Category Archive

i had planned for a weekend of chicken sandwiches (yes, i am hopelessly insane over chicken sandwiches now) but i am tragically out of bread.

since i can’t have chicken i opted for bacon-wrapped asparagus for lunch. asparagus is something very new to me because for the most of my life, i had cruelly rejected them. i admit i am shallow, but when i reject food, it’s usually because they look grotesque.

i first tried asparagus at a cousin’s wedding, where the presentation of food was pretty good and they made me want to eat everything served to me on my plate. so i ate those asparagus like a hypnotized fool. after that first encounter i overcame the stereotype of this weird-looking vegetable. generally i still refuse to eat stir-fried asparagus cos they look very unappetizing but hey, it takes time to get over something ugly right?

at least bacon-wrapped asparagus looks and tastes good. besides, they’re trouble-free food: no condiments required (except for a dash of pepper), no complicated preparations, no standing in front of the stove, no washing up of dirty pans and pots. they just need to be cut up and wrapped nicely before popping into the oven. i added cheese too, but i realised cheese doesn’t add much value to the taste.

quick food is always good.

just the other day my very nice landlady made some taiwanese tea eggs and gave me four of them. four tea eggs, all to myself. i seriously wonder if anyone here heard about cholestrol levels in eggs. i ate them over two days cos food should be best eaten fresh you know? but they were yummy all the same.

then i used up the remaining three eggs in my fridge yesterday cos eggs can’t be kept for too long. it felt less sinful cos i used them in fried rice that would last me for three meals. still, i know i’m eating an average of an egg a day.

i don’t think i wanna consume any more eggs for the time being.

i have ridiculous food cravings that hit me all the time. it gets worse when i’m in a bad mood or when i have tonnes of deadlines to meet.

whenever i get stressed by deadlines i have to have sweet food. i don’t even like sweet food very much. but i bought half a dozen of krispy kreme doughnuts today cos damn it, i gotta have unhealthy sweet food! guess they’ll last me a couple of meals. they were sinfully satisfying though.

can’t figure out which food attack is worse. i finished most of the cake during the last attack and i’m all by myself this round.

if i die young from a heart attack it’s because school killed me.

i used to hate salads with a vengeance, until i realised the beauty of it - quick and easy to prepare. still, i avoid salads as much as i can. mainly because i don’t like the taste of raw veggies. why eat uncooked plants when there’s meat?

i was all out to prepare meat patties for dinner, until i checked on the microwave and realised i had cooked the chicken mince instead of defrosting it. there wasn’t anything much i could do with a bowl of cooked chicken mince so i decided to turn it into a salad instead.

so i threw in random ingredients and it turned out pretty nice. doesn’t look too appetizing, but it tastes fine. guess this is one recipe i would be using often, cos it’s a one-bowl recipe and hey, i’m lazy.

i can’t believe i’m doing this on my blog, but i gotta note down the ingredients cos i have never managed to replicate the better food i cook. so there, for the sake of future meals, this was how it went: a bowl of chicken mince, half a chopped onion, two cloves of chopped garlic, coriander, chopped tomatoes, a chopped boiled egg, a tiny can of four-bean mix, a slice of cheese, some cream cheese, dash of salt and pepper. so the basic idea is, nuke the chicken mince, mix it with the onions, garlic, salt, pepper and coriander and nuke it for a minute. mix in the other ingredients, adding in the cheese and cream cheese on top of everything. nuke it again until the cheese melts and mix everything nicely.

it might be the desperation to consume asian food when i’m here, but it’s over here that i start exploring korean food. with the number of korean immigrants in australia, it’s not difficult to find authentic korean food everywhere. in fact, it’s easier to find korean food than singaporean food in canberra.

there’s this korean grocery store in the town area that sells quite a lot of duh, korean stuff. so once in a while i’ll drop in to stock up on interesting food. mrs. owner of the korean grocery store is extremely cheery. she bounces around the store to rearrange the store and when she stops near you, she greets you with a big smile and a warm “hello! how are you doing?” it feels kinda familiar there cos i hear the korean customers calling out to mr. owner with a “ahdjoosee!” and mrs. owner sending off customers with a sincere “kamsahamnida!” yeah, i admit i’ve been watching too many korean dramas.

back to korean food, last semester i found little boxes of kimchi and spicy dried shrimps. the spicy dried shrimps were terrific but the kimchi was a little disappointing. so i had a bad impression of kimchi, until the house owner had a little dinner gathering and a korean classmate of their daughter’s turned up with fresh, authentic korean kimchi. oh gosh, i fell in love all over again.

the best thing about the korean grocery store is they sell tonnes of instant korean food. instant meaning anything that can be thrown into the microwave or boiling water and ready to serve in less than ten minutes. they have an endless variety of dumplings with different fillings. there were even different types of vegetarian dumplings, can you imagine?

i made another discovery today:

breaded hotdogs!! did i ever mention that i have a soft spot for hotdogs and sausages? piping hot sausages and hotdogs can make me a very happy person. and these breaded hotdogs made a great snack, even though they were grossly overcooked. i supposed the korean instructions were trying to say “microwave on medium for 2 minutes” but i could only recognise the numeral “2″ so i microwaved it on high instead.

oh well, this is gonna be a staple in my freezer anyway! yummy food at affordable prices!

timeliness is when the landlady comes over with a thick, warm slice of orange butter cake just when i was contemplating what to have for brunch.

a slice of smooth, dense cake with the top still crispy.

food makes me happy.

as a kid i never liked the winter melon drinks my mum used to make when we complained of sore throats and fevers. it’s some kind of dried winter melons i think; i’m fine with winter melon soups. it’s been such a long time since she made that drink. i didn’t remember that it was a drink i hated and answered “okay” when she said she would make me some of that today. i’m on the verge of sore throats and fevers again, must be the crazy weather over here in singapore.

so i’ve been downing the suspicious drink and man, it really tastes like it’s got alcohol in it. the drink looks totally harmles, almost transparent and smells a little sweet when you sniff at it. it comes with those strips of winter melon which my sister loved. after taking a gulp of the winter melon drink, i suddenly remembered to stay far, far away from those melon strips cos i hated that too.

i still hate the weird taste. but i guess i’ve remembered why i dislike the drink and i’m gonna reject it anytime my mum offers me that in the near future.

kopi-o gao

i finally found an instant coffee that satisfies my dark desires for caffeine. instant, considering i only need to add sugar and hot water to the coffee powder. instant coffee used to only mean 3-in-1 coffee satchets. my friend from last semester tried to introduce me to those swanky coffee powder where it had to be brewed or something; it required some apparatus called a plunger. i’ve never figured that out cos i don’t see the need to. homemade coffee should always be instant

nescafe espresso is my saviour for this semester, it packs a powerful punch compared to other brands of coffee. i used to buy international roast but the coffee was a sissy cousin of the thick, aromatic coffee i crave for. that sissy coffee was always in a shade of brown nowhere close to black and the taste was bland. that purely served as a caffeine boost.

