some pictures from the past week before i forget and put them off forever and ever.

i made tiramisu!

eeeks, not the most pratical dessert to make cash-wise, but so so worth it! at first i was apprehensive since most recipes used cocoa powder and i dont know if you've noticed but cocoa powder is bitter and disgusting. managed to find a recipe that used drinking chocolate powder instead, how brilliant it that? i topped them off with grated chocolate (yes, i used my mini-grater!) so in a nutshell, tiramisu=awesome. as joey would say;
coffee? good. chocolate? good. cheese? gooooooood.

bling

i love big gaudy rings more than i should. it's true.

speaking of rings, my cousin and his girlfriend got engaged on sunday

i dont remember tunangs being a big deal but apparently they are? i had to wear a proper tunic and everything. i paired it charmingly with my havainas though... it was the weekend ok, i am not forsaking the comfort of my feet on a sunday!

finally got to eat my garlic prawn pasta on monday!

i think i was 16 when i first started eating at coffee club but mostly for dessert with my mom. fancy coffee for her, iced passion tea for me and a muddy mud pie for the road. then i started having actual meals there and this pasta quickly became my favourite. this and their wasabi prawn salad. and their banana butterscotch latte. and their calamari.

i'm sorry, i cannot lie. i love everything.

headcover of the week

i want to be buried in a bookstore.

just throwing it out there.

this post might burn your retinas.

excuse the cliché but where the hell did june go? i feel like the primary school kid i was who simply refused to accept that the school holidays were ending already. i mean, i dont feel like a whole month has gone by. let's see, the last week of may and the first week of june, i was mostly at TTSH. the second and third week of this month, nabillah, amalina and i were mostly stranded in sengkang, either vegetating at my house or at the nearby stadium watching hockey. oh lord, hockey. will talk about that more later. the time i usually spend watching tv shows a day after they air is now time i spend deciding what crappy movie to watch because pretty much every tv show is on its season break. i'm now only depending on So You Think You Can Dance and my final breakdown is;
Season2>Season3>Season5>Season4.

a few weeks ago, my boredom found its temporary release in the form of the Sex and The City movie. i didnt hate it so since i have nothing to do anyway, i decided to watch the entire SaTC series (which i did in less than 2 weeks, bless you Sidereel). lol @ the show supposedly empowering women, when 1/2 of it involves the female characters being treated like shit by men, swearing off dudes (which they do carry through...for like 1 episode) and then doing the same thing the next episode. the writing for the show was applaudable though but i got tired of carrie "i'm so witty and full of puns and i make funny faces!" bradshaw really fast. SJP will always be sarah on Hocus Pocus and no amount of manolo blahniks will convince me otherwise.

ok enough with the sex talk. a few sundays ago, nabillah, kham and i had a little picnic at the field in sengkang where we tried to fly our small kite.

until we became the victims of gatecrashers! i'll explain more in a separate entry, im still not done resizing/photoshopping the photos (that came from kham's camera cos my camera's battery died) because they are humongous (kham, you know what to do!) and my laptop is old and dying so i should be done in a couple of weeks.....
give or take a few more weeks.

i made some white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies for the picnic because i literally had white chocolate and macadamia nuts lying around in my fridge.

if you are a subway cookie fan, make these today.

let's talk about hockey. amalina the hockey player got us some tickets to the
junior hockey world cup

yes, junior. i was shocked (and slightly dismayed) when i found out these were the under21 teams after nabillah and i had examined the players thoroughly and 'chopped' our boys (fyi this was the guy i 'chopped', a quick google search would inform me that he was born in 1991. FAIL) thus my initial enthusiasm went from "omg he's so cute" to "fuck, how can he be a child of the nineties?!" nabillah had little to no problem perving on any random guy without feeling like an actual pervert, seeing as to how she is not even 20 yet officially but she is pretty much obsessed with this dude. poor amalina, who was genuinely really into the game, having to sit next to two giggly girls. plus we sat behind a dilf who resembled arjun rampal... very distracting! we sobered up for the germany vs australia game a few days later though. we sort of were supporting australia and of course we had to unknowingly sit our asses at the section with hardcore germany supporters. it was fun, being surrounded by aryan looking people who shouted "DEUTSCHLAND!" every few minutes and us trying to keep our cheering down when australia scored a goal. yup, loads of fun. so yeah, hockey is cool in my book.

let me exclaim something; i love bokeh!

this was a couple of saturdays ago at my nyai's. i love taking pictures of her flowers at night because of the pretty backdrop of the corridor lights from the opposite block. a carrie bradshaw-worthy pun would be to name this photo...bokehvillea.
yeah i know, i tried.

my mom also wanted me to bring some baked goods for my nyai and bibik so i made my feel good banana muffins and (mini!) sugar donut muffins.

oh banana muffins. you are what comfort food is all about.

i also went to the PC show after much consideration. managed to get a sweet 320gig (red!) hard drive after much cursing. stupid people and their stupid ways! let me tell you, after looking for parking for what seemed like forever (we ended up at millenia walk), the moment i stepped into suntec i turned to amalina and said "i immediately regret this decision." luckily, i spotted the seagate store from the door and even though it took us a long time to get there, we totally did a buy and dash. oh man, did we dash. anyway amalina is a frozen yoghurt virgin and since there was a frolick outlet at millenia walk, i offered to buy some froyo for her as a sort of thank you gesture for being there for me through the horror of human congestion we just experienced.

i'll just go ahead and say it; i prefer yami yogurt. lol sorry, i dont mean to be a yogurt elitist but frolick claims to 'stay hard' but as you can see, ours melted undesirably fast!
yami would never do that to you!

this is what my life has become, a frozen yogurt enthusiast with promise.

nabillah came over last saturday and i gave her an ultimatum; to please, pretty please, change my bedsheets for me or to just, change my bedsheets for me. i know i tweeted about changing my bedsheets and curtains 4 days before that and i managed to change the curtains, 2 pillowcases and 1 bolster case before i gave up. as a reward/peace offering, i suggested making some nutella cupcakes and she helped. and did the dishes. and finished the jar of nutella. everybody needs a sidekick who changes the bedsheets for you, holds the handheld mixer for you, does the dishes for you and
licks nutella from a spoon for herself.

or you can get a maid...and a dog for that last bit. but i prefer this penguin.

because we ran out of nutella, i scoured my fridge for something else to swirl into the batter and found a jar of dulce de leche that amalina got me for my birthday ages ago!

i've been 'saving' it, i dont even know why. but i cant think of a better time to use it, these cupcakes are freaking awesome and pretty easy to make.

oh, this past sunday. guess where we were?

