The Sentosa Resort

Formerly Beaufort Hotel, it's now The Sentosa Resort after a revamp. Heard of some good reviews from friends so we decided to give it a try before our baby girl arrives.

On the way there, it started to rain heavily ... there goes the fun ... of sand and water. I guess being a resort on the Sentosa island, it modeled after a beach, resort-like atmosphere. The reception wasn't air-conditioned ... not comfortable in humid Singapore. The rooms are low lying, a max of 5 storeys. It also quite a long walk to our reserved room.





My little cheeky boy had a fun time exploring the room!





No swim for us at the pool as it started pouring again. We decided to head for some afternoon tea at the hotel Pavilion lounge. It took a while for our orders to arrive :( Overall, the pastries weren't too bad. The highlight of the day was a peacock ventured into our area. It tried to grab Aaron's cookie. The other people started to gather around the bird taking photos before it came to our table and grabbed my scone! Instead of apologizing for my "loss", the waiter admonished us for feeding the peacock. hey, they should have kept the bird out of the premises then. Lousy service once more at a restaurant ... I seemed to encountered bad service daily ...





After a little rest back at our room, we head out to Vivo City for dinner. There was a shuttle service that runs every half hour there. It's was a good experience for Aaron as he had a great time doing the "Wheels on the bus go round and round". It was a bad choice to come back to the hotel via the shuttle though. There was an endless traffic jam for vehicles heading out of Sentosa. The shuttle bus was half an hour late ... and it was humid at the pickup point ...

My choice was to dine at Marche for the pork knuckle ... but the queue was so, so long. Don't even want to try queuing. As we walked around, I saw Modestos. Oh boy, it's been so many years since I had tried their lovely wood-fired baked pizzas. There was no queue and we were seated immediately. The restaurant filled up quickly after us though. I really liked their service. Our orders came promptly even though the restaurant was very crowded. The staff was friendly and super duper efficient, be it clearing or setting up tables. No regret on dinner here.



The Pina Colada was super refreshing. Nice! :)



Milky panna cotta.


Weather next morning held up, so Aaron got his swim. He took to the water quite well, finally :)



Peacocks running around freely. Their cries sounded like cats' meows!



Price of stay - $238++ and additional $29++/pax for breakfast.

Related Tweet:
26 Nov 2011, 10:07 PM, DC: Scones, cookies, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, olive bread, nectarine and a pinch of lemon ... Aaron enjoyed them all today :)


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Immortals

Immortals
CAST: Henry Cavill, Stephen Dorff, Luke Evans, Isabel Lucas, Kellan Lutz, Joseph Morgan, Freida Pinto, with John Hurt and Mickey Rourke
DIRECTOR: Tarsem Singh
LANGUAGE: English
OPENING: 17 Nov 2011
RUNTIME: 110 minutes
RATING: M18-Violence & Sexual Scene

Eons after the Gods won their mythic struggle against the Titans, a new evil threatens the land. Mad with power, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) has declared war against humanity. Amassing a bloodthirsty army of soldiers disfigured by his own hand, Hyperion has scorched Greece in search of the legendary Epirus Bow, a weapon of unimaginable power forged in the heavens by Ares.

Only he who possesses this bow can unleash the Titans, who have been imprisoned deep within the walls of Mount Tartaros since the dawn of time and thirst for revenge. In the king’s hands, the bow would rain destruction upon mankind and annihilate the Gods. But ancient law dictates the Gods must not intervene in man’s conflict. They remain powerless to stop Hyperion…until a peasant named Theseus (Henry Cavill) comes forth as their only hope.

Secretly chosen by Zeus, Theseus must save his people from Hyperion and his hordes. Rallying a band of fellow outsiders—including visionary priestess Phaedra (Freida Pinto) and cunning slave Stavros (Stephen Dorff)—one hero will lead the uprising, or watch his homeland fall into ruin and his Gods vanish into legend.
=============================================================================

Although by the same producers, the movie 300 is way much better than this. The story line is confusing and unclear and there is no good connection between the characters. Watch if you want to see picturesque views and masculine and nude (only 1 scene and it's from a double) bodies. Actions? Not much and not impressive! There might possibly be a sequel, I'm doubting if I would watch it?

A is 28 months old

He says "Blue", "妹妹" and he calls me "妮妮". I was told that in school, he says "师", "清老师", "Lou" - how he greets the teachers. He points to the alphabets on the keyboard and pronounces "A as E" and "B as D". Only his "O" is perfect. And, he started to combine adjective and nouns in two-words phase e.g. "Oi Oi - there".

He's very interested in cars and enjoys looking at and making the action of wheel steering and that gives a good idea of what to get for his christmas present! :)

We brought him to the children's garden which he enjoyed the maze walk and running around the cafe. :) Also within the botanic gardens, we also brought him to fine dining at Au Jardin to celebrate his daddy's birthday.