the moment i took a whiff of this new love, i knew it was the one. the coffee’s rich and robust. something like the kopi-o i’ve always liked.

the last time i drank kopi-o-o (double power!) to stay up all night was during ‘O’ levels, the night before the history paper. now i can relive my kopi-o moments.

it feels good to find true love.

who’s hiding them?

happy mid-autumn-mooncake-lantern festival, people.

i’m mooncake-less this year and even though i’ve never finished more than 1 mooncake every year, i suddenly feel like having some. i just can’t find any over here, damn.

and to those unenlightened souls, there are mooncakes with red bean fillings and yes, they’re my favourite.

because i still have frozen wontons (they’re getting frostbitten!) in the freezer, i felt like wonton noodles. which calls for char siew, or it wouldn’t be like wonton noodles at all. therefore google proved useful again as i sieved through the numerous cooking blogs and finally found something idiot-proof.

what i love about this is that the preparation is so easy, just throw in the few marinades and leave the meat to sit there for 4 hours while i work on my assignments. and it doesn’t require a bloody oven! okay, maybe the cooking time of half an hour isn’t exactly good, but it’s still quick and easy considered to other char siew recipes.

i randomly chose a long strip of meat labelled “pork fillet” and which resembled a piece of char siew because i have no idea how 五花肉 looks like. i think it turned out to be the right cut of meat anyway.

so there, my wonton noodles for dinner!

yeah, it looks brown cos i’m not gonna invest in red food colouring. what am i gonna do with the remaining? make red half-boiled eggs everyday? as long as it tastes the same, i’d eat it even it’s blue in colour.

because it’s the term break and i’m pretty much stuck at home with nothing to do, i have lots of food i want to try cooking.

so the challenge i scheduled for today was wontons.
it was a rather slow and tedious event, considering i took about 3 hours to prepare and cook everything and especially since there were not many ingredients in wontons. it was the slow chopping and grating (manually with a knife, can you imagine!) that took a really long time. and i now believe my mum’s claims that there are different kinds of ginger - yellow ginger, blue ginger and what not.

the process was hazardous and full of obstacles. the very first one was when i realised there was no bloody can opener in the kitchen. the canned food i’ve bought so far always comes with pull back rings, so they were not problems. even with a proper can opener, i usually take about 20 to 30 minutes to open a can, cos the physics of opening cans just escapes me.

so anyway, without a proper can opener, i had to poke a hole into the side of the can with some bottle opener thingy. then, i used a pair of powerful kitchen scissors to cut up the can. throughout the whole ordeal i was paranoid about cutting my fingers on the lethal metal edges. but fortunately it didn’t happen.

the second horrifying moment was when i took a wrong guess and added the wrong soy sauce. the recipe stated “soy sauce” and making a logical guess that the filling would need some colour, i added dark soy sauce. the raw filling looked abnormally brown and that’s when i realised the recipe really meant light soy sauce. doesn’t really matter, cos i ate my wontons whole without taking gu-niang bites so i didn’t notice the colour of the cooked filling anyway.because i was adventurous i tried different ways of wrapping the wontons. the triangular one was good but messy. the crumpled ball versions were easy and good but used too little filling. i tried another one which was just horrendous-looking, i wonder why all the usual recipes recommend that wrapping method.

the soup looks reddish cos i added the unwanted prawn heads into the soup, along with leftover onions and some garlic. it tasted a little strange with wontons, but i have to say it was pretty good by itself.

so there, my wontons adventure for the day. and i’ve got about 45 wontons left in the freezer.

——-

post-edit: okay, as requested, here’s the stuff needed for a wonton adventure. the recipe was taken from some website i can’t remember…

all quantities are approximate amounts, cos i don’t have weighing scales and what-not. sheesh, i can’t believe i’m posting recipes on my blog. the earth must be rotating on the wrong axis.

1) 300g minced pork/chicken

2) 6 tablespoons chopped onions

3) 1 1/2 tablespoons grated ginger

4) 4 tablespoons water chestnuts

5) diced prawns (i bought 300g of whole cooked prawns and shelled them)

6) 3/4 to 1 teaspoon salt

7) 3/4 teaspoon sugar

1/8 teaspoon pepper

9) 1 1/2 tablespoon light soy sauce

10) 1 beaten egg

11) 60 wonton skins

mix items 1 to 10 in a nice big bowl, adding the beaten egg last. place some (i really mean a little) filling in the middle of the wonton skin and scrunch up the four corners. squeeze hard, but don’t tear the skin. OR, place some filling on one side of the wonton skin, near the middle. wet the four edges of the wonton skin and fold it into a neat triangle. make sure the edges stick nicely.

boil some soup or water, whatever. throw the wontons in and wait for them to boil. there you go, wontons!

i was out at the shopping mall and decided i should reward myself with some outside-lunch since i’ve been good and hell, it’s the term break after all.so i decided to give the chinese stall at the food court just one more chance.

the last time i bought noodles with soy sauce chicken from them, it was damn bloody salty. since then i haven’t had the guts to try their food again. usually the chinese food over here are a lot more salty and i have no idea why. maybe they’re catering to foreign tastes of something, but then again the angmohs dun eat such salty food also mah.

i thought char siew would be a safe choice, they can’t possibly add too much salt to char siew, right?

the lady at the stall took her time slicing the char siew and arranged them to cover the entire bowl of rice and the few stalks of choy sum. then. she spooned some suspicious thing which looked like minced garlic and ginger while i stared in absolute horror. *alarm sounds. i hate garlic and ginger unless their pungent tastes are “well hidden”. then, she squeezed enough of some strange looking liquid to fill a river. it looked like a mixture of dark soy sauce and something, which i hate too. i don’t like dark soy sauce in my rice.

i sat down miserably at an empty table and tasted the suspicious looking thing. basket, it was damn bloody salty. salty enough to kill the taste of garlic and ginger. and i still have no idea what that strange looking liquid was. the char siew tasted like, pork.

there goes, no more adventures at that chinese stall ever again.

this is my new favourite veggie - the chinese wombok. i don’t understand why it has such a weird name too, but never mind.

it’s hard trying to find yummy veggies here cos the angmohs eat different veggies from us asians. i’m lucky there’s asian veggies like choy sum and kai lan here. the thing is, i’m not exactly crazy about choy sum and kai lan. i just learnt how to eat eggplants last semester. i don’t eat corn or beetroot or silverbeet or sweet potatoes or pumpkin.

which means that all along, i’ve been living on broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, mushrooms and carrots. the occasional spinach, cos it’s a bitch to totally get rid of the soil and grit before cooking. after four months of broccoli, broccoli and more broccoli, i swore off my favourite veggie when i was back in sg.

welcome to my list of staple veggies, you wombok.

