Celebrating Any Occasion with Downtown East!

During Father's Day this year, the family was treated to a fantastic dinner from Downtown East as we reviewed their Just4U Celebration Package. There's food, drinks, a card and free gifts included! Let me just share with you a litte more on what this package is all about and what we had.

The spread was more than enough for my family, and the bubble teas were definitely welcomed!

For a price of $148, you will receive the delivery of a meal for 4 from one of the 4 restaurants with outlets in Downtown East. They are namely Flaming Spice, Segar Restaurant, Swensen's and Yam's Kitchen. For us, we decided on Segar Restaurant and we found the Fish Head Curry fantastic! Tom Yum Seafood was awesome as well!

The tze char dishes were all up to standard and delivered still hot! I actually had the fish head curry for 3 consecutive days, because I am the only one who takes such spicy stuff, and was still enjoying it on the last! 

Beside the food, you will also be able to select 4 different beverages from Kung Fu Tea to go along. You can choose from Rich Milk Tea, Pearl Milk with Brown Sugar, 38 Milk Tea or Passion Fruits Green Tea. If you like grass jelly, I would suggest the 38 Milk Tea that has grass jelly and pearl as well! Best of both world, more worth it leh... 

It was a great evening that ended on a sweet note with the whole family!

You will also get a GIANT greeting card which can include any personalized message for the person you would like to send the package to. And best of all, you will also receive a surprise gift worth anything between $10 - $50. These can include admission tickets to their attractions etc. If a cake is a must for your celebration, you can also choose to top up $40 for a Swensen's or Twelve Cupcakes cake to go along with your order.

The cake is an add-on. But this Tropical Mango Cake is yummy!

The delivery is included in the price but do note that they only deliver within Bedok, Upper East Coast, Eastwood, Kew Drive, Loyang, Changi, Simei, Tampines, Pasir Ris, Hougang, Punggol and Sengkang only. 

Teach you how to get $10 off. If you self-collect, use code [PICKUP10], or if you want delivery, use code [PF10]. Both will entitle you to $10 off, but vote... I mean choose wisely. Thanks for the treat once again Downtown East, we cannot wait to visit you guys again! 

You can head over to https://www.downtowneast.com.sg/celebrate/just-4-u for more info and to place your order.

Durian Delivery With 8 Durian!

It would be hard to miss friends posting about durians online, or catching the aroma when you walk pass fruit stores now that the durian session is back! Steffi, like myself, is a durian lover, and her eyes literally lit up when she saw our delivery from 8 Durians.

They are packed in these sturdy boxes and vacuum packed. But one can still smell the durians, albeit faintly.

While I still have to admit that opening up some durians and gathering round the tables with friend, and discussing the intensity and aroma of different cultivars would still be the best experience. But in this climate now, ordering online and getting them dehusked and delivered to the comfort of your home, would be the next best practical thing.

These 3 boxes were enough to keep the durian-lovers in the family very happy indeed.

The durians come in a box that is vacuum-sealed in plastic but the durian aroma is unmistakable. The moment we opened it and even though the boys (who are not exactly durian fans) were far away, they shouted out loud, asking how come there was durian smell!

You can imagine the distinctive aroma of these beautiful MSW right?

The first thing that struck me was the how little durians there seemed to be only, and dunno how big the actual seed were lor especially when they were showing in their premium AAA and Black Gold MSW from Pahang High Mountain Plantation. The Penang Red Prawn also looked quite small. 

Small flat seed of the MSW even though they were showing though the flesh.

Look at these incredibly small seeds from some regular-sized Red Prawn flesh!

Hahaha in the end my fears were unfounded because the seeds were literally flat for the MSW and even for the Red Prawn, some had seeds so small that I might accidentally swallow them lor! And that is even though the flesh looks regular sized! It was a great durian feast with the family, sans the boys would prefer something else. I love the sweet flesh MSW with the tinge of bitterness. The red prawn is also nice lah, and the after taste felt almost like having a little alcohol at the end. 

The girls (and myself) had a very good evening, ending on a (bitter) sweet note!

Thanks for the durian treat for the family, and I must say that you guys really have some pretty good quality stuff delivered to us! So actually unless one hates durians, fuss-free ordering with super fast delivery would have to be 8 Durian. Hmm shouldn't it be 8 Durians instead though? 