i wonder how many sundays i've spent at this very place this past 6 months. not that it matters, because i chanced upon this wonderful quote "the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time" and it is now my life mantra. perspective guys, perspective!

amalina came over my place on monday and we made tons and tons of mushroom for lunch. there was the ham&cheese sandwich that we made special by casually inserting a pan-fried portobello mushroom and then there was the 'sorta-soup', consisting of enoki and shitake mushrooms cooked in a bit of butter and plenty of dried herbs. i am now obsessed with portobello and enoki mushrooms! i'll take the latter any day though, because its literally 80cents for a bundle. oh joy.

we also made this sinful delight. i've made them before and i honestly dont remember the caramel bit being so... leceh to make. luckily amalina was the appointed whisker and she hardly broke a sweat but damn it was tiring. but come on, you get this at the
end of all that! win-win. kinda.

hey remember headcovers?

i wonder why i stopped doing them. isnt this a perfect headcover though? taken with my handphone, my camera's battery was dead. it's been dng that more than i'd like to admit. oh please god please, let me have this one thing, this one device. i've been geeking out over the 50D though, im salivating at the thought of owning it.
hey, a girl can dream alright?

speaking of cameras, i took part in this photo contest and it would be awesome if anyone reading this would vote for me haahaa! its for samsung's latest digital camera, the ST50, so yeah... vote for me! apparently you can vote once per day and you could stand to win an mp3 player. i'm beeswaxx and right now i am being beaten by a girl with photos of cats. karma, is that you?

hey guess what? end of possible retina-burning entry!

you know sometimes when you wake up and you dont immediately get out of bed, choosing instead to lie perfectly still with eyes closed and just...thinking? thinking good thoughts, thinking about the dream you just had, thinking about what excuse to give for not getting out of bed. i was doing just that last thursday when my thoughts were interrupted by the sms ringtone of my phone. okay, anyone who knows me would know that i am bad bad bad with returning smses/calls (it's my prerogative, my burden to bear) and normally i would, since we're being honest, ignore it. but that day, i felt almost compelled to check my hp right away and when i did, my heart sank to the pit of my stomach. the sms from nabillah said that my dada is sick and the ambulance was taking him to the hospital.

i dont think i've ever sat up so quickly. a few calls later, i found out that my dada was having difficulty breathing and his cough was making it worse. took the quickest shower of my life, went to TTSH and waited with nabillah, her mom, my nani and my uncle for my dada to be warded. everyone seemed calm so i let myself think that maybe it wasnt so bad. a few hours later, things were looking bleak when we realised that they put him in the ICU. the doctor explained to us that he had a very bad lung infection and because of his blood pressure and old age, stabilizing him would take a while. i stared at him through the glass door, lying on the bed with what seemed like 20 tubes in/around/over him and wondered why he looked so different. who was this man? and then i realised that it was because for the first time in my life, my dada looked weak. he looked small. i guess ive always regarded him as a superhero figure, i mean he has always had such a mighty presence even though he might not be as strong as he was in his prime. my dada is like don fucking corleone (minus all the criminal activities of course), people respect and more importantly, love him. so seeing him like that was like a 'woah' moment...
my larger than life grandfather is human after all.

thankfully, after 4 days in the ICU, he was transferred to a normal ward (with a few very err, memorable wardmates) and today, he's been discharged! he looks like his normal self, speaks like his normal self and acts like his normal self but i dont know.
these things are eye-openers you know?

dearest dada, please get a lot of rest and get much much better soon!

love, your cucu yang suker makan.

a couple of things that made this whole week of waiting for my dada to recover slightly easier are; the chicken rice at the kopitiam of TTSH (foo!), TTSH's close proximity
to a yami yogurt, and visits from this little dude.

amr aka zoolander jr please stop being so cute! urgh it was so difficult to stop myself from biting him everytime i look at his face. and nabillah and i did a semi-bad thing out of good intentions. we fed him. we fed him ice cream. wait for it, not just any ice cream, soya bean ice cream.

oh and his older brother affan is not so bad-looking himself

he actually let me carry him! ok so it was only that one time but still!
trying to get this boy to crack and let his guard down is hard man, it's really hard.

things i'm not gonna miss (other than the fact that my dada is not, you know, in the hospital anymore) are; queueing up and registering to visit, waiting for my turn to visit (3 visitors at a time please) and having to sanitize my hands before and after each visit.
seriously, they even stamp kids!

this child is 1 ok, he doesnt need to be registering for shit.

enough with the babble, this was last Sunday


my mom bought me a few periplus mini cookbooks and now i'm dying to make lemon bars. it's weird, i've never been a citrus person but it's never too late to start, i guess? amalina (aka my resident food taster/tester), please cleanse your palate so you may
taste & judge my (would be) lemon bars!

how do you explain making a joke about taking 3 days to update one entry and actually taking 3 days to update one entry? self fulfilling prophecy? is the social psychology ghost of polytechnic past paying me a visit?

i've just been distracted, i guess, even more so than usual. and not the "ponder about the future" kind either, more of the "why's that? what's that? who's that?" sort. i've got the wandering mind of an kaypohinquisitive 6 year old. what can i say, the internet's fucking distracting.

let me create a sort of timeline since i last updated. first things first, KL trip!

the short vay-cay was over in a blink of an eye but it was memorable as hell.
"bapak besar maner?!"

shortly before i left for KL, i got a sweet email from the people at miotv saying that i won the Top Chef TNP contest (that i took part on a major whim, i submitted it on the very last day) so yeay for that! i hardly ever win anything so that was cool but lets be honest, i was probably the only one who took part in it lol.

btw for those who have no idea what Top Chef is, its basically the cooking equivalent of Project Runaway and it is AWESOME. padma lakshmi's the host and i dont care that she bumped uglies with salman 'i've been issued a fatwa' rushdie, loved her in Planet Food, love her in Top Chef.

next on the timeline, mother's day. how was mother's day for you?

i baked my mom these delicious Sugar Donut Muffins and i have to say, this is probably my 2nd favourite muffin of all time (i dont think anything can knock the amazing banana crumb muffin off from the top of my list) and it was ridiculously easy to make.

i also made her a stack of these d-i-y coupons (that i slotted in between her card)

i'll admit, i almost left out the dishes one because that is my most hated household chore of all time. i just dont think im genetically cut out for it. i use way too much soap, i waste way too much water, i take way too much time. but meh, i love my mom more than i hate doing the dishes so i'll learn to deal.

interesting fact about my mom and i; even though we dont look anything alike, we have moles on our faces at the exact same spots! different sizes (the one on her upper lip is bigger than mine, the one on my eyebrow is bigger than hers) but cool nonetheless.

may so far has been pretty decent. i've been doing the usual shit, coffee with the fav people, ichiban boshi (again) with ain (again), having way too much yami yogurt, catching up on my reading... the usual.

