Hong Kong 17 -19th October 2009

View of Hong Kong harbour from our 31st Floor Hotel

As my wife, May, is in Hong Kong for work related matters, I came to Hong Kong last weekend to enjoy the food,shopping and sightseeing for a short 2 and a half days. Hong Kong is my favourite destination because it has wide variety of top end shopping (many LV,Chanel, Dior,Tods, Gucci etc. etc.) so much so that it beats Singapore or any other Asian city on 3 counts :

a) Widest varierty of branded goods in a centralised area - mainly Central Hong Kong
b) Weak HK dollar which is pegged to the US$ ; at present it is S$ 1 to HK$ 5.5 ; about 10% lower than start of this year
c) No Goods and Services tax (Singapore has 7%)



Tender, Juicy and Cold - Taken best with Lea and Perrins Worcestetshire Sauce. Yummy.

Teochiew or Chiu Chow food has got to be one of the best in the world here, not to mention Cantonese food. As a foodie, my wife and I know of many friends and acquaintences who have eaten at the 'best of the best' and Hong Kong chefs are best in the world for their food. No doubt about that. The cold crab above is 'to die for'.



Cold Crab at Pak Lok, 23 - 25 Hysan Street

The Cantonese food, is also top notch too. Yung Kee at Wellington Street is world famous winning literally 100+ awards for its gourmet Cantonese food and the roast goose, pork ribs and pei tan (100 year old egg) are literally out of this world. It is what I call gastronomic excess to the 10th degree. Food beyond anyone's imagination. President's, kings, queens, princes have all eaten here, as have movie stars and millionaires.



Halloween is 2 weeks away and they are celebrating already

Lan Kwai Fong is the party district of Hong Kong, so if you are a party animal, the party goes on till 6am in the morning. The place is filled with tourists, expatriates and party people spilling on to the streets. The cool weather also assists in making the place a perfect venue for alfresco dining and drinking at a reasonable price.




Marlin Bar at Lan Kwai Fong

Hong Kong in short, is a main shopping venue, safe, inexpensive and has very excellent MTR infrasructure so getting around is a brezze. To paraphrase an Austrian / American action star : " I'll be back !"

Post PSLE Lunch 13th Oct 2009

American style Food - No prizes for guessing why I chose this place !

1 day just after Andrew, my second son finished his Primary School Leaving Examination, I decided to reward him with a nice lunch of his choice as well as a yo-yo. Note, that I have not rewarded him for good results or anything like that, the results will be made known over 1 month from now. In fact, I (and his mother of course) am rewarding him for the hard work he has put in all these months and even years leading up to this exam. Truth be told, he has an excellent attitude towards work and finishing assignments, this I think will put him in good stead for the longer and tougher secondary years as there will be up to 9 examinable subjects as compared to the 4 which he is taking now.


This Yo-yo looks cool !

After a short morning meeting with my Malaysian colleague Rufus, I headed home to pick him up and we headed for the Coronation Plaza, a small shopping center near our house which has a branch of the popular New York New York American style food. Plenty of good quality burgers, steaks, hot dogs, pizzas and spaghettis on offer and the place is normally packed at lunch time, so when we went at 2pm, it was past the peak lunch crowd. He had a Mo sandwich of ham,cheese,bacon and lettuce etc. while I had the black pepper ribs.

The food we had yesterday was so-so, but the time spent with my son was the most priceless gift to me. As he grows into his teen years, he will be more attracted to his friends, peers, and all the electronic gadgets like handphones, latest notebook PCs and the like.


Black Pepper Pork Ribs

So for the one hour and a half, we enjoyed the lunch, the ambience, and most of all the father -son bonding.
I will treasure these moments more than anything else in the world. For those with young children or no kids, well this is one of the many blessings and gifts which we have in our lives, so don't waste the opportunity to spend quality time with them for very soon, they will want to spend that quality time with many other things.


Andrew with his Sandwich

Seize the moment and the Day.

