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Month: December 2008

Underworld childbirth

Yesterday we congratulated our friends Mika and Gary because they’re brand new parents to a brand new baby boy, and we went and visited them at KKH just a couple of hours after she’d returned to the ward and enjoyed her first couple of hours of motherhood.

It was a happy afternoon all round, and it’s always a happy feeling around the maternity ward and the nursery and it was probably the only place in the whole world where I would have completely understood what the women in the corridors were talking about when they were discussing the merits of natural childbirth as opposed to a Sicilian one.

As we’ve suspected all along

We did something really stupid on the last Saturday before Christmas – we drove to Parkway Parade and tried to shop. Well actually, we were in the area for reasons beyond our control, but having said that, we could’ve avoided Parkway Parade, but didn’t.

We could also have avoided dining at Olio Dome, but didn’t, and paid the price (about $55) for a dinner so, so bad I’m trying to erase it from record, but because I think there should be some public service announcement about how bad it is, I’m telling you now – don’t order the Christmas set there, and if you think Olio Dome looks nice, quiet and cosy, it’s because the food’s bad and you should go home and chill out if you’re looking for nice, quiet and cosy this week.

The only good thing about Olio Dome at Parkway is that it’s attached to Borders the bookshop, and that’s about all the good I can say, really.

It’s the first time we’ve been to the Parkway branch of Borders, and I was hoping for a more sensible layout and cataloguing system than the Wheelock one- like doing away with a section called “Literature” for example – but after two minutes, was utterly disappointed.

I had been looking for the Pregnancy or Parenting shelf/section which I thought might be in the Health area, which I found to be next to the Computer reference area, which was fine because sometimes you need to figure out why your computer can’t log into some pregnancy websites.

Then I saw a row of books labelled “Fertility and Infertility“, which to me, is like labelling a row of books “Self Help, and No Help”, or “Inspiration and Disillusionment”.

What was even more startling was that “Fertility and Infertility” came under the heading “Appearance”, as labeled at the top of the shelf. Then again, that’s what some people might have suspected all along.

Fertility is all due to Appearance

Fertility is all due to Appearance

Understatement

Akashi

Loyal Reader Lincoln told us Wednesday that staff at Akashi reckon that their Chicken Karaage is “better than KFC”.

That’s no way to describe your own chicken. Like I’ve heard somewhere else, even General Tso’s trumps Colonel Sanders’ just on rank.

The Chicken Karaage alone is worth a visit to Akashi, and as their staff told Loyal Reader Lincoln when he told them that I had never dined there, “what, your friend not local ah?”

It is that popular, and I was amazed to be told that the mid-week crowd we witnessed was already poor by their standards. They obviously don’t need any more publicity.

Loyal Reader Lincoln says that if he were a blogger, he wouldn’t blog so much about restaurants that are really good, because it’d just add to the queues (like the one at Ramen Santouka) and you’d have difficulty trying to get to eat there again. But because I’m the caring and sharing type of blogger, I’m blogging about Akashi, and I want to tell the staff that their chicken karaage is so good, they can go tell Colonel Sanders, “eh, lick my finger”.


AkashiAkashiAkashi

Akashi Japanese Restaurant (Orchard Parade Hotel)

1 Tanglin Road #01-01A Orchard Parade Hotel. Tel: 6732 4438