Sunday, June 29, 2014

Cavalock and The Guardians of The Galaxy Heroclix Sneaks

It's that time of the month again when I find myself wandering like a dazed foodie in the basement of Liang Court and stumbling into my favourite supermarket Meidi-Ya. I said it before, it's like a magical portal to another country cos there are always stuff in there that you just don't see in other local grocery stores. First thing that caught my eye were these almond milk bottles. They looked so sturdy, they kinda remind me of bowling pins. Part of me wanted to start hitting folks with them! Hah!


Ale that's brewed from rosemary and rosemary honey. I can't imagine how sweet it would be but as tempting as it sounds, there's nothing worse than a drunken caregiver so I'll pass for now. ;)


If I had known they had these frozen Japanese waffles for sale, I wouldn't had gone to McDonald's just so I could use my Japanese maple honey.


When I was a kid, me late mom would always serve McVitie's Digestives for tea. Wasn't that crazy about them but I still ate them almost all the time. Nice to see that they got these little cute gingerbread men now.


All right, time to take a break from food and dive into some comic book gaming geekery! Really glad that I got back into playing Heroclix after like a decade. After coming in second in my first tourney, history repeated itself again when I got second in two weeks later. Prize was a buncha of well-deserved mystic figures. Was also damn lucky to pick this chase Nimrod figure out of X-Men: Days of Future Past pack. A really rare figure, I heard it's one in two gravity feed boxes.


Speaking of gravity feed packs, looks like shops here have released the new Heroclix Guardians of the Galaxy packs! Interesting to see that the Spaceknights are included but of cos no Rom. The detail in the Captain Marvel figure is amazing. Bought five Guardians of the Galaxy Heroclix comic book version packs and got Captain Marvel, Starlord, Gamora, a Spaceknight and a Chitauri soldier.


Sunday, June 22, 2014

Cavalock and The Fiorentina Flashback

When I first heard of La Barca Ristorante last week, it immediately brought back memories of my trip to Tuscany which certainly felt like a lifetime ago. Their tagline promised "a taste of Tuscany in Singapore" so I figured why not give it a shot?


Was there on a weekday night and the joint was almost deserted which is fine with me as I actually prefer this to a packed noisy restaurant. Started with a plate of cold cuts and cheeses like Burrata and Pecorino, followed by a couple of pizzas, one of which they forgot the parma ham topping. Anyway, they were alright but nothing really worth writing home about.


Now this is what I came for. Their much-hyped traditional Fiorentina and I gotta say it sure as hell felt like I was back in freakin' Florence again. Yup, transported back via a mouthful of the finest piece of beefsteak around. So what we had was the traditional Fiorentina with truffle sauce, served with roasted potatoes and sauteed spinach. The Wagyu beef from Australia comes with a marbling score of 3 - 4 and is served medium rare. Really impressed at how soft and tender the beef was and they even had a hot plate if you like it a little more well done. I definitely didn't need that at all as I felt the medium rare was perfect in every way. Totally recommended for all meat lovers.



So after my last medical checkup, I have been working out a bit and a friend recommended I get a fitness bracelet to monitor my daily walking routine and ... this is the cool part! ... tracking my sleeping patterns. Yah, I read the literature on them and there are plenty out there that are pretty skeptical bout how accurate they are. But I'm cool with it. I got the UP by Jawbone and it was on sale at S$159 cos a newer more expensive Bluetooth model was just released. Paid for it using my Citibank points so it was quite a sweet deal at just S$59.


The darker blue bars are when I was in deep or sound sleep while the lighter ones denote light sleep. The orange periods are when I was awake. I think they are quite accurate as I do remember getting up at around those times. I guess it's kinda fun to wake up every morning to see how well you slept the previous nite. Check out my crazy sleep pattens!!!


Monday, June 16, 2014

Cavalock and One Week in Sillypore 10

Another dreary week has slipped by and although it wasn't exactly a bland one, it was rather a chore to recall a single event or occurrence that really stood out. Besides my usual caregiving duties, I did find time to join my gaming friends for dinner at the popular Keng Eng Kee restaurant at Bukit Merah. Was my first time having their signature 'Wat Tan' Hor Fun and Braised Liver Claypot and they were as good as I expected them to be. You can't really taste the eggs after mixing them up with the noodles and the livers weren't too chewy. Don't bother with the crabs, I think the ones at Mellben and No Sighboard are much better.



