Ten Amazing Creatures My BF Wants to See at River Safari

10. Alligator Gar.
This fish has a mouth like an alligator! How cool is that?

9. Terrapin?
This tortoise/turtle has no shell! I wonder how it feels like...

8. Paddlefish
You do NOT want this fish's nose up in your face.

7. Random Fish
Doesn't this look like the fish characters from Spongebob Squarepants?

6. Sturgeon
Swimming, living army tank in the form of a fish.

5. Red Panda
Looks like a cat, walks like a dog, hugs its tail for warmth when sleeping. EEEEE!

4. Manatee
SO FAT AND SQUISHYYYYY

3. Sea Otter
Adorbs!

2. Arapaima
This thing scares me. At least 8 feet long?!?

1. Me

Reflections: A Rainy Day

I just got home from cell, after braving through the usual one hour KL-Klang crawl that's typical of a rainy Friday evening. Everyone else was late, so we started late but had good fellowship and great food (bread, spreads and chips for the body and Mark 12:41-44 for the spirit).

I can really say that I truly enjoyed today. It's a normal day like any other, and I still have things on my plate to deal with, but there is so much to be thankful for, and so many little things to relish in. The sound of today's heavy downpour, the smell of the fragrant chicken rice I had for lunch, the soft, cloudy texture of the matcha wafer sandwich I had, the feel of smooth brown paper on my fingers. The relationships that I have with the people in my life, which I must treasure and water daily to maintain it.

Ah, such is the life.

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
-Kurt Vonnegut

A Dinner at Porto Romano, TTDI

For K's bachelorette weekend, we had dinner at Porto Romano at TTDI. Here's a food diary of the things we ate!

The Albanian Village salad is something you can create at home. Cubes of feta cheese and cucumber, tiny wheels of olives and onions on tomato wedges drizzled in a light, olive oil-based dressing. A nice and light opener for the next dishes.

Aglio olio with lamb slices, an October special. Well-marinated and tender lamb discs which everyone enjoyed, together with the oily and only slightly spicy spaghetti strands.

Pizza margherita, a thin crust pizza simply topped with melted cheese. As delicious as it sounds! Eaten up quickly because cold pizza sucks!

Seafood paella. Mussels, prawns and squid on a bed of red-colored rice. Each spoonful of the rice brought to our tastebuds a taste of the sea, balanced with the stark tartness of the tomato. I'm not a fan of the peas hiding inside there though, totally put off the texture of the dish (mushy plus more mushy). A crunchy vegetable would have been a better alternative, perhaps?

(No photo! Gone in a flash) Salmon ravioli. 5 salmon pillows sitting in a warm broth. Tasted quite fishy but edible all the same, filling was too mushy for my liking though :P

Tiramisu, when it's well done, is sublime. This barely made the cut because of the excessive use of cream. The only saving grace is perhaps the espresso-soaked lady fingers, which was hard to taste under all that cream. Also...I don't recall Tiramisu recipes calling for a mountain of cocoa powder as topping! (Luckily, the one I had at Italiannies the next day was suuuuper nice and made me forget about Porto Romano's...until I had to write this blog post -.-")

I would come back for the pizza and maybe to try the other pastas. And definitely come back for the environment, it's quite quiet and lightly-lit enough for a nice evening.

Meritus Pelangi Langkawi Resort Breakfast

One of my very favouritest things while on holiday (not backpacker holiday) is the hotel breakfast. It goes without saying that when I arrived at Meritus Pelangi Resort & Spa on Langkawi, I had to indulge in every area of the breakfast...

(Sorry for overdoing the warmth on the editing, teehee)

As you can tell, my favourite part is actually the western/continental breakfast part. Spice Market serves mediocre sausages, pancakes, faux bacon, no waffles, no hash browns, omelettes that are more like fried eggs and condiments than omelettes. But their croissants are buttery and warm, and I had four raisin danish rolls each day.

Asian breakfast - nasi lemak condiments but no actual nasi lemak spotted. Some chapatti and curry, porridge station and a noodle station. I like that they had a small section for Japanese breakfast, where there was always rice (plain white rice, sorry), a stew-dish and a fried-cake-dish. That was cute!

Although the two types of cold cuts were boring, at least there are cold cuts. There's also a platter of cheese hunks (mostly cheddar I think?) next to it. Next to this was at least 5 salad options and a lot of toppings like compote, apricot and walnuts.

Plenty of fruit juices for you to choose from, as evidenced from one of the photos above, as well as a special canister (you'll have to hunt this one down near the yogurt area) of freshly-squeezed juice! On Sunday it was watermelon, on Monday it was honeydew. Both times I had at least three small glasses.

Overall, variety was smaller than I expected. Still an okay breakfast joint :)

Hotel Breakfast Diaries:
Parkroyal on Pickering Singapore breakfast