Singapore Chilli Lobsters

Sometimes the more you plan for something, that something will never happen. When you least expect it, it will magically come up. The best of all: it comes in the form of Singapore Chilli Lobsters!

We brought back a pack of Prima Mix for Singapore Chill crabs a year ago, hoping to get hold on some yummy-licious lobsters which would serve as glorious substitutes for the good old Sri Lankan Crabs that are normally used for the dish. For some reason, the pack kept sitting there. The price of lobsters went up from $4 to $9 per lb and back down and still nothing happened.

On thursday, we knocked off early to send our car for a check up in Arlington. (We sort of hear a high pitch screeching sound everytime we brake but the mechanic convinces us that we are paranoid.) Anyway, the checkup took such a short time that when we went to H-mart to buy some stuff, it was still too early to have dinner. By some twist of fate, lobsters were going at $4.99 per lb instead of the usual $6.99. Long story short, this was what we had on our kitchen top.

A few swift knife moves (humane or inhumane depending how you see it)....

Some eggs to thicken the sauce...

The only lacking was fried man tou but french baguette seemed to do the job too!

Yummy, Boston (or Maine) Lobsters as fresh as it gets, and as exotic as it can get with Singapore chilli sauce gravy!

Into the dream apartment

It has been a rather dry season for this blog (only a few twitter-like entries for the past 1 month plus). Just to ward off worries that we are getting lazy and tired of penning details of our lives down, we are hereby explaining that we have been busy moving from our old place (MIT Graduate Housing) into a private apartment which is further away from campus.

It all started on May 15th, when we were struck with the agonizing fact that we were no longer able to stay in Eastgate, which is so so so near to campus and a Red line T-stop.

TC: "Gosh, I can't believe we can't get a place in Eastgate even with 2 chances" (Both of us are students and so each of us can enter to lottery to try our luck in getting an Eastgate apartment)

CY: "Yea, we will never be able to find a place that is so cheap, so convenient and even with all utilities covered" :(

To illustrate how we feel about moving out of Eastgate, look at the picture below

Nah! That was posed by CY! Actually we are...

Overjoyed!

What is this all about? Well, long story short, we have found an apartment which is so much better in every way. We are always dreaming about having in-house laundry units (not possible in dorms, at least for MIT. Sigh, Harvard can do it leh, MIT needs to buck up), dishwasher (my dream, because I really hate washing dishes), luxury condo (ok, this is more like a dream for our permanent residence in Singapore), garage parking, ceiling showerhead (from our fabulous hotel stays in Fairmont Hotel everytime we went back to Singapore, courtesy of CY's parents!) etc etc. And guess what, God blesses us with an apartment that has every one of the above.

And just a side anecdote, we (or least I) begin to discover how inhabitable Eastgate becomes over summer. Somehow, the place becomes infested with roaches, flies and that is always tons of dust. My chest congestion, which has been plaguing me for the past 2 years, becomes especially bad even during summer when the air is supposed to be more humid and warmer. I realize I have allergies to something and that something is definitely in Eastgate. Look at how horrifying our old place has become.

Did you see the small little carcasses of roaches hidden among the dust? Ok, I'm just exaggerating and bashing up the place we are moving out of to make ourselves feel better. But seriously, after killing about 3 roaches everyday over summer, we were looking forward to our new place.

Our new place is a Penthouse unit in a luxury condo complex and the only catch is the bulding is only 4-storey high. (We cant even look over our neighboring building :P) Actually there is another catch, which is that there is no elevator! So for everyday in the whole month of July, CY and I would come back from work, have dinner and faithfully carry 4 - 6 boxes of stuff over to our new place, up 4 levels of steps. All these culminated in the grand moving over on Jul 29 of course only possible with the generous help of our friends, Shengyong and Richie.

Ok, just pictures of boxes and disassembled furniture lying all around. It's not exactly a nice time to take pictures of hot, sweaty and tired movers.

After a month of hard work, we are proud to unveil never-to-be-seen pictures of our newly set up home.

It is no doubt another milestone of our lives in US and in Cambridge. We just recalled how this blog was set up or at least actively used after we moved into Eastgate apartment and now we are blogging about leaving it to another place. No hard feelings Eastgate about all the bashing, we still cherish the good old memories of the times we spent there, the nice Dunkin Donuts opp. the place where we got our tea snacks after the sleep-inducing transport lectures, the time when CY's parents and sister had to squeeze in with us in a 1 bedroom apartment meant for 2 people to stay, the ridiculous fire alarms in at least 5 different languages. We will still miss Eastgate (esp. its proximity to school and the T, but def. not the roaches) but right now, we are soaking in joy and bliss in the apartment we are blessed with. How not to top it off with the very first sushi making (and incidentally tempura) both of us have since we knew each other.