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It’s time for Lunar New Year merchandise to flood the stores again. If you live in Singapore, you’ll know that the more adorable the zodiac animal for the year is, the better the merchandise that comes with it. Starbucks Singapore produces some of the most popular limited edition themed merchandise each year, and the upcoming year of the boar is no exception. On Thursday (Jan 3), Starbucks released the promotional photos for its Chinese New Year collection on Facebook. This year, the American coffee chain has launched a wide variety of cute pig-themed items, ranging from ceramic canisters to pig-shaped teaspoons and even piggy banks. But is it all worth hogging? If you’re not the type who likes animals or cute things, you can move along. Here’s what’s available this year: Of course there’s a Starbucks card with a pig on it. Starbucks Singapore The Starbucks Bearista is dressed in piglet for the year 2019. A variety of bottles and flasks sporting various pig-themed designs are also available. Starbucks Singapore Some designs are more fanciful than others Starbucks Singapore This range is quite minimalist, and relies heavily on the colour pink for its cuteness. There’s even a money pouch. Starbucks Singapore Some feature red lids in the spirit of Chinese New Year. Starbucks Singapore But if you are really superstitious and want to go all out with the “huat” (prosper in local dialect) factor, there’s also this series in red. It even features a very Japanese-inspired piggy bank! Starbucks Singapore This set features a different design from the rest, one is a drinking glass and the other is a plastic flask comes with a cap that looks like a pig’s head. Starbucks Singapore A ceramic canister and teapot are also available, but these are available only at certain outlets, Starbucks says. There is also a stripey mug with a teaspoon shaped like a pig. Starbucks Singapore Those who really love pigs will probably appreciate these pig mugs the most. Starbucks Singapore Drawstring pouches for all sorts of knickknacks. Starbucks Singapore And of course there are red packets (hongbao), but they’re not for sale. Gold tier members will receive them with purchase of any item from the Lunar New Year collection, except for Starbucks Cards. Starbucks Singapore But if you just want CNY-themed merchandise that’s not screaming “Year of the Pig!”, you can count on these red and white bags bearing Starbucks’ Mandarin name “Xing Ba Ke”. Suitable for National Day too. Starbucks Singapore https://www.businessinsider.my/starbucks-singapores-new-cny-merchandise-is-so-cute-fans-will-want-to-hog-them-all/

Reviving thread

Actually Singapore and HDB estate is very safe one. No need all these security equipment. I trust Singapore Police Forces.

