giving thanks

some time back i had this idea to give thanks to the Lord for something different each week. i know He probably doesnt get bored listening to the daily thanks-giving prayers i send to Him, but i felt that He would probably appreciate some variety. :)

so the plan was to think of something in particular which i wanted to thank the Lord for and tell Him every single day of that week how grateful i am to Him for making it a reality for me. and so it started like this.

week 1: i thanked the Lord for giving me an office with clean toilets.

week 2: i thanked the Lord for giving me my colleague Miss Y-E-H. it always puts a smile on my face whenever i think of her. her words and actions crack me up like anything. haha.

week 3: i thanked the Lord for giving me the ability breathe and enjoy the fresh morning air.

then i probably ran out of particular pple or things which i specially wanted to thank the Lord for, so my idea took the backseat for awhile.

this week, i would like to thank the Lord for giving me godmother. she has truly been an inspiration to us and i will always remember the days when she brought so much fun and laughter to everyone. noise pollution and all aside, i thoroughly enjoyed her company. im so glad the Lord had placed someone as wonderful as godmother in my life. sure will miss having her around the office.

one of the moments you wish the earth would open up and swallow you whole

don't you absolutely hate those times when you said something you wished hadn't leave that mouth of yours.

well, today was an example.

it's even worse knowing that they will come back to haunt you again.. and again..

urgh! please go away!

believing in the power of the Lord

i did some housekeeping for my coms today and decided to check on my blog while the cleaning program was running. only to find out that it was "skin-less" cuz the blog pic was removed from photobucket. geez! took awhile to find a blogskin that i like. i searched..

1. high school musical - cuz i just saw HSM3's trailer.. nothing nice although there were many cute zac pics! haha

2. autumn - which gave me tons of maple tree leaves and the infamous "autumn in my heart".. nah!

3. fashion - influence from watching AusNTM.. some were really nice but they were usually too messy. i wanna keep my blog simple and easy to read.

4. skin of the day - safe choice with many popular skins, but nothing in particular tugged at me and i didnt want something that 10, 000 pple around the world has.

after some high and low searching, i finally saw a jimmy liao skin i liked! yes, jimmy liao aka the novelist/cartoonist 几米!! so old-school right?! i used to be quite a fan of 几米's although frankly i didnt get some of his pictures and stories. BUT somehow the template didnt work out with blogger and the layout became messed up when i tried. dang! back to more searching!

thankfully i found another which i quite like, so im using this blogskin for now. simple, cute, easy on the eyes :) but i wish i knew how to increase the font size a little so i wouldnt have to look so hard at the words. oh.. look how time flies when im blogging. no time for that now! cya!

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something unfortunate happened this morning and caused quite a frenzy among my relatives. mum was on the phone with several people non-stop and she rushed to the hospital soon after. wasn't told much cuz no one really knew what happened. not even the doctors. but we'll keep praying and i know the angels are with him. i believe in the power of the Lord and i know that this time of uncertainty will soon pass over. he will wake up and be declared a miracle!

someone i know said..



"all i want to do is play basketball, but it's never as simple as that."



you know what, i feel the same way too.

HUAT LA!


this year we created a new record for the number of times we 捞鱼生!


here are the proof! :)



初一


初二



初四

初五

初六


初七 aka 人日/Chinese 情人节 -- went out to celebrate at clubhouse's restaurant with my relatives and they served the most humongulously gigantic 鱼生 we had of 2008! :D


初八 -- Teochew style 鱼生. it tasted different because the ingredients used were different from the usual 鱼生, much more raw, less sticky and with lesser nuts. i liked it cuz the sauce had a nice hint of sourness to make it really appetizing, but dad, mum and poppit still preferred the usual one.

初九 -- this one had purple cabbage in it so it looked very colourful!

looked really pretty after we mixed it! no doubt the prettiest 鱼生 for 2008!


初十


十一

十二 -- went out with relatives to celebrate again at dragon phoenix restaurant where the ["uh-hm"] effeminate captain insisted that i do not take pictures of him mixing in the ingredients of the 鱼生 cuz it's 不吉利 (inauspicious) according to him.

how it looked like before mixing in the ingredients.


十三 -- imperial restaurant's 鱼生 had deep fried shredded yam in it! interesting... but the portion size was kinda on the stingy side.


