Food for Thought

After a rather average walkthrough the Jacobs Children's Garden, I have already proposed to have our dinner here at Food for Thought in Botanical Gardens. We got kinda lost.

I entered through the Nassim gate and parked at the Nparks headquarters. It was a wrong choice and we ended up walking all the way from here to the other end of the botanical gardens. I actually forgotten how big botanical gardens is. It is HUGE. 

Along the way, we see streams of people coming out and probably heading to the carpark or exit. I think an event by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra has just ended. It must be nice to hear and enjoy wonderful music, out in the open. Mental note that we should try this soon!

After an 25 minutes walk, we have finally reached the Botany Centre where the Food for Thought is at. Phew. For any other people wanting to have a meal at Food for Thought and driving, park at the TANGLIN GATE! If not, you will end up building up your hungry by walking so a very long distance just to have a meal. 

Since we were there after their popular brunch timing, the place was quite quiet and there were lots of seats. It was a free seating thing during that time and you had to pick your choice of food and then pay at the cashier.

I really like this part of the wall, especially on the number 3. Love your family. There is nothing in this world more important than family. Nothing. They are the ones that will be there to support you in times of happiness and sadness. 

Hazel had this, Bacon and Sage Wrapped Chicken Leg ($20). I find it quite normal. In fact, the chicken leg didn't really taste very good and rather bland when you eat the inside part. The bacon wrapped part and the external was pretty nice though.

And I had the Grilled Ribeye with Honey Shallot Chuntney. ($23) Well, it was not the ribeye quality that I was looking at but this is definitely better than what I had at Outback Steakhouse just recently. I like the mushrooms sides though, that is really very appetizing. 

I saw quite a few people ordering their chicken wings and thought that I should have a go at one of these. This is their three chicken wings for $5. It is quite good but not as good as the ones at Ikea. The Ikea chicken wings are just so wonderful!

My total bill is $48.00 for 2 adults. 

Ice/Warm water is actually self service at one corner of the place and they have a small playground area for kids to play. This really is a good place for family type gatherings though I would not say so for their main dishes. I would probably come back again for their breakfast menu items. Heard that their pancakes are damn good!

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Jacobs Children's Garden

I have been hearing about this from blogs or instagrams previously and I wanted to go there to take a look to check out the place.

We did. And this is the ironic tree sculpture that resides at the entrance to the Jacobs Children's Garden. The children's garden is supposedly Asia's first children garden where they can learn about the flora and fauna. The other objective of this garden is also to cultivate an appreciation of plants, nature and the environment among the kids. This garden is designed for children up to 12 years old to explore and have fun. And for budget savvy families, this place is FREE. 

We brought little Jayden here and lets see if this place is any good.

Took a self portrait with Jayden while Hazel goes to grab some water to quench her thirst.

This is the map of the Jacobs Childrens Garden. We were there at about 1700hrs plus to avoid the strong sun.

I had originally wanted to bring some wet play gear along as I noticed the wet play area on the map while searching for this place online. However, as you can see here, the place is closed and out of order.

After passing by another closed and out of order area "Magic of Photosynthesis", Jayden went ahead to check out the suspension bridge. He was apprehensive initially and later on get very excited and happy walking to and fro the  shaking suspension bridge. I wonder where his guts come from.

There is also a "cave" with a waterfall and with Jayden's fascination with all things water, he just goes "POUUUUURRRRRR" when he saw the water. (He just likes to pour water la. Hahaha)

There were also slides in the area with a treehouse.

Most importantly, there are many places for him to just run around freely.

Overall, I don't think we will be back here anytime soon. The place looks quite rundown already. I hardly see staff around except at the main entrance and at the information center. This looks like an abandon project where they put very minimal resources to upkeep. Also, this is probably more suitable for older children but they would have to print out worksheets before coming here. The signs and information board around the garden is very very minimal. 

The one good thing for this place is that it is quite peaceful during the weekends. There are not too much people around the place and you dun have to squeeze around.

Opening hours
8.00am - 7.00pm (last admission at 6.30pm)
The Jacob Ballas Children's Garden is closed on Mondays (except when it falls on a designated public holiday)

Getting Here

By car or taxi

From Dunearn Road - At the Dunearn-Kheam Hock Road junction, turn right to enter NUS Bukit Timah Campus. Turn right into Jacob Ballas Children's Garden after car park gantry.
From Bukit Timah Road - At the Bukit Timah-Kheam Hock Road junction, turn left to enter NUS Bukit Timah Campus. Turn right into Jacob Ballas Children's Garden after car park gantry.
Parking is available at Jacob Ballas Children's Garden and NUS Bukit Timah Campus.

By bus SBS Bus No. 48, 66, 151, 153, 154, 156, 170, 186 and SMRT Bus No. 67, 171. Alight along Bukit Timah Road, NUS Bukit Timah Campus bus stop.

