Level 33  / Awesome company / Too-expensive food / Hilarious conversations / Medium steak / Mac and cheese / Truffle Mash / Chocolate lava cake / So Hungry Now.  

Giant 22” Pepperoni’s / Yup those are standard forks and knives / Parma ham and rocket / YUM / Fried giant portobello mushroom / Basic Life love / Dessert / Mango icecream with brownie / Ice cream chefs

10KM / 67 minutes / Done / Hot hot hot sweaty run / 157th in age group / Many many many people running the half and full at 1230am / Insanity / When’s the next?(:

Hilarious drawings and attempts to guess previous lines of drawings just by words during cell.

       

Amazing weekend.

Today, I am going to use a sentence that all kids between the ages of 6 to 8 (myself included when I was that age) love to end their essays/composition writing with.
'... and we went home feeling tired but happy.' The end.



(I used to love writing The End at the end of my essays, it made me feel accomplished for some kiddy reason but my teachers told me that real essays don't end like that and all the cool kids didnt have that at the end, so 'the end' became a thing of the past)



But that statement so accurately describes my exact feeling now. I could possibly make it a little more grown up by adding 'and satisfied' and scratching 'the end' but just let me go back to being 6 years old again for awhile? Being an almost-adult is hard. Decisions, responsibilities, obligations and challenges. But we shall save that for another time yes?
Today is all about tired and happy(:
(but I still am up doing this big pictorial post, figures. hahaha)
I'm liking this space more and more!
*check out the cute red pepper kitchen timer wheee



6 hours of sleep last night + early morning wake up alarm would normally bring the inner grumpy dwarf out of me but today held purpose and the incentive of breaking the daily routine.
I was going to see my silly little brother graduate from basic military training. For the life of me I cannot imagine or even begin to picture how that silly little boy who used to irritate me to no end could don the smart 4, operate a rifle, do a 24km route march and pull off a parade.



Decided to brave the boat ride (I tend to get seasick!), the heat, and impending smellyness that just wafts all around you, I cannot even begin to describe the smell of boys in uniform after 24 click. Please imagine.





And being the good student, yes I brought notes along. Tragic or dedication? You tell me.
We had to be seated by 2.30pm and the parade was only going to start at 3.45pm.
1hr 15min of sitting and sweating. Its like watching the National Day Parade (minus the fireworks)



I brought cookies!
(:



But they werent for me. Decided to bake them for the graduating little kid since I didnt have time to do them last week. Chocolate and coffee. I have no idea why he likes coffee so much since he doesnt have anything to be done pertaining to the need of caffeine but yeah I did make those mocha chocolate babies. Did the pre-chilled dough yesterday at 1.30am, which came together in less than 20 min. After much cookie making, I have concurred that the ideal cookie making time is at night. So the dough can be chilled and ready for the next day to be popped into the oven. Easy peasy. Throw away the cling wrap and heyy! no washing! haha(:




Had some quality time with my notes and it was time to take out the camera to have some fun!
But first, mum had go all law abiding on us and filling out the survey form. Who even does that! With super long comments on the section of 'Additional comments'
She suggested that they provide refreshments. Welldone mum, welldone.
I was amused to say the least. I think she was bored. But I know she meant the refreshments bit. Really.
Look at her go. She had fun.



Had a game of 'find the little green son/brother' and a slew of photos ensued. Some, not by choice but by insistent orders of a very excited mother 'take this!', 'look there!', 'take, take, take'.
Okaaay I'll just keep clicking then..



FOUND! hahah(:



Some formation and drill thingy



Ooh look, no hair! haha



Then came the 'putting on the cap for the son' bit which we had to brave the smell. Oh gosh. I wanted very much to be a dolphin/seal for 10 minutes so that I could hold my breath. Hahaha ok I kid, dolphins are smelly too!



Then comes ceremonial cap throwing.
So my kid brother has survived 9 weeks of the army. He looks quite happy with the cookie you think! Yay. Now he needs a bath.



Quite worth the late night and early morning wake up to make these cookies to see people eating them like this. The cookies were pretty yum if I may say so myself. If the chocolate + coffee combination doesnt float your boat or give you an instant boost I dont know what would.
End of parade! Spot the difference. Before and after.



O for Orion. Which my dear mother thought stood for O for Onion.
Does look pretty alike but a whole world of difference. Needless to say I got a good laugh out of it.
'Hi, I'm from Onion company' joke much!!



And then it was 6pm! So we spent 5 hours waiting around for the 45min parade. eeeesh
He needed a bath, so home it was. Then dinner at Everything With Fries. Awesome.
I was super hungry by then. 1 pc bread + 2 oreos the entire day. Ravenous now! Stuck my head out of the car to try and snap the pretty sky outside the ferry terminal. Very unlike usual Singapore scenery.



