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.