Getting Closer...

New York has come and gone and now the REAL countdown has begun! Was worried we actually wouldn't make it there in time for the first fitting appointment what with bloody Qantas grounding it's ENTIRE domestic and international fleet but Virgin Australia came to the rescue at the very last minute and thankfully it all worked out in the end.

My one and only picture I took at the fittings:

Makes me a little sad just looking at it and remembering how happy and excited I felt, but so glad my mum was with me to share in the (now very surreal) experience. Thank goodness the dresses, veil and the sashes made it safely to HK and are now awaiting my arrival. Am also thankful that HK has storage facilities (air-conditioned ones even!) available in which to store dresses that are a little on the big side. Mr Ng's sister (whose place the dresses were sent to) said that each dress arrived in a box the size of a washing machine, omg..

But back to New York and I gotta say as much as I love it there, it definitely wasn't as 'magical' this time round. The sight of steam rising out of the ground didn't fascinate me as much, the craziness of Times Square didn't send tingles down my spine and I didn't feel the need to snap a picture of every single street sign I came across. But there is definitely no denying that the city is truly beautiful in the Fall:

they were putting up the Christmas tree at Rockefellar on our last day there

Hopefully one day in the not too distant future Mr Ng will accompany me on my next trip there and I will finally get to do a bit of sight-seeing instead of just shopping for the entire day! I wonder if I'm the only tourist who has been to NY twice and has yet to see the State of Liberty?

Although I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, I did end up scoring quite a few goodies..

Ahh the Saks ladies shoes floor, one of the the happiest places on Earth..

But now it's time to get down to business. Less than two months til the big day and it still seems like we have a tonne of things to do!

Countdown to NYC

Just over a week now until I fly off and starting to get more than a little excited! But also a bit apprehensive since I am not feeling as skinny as I would have liked to be for the dress fittings. Thinking of doing absolutely no carbs next week in a final attempt to get my tummy as flat as possible but not even sure I would be able to last the day.

In the meantime, more Crave events (probably not the best idea for me to be going to these things at this point in time but hey, it only happens once a year) starting with the Nice As Spice drink & dine dinner at Sailors Thai Ivy, which was a fun four-course Thai dinner matched with four cocktails:

already majorly tipsy at this point lol

omg this drink was SO strong, I only managed a couple of sips

good view of the open kitchen

Sugar Hit at Cafe Ish:

you are meant to 'design your own dessert' with this palette of native Australian and Japanese sweets but I really couldn't be bothered to play with my food so just ate it

Sugar Hit at Westin:

Dinner followed by Sugar Hit at Azuma Kushiyaki:

the famous (for good reason) seared tuna salad

atsuage

some totally awesome clam special dish

assorted kushiyaki

tempura

Hopefully I can squeeze in a couple more sugar hits before I starve myself next week =)

Natura Bisse Inhibit-Tensolift

I am really starting to get paranoid about fine lines and wrinkles lately, as the years go by I find myself paying more attention to other people's complexions and realising what I don't want my skin to end up looking like in the future. Back in 2007 I read about Beauty Snob Tina's nightly skin routine and since then have been intrigued by one of the products she claimed to be like 'botox in a bottle' - Natura Bisse's Inhibit-Tensolift:

A 60mL bottle of this stuff costs a whopping USD715 and so I promised myself I wouldn't splurge on this until I hit 30. BUT I've started to freak out about the frown lines on my forehead (which Mr Ng claims do not exist but I swear I can see which I blame on him btw) and so I just might be buying this a little earlier than originally planned.

I'm not sure how my mum will feel about me spending that much on one product when we're in NY next month so it looks like my lines will have to wait until til I'm in HK at the end of the year. Can't wait to see what the results are!

Pedder Warehouse Sale

Received this email a few days ago and I'm so bummed I am not in HK right now. It's times like this I wish I was living there..

