Tian Tian Chicken Rice - Maxwell Road Hawker Centre ; my Review

$ 3.50 for a plate of Chicken Rice and another $2.50 for Bean Sprouts 

        Every Saturday I am in the vicinity of Maxwell Road Hawker Centte and I occasionally drop in for breakfast. There is always a long queue for Tian Tian's chicken rice. Frankly, apart from the fact that Chef Gordon Ramsay came and did the Hawker Challenge (and lost), the chicken rice is not typically outstanding. 

       The $3.50 plate of chicken rice serves maybe a dozen slices of chicken (breast or thigh you specify), some cut cucumber, rice and nothing else. The chicken is tender, and made flavourful due to the thick sauce or gravy poured over it. If you decline the gravy, it is nothing exceptional. The rice is fragrant but you can get very good chicken rice from the neighbouring 2 stalls if you are not bothered to queue. The chilli sauce and black sauce are also nothing exceptional. 

      There are some really good chicken rice restaurants in Wee Nam Kee in Balestier and Novena and if you like to try roasted chicken, there is a pretty decent Malay stall at Farrer Road Food Centre. I also like to frequent the Big Bird at Balmoral Centre off Bukit Timah. That chicken rice is really good with fragrant rice, but thinly sliced chicken. It is pricey though at $7 per plate on average. 

      90% of those in the queue are probably tourists who have never or heard about trying the 'famous' Tian Tian through the brochures and Gordon Ramsay's Hawker Challenge.

      I guess for first timers it is satisfactory. 

Demi Eurovision 2017 Finalist - this is love.

      This is one finalist of the Eurovision 2017 song of the year. Demi is the aritste. Thanks to my new Spotify account, I can keep current with all the top hits, from Europe, US, Japan, Korea and even Singapore.

      Disruptive Technology enables tremendous entertainment, information, communication and learning opportunities all in the palm of your hand. With great access to information and knowledge comes great responsibility to disseminate and lead the next generation wisely.

      

Cool Ad for Insurance featuring the NZ All Blacks

         This is really an inspiring advertisement for the insurance company in the video. The stars are the current NZ All Blacks and while Tokyo is obviously a very safe place, accidents do happen and these gentlemen have the psychic ability to intervene with seconds to spare. 

          Filmed mainly around the famed Shibuya station, the men go in all directions and tackle the bemused Tokyoites for no apparent reason. The idea for this is really fantastic as are the All Blacks who maintain a very stoic stone - faced expressions except till the end.
  
         Kudos to the advertising agency who managed this and full marks to the All Blacks who elevate the meaning of cool to a new level. 

SPRMRKT Kitchen and Bar ; Level 2 -01, 41 Robertson Quay A Review

Steak and Frites ; 

        Located on the 2nd floor of the SPTI (Singapore Tyler Print Institute)  shophouse, the SPRMRKT Kitchen and Bar has been around for 1 year now. I read a superb review of the place from the Straits Times Life section last Sunday so decided to try it out for ourselves, the following Saturday. Centrally located at Robertson Quay, if you park, park at the Service Residences Basement carpark and walk past the Brussel Sprouts. SPTI is a three in one concept, of outside dining casual bar, the French supermarket and second floor European bistro dining. 

Twice Cooked Chicken Roulade 

     We ordered the octopus and shrimp, the brussels sprouts for starters and I had a Bordeaux as an aperitif.  The Spanish octopus was pretty chewy but flavourful. It had been slow cooked for about 24 hours in a low temperature oven of 100 deg C and then served. The brussels sprouts dish was excellent with sambal as the secret ingredient.

      Coming to the mains, my steak and garlic fries was excellent. Done medium well it was flavourful and tender. Our only grouse was that it was rather thinly sliced compared to Woolloomooloo's thick 300 grams ribeyes or sirloin steaks. However for the price of S$ 38 it was a gem of a meal. The garlic fries as mentioned by food columnist Wong Ah Yoke were crispy and very tasty. 
 
     The twice cooked chieken roulade was above average, tender and tasty. My wife said that it tasted frozen cooked, though we can't be too sure about that. 
   
     The executive chef Joseph Yeo came out and spoke with us, and gave us a free dessert on the house. It was excellent and with enough raspberry sauce on the side, the brownie was in my opinion, a real treat.

     Service was very good, by any international standards. Kudos to SPRMRKT for making this a highly satisfying meal at a very decent price of $70 per person, with 2 starters, 2 main courses, a glass of wine and free dessert.

      I will probably return for the lunch one of these days. This goes into the I will return memo.

      Ratings 

      Food : 4.0 stars out of 5  (see above) ; French Fusion

      Service: 5 out of 5    (attention to customers, prompt, insighful)

      Location : 4.5 out of 5 (not too crowded, limited seating and easy accessibility)

      Price      : 5 out of 5 (high end gastronomic food at mid range prices. Happy Ending!)