Picture something you can make in an instant. You’re probably thinking of noodles or rice, or an egg, fried or boiled. Depending on where you’re from, you may have tried instant mashed potatoes before. There’s also instant gravy, oatmeal, custard and soup. These foods all contain a very limited number of main ingredients – in many cases, just one. That’s because until relatively recently, the technology needed to make anything more complex simply didn’t exist. So for decades, instant foods remained a convenience beloved by students, singletons and busy home cooks in need of a quick and dirty fix for rounding out a meal. That was until the rise of the home meal replacement (HMR). Home meal replacements in a South Korean supermarket. Photo: David Lee Billed as ready-to-eat repasts that can increasingly provide all the elements of a healthy, balanced diet, HMRs are big business – especially in South Korea, where the market for them almost quadrupled over the course of five years, from 800 billion won (US$716 million) in 2011 to 3 trillion won (US$2.68 billion) in 2017. The secret to HMRs’ success in the East Asian nation is undoubtedly down to the time they help save, which matters even more in its ppalli-ppalli, or “hurry hurry”, culture that places such great emphasis on speed. This culture, a legacy of the country’s rapid industrialisation in the 20th century, also explains the long hours many in South Korea spend at work, allowing little time for them to relax. Ian Hoffman is a native Chicagoan who moved to Busan – South Korea’s second-biggest city – two years ago to teach. The 24-year-old is learning the language and hopes to receive his long-term resident visa soon. It means he doesn’t have a lot of free time. “I don’t want to be using it for cooking,” he says. “The reasons for purchasing HMRs are multifaceted. It is cost-efficient to buy this pre-prepared food, especially if you buy it online or in bulk. Also, I’m not Korean but I’ve been living here for a while and I can feel the social pressure of looking weird eating alone. I feel quite uncomfortable eating alone at affordably priced food places. There’s also not a tonne of restaurants where I can eat alone because of serving or table culture reasons.” Korean supermarkets have aisles and aisles of HMRs. Photo: David Lee Korean families, too, find themselves with little time to cook. “I always buy some packaged curry rice or hamburger steak when I go grocery shopping,” says Park Jung-min, a housewife from Seoul. “My daughter ... doesn’t have a lot of time between school and [the] after-school [activities] she attends every day,” the 44-year-old says from inside Homeplus, one of the largest food retailers in South Korea, which has aisles and aisles filled with HMRs. Park Jong-dae, a researcher at the Korea Food Research Institute, says the emergence of this type of meal owes much to modern technology. “In the past, it was not possible for instant foods to have multiple main ingredients that would be preserved and heated in the same package,” he says. “Now, it is possible to microwave different ingredients in the same package and maintain the original taste.” CHANGING TASTES The most oft-cited reason for South Korea’s HMR boom over the last decade is the corresponding rise in one- or two-person households. In the capital of Seoul, for instance, with a population of almost 10 million, nearly 55 per cent of households consist of one or two people. Another factor is women, long consigned to the home in the traditionally conservative nation, increasingly joining the workforce and further expanding the market for convenient meals. According to Yoon Ji-hyun, a professor of food and nutrition at Seoul National University, many Koreans spend half their monthly food budget eating out, leaving HMRs as the best, cheapest option for when they eat at home. The rise of e-commerce has further added to the convenience of ready meals. Online purchases of HMRs increased 60 per cent from 2017 to 2018, yet 82 per cent of total sales still go through traditional, offline shops. A dumpling production line at a CJ CheiJedang factory. Photo: David Lee It is here that retailers such as Dongwon Home Food – a subsidiary of the country’s third-largest manufacturer of HMRs – see an opportunity. Its online shopfront The Banchan, or “side dish” in English, lists about 400 traditional dishes such as kimchi stew and Korean barbecue, prepared by hand in its Seoul kitchen whenever an order is placed. IT’S ALSO DANGEROUS FOR ONE TO EAT TOO MUCH OF ANYTHING, REALLY Park Jong-dae, researcher With overnight delivery available in the capital, extending to same-day shipping elsewhere, the service has certainly proved popular. According to the latest figures, the website’s annual profits have reached 40 billion won (US$35.7 million). Meanwhile, at CJ CheilJedang, South Korea’s biggest HMR manufacturer with a 35 per cent market share, Korean-style dumplings, or mandu, are one of the best sellers under its popular Bibigo brand. In the US alone, about US$150 million worth of Bibigo Mandu are sold every year. Jin Jung-tak, floor manager for the Bibigo Mandu production team, says the company has invested about 120 billion won (US$107 million) in its production facilities over the past five years. In 2013, CJ CheilJedang’s state-of-the-art factories made the switch to only using fresh vegetables that are in season and have since introduced processes to ensure their dumplings are constructed and frozen within 20 minutes “to prevent the loss of nutrition and to keep the natural juices and flavours of the food”. “It has done wonders [for] the popularity of our products,” Jin says. “Our rival companies have been trying to catch up.” QUICK AND HEALTHY? Consumers, however, are still wary of eating too many HMRs. A recent report widely circulated in South Korea revealed people who regularly eat instant foods are four times more likely to develop stomach cancer than those who do not. Park, of the Korea Food Research Institute, said that while it’s certainly “a problem if one eats too [many] HMRs, it’s also dangerous for one to eat too much of anything, really”. However, HMRs are not necessarily the healthy alternative some food companies claim, he admits. “We started to define such products as HMR because of the refined taste, texture change and enhanced convenience, not because of an improvement in nutritional values like the amount of sodium.” Packaging machinery at a CJ CheiJedang factory. Photo: David Lee However, HMRs often contain fewer calories and less sodium than their traditional instant counterparts, such as ramen. Park predicts such health concerns will become less of a problem in the future “as current HMRs are able to provide a more balanced diet”. Yoon, from Seoul National University, sees the rise in HMRs as a natural outgrowth of the country’s industrialisation. “Among the necessities of life, which include food, clothing and shelter, the last one to be industrialised is providing for one’s food,” she says. “We have had the refrigerator and the electric rice cooker for some time but these provisions have come quite late compared to the industrialisation of making clothes or houses.” Yoon predicts many more households will adopt HMRs in the next decade or so, although she notes there is still an issue with “a sense of guilt” among the older generation over serving processed food. “Even for me, I feel guilty if I feed my kids [takeaway] Chinese food, but I don’t feel the guilt if I open up a package of fried rice from CJ CheilJedang because I’m actually preparing the food inside our kitchen,” she says. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/2180770/forever-and-ever-ramen-how-home-meal-replacements-are

for 64gb it $300 vs $370 maybe i walk in xiaomi shop and see if they got promo

Z5 is a disappointment in terms of hardware performance. and ZUI has too much issues. my previous lenovo only work well because of good custom rom dev. with EIS dont know still. Mi A2 is not too bad but their low light shots can be soft. I will go for A2 over Poco because A2 is cheaper, better camera specs, using Android One instead of MIUI. Poco only advantage is bigger battery and faster CPU for gaming. i dont game, so doesnt make sense for me

I can confirm they are under food panda. Saw the sign on their stall counter.

Ok lah... once in a while not that bad.

Bubble teas are always super full of sugar. It is a cup of diabetes waiting to happen.

I went and tried it yesterday with my mum and sisters. The queue is damn bloody long and formed even before the stall opened for business in the evening. Interestingly enough, there were already orders placed by people before the stall opened and before the queue formed. The cook and his assistants were just busy clearly those pre-orders and took them a long while to wrap them up. Only then did the stall opened for business and order taking started with the queue. Food was nice.The pork chop and prawn fried rice are pretty darn close to what DTF serves but at half the price or so. The Dan Dan noodles was ok. My verdict: Food: Pork Chop or Prawn Fried Rice - 4.5/5 (Rice was not fluffy and seemed a bit to "wet", pork chop is on the salty side of things) Food: Dan Dan Noodles - 4/5 (A bit "heavy" on taste and some might find it salty) RTE (Return To Eat): Sure why not but must find out how to do the pre-ordering first to avoid waiting in the queue like an idiot.

Gorgeous meats aren't they? More marbled meat Perfect And then there was more Above meats are A5 small farm bred beef. Simply melts in your mouth.

Today shopped at Shibuya, found a nice restaurant for beef. Crowded place Shibuya Getting ready Here you go Table Seaweed salad Shochu Pickled veges

Xiaomi's version.

Night cap at a whiskey bar in Ginza Preparing our fist drink, the in-house Sonic The it was time for the real thing, Yamasaki Vintage 1982 Beautiful whiskey and then the 1977, smoother in smell and on the palate

Bistro Katsuki at Ginza, nice cafe and great coffee Elegant cups Expresso NY Cheese cake and creme brulee Earl grey

@Sofero Ezbuy address keep tio block. So decide to ship direct. Cost $8 to ship but fast sia......to my doorstep