The case of the receipt snatching lady

I was having coffee and kaya bread at one of my favourite haunts today when she struck again! I call her the receipt snatching lady. There I was, drinking my coffee and reading the papers when a couple sat down at the adjacent table. They put the receipt they got when they bought the coffee and out of nowhere, she appears. Faster than a leopard, more agile than the monkey and trickier than David Copperfield, she was there in a split-second and took the receipt from the table without so much as saying hello or thank you. The couple just stared wondering what hit them. I know the game though...this lady hangs around collecting receipts from other people so she can collect her total of $100 of purchases in Suntec and get a redemption voucher. Voucher for what? I don't know...I wouldn't refuse to give her the receipt but geez...unless there's something she really desperately wants with those vouchers, it sure makes her look like a cheapskate.

BTW, coffee and kaya at Yakun Kaya (sp?) coffee shop is very, very nice. And I find out why - there's a huge dollop of butter for each half slice together with kaya. Yummm....and to have with the Asian style coffee is bliss. Speaking about coffee, I've been told (and highly recommended) to try the coffee around the Gresik area near Surabaya when I have the chance. Well, I'm heading there in a couple of weeks so maybe I'll make a side trip...I'M DESPERATE FOR GOOD COFFEE!!!!


I attended a friend's wedding a whoa...three weeks ago already?!? Boy...time flies when you're working hard. The job's ramping up and things are getting hot but it's good fun I guess. The travelling is a little taxing though. Like I mentioned in the last post, each time I travel it's international so it's not like a Melbourne-Sydney domestic flight. I just came back from Jakarta again last night and the worse is yet to come - I have to go to Bangalore tomorrow night. That should be a lot of fun trying to get through immigration!

I kind of like working in Jakarta though. At least I can speak a lingo that they can understand. I just conducted a whole workshop (with my Indonesia colleague of course) in Bahasa! Geez...talk about a baptism of fire. The job is hard enough but in another language?? Thank god I still remember a lot of my long lost language (don't forget I've lived in Australia for the past 12 years and people don't really speak Bahasa there). I have to work on my vocabulary though. And there are also subtle differences with the words e.g. to wipe a whiteboard in Bahasa Malaysia (BM) is "padam" but it means "turn off the lights" in Bahasa Indonesia (BI). Imagine the confused look the guys gave me when I said that as I was drawing on the whiteboard. Or to build is called "bina" in BM but it means "handover" in BI.

My last trip to Jakarta was even better as I made two new friends. They're sisters of a good friend of mine in Melbourne and they took me around to shop for a new business travel bag. I got one for 1 million! (Rupiah) Very happy with it. And to top off the night, they took me to a nice Italian restaurant in Pondok Indah (about 20 mins drive south) called La trattoria. I think one of them said it means "The Cafe" in Italian? The food (I had a very juicy steak with mushroom sauce) was very nice, the one litre bottle of Bintang beer was refreshing and the company was very nice too. It was also very nice to have bruschetta. Yum yum. Hmm...must get my boss to throw more projects in Jakarta to me. Now I have more reasons to go back to Jakarta. :-) Thanks Marcelline and Marlene!

Anyway...back to my friend's wedding in Singapore. It was held at the Pan Pacific hotel and the setting was quite nice with lots of tables. There must have been around 40 tables! The food was OK and the drinks were flowing freely. I was lucky I had one friend I know from a long time ago sitting at the same table. Otherwise the conversation was more of a gossiping nature about the bride and groom (some not very nice), the cost of the food, etc. Some people really can't find nice things to talk about other people sometimes. Rumour at the table was that the dining cost was $150 per person. Frankly I don't know why but it might be because of the free flow drinks and there was shark's fin (sorry Ben) and abalone. And you can always tell the table where all the Aussies are - just look for the one with the most empty beer glasses! Pity all the pictures I took from my phone camera were blur so no pics to show here. Congrats to Nat and Boon anyway. :-)

I also got stumped with a $140 drink bill by some cheapskates. They were friends of the bride and they have a long standing business arrangement with my current company. Because of that and after they heard who I was working for, they expected me to take them out and party for the night. I especially did not like the eldest (and most senior guy). He actually asked me straight out to buy drinks for him because they've spent so much money with my company the past 20 years. Well mate, you've also been making tons of money of my company's technology the past 20 years. So we go to the bar to have a few beers. I'm chatting with another friend I haven't seen in a while. These guys drink, make a quip "Hey Eug, you're paying aren't you?" to which I didn't respond. They then proceeded on to the ballroom downstairs and lo and behold, when I got my bill, it included their 8 beers as well. Not happy! I didn't want to create a ruckus but they better be giving me some business in the next few months! My boss offered to pay the bill when I told him but I guess it's my own fault for letting my guard down. I'll buy this one...

This is a week to catch up on my blogging - last weekend (!) I was bored so I decided to walk westwards and explore the shopping centres there. The first one I encountered was City Plaza. Boring...

I continued walking to another shopping centre across the road called Tanjong Katong and it was also boring except that there was a supermarket in there (more about this later). Then I saw out of the corner of my eye some food stalls in what looked like a food court across the road so of course I headed there. It turned out to be the Haig Road Food Centre (one of the places that had a listing in the Makan Sutra. This place is located in Geylang Serai which is a Malay area so the food has a bit more of a Malay theme. I ordered a mee goreng from one of the stalls (see pic). It was so-so, not that good.


As I continued exploring, I noticed a long queue at one of the stalls in yet another food court place a few steps down. It turned out to be a dish called "putu piring". Looked very interesting (see photo below) so naturally I had to buy some to try. I asked one of the people in the queue what it was and it's a sweet. This is the same material as "putu mayam" but it's made into a cake shaped thingy with "gula melaka" (a nice caramelised sugar thingy) in the middle. I didn't try it straight off the steamer but it was delicious! I wish I bought more than one. Aargh... And I reckon it would have been nicer steaming hot.

Putu piring production line - the dough and gula melaka being prepared

Putu piring production line - that's the steamer on the left while the man packs it together with pandan leaves

Putu piring production line - another shot of the steamer

Putu piring - delicious!

Time to go!

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