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Top 5 Red Dot Gift Shops

There is always an occasion for gift shopping in Singapore. Here are our pick of the best stores for Singapore-inspired gifts.

Naiise

Naiise’s motto is ‘Design for Everyone Everyday’. Naiise stocks international brands as well as great local products inspired by diverse Singapore icons including the Supertrees, architecture, construction signage and Kueh. Shop online or in store at their Central Clark Quay ‘design megastore’, Wheelock Place store featuring best sellers and new arrivals or Westgate for a more family-orientated range.

naiise.com

Tangs

If you are looking for a Singapore themed gift, Tangs’ landmark department store stocks the popular Elephant Parade figurines, Peranakan tile print mugs, Singapore themed pewter ware and some special pieces from talented students at Pathlight School in Basement 1.

tangs.com

True Blue Shoppe

Situated at the Peranakan Museum, the True Blue Shoppe stocks a range of Peranakan items including jewellery, porcelain and sarongs. There are both authentic items such as antique jewellery and modern takes, such as acrylic bangles enclosing traditional batik fabric. While you are there, sample some authentic Peranakan delicacies at the neighbouring True Blue Pantry.

truebluecuisine.com/true-blue-shoppe

Supermama

Responsible for the collaboration that bore the One Singapore plate, Supermama at the Singapore Art Museum stocks products from Singapore and around the world ‘made with heart’.

supermama.sg

National Museum Shop

With outlets in the National Museum and the Asian Civilisations Museum, Museum Label stocks products inspired by the national collection and heritage of art and culture. Modern souvenirs, like the quirky steamboat bowl and vase and items based of the work of local artists, like Justin Lee’s Modern General, sit alongside the more traditional Patterns of Heritage range which adapts patterns adorning objects in the museum collection into clothing and accessories that represent the Peranakan, Chinese and Indian cultures of Singapore.

www.nhb.gov.sg

Image: Singapore Architechure from Now&Then’s 100 Years of Architecture collection, available at Naiise.

Teh Right Way

 

So many variations of local coffee and tea at hawkers, but what do they all mean? We’ve pulled together the lingo you need to have the perfect pick-me-up.

Kopi (coffee)

Famously brewed in a ‘sock’, kopi is used with robusto beans, known to have a higher caffeine kick. The coffee on its own is incredibly strong and slightly thicker. Ordering a kopi will get you equal amounts of coffee and water, with sweetened condensed milk on the bottom of the mug to stir in.

Kopi Gau – More coffee than water
Kopi Po – Less coffee than water
Kopi Siew Dai – Half the sugar
Kopi Si (or C) – Replaces condensed milk with sweetened evaporated milk
Kopi Kosong – No sugar
Kopi Peng – Ice is added

Teh (tea)
Not your everyday Earl Grey, teh tarik (pulled tea) is called so due to the way the mixture is poured from a height between two jugs, giving the froth on top. Using a Ceylon tea – which can be quite bitter on its own – water is added, and condensed milk is mixed in for sweetness.

Teh Gau – More tea than water
Teh Po – Less tea than water
Teh O – Tea without condensed milk
Teh O Po – Less tea than water
Teh O Gau – More tea than water
Teh Si (or C) – Replaces condensed milk with sweetened evaporated milk
Siew Dai – Half the sugar
Kosong – No sugar
Teh Peng – Ice is added

Beer Fear

Not sure which ale ails you? Sick of going to the same tasteless lagers? Have no idea about beer at all? Have no fear, because we’ve come up with a little guide on what you should eat when trying different beers.

 

Belgian Fruit Beer (Lambic)

Belgium has an incredible lineup of different beers, but their lambic ales are unique in that they almost don’t taste like beer at all. Blended with fruits – like cherries or raspberries – the sweetness of a lambic suits fruity and creamy desserts.

Try: Lindemans Kriek

Hefeweizen

The German beer is brewed with a lot more wheat in the mixture and is usually unfiltered, giving a cloudy appearance. With slightly sweet flavours, a Hefeweizen goes surprisingly well with salads and lighter meals.