2 unusual things happened though. wait, make that 3! when i came back from KL, i discovered that my (9 yr old) modem died. that's ok, it was bound to happen someday, i mean, i cant expect to use the same modem that i used during my icq days to last me forever right? so i got a new one and then a week later, my external hard drive (with 95% of my photos, my movies, my tv shows [my entire OZ/Arrested Development series!!!] and my resume/showreel) suddenly cannot be read on my laptop. rozi and i joked about backing up our back ups because i was always too paranoid to transfer stuff into the hard drive. i guess the joke's on me :/ i am actually sorta amazed at how i'm handling it, i havent had a full blown panic attack yet and im sure thats only because i havent really used up all my other options (to be honest, there aren't that many left) *gulp* so im thinking that it's ok, i can just burn anything else i have on my laptop's hard drive that's taking too much space while i fix/beg my mom for a new external one. but of course, i'm not cinderella, this is not a fairy tale. my cd-rom drive also rosak loh! disbelief is the only emotion i can really say i've been experiencing, i feel like this kid.

also, my body clock's all weird. its like at a point where it's so abnormal, its normal, you know? is it odd that i take 3 hr naps at dusk and/or dawn in lieu of a full 8 hr at night? i dont know, is it? anyways, i have accepted that fact, what i cant accept is the bizarro cravings i get when its like 4 in the morning and i realise that "hey, you slept through dinner you idiot" and my stomach is grumbling to the beat of Boom Boom Pow. i've mentioned having a pancake craving, the other night i had a french toast craving.

why cant i get a craving for something totally effortless like tuna straight out of the can? which will never ever happen because i hate tuna. i shouldnt even complain about effort though, this one didnt take much. 2 slices of bread, 1 egg, 1/2 tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, a dash of cinnamon and you've got yourself ~french toast~

i was also craving this caramel cake when ain reminded me how awesome anything caramel is, so i made it.

if i was gonna grade this, i would give it a B4. the frosting was so sweet, it was almost overwhelming. the cake is something i would make again though, just with a totally different frosting.

what is up with women (young or old) finding almost anything that's 'mini' cute? case in point, i am not an animal person (like...ever.) but why do i feel like squeeing on the inside when i see cute & small animals. i was at Cold Storage when i saw this mini grater and decided then and there that i had to have it. was it because i needed it? i already had a normal-sized one at home. was it because it was cheap? maybe (it was less than 2$). but it was mostly because guys! have you seen how small and cute it is?!

urgh! according to the package, it's 'ideal for grating fresh garlic, ginger & chocolate' but what they didnt say is that it is also ideal for insane people with no control or restraint.

Fresh Bulgogi has been around for awhile, have you guys tried it? i had it for the second time earlier tonight at E-Hub (so crowded!) and sure, the steamboat & bbq kicks ass (more than Seoul Garden actually) but the bimbap is also pretty good.

scratch that, it was really good. we had the garlic chicken one and at $9.90 it was worth it because they were very generous with well, pretty much everything. my mom and i tried zingdo when they first opened eons ago and it put me off kimchi but this one i loved (weird right, since they're from the same company).

i shall end this post with a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche;

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane
by those who could not hear the music."

so please, please, please dance.

the amount of stuff on my bed is both staggering and embarrassing. my version of packing clearly means throwing stuff on the bed until i can no longer see the bedsheets. oh man i am super anal about some stuff and one of them is packing, which is why i dont like doing it because it takes forever. i have to write down a list beforehand of things i need to bring and backup things i dont need to bring but will stuff into my bag anyway (i'm a big fan of "what if" and "just in case") and then i get overwhelmed by how much stuff i actually need to pack and then i take a break and forget all about it.

like now.

let's get some stuff out of the way. movies in april roll call!

this was a good month for movies, for me at least. let's start with the great; holy crap The Wrestler was so good. it was so real and raw and i know i said sean penn did a great job in Milk but oh my god mickey rourke totally deserved that oscar. this was a character only he could give justice to and can we talk about how hot he used to be? kids, stay away from the knife. Departures was also another great film, it was really beautifully shot, with a sort of quiet elegance and i'm not ashamed to admit this, i bawled maybe 515 times throughout the movie. can you believe i've never watched The Wedding Singer till recently? it's one of those movies that i've caught the start and the end but i was always missing out on the middle part. strangely enough another movie that i have yet to fully watch is 50 First Dates starring...the same actors (pretty much). 17 Again was funny and cute and utterly predictable and to be honest i only watched it for Matthew Perry. nabillah was freaking me out by confessing that she found zefron hot, i was genuinely scared for her soul. i'll talk about the wolverine movie later on but yeah, everything else was... okay. i had high hopes for The Reader, Brideshead Revisited and Margot at the Wedding but they were just alright. so yeah, i would definitely recommend The Wrestler and Departures.

i made strawberry muffins last week!

funny story bout strawberries, i only recently started eating the fruit. i mean before this i liked strawberry flavored stuff but not the actual fruit itself. thanks to my mom though, i have tried eating them and im liking it! these muffins were really good, im looking forward to making them again and again and again.

last tuesday, nabillah, kham, balqis and i had dinner at the new hawa at kembangan (i really like it there) and it was so fun. the company definitely made me enjoy my meal more and it doesnt take a whole lot for me to appreciate the chicken rice there as it is!

we later tried out this nearby ice cream place for dessert. it was yummy, i had the creme brulee and chippy mint with mini m&m's and i almost finished it which, for anyone who knows me, is a pretty mean feat.

my favourite girl baby/baby girl turned 1!

went out with huda and nayo a day before her birthday. we checked out Tampines 1 and it was a pretty cool mall i guess, seeing that it's in tam-pines but come on, do we really need 3 shopping centres at pretty much the same location? and whats with the big hoopla with uniqlo? it's just like muji? why are people such lemmings?
too many questions!

i've been wanting to get a backpack for a while now, everytime i go on trips i've had to borrow one from other people, but i keep putting it off because well, who buys backpacks? so when my mom tossed a 50$ capitaland voucher my way i figured i might as well use that to get a backpack and i've had my eye on these 2 since that one time i online-window-shopped for like 9 hours straight.

alas, it wasnt meant to be! i saw the jansport one a while back but i couldnt find it anywhere and the eastpak one was more than 100$ and that's 100$ that i wasnt willing to part with so yesterday i dragged nabillah to get the first big backpack that i see and i found it at...billabong lol. how pseudo-surfer-girl-zaman-2001 of me. but it was within the price range and it was big and it wasnt ugly so it was good enough for me!