Sudio Ett

[Review]

The latest model to join the Sudio family of earphones this year, would be the Ett series which comes in 4 different colors, Pink and Green on top of all-time favorites, Black and White. This time round I've gotten the dark green one for review, and I thought it looked rather like a piece of military-issued equipment. Quite cool I would say.

What's in the package?

For a small package measuring just 12.5cm x 10cm x 4cm, the contents sure packs quite a few nifty features. The pair of earbuds is housed in an almost cuboid case, and even the charger cable came in the same shade of green!

There is also a pack of different sized ear tips, that consisted of both the parabolic and conic type. While the flatter parabolic ones consisted of 5 different sizes, with the M size already affixed on the earbuds, the conical ones comes in only in 3 sizes.

Features

Active noise cancelling: Press and hold the buttons for 2 secs and one will hear the words "noise cancelling read out by whom I imagined to be a Caucasian lady. Note that activating this shortens the playtime of one charge to 4 hours, lesser by 2 hours instead of the usual 6 hours.

IPX 5 (splash/rain/sweat proof): If you wear the buds for exercise, it is inevitable that they come into contact with moisture. Rain proof too but I seriously do not recommend too much water!

Charging: Upon a full charge of the case, you can recharge your earbuds another 4 times, making it a total of 30hrs playtime. Charge is via type-C cable but you can also use wireless charging for the case.

Simplicity at its best?

Once again, getting started with the new earbuds is super intuitive. One simply needs to get into the Bluetooth setting of whichever device one intends to use, search for "Sudio Ett" and pair it! In fact I was just trying to check out the owner's guide, only to realize you only need one glance to finish the entire content!

My verdict

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Ett to anyone looking for a cool pair of wireless earphones that is not only great on performance but not cruel on the wallet. In fact, you will get 15% off the retail price on https://www.sudio.com/sg/ when you use our Sudio discount code [theperfectfather].

They are also having a special promotion where you get a new Sudio tote bag for free with every purchase (Until end of July, or while stock last)! This may jolly well be your best friend, as we get through all virtual meetings or entertainment during this Circuit Breaker period, together.

8 Crabs Seafood Kitchen

To be upfront again, I am no foodie and I always like having my food there and then. Don't you just feel that the food tastes nicer when plated straight from the wok? Especially zichar dishes right? I hardly ordered food deliveries previously, but this circuit breaker meant things had to change for everybody.

He said it looked "nice" but did not know it was spicy yet.

And for the very first time ever, we finally ordered some of our favorite zichar dishes online during this CB period. It was from the online store, 8 Crabs Seafood Kitchen and they only do deliveries with no pick up option. I believe are wholesalers of Sri Lankan crabs also, hence their assurance on the freshest and meatiest premium wild-caught crustaceans.

This is how they are packed and we had them straight from the containers.

Placing an order on the website was a breeze, like most online shopping these days and they even have a live customer support chat (they claimed not robot wor) if you need any help with ordering. Of course we had to order their crab dishes and opted for chili crab, as well as the kids' favorites such as sweet & sour pork, premium salted egg prawn balls and Yang Zhou fried rice.

This is one big container with one large crab and lots of tasty gravy!

Delivery was certainly punctual, but the litmus test, would have to be the condition of the dishes when they arrived. So far so good! They cut ventilation holes in the plastic covers to allow the steam to escape so that the food doesn't become a soggy mess and the food were still hot to the touch. 

Plump succulent prawns with a tasty coating of salted egg!

Sweet and sour pork! Yummy!

So how would I rate the food? It was definitely a great dinner for us and much better than most of the 'unrated' neighborhood stalls! The crab was fresh and meaty as described in the website with the chili gravy tasting exactly like how I imagined it to be, and simply awesome with the fried man tous! Salted egg prawn was flavorful while sweet and sour pork was a great balance of fat and lean meat which is very important! I ordered the large fried rice and it was too much for all of us!

Humongous box of fried rice! I think enough for 8 adults or more!

If you are already tired of cooking, or having the same food for the past few weeks and want to give the family a treat, hope over to their website and check out the dishes they are offering. I also read about the company supporting the needy with meals (https://8crabs.com/feed-singapore-campaign-by-8-crabs/) during this tough period and find it quite meaningful lor! 

Disclosure: Our dinner order was partially sponsored. All photos and opinions remain solely ours.