Try: Erdinger Weissbier

Pale Ale

Using more hops in the brewing process, pale ales have an added sweetness and bitterness, but incredible flavours. There are American and British-style Pale Ales, but both can be paired with pizzas, fried foods and blue cheese.

Try: Mosaic Pale Ale

India Pale Ale

There are a lot of hops used to make an IPA, raising the alcohol content – in the 18th century this better preserved beer while heading to India. With a hoppy maltiness, this beer goes incredibly well with curries – both Indian and Thai.

Try: BrewDog Punk IPA

Amber Ale

Almost dark red in colour and not unlike the fruity kick of a good American Pale Ale, the smooth blend of citrus and caramel goes incredibly well with smoky BBQ ribs, chicken and chilli.

Try: Green Flash Hop Head Red

Stout

There are more stouts than just Guinness – that also have amazing hints of chocolate and coffee. The roasted malt and barley makes it a heavier drink, and goes great with salty seafood, like oysters.

Try: Anchor Porter

Pilsner

The pilsner often gets mistaken for being a lager, though is actually a bit lighter on the palette. These beers are not very bitter, and would make a good pair with oily fish dishes, like tuna and salmon.

Try: Eight Degrees Barefoot Pilsner

SHOPS TO BUY

Thirsty Craft Beer Shop
3 Seng Poh Road #01-01
Tel: 6532 0116

thirsty.com.sg

East of Avalon Wines
152 Paya Lebar Rd
Tel: 6440 0504

eastofavalonwines.com

Cellarbration
75 Circular Rd
Tel: 6532 2089

cellarbration.com.sg

Brewerkz
30 Merchant Road
#01-05/06 Riverside Point
Clarke Quay
Tel:6438 7438

brewerkz.com

10 Minutes with Sarah Mounsey

Ken Hickson spent 10 Minutes with Sarah Mounsey, Singapore-based self-published children’s book author.

What got you started writing children’s books?

I have always wanted to write books for children! I still have little books and sto­ries that I made in primary school, and I love sharing them with children today to show them that dreams can come true. When I was a primary school teacher, I was always looking for new children’s books titles and would think to myself, ‘One day I want to write my own’.

The time came when I was on materni­ty leave with my first child and I decided it was time to start writing again. I was living in London and enrolled in some picture book writing courses. That was in 2008, and I’ve been writing regularly ever since.

How did your childhood influence you in your decision to become a writer?

I went to a wonderful primary school in Brisbane and had some fabulous teachers who knew how much I loved to read and write – and really encouraged me in this area. My Year 7 teacher did two amazing things for me that had a profound impact on my writing life. The first was choosing me as the only child from our school to go to a question and answer session with Judy Blume – one of my favourite authors.

The second was entering some of my writing into a competition where I was selected to go on a Writer’s Camp and [Australian Children’s author] Gary Crew was one of the presenters. I went back to my old primary school and spoke to the children last year and it was pretty spe­cial to share these special memories and talk about my journey to publication.

How has your writing and publishing career progressed since coming to Singapore?

I have created my own publishing company in Singapore and have self-published three books in the Paw Prints series. I do not think I would have done this if I had not moved to Singapore and made friends in the writing com­munity who encouraged me. It has been an incredibly positive experience and the books have done better than I ever dreamed. My stories are silly and fun, and I love sharing these types of stories with children and encouraging their imagina­tions to fly.

ANZA was a big part of my initial writ­ing journey in Singapore. I joined the ANZA Writer’s Group and my first draft for Purple Paw Prints was written in a meeting! Thank you also to many of you who have come along to my events and enjoyed my books with your children.

How has the ‘being published’ experience been for you?

Amazing! But a lot of hard work because it is a very competitive industry and books do not sell without you working hard to get your name and books known.

Any advice for those who want to do books for children?

Read as many books as you can in the genre you are writing for. Join the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and join a writing critique group. We have a friendly group here in Singapore.

