That which tastes like Sara Lee pound cake (chocolate flavour) and an espressoOne blustery rainy evening, possibly not unlike the one that came upon Nigel Slater (but without the napping cats and speckled brown eggs), there was indeed the warm wholesome smell of a dense chocolate loaf cake in the oven.*Homey-ness and comfort? As much as might emanate from the Übermensch donning red gingham, the shade of standard issue Stepford wife aprons, for Halloween.Belatedly clearing some boxes (physical... Read Full Story

Green Tea Cream Frap, Hazelnut Latte and a few Good Snacks. Taken with an iphone and messed with on Mill Color.Starbucks - the new McDonalds mugging (as in hogging a table and swotting, not the thing that happens in a dark lonely alley with a knife) hotspot with a smellscape of coffee instead of french fry grease and a soundscape of easy jazz* instead of the hyperness of Rick Dee's Top 40s; at least one Macbook and an iphone on each table.Mugging up God's word is hard work, especially with th... Read Full Story

It would have been clear to Jesus' Jewish audience that the characteristics of members of the kingdom of heaven (= the real disciples of Jesus = Christians) and their relationship with the world (Matthew 5:3-16) was not unlike what they had been taught through the ages by God's prophets and written down in the Law and the Prophets. Viral meme word associations would have hit a chord in their (sub)consciousness, like "zipbra preens", "duck genes" and "boomz" to a Singaporean.But the elephant i... Read Full Story

Buoyed by great waves of enthusiasm, we stopped at Papa Palheta for a refuel between bible study and dinner that night. The Terra Firma blend was indeed bootylicious, complex with long palate, as advertised, unfairly disadvantaging the Sulawesi Today, Tomorrow, Toraja that came after.A bag of Terra Firma, ground on the spot with the dial at 5.5, for the stovetop, was delicious stuff; a beacon of light amongst the soured drainwater of big chain coffeehouses. The steady stream of caffeine fiend... Read Full Story

My name is BlahBlah. And i am a yoghurt addict. My fermented milk of choice is La Fermière's Nature. Unlike most commercial brands, this trumps Nestle's La Laitière in the Proustian associative stakes - thick, creamy, tart, very good with morning muesli before heading for the slopes. But at S$8.90 a hit (S$4.00 if only 2 days to go to expiry), regular expenditure on sandstone pots was not a viable lifestyle choice.Thanks to Harold McGee however, we've been breeding colonies of the stuff in ol... Read Full Story

Foray into Sermon on the Mount looked to be fairly epic. Adequate fortification was necessary.L.A. Burgers at Café Hacienda, Dempsey The Handburger at Raffles City. Interior thanks to Plystudio. Dry-pattied blue cheese beef burger no thanks to kitchen dude.A well-lubricated good dinner on pretty Klaus Haapaniemi plates. Now if only the tastebuds had returned in time for the occasion.Human culture has been built great epic stories. The most exciting sort feature long journeys into far-flung l... Read Full Story

Outside, at six in the evening, there was fog and clammy greyness. A pervasive heaviness, the colour of the presence of life-sucking Dementors, the hue favoured by the Nazgûl. Then buildings shook. And the worker bees inside looked up in terror. "I thought I'd worked too hard and was about to faint," gasped one. "I thdoughtd I'd overdosed on cold meds," sniffled another. Several hysterical ones grabbed their bags and fled for the lifts, then deciding it was too dangerous to take them, ran bac... Read Full Story

Why are there magazines on food and travel? Wasn't foreign food, until recently, merely a component of travel, like killing natives off with foreign diseases; a by-product of other evolutionarily more lofty aims like the crusading or discovering new countries for self-glory and mercenary profit?Is culinary tourism, where food and drink are the motivation and goal of a tourist's experience, a Western/developed world construct where the Freudianly infantile obsession with putting things in one'... Read Full Story

In the garden, the lotuses are blooming but we're off for the long weekend.Woohoo, here we go! Oh, them undies are missing again.We just can't let go. We need to know and we need to plan and we need to manage.We need to "know the truth" about our destinations before we leave:Trip AdvisorLonely Planet's Thorn Tree ForumTravel Fish (for SE Asia)National Geographic's Intelligent TravelConde Nast Travelerespecially recessionistas:Budget TravelThe Frugal TravelerThose with a slightly higher travel... Read Full Story

In another life, it might be nice to use some random postgraduate degree as an excuse to research a thesis on food blogs as carriers of cultural memes, with food as universal language, hunger and greed as international drivers, recipes as socially-transmitted information. Unfortunately for those lovely ladies slogging away in cavernous kitchens in the Middle Ages, the lack of the internets then and the lack of readily available plucked and washed swans in the supermarkets now means my collect... Read Full Story