and we saw akshay kumar! at marina square, how random. we were walking and suddenly nabillah grabbed my arm and shrieked "ajay devgan?! oh my god ajay devgan!" and we were "oh my god"-ding each other and it was probably a full minute later that i said "eh, that's akshay kumar what" and then she sulked because i did not want to go chase him for a photo. sorry dude, he's not shah rukh khan! but he was very handsome though, and oddly enough slim and im only saying that its odd because i've seen his ads for levis (at ONTD of all places) and he seemed so buff.

after that i went over to her place for a while and the three budak lapoks were there.

good lord why are boys so hyper? i felt like a super multitasker when i tried to listen to all 3 of them talk (at the speed of light!) at the same time. one was telling me a joke, one was showing me a trick and one was asking me about swine flu. cute as hell but too energy-draining! and my favourite ah pek was having fever which explains his sulky face.

i watched the wolverine movie just now and it was awesome.

made more awesome by the fact that we had frozen yogurt afterwards! strawberry for me and grape for the penguin. but seriously though, i am totally on the other side of the spectrum when it comes to action movies. i avoid them like i avoid all forms of exercise. but x-men is different. i watched a tonne of x-men cartoons when i was smaller and other than devon sawa in Casper, the character of gambit was my only other crush as a kid (before BSB and Nick Carter obviously) so i've made myself watch the movies. i quite enjoyed X2 but i really like this one (other than their choice of gambit, which i have made very clear) because it had just the right amount of humour to tone down the killkillkill factor of the movie (VICTORRRR!) and the sfx was dynamite. it totally made me forget the suckfest that was x-men 3.

gaaaah ok i should really start to pack now before i fall asleep and/or
procrastinate even further by doing something else.

have a great long weekend everybody!

you know, there can be some advantages in getting lost in singapore.

such as ending up at chinatown.

such as ending up at chinatown and discovering that cheap shit is all around you.


guys i totally made this charm bracelet!

from scratch!

by myself!

so whadya think, enough exclamation marks there?



ain, ain't you proud of me?

being sick sucks. i mean that's the general consensus, we get it, but its amazing how you sorta forget how miserable you get when you're ill and then boom, welcome to gloomy-town. my melancholy came in stages though; last thursday i had a bit of cough and then on friday, sore throat. on saturday night i got a minor fever and on sunday, it was a "light at the end of the tunnel" moment. i was feeling fine and then on monday, everything came back with a vengeance. i basically spent the day under my blanket, taking panadol&clarinase&cough syrup and willing my body to flush out all the toxins. it didnt help that i could not freaking breathe, my nose was almost completely blocked. today when it didnt get any better my mom brought me to the doctor (at 8 in the morning!) and all i was thinking was "PLEASE NO JABS PLEASE". the doctor said i had a sinus infection which was basically causing my on&off fever and gave me tons of medication (which included what might be the world's biggest pills) and im feeling much better now so hurray for me.

i think the funny thing to come out of this is my complete lack of appetite. the only thing i had on monday was a primadeli bun which i took 15 minutes to finish and today i had a sausage mcmuffin (gave up a quarter way through) and fish soup (ignored the noodles, ate 1/2 of the fish). oh it's not that i wasnt hungry, i was famished but the thought of swallowing any type of food made me gag and the whole time i was thinking "oooh so this is how it feels like to purposely starve oneself" it was an educational experience.

i'm trying to remember what happened since i last blogged so i guess i'll start with the time rozi and i went to the national museum last month because, well, just because.

so much walking that day! grrr.

my nani turned 75 at the beginning of the month! i made my chocolate caramel cheesecake and i actually halved the cheesecake batter because there usually are at least 2 other storebought cakes so i figured hey, maybe mine will be the afterthought... which i was fine with! so my cheesecake became a cheese-tart of sorts and then egad!
there was only 1 other cake!

oh man, look how puny my cheese-tart is compared to the colossal (real) cake. it was a tiny bit embarassing but oh well, at least they finished it. i also made brownies & blondies which was gone in 60 seconds. ok maybe not 60 seconds, maybe a few minutes. my nani has 13 grown kids with their own kids okay, that place was packed!

because i am a part time bat, i usually skip dinner because i'm hibernating.
and then a few weeks ago at 3am i was suddenly craving for pancakes. hardcore. a quick search online lead me to this easy as hell recipe and i made them. yes, at 3 in the morning. and then the following sunday morning, i decided to make blueberry pancakes for my mom because i love her and because i had a bit of frozen blueberries leftover that i dont predict using anytime soon.

my mom loved it! it was neat, having breakfast together. my dad shunned my pancakes but only because sunday=LJS for breakfast and he religiously follows that to a T.

last tuesday there was some syf malay dance competition at NUS's cultural center and usually thats the last place in singapore i would want to be but the chance of seeing my cousin saiful in make-up & some ridiculous costume and dancing the freaking zapin?
i mean, how could i miss that right?

turns out his school was the first to perform so i had to sit through the whole set of 12 schools performing. it was certainly an interesting few hours, i mean i stifled a yawn here and there but it definitely made me nostalgic, made me think of the 4 years i spent in tarian in primary school. and then it made me LOL.

i made something totally awesome last week! parmesan crusted chicken!

as usual, click for the recipe. my mom was in JB and i told her to get me some cheese if they weren't too expensive and she came back with 2 bags of parmesan and mozzarella. i remember watching this episode of some cookshow where the woman made parmesan chicken so i searched the web for a reliable & easy recipe and tried it out and it was magical. i cant wait to make it again!

this past saturday kham and i went to little guilin at bukit gombak

it was not the ideal weather to be there i guess (we were in the underground train from bugis and when it went out at redhill our jaws dropped at the heavy downpour) but it was so serene. no actual photos of the giant rock masquerading a hill because i only had my 50mm with me.

oh and here's my second set of highly suspicious cross-processed photos

highly suspicious only because they were done on photoshop of course.

also, this blog is 6 years old!
lol, im just amused and amazed that i've been able to keep it up for more than 1 year.