It’s Nut an Option

 

Having some trouble finding out where to go if you have an allergy to cater for? We have a few tips to get you started.

Eating out in Singapore can pose a few challenges when you have food allergies or dietary restrictions. This is partially because Singapore doesn’t share the same allergy prevalence that countries like Australia and New Zealand are experiencing, so staff aren’t aware of the potentially severe consequences of mistakes – and important practices like avoiding cross-contamination.

There are also sometimes communication challenges when trying out a new restaurant, for example. Hawker food favourites like rojak, laksa and popiah contain peanuts, so hawker centres are especially difficult for those with particular dietary requirements.

While Singapore is gradually improving, with restaurants and cafes offering alternatives, there’s still a level of caution needed. Building relationships with a few restaurants where the staff are good communicators, visiting at times when the staff have the time to pay attention to special orders and sticking to a few tried and true dishes has been the most successful way for people to eat out.

Cedele is a good emergency stop, as they have outlets everywhere and the soup menu has symbols indicating which are free of gluten, dairy
or meat.

Kith Café (Sentosa Cove, Park Mall and Robinsons Quay) offer gluten, egg and dairy-free toast, and even soy babycinos.

East Manhattan Bakery Café (Upper Bukit Timah, Katong) is a new find, and their gluten-free bread has an amazing fluffy texture.

Pepper Steakhouse & Bistro (Great World City) also deserves a mention since they will prepare a special order grilled chicken, vegetables and chips for kids and still charge the price of a kids meal, which is quite rare.

The newly opened Lean Bento – is meticulous with the ingredients used, making a range of nut- and wheat-free muffins.

The supermarkets have been stepping up on gluten-free products lately. Mustafa has the biggest range of Bob’s Red Mill products on the island. Cold Storage is constantly expanding their selection of allergy-friendly options, particularly in the more expat-orientated outlets like Jelita. Fairprice Finest also has a good selection of specialty products both in their organic and specialist section, such as the Orgran range of products, and in the regular aisles where you’d find the pasta and baking mixes. Supernature also has a lot of wheat-free and dairy-free products on offer.

RESTAURANT SUGGESTIONS
Disclaimer: These have been suggestions from the Singaporean community for places to try, but we advise still taking the necessary precautions to make sure the food is safe.

Long Chim – longchim.com.sg (GF)
Crust Pizza Bar – crustpizza.com.sg (GF)
Soi 60 – soi60.com.sg (GF)
StraitsKitchen – singapore.grand.hyattrestaurants.com/straitskitchen (NF)
Jonathan’s – facebook.com/JonSpecials (V, GF)
Original Sin –originalsin.com.sg (GF)
Jamie Oliver’s – jamieoliver.com/italian/singapore (GF)
Level 33 – level33.com.sg (GF)
Balanced Living – balancedlivingasia.com(GF)
Super Loco – super-loco.com (GF)
The Soup Spoon – thesoupspoon.com (V, GF, DF)
Brown Rice Paradise – mybrp.com.sg (GF, WF, DF)
Brunetti – brunetti.com.au/singapore (GF)
Real Food – realfoodgrocer.com (V)
Loving Hut – lovinghut.com.sg (V, GF)
Afterglow – facebook.com/afterglowsg (V)

V – Vegan
GF – Gluten-free
WF – Wheat-free
DF – Dairy-free
NF – Nut-free

If you have any experiences to share or more suggestions for restaurants, cafes and stores, please comment below.

Lean Bento

 

Run by a botanist and a nutritionist, it all started when co-founder Dionis Chiua wanted to watch her diet and lose weight. After losing over 20kg, she became a nutritionist. Together with co-founder Charles Ng – who also works as a skin consultant – they both cooked meals meticulously, ensuring everything was clean, healthy and beneficial to their health – with no additives. Thus, the guilt-free fast food restaurant Lean Bento was born.

The menu says it all – almost literally. There’s a list of calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat content, as well as the assurance that every meal is under 500 calories.