Went rampaging through the old family home again and found these nuggets from the 1970s. Remember bookmarks?


I have no idea how these work but for a S$2 Daiso product, it's pretty cool in a weird snake-oil-salesman kinda way. Do they work like regular glasses too?


On my way out on Saturday for another Heroclix tournament, felt the wind bellowing, looked up and realised that I was at ground zero of an Asgardian-level 2 storm.


Bought the Back to the Future Lego set months ago and finally found the time (and mood) to put it together. Took me a little less three hours to build it. It's really neat cos you can mod the car into three  different versions from each movie. I'll post the pix next time. Yes, I know it's a shameless effort to get readers to return to this blog but ... :(


Spent last Monday afternoon with my 80-year-old Dad going through his latest wildlife photos and I thought this was a pretty cool shot. He said there are two nestlings in there and has been staking out the nest for about a week. I still think someone his age should just take it real easy and not criss-cross the island every morning at the break of dawn while lugging a ton of camera equipment.


Well, it's World Cup time again and we actually had an order of cookies a couple weeks ago for a children's party and came up with this. More than a few of my friends are betting away like crazy every day now and they even created a Whatsapp chatroom for it. I'm the only guy in it who doesn't watch or bet on any of the matches but it's fun to read their (very) early morning chats on who to bet on. If you had read my earlier post, you would know I was betting quite heavily on soccer years ago. Not something I'm terribly proud of but I must say it was remarkably easy for me to quit. Don't really understand why other people have trouble quitting.


Monday, June 09, 2014

Cavalock and The T-Bone Tourney Treats

Ever since my last post on Cicheti, this little joint down the road has been my go-to restaurant for a hearty serving or two of Italian comfort food. The last time I was there about a week ago, we had the 800g T-bone steak which is something you don't see on their menu cos they don't have it all the time. It was pretty good, tender and juicy with every bite. Since we couldn't resist ordering a ton of our favourite dishes earlier, we ended up having to bag it. If you like a really good steak, you can try asking them if it's on the menu the next time you are there.


WARNING! 

All right, non-geeks get ready to turn back cos it's time for a whole lot of geek gaming talk! 

Hah! So its been a loooooong time since I entered any game tourney and came out on top. I honestly can't remember why but a few weeks ago, I decided to get back into collecting Heroclix or just Marvel Heroclix to be exact. Heroclix is a superhero miniatures tabletop game based on DC and Marvel comic characters. Me and my regular gaming buddies played it when it first appeared on the market over a decade ago. After a year or two, the rest stopped playing but I still bought an occasional booster whenever I dropped by the local game shop.

Like I said, for some unknown reason I recently decided to buy a ton of the latest Marvel Heroclix figures and then take part in a local tourney for newbies. Well, being out of practice for that many years, I'm definitely no better than a newbie ... or am I? My 300-point team consisted of Deadpool and The Black King. For non-geeks (are there any still reading this post?!?), Deadpool is the character portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in the first Wolverine movie and Kevin Bacon played the villainous Sebastian Shaw aka The Black King in the popular X-Men: First Class movie.


Was a three rounds tourney and my first two opponents were playing Avengers teams. Thor, Spidey and Scarlet Witch for the first guy while the second guy had Thor, Spidey and Sif. Thor was naturally the heavy hitter while the rest provided support and back up. Now the trick with my team is that Deadpool and The Black King are both heavy hitters, I don't have or really need any support. The Black King's special ability (like in the comics and movie) is that he gets more powerful whenever he takes any damage so he just gets stronger and bigger throughout the game! Plus Deadpool has the power to make opponents reroll their dice if he gets hit by them.


In the first game, I took out my opponent's Spidey, then Thor and Scarlet Witch. For the second game, Sif went down early followed by Thor and finally Spidey. Both of my guys were still on the map by the end of both games. When The Black King was at his last dial, he was just too damn powerful to die. ;) So it came down to the final 3rd game and my opponent was none other than my friend whom I practised the game with the night before, plus I loaned him my figures (Magneto and Emma Frost) to make it to the finals! After a quick beatdown, he came out tops while I was second. For his reward, he had first pick of the prizes and naturally went for the big bag of Heroclix figures from the Hulk set. Since I already had some figures from that collection, my sights were set on the above limited edition figures from the Fear Itself storyline. In other words, we both got exactly what we came for. <^;^>