~there can be miracles...~

~...when you believe~

hah! oh geo challenge, you will be the death of me. what started as a joke between amalina and me (geo student vs history student) became something i had to do almost every time i'm online. chatting with me on msn? you can bet your ass i'm playing this in the other window. it could be worse i guess, i could be one of those people who floods your facebook homepage with the inane quizes that no one cares about.

before i bore you with the rest of the post, here's something i baked recently

Millionaire's Shortbread! easily one of the best things i've ever baked, they taste so good. in fact, they taste just like twix but with less chocolate! random fact of the day; when i was 15, i had a serious addiction to twix. it was so ridiculous, i would salivate at the mere mention of twix. i dont even know how it started! and then, as suddenly as it began, i was over twix. in fact, i dont think i've eaten one since then actually. i mentioned this to amalina yesterday during our coffee session and even she remembered it, therefore it's legit! i also had a mee rebus addiction when i was 10 but that's another story for another time.

movies thus far

wow, i havent watched an intelligent film in so long, i can feel my brain becoming irrelevant. i quite enjoyed marley&me and mini's first time though, the former made me cry even though i am not and never will be an animal person (unless they're on my plate OH SNAP too crude?) and the latter reaffirmed my belief that alec baldwin is a major DILF. i was actually hoping that bedtime stories would be like click...it wasnt but it wasnt anything like zohan so thank the lord. i miss adam sandler circa happy gilmore, although i am looking forward to funny people, i have a feeling its gonna be epic. inkheart? bleargh, i dont even know why i watched that movie. lol it wasnt bad, it just wasnt good. brendan fraser needs better hair plugs amirite? and twilight...oh.my.god.

last monday amalina came over and i made fish&chips.
we parked ourselves in front of my tv and watched...twilight.

both of us wanted to watch this movie basically to see what the big hoohaa was (if you're on ONTD you'd know that for a while back every other post was a freaking twilight one) but hell no we weren't about to pay $10 for a tween movie. patiently we waited until a proper torrent was available so came the day when we finally got a chance to watch it. holy crap, i...we... we were srsly making this face througout the movie >:0 (in mutual disbelief at how bad it was) except for the times when we shrieked with laughter (ie. when he 'jizzed in his pants', in the forest when edward was telling bella that he was designed to kill and then he fucking sparkled) sparkle! can you imagine a more sissy thing for a vampire to be doing?! somewhere lestat is plotting stephanie meyer's death. god, the dialogue was super cheesy, the edits were amateur-ish even and the acting! oh lord, the acting. is constipated, pseudo angst the new method acting? i'm sorry, i have now involuntarily lumped all twilight fans into one person. this girl.

i dont mean to sound like a broken record but...........

WANT.

i wish you could see my hair right now. i showered and wrapped a towel around my head and literally forgot about it till 5 mins ago. i look like diana ross! but if i really was a supreme i would probably be florence ballard, the one who gets kicked out of the band and then dies a sad drunk.

also, guys?

guys!

"wait, what happens if you fall in love?"

"you dont believe that do you?"

"what, it's love it's not Santa Claus"

i absolutely cannot wait to watch 500 Days of Summer

other than the fact that they used regina spektor's music for the trailer, come on,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel (URGH not her annoyingly gaudy copycat"doppelganger") together? a match made in indie heaven!

because i managed to clear a lot of space on my laptop so its not as slow as before

because it's the second friday the 13th of the year (already)

because today i've screwed up more than once

because this is more than a month overdue

because i've run out of excuses


photos from my cousin's wedding 33 days ago!

vanilla yoghurt + granola

so this was breakfast.

okay i shall not lie to you, i did not exactly eat this for breakfast. truth be told i am usually just about to go to sleep when people actually start having breakfast. this was actually lunch, caused by the fact that there was only leftover jempotan food(bleurgh) and i did not feel like cooking anything.

i'm sorry i didnt post this earlier but 2 saturdays ago 3 important people in my life all turned 1 year older. and you know what this means...

3 birthday cakes!

my abah turned 50 and both balqis and amalina turned 23. oh man, it was a pretty hectic weekend! let's summarize 48hours in 2 sentences; my mom and i surprised my dad at midnight with 3 small cakes and his gifts (all from adidas, he is the easiest person to shop for presents for) and then later that night kham, nabillah and i surprised balqis at the airport with an ice cream cake and gifts. the next day i met up with amalina for coffee and to pass her her gifts, which included 2 boxes of baked goods!

and of course i documented the process of baking the erm, baked goods.

made brownies, cheesecake cookies and cupcakes with minty cream cheese frosting.
as usual, click fo' mo'.

i'm glad at least 2 other people are now the same age as me, although i think i'm the only one to actually look 23 =/ at this almost mid-mid-life period in my life, it's always fun to chance upon things that gets me almost teary-eyed with nostalgia.
like these stuff i found randomly at a book fair and a bubble tea shop!

50cents each! doesnt this take you back? i feel like i'm 9 again and being forced to go to ngaji. speaking of which, i found a photo of balqis, nabillah and i and some of our other friends after a ngaji session and it's the funniest photo ever. one day i shall scan it! also, if anyone sees a pack Happy Family cards please get it for me so that i may complete my collection...and my life.

it's time for headcovers of the week, folks.

this week i present to you, a bodycover!

i feel like i need to show some love for Charco's.

mmmmm ribs and creamed potatoes. ribs and creamed potatoes people. at the void deck of some hdb flat in ang mo kio no less! oh and for those who cares... it's halal! how i wish i have some sort of genetic deformity where my metabolism is freakishly high so that i can have this once a week.

on a more serious note, the past week's chirpy level was not exactly of the brady bunch proportion. full of botched up plans, jaw-dropping moments of utter disbelief and the cherry on top of the crap sundae, unpredictable weather. 2 deaths in the extended family, one in a horrific accident (that makes me worry so much for my dad) and the other from old age. i feel so much for the family who lost their man of the house in the road accident. i cannot imagine what they must be going through, the wife losing her husband, the daughters losing their father... just like that. having their entire lives change so abruptly. i never really know what to say but i wish for them acceptance and eventually, peace of mind, however hard it might be right now.

i shall end this post with some photos from the time we stole the virginity
of nabillah's brand new laptop's built in webcam.
crrreeeeeepers

i've been trying to get organised

neatly leaving post-its in books is kinda like getting organised isn't it?

let's talk about the headcover of the week;

the end.

the second month of the year is *gulp* ending soon. these are movies i've watched since the beginning of 2009, in that order because im 20% anal about these sorta things.

there were some movies i wish i didnt bother watching like W, Sex Drive and Rachel Getting Married. and then there were the stand-outs like Vicky Christina Barcelona (i did not expect to like this film), Milk, Choke and Slumdog Millionaire. right now the only movies im looking forward to are The Reader & Coraline

speaking of Slumdog Millionaire, isnt it the cutest movie ever? its the most heartwarming and non-pretentious film ive seen in a long time and i was so excited to hear M.I.A. on the soundtrack not one but two times! me and nabillah were cracking up everytime the youngest Salim character was on screen.
he's a deadringer for our cousin Firhan!

right?!

slightly off-topic but can we talk about how unfair it is for boys to have thick and long eyelashes? what use do they have for them? do they know how troublesome it is to remove mascara? how many times a day do they thank the lord for their eyelashes?
too many questions, too little answers!

