the tasting of this dish. My server came around and offered me a free second helping - and who was I to resist? So I had two poached pears :D Oh, the heaven. I would have preferred the pear sliced up neatly; though the presentation scored high with the pear poached whole, it was difficult to remove portions with my spoon to eat. So, uh, I picked it up like a savage and bit into it with cinnamon sauce running down my chin.

I deny everything.

The drinks were perfectly adorable too, served in a little plastic jug (which looks a bit tacky amidst the lovely pottery plates) along with a tiny pottery teacup. The ice rose apple tea is deeeelish, my personal favorite. The ice peach tea is also yummy, and we reached a happy medium by blending the two. The drinks come with a little fork so you can pry open the jug covers and eat the fruit inside. It’s the thought that goes into the presentation that really makes a difference.

The “free” drink is a hot tea which comes with free refills. I don’t particularly like hot Chinese teas so I approached this with reservations but to my delighted surprise this was light and redolent of summer berries. We enquired as to the type of tea and were told that it was a special blend of green tea and berry tea from Taiwan. It really was very good, and N* thinks the hot tea outstrips the cold (though for me it’s the other way around, the rose apple tea *swoon* was so very good, and I do like ice teas).

The servers were friendly and helpful and boisterous, and I applaud Tao’s hiring policies because they are definitely picking the right people. I seriously contemplating tipping despite the already-levied 10% service charge, but cheap though the seven-course meal is, a poor college student am I, so regretfully I had to deny them an extra tip. My change and receipt was delivered to me in an envelope. Another unique thing.

I have to mention their serving dishes which, I hear tell, is Tao Tzu pottery plates. They are very pretty and their presentation is gorgeous. Every dish looks almost too good to eat (although I was so eager to eat that I forgot to take pictures at the start).

And we got baby hongbaos with milk chocolate coins inside, compliments of the season; as well as a card that entitles me to 10% off the next time I go.

The price ($28.90++) is very decent for a seven-course meal of the calibre served at Tao’s, but of course too pricey to eat too often. I would love to go back and try the other dishes though.

Succumbed to my inner shopper (as well as the outer one) and bumped off to Vivo for the day expecting great things from Singapore’s latest mall.

Got there amidst a large crowd which prompted me to mutter vehemently under my breath that I hate people.  Crowd wasn’t really that bad in the end.  I think most of Singapore went to Vivo in the first week already.

My first item on the agenda was to find food to eat.  I was craving Korean - but no Korean in the whole mall.  Boo.  Ended up eating at Harborfront because we couldn’t find anywhere in Vivo that sold nice affordable soupy noodle meals.  Double boo.

Vivo’s got a lot of nice upmarket boutiques on the first floor - Pull and Bear, Gap, the bingo-bango-bongo of Zara, Mango, Topshop and even Forever 21.  I’m waiting for River Island to open up.  I salivated outside their doors for awhile before reluctantly heading off to explore the rest of the mall.

Layout is a bit weird and I got a tad disoriented but fear not!  I will soon know Vivo at the back of my hand.

I went a bit nutty when I saw the capsule machine wall in Toys R’ Us.  I now have a little toaster keychain with bread that ACTUALLY POPS UP OMG *SPASM* SO CUTE!!! :D :D  Alas, no Tofu Man.  I had such hopes.

Okay lah Vivo isn’t that hot.  I’d expected better but unfortch the expensive shops are just a bit out of my financial league and the mid-priced shops are all ones you can find anywhere else.  The play area is quite fun and the food choices are quite vast (don’t expect to find any Korean though).  Still, not bad and the new-kid-on-the-block factor is there.  I’ll probably go back one of these days.

Ooh ooh and I went to Browhaus in Orchard for my first eyebrow threading experience.  Fun!

Oh yeah.  MY PHONE DIED, PEOPLE.  I WILL BE MORE OR LESS UNCONTACTABLE TILL WEDNESDAY.  Please leave me messages on MSN if you need me, or gmail me ya.  :)

I love these little fermented milk drinks so much. (Ew, fermented milk. Now that I think about it that sounds kinda gross.) I’m the kind of person who can actually crave for these drinks.

When I was young I remember we actually went on a church field trip to the Vitagen factory to see how they were made. The girl who brought us around told us that Vitagen was healthier because they use real fruit juice. Me being a small kid, I totally bought into the healthy hype and I started picking Vitagen over Yakult.

Eventually Vitagen and I grew apart as I grew older and I hadn’t drunk it for yonks when I suddenly started having cravings again this year. However over the years I had heard from countless friends that “Yakult tastes better”. My weak rebuttals of “But…but Vitagen uses real fruit juice!” were not very convincing. Not being very discerning about my fermented milk choices I picked up a pack of Yakult last week to relive old times.