Yam noodles replace egg noodles, and the white rice of your usual bento is replaced by multi-grain nigiri-shaped rice. The protein sits on a bed of fresh cabbage, egg and carrot, with sides of broccoli and cauliflower.

Alkalinised water is used to make the coffee and matcha tea, and an ioniser to clean the vegetables. Charles says because everything is gluten-free and Halal certified, it’s made things hard to find a lot of choice for supplier, but ‘the extra effort is well worth it’.

The chicken, grinded to a mince, seasoned and shaped into the type of patties you’d find in a bento box, led me to ask about the stigma behind shaped chicken – like you would for a chicken nugget. Charles understands, reminding me how the Japanese bento is about the level of care and thought into everything, from flavour to presentation. Grinding the best meat allows for controlling every single thing that goes into the patty. ‘From marinara, parmesan and honey mustard, we want to give a nod to the Italian, Australian and American flavours in our chicken,’ Charles says. The sauce used on the Shoyu salmon is a honey soy sauce. ‘Most sauces are so sugary, and is what adds a lot of calories’, Charles says. The honey gives the sweetness without unnecessary added sugar.

The chocolate chip muffins, which are nut and wheat-free, are warm, soft and good enough to fool someone that there’s no added sugar.

Lean Bento
#02-02 The Arcade
Raffles Place

leanbento.com

Top 5 Online Stores

BEST LOCAL VEGETABLES

Green Circle Eco Farm

Literally from the farm to you, you’ll be supporting the farm directly by purchasing their organically-grown goods. If they aren’t grown at the farm, they’re sourced from an organic source – and the website will tell you.

greencircle.com.sg

BEST MOBILE APP

Redmart

Known to be a reliable source to buy foods with a better shelf life. You can browse through 5,000 products on your mobile phone through their Android and iOS apps, and send your order for delivery.

redmart.com

BEST NEXT-DAY DELIVERY

GoFresh

From the guys who started Beeconomic – a deal hunter site bought out by Groupon – the company offers everything from meat and seafood to produce, herbs and sauces. There’s flash sales on items as well.

gofresh.com.sg

BEST FOR SPECIALTY DIETS

SuperNature

This organic retail shop has a lot more on offer for those needing to watch what’s in their foods – with gluten-free, wheat-free, soy, vegan, dairy-free and hypoallergenic products all on offer.

supernature.com.sg

BEST FOR CHOICE MEATS

The Butcher

You can find all your various cuts of Australian meat, as well as homemade sausages and beef burger patties, prepared chicken breasts, and pre-packed BBQ packages – all delivered to your door.

thebutcher.com.sg

Image: SuperNature

Sushi Burrito

This fast food fusion restaurant in the 100 AM Shopping Mall near the Amara Hotel doesn’t mess around – you’re not dealing with a sushi roll wrapped in a pita wrap, but a burrito-sized sushi roll. By using less rice than a normal sushi roll and stuffing a lot more vegetables, there are fewer calories to worry about.

The seaweed wrap is strong enough to contain the contents without bursting. It doesn’t feel immediately like a healthy lunch when you can’t wrap your whole hand around it, but each selection on the menu has a calorie count. You can also order a half, making it less of a hard choice if you wanted to try two.

The Hot Chick ($5.50 half, $9.90 full) – with a fiery kick from the spicy Togarashi powder – contains pan-fried chicken, sliced red cabbage, cucumber slices and carrot. The Salmon Rumba ($5.50 half, $9.90 full) – with flavourful grilled salmon, with lettuce, tomato, carrots, pickles and mayo – oddly has vegetarian bacon bits in it, and tastes almost like a BLT roll.

Sushi Burrito
#01-06 100 Tras Street
100 AM Shopping Mall
www.facebook.com/Sushiburritosg/

Panelist Profile: Dr Steven Tucker, Medical Director

The fourth of our expert panel to be profiled, Dr Steven Tucker focuses on providing preventive medicine to his clients. Dr. Tucker has an extensive wellness-focused General Medical practice that emphasises personalised data-driven plans based upon each patient’s unique biology as well as lifestyle factors.

