Butterfly Lovers

It has been a long time since I last attended a Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) concert. And what better time than to do it since they are performing one of my all-time favourites - Butterfly Lovers in the newly refurbished Victoria Concert Hall.

The conductor for this concert was one of China's most prominent conductors, Zheng Xiao Ying. At the age of 86, she is still extremely energetic and full of passion for her craft. Although I didn't attend the pre-concert talk, she made the pieces relevant to the audience by explaining the story/ interesting snippets/history of each piece before the piece was performed. I thought that was rather cool and made the concert more accessible to people, especially when there was a large group of students in the audience.

Baby S seemed to be enjoying the concert as well as she was actively kicking for almost 1.5 hours! When I told the hub that, he claims that was a figment of my imagination. I refuse to give in to that argument.

Anyway, after the concert, I met the hub for supper at Prive @ ACM. Just feeling peckish, I ordered the banana walnut loaf and a cup of hot milo. I like it that the banana cake was neither too dense nor too sweet. A french couple was sitting beside us and I was literally salivating at their beef burgers. We made a mental note to return for their brunch one of these days.

With another about 15 weeks to go, I'm not sure how many more concerts/ plays I can squeeze in before Baby S takes centre stage in our lives. I'll end this post with a quote from Nietzsche,

"Without music, life would be a mistake".

How true!

Say Cheese

Haven't been updating this space as much as I would love to! Blame it on the pressures of life and work!

Anyway, I've been doing quite a few tastings, with cheese tasting being the most recent. It was kind of unplanned though. After some paella and darn good roasted pork at Pasarbella on a Tuesday evening, the hub commented that he still has appetite for more and that's how we ended up at The Cheese Ark.

It was a quiet evening with few customers. We looked around and saw that they are now serving tasting platters at a really reasonable price. And we thought, why not.

For less than 40 bucks (excluding wine and nuts), we have a selection of 8 rare cheeses from Italy and France, with a range of young cheeses to those that are cured for up to 48 months. We love cheese but have never been much of a conoisseur. Hence, it was pretty interesting for us to read the label for each cheese ( giving us information of the farms they come from, the artisans who cured them, the technique and the philosophy that goes into making the milk into great cheeses) and discover for ourselves what we truly like. 

Cheese, like wine and many other food, are subjective in taste. At the end of the day, I very much prefer a soft, creamy cheese that is not cured for over a year, although exceptions apply.

These days, I live for date nights and weekends - the only things that keep me sane.

On another note, we finally booked our tickets for Milan! Can't wait for June to come! :)

Ciao!