these days the fridge has been a little empty because i have been a bum who is too lazy to shop for groceries. there’s still lots of frozen meats but what’s the use of frozen meats when the supply of noodles and rice are running low? when there’s almost no veggies to go along with those proteins? no fruits, no milk to go with cereal, no salad ingredients, no butter, no jam and almost zero sandwich ingredients despite the many slices of bread i have left.

fortunately i have enough ham and cheese to last me till monday. and surprise, surprise, i have an unopened can of tuna which i bought in abundant supply when the supermarket sold them at a discounted price of 99 cents each. i’m glad i was a kiasu auntie when i bought those canned tunas.

oh, i have one last packet of instant noodles too!

p.s: i have been blogging excessively, i know. at least it keeps me from destructive crunchyroll actitivies.

happy public holiday national day, people.

may we all grow to love singapore more.

and to immerse myself in the singaporean-ly mood, i’m having leftover chicken rice for dinner. it isn’t as good as what’s in the picture, of course. but better than nothing lah.

i’m sure glad i don’t have to be in the homeland this month, bombarded by patriotic songs and red-and-white banners and residents committees all over the island vying to hang the most national flags in their area and national day rallies and the ndp parade monopolizing tv channels.

i had this super mega craving for blackforest cake. a huge slice of rich, chocolatey goodness.

so i decided to check out this seemingly famous cakeshop which was located at a very ulu place. nevertheless, it was an insatiable craving i had and i would do anything to satisfy it. it wasn’t too bad, the quest took me only one and a half hours, including travel time and the darn upslope trek.

so i was all excited when i reached home. never mind the cheesy-looking cakebox that featured the mascot baker and coloured balloons and confetti.

the cake wasn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing and some of the cherries were a little mutated.

never mind if it didn’t look pretty, it should at least taste yummy, right? but it was a little too dry and crumbly and far from the rich and chocolatey experience i was expecting. the sour cherries they used were too mashed up and too sour for my liking too.

so in short, it was a bad way to satisfy a craving. still, i promised myself to get work done after getting my hands on a blackforest cake. well, i’ve got it and now i have no other excuses.

p.s: yes, i bought an entire cake but it’s meant to be shared with my friends lah. 

pp.s: i can’t find my camera usb data cable. i hope it’s safe in singapore. 

when i heard of the very unusual name of “the v tea room” my reaction was “huh?” “hah?” and “what?” even after tracy’s multiple repetitions of the name.

i’m glad i wasn’t only one who did the huh-hah-what thing.

but gosh, the v tea room at esplanade is a very sweet and dainty cafe, selling cakes and cookies to die for. there were those ornamental venetian masks against the red-and-gold wallpapers with lots of fine tea sets displayed in the shop. the place was so dainty and euro-ish i felt out of place in my disney polo tee and jeans (i refused to wear decent clothes cos the weather was simply too hot).

the melty chocolate cake and the baileys cake we had were not too sweet and had the full flavours of what they were named after. the kind which doesn’t make you feel sick of cake and all things rich and heavy after eating them.

fortunately their “boys were smelly” cookies didn’t have the full smelly-boys taste.

the cookies were OOOOOH. totally different from what i get outside. the flavours were original and exquisite, the baking freshly done in the shop itself. the prices are kind of steep at $28 (i think) a tin, but it will brighten up any afternoon, seriously.

which is why i think i’m getting them for the ex-colleagues who are forever asking me out for dinners and yet whacking me when i try to pay them. they deserve happier afternoons in the office when they have to battle with evil women.

yes, the next time we all feel rich, let’s visit the v tea room!

for the past few days i thought i was adding sugar when i cooked.

to my horror, the french toast i made this morning was extremely salty. since i had no food left, i had to eat them with lots of jam and wash it down with juice so that it wouldn’t taste so bloody salty. it was a breakfast from hell.

thankfully i haven’t been cooking a lot these days.

**********************************

the lecturer wants us to answer questions raised in case studies written by our classmates. sometimes i don’t even understand what they are trying to say.

a classic line, “Soaking the coffee, he has to addict himself in the great-pressure work.”

and this is just casual description before the real thing begins.

despite the disaster i had to face early in the morning, i experienced a bout of unexplainable joy today.

which was brought about by the weekly *coughgroceriesshoppingcoughcough trip. the last time i was down for a long time, groceries shopping brought me from the dark inner edge of the pit to sunlight and bubbles and flowers and all things happy again.

fridays are the ultimate housewife days cos i do the laundry, ironing, cleaning on top of the groceries shopping. which was why i hated it when my mid-term exams were on fridays. they disrupted my weekly routine. housewives have to keep to their routines, you know, they just have too many things to do.

today, there was this sense of excitement when i was browsing the meats section. over the past two months, my favourite supermarket here has been bringing in minced meat - something that didn’t exist on their shelves before. so they started off with minced beef, minced pork and veal and to my dismay, there just wasn’t minced chicken or minced pork. then came minced chicken. but i’ve been wanting to cook some substitute of ban mian thingy, which tastes better with minced pork. so for weeks, i waited patiently for them to start selling minced pork.

and today, there it was, minced pork!

the little package of minced pork has put me in good humour again. i think i’ll say hi to the housemate later if i see her around. still, the label housewife doesn’t suit me very much, cos after all, i am not a wife. does that make me a….housemaid? damn!

did i mention the online tutorial thingy is asking us to comment some stuff related to web 2.0? how will a closet housewife like me know what is web 2.0 in the first place? fortunately, a modern houselady will always know how to google for answers.

oh great, the housemate is back and is messing up the kitchen. should i go and smile at her?

post-edit: to my absolute horror, question 2 of the tutorial requires me to know what twitter, ning and stikkit are before i can participate. at least i know one out of three - twitter.

the woes of having an internet geek as a lecturer.

i haven’t done anything except to clear the first round of readings for a 4,000 word essay. which isn’t even the nearest deadline.

the next deadline is coming tuesday. gotta design a stupid poster to present an evaluation of stuff. it’s tricky presenting evaluations via a poster. it’s hard trying to replace those lengthy paragraphs into something aesthetically pleasing. and i’d hate to come up with anything that’s not uber cool, cos i am taking this darn thing as a personal challenge.

till date, i don’t have any uber-strong inspirations.

die liao.

oh, the first kitchen injury has taken place.

i made honey lemon chicken for dinner and it turned out good (i’ve been telling the whole world about my achievement, but i don’t care, i gotta do it here).  the coating was even and crispy, the meat was tender and the coating stayed nicely on the meat. nice golden brown.

judging from the dish, i should have bearing war injuries like burnts from hot oil splatters or cuts from the knife.

but no, it’s just that my thumb got giaped by the innocent-looking kitchen drawers. and it’s no common giap too.

such a pathetic cook i am.

sydney is a CITY!

how come i always end up living in boring places, jw in singapore and canberra in australia. sheesh. gonna start taking photos and taking long, good walks from tomorrow! or whenever my bro doesn’t offer to take me around.