Oxygen Conditioning of Sportsmen and Sportswomen

At this level, O2 is probably only 11% of the atmosphere

       Michael Phelps sleeps in an oxygen controlled environment every night. Top class athletes also sleep and train in oxygen depleted chambers or sealed rooms. Why do they do it ? About 50 years ago, there were some astonishing physical test results from people who lived and exercised in high altitude conditions, namely the mountains. Scientists were baffled as to why these people, Kenyans, Nepalese to name a few. Since the early '90s the marathons of the world were dominated by Kenyans who lived and trained in hilly regions and ran easily 20 - 30 km to school.

      After years of research, it was theorised that the lack of oxygen will affect the cognitive and physical functioning of the brain, and other body parts. Studies have shown many years ago that with much lowered oxygen levels, people struggle even to perform the simplest of physical and mental tasks like speaking, simple arithmetic and memory. Even walking up a flight of stairs resulted in tremendous effort. The physiological reason is that the body is naturally conditioned to operate at optimum levels of oxygen in the air at around 20.8%.

A conditioning chamber can control oxygen to 11.2% or equivalent to 5000 meters above sealevel.

        Hence, the mature adult body requires oxygen in the bloodstreams and the red blood cells are the main transporters of this to all the other body parts where aerobic respiration takes place whereby the oxygen is then broken down in the muscle fibre, energy, work done and motion are hence the result.

        In long term reduced oxygen levels, the body adapts brilliantly and the speed of transport of the red blood cells to the various body parts is increased so as to maintain the same level of work done or energy. That is why if you are in an oxygen depleted room, you will find yourself panting, taking shorter inhalations, perhaps gasping as you perform the same run on the treadmill at the same pace of running as you would if you were in a normal open air room. Studies have shown that at 3000 meters above sea level or about 14.5% of Oxygen in the air even the simple run at say 6 mins 30 seconds per kilometer will make you feel like you are running at 6 minutes pace ! You will be putting in much more effort and your blood vessels will be increasing the oxygen distribution by up to 30%. 

       A practical example is if you went up to Everest base camp at 3000 meters, even 100 meters walk is a stretch for the weekend warriors and they end up panting through the mouth.

       The effects of your body's increased productivity (up to 30%) by your red blood cells' activity can then be an enhancing effect if you then return back to normal oxygen levels of 20.8% - your performance will definately be enhanced. The enhanced performance can last days up to 1 week depending on the duration you live, train and go about your daily life.

        So the top sportsmen and sportswomen will record even better results using legitimate and accepted scientific technology.        

    

Kicking Practice

My mawashigiri (roundhouse kicks) isn't very good, as I tend to be too stiff with my trunk ; anyone with some recommendations or comments on how to improve this would be most welcome.

Singapore Densely Populated ? Actually we are way down the list in the world

         Recently I visited the Singapore Urban Gallery at the former URA Building, along Maxwell Road. It shows a helicopter view in 3D of the changes in the landscape of Singapore and how far we have come as a country and city these past 52 years. The urban landscape has changed from the post 2nd World War when all we had were kampungs (rural villages with attap houses and huts, no running water and no sewage system at all), poor infrastructure and third world standard of living. 

        My takeaway was that Singapore has expanded in area from 650 square kilometers during the '70s to 710 square kilometres as an island. I all along thought that my city state was densley populated per square kilometre. I was totally wrong on that count. The latest census puts Singapore's population (citizenry, residents and temporary workers) at 5,400,000 or 5.4 million. Divide that by 710 square kilometres and you get 7,603 persons roughly per square kilometre. 

        I did a check on Wikipedia, and much to my surprise, as a city, Singapore does not even come in the top 50 cities in terms of density if you take into account the municipalities or districts within certain cities. See below for some examples. Guttenberg is just outside New York City, as is Bnej Brak and Pateros The top 20 cities and municipalities in terms of density are :

  1. Manila   :   41,515 per km2

  2. Pateros :   30,546 per km2   (municipality of Philippines)

  3. Mumbai :  28,508 per km2

  4. Dhaka   :  27,916 per km2

 .6 Bnei Brak :27,299 per km2  (Israel)

 .7 Levallois

     Perret      : 26,432 per km2  (France)

 .15 Kolkata  : 24,252 per km2  (India).

 .16 St Josse  

       ten Noode : 24, 165 per km2 (Belgium)

 .20 Guttenberg :22,645 per km2 (USA)

      So having 7,306 persons per km2 is way down the list of crowded cities. Its a paradigm shift to me having thought of us as an overcrowded city with masses of people jostling for personal space. 

      In another list of actual cities, Singapore (category city state) makes it only as the 25th most densely populated city in the list of 91 cities.

     Its the 48 th largest city by population worldwide, and it is  the 25th most densely populated. 

    In its proper perspective, if you consider anywhere in Singapore, you have a football pitch area (its 106 m x 75 m approximately or 75% of 100 x 100 m), you would theroretically see about 58 persons.  So, thats in theory about slightly more than 2 times the number of football players plus referee plus linesmen.

    In reality actually, this is just the average density, many places are far more crowded (like in MRT trains during peak periods, F1 walkabouts in Marina Square and in movie theaters). Outside in the tropical forests of MacRitchie Catchment Area it goes down to perhaps 1 person or less per 100 m2.