He celebrated quite a number of people's birthday this month - his paternal grandpa, maternal grandma, daddy and daddy's friend's son Gabriel's birthdays. He enjoys clapping his hands to the tune of song and likes to blow candles! :) He also celebrated his mummy's cousin's wedding this month.

He's got a bad mosquito bite that turned swollen. He learnt that mosquito bites are not to be scratched or else it'll become painful and ugly.

We went for his meet-the-parent session at his childcare centre and the words were very encouraging and the teachers were all very pleased with his performance. We are very proud of him! :)

Very soon next month, he'll be promoted to elder brother. I wonder whether he'll get used to his new sister or how he'll be doing without me with him for 4 days? I know I'll miss him terribly!


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My First Skool - A Review

My First Skool, although the largest provider of preschool education programmes, did not impress us at all in their registration and administrative procedures. Sadly, My First Skool, although is the one that comes first to our mind, is not the first school we want to enroll our children into! Here are the reasons:

Six months ago, in May 2011, when we were frantically searching for a childcare centre for our son, our first choice was actually My First Skool which was located just a few blocks away from where we stay. We attempted to walk in for a site visit but the principal, although she was present, refused to see us as she was supposed to be on leave that day and wanted us to make an appointment instead! The teachers that opened the door for us looked blur and couldn't answer most of our questions! I wonder how I could entrust them to coach my son? Anyway, because of the urgency to get him a place, I called the hotline several times to check out the nearby centres and the answers given were all very general and we had to go back to the exact centres themselves to check for details. We were very annoyed by the responses given and never went back again. Fortunately, we managed to find A a childcare centre that is still convenient and A is very well-adjusted and loved by his teachers there.

About three months ago, I registered online to check out the new infant care centre, also My First Skool, set up in our area which is a few streets away for our not-yet-born daughter. I was expecting a call from them within 3-5 days but never did they call once in these months. In fact, I sorta gave up on them already. Today, a call came and surprise! surprise! it was from them and they called to inform that the centre was already over-capacity and if I'm still interested, they will put me on the wait list. I tried to probe further but my questions seem very difficult for the lady on the other side to answer. She had to check before she could answer them. The questions that I had are very straight forward e.g. "What is the max capacity?" and "What's the teacher-to-infant ratio"? I wonder if she's new there? That quite puts me off. I did ask her to put me on waiting list though. However, considering 20 babies with ratio of 1:3.5, hmm... I don't think I'm very keen! Probably, A's current centre is a much better choice for us.

And, I heard they are targeting to open another 50 new centres around the island within 2 years? Good luck!


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Ugly Mosquito Bite

I guess A inherited his daddy's genes. He never fails to scratch a mosquito bite on himself!
Or maybe he inherited mine? I attract mosquitoes.

On Friday, when we stepped into FIL's place, A pointed at his left leg to me. I thought he was telling me he had his socks on. Then, when we were having our dinner, he pointed to the same direction again. It was then that I realised that he wanted to show me he had a huge mosquito bite on his leg!

My little one couldn't stop scratching his leg that night and the next day, the bite became very red and swollen that it's beyond recognition. It now looks like a frightening scar! The area was infected and there were pus!

A stopped scratching, I think he has learnt his lesson to never scratch his mosquito bite again! It's a painful lesson! My heart aches whenever I saw it!




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A Majestic Lunch

On my birthday itself, CP and I, together with a long time friend decided to have lunch at the Majestic Restaurant. I had quite a few of fine dining but it's mostly French or fusion cuisine. So it's quite a good change to try chinese for once.



Fried prawns with fresh fruits


Shark fins


Peking duck, foie gras (with watermelon), crab claw


Abalone with toufu


Lamb with carrot cake


Chicken chop for CP


扬枝甘露


Avocado with coffee ice-cream


This is a restaurant that our parents may like, given that it's mainly chinese cuisine. For me, I still prefer my French fine dining :)

After lunch, I bought the iPhone 4S for myself :)


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A's Meet-The-Parents Session

We didn't know that nowadays the meet-the-parents session is held during lunchtime? For Aaron's case, it was held during his naptime today which is, our lunchtime.

To make it convenient for DC, I telecommuted today. He just have to fetch me from home to the centre. :)

The teachers all sang praises of him. It was very encouraging to hear that he got along very well with the teachers and his friends and he progresses a lot since he attended childcare sessions. In fact, some of his achievements sound alien and shocking to us! E.g. he actually naps for hours routinely (when he wakes up after 45mins of nap everytime at home!), he signals the teachers to cover him with blanket during nap (at home, he kicks his blanket!), he asks for his socks to be put on during naptime (when he pulls them off and throws them on the floor during bedtime!), he eats his meals at the centre independently, sometimes even had 2 servings (when we are still spoon feeding him at home!), he is currently undergoing toilet training (something which was new to us until today). Other things that were said that we already know: He's very observant, cheerful and starting to get playful. :)

Wow! My son has grown up and adapt so well to his environment! DC and I were very proud of him! :)


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Birthday Celebration - Brunch at Au Jardin

It's been a while since the 3 of us had fine dining. This time round, I finally decided on Au Jardin (also under the Les Amis group), located with the Botanic Gardens. CP had always wanted to experience the ambience there.

