Tingkat - When you've too small a kitchen to cook (Or are too lazy!)

It's a strange thing - newer flats usually means smaller kitchens. Go see the showflats for some of the recent developments... their 2-3 bedroom flats have kitchens that are made for.. well, for show really. They are not designed for proper Chinese (or Western) cooking, even though it might have the swankiest kitchen electrical items. But anyone who's cooked knows that...

1. You need space, lots of space, to prepare your ingredients.
2. You need a well-ventilated kitchen area when you're cooking Asian food, particularly chilli, spicy or dishes that uses a lot of strong herbs.
3. You don't want your neighbours cursing at you for making them hungry with the wafts of your excellent culinary dishes, or for stinking up their laundry with your twenty-spiced quadruple-cooked essence soup.
4. You need space to keep your ingredients and utensils.

Viz kitchens are small. They're meant for breakfast cereals, microwave meals, instant noodles, coffee making. They're not meant for cooking 8 course meals for guests, and I'm sure people here struggle to cook their dinners in the limited kitchen space (how many pack and store your kitchen items elsewhere?).

So design-wise, our kitchens are not cooking-friendly. Which gives us 3 choices:

1. Grin and bear it.. cook in that cramped space. Helps if you don't have to do the cooking (ie you have a live-in maid or a very obliging husband/wife!)
2. Eat out.. Some people just find it more convenient to eat at the numerous hawker centres or restaurants and then come home.
3. Tingkat!

Tingkat (I think) literally means 'tiered carrier'. It's a metal container comprising of multiple, stacked, round containers (usually about 3-4 levels) which is sealed at the top, and used to carry food around. In the old days, people would cook their food in the morning, and bring them to work in such tingkats.





Nowadays, it's a term used to mean "home-cooked food delivered to your door so you don't have to cook". Something like that.

It's not 'takeaway food' (eg pizza, KFC, McD), but rather, the tingkat services pride themselves in cooking food that would taste like they're home-cooked rather than 'cooked-in-a-big-pot-that-can-feed-the-entire-Queenstown-Remand-Prison-guests'. It's useful for busy people, for mothers-to-be (whose hubbies are out working), for lazy people (like, erm, us), for people who are sick of deciding daily where to eat for dinner (like, erm, us).

There's quite a few tingkat services in Singapore. They usually have the following characteristics:

• They deliver dinners at about 3-4pm, which means if you get back at about 7pm, you'll need to microwave the food just to heat them up.
• They do change their menus (usually) monthly, and you can try to request for certain dishes (eg no meat dishes etc).
  
• Some have a 'trial' period of say 10 days, when you can try their meals for 10 days and if you don't like it, try another service or return to whatever you were doing to feed yourselves.
• Some pride themselves as being 'msg-free' or they use 'less salt or oil' etc. The more upmarket ones will feature better or larger varieties, or more interesting selections.
• You can usually cancel the food for the day (eg you have a dinner date) but that usually requires a day's notice (ie you can't spring a sudden dinner date or you'll find a tingkat at your doorstep).
  
• You can order with or without rice, up to 4 dishes with or without soup etc. Costs about $5 per person ($10 per couple) to $15 per person for the more posh ones.
• Some will provide the food in the metal tingkat containers, which you then wash and leave outside the next day for them to collect. Others will heat-seal the food in plastic, disposable, containers.
  
• They have specific areas where they will serve.

The last point is a bit annoying for Viz Hollanders. When we decided upon going the tingkat route, we contacted all the tingkat services that were within the reasonable range (about $10-20 per couple). We found that (a) not a lot of them have heard of Viz Holland (b) many do not serve the Queensway area that we are at.

There's two tingkat services that can/do serve our estate - First Cuisine, and Four Seasons. We've tried both and preferred one over the other. Without biasing people, I'd suggest that you give it a go yourselves if you wish to do the tingkat thang.

So here's some links for you to try out:
http://www.fourseasonscatering.com.sg/
http://www.firstcuisine.com.sg/tingkat.asp
http://www.houseofcatering.com/tingkat.htm
http://www.kimskitchen.com.sg/tingkat.html
http://www.jessie.com.sg/
http://www.empirefood.com.sg/tingkat.htm
http://www.select.com.sg/tingkat.htm
http://www.neogarden.com.sg/
http://www.lexin.com.sg/tingkat.htm
http://www.tongchiang.com.sg/delivery.htm

As mentioned, Four Seasons and First Cuisine will cater to Viz Hollanders, while the rest either refused to, or were not contactable at the time we were looking for one. Worth asking them though, if you want to.

