If you see that the birthday weekend was all about food, well, you're right. Special occasions are the occasion that I get to s***w discipline, forget the (usual) diet, and freely, randomly indulge in whatever I want to indulge in.
It is very liberating, I tell you.
I'm told we don't need the excuse of birthdays when we have cheat days- but, see, I don't do cheat days. It's okay if you do- I just prefer to incorporate my diet into a lifestyle and so I don't have cheat days.
I have cheat moments.
And a birthday is filled with many of such moments.
Two places in particular I headed to on that weekend.
One was Harborfront. I wanted to see some water, some trees, the sunset and the cable car. I also wanted to visit Vivo- one of my all-time favorite malls for the simple reason that it's got a really fun vibe- and which I wish I could more frequently go. :) Funny thing is, I don't remember which stores in the mall I went to. NTUC maybe (I can't seem to roll Fairprice off my tongue), the fast fashion stores definitely, and very likely, VS and Bath and Body Works too.
Dinner was over at the Harborfront side, at this little sushi place whose name I don't know, but which sits right in front of Starbucks amidst other smaller eateries that now fill up the once-empty space of the mall.
There was salmon.
Roasted salmon sushi, roasted salmon belly sushi, roasted salmon belly with mentaiko sushi, salmon sashimi over a roll of softshell crab and cucumber, salmon sashimi on a bed of ice.... :)
And it was good.
My companion wanted to buy a cake complete with candle and all, and admittedly although I've always wanted one of those medium-sized birthday cakes that look so pretty, it is (still) too large a portion for me alone to consume over several days, and so after a bit of sighing at some of the pretty cakes in the counter, we decided on individually packed chocolate mousse squares that could keep, and I could happily eat at will.
Into Holland V we dropped in the day after because I was looking for a particular egg tart that was available at a bakery over there. See, someone had gifted me an egg tart a while back that was soooo good I wanted to eat it again and because the gifter couldn't remember from which bakery it'd come from except that "it is in Holland V", so to this enclave we went.
And now I can tell you that said glorious egg tart with the most buttery crust ever is at Tai Cheong Bakery.
Yes, part of my birthday weekend was spent roaming the entire Village for that one single tart.
That's my life.
I'm cool with it.
After all there're memories in Holland V in the form of a large Pooh Pooh helium balloon that my companion bought from here as a gift to me on a birthday a long time ago.
The shop, I think, is still there.
So is Foster's- the cafe that we ate at all those years ago.
But that evening we didn't go there.
Because I wanted zichar.
And so we went to the nearest place for zichar- a nearby coffee shop on Holland Drive under a block of four-storeyed flats near the Buona Vista Bus Interchange where we shared fried yee mian (for longevity and all plus it was unusual) and a plate of salted egg popcorn chicken that was as salted egg yolk as it should be.