放假

圣诞前夕那天便一直为家事忙进忙出，今天难得父母 “准假”，总算争取到属于自己的一天!

早上出门，先到Square 2 吃了碗广东粥配油条。Super yummy! 店家还在店里摆了一锅热腾腾的咖喱鸡，任客人自取。我也盛了点试试，果然很赞。怪不得这么多人点他们家的咖喱鸡面。 下次我也要叫一份！

Mian 的工作地点就在乌节路一带, 我和她共进午餐后顺道shopping。

同样系列的化妆品用了多年，是时候 update。自2002年［冬季恋歌］播出后，韩流便入侵亚洲，“哈韩”指数一直飙升，这些年来从未下降过，欧美日的产品似乎已passé。改用韩国品牌［兰芝］，让肤色看起来明亮，更有精神，好好地迎接新的一年。

走累了，吃份凉豆花，度过一个写意的下午。

THE KING

I do not like to wait.  I hate standing in line even more.  But Dad had been craving for his favourite soy sauce chicken for the longest time. Funny how Singaporeans tend to make a beeline for the food places that has the longest queue. Like that darn fish porridge in Maxwell, for instance. Or the rojak in HDB Hub.  Anyway, The King has spoken and his subjects must oblige.

And so I stood in line for exactly one hour in Chinatown Market while my mother made herself comfortable and munched on Harm Chim Bang (咸煎饼). After that we queued for fish porridge, then again for you tiao (油条) before hastily making our way home.  Heads will roll should the king not be served his lunch by 12 noon.

Sure enough, my phone rang not long after we boarded the bus.  It was The King demanding our whereabouts.

CHINESE PHARMACY

Ran an errand at Wong Yiu Nam over the weekend.  I used to tag along with my grandmother to this very shop for Chinese herbal remedies when I was a little girl.  I had quite forgotten how to shop here.

Purchasing medicines at a traditional Chinese medical hall is quite similar to baking a cake, really.  First you need a written prescription (much like a recipe), which can either be written by a Chinese physician or a family's secret formula passed down from generation to generation.  You hand it over to the nice elderly man behind  the counter and he locates the ingredients from a large wooden chest of drawers behind him then weighs each out with precision. 

Almost anything imaginable (and unimaginable) can fall into the Chinese medicine category - flowers and fauna, fruits and nuts, roots, twigs, barks from trees, reptiles, grubs ...

 ... parts of animals (bones and shells, horns and antlers are considered the more "normal" stuff). And some sea creatures, like the sea horse and sea dragon above.  I know, I know ... I agree that it isn't always easy to swallow. 

 Mortar and pestle