Tao's

This restaurant is located at the basement of Paradiz centre.

It's a whole new dining experience if you have never been to the place. The first thing and perhaps the most attracting factor of the restaurant is the excellent customer service they provided. The staff are unbelievable friendly. Every now and then, They will pop over and ask for your needs and if you are satisfied with their service and the food they provided. As each dish is being served, the serving staff will provide a little commentary on the food. It may be a little disturbing for people who like their meals in a peace and quiet environment but nevertheless, it's quite refreshing to have friendly staff who pop over to have a little chat with you. They treat their customers like family and one can easily felt the warm and friendly atmosphere at the first step into the place.

Environment aside, let's get to the main focus on food. The menu is planned in such a way that you choose each dish from the different categories. They have starter, salads,soup,main entrees,desserts and beverages and for dinner they throw in the grilled mushroom and mango sorbet.

The starter: bacon & mushroom gratin. This is one unique starter that is worth trying. The mushroom gratin was served up on a tin plate place on top of a ceramic tile. It's was piping hot and the slightly toasted bread are a great companion to the mushroom gratin. Spreading or dipping them with the mushroom gratin bring a rich favour to your mouth. The taste is just right and it really enhance your appetite. Not to mention, the restaurant is quite generous with the toasted bread, often needing 3 slices to empty the mushroom gratin served.

The salad: a few choices are available. The curry yogurt prawn salad is a must-try. The curry yogurt had a slight hint of the usual curry we had and the prawns they used were very fresh. The only downside is the small portion: 3 small prawns.

The soup:fish soup,cream of mushroom,cream of pumpkin and sharkfin melon herbal soup. The most unique of them all is the fish soup, even though it had the most common name. The fish soup is served in a teapot and there's a small cup available where you pour the soup into from the teapot. You drink the soup as though you are drinking wine. The fish soup is refreshing with a few slices of fish inside the teapot which would have to be taken out using a fork. The sharkfin melon herbal soup is quite misleading, cause there's no sharkfin in it. Sharkfin melon should be read as one. It's basically a sharkfin shaped melon served with some common Chinese herbs like ginseng and red dates. Other than the misleading name, this soup is also quite cooling with a slight hint of ginseng favour.

The grilled mushroom: This dish will always be served, one of those dishes that cannot be chosen caused there's no alternative. For mushroom lovers, this is highly recommended. The mushroom is grilled to perfection and the sauce is rather sweet that covers the slight bitter taste of the mushroom.

The mango sorbet. According to the staff, this is to help rinse all the taste in the mouth to prepare one for the main course. It's quite sweet and cooling, served in a small glass.

The main entrees: tao's oven roasted steak, marinated lamb cutlet, stew beef with rice (Japanese style),grilled snapper with Japanese sauce, slow cooked pork back ribs, baby lobster pasta in white wine sauce,tao's grilled chicken,baked Atlantic flounder with cheese. The tao's oven roasted steak has with a few choices of 30 to 70 % rare. The steak is quite thick but in smaller sizes than usual one and served with mashed sweet potato ( not the usual mashed potato) The snapper is very fresh and together with the sweet teriyaki sauce, it's just melt in your mouth. The ribs have the biggest portion of them all and looks and taste very good.

The dessert: creme brulee was highly recommended by the staff , otherwise there's still choices of sesame pudding yangsheng (养生）poached pear green tea or yam ice-cream, home-made chocolate mousse. All equally rich in favour.

The beverages: Their iced tea is another must try. They are super cooling and refreshing, especially after a meal. If not, the usual stuff of coffee, tea and juices are available.

The price is on the steep side. Cost about $28.80++ for dinner and would easily adds up to about $50 after all the cost had been added

Overall, the restaurant is highly recommended. A whole new style of dinning and excellent food.

Orient Ocean Restuarant

Located at Miramar Hotel. This restaurant offers Chinese Dim Sum buffets at lunch and dinner time.

The usual dim sum fare were all available. The food is nice and tasty, always steaming hot when they arrived at the tables. There's a piece of paper with the names of the dim sum available in the restaurant and you simply just put down the quantity of the dim sum you want by the names and pass it to the serving staff.

Some recommended Dim-sum are: Phoenix feet, the chicken herbal soups, the crystal dumplings and their desserts: watermelon sago.

The prices are relatively cheap. Cost about $15 per person after all the costs had been added.