Tried to get mum to take a decent photo of us and the pretty sky. This is what I got. Total fail. Mum's are awesome and all but behind a camera, yep this is as good as it gets. hahaaa. WHAT IS THIS!



And then onto dinner!



This time I got to try all the different fries cos I made them order different flavours heh.



And after that 4 of us demolished 1 nutella tart in about.....1 minute, literally.
Please excuse the blurry picture, people were impatient. Quite understandable if you're sitting in front of this.



It was so fast if you blinked three times slowly I promise you, you would only get a bite. But sharing desserts is (: A little sweet end to a meal which I love but not too much till you dont want it anymore.



Came home, decided to go for an impromptu run which turned out to be sprint intervals and hill climbs. Legs totally game over after that but the feeling of conquering hills and sprints is pretty cool. 5.6km worth of that, now I just want to sit and never get up.

See, 'tired and happy' pretty aptly describes the day aye! And if you need an instant perk-me-up. Please make those cookies, they would make anyone happy. Even grumpy the dwarf(:
I got the recipe from Kim@Lovintheoven and yes if you love coffee like I do my starbucks, please add all 3 tablespoons of instant coffee. No regrets there(:



School tomorrow. I can almost smell the weekend.

The End(;

It's Chinese New Year, and I don't really think I need to know the exact date on the lunar calendar to be all ready for this celebration/occasion/festival. Yes the date changes every year without fail thanks to the 30 day lunar calendar but also without fail, right after the christmas decorations come down from shops, malls and homes, the bright red ones go up with immediate effect. Silent night and Joy to the world morph into cny songs that have been pretty much ingrained into us since.



Its kinda impossible to ignore.
Most years, I dont really like cny. All the visiting, continuous eating and watching bad tv, starting off with reunion dinner and ending with this big dinner on the second day. Two consecutive days of relative visiting all over the island, which otherwise would not happen any other day of the year. I know its tradition and part of customary actions that we visit and shake hands, wish them well, but the fact is I hardly know them, if at all. I might as well be shaking the hands of a stranger and wishing them happy new year.
I wonder how different it would be when we become adults, who would we visit?



But this year I had a chance to leave the country! Albeit only a 40min plane ride (half the time I take to get to school btw, ridiculous), it was still away from all the routined habits here and of course I'm in!
And it feels really really good to leave SG, even if it were for less than 40 hours.
Woke up way too early by any standards for a first day of a year. Landed in KL before 9am, had mc's breakfast (hah, its nt brunch, its breakfast ok!). Pretty awesome.
45min drive to PJ and it was the start of the non-stop eating. Grandma seems to take much delight in insisting that we're hungry even though I was still holding the sausage mc muffin in my hand, half eaten.


(Udang is prawn in malay, another so so so yummy snack, only in m'sia sigh, but grandma forced us to cart 2 bags home, nice)

Singapore has its traditions, but when we go up to malaysia, we have traditions too, sigh, we are indeed creatures of habit, either that or we're just slumped into familiarity and comfort with routine knowing it wont disappoint. I'm talking about food here(:
Going up to the same roti canai place, ordering the same thing, talking about the same things, griping about the same things.
Roti canai with egg and teh tarik. mmmm
I guess some things never do change.
Well I dont have any photos from M'sia for one because the mother's paranoid about malaysia being dangerous and we'll get mugged carrying a dslr around. Shouldve brought the digi cam. Thinking about it, despite visiting m'sia so so often, I dont have pictures of the trips, ever. Should really take some the next time.


(ahhhh!(:)

Following that was tv show after tv show on cable in the new home theatre room that the cousins got, complete with funky sofas and a 42inch. Life is good.
Plus for whoever who doesnt know, kl is pretty much a ghost town like you wouldnt believe during cny, cos everyone goes out of state (to penang, malacca, all the small towns) to visit parents and relatives. So everything is closed, literally everything, and the roads are all jam-free.
Upon which we pretty much watched tv, played dvds, and watched more tv the entire day. Peppered with small conversations throughout.
Dinner was a simple affair unlike the usual a-lot-of-fuss-and-too-much-food cny dinners.
Curry chicken with oyster saucs vegs. (:



(note to self, should probably 'steal' and keep some of these to make pistachio icecream!(:)

Grandma was also looking pretty good herself, so cute, she kinda thought chu yi was actually chu xi and how she hurriedly changed into new clothes upon realisation. Quite funny.
And from the amount of talking and encouragements to eat more, I think she was feeling pretty happy that day too.

Now if only there were her arrowhead chips and seaweed chips to eat. omg those are like my ultimate favourite cny snacks. Wins pineapple tarts, hae bee hiam, bak kwa, or melting moments anytime, hands down. I can like go through half a bottle of that at a go. And the worse thing is its so light that you dont think you've eaten that much of it and before you know it you're staring at half an empty bottle of chips. Very Bad.