we went to this taiwanese eatery and sheesh, i haven’t had decent chinese food for a long while! so in appreciation of quality chinese fare i gobbled down a huge plate of curry fried rice and doughsticks wrapped in a spring onion pancake. and yummy ice cream for dessert. man, i’m stuffed. seafood tomorrow and dimsum on saturday. woohooo!

canberra is such a small place that i met my project groupmate on the bus to sydney. and i chose to sit behind her, cos i wouldn’t know what to say for three and a half hours. so anti-social of me, i know. but i can’t help it!

today was an unexpectedly good food day.

when i was on my way out to the neighbourhood mall, yet to decide what to do there, my landlady spotted me through her glass windows and caught up with me at the other end of her house. she screeched my name and it went something like “YAAAN YAAAN!!” the kind you hear in dramas where people haven’t met for twenty years.

turned out that she hadn’t been seeing me around and wanted to invite me over for lunch as she cooked quite a spread to host a gathering for her daughter and friends. having just eaten breakfast and not in the chirpy mood to meet new people, i declined.

later in the afternoon, the landlady brought me a humongous slice of chocolate cake, which is still sitting in my fridge. strangely, i had a strong craving for chocolate cake yesterday. sometime ago when i was drooling over watermelons, she brought me some. she seems capable of reading my mind through brick walls.

after my heavy dinner (in an attempt to clear the fridge of perishables before i head for sydney tomorrow), the housemate’s mum gave me a whole crab. cos she bought too much and it wouldn’t taste nice tomorrow. i told her i ate a lot for dinner too but she insisted.

i think i’ll have lots of supper food today.

and that’s after stocking up on junk food and instant food for late-night hunger pangs.

my room smells of baked buttered potatoes cos i had that for dinner with roast chicken and a range of other healthy, wholesome greens. for the first time in two weeks i feel immensely satisfied with my food.the grass is always greener on the other side and boy, i’m always drooling at the housemate’s spreads. that’s the advantage of having a mum who has absolutely nothing to do but to clean up after you and to cook mouth-watering food for you. of course, that’s a brat’s life which i’m not exactly hankering after. but still, the housemate gets three piping hot meals on time without having to life any of her dainty, aristocratic fingers.

to back their three full course meals a day, they have tonnes of food in their fridge. when they came back from groceries shopping (while i entered the kitchen to start cooking dinner at 9pm, just home and starving and tired and cold from a project discussion in school) yesterday, i was awed by what they bought. they bought enough food to fill up more than ten regular sized plastic bags.

there was this mini sack of potatoes and she indulged her daughter with five boxes of ice-cream. after which i saw the empty packagings of three dozens of eggs which made me do a double-turn. they obviously haven’t heard of cholesterol limits and fats and carbohydrates and stuff like that.

and yeah, the mum confirmed that was food for one week.

i must have been eating like a sparrow these days, eh?

the roof of my mouth is mega-burnt cos i bit into a piping hot pork sausage straight from the toaster oven.ouch, it hurts like crazy.

and i only have hot water to drink and i’m having hot soup for dinner.

what are the chances of all these taking place at the same time in the real world?

i was never a hardcore addict of chocolate but for some unknown reason, i started smiling to myself when i saw this when grocery shopping.the aroma of cocoa escaping from the foil wrapper. the rich taste of bitter cocoa - with just a little sweet lingering aftertaste .

i was in heaven for a little short while.

i keep buying weird eggs. the first batch i bought, there was one with some chicken feathers stubbornly stuck to the shell. stubbornly.this time round, i got a happy egg.

probably cos it’s a premium egg from grain-fed chickens with no hormone injections, or so the carton said. who cares about those bull, as long as they’re the cheapest on the shelves.

and i am moused, courtesy of the aussie bro! a nice, affordable logitech mouse! yeah i know it’s not white like ally, but white coloured mice are really hard to clean.

i had a small, glossy white mouse which cost around ten bucks, and it spoilt in less than a month. stupid cheap brand-less products.

i kinda missed everyone again this afternoon. cos it was a really hot saturday afternoon and it reminded me of the sweltering heat shopping in bugis village. then i thought of the friends i could have been meeting today.

but i made myself happier telling myself there’s only 9 more months to go (one month has already passed, can you believe it?!) and life isn’t too bad here after all. and i have msn, don’t i?

as long as i don’t think of saturday afternoons which were always meant for coffee and shopping.

something turned horribly bad.for the past few days my cooking has been atrocious. except for the stuff i cooked with luncheon meat.

i just ate two dory fillets which tasted extremely bad. but it’s cooked and i’m hungry, so i ate it all the same.

if this continues for the next ten months, i’m doomed.

the best thing about living alone is you can do anything you want at anytime.and that includes having breakfast food - hot toast and tea, for supper.

cos snacks are almost non-existent due to cost-cutting measures.

but this hot supper is great in this chilly thunderstormy weather.

it’s been a really long time since i updated and the main reasons are:1) i reset the router in an attempt to set up the wireless. i admit i’m hopeless at computer stuff. i have the passwords and everything, but i just can’t get it to work. not even when i connect it through ethernet.

2) i have been trying to get used to school stuff. the lecturers are darn serious about the readings. and my textbooks are gonna be imported from singapore. i have to zap textbooks and borrow from classmates (hopefully i can find some before the tutorials) to prepare for tutorials.

3) school internet is a pain-in-the-ass. they have surfing quotas (can you believe it?!) and by the time i manage to find a windows pc (so that i can msn), finish school housekeeping stuff on the very, very slow network, reply emails and am finally ready to log on, i can’t stay for long cos i have to rush home to prepare lunch / dinner. i don’t like to eat in school cos i fell in love with my own cooking.

JUST KIDDING.

it’s just weird eating lunch alone everyday. and it’s expensive too.

i realized how much i hate cooking for just myself. cos even when i cooked back at home (only when the parents were out gallivanting in some foreign land), i’d cook for the brother who eats like a horse. now i always overcook. there’s always so much veggies i end up eating at least four servings of veggies a day. and no, i haven’t lost weight yet.

so in an attempt to clear the food in my fridge faster and mostly out of goodwill, i cooked a dish for the adopted family. sharon (lady owner) was saying she felt guilty for me doing that cos i’m supposed to be studying hard and all that, and i went, “nah, i don’t do that kind of thing!”. as if the main reason i’m here is to cook and not study. but anyway she’s been taking really good care of me, giving me huge portions of fruits every now and then and buying everything extra i might need. so i thought it’ll be nice to give in return.

the drought here has subsided, i think. it’s been raining frequently for the past two weeks. with the gray clouds, a bit of blue skies and the beginning of sunset, this was what i saw:

a pretty blend of gray, blue and pink.

you thought i have a good view from my room eh?

just beyond my room, right at the bottom of the hill, they’re building a retirement village. i left singapore thinking it’ll be good to see the construction opposite my room at home all completed by the time i return. then i came here to see this:

beyond the perimeter of skimpy bamboos will be the ugly construction site. i must have an aura for renovation and moving. fortunately they’re in the end-stages of construction, so there’s not too much noise.

lastly, i was dressing for school the other day and i thought of a couple of years ago when i started school. remember my dressing in the first two years?