Dr. Steven Tucker trained in Internal Medicine, Haematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation at the UCLA Centre for Health Sciences. While at UCLA he studied molecular biology with Dr. Charles Sawyers and joined the UCLA faculty as Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in 1999. Dr. Tucker has made Singapore his permanent home since 2006.

Dr. Tucker is a sought after consultant and speaker to numerous stakeholders, including governments, academia and multi-national companies. He is the Global Health Advisor for Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), on the Scientific Advisory Board of Inside Tracker and an Advisor to Healint, a Singapore-based start-up using sensors, machine learning and big data for the management of chronic diseases.

Dr. Tucker is a leader in the transformation of healthcare. He is actively engaged across a broad range of disciplines including genomic and precision medicine, digital and mobile health and wearable technology. Dr Tucker believes that early detection along with patient engagement and empowerments are some of the main keys to achieving medical wellness.

Dr. Steven Tucker will be speaking at the Professional Series Healthy Wealthy and Wise workshop.

UPDATE: This workshop has been rescheduled to Thursday 10 September and we regret that Scott Montgomery is not available to join our panel.

Find out more and book tickets.

Yoga Benefits – Feel good, be good, do good

Not convinced that Yoga is for you? WanderingYogi, Lee Carsley, outlines the physical, mental and emotional benefits of this ancient practice.

A google search on the benefits of yoga yielded 59 million hits. And a 2012 study that 8.7 percent of U.S. adults, or 20.4 million people, practice yoga, with 44.4 percent of current non-practitioners calling themselves “aspirational yogis”—people who are interested in trying yoga.

Might this yoga ‘trend’ be onto something?

For all the aspirational yogis out there in the ANZA community, read on for some of the scientifically proven, fair dinkum benefits of yoga.

Flexibility = strength

During your first class, you probably won’t be able to touch your toes, never mind do a backbend. But if you stick with it, you’ll notice a gradual loosening, and eventually, the ‘impossible’ poses become possible. Aches and pains start to disappear. That’s no coincidence. Tight hips can strain the knee joint due to improper alignment of the thigh and shinbones. Tight hamstrings can flatten the lumbar spine, which can cause back pain. Inflexibility in muscles and connective tissue, such as fascia and ligaments, causes poor posture.

Lean, strong muscles

Yoga creates muscles that are strong and lean – muscles that promote maximum joint movement. It reduces potential for arthritis and back pain. And helps prevent bone breaking falls for elderly people.

Build a powerful resilient immune system

Consistent yoga practice lowers cortisol levels. 100% guaranteed. Adrenal glands secrete cortisol when we have a crisis (that work deadline, an argument with your partner) which temporarily boosts immune function (this is the body’s way of helping us cope). But if the crises keep happening one after the other, these continual high hits start to destroy your immune system. Ever noticed that some people, the super-stressies, I call them – always get sick the moment they go on holidays?

While temporary boosts of cortisol help with long-term memory, consistent high hits undermine memory and also leads to permanent undesirable changes to the brain (including predisposition to depression, but worse, addictive and psychotic behaviours).

Happy as Larry

Consistent yoga practice improves depression, significantly increases serotonin levels (the chemical which makes us feel happy) and decreases the enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters (the enzyme found in large amounts with Alzheimer’s victims). At the University of Wisconsin, researchers found the left prefrontal cortex (responsible for distinguishing right from wrong) showed heightened activity, which is positively linked to greater levels of happiness.

A consistent yogi is a smart yogi

The part we love to hate about yoga – stillness. In Savasana, when we are seated with our eyes closed at the start. An important yoga practice is staying present. Studies in India and the US have found regular yoga mindful practice improves coordination, reaction time, memory, and even IQ scores. People who practice meditation demonstrate the ability to solve problems and acquire and recall information better than those who don’t.

And if all this is not enough, when you begin your practice, watch your family and friends comment on how much of a better ‘you’ you are becoming.

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