By Mass Rapid Transit (MRT, Circle Line):
Alight at Eco Garden (North end of the Gardens) via the Botanic Gardens Station.

 

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A lazy Sunday breakfast @ Swensens

It always feels like eternity to me when I managed to get a weekend morning off from work to be with my family. And I finally did. A weekend breakfast outside of the home is made even more difficult as we have our part time helper coming in normally on Sundays to do the weekly household chores (vacuuming, mopping, cleaning areas of home and ironing our clothes). We have a policy to never let her be alone in our home and usually, our sunday breakfast is either "take away" by myself or a delivery from Mcdonald's. So when our helper SMSed us that she will be late on Sunday morning, we took the chance to go out and grab a breakfast at the Jurong Point Swensen's. 

I also took the opportunity to take out my newly acquired Olympus TG-1 to snap some photos.

The last time I recall having breakfast here was probably almost a year ago. Time really does flies.

I wanted Jayden to try new things despite knowing that most probably his food will get wasted and most of it not eaten. But we had to keep trying! He is just such a fussy eater. This is what we ordered for him, Blueberry Toasties Set ($5.50) comes with a juice (orange/apple). 

This is for the wife, a traditional french toast set. ($6.90) For the main course, the breakfast comes with a hot beverage (coffee/tea) and juice (orange/apple). Very affordable pricing if you ask me.

And mine was the Eggs a la Ben set, or eggs benedict. ($9.90) The poached eggs are well, okay. Both of us didn't really like cheese sausages though. I thought that it would be better if normal sausages were served or that there was a choice. 

The food wasn't awesomely good. But the feeling that I was out with my love ones, not in the office on a weekend morning was great. Really great. 

It was awesome.

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Bao Today (包今天) @ Marina Square

The weekends are usually filled with trips to restaurants and shopping, if my little Jayden is sleeping soundly. For us, we still find it quite difficult for Hazel to shop if Jayden is awake as he tends to stick more with his mummy. On this particular Saturday afternoon after my work, we went to Marina Square for a little "walking" therapy and some food. Jayden was tired and he was soundly asleep in his pram and we were a little hungry. So some snacks will be great for us.

And we came here to Bao Today. This is the second time we ate here and I think the previous time was when Hazel was pregnant. It has been that long. 

We just wanted something light so we didn't order much. I told Hazel that since we are in a "Bao" or Bun speciality place we should order a few of it. The black sesame bun ($2.60) looks interesting and we had it. We thought this was quite good. Think it as a black sesame version of the popular "Liew Sa" bao or a bao version of black sesame dumpling.

I ordered this. Braised pork bun ($4.80). The braised pork is not being placed into the bun and served separately. I love this! Especially since it is served separately with some gravy, I put my piece of braised pork in the bun, dipped the bun into the sauce every time before I take a bite. OOOOO so wonderfully fatteningly good. Hahaha. The pork was tender and had all the favor of the dark soy sauce + herbs in it. Wonderful.

 

 

Hazel tends to prefer fried stuff and she ordered the crispy fried shrimp dumpling ($3.80). Hmmm, it is not too bad but I prefer it to be just a little bigger.

 

 

The spring roll with japanese sweet potato ( $3.50) was new on the menu and Hazel ordered this. The sweet potato is nice and very sweet. I thought that if some other types of wraps will do this more justice? 

 

We shared a spring plum drink ($3.80) and the total bill came up to $19.80. Quite affordable for a nice little snack. I think we will come back here again for some quick dim sum fix next time.

 

Bao Today

Marina Square

Unit: #02-234 to 236

Tel: 6336 2237

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My User Impressions on the Olympus TG-1

I said I needed a waterproof camera and suggested a camera in my previous blog post and, poof it is now laying on my table. I honestly had no intentions of suggesting this to be a present but Hazel went out and got it for me anyway. Love her lots. I think it is tough to be a spouse of a gadget crazy husband, who is always on the lookout for new toys and techy stuff. LOL

The following is intended to be a user impression or experience on the Olympus TG-1 and not meant to be a full technical review. You can always read about the techy stuff with pixel peeping elsewhere in camera review websites.

Olympus TG-1, a waterprof, crushproof, freezeproof and dustproof camera from Olympus is the only camera in the world now that sports a F2.0 aperture. It even has GPS and a 12MP sensor inside this sleek silver body. I have been looking around for waterproof cameras for a long time. It has been part of the options to consider when I got the waterproof casing for the Canon S95. After repeated uses, I find that casing to be lacking in functionality and it is obstructing proper uses of the camera. Of course, if anyone were to ask me for a recommendation to a cheap waterproof casing, As a keen photography enthusiast, that is frustrating. What made this camera first stand out of the crowd was firstly the F2.0 aperture which will ensure reasonable good low light photography and then, a centrally placed lens. I am not fond of cameras with lens that are right at some corners. It just make the camera look weird, no matter how good the specs of the camera is. And this camera really looks ready to be roughen up with exposed bolts adding to that effect.

