Niu Che Shui @ Kelana Jaya

I chanced upon this interesting place in Kelana Jaya.

The place consists of mainly little shops or partitions selling mostly knick-knacks and cutesy items, most likely with an international theme.

I have taken a few photos at night using my Samsung Omnia mobile. However, they have turned out less than impressive.

Artificial plants in pots. Cute.

Several areas have displays of paintings. Quite nice, I must say.

Some handmade dolls. Origin unknown as I did not see any sales assistants around.

A shop selling Japanese-related foodstuffs.


A section meant as display and photo-taking based on theme of the movie in which I will revisit later since I am not able to recall the name of the movie in which has Johnny Depp as voiceover.

Clay figurines which are Victorian-inspired.

Ivins Peranakan Restaurant vs Al-Azhar

I could not resist the temptation to place a foot note on Ivins Peranakan Restaurant and Al-Azhar. Sure, this may not be a fair comparison. Ivins serves Peranakan food whilst Al-Azhar serves Malay/ Indian/ Thai/ Chindian food. What can I compare?

Ivins is a no-frills restaurant in an air-conditioned setting, with very cost-effective pricing for customers. They have a big variety of dishes available, i.e. ayam buah keluak, ayam pongteh, gado gado, bakwan kepiting, pretty authentic. You can get to order ayam buah keluak for a budgetary pricing of about SG$6. Cucumber with sambal is probably at SG$3. Dessert such as my all time favourite, Gula Melaka Sago, is at SG$1.20. The good news is, GST is waived too.

Al-Azhar is a real hangout place. It opens till late at night. I cannot recall how late it opens. It serves anything Malay/ Indian/ Chindian under the sun. You have all sorts of paratha, butter/ cheese/ garlic, naan, panggang fish, North and South Indian curries. On top of that, you even can get Nasi Paprik, Nasi Pattaya and Tom Yum. I spotted a customer eating Chinese style Hokkien Mee. One is spoilt for choices and food is pretty tasty and at pretty affordable prices.

Ivin's wait staff is dressed in their signature (batik) shirt and in other words, they do have a standard code of dressing. They are young, most of them Singaporeans, perhaps one or two are Filipinos. In fact, most of them are students with nice wholesome features. The oldest wait staff was their Manager, definitely the oldest among all. They speak proficient English.

Al-Azhar wait staff are mostly Indians/ Malays and mostly foreigners, (I believe), not really the best-dressed around. However, they do carry PDAs to take your orders. They may not look extremely educated and do speak with a slight twang of slang.

My, my, when it comes to Service, I can't say how badly Ivin's wait staff is trained. The wait staff avoid all possible eye contacts with customers. We waited at least 15 minutes for our orders to be taken down. It was finally taken down when we raised our voice to the waiter. Other customers were facing the same problem too. Definitely such a big disappointment on the attentiveness of the wait staff. Drinks were only served after our meal. The dessert failed to come despite the first reminder.

A-Azhar is completely different. Orders are taken down fast. Mostly importantly, wait staff makes eye contact. Never pretends not to see the customers waving their hands or calling them over.

The basic respect of looking at a person is not even there. Are youngsters nowadays too proud of themselves? What happened to education and proper upbringing? Sure, this may not be applicable to all youngters. But just prepared for the bad and disappointing service at Ivins.

Buy 1 Get 1 Promotion at Tully's Coffee

I was grocery shopping at Cold Storage, West Coast Mall when I passed by Tully's. They were giving away coupons to promote their coffee.

Tully's is having a 1-for-1 promotion until the 28th Feb. Definitely comes in handy during this tough times.

Jusco Bukit Indah @ Johor

It was the weekend again and visiting Johor, which is a Causeway across Singapore sounds good. It was my first time visiting Jusco Bukit Indah and was looking forward to eating and shopping, then eating and shopping again.

This place is certainly not a place to stop your shopping itch. There were a lot of restaurants available though i.e. Secret Recipe, Grand Canyon and many others in which I am not able to recall at the moment.

After searching from the 1st floor till the 3rd floor, we decided to go for Soul Thai. Well, the restaurant's interior looked great and it was the main deciding factor then!

Browsing through the menu, I was a tad disappointed at the lack of variety of authentic Thai dishes available. I decided to have the simple chicken tom yum with tung hoon with a side order of their special seafood salad.

The chicken tom yum soup was unbelievably good. Savoury with the right balance of spiciness and sourness. Irresistible. Despite its fiery soup, it would be difficult not to finish up everything. Chicken and abalone mushrooms do make a good combination. Most importantly, the tom yum soup was served heated and at the end of the meal, there is a feeling of content and satisfaction.

The special seafood salad is nothing to shout about despite it being special. I am sure there are many better versions out there.

This place is worth a visit. I just wish that they will have less of the set meals available and more authentic Thai dishes available.

Tully's Coffee @ West Coast Mall

Upon learning about Tully's Coffee has arrived in Singapore, at West Coast Mall, I squeezed in some time during a weekday lunch of Sushi-Tei to try out their coffee.

Despite drinking a lot of coffee, the unadventurous me, will only drink latte or au lait most of the time, occassionally cappucino or mocha, therefore I got a latte myself. I like the coffee though, smooth and not bitter. Very American-like, coffee is served in paper cups =). I also ordered a raisin scone, if I am not wrong. It was definitely not a scone you will come again for.

Overall, I still prefer Starbucks.. hehe. They have a great selection cakes, sandwiches and pies as an accompaniment to their coffee. It is still nice place though, to soak in the American ambience once in a while.

I did a little research in the Internet for more information about Tully's and learnt the following:

Company History:
Founded in 1992, Tully's Coffee Corporation is the third largest company-owned specialty coffee retailer in the United States. Tully's Coffee currently has 101 locations in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, and the Pacific Rim. Its wholesale division provides Tully's whole bean coffee, related products, and supplies to domestic supermarkets, food services, restaurants, office coffee services, and institutions, as well as to customers through Tully's mail order and Internet sales. licensees.

Charcoal Steamboat @ 7th Storey, Marina Barrage

Imagine sitting by the sea at night, with a gentle breeze caressing your hair, while you sip hot steaming soup slowly and delicately picking up little morsels of food with your chopsticks dipping the food into a spicy chilli sauce occasionally.

After filling up yourselves with food and drinks, feel free to walk around the vicinity of the area to digest the heavy meal that you had. At the far distance into the night, one can enjoy the bird's eye view of the Singapore Flyer.

Yes, all of the above can be enjoyed at 7th Storey at Marina Barrage. You can either order their steamboat standard set or ala carte is also available. This place also serves chicken rice which is quite delicious and fragrant.

Tastewise, the soup tastes really bland but yet very articially sweet. Nothing to shout about and definitely not memorable. The strangest thing was that the taste of the soup did not improve even at the end of the meal.

However, thumbs up for the fresh ingredients such as squid, fish and prawns. There was a good balance of chicken meat, seafood, vegetables and mushrooms. It was a pretty substantial meal in terms of quantity.

It was a good experience to come here for the steam boat for the first time. As a soup lover, I doubt that I will make plans to come here again for steamboat. Unless there is an improvement in the soup stock.

The total bill came to $80 for a standard steamboat set dinner for 2 persons with additional orders of chicken rice.