Savings with Ohm Energy

It is not uncommon to read of social media posts of friends mentioning about how high their electricity bill is going to be during this Circuit Breaker month as everyone will be stuck at home. The aircon will probably be abused while some might even experience internet lag as all the devices are sucking up the bandwidth and of course, electricity. 

 

You might have even read about netizens demanding for a month of free utilities because you know lah, we are pampered and we want to save money mah. I mean who doesn't? But with the energy market already opened, have you been paying a much higher price for electricity all these while? Well, it took me months of procrastination before I switched from SP Services to Ohm Energy and it was only after a friendly chit-chat with someone from their management.

 

Even so, I made sure I checked for promotions etc before signing up with them but alas, their promotions are all so short-lived and often fully redeemed really fast. The only extra savings left that I stand to get (or even for you) now, would be their referral scheme where the referrer and person signing up both gets $20. My referrer code is [OHMFREE20TPF] so you know what to do hor? After you get your own referral code upon signing up, you can then share your own code with your friends.

 

So why did I choose Ohm Energy?

 

To be absolutely honest they are not the cheapest around, but the difference is quite negligible if you compare prices based on similar plans and duration across the retailers. They also happened to be one of the only 3 retailers that got 4 stars our of 5 in the EMA customer survey. Kudos to them for a job well done.

 



The fixed price plan that I subscribed to, but they have a few other plans too.



Just for simple illustrations using my 12mth fixed-price plan with them, my Mar bill with electricity consumption of 890kWh is charged at 17.66 cents instead of SP Services' tariff rate of 23.02 cents. And that meant a savings of over $47 just for that one monthly, excluding GST!

 

 

And lastly, there is no change in your utility bills (except for the cheaper price!) and I can also continue to access the SP Utilities app on my mobile to get my bills, as well as track my usage and payments.

 

Same bill, same format, same accessibility with SP Utilities app, but at a cheaper price!

 

So why you should choose Ohm Energy?

 

Well if you are still sticking around with SP Services despite all the efforts by the different retailers to get you onboard, you should really just do yourself a favour and JUST SIGN UP with anyone else (but Ohm Energy if possible) to save money for the family. Go check out the price comparison tool by EMA here. All the providers have different price plans for you to choose from, not much unlike the telcos.



 These are the plans currently offered by Ohm Energy.

Anyway I strongly recommend Ohm Energy because I found them to be upfront and approachable throughout, and it was really easy to sign up online. They also have a free 3-month trial now. Lastly and shamelessly too, it is also because both of us will get $20 off if you use my code [OHMFREE20TPF]. To sign up, check out this link - https://www.ohm.sg/!

Creating Geniuses with Geniebook?

We were introduced to Geniebook a couple of months back because an ex-colleague of my wife happened to be with the company and had shared with us the many advantages of using this online self-learning platform. Truth be told, I was really impressed with their selling points, and I still am.

Many tuition centres would have taken their curriculum online by now because e-Learning is the way to go for our future generation. But what differentiates Geniebook software from the rest of the pack, would have to be the A.I. that generates worksheets based on the students' weaknesses from past work. It starts with a Strengths Analysis that kiddo will do first; from there, it will detect kiddo's strengths and weaknesses. For subsequent questions, the system will then prioritise those relevant questions for students to practise.

Geniebook motivates e-Learning by rewarding "Bubbles" to students based on their scores in the worksheets they had embarked on. In turn, the Bubbles can then be used to exchange for real gifts such as slime and snacks etc.

The kid get bubbles for every completed worksheet.

Whilst students (or parents) would be able to select the topics that they wish to be tested on, and more Bubbles would be awarded for scoring in topics they are weak on, thus encouraging them to work harder on grasping new concepts and to get better.

Parents are also kept in the know whenever the kiddos log into Geniebook and generate worksheets to do. Once the worksheets are marked, parents would also be able to view the results via the Geniebook Parent app and see for themselves how their kiddos fare.

Track the progress of each child and each subject.

The analytics is quite amazing.

Parents can view all the mistakes and also the solution as well.

There are also LIVE Online Lessons weekly with their teachers. With the current COVID situation, these lessons and the assessment sheets will be great for those who are staying indoors and keeping kids occupied.

My Personal Take

This app would be godsent for parents who wish to keep a close tab on the progress of their children. Parents can create study plans and generate worksheets for their children and then monitor their activities remotely via the parent app.