I love the holder for the strap. It looks solid and rugged, unlike the normal lugs found on other cameras. Olympus has also made a good aesthetic choice by provide a bright red strap that comes bundled in the box.

In order to ensure that the compartments to both the battery/SD card area and the mini HDMI/USB ports, a double locking mechanism is included each one of them. In order to open, you have to unlock the latch and then switch the other to open it.

Each compartment has a rubber seal to it and if you handled it, you will be very reassured that this camera is made for the great outdoors. No matter, dirt, water, drops, come at it! 

For my hands, the camera feels just nice. It is a little thicker than normal cameras but I guess that extra heft is to maximize functionality over design. At this technological era, I will still be rather hesitant of a product that is sleek and slim but claims to be waterproof and dustproof.

The rear buttons are easy to reach. The directional buttons are all raised up a notch making it easy to access if you are wearing gloves. (I should have this camera with me when we were in the deep snow in Korea) The zoom buttons are also at the back of the camera using buttons rather than levers situated at the shutter button. A separate movie button is also here which lets you enter the movie recording mode anytime. In the Olympus TG-1, you will be lacking of the more "professional" modes, i.e. the aperture priority, shutter priority and manual mode. That means you have no control over the shutter or the aperture. So far, that didn't pose a problem for me. This camera is basically for me to take shots under more adverse conditions where other cameras will not be able to do (at the beach, swimming pool, etc for me). I dun see the need for so much manual control for those moments.

At the top of the camera, you can easily locate the shutter and on off button. The GPS wording is also very boldly written at the center of the camera.

On the front of the camera, you can find the lens and the flash. The TG-1 also has a mode where you can turn on the LED light for macro photography, a very useful feature. And as shown here, there is a piece that could be removed from the lens. Here you can add in an adaptor and mount either a fisheye or telescope converter. This is not found in any other cameras and it is useful if this camera is your only camera to bring for traveling. It adds so much versatility to the camera.

One of the more interesting features that I always like about Olympus cameras is the art mode or magic mode as displayed in the function dials. For the Olympus TG-1, there is a total of 12 art modes included in the camera and I will include one photo for each of the magic mode.

But first, let me test out the waterproof function. Since I still have no beach outings or swimming pool trips with Jayden, this shall suffice. (at the moment)

Jayden is looking at the new camera. Strange new thing daddy has right?

Strange thing? WASH IT!! And the camera still works after this. OK. This is not sufficient test for a waterproof camera which is capable of depths up to 12m but you will be sure that I have more photos coming up from this camera. 

POP ART MODE - This basically makes colors more vivid and saturated out of camera without any post processing.

PIN HOLE MODE - This darkens the photo and then adds in some vignetting to the shot.

FISH EYE MODE - This is a "fake" fish eye mode which adds in a bulge at the center of the photo and then distorts the image.

DRAWING - A mode that simply outlines the photo and makes it look like a sketch.

SOFT FOCUS - This adds in the dreamy effect into the photo.

PUNK - In my opinion, the most useless effect in the magic mode. It creates this purple pinkish effect as you can see here.

SPARKLE - This adds sparkle to the lights found in the image.

WATERCOLOR - Similar to the drawing mode, this makes the image looks as if it is created using watercolors.

REFLECTION - This places an invisible line at the center of the frame and mirrors what is on one side to the other.

MINATURE - An effect that has grown in popularity especially after many phone photo editing apps comes with it.

FRAGMENTED - Another useless effect in my opinion.

DRAMATIC - Favorite effect of all. The photo just explains everything.

The other feature is the Olympus TG-1 has three macro modes. Picture will show everything.

This is the maximum magnification possible without any macro modes enabled.

This is with the normal macro mode enabled. Choosing this mode lets the camera focus nearer, at just10 cm away from the subject.

This is the Super Macro mode which allows focusing at just 1cm away from the subject.

I am quite fond of this. This is the Super Macro mode with LED light on. Similar to the previous mode, this adds on to it by activating the LED light whenever you half press the shutter button. Cool!

My overall verdict

This camera is quite capable and will render Olympus Colors if you are fond of their color set. Since I have been using the Olympus OMD EM5, I am quite ok with it. One thing was quite obvious to me was that the Olympus TG-1 was not the image sharpness. I googled around and found that it was indeed a reduced sharpness in TG-1. But for me, that was not too big an issue since I am quite happy with the other features of the camera and love the F2.0 aperture.

It is a very capable camera with useful preset modes. There are other modes - Low light mode and super sport mode which are self explanatory. 

I think the size is one thing that make people hesitate for a while, but if you think about it, a normal camera with a underwater casing will typically be even bulkier than this! It is a trade off. 

Finally, I am eager to get this camera out into the water soon!

 

 

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