still on the topic of family, we had a get-together last saturday. abundance of food as usual but also abundance of people! it was exceedingly humid so after dinner we took refuge in nabillah's room. our entertainment for the night were the kids.

we started off with writing words on the board and asking nuzhan to pronounce them. wanton=want-tone! haahaa. we also made him spell words and i almost peed my pants when he spelt turtle as tete! and then in an effort to cover up his error, he added an r at the end.... teter! oh man, i literally lost my voice from laughing so much. nazhan and him then took turns drawing us and this was nazhan drawing kak ameen. funny thing was that while the two of them have entirely different styles in drawing people and things, they both gave unusually large pigtails on everyone they drew! doesnt this face remind you of the part in The Little Mermaid when ursula turns the mermaids into
those small kelp-like creatures? lol.

when the kids grew tired of being laughed at, ummairah taught nabillah and i how to play blackjack. remember when card games meant Snap, Happy Family, Old Maid and Donkey? man, i rocked at Snap! when im commited to it, i have very good hand-eye coordination and yes, im super commited when it comes to playing Snap.

i can do a few magic tricks with the cards but i suck at gambling. it gets boring after a while and there's so many rules and shit. i'd rather be playing mario on my dslite.

did i saytype that out loud?

seriously though, mario is the bee's knees. i play the game whenever
i cannot sleep so in laymans term, i play it alot ok?

66666, how cool is that! i love it when these things happen. once, i glanced at my watch and it was 12:3456 and it was like nothing could spoil the rest of my day.

btw, typing this entry; 15 mins. uploading the 7 images; 2 hours.

why photobucket, why?!

all you need is love

this isnt a belated valentine's day entry, although this picture was taken on the day a boy in diapers is supposedly going around shooting arrows at people. it seems a field in sengkang is now the it place to be flying kites. nabillah and i were on the bus en route to the interchange when we chanced upon this awesomely cute kite.

after a tiny bit of shopping, we couldnt decide where to have dinner and spent a lot of time eliminating places that would be crowded with people carrying bouquets and/or balloons. finally settled on seah im at harbourfront. i've got one thing to say,

you can't handle the truthcarbs!

there isnt much going on since my last update, except for my cousin's wedding last weekend. im slowly resizing and photoshopping the photos from that occasion but there were a few that had priority, plain and simple. such as these;

im laughing so hard at the first picture, my favourite ah pek is now missing his 2 front teeth! and of course more photos of nabillah pretending to be a back up dancer in a hindi movie are impending, it would be unfair for me to keep them to myself. i mean, this are what sidekicks are for!

sidekicks also pose for you. i'm inspired by this flickr group alot. like, alot alot.

im totally looking forward to creating my own set of headcovers!

and finally, the pièce de résistance of this post..... amalina with a goatee!

haahaa! i dreamt last week that she had a badass goatee and this was the best i could come up with. i call this look stoner-chic.

it was a sort of divine intervention. on friday my mom came back with lots of groceries, including frozen sutchi fillets. i usually pan fry them or cut them into tiny slices for my aglio olio so i was pretty stoked. later that night i met up with amalina and in between our conversation about where to eat, she said that her maid made fish & chips and it was like a bright light entered the car. i decided then and there that i was destined to make fish & chips within the next week.

god does work in mysterious ways.

ok enough of the extra dramatic why, lets talk about the how. i decided against using a batter and opted for a breadcrumb coating instead. 3 reasons, the first being when i do eat the traditional fish&chips (the batter kind) it gets soggy after a while, and soggy is never a good thing. the 2nd reason was that if i used a batter i would have to deep fry the thing and with breadcrumbs i would just need to shallow fry the bugger. i'll admit, large amounts of hot oil are one of my irrational fears (and i say irrational because i'm actually scared i might slip and trip face first into the pan). 3rd (and ultimately the sole factor) reason is because my absolute most favourite fish&chips ever from botak jones uses breadcrumbs! thus i present to you....
Breaded Fish & Roasted Chips.

i decided to try my luck and went straight to the index of my Nigella Express book and started looking at the fish section. this recipe immediately stood out, i was bowled over at the very few ingredients and how easy it seems.

i decided not to fry the potatoes but to roast them in the oven instead, not because it was the healthier option (obviously) but because i actually like my roasted potatoes! plus it's pretty fool-proof, wash and cut potatoes into wedges, coat in olive oil and season with salt, pepper and whichever herb happens to be nearest (in this case rosemary & i added chilli flakes just because) and bake in a hot oven for 40 minutes.


the work line! i cut the fillet into 4 pieces. its not rocket science, you coat the fish in cornflour, then dip it in the beaten egg mixture and cover completely with breadcrumbs.

easy peasy.

so this was lunch!
i also made a dill mayonnaise dip (mayo+dill+salt&pepper+lemon juice)
and it was soooo good.

lol i know, i fail at food styling.

fish&chips party at my place is a go!

i would like to introduce you guys to my new favourite drink

iced vanilla black tea latte!
is it possible to judge a drink from its name? because i did and now i'm in love.

and no penguin, it does not taste like teh susu mamak!

speaking of which, nabillah bogeh!

haahaa she finally removed her huge-ass (compared to her other teeth) wisdom tooth!

oh nabillah, here are the links i wanted to show you. 1 / 2
(ambik kau minah malaysia!)

speaking of links have you guys heard the christian bale tirade yet? holy shit what a douchebag! dear mr bale, whatever feelings i had for you after watching
American Psycho is now gone. //ETA: BALE-OUT TIRADE REMIXED//

oh and i got a twitter account? lol its so fun. add me if you have one and if you don't, sign up for one! its like...you know those irritating people who have the most redundant facebook status updates? yeah like that but automatically less annoying because nobody's talking in third person.

had yusheng with my mom

it was so funny, i thought you were supposed to say your auspicious wishes for the new year while tossing the salad together but the waitress serving this to us was muttering some as she poured the dressing and other condiments onto the platter. it was sort of awkward, it was like she was talking to herself and my mom and i were interrupting her private moment.

ain came over just now and we made smores bars!

they are so good, my parents (dad especially) have been snacking on so many.
watched Anchorman (think it might be my 57th time watching it) and Shaun of the Dead in between and after baking. just like huda and i used to quote Zoolander in poly, ain and i were quoting practically the whole of Anchorman while getting asthma attacks from laughing so hard.

spotted at the notice board at my lift lobby

because nothing shouts 'safe environment for your kids!' like hastily written d-i-y flyers.

and lets not mock the grammar ok? too easy.

why are gmail and photobucket being such huge dicks? why, oh wide world of web, why!