*shudders

and i do agree i’ve changed a lot since then. dressing, hair, everything.

i was wearing make-up every time i left the house, in a failed attempt to use up my make-up before i leave sg. now i don’t like seeing myself all dressed up and without make-up. so there, i’ve been wearing make-up to school too.

these are photos i took of myself a few weeks before i left sg, it’s kind of a milestone in my own timeline you know? guess i can do some compare-and-contrast thingy a few months down the road or something. or maybe not. where got money and time to shop for new stuff when i’m supposed to be erm, a poor student who studies hard?

but i’ve got new glasses though.

which, due to some screw-up, will only be ready on tuesday. will put up photos of myself in the new glasses! and because they cost a hell lot of money, i’ll be wearing them a lot more often!

oh yeah, i’ve been sleeping real early this week, when my brain isn’t ready to rest yet. so i’ve been dreaming a lot in the night. of family, friends, my old home, people i haven’t seen for ten million years, etc. etc. i guess i really miss home subconsciously, just that i’m currently happy enough not to notice it.

i scalded my scalp today.

that’s right, you didn’t read wrongly.

i scalded my scalp today.

cos while trying to rinse my hair during my shower, i turned on the hot water tap and forgot to turn on the cold water tap simultaneously. it was so bloody painful i was cursing and swearing at an audible volume. luckily the owner who was clearing the housemate’s room outside the bathroom stepped away for the moment.

then, i broke my glasses.

i wasn’t violent at all, i swear. i just took it off and one of the screws fell out and was nowhere to be found. that’s on top of dropping the glasses from more than a metre’s height and chipping it a week before i left singapore. so it means a new pair of glasses for me, i guess. darn, i don’t think they have cheap eyewear here.

on a cheerier note, the lady owner really takes good care of me. she gave me a whole bowl of watermelon and grapes during dinnertime. i do miss watermelon and i thought i wouldn’t be able to eat any for a long time, since they only sell watermelons in whole or in huge chunks. i was just looking longingly at the watermelons in the supermarket a few days ago, and there it is, a whole bowl of it!

happy chinese new year to all of you out there!!this is the first time i’m away from home for chinese new year and man, i miss the cny mood and reunion dinner and eating all the cny goodies. there’s absolutely zero cny mood here, though i had dinner with the house owner’s family.

luckily for me the extended family didn’t turn up. so it was just me and them. which wasn’t too bad.

their daughters, just a few years younger than me, were friendly and chatty, like most australians. the japanese exchange student living with them is uber cute in expressing herself.

and i realised the very fierce looking male owner is just quiet, that’s all.

it was nice not having to face the wall while having dinner alone, silently. and there was a spread of chinese food and, get this, nian gao!

it wasn’t too bad, after all.

p.s. it’s been warmer these few nights. no more sweaters for the time being!

went to the school to enrol myself and for once, i appreciate the system in ntu. where we are automatically enrolled, we don’t have to consult course coordinators with timetable issues and everything is done online.during the enrolment i was directed left, right, centre, to different people at different places for different stages. i nearly went mad. and i’m not done with everything yet.

since it was 4pm already i decided to take life easy and do it another day. anyway i’m already enrolled, so i’m kinda safe.

and i had to rush home at 4.30pm, cos

a) it looked like it was gonna rain. rainy days are really cold days over here, i had no sweaters or umbrella. intelligently left my umbrella in sg and haven’t bought one yet.

b) i had to cook dinner. and i was hungry cos i didn’t have lunch. and see, i’m getting better everyday! no more burnt food!

all right, i know you all must be damn bored looking at the food i’m having everyday. but i haven’t been out exploring canberra, cos there’s nothing much to explore here.

oh well, till i find something more interesting then.

yeah something interesting?

i saw this woman in the library, walking around with this palm-sized flower in her hair. i thought that was weird, cos i’m not a flower-in-the-hair person. eeeek.

anyway, i was so distracted by that woman and the urgency to finish up the enrolment stuff and head home, THAT I LEFT MY SHADES BEHIND.

my new shades. which are necessary cos the sun here is really bright and it makes me squint.

how am i gonna face the outside world without a pair of shades???

ok, i shall quit the drama. new shades on the next shopping trip.

internet is indeed amazing.

from a nowt-to-do, i became employed. all thanks to the world wide web. now i’m doing some transcribing and translating work for nie in singapore and it kept me happy for the whole day. money rolling in, things to do in my spare time. what’s there to complain about?

more proof i can cook edible food:

though the spaghetti would have tasted better if it was cooked for longer. but the pre-packaged meatballs are surprisingly good!

and guess what i had for dinner: more meatballs and leftover cabbage soup from yesterday.

there’s more meatballs in the fridge. i might turn into one big meatball by the time i return home.

am back from groceries shopping. the mall is a 50 min walk from my place, with uphill and downhill slopes. by the time i got there, my legs felt like cramps. sheesh. and man, the wind was so strong and cold my teeth were chattering like crazy. and i thought it’ll be fine to go out without a jacket cos of the sun. by the time i walked to the main road i was freezing. crazy weather here, and i need a lot more sweaters than what i have now, i guess. dang.at least i’ve got a well-stocked fridge, pantry and kitchen now. too well-stocked, maybe. if this kind of grocery shopping carries on, i’ll be busting my tight budget very soon.

i need time to learn eh? how the heck am i supposed to know how much food one person consumes, anyway? besides, the darn supermarkets don’t really sell food in single servings unless we’re talking about microwavable or instant food. bah, no more of that for the time being. and i can’t possible buy a quarter of a cabbage and eat that for say, four meals. it’ll kill me, i’m a person who needs variety in food!

grocery shopping and budgeting is an art in itself.

to think that the only spending i had to budget for in the past was phone bills, shopping, entertainment and socializing. now it’s a whole lot more – broadband bills, rental, multiple phone bills, groceries, miscellaneous items previously provided by home.

i might just die of starvation before i get home.

i’ve just done the ironing, cos all my clothes were vacuum packed and were crumpled beyond recognition. then i realized something. somehow, except for clothes i’m wearing at home, there are only four colours in my wardrobe – white, green, brown and black. somehow! i can’t figure it out too. i almost never wear green in the first place!

it’s definitely not an excuse to look for more clothes here, though they have pretty nice clothes at the malls here. think i gotta live with these four colours for the time being. but damn, i miss the colour-coded wardrobe i had sometime ago.

i’m munching on cherry tomatoes, cos i had a heavy breakfast, skipped lunch, am hungry and it’s too early for dinner. main point is, me! cherry tomatoes! i never got along well with tomatoes, i only liked them in pasta sauce, ketchup and sandwiches. and now, raw cherry tomatoes! still getting used to the taste of tomatoes. told you all i’m gonna be a changed person, didn’t i?