This started an avalanche. I have consumed three delicious packs of Yakult in the last two weeks. I must say it doesn’t seem to do anything for my pooping habits; unlike Derelyn who drinks two bottles and immediately has to rush off to the loo. But perhaps that’s a bit too much info for my Gentle Readers.

Last night however when I was out doing some 3am grocery shopping (God bless Prime Supermart) with Kerri and Qiyan and Marcus, I discovered that Vitagen costs the same as Yakult (S$2.70) but packs 25ml more into a larger bottle. Gasp! This brought out the kiasu aunty in me.

“Look! I can get 25ml more for the same price! AND Vitagen has real fruit juice,” I asserted proudly to Marcus (who wasn’t listening).

Today I opened the last bottle of my Yakult, which happened to be grape flavored, and in a burst of inspiration opened the grape-flavored Vitagen as well, to facilitate a showdown between the two premium fermented milk drinks on the market.

As you can tell I am trying to avoid studying. Gee, is it 5pm already? *innocent*

Visual proof that Vitagen bottles are bigger than Yakult. Vitagen - 125ml. Yakult - 100ml. I’m eager for Vitagen to prove its worth so that I can go around and inform people smugly that Vitagen “has real fruit juice, okay, and it tastes better, so there!” Also so that I can continue buying Vitagen because I get 100 more ml of drink per five-bottle packet. I am such an aunty.

So anyway.

The purple Vitagen is lighter colored than Yakult, a little paler, while Yakult has a richer color, and is slightly pinker than the more lavender-toned Vitagen. Yakult also has a stronger, sweeter smell than Vitagen.

(If only I put as much effort into my studies, ha.)

Time for the taste test!

*rolls fermented milk thoughtfully around in my mouth, swishes and spits*

Hmmm, yes. I see what they mean. Yakult is definitely sweeter than Vitagen, with a more robust and intense flavor. Vitagen on the other hand tastes rather weak and vaguely insipid when compared to Yakult; though I must also admit that if I hadn’t drunk Yakult immediately after to compare, I might not have realized the difference so clearly.

Texture-wise however, Vitagen seems to be a tad thicker and leaves more of an aftertaste than Yakult does.

Health-wise, Vitagen might still win the competition. It’s not as sweet because, well, it says in large print on the bottle, “LESS SUGAR”. Which is probably healthier. Vitagen also contains dietary fibre (prebiotics) and lactobacillus acidolphilus culture. I’m sure we all remember the ads where the Vitagen culture goes into the intestine and zaps away all the bad germs. Yakult has live L. casei Shirota strain.

According to my *ahem* exhaustive Google searches, L. casei Shirota strain “may accelerate the innate immune response of the respiratory tract and protect against various respiratory infections in neonates, infants, and children, a high risk group for viral and bacterial infections.” (Hori, T., Kiyoshima, J., and Yasui, H., 2004).

L. acidolphilus on the other hand,”protects against the entrance and proliferation of “bad” organisms that can cause disease. This is accomplished through a variety of mechanisms. For example, the breakdown of food by L. acidophilus leads to production of lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and other byproducts that make the environment hostile for undesired organisms. L. acidophilus also produces lactase, the enzyme that breaks down milk sugar (lactose) into simple sugars. People who are lactose intolerant do not produce this enzyme. For this reason, L. acidophilus supplements may be beneficial for these individuals.” (DeBusk, R., et al, 2002).

Also, dietary fibre or probiotics “are claimed to prevent and control diarrhoea, lessen the effects of lactose intolerance, relieve constipation, lower cholesterol, prevent and control thrush (a vaginal yeast Infection) and even prevent bowel cancer, as well as stimulate the immune system.” (Wahlqvist, 2002).

There you have it. Vitagen sounds healthier but doesn’t taste quite as good as Yakult. If you’re going for taste, buy Yakult. If you rather err on the side of price and its health benefits, Vitagen’s for you.

Me, I think I’m going to stick to Yakult. The taste really does beat Vitagen hands down.

Citations:

DeBusk, R., et al. April 2002. Retrieved from http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ConsSupplements/Lactobacillusacidophiluscs.html

Hori, T., Kiyoshima, J., and Yasui, H. 13 April 2004. Retrieved from http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=440622

Wahlqvist, M. 5 April 2002. Retrieved from http://www.healthyeatingclub.com/info/articles/func-foods/probiotics.htm

Watched Death Note tonight with Shaun, Joel and Bing. It started out awfully cheesy and badly CG-ed and we were giggling in disbelief, but eventually it got a lot better and believable. The ending killed me; up till that point I was still rooting for Light (it helped that he’s pretty cute) but augh when he did what he did, it was heartbreaking.

He’s still cute though.

Plus I finally finished the first season of Prison Break and on to the second season woo! Wentworth Miller, absolute yum. I do like men with shaved heads :P and his tattoos are really awesome. So many cute men in Prison Break. Squee!

Teehee Wentworth Miller :D

^_^