You can read other forums which have some recommendations.. there are largely in the motherhood forums like this one here, here, or a women's forum here.

If you find others that service Viz, please put it in the comments. We're always keen to try them out ourselves!

Tags: tingkat, viz@holland, viz holland, viz @ holland, queensway, singapore

Eating Spots Around Viz - Commonwealth Crescent Food Centre ... Right Behind Us!

I'm going to try to put up a number of posts highlighting some of the eating places that are nearby Viz. The closest location is right behind us, down the stairs after the rear gate (near the tennis court) - the Commonwealth Crescent Food Centre (FC).

The FC has recently been renovated and features a wet market selling fresh meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits on the ground floor (the food stalls are upstairs). There's also a GP clinic at one of the shops 'surrounding' the FC, and a few minisupermarkets (the equivalent of UK's corner shops). One of the minisupermarkets sell Coke Zero 1.5l bottles at $1.60 and that's quite a decent price :) (Yes, I'm addicted to Zero!).

You can find the FC on this map (follow the red arrows):



Located within the FC itself are several notable stalls:

• Recently, the dessert stall there's had a makeover courtesy of Channel 8's Buzzing Cashier. This show goes around Singapore helping out hawkers that are in financial diffulcty, and provide expert culinary advice and makeover. You can read about the Bee Garden Desserts here (food blog courtesy of ieatishootipost).
• On the same floor is Henry's Chicken Rice, which opens during lunchtime only. His chickens run out (well, not literally) about 130pm or so, so you have to be there early to get some. I like his roasted chicken (boneless!).
• The biggest stall there is the Hong Kong Street stall which is a Cze Char stall - they have a set menu of cooked dishes you can order from (although they do not provide a physical menu I think). They're open lunch and dinner, and we used to get food from there as takeaway, to eat back home. That's until we found our tingkat service (another post on this in the future)
• There's also a decent western stall (same row as the sugar cane/fruit juice stall) that serves nice chicken cutlet/fried rice meals, and same row, a noodle store that has decent jade (ie green) noodles with charsiew (although the charsiew isn't that good).

Venture out of the FC and there are several restaurants surrounding it that's been recommended by floggers (food bloggers), such as:

• Eng Kee Chicken Wings - This is in one corner of the 'square', and if driving you can't miss the huge chicken wings signboard. There's always a LONG queue for this stall so take note. It's famous for its deep fried chicken wings, and you order that with fried bee hoon, and other optional items (eg vegetables, fried egg, luncheon meat, sausage, fish cake etc). You can read about it here.
• Two Chefs Eating Place - Try the butter pork ribs.. That alone is worth the trip there. Food is served fast, and while there are other dishes there, we didn't find them as great as the butter pork ribs. You can read about it here, here or here too.
• Finally, the flogger ieatishootipost has highly recommended the Indian Mutton Soup in the same stall area as Two Chefs here. I have to admit not trying this yet, due to the high chloresterol content of mutton soup, but ieatishootipost has pretty good recommendations thus far, so for the adventurous (and those on xenical, crestor etc) might want to give it a go LOL.
  

Tags: viz@holland, viz holland, viz @ holland, singapore, queensway, commonwealth crescent food centre

Pros and Cons of Staying at the Viz

It's been more than a year since we moved in.. got us thinking what's great, and not so great, about staying at Viz.. These are our own opinions, so caveat emptor as always...!

Pros:

1. Fairly convenient location to Holland Village, Queenstown, Bukit Timah, Holland Road, Dempsey Village, and or course Orchard Road.
2. Easy access to NTUC at Margaret Drive, National Library Queenstown, McDonalds Ridout Gardens, hawker centre and wet market just behind the estate.
3. New condo with (fairly) new facilities, although we're starting to see some signs of ageing, yes, even now! (Talk about poor quality construction!)
4. Each 'block' of flat is secure and accessible only to residents in that block.
5. Nice view of the South East (looking towards Queenstown/Margaret Drive) because of the greenery (mini-jungle!). Let's hope that view remains unobstructed courtesy of that supposed-Malaysian land in front of the condo!
6. About 3 neighbours (I think this is standard in all blocks?) share a common lift access area, so if you're lucky you get nice folks.
7. Decent common facilities - Good swimming pool for adults (with jacuzzi on the side), sizeable swimming pool for children (with built in jacuzzi), children's playground, gym, reading room, and about 4-5 BBQ pits. The pits get used quite often over the weekends too.

