Food p0rn, random stuff - Photo round up!

[coolohoh]

Yay photos! Cos I was too lazy last weekend to open marsedit and make a post with photos… I kinda… refuse to do posts on LJ with photos unless I open marsedit. Its too troublesome to upload each photo individually to photo bucket or wherever, and then tinkering with the html code to make sure the photos don’t end up TOO big… whatever. I’m just a lazy person. You should know that by now.

One of the canteens in the uni got a renovation. It barely looks any different from pre-renovation. Well except for the whole… construction place theme. 

yup. strange isn’t it?

Because of that stupid ‘renovation’, the canteen was closed for a couple of months. And as with all renovations, store rental increased after that, and many of the good stalls were gone. And prices have increased. Sucks! And to top it off, they force you to buy this soared value card thingy, and the stalls will no longer accept cash. Worst still… I thought they would have some automated machines to allow you to top up the card, as there is in a food court chain in sg… but nope. Just to cashiers and 1 loooong queue. It’s just plain stupid because, unless you are going to top up a HUGE amount at once, like say 50 bucks… you’ll have to end up queuing twice pretty often, once to top up the card, and another time to buy the food. Plus the food isn’t as good as it used to be. Now me and my colleagues end up pretty much going only to NIE for lunch if I join them. 

Hmm well let me explain a little. The institute I’m working at is under this uni, and also the uni I graduated from, called NTU. But our institute, for various reasons, is located in a building that’s just outside of the uni. So we are actually part of the uni, but not located on campus. Well it’s like just a 5-10 min walk to the gate of the uni though. So well for lunch there’s a shuttle bus service that my institute provides to go to the uni. There used to be a few options that we often go to for lunch, canteen A (which was the one that went under renovation), SBS, and NIE. There’s canteen B too but that’s quite far. 

So I’ve explained it in my previous post, the canteen at my workplace closed down, so now we are forced to go to the uni to eat everyday, or order delivery. There are some other canteens in the hostels too… like canteen 2 and canteen 8 that they go to, but I’ve still not been to those for lunch before. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before… but well uni has reopened now, so previously the canteens were not very crowded. On the 1st week of school reopening me and my lunch buddies went to SBS for lunch as we usually did… but the horrors! We had to queue up for over a freaking 30mins to get our food. By the time we got the food, it was the time that we were normally waiting for the shuttle bus back! We’ve not dared to go back there for lunch again. Definitely not till it’s holidays again. So yup, not much choices left for lunch. I’ve been ordering some vegetarian food for lunch recently though. Cos one of my colleagues is a vegetarian and she knows this vegetarian place that does deliveries. More and more ppl are ordering from them now too. The food is good and the prices are reasonable. 

this was sweet and sour pork...

And this is the olive fried rice. 4 bucks with 50 cents for delivery. It’s great for days when I won’t be able to finish up before 11:45am… cos we normally take the first shuttle bus out at 12 sharp… lessons in ntu end at XX:30, so if we reach the canteens after 12:30 the crowd is insane! And with the canteen out of commission now, everyone’s taking the shuttle out, the first shuttle out for lunch so you needa go queue up for the bus early too. Really it’s so troublesome and tiring that sometimes I just order the vegetarian for the convenience more than anything else. 

Well they did just install this vending machine downstairs though… 

No one I know has tried it yet, so we have no idea if the food is decent.

A random photo. I was taking the train to Jem for Rurouni Kenshin movie with my sis yesterday… and look at the ceiling! It’s not really obvious though, but someone drew ‘Clean ME!’ with the dust on the ceiling. LOL.

Dinner at sushi tei! I left work early and my sis went just a bit earlier than me to get a seat. And boy were we glad we did that. There was a super long queue outside by the time we finished our meal at 6+pm. And there was still a long queue outside when we headed for the movies, and it was already close to 9pm then. So anyway, sake ikura don again. 

We wanted to order whelk but they didn’t have it yesterday :( So, monkfish liver and ika (squid). The ika was normal… I love the monkfish liver though!!!

My sis’s fav. Tempura ika with roe on top ^.^

Fried salmon skin

And the hotaru ika that I loved so much last time!
We ordered lesser food last night, so we didn’t have to stuff our bellies full. Plus, we had chips waiting for us during the movie… XD

We walked around and went shopping for my dad’s bday present… in the end it was a huge hassle cos we got a shirt, but my mum told us the wrong size, and we had to get it exchange only that the saleswoman gave us a black face because she had warned us that sales items could not be exchanged… well a HUGE hassle calling and messaging my mum back and forth…  But meh. Finally we got to watch the movie. It was good. I loved it. The action, the fighting scenes… I’d already loved the manga and I enjoyed the first movie a lot too. Can’t wait for part 2 to come out! My sis went to buy the tix a few days before too, and we were glad she did that cos it was so crowded, all but the first few rows were full! Completely full! If we had arrived just before the movie to get the tix we would be seated at the very front! And it’s like all the patrons outside at the lobby were waiting for no. 9 to open. Everyone’s there for kenshin! XD

Last pic to spam you with, in this post that is. Some food I got from muji some time back cos it was on offer. Pretty unique taste, a blend of miso, and loads of sake. 

EDIT: Opps. Mum just came back with my lunch for today and… it looks solo delicious! 

Duck noodles! YUM!