Ritz Champagne Brunch

Went for the Ritz Carlton's champagne brunch. After my pocari sweat run 10km run. My timing was horrible, joined the 3rd wave flag-off time at 7:21am, and arrived at 8:54.......

The champagne was very nice though. I must be drinking 5-6 glasses of the Moet 2004, Vintage. Waiting for the photos to be uploaded from my WP8 to Skydrive.

MOET vintage

 

They also have the best seafood section. 1) Baked lobster, and 2) foie gras with gold specks.

Fresh oysters - 5 types:

 

 

Seafood section with unagi maki, fresh sushi, and sashimi belly....

Pocari Sweat Run

My worst timing ever for 10k run.

You'll see that the original 2.7Km wasn't bad - 8min/km.

Then the next 3.2km towards 5.9km split 8:45/km. Pretty good considering, there's marina barrage first slope and 2 water points.

The next 2.7km (where there is no waterpoint and super hot) with marina barrage final slope, and towards Garden's - the timing is 11:33/km. I started having very bad stitch then.

The final 1.4km is 9:20/km is not bad. I started to regain speed after final waterpoint and run quickly towards the finish line.

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Body Fat Percentage

According to this article, the ideal body fat for healthy/normal women should be 21-24% (athlete), or 24-31% (acceptable). My weight today 59kg. Body Fat 20.9%

According to that: my body fat is 12.33kg with lean body mass of 59 minus 12.33 = 46.67kg. With my goal to achieve ideal weight, I should aim for 18% (let say) = 57kg. I think my weighing machine is broken. There's no way I have body fat of only 21%.

How to measure body fat? A link here has 5 ways to measure.
Adult body fat % = (1.20 × BMI) + (0.23 × Age) − (10.8 × sex) − 5.4
Sex = 0 for man, 1 for female
BMI = body weight (kg) divide into height (in m) square. So 59kg / 1.62m = 36.4 / 1.62m = equals 22.48

Making BakChang and weekend

Today I woke up before 7am *yay* after a long while. During a short run towards marina bay, I could see very dark ominous clouds forming above Asia Square blowing towards the MBS. I tried to run, run to beat the clouds and wind, but i could feel the tiny drizzle catching up. Finally, towards the end of MBS, I made detour to the mall.... so there goes my morning run.

After 15 run in the tiny gentle drizzle, I reached home. I didn't want to wait and waste time, so I ran in the rain (felt so nice) and reached home by 8:18. After shower, I felt great as I haven't been for so long. After breakfast of mom's meat porridge (with little jewels which are the salted yolk, very fresh and nice) I helped mom to prepare the ingredients for her making of bak-chang (literal translation from Hokkien dialect, Bak = meat, chang = dumpling) by preparing the yolks and cleaning the dried bamboo leaves. I also marinated pork meat as pork chop for lunch with my collection of herbs.

After lunch, I wanted to make a good use of the heavy cream I bought last time (for $8 1L it's a good price, it's also too good to waste). So I whipped an 100-ml and have it with green tea ice cream Haagen Dazs.

It's lovely bitter green tea macha + sweet whipped cream . Product link

Here's more information about whipped cream:

My bath and body works candles

BBW always stock beautiful candles - and in my latest spree, I used the Comgateway service to do buyforme service - they buy for you on the website that only accepts USA credit cards and charge 5% buyers fee of the total amount.

I bought 4x 3-wick candles under a sale. Normal price is $22 each. Under sale it is US$35.70 incl concierge fee.

Comgateway then shipped it - the candles were huge and heavy. I paid 3.50kg shipment for 4 candles, after sharing it turns out to be US26.80.

Total pricing:- $35.70+$26.80 = $62.5 x 1.3 = SG$81.25 / 4 candles = $20.35 each. vs normal price of US$22 or US$11 during sale.


On average the international shipping cost adds about 30% to the cost - so if you think you can still save after factoring the pricing then you should shop, otherwise get the products locally especially in Singapore which is a global trading hub.
Example 1: my latest bakeware supplies from Amazon shipping is US$27 for 3kg after repack (US$5 fees) for US$102.50 worth of goods - refer to my earlier posting. Also there's often fuel surcharge, and insurance (in case goods are damaged during international shipment, and other miscellaneous fees).

Another one is: Injiji socks at amazon US$7 each x 3 items = US$21+ shared shipping ($4 for 0.5kg) = US24 for 3-pair of socks.

Finally: Coach factory outlet $99 sale item plus fee $9 plus $10.50 local shipping plus $3 repack plus $9 international shipping.

I found Comgateway service is fast, good and reliable although the shipping charges for large boxes are exorbitant. If you encounter that you should write to the customer service, and they can try to trigger a manual repacking order for you (it's going to cost you $3-$5 and they did not ask your permission to do that). Well, often once you bought it and you spend hundreds of dollars and the items are already in the warehouse, you are stuck. and I think those forwarder tried to take advantage of ignorance... but Comgateway service had been good.

Gu Energy gels shipment vs buying locally

Recently I just completed my shipment of the running energy Gu gel from Amazon, tabulation of the total cost are:

Amazon per pack of 24: US$26.95 (Mandarin Orange/Tri-Berry) ordered on March 15.
Delivery charge from Amazon: free
Comgateway: for 2.5kg $29

Total : $83.9 for 2boxes = US$42 = SG$2.3 per packet.
For incremental box - $1.8 per packet.

The gel is sold at $4-6 in either nutrition shop or exhibition near runner's events.

My cooking today

After a depressing but unsurprising news from my massage therapist, I decided to do my home-cooking hobby to ease tension in my body. I am hooked on recipes from this book from Amazon (shipped all the way from US!), I tried:

• A variation of Rochers today - with cashew, almond, and Cointreau.
• Honeycomb candy - honey, corn syrup, lots of sugar, gelatin, and baking soda
• +coated with chocolate
• Also did the dark-chocolate truffles (with some success).

Honeycomb-candy

Coated honey comb in the fridge

For ganache, I used chocolate from Cacao Barry - while I supplemented my chocolate coating with Callebaut. The Cacao Barry turned out to be oily as I managed to skim about half a cup of chocolate oil that bubbled up from my ganache. The box indicated 41.8% Fat.

Ps. I also cooked Carbonara for dinner with mom. :)