A German Specialty : CurryWurst/CurrySausage

CurryWurst, a German specialty

This is a typical German dish, with sliced sausages topped with a sweet curry sauce (mix of ketchup sauce and curry powder) , accompanied by french fries or small bread rolls (Brötchen). This dish is very appreciated by tourists who come and taste this local dish as well as by the German people. It is tasty and not too spicy.

The invention of CurryWurst is attributed to Herta Heuwer in Berlin in 1949, after obtaining ketchup, sausages and curry powder from British soldiers. She mixed the... Read more>>

Seoul Yummy @ Suntec City

Seoul Yummy is a casual Korean eating place that is pretty good value for money (in Singapore) and nice food to boot. It certainty isn't the cheapest, but it is not the most expensive either. I have been to the Seoul Yummy branch at Suntec City a couple of times, and today is one of the days that I happened to have dinner there. The lunch specials are worth the visit too.

One of the things like about Seoul Yummy is that the main meals come with a free flow of side dishes, as well as barley tea. The décor is simple, yet stylish and comfortable at the same time. And yes, as it is a Korean restaurant, Korean music is played continuously.

My mom ordered the Half Ginseng Chicken Soup at S$13.99 set, which comes with brown rice and (free flow) hot barley tea. This soup’s flavor comes from fresh Korean ginseng and is great for those who fear the strong flavors of ginseng.

Half Ginseng Chicken Soup

I had the Hotpot Beancurd with Seafood at S$10.80, and added a bowl of white rice at.. Read More>>

Skip Beat (Extravagant Challenge)

After waiting for 3 years, this drama is finally in the works! The cast has changed and it is a little weird having Korean actors acting in a Taiwan drama with their parts being dubbed, but so far so good. If you don't know already, the drama is adapted from the manga "Skip Beat", with the necessary changes made for the Chinese audience.

The drama follows Gong Xi, a high school student who gave up the opportunity to enter university to support her childhood friend and crush, Bu Po Shang. She slaves over multiple jobs just to earn enough to pay the rent for their up-scale condominium in Taipei, while Bo Po Shang (also known as Shang) focuses on his career as a singer.

As Shang's popularity starts to soar, he starts to disregard Gong Xi and even flirts with his manager. It is only now that Gong Xi realizes that she was used by Shang to help him with his living expenses.

Feeling heart-broken and betrayed, Gong Xi is determined to get her revenge on Shang, vowing to enter the entertainment industry and become bigger star than Shang. She auditions to L.M.E, Taiwan's largest talent agency and rival to Shang's agency. Although Gong Xi passes the autiditon, she lacks compassion and love due to Shang's betrayal, so she ends up in the newly created "Love Me" section with new recruit Jiang Nanqin.

While at L.M.E, gong Xi encounters Dun He Lian (also known as Lian), a famous actor. He is... Read More>>

ICT203 - Foundations in Modern System Design Question 2

(a) Collection classes are to be used to model a number of real world situations, described in (i) to (iii) below. In each case:

• write down the name of the class that you think is most suitable;
• give a brief justification for your choice (no more than one or two sentences);
• write down an expression or expressions to create an instance of the collection class you have chosen, assign it to a suitably named variable, and add the example elements given in the description to the collection.

(i) An ICT203 tutor wants to store her students' myUni names as strings in such a way that she can easily look up an individual student, as in the table below. There are no two students in her group with the same name.

Student’s name      |      myUni name      

Charlie Dickens             Charles Dickens

Margie Hector               Margaret Hector

Terry Martin                  Terence Martin

(ii) When a hotel is fully booked, it holds a waiting list of customers in case of cancellations. Once a cancellation is received, the newly available room is allocated to the first person on the waiting list, who is then deleted from the list. On a particular day the first three customers added to the list are Ali Baba, Bibi Batek and Charlie Chan.

(iii) A video shop wants to store the titles of videos available for hire. It must be possible to list all the titles available but no particular order is required. Although the store may have more than one copy of a particular film, the title should only appear once. Titles available include: Iron Man, Crystal Skull and Dr Doplenty.

(iv) A property company has a block of luxury apartments for sale. The apartments comes in three models: modelA, modelB and modelC. During the year of its launch, it achieved the quarterly sales (in units) as shown in the table below:

(b) A hash map is to be used to store the addresses of students on a Uni course.

(i) The designer of the software needs to decide what to use as keys for the hash map, and considers student names and personal identifiers as possible candidates.  If you were designing the hash map, which of these would you choose? Briefly justify your answer.

(ii) During the discussions about the software to be used it becomes apparent that there

may be more than one student at the same address.  Would this affect your choice of a hash map as the appropriate collection class to use? Briefly justify your answer.

(c) Page 12 of Unit 3 shows how an Iterator object could be used to directly retrieve all the objects in a collection for further processing.  Using an appropriate example, explain whether this could be applied to a HashMap object.

Wisdom Tooth Extraction: The Experience

My bottom left wisdom had been problematic the past couple of years because it did not fully erupt and got infected a couple of times. Usually the pain was bearable and would fade of after a couple of days. But yesterday the pain was slightly more than what it was usually: I could feel the throbbing of dull pain with each heartbeat and the gum surrounding that wisdom tooth was sore and swollen.

Previously I had put off getting the tooth extracted as the reading up on other people’s experiences’ with things that went wrong, or just the thought of being awake during the procedure and being able to feel and be aware of what was going on, minus the pain, did not sit too well with me as I have never extracted any teeth at all. Moreover, having read even more horror stories, especially of one at the National Dental Center pulling out two wrong teeth of a patient by mistake after the wrong referral slip was attached to the wrong patient call-number chit did not help ease my nerves.

So it was a quick call to make an appointment at the nearest private dentist for a consultation at AllSmiles Dental Care @ Tampines, which I had only been too about 3-4 times for teeth cleaning. AllSmiles Dental Care @ Tampines...Read More>>

Richart Chocolat: Intense Ballotin

I am not really a chocolate or sweets fan, but the chocolates from France are truly different, not too sweet and interesting flavors in just the right portion (not too big). It's weird I don't really eat chocolates that are made or can be bought in Singapore; just not interested in them and they are too sweet! Recently, I received a box of RICHART... Read More>>

Sentosa Flowers 2012

When in Singapore there are only a few types of weather, hot and humid (hot) or rainy or just cloudy, and just one season – summer? Durng my staycation, I discovered that Singapore has spring too: Sentosa’s annual springtime floral extravaganza Sentosa Flowers (圣淘沙春节花会). Returning for the 7th time, this year’s extravaganza, started from 22 January and ends 29 January 2012, from 10am - 10pm daily. 

Image by Alvin Choi via Facebook

This year’s Sentosa Flowers is held in January to coincide with the Chinese New Year, transforming the resort island of Sentosa into a dazzling floral paradise. It’s theme this year s Enchanted Spring, which unfolds the story of 3 playful kids as they venture out to...Read more>>