I have no doubt that if I had exercised my diligence in ensuring that the kiddos do their practices, that they would definitely see a great improvement in their English, Maths and Science. Practice makes perfect and by constantly practising on the weak topics, it is only a matter of time the grades improve.
    

Cons

However, the best tools in the world will still depend on the user welding it, and my children are not the most disciplined ones (neither are their parents). All great things come with consistent practice! In fact, we often receive follow up calls from Geniebook asking if they could be of assistance because they had not been practising! That is how dedicated their team is.

The company charges on an annual basis for 1 to 3 subjects and users can generate 300 worksheets per subject. The cost of getting all 3 subjects would be $4,947 in total, or about $5.40 per worksheet. Can appear to be a little steep to me, but then again you are not paying for the worksheets only, but the accompanying support and they can even sit in 'live' classes.

If you want to find out more, check out here and get a Complimentary Strengths Analysis http://bit.ly/39gQVLA.

Dyson Supersonic Blew Me Away

My wife, had never ever requested for any gifts for her birthday or our anniversaries. In fact she hates surprises and I learnt my lesson many years back when I organized a surprise birthday party in cahoots with her colleagues and it ended up annoying her to the max. She cannot be bothered these days, and would always say "just give me money will do".

The girls were really excited to find out what mom's gift was!

However for Valentines Day this year, she received something really practical from Dyson indeed. I believe everyone would have heard about the Dyson Supersonic hairdryer and how it it looked by now right? I myself have heard of many wonderful reviews but to experience it for ourselves, beats reading any other 3rd party reviews. I vouch that I can feel the difference, just by holding the hairdryer in my hands and feeling the .

Steffi holding on to the Dyson Supersonic

We are already used to the noisy conventional big-headed hairdryer, just like how we were used to our old corded vacuum cleaner along with vacuum bag before we started using Dyson V8. Having to dry her own hair, as well as my daughters’ hair after their bathes, can take quite a long time, tiring her wrists. Not to mention that she will have to personally dry for the girls because the hairdryer can get really hot!

This is how the set looked like! Comes with 4 attachments too!

Now that the wife (and the whole family) had tried our new gadget for a while now, I can safely proclaim that Dyson Supersonic hairdryer, is really in a class of its own! Just like their vacuum and purifying fans, once you try them, you would not want to go back to your old appliances. So let me share with what I love or found out about the hairdryer!

Light but Powerful

I honestly do not care if the Dyson V9 digital motor is big or small, but the fact that it is small and yet powerful, allowed it to be positioned in the handle, making handling the dryer a breeze. No need to “balance” the heavy head of the conventional dryers and no more strain on the wrists even after drying all 5 kiddos!

It is indeed powerful. Starri was in awe.

Gentle on Hair

I do not know about you but I had personally “burnt” my own hair before due to extreme heat lor, and I could still remember the smell! This will never happen with Dyson, because of the glass bead thermistor that measures the temperature a whopping 20 times a second, with the microprocessor making sure it does not overheat based on the data it receives. In short, with its 3 airflow settings + cold air and 4 heat settings, it is safe even for the kiddos to use!

The Attachments

Well truth be told, we never really used them (except the gentle flow) because just the dryer itself was really good enough for all of us. Because you know lah, we are not that stylo milo lor. But I did try them on to find out what difference they made, and the gentle flow really diffused the heat and airflow, making it an even more comfortable experience for the kiddos.

The different attachments that come with the set.

I think if my wife had permed hair, she would probably find the Diffuser great as it is supposed to dry without frizzing up the hair, while the Styling Concentrator would be helpful if I had long fringe like before and needed to style just that part. Oh yeah, the attachments really stayed cool to the touch when in use, just like Dyson claimed!

In Conclusion?

Well if you ask me, there is really nothing that I would complain about Dyson Supersonic. Erm.. but I was hoping that all the attachments would be able to fit into the beautiful case that came with it lah! You can easily get yours online at https://www.dyson.com.sg/products/hair-care/dyson-supersonic-hair-dryer/shop-all too. It comes with a set of complimentary brush kit along with the case that you can personalize at Dyson Demo Store - Owner Center Capitol as well!

A personalized case in pink for my lady.

A couple of hundreds for the Supersonic may be small change to many, but can be a little extravagant, especially when one compares it to the $20 hairdryer that one can easily find. But having experienced it ourselves, I feel that it is definitely worth the price you pay. You only need to try it for yourself!