mark & michelle's wedding dinner @ amara sanctuary

ida posing with the bride

ida with puay ngan and elijah


michelle dancing with the priest

ida and ting ting (pei chun school mate)

go to this site to view wedding photos.

jennifer's birthday dinner @ craig rd

jennifer celebrated her half-century birthday at xi yan restaurant, an exclusive restaurant at 38a craig road.

the menu is not the run-of-the mill type. we started with their signature dish - greenhouse tomatoes in sesame sauce. this was followed by three other appetisers: grilled thai pork cheek, japanese cucumber rosettes and spicy shishamo with xo terayaki sauce.

the main course started with marinated drunken prawns. the other dishes were hakka marinated duck, braised beef brisket in sichuan hot and spicy sauce, stir fried spicy bean curd crabs, intermezzo of chrysanthemum tea sorbet with sugarcane crystals, chinese cabbage consomme (soup) and stir fried mushrooms with pickled cucumber.

to round off everything, we had a piece of the birthday cake each and coconut and durian sauce on sea coconut and attap seed pudding.

dinner at bottletree park

people tend to mix up the two places: bottletree park and bottletree village. one is at the beginning of sembawang and the other is at sembawang end. which is which? the village is at jalan mempurong, which is about the end of sembawang.

upon ida's return from melbourne for a 2-week stay, victor promptly arranged for dinner at bottletree park. the arrangement was for us to meet at 7.00 p.m. victor and helen would take the mrt to khatib and from the station, they would take a 10-minute walk to the restaurant. we would drive there to meet them but because lay bee was delayed at work, we reached the place only at 7.20 p.m.

while waiting for us, victor and helen were taken on a conducted tour of the place by mr neo, one of the owners of the restaurant. mr neo used a buggy to drive them around the park to show them the many fruit trees that he had planted in the park. victor had specifically asked to see the cashew nut tree.

for dinner, we had cereal oat prawns, tou miao, fried chicken wings, chilli crabs and mantou to go with the chilli crab gravy. for desserts, five of us shared three bowls of soursop, mango and chendol.

after dinner, victor took me to meet mr neo, who got me to sign up for the privileged dining card. we can see that mr neo has a come along way since the time he operated a stall, also selling sea-food, at one of the coffee-shops in sembawang.