the dinner i cooked: cabbage soup with carrots and tofu, sweet and sour fish.

yeah, the black things on the fish are the chao tar parts. quit smirking.

am bloated from all the good food i’ve had. it was the final dash for local food today, made possible by weiwei’s company to the nus prata place. yeah, she bought me a flower and i was terrified. i’ve always been a person who has no idea what to do with flowers. i mean, they generally look and smell nice, but what do you do with them when they start to wither? it’s such a waste to throw them away.

in less than twenty-four hours’ time i’ll be leaving for ten months. i’ve been keeping the tears away without much trouble, cos my departure has seemed unreal all this while. but today, after saying goodbye to the msian and the llama, i could feel the tears coming while i stood alone in the bus queue.

it finally hit me that i’m really, really leaving.

i think i’m quite a genius for refusing to let anyone know about my flight details. i was on the verge of crying just saying bye to the two of them. imagine the drama that will take place if most of my close friends turn up. i swear it’ll make it hard for me to leave, really.

thank you to all for spending time with me and meeting me (especially since most of you are really busy with final semester stuff or insane work schedules) before i go. for all the company in my crazy quest for local food, for the food sponsorship, for the well wishes, for the hugs, for the cards, for the gifts.

i feel loved, serious.

see you all in november this year. meanwhile, go download skype if you still want to hear my voice. and hang out on msn if you wanna catch up. check your emails for my once-in-a-blue-moon newsletters if you’ve subscribed, lol.

spent the last days of 2006 and the first few days of 2007 being hungry.

went to watch charlotte’s web on 30th and was happily filled with popcorn and coke. i know i was supposed to feel sad and get all teary when charlotte announced that she wouldn’t be going back to the barn with wilbur - but i couldn’t help laughing. cos wilbur went, “what are you talking about?” in the american way that wenwen always mimicked in those good old days.

was supposed to go to msia over the weekend (again), but i accidentally starved myself a little and the digestive system went a little wild. had to give the trip a miss, and i’ve been living on a mix of terrible outside food and rice dumplings since. never am i going to buy porridge from the kopitiam near my house again. at the end of it, it taste like msg porridge. sheesh. luckily mf and pupu came in the last few hours of 2006 to gorge on pizza along with me. as for the rice dumplings, my mum made some cos my aussie bro hasn’t had any homemade ones for two years. it’s amazing how he has been living on them for the past few days, having them for almost every meal.

i spent half of the first day in 2007 making this ribbons-and-laces thing for my handphone. i know it’s not me to have this on my handphone, but i had to revamp the ugly pink chinese knot thing and yet keep the pink crystals. maybe i’ll think of something else. i can’t stand this thing hanging on my phone too.

and these are the bits and pieces of 2006.

decision of the year: heading for aussie to do the postgrad course. guess it’s a life-changing (no kidding) moment.

events of the year: convocation and the bro’s engagement.

discoveries of the year: contact lenses and *coughmascaracoughcough.

crap of the year: the design course being screwed up (it still bloody hell hurts when i think of it)

best moments of the year: going back to the usual company for the admin stint. thoroughly enjoyed myself, so much that the nag and the backstabber can be blisfully ignored. knew so many more great people i’m gonna miss.

maybe it’s because i’ve spent half of the year working at the company, that 2006 feels pretty empty. empty in the sense that there seems so few highlights and there was no space for unforgettable events. plus the fact that people around me are busy with either work or fyp.

i’m gonna keep my fingers crossed that everything works out for everyone in 2007, school, work, etc. etc.

here’s to a better 2007!

i have to say i’m a very un-xmassy person.

it’s probably due to family influence. my family, being the extremely-chinese kind, doesn’t celebrate christmas at all. to us, it’s just another public holiday. friends around me aren’t either extremely xmas-sy too, which leaves me with a bland xmas every year.

for the past three years, christmas-es have been spent in malaysia. and it’s always with family. foodie-family. this year, we went with the same uncle and family, carrying out similar activities. just that this year, time was a little tight and the weekend was spent on sitting (read: sleeping in various sitting positions) in the car, getting stuck in jams, getting off at highway rest stations and for meals.

at least we got a great variety of street food (i really like msia street food), fantastic ipoh hor fun and chicken and charsiew and meatballs in ipoh, as well yummy seafood back in johor.

and it’s a little too late to reply the xmas sms-es cos i only reached home after midnight yesterday. i guess the same thing will happen next week, cos i’ll be in msia (yes, again) for the new year weekend.

but to all the well-wishes and xmas presents, thank you very, very much.

and to everyone out there, thanks for being there for me.

my only remaining tuition kid was playing with her plasticine during the 10-min break we had yesterday.

she made the stingray first and i was pretty impressed with it.

then she told me the mouse was a mouse and honestly, i wouldn’t know if she hadn’t said so. it looked more like a bear to me.

then she made the “beetle”. and asked me to guess what it was. i thought it was a squid.

the last item, a “ladybird”. i made a really confident guess that it was a rabbit.

is it just me or can it be that my student isn’t very talented in sculpting?

met a real-life rabbit for dinner last night at the newly revamped imm. who the hell eats only salad for dinner at long john’s silver? i scoffed at her sorry-looking salad, while i feasted on shrimps, fish and chicken. all washed down with a satisfying cup of pepsi. or was it coke?

capitaland should do something about the directional signs at imm. we walked around the bloody place for two entire rounds, following the arrows pointing in misleading directions. by the time we found the shuttle bus pick up point, the last one had already left.

i wanna watch the korean drama serial princess hours. it’s a really entertaining, no-brainer drama. been missing too much of it on tv. they’re selling the set at $24.90 at imm. can someone go buy it then lend it to me when you are done?

my first kueh tutu in 22 years.and i didn’t know it was highly abnormal for a singaporean to not have tasted them before, until my fyp mates stared at me in pure disbelief when i told them.

my neighbour-in-black had the same reaction, so off we went to buy some after lunch. i was so intrigued by the look of them and so curious about everything in the small stall, that the auntie did a demo for me when she knew i’m new to these delicate little fluffy things. yah, she asked if i’m a local too.

kueh tutus are a little dry, i think. but it makes a pretty good light snack. and of course, the production process was really cool.

but there, am not a bumbling local anymore.

i must have been influenced by the msian.

i was looking through the pictures i had on my camera, and all the pictures were of food. i seldom take pictures of food in the first place.

and in between these escapades, there were many others unaccounted for. i must have been eating a lot, happily.

about twice a week, my parents go out in the mornings to search for magical cures for their aching limbs and joints. and they’ll always call back to see if i want breakfast. yes, i know i sound like a lazy brat. it’s just that i’m on a prolonged holiday and it’s ending soon, anyway.