The Luisa sale here just does NOT compare to the Pedder Warehouse sale. I dragged Mr Ng along with me to check out one of the sales in April this year and geez it was a crazy house! HK girls sure do love their designer shoes. And I did manage to buy this awesome pair of Pierre Hardy booties:

which I know came out all the way back in 2008 but I love anyway, although still haven't managed to wear them yet hmm..

But as with all these sales, the popular sizes sell out FAST so the pickings will probably be pretty slim by today.

Crave Sydney Food Festival

So it's that time of the year again where Sydney comes alive with events to satisfy even the fussiest of foodies (well actually it's almost already halfway through the month so I'm a bit behind). Previously called the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Month, the month-long festival is now known as the Crave Sydney Food Festival and new events such as Breakfast on Bondi have been added to the now popular Night Noodle Markets, Let's Do Lunch, Hats Off Dinners and my favourite, Sugar Hit.

Unfortunately, Mr Ng and I were in Newcastle for the first weekend of Crave and so we've already missed out on one weekend of fun events. Just on the topic of Newcastle, I think visiting once in your lifetime is quite enough - there is absolutely nothing to do there! Harry's hotdogs is probably the most exciting thing they've got lol..

Lucky for us we don't have to drive all the way to Newcastle to get the same great taste.

Back to Crave and the first thing on the agenda was the Flavours of Malaysia buffet which Mr Ng's cousin was kind enough to book for us (after numerous hints to Mr Ng resulted in nothing):

But in short - save your money! Pretty much everything was a let down and Mr Ng was disappointed there wasn't even any chicken rice. Although they did have a not-so-good har mee i suppose..

Didn't take any more pictures though coz sadly there wasn't really anything worth taking pictures of.

Next up, Sugar Hit at Sheraton on the Park beginning with a delicious glass of Brown Brothers dessert wine (forgot the exact name):

and ending with a yummy chocolate-y dessert:

My only gripe would be it was much too small. I'm interested to see if other Sugar Hits have also downsized their portions.

The next morning Mr Ng and I decided to try somewhere different and so settled on brunch at Sonoma which is famous for their sourdough bread:

I love the cool coffee cup holders above the coffee machine, very ingenious.
Onto the food..I opted for the Crave brunch which was a baked free-range eggs, wild mushrooms, spinach and goat's cheese concoction with sourdough bread on the side and Mr Ng, being the unoriginal person he is, went for the eggs. bacon and bread option:

And the verdict? I will definitely be back. Super fresh ingredients made for a a very nice brunch indeed.

Last but not least, the Night Noodle Markets:

This was the crowd on the very first (Monday) night just around 5pm. Walked through last night (Thursday) at about 6pm and it was PACKED. Such a great excuse to grab a bunch of friends , find a table (if you can) and enjoy some nice Asian cuisine in Hyde Park if the weather is good..although it seems they do make you pay through the nose for the experience. Mr Ng therefore refused to eat there and so I had to make do with this before heading for dinner in Chinatown (you'll find the exact same food for much cheaper there you see lol):

Not very Asian at all huh haha. Now is it just me or is Sydney getting crazily expensive?? This small plate cost me a whopping $10. And I just realised yesterday that when I see petrol for $1.40/L these days I now consider that cheap!

More Crave events to come shortly =)

David Jones Nail Spa - Never Again!

I never seem to learn my lesson - after vowing never to go to any other nail spa other than Blush (here) I decided to give the David Jones Nail Spa a go yesterday since I just couldn't be bothered making the hike all the way to Chatswood. BIG MISTAKE!

First impression? This place is no cleaner than your average suburban nail salon. So I thought, perhaps the high prices meant they did a good job? Not the case. The nails on my two big and two little toes were cut and filed crooked, the undercoat was applied to my hands and toes haphazardly (I'm not even sure there was an undercoat applied to my toes) and the colour was not applied evenly or even all the way to the end of the nail. NOT HAPPY!

