just some tings.

Donald turned 31 yesterday. Yep, he’s officially old. hehe. Had spent the week wracking my brains to do something special for him this year, and managed to scrouge up some things to do, and buy for his birthday.

#1. Ordered an iPad to be delivered to his office

Blah. All that went down the drain when I found out that it still wasn’t delivered by 6pm on Friday, 4 Nov 2011, despite being “told” (i.e., read off the website) that it would be delivered by 4th Nov, and between 9am – 5pm for corporate addresses. *sigh* No sms from him to say “thanks for the present!” meant it wasn’t delivered. Called DHL to check out the status, etc., and finally got it delivered by 7.10pm, just before Donald left to pick me up from work. Some surprise. pfffpt.

Guess the surprise was on me instead. heh. I had it engraved, and it was similar to what we got on this blog. “just some tings. big tings. small tings.” *beams*

#2. Buy him an iPhone

Yep. He’s been debating whether to get an iPhone 4s or not after so long. He only wants it cos of Siri. *roll eyes* So we dragged our asses to the telco shop that afternoon after an unearthly morning breakfast, queued for almost an hour, only to find out that hey, i could recontract my line one day earlier if i wanted to! meh. And I would also need to bring the charger and data cable if I wanted to trade in my phone as well. Doh.

So we drove back home to grab all the necessary stuff before heading out again. This time, we left the telco shop with a 16GB black iPhone 4s, and a Nokia N9 (for me). I couldn’t resist, and my N8 was getting a little laggy (though post-purchase, I still prefer my N8 to the N9..oops)

#3. Dining @ height

Rushed back home after the purchases, cos Donald reckoned that we should charge the new phones, so that we could play around with them when we got home tonight. *roll eyes* Anyways, earlier this week, I had been thinking alot about places that we could try for dinner. I thought about dining at height, and immediately came up with Equinox, the restaurant at the top of Swissotel Raffles. The menu was a little meh-ish, so decided to looking around a little more. Came up with a few more selections:

one Altitude @ 1 Raffles Place.
Si Chuan Dou Hua Restaurant @ 80 Raffles Place.
Ku De Ta @ Marina Bay Sands.
Salt Grill @ ion Sky.

I picked Salt Grill cos it was served Australian cuisine, and there was a chocolate dessert with my name on it on the menu. *grin* Well, also because we were going to have breakfast at Wild Honey @ Mandarin Gallery that morning, and thought that if we hung around Orchard the entire day, dinner at Orchard would be perfect.

Salt Grill was on the 55th floor of ion Orchard, and there was only one pair of elevators that would take you up there, like from the 4th floor to the 55th floor, no other stops in between. At the restaurant, you could take a walk around the viewing gallery for a 360 degree view of Singapore. It was pretty crazy. A shame that it was a cloudy day. I was hoping to get a gorgeous sunset. =( The food was pretty good though. This was what we had:

Appetizer:

 I’ve been wanting to try gnocchi since I saw how it was being made on Masterchef Australia Season 1. I always saw the premade ones in the supermarkets, but never knew what it was. Then I found out that it was potatoes, so we took the opportunity to try this entree. And ohhh boy, was it good. I would have been happy to have that as a main if I had known how good it was. It was like eating little dumplings of mashed potatoes, with a sauce similar to that of bolognaise, but a lot lighter, and it went so well with the parmesan. *blissful sigh* Happiness.

We shared it between the two of us, and it was a nice portion. Something light to start off the evening. Thinking about it is making me hungry!

Mains:

To be honest, the mains weren’t much to rave about. It was good. The fish was fresh, and the steak was really tender, but it didn’t make me go wow. Neither did it make Donald go wow either. I was surprised how well the fish went with the wasabi mayo though. Gave it that little extra oomph to it. Not shown in the pictures, we also ordered a bowl of fries with rosemary salt for a side. We couldn’t taste much of the rosemary in that one. We’ve had better fries at Mad Monks @ Fremantle. Those fries we had then were rough cut fries with heaps of salt and fried rosemary leaves. mmMM..those memories.

Still, it was the experience. Maybe we’ll try another main the next time round. Heh.

Dessert:

With dessert, we decided to take the route less travelled (for the both of us), skip the safe choice of a chocolate dessert, and tried the one above. Am I glad we did. Cos we definitely didn’t regret it. The pineapple granita balanced out the sweetness of the honeycomb, and there was a hint of coconut aftertaste, nothing too heavy. Shiok! Very light dessert. Next time I’m there, I want to try the passionfruit banana souffle with mascorpone sorbet. *licks lips* 

Reservations for dinner is a must, and you can request for a window seat subject to availability.

#4. Movie date

Donald had mentioned a couple of times that he wanted to catch Real Steel. Bearing in mind that I have not watched the trailer for that movie, of course I thought it was going to be a boys kind of movie, all technical about robots and boxing. But heck. It was his birthday, and I should let him watch what he would want to watch. So Real Steel it was. *sigh*

Gotta admit though, it was quite a good movie. A feel good kinda movie. Of course, with decent popcorn, made it alot better. *grin* Yes, after all that dinner. Donald was about to heave at the smell of popcorn, and even at the mention of food. I need my sweet popcorn. Pregnant and all. *pats tummy*

Overall, it was a pretty full on day, especially when we had been up fairly late the night before to wake up early for breakfast the next morning, and then going around the entire day, only to come home and stay up till 3am to play with our new toys. In addition to that, I had to wake up early this morning to head to the wet markets to buy the ingredients for dinner tomorrow, cos the markets don’t open on Mondays. I spent a good part of the day sleeping to catch up on that sleep debt. Geez.

But it was a good birthday. Donald’s last lavish birthday before I spend all my attention (and money) on my son next year.