so today they bought some fishball noodles for me. damn, the noodles had zero hint of ketchup and tonnes of vinegar. i know foreigners have fits when they hear that we, singaporeans, have noodles with ketchup. but i like noodles in ketchup and a bit of chili a lot more than noodles in vinegar.

i am vinegar-intolerant and by the time i got to the last mouthful, i gave up.

no more vinegar food for me in the near future.

every vesak day, my family eats vegeterian food for half a day, which ends when we finish our rounds of praying.

i didn’t find it such a pain in the past, cos i used to eat almost all sorts of food - whether they’re plants or animals. nowadays i’m getting a little picky about the plants i eat, and i have a craaaaaving for meat.

i’m so glad i completed the half-day-vegeterian challenge today.

but it wasn’t so easy, when i realised even some buddhist monks eat meat. before we started on our standard praying rounds, we visited the mini temple two houses away, and they had invited buddhist monks from thailand to bless the followers. there was a buffet spread outside, which had chicken wings and pork buns. i was flabbergasted and stood there staring at the food.

apparently not all monks need to be vegeterian, there’s different schools of thoughts.

oh yes, these buddhist monks had this ritual which i’m totally new to. we were supposed to kneel in front of the most senior monk among them, where he would bless us with some holy water. i thought i would escape from being drenched cos my dad was in front of me and he provided generous coverage. but gosh, the senior monk had really good aim. he managed to drench my entire face and shoulders without seeing me.

after this sprinkling of holy water we would place a red packet (think it’s something like alms to them) on a tray next to him. guys can hand it to the monk personally and he’ll be blessed by the monk again through physical contact. but females should not touch the monk at all. then we were supposed to go round kneeling in front of the five or six other junior monks to offering our erm, prayers or something lah. somehow my family skipped this step and i was all ready to step back to dry my face a little, when in a state of confusion, i heard someone urgently told me to turn behind.

i saw junior monk no. 3 handing some yellow string bracelet to my brother, who was kneeling in front of him with cupped hands to receive it. junior monk no. 2 then signalled for me and i dropped to my knees and did the same, with a very blank face.

sheesh, the “head” of this mini temple also invited my brother and i to drop in and practise meditation whenever we are free. i was like, woah! meditation! cool! but nah, i’m not so hot about this idea cos it’s kinda strange to me. maybe, someday.

oh yeah, back to the vegeterian issue: i asked my mum how come we have to go vegeterian (even if it’s only half a day) when monks can eat meat. she said it’s our sincerity.

oh well. half a day of vegetables wouldn’t kill me anyway. i quite like cabbage, mushrooms, broccoli, tau kee, those dried lilies thingy etc. etc. just that my mum adds ginger to all the dishes on this special day, to “add flavour” cos garlic and onions don’t belong to the cateogry of plants or something, haha. i hate ginger with a vengence.

i had a classmate who had it worse. her family goes vegeterian for an entire month during vesak day. sheesh, i’m full of admiration for her.

tomorrow, i’m definitely eating carl’s junior for real meat, real cheese, and yeah, some veggies.

happy vesak day, everyone!

subway has finally entered the suburbs of the suburbs, jurong point!

i am so glad i don’t have to go to holland v for a subway sandwich, or anywhere near town just to have “bread and some ingredients” in between, which is what my parents will call it, or some of my more *ahem auntie friends.

it’s a milestone for jurong point, cos personally i think subway only has outlets in more happening areas, whether it’s fun-happening or work-happening. therefore there must be something in jurong point, other than the rental fees, which is rumoured to be an obscene sum of moolah.

i remember a jc classmate, the one with extremely short and spiky hair and an eternally cheeky smile, commenting that jurong point does seem “quite modern”, in his words on his first visit to the place. i really don’t know what he was expecting, perhaps he thought it would be something like queensway shopping centre. but yah, jurong point is quite modern.

though i’ll still appreciate it a lot more if there’s a place like holland v in jurong. it’s just so much more happening and interesting.

*while surfing the website of my favourite cinema, with a branch at jurong point:

for a moment i seriouosly thought hollywood went the exotic route, trying to name their movie in malay or something.

i think golden village really quite sia sway.

the gals and i went into a retreat in preparation for our core paper. we ended up eating lots of meat, some butterhead veggies, baby carrots, a tub of ben n jerry’s, hershey’s chocolates and a canister of chips. yeah, the meal was a little extreme.

the ground we covered for the paper? that ian is out to kill everyone of us, that half an hour per question just isn’t sufficient and yeah, there’s lots of countries that we need to read up on. within one hour of discussion we were all sprawled on the ground.

there.

but we managed to watch a couple of movies - a very old hk movie, the andy lau muscleman movie, and 13 going on 30. man, jennifer garner was so damn funny.

the domestic f&b manager has been serving up food less than satisfactory recently.ever since the opening of a new nasi-lemak and “economic” (wah, this is definitely uniquely singapore) beehoon after the cny period and my innocent utterance that the nasi-lemak is indeed palatable, she has been buying me the same food everytime she goes marketing. the same packet of nasi-lemak containing a slice of cucumber, a sunny-side-up, a chicken wing, peanuts and ikan bilis. without fail.

i once asked her how come she always buys me the same food for eons until i have a new craving, and she said it’s easier cos she doesn’t have to think what to buy for me.

and recently, her homecooked dishes have been very……strange. she throws whatever she sees in the fridge into the wok. a couple of days ago she dumped a carton of tofu which had been in the fridge for quite some time with sotongs. the combination was edible, but weird. and sometimes the combinations are even weirder. she just laughs it off when i accuse her of such crimes, or tell me to shut up and stop complaining, or i can cook for myself.

usually she says she doesn’t know what to cook, so just throw in anything lor.

and recently, there’s been more instant noodles, all-ingredients kwayteow/noodle soup and such.gosh, the f&b standards are deteriorating at an alarming speed.

i like plain milk.milk goes well with cookies.

and here’s an announcement: weiwei has been made the blog vip. she has a section dedicated to her now. she wanted to adopt a turtle like the chubby little turtle i have on msn, but they don’t offer turtles for adoption. she wanted the tiger, but we decided it looks too weakly. so a hedgehog it shall be. plus, i miss my spiky hair.

oh yes, hedgehogs drink milk too. so maybe spiker biker can get some here. since he doesn’t have any feeding thingy, unlike penny lope which gets tonnes of straw each day from weiwei.

she says she wants a fish too, so that she can feed it.

the first meal we’ve had together since….kx’s birthday? finally.

it’s not the food, it’s the company.

even though i had to restrain myself and try not to behave like an animal among these gu niangs. i ate demurely. i behaved. i felt full.

and people wonder why i’m becoming more demure nowadays. with the hang-out-gang like that, how can i help it?

wahaha to all the nus and smu people TRALALA!! my exams are over!!!

hehe!! i’ve been sleeping and sleeping. eating and sleeping. eating. sleeping. sleeping. i got my mayday 2006 calendar and book!! i think i’m regretting buying the book a little cos itz quite thick. flooded with trad chinese words. basket, i wonder how much time i gotta spend to finish it.