anyway, watched Milk last week with ain. man, the ticket counter girl didnt even asked for our id. we're old! this happened to be my first 'legal' r21 movie btw. i remember when Bad Education came out 4 yrs ago, me and ain sneaked into the theater to watch it....good times. this was of course before i discovered the beauty of tor-rent-s. by the way, milk was briliant. sean penn was eerily good in his role, playing a flamboyant gay man. and even though we both knew the ending, ain and i quietly went 'noooo' when he got shot. we had an overpriced dinner at marche('s?) and then some brew at pacific coffee.

presenting ain's bigger than life coffee cup. check out the size of the platesaucer! my iced caramel latte sucked so much, its like god was telling me to stick to starbucks. and ain thanks for the charm bracelet! i valued its short life on earth.

one of the baking books i got for my birthday was this one, and while the cupcakes in the book were cute and all, the cheesecakes were the ones that caught my fancy. so for my mom and nayli's pre-birthday party last saturday, i offered to bake the birthday cake. Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake..... mmmmm.

click for the recipe and lots more photos, as usual. i was anxiously waiting for my nyai's official review and she told me it was very good! this coming from a woman who has never willingly eaten cheese before (much less a cake drenched with caramel), i was grinning from ear to ear. weeeeee. father's side of the family, have no fear! i shall make this cake for nani's birthday!

dropped by borders on sunday (it was one of the only places in town that was open) and bought a james dean poster. having worked there before i knew calendars would go for $5 a few weeks after the new year so i waited and waited some more, even though patience is not my middle name. oh the things i'm willing to do to save $25!

also, balqis bought me the nigella express book omg! how random and awesome. i have already bookmarked so many recipes to try out...... happpppppppy!

oh and happy chinese new year? let us welcome the year of the ox. funny story, i was born in the year of the tiger but before cny so my mom said my top half is of a tiger and my bottom part is of an ox. looking at my big butt i guess the theory must be true.

met up with huda and nayo yesterday! i'm sure you all remember nayo. i'm so glad that she is a happy baby and not scared of people and by people i mean me. urgh cant stand her cuteness. dont be distracted by her smile in the picture, she had just made doodoo! nayo when you are older i will tell you stories about your mummy ok?
lots and lots of stories!

my mom turns 47 today!

went to bishan just to get her a slice of her most favourite cake in the whole wide world... coffee bean's carrot cake. just a slice because my dad is not much of a dessert person and i'd rather eat bad tuna than have a bite of that cake (dont get me wrong, i love carrots but...not in a freaking cake) my dad and i got her a snazzy coffeemaker and a pair of even snazzier heels.

also, guess who else turns a year older today? nicholas gene carter!

dearest nick, my 13 yr old self would like to wish you a happy birthday.

my 23 yr old self would like to ask... paris hilton?

really, nick?

a few days ago, while sitting at starbucks (where else) with nabillah as she studied and i gazed into nothingness and listened to silverchair's reflection of a sound... it hit me. i have a lot of things to say. so i stole a piece of paper from the penguin and wrote out things that i wanted to blog about, things that no doubt in a week i would probably forget. so let this serve as a warning, this is gonna one of those rant posts and i think its gonna be my longest one yet.

to make things fair i shall start with 2 photo posts

a family bbq from 13th&14th of last month, and a dinner with my parents on the 15th of this month (a.k.a. last thursday lol)

let the rambling begin!

ok so as im writing down things to blog about, nabillah whispered to me that the couple sitting behind us were making out (tongue involved!) and the worst thing was that they were kind of old. the guy was this malay dude (maybe in his 60s) and the chinese lady was probably in her 40s. listen, i get it, old people have needs too but goddamn it address those needs somewhere else! somewhere where you are not around people with weak gag reflexes! and they did not even buy any drinks which brings me to the next issue, will starbucks please chase away people who just occupy tables
without getting anything?

so while we're on the topic of what annoys me most, let me rant about my recent oh no you didn't moment. i was on a crowded bus and sitting in the middle of the very last row. nyonya to my right was occupying 2 seats, 1 for her butt and 1 for her plastic bag. thats right, just one plastic bag that was too precious to be placed on her lap. as usual, nobody did anything but the bus grew significantly less crowded after a while so i let it pass. as i was making up a to-do list in my head, i felt 3 hard jabs to my right arm. girlfriend wanted to get off and was elbowing me to move! OH HELL NAW. as she stood up i said to her 'hello, dont know how to say excuse me is it?' and she gave me a blank muker tak bersalah look. they always give the muker tak bersalah look which in turn irks me even more. oh how i wish i could have given her a violent shove without suffering the consequences.

but i dont always hate taking the bus, i mean i prefer taking the bus than the train anytime. crowded trains bring out the worst in people. and on the bus, sometimes tvmobile actually plays something other than mindless repeats and chinese variety shows. my fav? this indian dance show, holy shit i love it when that plays! i think its a group dance contest? it's entertainment is what it is! their costumes and choreography are so 90s that i cant help smiling when i watch them dance with all the enthusiasm in the world. the best part is that since im always listening to my ipod so its like they're dancing to whatever song's playing. once, this group (they were shirtless but had on chains and... paint?) was 'dancing' to timbaland's bounce. was lol-ing in my head. the difference between indian dancers and the rest? they mouth the lyrics to whatever song they're dancing to with much gusto! haahaa.

speaking of which, one of my cousin's getting married early next month and we (the immediate family) are supposed to wear punjabi suits =/ dammit i hate it when the theme of the wedding isnt just...wedding. anyhow my mom and i had dinner at sakunthala's after looking for punjabi suits at the temporary tekka market (my mom bought hers for $22! while i once again couldnt find anything i like)

holy shit guys, best butter chicken i've ever eaten ever (yes, even nicer than usman's!) the gravy was so good i sorta want to drink it up like soup. i want to eat it all day everyday and not worry about my ballooning weight and thinning pockets. also, the fish briyani came with one hard boiled egg which i found really funny.

i saw this recipe online the other day and thought 'goddamn i need to make this'. i even went out and bought a bundt pan and everything! ($7, robinsons sale, happy me) so i went home, started making my first cake ever and bit my nails off while it baked in the oven. after taking it out and letting it cool for a while, i nervously turned the cake over to a plate and lol-ed to myself. my cake looks like those fake looking glossy breads! after a quick taste, i thanked the lord that it didnt suck but strangely (i say strange because the main ingredient is sweetened condensed milk) it was not sweet enough.

so i quickly made a glaze using icing sugar and milk and poured it all over the sucker. imo it tastes like kueh bahulu on crack.