I'm just glad that I didn't decide to go for the full $70 New York Mani/Pedi, I got the $40 mini mani/pedi combo which does not involve any cuticle cutting (thank God). Admittedly, the girl I had was lovely (if a little unprofessional) and they do what is probably the best range of OPI colours I have seen to date. But it's back to Blush for me!

I was excited to finally try out my Chanel Blue Boy though:

J'adore!

More Food!

Very little gives me comfort these days except for food. And even though I really shouldn't be eating carbs after 6pm in an attempt to shed a little weight before my first dress fitting, I've had so many stressful days over the past week that I just don't care anymore! Although I have been going to yoga more than usual to make myself feel a little less guilty.

Anyhoo, back to the food.
I've been wanting to try The Meat & Wine Co for the longest time now and so Mr Ng and I made a very spur of the moment decision to give it a go one night last week at the Darling Harbour location. First impression? I never realised this place was so huge! It spans over 3 levels and by the time we left at about 7.30pm it was really starting to fill up.

my Evergreen mocktail

Pork Belly entree

Mr Ng's Grilled Chicken Breast

my 200g Fillet

The service here is a little slow probably due to the size of the restaurant and the fact that we were sitting in a little hidden corner on the 2nd floor. But if I were to go back I would probably go when I'm a little more hungry and able to fit in some dessert which looked really good judging by the table next to ours. The Darling Harbour branch is open from 12noon-10pm Sunday to Thursday and 12noon-11pm Friday and Saturday.

The next night my little bro shouted us all to yummy German at Essen. I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Mr Ng's Farm fresh duck

my Mum's Crispy skinned porkbelly

my Jaeger schnitzel, also ordered by my bro, sister and Dad lol

my sister's Cherry strudel dessert special

my Apple and pear strudel

my bro's Schwaerzwalder (white chocolate mousse)

In short, I LOVE Essen. It is open 7 days for both lunch and dinner.

And most recently, the crazy busy Mamak at Chinatown:

An interesting bit of history about the place from Gosstronomy: The idea for the restaurant started back in 2004 when a young ABC (Australian-born-Chinese) account manager for Pfizer named Julian Lee (who is super cute btw) visited a Malaysian restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD and wondered why there wasn’t an equally good Malaysian experience in Sydney. So he and two friends, Alan Au and Clement Lee, decided to open up their own restaurant but when attempts to recruit a trained chef from Kuala Lumpur proved too hard, the three decided to quit their jobs – Alan was a risk manager for Macquarie Bank and Clement a software engineer for Optus – and move to KL to work in restaurants and learn to cook authentic Malaysian food. Can you say best decision ever?

Mamak opened its doors at Haymarket in 2007 and just 2 years later received a Chef's Hat in the coveted Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards. On the auspicious day of 10th of October last year, a second branch was opened in Chatswood. If the queues are anything to go by it's obvious that Sydney has fallen in love with the fare here lunchtime, dinnertime, every day of the week.

I haven't been to the Chinatown branch in a while now but Mr Ng and I happened to be in the area just before the restaurant was due to open (which is the best time to get there if you don't want to wait in line for more than 30 minutes) and decided to gorge ourselves:

the emptiest I have ever seen the place

but it was only 5.35pm at this time, all the tables were filled within 20 minutes

no Rojak on a Monday night so opted for Mee Goreng

Ayam goreng

Chicken roti murtabak

Roti bom for dessert

Very SHIOK! (loosely translated as super yummy)

Now I have to be honest and say that the first time I tried Mamak in its first year of operation Mr Ng and I had just come back from Singapore having had tasted the best roti prata all at a cost of a few Sing dollars. Needless to say, we weren't super impressed. But absence makes the heart - or in this case the tummy - grow fonder =).

Both the Chinatown and Chatswood branches are open 7 days a week from 11.30am-2.30pm for lunch and 5.30pm-9.30pm for dinner. Additionally, the Chinatown one is open until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays for supper.