pictures taken on friday, end-of-exams-celebrations-cum-shiya’s-birthday-dinner at marina.

dinner at vien tai, table no. 4.

they blu-tacked their table number to stop the likes of me from moving it around.

the birthday girl.

shiya and yaoquan.

fengyi and her bowl of food.

the soft shelled crabs which were lao-hong.

shiya’s green laksa.

my pineapple laksa, which tasted very much like curry.

tofu, with the rice-thingy coating over it.

kexin and her viet char kway teow.

kx and fengyi.

kx and me.

again.

fengyi and shiya.

full set here: http://beta.propichosting.com/Album.aspx?folder=450006484

we watched harry potter too. i hate the marina cinema cos it’s too damn big and it was CROWDED. almost filled i think. and the carpeted steps to the exit were so small and my sandals’ soles were a little worn, so i slid down a few steps like what jackie chan would do. lucky i didn’t fall, so not too unglam yet.

wahaha yes when i’m driven to desperation i can cook. now that i’m all alone (sigh) at home with the parents far far away in china, the siblings far far away at work, i’m left to feed myself.

being the genius i am, i still managed to cook some broccoli and mushrooms, drunken prawns and chicken nuggets. thank god the rice wasn’t a flop or i’ll be a hungry one tonight.

i have gone from slacker to hardworking maid in one day. cleaning the room and the house, watering the plants, sweeping the yard, cooking, sunning the laundry…..gosh, what’s next?

’tis tiring having to do the household chores.

next time must get domestic help.

yes, despite the number of projects i have on hand and the amount of readings i have to finish, i need to entertain myself!!

it’s fun designing new stuff, even though this looks almost the same as the old one. just a change of colours and the picture. cos i don’t have that much time to come up with a new one.

shall work on something more complicated when i’m free.

sorry to all those who hate white backgrounds, like the wenwen who complained of the blinding white one i used to have. too bad, i do like white backgrounds.

oh yes, i do want to mention the sandwich vending machines ntu have nowadays. seriously, it serves slightly better food than canteen b stuff. but then i tried the one at south spine b3 level, where the lift to the mlt is located. beware, they turned my sandwich black. so chao ta that the paper wrapping it turned cripsy black. even in the night i could “see” the black toast. and the toast is so damn bloody hot when it’s just done, i’ll advise you to leave it alone for 1 whole minute before touching it. no kidding.

i wanna talk about something else that hit me hard. but i need to take photos of it first.

update again tomorrow, if i don’t fall asleep before doing so.

let’s do this systematically cos there’s too many weird things happening:

incident 1:

for some unknown reasons the school entered yesteryear fever and banished me to join the freshies.

in the very same week there was this course aa102 which appeared on the edventure list of people of my batch, when we had completed the course. the first thing that came to our minds was that we had to retake the course. then everyone started panicking for 10 seconds before they realised it’s a screw-up again. strange thing that we still panick cos of things like that despite the daily screw-ups we face.

incident 2:

i went to the office of academic services today, way up on top of the hill to apply for a replacement matric card. the school is charging a bloody S$21 for a replacement card. but then i have no choice but to succumb to their bullying ways. the first funny thing was, you couldn’t pay for the replacement card and submit the application form at the same counter. so i had to go up to the third floor where the office of finance was, gave them the money, collected the receipt and went down to the first floor where the office of academic services was.

due to the weird manner they phrase their instructions, i couldn’t “self-service” and had to press a buzzer for help. so this lady came along and asked me how she could help. told her i needed a replacement matric card, and she asked “where did you lose your card?”. i thought i heard wrongly and went, “HUH?” she repeated her question and i was dumbfounded. wah lau eh, if i know where i lost my matric card, it wouldn’t be lost what!!

so i stifled my laughter and told her i didn’t know. then she asked a slightly more intelligent question, “when did you lose it?” by then i seriously couldn’t figure out if she was asking for the sake of making conversation or was she really so erm, dumb. anyway i walked out of the office alive after being told i can pick up the replacement card after 7 working days.

incident 3:

was having dinner with wenwen at the recently-renovated delifrance. nowadays they very high class, they don’t call themselves delifrance anymore. they’re bistro delifrance. i didn’t even notice it until wenwen pointed it out to me. in fact i walked past the back last week after a movie (dunno why jurong point always make movie-watchers go out of jurong point, to the back and walk back into the place after movies) and commented that it was a nice place without realising it was delifrance.

after ordering from the brand new menu we helped ourselves to the free flow bread (which turned out stone-hard) and sat down at our table. then wenwen was looking around for the cutlery when she realised there was this waitress painstakingly counting the cutlery and checking what we needed against our orders. she ended up giving us a spoon, three forks and two knives. i had no idea where the extra fork comes into place. so we decided the manpower they had must have come over from their next-door neighbout, pizza hut. go figure.

incident 4:

ok, this isn’t as weird. it’s just plain commercialism. you know this extra thingy that comes with the straits times from tuesdays to thursdays? yesterday i was flipping through it, the mind and body issue. then there was this page:

wah lau, kfc is a better choice leh!! they blatantly stated it was “better-for-you series : brought to you by kfc” and according to the article, chicken is rich in niacin, which “gives a buffer to Alzheimer’s disease”.

don’t wanna get Alzheimer’s then must eat kfc ah!! Alzheimer’s better than heart disease and obesity mah!! recommended in the mind and body issue leh! mational newspaper leh!!

*lesson learnt: don’t trust any of these recommendations from straits times. they receive ad money too.

this place serves pretty good food. nice garlic bread and nice chicken kebabs, which unfortunately came in *ahem* very creative presentations. the garlic bread (approx. more than a foot long) came standing in a erm….garlic bread stand? and ended up looking like a giant candlestick on the table. the kebab came hanging from an iron stand, but the nice waiter offered to un-kebab everything on my plate.

caution: this restaurant has very heavy chairs. very heavy cutlery.

i didn’t realise my picture host had credit limits till yesterday. gotta cut down on the hits per image. thus i shall learn from sharie the funky one and combine many pictures into a big-assed one!

*by the way, gotta share this! the previous post: mr teh tarik refers to an indian stall in far east square. their teh tarik is MUST try standard!! especially if you drink it immediately - don’t wait for the ice to melt!!

on father’s day, which happens to be today, my dad’s treating us to lunch and dinner.

without us even asking or hinting our demands for food.

what the…..

anyway, the indian food at samy’s curry restaurant somewhere along dempsey road is great.

yummy food they have there.

too bad, i had breakfast 2 hrs before lunch. so i wasn’t in the best condition to feast upon such yummy food.

while heading home, we were passing by the route i used to take (or, am going to take again) when i drive from queensway to ubi.

and i think i haven’t gotten over my driving test yet.

in fact, i think i got a slight phobia for driving already.

ugh.