Of course, I had some dining vouchers from credit card spend and I could also use it at Au Jardin. Nice!

Not wanting to feed Aaron his porridge there, we try to let him have lunch first at home. Well, tough luck ... he woke up super late at about 10 a.m., had his milk and simply wouldn't finish the bowl of porridge at 11 a.m. I had expected too much. Fortunately, he finished about half.

In any case, we reached Botanic Gardens on time. Au Jardin was just a short walk from the Visitors Info Centre.



Then I realised my worst fears came true ... I forgot my dining vouchers! As we were almost reaching the place, a guy approached us. He was trying to sell a $200 Les Amis voucher that he won from the Great Singapore Sale. After checking that we could indeed use it, I bargained it down to $170 for the voucher, instead of $180 :) Lovely, God provided again :)

We were seated on the 2nd level, next to the windows. The place was well-cooled, so it wasn't hot from the blazing sun outside..


Brunch was a semi-buffet affair. Cold cuts and appetisers were free-flow. We only need to select a choice of eggs, main course and dessert.



I had Cocotte for eggs.


CP had fried eggs, which is actually sunny-side up.


I had Grilled Angus Striploin with butternut puree, roasted zucchini, red wine sauce.


CP had lobster pasta, seared scallop. This was fantastic. The pasta is real thin, almost like mee sua. Flavour is good too.


I had Manjari chocolate tart with sable breton, "soil" & burnt butter ice-cream. Too chocolatey for me.


CP had Frozen passion fruit foam with persimmon soup, fromage frais sorbet. This was a real suprise. The persimmon wasn't too sweet but able to contrast the sour flavour of the sorbet.


Les mignardises - Yuzu pearls - made from Japanese Yuzu fruit extract, then pass through either a hot or cold agent, after which the pearls were formed. Not an easy job, I guess. They were then filled onto a thin hazelnut wafer. Aaron loved the pearls!


Service was really superb. The staff were warm and friendly, patient with our questions. I think I was really tempted to go back just to soak in the ambience!

Of course, in terms of food, I still prefer Gunther's, Iggys and Les Amis but those are full lunches and dinner. I may just come back on a weekday just to try a proper degustation menu.

Aaron also had his fair share of fun. The minute we let him down, he quickly made use of his freedom!


See DC's food review at HungryGoWhere here.


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Cousin's Wedding

Just back from Cousin's wedding, held at Qian Xi (Farrer Park) Restaurant and settled A to sleep. He was very tired and slept on the journey to home.

Another cousin brought along her Polaroid camera and took a few photos of us all... Here're some to share:



They reminded me of the Polaroid camera that I had (unfortunately, the cam didn't last long). I might dig my old Polaroid photos that I took on my wedding day itself to share someday, if I've the time. :)


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Motherhood Fair At Expo

We managed to get quite a bit of things that we wanted at the Motherhood fair at Expo today!

We've got these for our daughter:
1. 3x Milk Bottles
2. 10 year plan of Cord blood banking
3. 2x Photo shoot sessions (This is where A took his, just what we are looking for! A had his photo session with them too. See picture below. See how happy he was!)
4. Packs of Pampers for new born


That settles most of the items in the to-buy list! I'm so satisfied! :)

After our fruitful purchase, we went for a equally satisfying BK meal and it started to pour heavily. And, A had a good nap in his stroller while it rained.

Sleeping:


Almost Up but still feeling sleepy:


I love it when he wakes up so happy :)



Related Tweet:
12 November 2011, 1:16pm, DC: Pampers, 2 x studio baby photo sessions, Avent bottles, Cordlife, all in one day.
12 November 2011, 6:46pm, DC: Impromptu shot at Parenthood fair, courtesy of StudioPlay (formerly SeanLau photography). Already booked 2 sessions for A's sister :)

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Peekaboo!

My playful A loves the peekaboo game! :)

That's him under the table, Peekaboo!


That's him at the side of the chair, Peekaboo!


That's him searching into the party bag, Peekaboo!


That's him peeping into the binoculars, Peekaboo!


That's him making funny faces, Peekaboo!


That's him flipping over his high chair tray, Peekaboo!


And, that's him with Daddy popping his head out of a children maze, Peekaboo!


Very lately, he loves to put his blanket or pillow over his face and take them out. He says "Da" (means Peekaboo)! Looking at all these little actions that he did... they just make my day! :D


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