Monthly Archive for November, 2006Page 2 of 3

My mum’s cakes

Published
by
acroamatic
on Tuesday, 21 November 2006
in Personal
. 6 Comments

Football Cake

My love for baking started when my son was born. His birthdays were celebrated with a birthday cake made by one of my sis-in-laws. It dawned on me that if she can bake a cake so can I.

I started experimenting and looked up books and magazines for recipes which was easy to follow. One experiment led to another and I soon gathered enough courage to demonstrate my so called `acquired skills’ to bake a birthday cake for my son. Being an amateur did not stop me from baking a cake replicating a football field, complete with ‘goal posts and men playing on the field’. The cake came out perfect and so did the icing on the cake or so it seemed to be in the eyes of the beholder.

Your cakes are always perfect in the eyes of the beholder (not to mention in my stomach too). Thanks, mum.

Similar Posts

Whithr Flickr?

Published
by
acroamatic
on Monday, 20 November 2006
in Tech
. 0 Comments

Read/Write Web highlights an internal Yahoo! memo which is a harbinger of change to products like Flickr and del.icio.us. Part of the memo highlights that various Yahoo! products/brands are treading the same ground. However…

There’s a good argument to be made that Flickr doesn’t cannibalize Photos, because Flickr is used by the early adopter crowd and Photos by your Mom or Pop. That’s very true, because there is still a big gulf between the blogosphere and the mainstream. My feeling though is that Flickr’s technology should be utilized more in Photos - i.e. why not re-brand Flickr as Photos. I can hear the gasps of horror from early adopter Flickr fans (of which I am one). But these are the kinds of hard decisions which Yahoo probably needs to make.

So, Flickr will cease to exist in its current form. Already, Flickr login is integrated with Yahoo! accounts. I realise they are bending over backwards for early adopters like me to retain their old, non-Yahoo!-integrated Flickr accounts. I don’t care what they do with Yahoo! Photos. As long as I retain all of Flickr’s current features and functionality. Hell, import all the Yahoo! Photo accounts into Flickr, and rename it Yahoo! Photos. Not as cool, but I’m not going to pay to use Yahoo! Photos.

But I realise that migrating Photos users to Flickr will cheese off the larger market who do use Yahoo! Photos. Google did something similar to Writely, buying it, then renaming (and merging) it Google Docs & Spreadsheets. However, Google didn’t have to contend with a large preexisting user-base when they made the switch. Yahoo! is seemingly at an impasse, and I don’t like how it might turn out.

Brad Garlinghouse, the Yahoo! senior vice president who wrote the memo declares, “We need to exit (sell?) non core businesses and eliminate duplicative projects and businesses.”

Ominous.

Similar Posts

Turkish delights

Published
by
acroamatic
on Friday, 17 November 2006
in Review
. 3 Comments

Iskender kebab, Musakka & Tereyagli ekmek

Alaturka is a wonderful little restaurant along Bussorah Street. My colleague, whose husband is from Turkey, attests that this is the place for a Turkish meal that is almost as good as home-cooked. Warning Their website has a very slow-loading Java applet.

If this is home-cooked Turkish food, I want more!

I went there is a Uni mate of mine. We ordered two dishes and a serving of bread. The Iskender kebab was thinly sliced lamb on pieces of pide (a type of Turkish bread), with a big dollop of yoghurt. The tomato-based sauce and yoghurt work well together, sandwiching the tender and juicy lamb slices. Add the harder texture of the pide cubes, and we’ve got a winner.

If there’s one thing that can be improved, it’s the lamb slices. Not the flavour but how they are cut. I like my meat chunky. But that’s just me. Those that find lamb overpowering might find the sliced meat more palatable. In any case, the Iskender kebab - apparently named after Alexander the Great - comes in chicken too.

Musakka. Remember that name. Musakka.

Musakka is a hotplate eggplant dish which comes in lamb or chicken sauce. Since we had lamb Iskender kebab, we plonked for the chicken sauce. What I didn’t know until my first taste was that Musakka had two of my favourite foods: cheese and potato.

Eggplant is a very easy vegetable to do badly. And one that is difficult to do well. Alaturka does Musakka exceedingly well. It’s a riot of flavour. Truly truly amazing. I should be using exclamation marks, but using them in every sentence about this dish would diminish the wow factor. I used the Musakka sauce as a dip for the Tereyagli ekmek (butter bread).

Alaturka itself is small and not air-conditioned. Still it wasn’t unbearable. In fact, Alaturka is quite cosy. And if you have a group of about 10 or so, I believe there is a private area which can accomodate the group quite nicely.

Alaturka is located at 16 Bussorah Street. (Bussorah Street at night is a hive of activity. The topic of a possible future post.) Reservations are recommended. Their contact number is 6294 0304. Click the following link for a couple more photos.

Continue reading ‘Turkish delights’

Similar Posts

Tribute Video to St. Joseph’s Institution

Published
by
acroamatic
on Thursday, 16 November 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

After writing the previous post, I googled “Saint Joseph’s Institution” and found this!

“Soccer player.”

Yeh!

More about the former SJI premises at Wikipedia.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Similar Posts

The Singapore Art Musuem a.k.a. former Saint Joseph’s Institution building

Published
by
acroamatic
on Thursday, 16 November 2006
in Heritage, Personal and Photos
. 0 Comments

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) | Old Saint Joseph's Institution (SJI)

I took this photo on Tuesday afternoon, just before a seminar at the Singapore Management University. I’ve decided to write a bit about it ‘cos I noticed quite a number of people have viewed the photo.

Many many years ago, the ground I was standing was an open field. My primary school - Saint Anthony’s Boys’ School - used it for the occasional inter-class football games. No goalposts or painted lines or anything. Just an open field.

Even though I never attended school in the building across the road (SJI had already moved to its Malcolm Road premises), I feel connected to it and to SJI alumni stretching back more than 150 years.

Perhaps the topic of a yesterday.sg post? The Former Lives of Museums & Monuments. Can even be a podcast series, with ’soundseeing’ tours (apologies to Fr. Roderick).

I remember being brought around old SJI before it was handed over for redevelopment. It was during a Secondary 3 Leadership Camp. Brother Michael Broughton showed us around and regaled us with stories from his school days and stories from even further back. Maybe the yesterday.sg crew can get him to record the stories for posterity.

As with most of my SJI memories, I have no photographic evidence of the pre-redeveloped building. My friends and I were somehow quite averse to documenting things on film. Case in point: almost my entire batch went for OBS and no one brought a camera. Not even a cheap plastic point-and-shoot.

We would have had photos of the attic. Photos from the dome. Photos of the chapel with missing tiles. Photos of grass growing a circular border in the courtyard - evidence of a World War II bomb crater. It would have been very interesting.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Similar Posts