十四


十五 -- 鱼生 followed by a nice steamboat dinner at a famous stall along serangoon road :D

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i think you can see why we had enough 鱼生 to HUAT BIG BIG for the entire year liao! haha.. oh man.. i love 鱼生 so much i cant wait to have it again during CNY next year!

成长 成长 我已成长 (比比看, 谁比谁高?)

me sings..
"busy, busy, busy little bummble bee is meeee..
come on sweet baby, show me the H-O-NEY!" :)

this year we celebrated my XXth birthday @ min jiang at one-north. heard loads of good ravings about their famous beijing duck so we had to go there and give it a try. it was neatly located amongst other renowned eateries at one-north, but was quite some distance away from the carpark. we had to thread down this pretty steep slope leading to the colonial-style bungalow which houses the restaurant and i had to hold on for my dear life to Dad cuz i was on heels. x_x *eeps* yes i do wear heels on special occasions. heh. but poppit seemed to have an easier time on her heels than mine. i think it's cuz she's shorter. haha.

the beijing duck was very well-roasted and they had two different sauces - the usual one and a spicy szechuan version - to go with the beijing duck wrap. the manager told us to try the crispy skin with sugar (something NEW!) and you had to like dip the entire skin in the bowl of sugar for you to fully enjoy the delectable taste. it wasnt so nice when we added only a touch of sugar. the chef's platter was nice, but the rest of the food was just alright. maybe cuz we had a very high expectation for the restaurant given its reputation. but the beijing duck is definitely worth a try!

next we headed for supper-cum-cake cutting session @ swensens in orchard with some of my relatives. and because they didnt accept reservations on a friday, we had to queue for quite some time before we got to our seats. then we were informed by the manager that we could only sing the birthday song and cut the cake, but not eat it there because it wasnt bought from swensens. we could not divide the cake and use their boxes to dar pau summore. *bleh* so i couldnt share my lovely bakerzin pistachio cream strawberry cake with everyone there. haiz. it was really nice by the way. we used to have regular supper outings to swensens especially when there was some cause for a celebration and 20+ of us always caused quite a commotion with our huge orders and constant chatter. i miss those 49ers, sticky chewy chocolate days.

and surprisingly, just when i stepped into the house, sok called me and told me that some class peeps wanted to have prata and asked me if i wanted to go too. since there was transport, why not? hehe. of course i was too full to eat anymore but it was nice catching up with some old friends who are all doing different courses now or even working already. it's funny that im reminded of how old i am only when im with people of the same age. oh dear i feel old again *sobz*

i reached home rather late and that explains why i was late for the birthday lunch the next day. my GANG had specially prepared a "feast" for me over at huay's place and the menu was created by JO who was also the head chef of the day! im sure sous chefs huay and miss P contributed much to the success of it too :) laoda had some function to attend earlier but managed to make it for us to have lunch together. the food was very nice! JO brought wine too! and we had crème brûlée peppered with cinnamon powder as the stand-in birthday cake. that was yummylicious too! and i didnt know that it could be served chilled as well. the rest found it a tat too sweet, but im madly in love with all things sweet so it all went down nicely despite the heavy lunch. thanks guys! i could feel (and taste) the effort which all of you had put in and i appreciate (and digested) every single bit of it. heh.

once again, i thank God and also to everyone who made my birthday this year a very memorable one. i love birthdays, duncha? :D

*note* all pictures of birthday cakes and stand-in crème brûlée birthday cakes with candles have been purposely left out to protect the identity of the blogger. :)


entrance to min jiang at one-north - took this at the top of the frighteningly steep slope


beijing duck skin which you can glaze with sugar

beijing duck wrap and duck meat with two special sauces

fried chicken stuffed with prawn paste

you cant see this very well from the picture but it's actually beef wrapped enoki mushrooms in black pepper sauce

steamed broccoli covered in crab sauce

ee-foo noodles - noodles for longevity

ice cream and mango sago

durian pudding with spring rolls and a pair of lovely cherry tomato bunnies *ka-wa-ii*!!

cherry tomato bunnies up close!

lunch "feast" prepared by GANG!

baked rice with ham and mushroom

soup of the day! haha cant rem what it was cuz was quite long ago. paiseh

salad tossed with egg, ham, cheese and longans. special recipe courtesy of miss P

jones the grocer was one of the unique ones there.

spent quite some time here getting "supplies" heh. it has a part grocery shop, part cafe concept.

it offers some novelty australian products and a wide selection of jams especially.

the prime society sounds so classy.. so atas! must visit there someday too!