Cons:

1. No easy access to MRT (although public buses are quite frequent). The nearby MRT is still under construction for the next 2 years or so, and the construction area is causing jams during peak hours right outside Viz.
2. Noisy traffic and pollution from the Queensway road. This is worse over at Blks A and B (which are nearer to the road) than C and D. It's going to get worse, once the MRT construction is completed, and the PIE-ECP thoroughfare becomes accessible for drivers.
3. Neighbours are a mixed lot, from HDB upgraders to expats. Some can be downright rude or tend towards anti-social behaviour. Spotted - litter thrown down from upper floors, dogs brought on walks that pee in the carpark area (and the dog's walked by the owner), noisy pets, cooking that gets really smelly, noisy BBQ nights, and unfriendly glares in the lifts! We've been lucky that we have some really nice neighbours though :)
   
4. Whoever thought of using the carpark area as the main access for guests and residents is a loonybin. Talk about aesthetically unpleasing entry to the condo :P
   
5. Anticipating construction noises coming from Holland Crest when it gets (finally) torn down and construction on "Lush on Holland Hill.. yeah right" starts. Because it's a new condo, people moving in still do some renovation works, so for those who stay at home during the daytime, it might get.. irritable! God help us if Holland Peak goes en-bloc'ed!
   
6. Sun shines on one side of the condo, making that side particularly hot in the afternoons. Advisable to use solar film for those windows.
7. What's with new buildings and their somewhat paper-thin walls? We can hear when the folks upstairs take showers in the morning. Gets worse when the jacuzzi comes on, especially late at night.
8. Bathroom windows, while they are fogged out (so people can't see in), are still constructed like normal windows. That means leaving them slightly open will allow our neighbours to peek in. We've installed blinds to shut out unwanted attention. Still, some thought might have been put in to install more privacy-oriented windows.
9. No awnings so that when it rains, most windows that are open will let in the rain immediately, flooding the window ledge area.
10. Beware the mynah birds!!
    

Tags: viz @ holland, viz holland, viz@holland, holland, property, queensway, singapore

Recycle Often.. Recycle Properly!!

Finally, our estate has its own recycling point!!


This has been a long time... The bright recycle bins are located in the parking area (B2) between Blocks B and C, so there's really no excuse not to use them to recycle paper, plastic, glass, soft drink cans, etc.

But I noticed that some people were dumping stuff (especially plastic bags) into the incorrect bins, and worse, dumping non-recyclable waste into the bins as well. Like food!! :( Please.. if you're going to recycle, do it properly...!!

DON'T DUMP INTO THE BINS THE FOLLOWING..

• disposable cups or containers (eg those used by hawkers for meals)
• uncleaned bottles, plastic and glass materials. Wash/rinse them first. It really stinks if this happens :(
• porcelain (eg kitchenware) cups, plates, spoons etc.
• light bulbs, window glass, food wrappers (eg McDonalds wrappers, boxes, even the fries packaging)

You can find more information on what you can and can't recycle here:
http://www.zerowastesg.com/category/recycle/

Please be considerate when recycling.. It's likely the stuff you put in there's going to stay for a few days so if you don't at the very least RINSE it, it's gonna cause a stinker...!

Living in Tips: Rain, Windows and Doors

Here's 2 CRUCIAL tips:

• DO NOT open the bay windows when it rains, and when you're out of your flat and it looks like it's going to rain.
• DO NOT leave the backyard door open when there are strong winds either.

We left the windows opened one day, went out, it rained, came back, and found a nice big puddle of water on the bay ledges, floor, along with soaked walls, everything on the ledges soaked etc... There are no shelter for our units from rain. It will come right into the flat if you leave the windows open.

As for the door, the higher you are the stronger the winds, and sometimes the door (including some of the inside ones if you leave both backyard and balcony open) will slam. We've had our backyard glass door's pane smashed when it slammed in one day. We've also notice that if we leave our bathroom window open (for circulation), and close the bathroom sliding door, during strong winds the doors will rattle.

Keeping us awake. And grumpy the following morning. Makes you wonder why the architect never designed canopies to prevent the rain from entering. Must be aesthetically so-yesterday's style... :(

Tags: viz@holland, viz holland, viz @ holland, singapore, condo, queensway, holland