Breakfast by Tata 11th Oct 2009

My simple breakfast today

Every Sunday while my wife May shops at the wet market in Tiong Bahru, I rush home (after dropping her off) to cook some breakfast for the family. This ritual has been going on for about 2 years now, and I consider myself an 'advanced beginner' chef having progressed from a total novice who did not know how to start a fire, let alone cook maybe Maggie Mee to someone who can cook around 10 very simple dishes, which include the following below. Go ahead and laugh, but I present most humbly :

a) steamed rice
b) blanching vegetables
c) stir fry vegetables with oyster sauce
d) omelette
e) steamed fish
f) porridge with sweet potato
g) scrambled eggs
h) all kinds of grilled meats,char siew and chicken - no brainer of course
i) spaghetti bolognaise

Our Display Table in the Living Room

Today as usual, I cooked the following simple dishes, grilled back bacon, blanched asparagus spears, cherry tomatoes, scrambled eggs with toast and Vietnamese coffee. Thanks to my friend Richard Goh who hand - carried a bag of coffee back to Singapore from Hanoi. I have to make a special thanks to my wife, May, who taught me step by step all the basic coooking procedures and I dutifully noted them down for easy reference. Another thanks goes to the book "Healthy Appetite" by renowned celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay whose recipes I have been following conscienciously for the whole of last year.

Mum's not cooking, so Tata comes in to do his part.

Time to Give Back to Society

Youth Challenge

Recently I was invited to join the Executive Board as 2nd Vice President of the Youth Challenge, a non-profit charity with the objectives of helping disadvantaged youths find their place in society as well as provide self-esteem awareness courses and humanitarian trips to Third World Countries.

My friend who is the President, Looi Teck Kheong, is a lawyer in private practice and after much persistent persuasion, I decided to join and contribute my small share in terms of experience as a business leader and I hope it provides me with the humbling experience of knowing first hand what the problems are for the youth of today in Singapore. Categorically, there are 3 segments :

a) Youth from well to do homes
b) Youth in suburban middle income homes
c) Youth from poor families
d) Youth from dysfunctional families and from families with endemic problems

As I am a relative newcomer to volunteerism, I hope I can inject some fresh ideas and contacts to improve the lot of this charity which I find can establish its niche in our society. I will keep the readers posted on what are our initiatives and where YC will be headed in the near future.

Old School Dinner 2009

Sim Boon Yang, Eric Lim and Ng Tong Yang


"We Won ! !"


" Yam Sheng ! "

7 Oct 2009 ; D Day ; PSLE first major exam for Junior

Andrew taking a rest

The day of reckoning has come, where my son Andrew will be taking the Primary School Leaving Examination or PSLE for short this morning. Although he is pretty confident of himself, having undergone literally thousands of hours of practice, studying and tuition for all 4 subjects, English, Math,Science and Chinese (Mother Tongue), I am nervous for him.

Like General Dwight Eisenhower, who was tormented on what day to activate the largest airborne, seaborne and landborne attack onto the shores of Normady, after the decision was made for 6th June 1944, all he could was sit tight, wait .. and pray for the optimum outcome. Of course, a major exam is in no way as stressful as what Eisenhower felt, as his decision meant that literally thousands and ultimately millions of soldiers would fight, die and be injured critically for the rest of their lives so that humanity and the future generations of people in more than 10 countries would have freedom to their own self - rule. I had, as the concerned father, run through the textbooks (what do I know now, after 30 + years of leaving Secondary school ?) and given my little input and discipline to junior as and when he slackened on the pace and got distracted. I had also to play friend,confidante, exercise buddy - we went for runs and cycles together and most importantly, motivator to reward him with sweets,drinks and snack food whenever he finished a test paper or had a long 4 - 6 hour tuition session.

The Caltex petrol station opposite our house has become a meeting point, or 'club' of sorts for the friends who hang out after the tuition is over to have a soft drink and snack (Old Chang Kee curry puff or fried sotong which my wife strongly disapproves of as it is deep fried and the vegetable oil is reused again and again). His pals, Aaaron, Glenn, Ava and Yi Fen will in the future years, look back to these days with fondness.

Andrew has been a very diligent, and since he has been under the tutelage of a Mrs. Florence Lim who is a tuition specialist for the last 3 years, his grades have been improving. It is impossible to compare the lives of myself and my peers who lived their primary school days in the 70s and now, as it is as different as living on earth and a living in a space station.