Highly recommended for people with huge appetite and looking for value for money cuisine.

Singapore VS Vietnam

Singapore U23 football team caused an upset against the tournament favourites Vietnam U23 in the 24th SEA Games on Monday.

The Vietnam team went into the group stages in the Olympic qualifiers (Asian Zone). The only Southeast Asian team to do so and in that tournament they narrowly lose to Japan Olympic Squad by 1-0.

Having trashed Malaysia U23 on Saturday, their confidence level must be sky high. Yet they were brought down to earth by a unified Singapore team whose 0-0 draw against Laos on Saturday had nearly put them out of contention.

The Singapore team changed formation. Coach Raddy dropped the ineffective Agu Casmir and in come the defensive midfielder Isa Halim to beef up the defence in face of the Vietnam's onslaught.

That onslaught never came and the Vietnam team went into a slumber in the first half. Instead, it was the Singapore team that were 3-0 up by half time. Thanks to horrendous defending by Vietnam and a Shahril Ishak's sweet blast just before half time. The only glitch in the first half is Isa Halim's double yellow cards which send him off for early showers. The referee was inconsistent on several occasions. He awarded yellow cards on some illegal tackles and miss out on similar ones later on.

The Vietnam team regrouped after half-time. The feared attack of the Vietnamese began to pound attacks after attacks on the Singapore's goalmouth. The Singapore team played well defensively, although at times seem vulnerable by some quick movements of the Vietnamese players. Nevertheless, The Vietnamese team finally break the deadlock through PT Binh.

Hassan Sunny, the Singaporean goalkeeper was kept even busy by the Vietnam team after that goal. But he respond tremendously, saving at the feet and spreading himself very big on one on one situations. He was alert at all times and even contributed to the counter-attack tactics with his power kicks from his box.

The game gets more interesting when Vietnam had a player send off for elbowing a Singaporean and the most puzzled decision came when the referee awarded the Vietnam side a late penalty even though the replays show it's a situation of ball to hand,an unintentional handball which in that case was not the defining situation that would cause the Vietnam side a goal. In most cases, referee will ignore the situation. Furthermore, the Vietnam side never called for it.

As always, the Vietnam side converted and this turn out to be the last kick of the game.

Singapore will next faced Malaysia on Saturday while Vietnam took on Laos.

The curious incident of the dog in the night time

The curious incident of the dog in the night time is a strange title for a book. For one thing, the title seem a bit too long and the incident was not the main focus of the story. Rather it's a starting point for the book where events of the story are born out of this incident.

The book took the perspective of an autistic fifteen years old, Christopher. Christopher's world is very logical and things like love and human interaction had little meanings to him. He lived on patterns and rules he made himself, not caring about the world as he went on achieving his goal to score an A in the A'levels Mathematics.

Christopher's curiosity took him to found out that his neighbour's dog had died. What happen afterward began a trail to uncover the truth about the death of the dog. Yet, interestingly, he uncovered more about his family instead.

Throughout the book, Christopher shared with us his thoughts and thinking. The author, Mark Haddon seem to understand the minds of the autistic. While many people cannot comprehend the strange actions of those who are autistic, he is able to tell us how their thinking was mapped out in their minds.

It's a moving book and the story unfold in a nice way that makes readers unwilling to put the book away once they started reading it.

Woeful Man U!

Man U just lost to Bolton yesterday.

It's was bad. Why did old Fergie leave out Ronaldo when he was left with injury-prone Saha, (travel-round-the-world-and-I'm-tired) Tevez, and (I'm-still-young-blame-others) Nani as their strike force.

Little doubts they cant scored with such little fire power up front and they are missing ever reliable Vidic at the back, that make things worse. For his replacement, Gerard Pique missed his header and up goes Anelka to blast past VDS.

Old Fergie still got the cheek to blame the man in black and got ousted to the stands at half time. Maybe that's his idea of shifting the blame. He always like to blow up certain things to cover for his mistake and now his idea of not showing respect to the Bolton team (by leaving Ronaldo out) seem not to be the major impact.

As the Chinese sayings goes "Arrogant army will meet defeat" , Old Fergie with all his experience can forget this simple theory. He need a refresher course on tactics and strategies.

Now that Arsenal had gone 3 points ahead with 1 game in hand, it's look like Man U had to play catch-up during the Christmas period. The depth of the squad must be strengthened, at least to Arsenal standards