before i forget, me and kham spazzed out last tuesday when we saw Chris Garver! we were just sitting outside Taka and i was whining about the fact that i chose Volvic over Evian because i thought it would be cheaper (it wasn't. $2.50 for a small bottle of mineral water are you kidding me?) when i saw him walking in front of us. i was like 'duuuuude, chris garver!' and instead of going over there and demanding a photo we just sat there and went 'oh my god we saw chris garver what the hell?' and proceeded to spread the news to friends and family. he was walking hand in hand with a tiny chinese woman so that was a downer (sorry nabs) and we prolly wouldnt have gotten a photo cos kham didnt bring her camera along and mine is staging a coup against me because.....

my accidental destructive nature strikes again! my beloved 50mm lens broke (well, it didnt break per se, more like cracked) and i honestly dont know how. ok so i do have a vague idea (i might have dropped my bag real hard once) so i was a walking sad sack the entire time. but luckily my dad inadvertently got me a new one so i am happy again! as a thank you gesture i bought him a book of sudoku puzzles.

sometimes i wish life was as simple as picking out which
blueberry muffin recipe was more appealing.

who am i kidding, i cant even choose a damn recipe without overthinking it. btw i did not know that blueberries are pretty ex, a 340g bag of frozen bluebrries costs $8.35, god. my mom is making me bake them for her colleague's birthday. fingers crossed it turns out good (i chose the recipe from book in the foreground btw, after 24hrs of consideration.)

yes, i tend to over-analyze and over-scrutinize things. its a gift and a curse, although i have yet to come across a situation where it has benefitted me. anyway because of this i cannot know anything distinctive about someone without always thinking about it. like for example when balqis & nabillah told me about hrithik roshan's extra thumb, i cannot watch kabhi kushi kabhi gham without unwittingly looking out for his thumbs. it cannot be helped! so after scouring imdb forums for CSI spoilers, i came across a thread that was about grissom's walk. he is...bow-legged. great, so now i cannot watch csi without thinking about how and why he walks that way. also, this season of csi is making me a big crybaby *spoilers ahead*, first with warrick's death and now grissom left! how long more till the show's swansong? =(

so that this post will not end on a sad note, i want to give a quick shout-out to McCafe's caramel crumb frappe. thanks for your existence in this hard time, i love you.

which brings me to this.
some people would call this unhealthy.

for me and nabillah, its the best of both worlds.
lol hey, you say po-tay-to i say po-tah-toSEDAP.

23years+1 week ago, due to placental problems, i was cut out of my mother's womb about 12 days before i was actually supposed to make my grand entrance.

~the more you know~


what a good birthday this year! celebrated it on the 3rd at my nyai's (she turned 66 on the 5th) with lots of food and love. we sang all the birthday songs twice! first with 2 big candles and 3 small ones for me, then 6 large ones and 6 small ones for my nyai.

and you know me, everytime i'm at my nyai's i cannot help but take pictures of her pretty flowers. i call this ~Beauty amidst Chaos~

i kid, i kid! lol im not pompous enough to name my photos, i just take them.

on my birthday itself, nabillah and balqis surprised me at my door (after making me wait like... forever! how can make birthday girl wait right!) bearing gifts and a cake

lol thank you guys! and kak ameen too! spent the next few hours rushing around vivo and then a huge seafood dinner with an even huger family at newton. got some presents from my wishlist, and then some! so thank you again everyone =)

hung out with kham on monday. it felt like old times when we were fresh graduates, with nothing to do, just going around singapore aimlessly but having fun nonetheless. only this time, one of us was on leave while the other remains a freshbasi graduate.

we went to so many places it was ridiculous. in this order; far east plaza, bukit timah, newton, haji lane, suntec city, peninsula plaza, raffles city.

at haji lane we chilled at mosi cafe for awhile. ice cold mint tea and hummus...yum. before that we ended up at the salvation army at bukit timah while trying to get to a shop at newton called b-i-y. i bought so many things (OKS mah) and then possibly giggled from the excitement of baking new stuff (i got not 1, not even 2 but 4 baking books for my birthday! haaaappppyyyy)

which brings me to my next subject. cake pops and the fact that i made them!

i've always wanted to make cake pops after drooling at the ones bakerella makes. i also made frosting from scratch for the very first time so that was lol-worthy (i tend to over analyze everything when trying things out for the first time. i think i read 23443 frosting recipes before settling on one) my mom said my cake pops look weird, even though i coated them in her favourite colour loh.... *sadface*

i gave one to nabillah on the bus pre dinner at spize

she seems to enjoy it so.... thats good lol

and remember kids, fairies might have their wands, police officers might have their batons, norman bates (dressed as his mother) might have his knife but...

i have my big, red & fabulous spatula!

happy 2009 everyone!

in lieu of any sweaty party among strangers, me and nabillah went out with the family instead. after getting my butt kicked at bowling by my mom (again), we went for supper at this coffeeshop at sembawang (yes amalina, while you were at ~shangri-la~ celebrating the new year, i was somewhere in your area!)

as 2008 ended and 2009 started, i was eating a garlic and cheese naan, enjoying myself with my family around me (we occupied 3 tables!) it was so funny, there was a huge flatscreen tv playing some new year's eve show with the usual chinese people that channel 5 deemed celebrities and during the 10sec countdown to the new year, everyone in that crowded coffeeshop was counting down as well! after the 3-2-1, everyone there cheered and banged the tables and generally creating a ruckus, but it was so much fun. i cant think of a better way to kickstart the year!

how has 2009 treated you thus far? im currently nursing a flu (that's slowly affecting my throat) and a slight fever, lol. 2009 did not start with a bang or a snip but with an
ah-choo instead!

can you believe we are almost a day away from the new year? it feels like it was just last week that balqis, nabillah and i went on a last minute trip to amk hub for some groceries for our new year's eve bsb karaoke party.

i feel like i should be in a reflective mode and get all deep, like i should be pondering over the year, my existence and everything around me.

but i wont. i will sum up 2008 in one word...interesting. it certainly wasnt boring but it definitely wasnt overly exciting either so yeah... interesting. my one hope for 2009 would be to not second guess myself and i would want this to be the case for everyone i know. sometimes you dont even realise you're doing it because your mind is so used to not trusting your first instinct, your intuition. your gut is there for a reason!

so what else does the new year bring, other than empty promises of resolutions?

why, a birthday of course! because i am practical and accommodating (hah!),
i made a wishlist post!

thanks friends & family! i heard this thing about people receiving like, bonus or something at the end of the year... im unsure of its truth. haahaa!

i also cannot believe i let my hair grow this long.

ignore my dirty & generally unused mirror.
maybe i should start the new year with a BANGsnip?

nah.