To put things in perspective, Andrew has posted reasonable grades, scoring As and Bs for most of his subjects in this year and including the preliminaries, its just that the points system award to students for their perfomance is based on the National Average of Singapore and one can score say 78 marks for Math and be graded with a 'B' because the paper was an easy one and everybody scored around 75, so the examiners draw up a normal distribution curve and rank the grades accordingly.He has been reminded time and again not to rush through each paper, read the questions properly, circle the ones he is not sure of and move on to the next question and come back to redo the difficult question after he has finished the paper. All this is well and good in theory. How is mood is for taking the exam and whether he will find the 'flow' is another totally different matter.

My other son, Noel is in Secondary 3 and he also has been burning the midnight oil this past 2 weeks. He is taking his final exams these 2 weeks and though they are not as major as the PSLE, this exam for Noel provides the foundation for his GCE 'O" Levels which are targetted for next year 2010. He has to prepare for 9 papers over 2 weeks.

After all that is said and done, and now the first of 4 'battles' over the next 7 days begins, I can only sit, wait and pray for a satisfactory outcome. Good Luck Andrew and Noel !

F1 Singapore 26-27 Sept 2009

Jensen Button's Brawn car ; taken using the Canon EOS 500

The world's most watched human circus came to Singapore last weekend,25th - 27th September. The F1 is the brainchild of Bernie Eccelstone and the various teams from mainly European car makers, spend hundreds of millions of EUROs to participate in it. Red Bull, Braun (formerly Honda), Philips,Force India are the non car manufacturing teams while the traditional top names are Maclaren Mercedes, Ferrari, BMW Sauber, Renault (they are going to be banned for 2 years for Crashgate last year) and Toyota are the more established car marques. The recent financial crisis led to Honda pulling out of the F1 this year and some famous names in the banking world like AIG and RBS are also pulling out for various reasons.

AIG pulled out of Renault because of the Crashgate incident last year when Nelson Piquet Jr., purposely crashed under no pressure in Singapore, enabling his team-mate Fernando Alonso to win the GP. After 1 year of investigation, they found that Nelson was acting under instructions from the team boss, Flavio Briatore and Manager Pat Symonds. Both were subsequentlly barred,Flavio for life in the sport and Symonds for 2 years. RBS pulled out mainly due to the Financial Crisis which engulfed most Western banks with toxic assets.

The F1 is typically the pinnacle in car performance and the drivers have to be subjected to many Gs (acceleration due to gravity) - similar to what fighter pilots experience - in their quest to finish on the podium or top 3. I am not a fan, but I am slowly developing an interest what with the many scandals, in and out of the circuit,with their twists and turns, crashes and clashes of egos, make the most thrilling bestseller novel seem like a boring textbook.


Friends from Germany, Meike and Florian came specially for the races

My friends from Germany, Meike Pucher and her boyfriend, Florian flew all the way to Asia to watch the F1 and after the race, managed to watch a live performance by the Backstreet Boys. The F1 Singapore management, I must add, did a tremendous job in arranging ample seating and viewing for the 80,000 foriegn fans and probably 200,000 local fans. The international acts came from top headliners like Black Eyed Peas, No Doubt, Jacky Cheung, Pussycat Dolls, Damage, Backstreet Boys, among many others.


Lewis Hamilton's Maclaren Mercedes racing to Pole Position

To get a taste of the sound, imagine a fighter jet flying about 100 feet about you.It is a high pithced whining sound which, if without earplugs, can cause serious auditory damage to your hearing. That is how loud the sound is ! I booked 4 tickets at the Singapore Cricket Club on Saturday 26th Sept. and they had a very nice corner where the cars all sped past, and it was great for photo taking. The band at the Bar was in full flight when we got there, and belting out rock and roll numbers loud enough to drown out the cars. As a new member of the Cricket Club, I was quite taken by the fact that the expatriates really know how to enjoy the races and have a jolly time with alcohol acting as a barrier breaking salve for the stressed executives and expatriates working here. By the 3rd glass of beer, most of us at the bar were watching the proceedings from the large screen with the close -ups shots at every turn, driver's helmet and of course the crashes.


Red Bull in Full Flight

So, as the only night race for the moment, Singapore is attracting the world's sports fans for the next 2 years. We will be hosting the inaugaral Youth Olympics in 2010, so we might see the next Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt in Singapore soon. I look forward to that opportunity.