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.