a sight worth seeing

So over the past weekend I decided to abuse my DSLR and hence I went on a little photo taking spree, or rather as spree-like as I can.

I have never seen autumn or rather, I have never seen any seasons. So when I came to Sydney, and I was greeted with all manners of yellow and red trees, I knew I had to capture autumn on my camera to remember my first season other than summer.


This was taken near my apartment. I took it while I was waiting for a bus to IKEA. You may think it's silly and nothing out of the ordinary, but when you have stared at green trees all your life, a tree with yellow and red leaves can create excitement.

As I was saying I was waiting for a bus to IKEA which is located in a suburb called Rhodes. It is quite a nice suburb, quite a big difference from all these other homely, stepford wives communities. It had plenty of young couples and seemed like a modern suburb.


This wasn't the first time that I have been here though. Remember that all my furniture is bought from IKEA and when I first came to this suburb, I was greeted with a pretty ocean side park and a gorgeous sunset. Unfortunately for me though, I did not bring my DSLR on my first visit here but this time round, when I brought my camera, it was just cloudy and dark but there are always nice scenes to capture, regardless of the circumstances. I may not have been able to capture a glorious fiery sunset but I snapped something just as awesome.




It was quite a pretty sight despite the gloom, a beautiful gloom. Sadly, you don't get to see things like these in Singapore. Or rather I haven't.

The pictures above are the pictures of Rhodes shopping centre. My weekly haunt or so to speak. I come here to buy my groceries and whatever home items  I need. It is pretty much a shopping centre for the suburbs. Full of storage ideas, grocery shops and home-ware. Nothing much else to do here other than buy necessities. Even the food here is bad, but then again, plenty of restaurants in Sydney are like that.

But, there is one ray of hope amongst all these fast food joints and so called asian food. It is a little place in my suburb called Singapore Kitchen! I couldn't be more lucky to have found a Singapore food joint near my apartment that served some relatively good and dare I say possibly one of the best Singapore food outside of Singapore.

When I walked in, I saw a newspaper cutting on the wall about the restaurant & Nyonya food, something about firing something up and it had a picture of the owner holding a flaming wok. I don't think it was something about him burning down a building so I knew right away that this place might have potential. The owner was after all Singaporean.

I ordered 2 dishes that day and first up was Otakotak. At about $6AUD for 2 small pieces of otak, it might have been pretty steep but I seriously missed Singapore food and I would have paid an arm and a leg for a bowl of Bak Chor Mee a.k.a Mushroom Minced Pork Noodles.

The otak was pretty tasty and had to me, an authentic Nyonya flavor. It reminded me of the otak I tried to make a while back with a recipe from a Nyonya cookbook, but better. I could taste the spices in it and the fresh fish flavor along with the sour of the lime leaves. The chilli in it was just right and hit the spot. Overall, a good otakotak but just a little pricy.

The second dish I had is the Singapore local favorite of Hainanese Chicken Rice. What better way to judge the standard of a restaurant claiming to be authentically Singaporean by how good its chicken rice is. 

I wouldn't say the chicken rice I had was awesome. Only Tian Tian Chicken Rice in Maxwell Market and Ghim Moh Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice deserves such an accolade. But it was pretty good. Better than even some chicken rice that I have had in Singapore. The chicken was tasty and not dry although the rice could do with more flavor. The chilli could have also used more spice and garlic and perhaps the owner should be less thrifty with the chilli. It was after all $9.00 AUD for a plate of chicken rice. Overall it was a pretty good meal and it has settled the craving for some of the foods I missed in Singapore, for now...

I believe this will be the start of many more visits to this Singapore eatery.

The next day, I decided that I shall have to visit Fish Market again to satisfy my craving for some tuna sashimi. I managed to drag Kevin along with me for lunch and boy did we have a feast. But before I get to that, let me show some pictures of the Fish Market that I've been boasting about so many times. It has a lovely smell of the sea that obviously comes from the fresh seafood, kind of reminds me of Fish Market and Bistro in Singapore, but better...

This is just one of the merchants at the Fish Market called Claudio's. There are alot of other merchants there but I was told that this one had the best and freshest oysters so whenever I come here, I'll get the oysters from them. As you can see, the seafood varieties are endless and fresh! Now if there is one thing I must praise Australia about, it is their quality of fresh produce. The seafood, the poultry, the cattle, the vegetables, they are all lovely and fresh and when you eat it & cook with it, you can tell the difference between it and the crap you buy from the supermarkets in Singapore. The number of varieties of produce is incredible and truly, that is the best part about Australia from the point of view of a person who loves to cook and eat.

We ordered quite a lot of food that day. Abalone sashimi, tuna sashimi, fish and chips, a dozen fresh oysters and half a dozen each of oyster mornay and oyster kirpatrick. It was a good meal. Filling and satisfying. I'm amazed I didn't end up in the hospital after eating a dozen oysters and a boat load of raw seafood like when I was younger.

After the meal, I went out to the port side of the fish market and managed to snap a photo of the ANZAC Bridge.

I decided also to take a walk around the city to take a few photos as Kevin had to go study and here are a couple of photos I took of the people and the city. I decided to call the 2nd picture "Man vs Gravity".

Later during that week, my classmates and I had a meal at yet another Spanish restaurant in the city called Capitan Torres. That was not a typo, it is capitan not captain. It was quite a good meal. We had quite a number of entrees such as chorizo sausages, garlic prawns, mussels and then shared a seafood platter of sorts, a paella and suckling pig.

Seafood platter

Paella

Mussels

Garlic Prawns

Suckling Pig

Can I just say that the suckling pig and the paella were wonderful! The crispy skin and juicy meat of the suckling pig was awesome and I could just imagine having it with an ice cold beer! Umm heaven! The paella too was tasty although i think the rice was a tad bit overcooked. After finishing almost everything, we realized that no one had touched the crabs so it was left to my friend and I to devour them. Singaporeans and Malaysians truly possess the skills and the "thick skin" to devour whole crabs because everyone else was so afraid of the crabs but we just tore them apart and consumed them without much problems except for the tarnishing of our once civilized image. Hmm I miss chilli and butter crab from Long Beach now!

I realized that I am currently about 3 days behind in my blog posts. I have not written about the past 3 days of school. So I'll get to it asap! So until next time, pileuleuyan.