Orinity

The Cocoa Trees office is just beside my office. It was a few months back when we noticed this really big banner framing the wall in front of the building – Chocolate Warehouse Sales. It is my third visit there today and I am proud to say that I have only spent S$10 on one variety pack. My girlfriend bought S$80 of chocolates due to a gathering with her young cousins the next day.

I went around the store, using my handphone camera to snap the more uncommon chocolates not found in supermarkets like NTUC and Cold Storage. Move your cursor over the picture for the product name.

From young, my mum has bought this for me. However, as I was pretty little, I do not know how to pronounce the name so I always called this brand the ‘Elephant Brand’. Pretty nice to call your favourite brand of chocolates such an endearing term right?

The Cocoa Trees Warehouse Sales is located in a small unit (Level 2, straight up the flight of stairs at the front) in their office at:
MEC Techno Centre, 87 Defu Lane 10 (S) 539219. Opening hours for Mondays to Fridays are 9pm to 6pm, and Saturdays are open from 9pm to 12pm.

I was in Malaysia for a short trip and as usual, whenever I see a candy store, I’d invariably find myself being drawn to them. A couple of months ago, I read that there is a local ice-cream shop offering chilli chocolate flavoured ice-cream. From the interviewee, the hottness kicks in only a few seconds you have tasted the ice-cream. Surprisingly, this unique flavour is one of their best sellers. So, it was of no surprise to me when I saw this:

Apologies for the unclear handphone pictures as the salesperson kept looking in my direction. I must have one of those chocolate lunatic looks. We all know that fruits have been used as chocolate fillings and as flavours. The most common one would have to be orange, strawberry, green tea and kiwi.

But have you seen these? See the last picture, I was really stunned to find such a combination.

Next up, I’ll let you know where to get some chocolates at a mini warehouse sale!

Unlike some of you who change your fragrance often, I have only used two fragrances for the past two years, namely Giorgio Armani’s Acqua Di Gio and BodyShop’s Oceanus. Both are somewhat similar for the fact that they are both breezy fragrances. For now, I have stopped on Oceanus and only using Acqua Di Gio. I first read about Acqua Di Gio 3-4 years ago on a lifestyle website. Back then, it is already labelled a classic fragrance. After using a tester, I definitely share the same sentiments. I have also noticed that my cousins are using the same fragrance as me so I think it runs in the family that we share similar tastes.

As you can see above, I am halfway through my current bottle of Acqua Di Gio. Once I finish my current bottle, I will be getting another from my local store. I have noticed that I don’t save that much by buying off eBay since the shipping will pretty much cover the differences. I will probably do a cover on Singapore-based shops that sell fragrances at bargain prices in the future. So, what’s your classic fragrance?

As a proud user of Gmail since 2004, I have always despised Hotmail and its lack of user-friendliness and functionality. Can you believe that I cannot event mark an unread email as read in the Hotmail interface. I still check my hotmail account from time to time as I use it for my Live Messenger and that Hotmail is my first email account. I do get sentimental once in a while…

Back to Hotmail, I just got the shock after logging in and seeing this! I know Hotmail is a product of Microsoft but doesn’t it cross their pea-sized brains that there are still more than 20% of the users using Firefox and other IE alternatives just because Internet Explorer is crap? All in all, I am utterly disappointed that MSN decided to push out a screwed Hotmail and I am definitely not going back to using Hotmail.

Brought up as a typical Singaporean, I have always stereotyped the Police force across the causeway in Malaysia as corrupted. This YouTube video that I came across just enforce my stereotype against their Police force. While I am sure that there are bound to be officers who are vigilant, an awful number of them seems to be corrupted. Either the salary is far too low to make a living or it is just plain greed. I have a friend from university who goes up to Johore, the Malaysian state nearest to Singapore often and she mentioned that Malaysian police like to focus on foreigners, especially Singaporeans, as we can afford bigger bribes. She has already been a victim of the corruption before when the police officer tried to give her a ticket when she just stopped her vehicle to pick up a friend.