And I like how cute shes being by trying to impart her recipes to me but not realising she doesnt use any units of formal measurements. Old people are funny that way(:
(ok this is obviously not my photo, got it off google but since I dont want to launch into describing my favourite cny snack and feeling sad all over again cos I have no way of getting these awesome babies any time soon) but here, arrowhead chips. Just like potato chips, but totally different, and better.

Ah yes, movies movies and more movies. Watched a grand total of 6 movies in <40hours. I think part of it was mum and her brother trying to relive their childhood (because during new years, they would go to the theatre and watch as many movies as they could in a day, because they didnt have a tv set at home). But I do love movies, and good ones at that, so I'm really not complaining. Plus with their extensive collection of dvds, we could watch all the good ones.
Awesomeness.

Total damage: CJ7, Up!, Pride and prejudice, stranger than fiction, sherlock holmes, and taken
movies ftw(:

The second day involved brunch at one of the usual coffee shops that had basically everything yumz and hawker food-ish that I love. Not exactly the cleanest of places haha but they always say, the ickiest places gives the yummiest food. I agree.
And for 3 people,we had chee cheong fun, yong taufoo, penang laksa (which I cant eat but its ok!), wanton mee, popiah! and of course, teh tarik. omg So Full! if I had a second stomach, I would have gone for dim sum but too bad):
Back home to continue with the tv mooching. Totally never visit any of the malls and spent 90% of the time at home but it was all gd. No technology, no internet, no facebook, no phones. Tiny, awesome respite.



Crunched down half a bottle of arrowhead chips between mum and myself. And it was bad, but so good at the same time. sigh.
Having cny snacks <1m away from you and arms reach while whiling time away in front of the tv is so not a good thing.
6pm came too fast and retreat was over.
It was another 45min ride to klia and back home, by which we would all concur that we were returning back to the best airport in the world - somehow whenever I leave the country I always return with the same conclusion. whether its msia or usa, the conclusions dont differ. Is it the familarity and comfort of repetition or just that I'm missing home but don't really care to admit sometimes.

Well, I dont really know myself(;

mmm tastes like butter cookies, oh wait, not butter cookies, more like butter cookies with nuts, Actually you know what, tastes almost like cereal prawns, especially of the crunchy crispy bits of cereal often strewned abundantly over the prawns or squid or whatever seafood there is.
Wait, how can the taste of butter cookies evolveto cereal prawns within the span of 4-5 chews.
dont ask me, ask the cookies. dont look at me, its not my fault! its theirs!
*conveniently shifts all blame to the cookie for being difficult.



Aha cny brings about the mother going on a massive cookie spree. much like me during christmas time and aftermajor exams. I guess the apple doesnt fall that far from the tree in relation to this(; Its a good thing though, so no complains here. Cookies, big or small are pretty much good friends with mix-ins of any sort, most commonly being chocolate chips but that in itself brings about numerous variety for those who care to look.
dark, white, milk, semi-sweet,bittersweet, mint chocolate. ah chocolate.
BUT, onto that another day.



That said, we mustn't forget nuts. Although here in singapore the most commonly found and well, readily available nut (in non exorbitant prices) are almonds.
A trip to redman or phoonhuat can bring you face to face with an entire shelf or shelves of almonds.
Almonds done in every way possible. chopped, diced, silvered, whole, blanched, unblanched, powdered (ooh almond powder = macarons!), sliced, salted, unsalted. You get the idea. And its relatively affordable as well. Second to that is probably walnuts. Peanuts dont count here, those are for teasing your perfectly manicured fingernails with during cny or coupled with beer and pizza on a saturday night. or in my parents case, snacks to go with red wine..hmm no judging here.



But we're not here to talk about peanuts or almonds, its walnuts! hello! About $16/kg give or take. Sigh no farmers markets here to go to for pecans, macademia!, walnuts, brazil nuts and all other forms of nutty delights. Hence the obvious lack of nuts in my food endavours.but well, since these cookies have nuts as a key ingredient and I didnt have to fund these myself, hah walnuts it is!
200g of walnuts can make a whole lot of very-walnutty cookies. and very awesome i might add. so thats more than half a kg of walnuts for me to play around with in the near future. double yay.



The chopping up of the nuts could well be done by a food processor - yet again. But chopping them by hand (something not done by me) is definitely the easier way to quality control the size of the nut chunks. so it is recommended, by me(: Besides, food processing does ruin the fun, whizzing everything up into a food blur, plus the washing! haha.



Walnuts + oatmeal + cookie. i think this is my new favourite cny cookie. Still cant hold a candle, though, to my favourite cny snack(s) which grandma has perfected through years and years of making them. More on that sometime in the next post. I think this is what a cross between cereal prawns and a butter cookie would taste like.



Ah chinese new year, I really dont know whether to love or hate you.