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vivocity when it's way past midnight *ssspppoooky*

can you see anyone or ANYTHING? *yikes*



do you see the happy children prancing around the shopping mall?


spain2dream should be open when we're dreaming now..


have you ever admired a shopping mall when it looks so serene?


im not gonna tell you what i was doing at vivo at that eerie hour, but let's just say it was really quite an interesting experience that night and somehow it reminded me of the episode where the O.C. kids were fooling around in a closed shopping mall :) they almost got caught by the way, or were they?

forbidden love

first of all i wanna say.. I'M BACK! :) yes.. my dear pple..
Me + MIA = nothing new right?! haha..
had to miss service (just when pastor came back *sobz*) and go back to work today, on a SUNDAY! mind you, all because i couldnt wake up on time yesterday. the result of an accumulation of work, tiredness and friday night booze i guess. but somehow i enjoyed going back to work on a weekend when the workplace is less crowded, which means i dont have to keep my things tidy and share space, and also, with fewer people running around, the pace was more relaxing and comfortable. plus.. i get to blast the music and watch youtube whenever i wanted :) i think half-boss came back too cuz i saw that his office lights were on when i walked past, but i didnt have time to find him for a chitchat and he was gone when i was done.

there were a couple of other people who came back to work too, mostly the foreigners (poor peeps.. dont have a life! *oops* jkjk). what a bunch of hardworking ants. smalleyes-eyecandy came back too, and just when i thought i had a chance to chat with him one-to-one at last, i saw papabear just at the other corner. kaoz! haha.. papabear is always sitting behind a computer. i catch him occasionally looking over the com to our (smalleyes-eyecandy and i) work benches as if he was watching over us.. in the you-two-better-behave way. haha! but i think smalleyes-eyecandy and papabear are friends although i havent exactly seen them talk to one another before. smalleyes-eyecandy has another friend whom i shall call the smurf cuz he's short, always hard at work and seems like a mr. nice, but im not sure if he's blue anywhere or has a terribly squeaky voice though. promise i will update when i find that out. haha. ok.. 'nuff said about work related stuff. will elaborate further when i have the time.

while waiting for my results, i continued watching coffee prince. as much as i think that its plot is basically a combination of successful has-been dramas (think full house + hana kimi + meteor garden), im still helplessly drawn to it. Go Eun Chan is such a funny and entertaining character and Min Yeop (who reminds me of laoda and py's friend.. haha) can be so 可爱 too! the episodes i watched today were about Han Kyul struggling to come to terms with accepting that he really loves Eun Chan and wants to be with him, because he knows Eun Chan as a boy and so it's impossible for them to be together as lovers. Gosh.. it must really be so painful.. all these forbidden love stuff. and poor Eun Chan.. felt so sad for her when he treated her so badly and made her cry and so worried when he disappeared for 3 days. guys can be such insensitive b******s sometimes. pui! they were so sweet together when they became sworn brothers, but that Han Kyul wanted to be more than that which resulted to all that messed-up awkward feelings. what a needy guy! haha. love each other as brothers cannot meh? that is prob the best thing to do considering Han Kyul knew Eun Chan as a boy. oh well.. anyway.. i was very happy when he finally chose to follow his heart, dont give a damn as to what the world thinks and ran (and drove a bit.. haha) back to be with Eun Chan, sealing his decision with a kiss.. aww.. Yoo Ju and Han Seong's story has turned interesting too. im not sure why im rooting for Han Seong to go for Eun Chan but my prediction (which is not hard to guess in the first place) is that ONCE AGAIN it will be a and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after ending with Yoo Ju and Han Seong patching up.

sadly, there arent as many and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after ending in real life. barbie and vic split (didnt see that coming). jiawei and ronald too (knew that liao). xiangyun and edmund as well.. haha jkjk! maybe it's because we often make the wrong choices and it's worse when we foolishly, yet willingly, make choices that we know we may regret someday. ahlian told me that she always fall for the bad boys. i didnt have a chance to ask her why but i doubt she can understand herself too. sometimes it's "just because". like there's this very seductive tinge in forbidden loves that we as humans are willing to gamble our hearts with. throwing away the by-default rationality that we all have and taking that risk of getting hurt in the end. call it plain stupidity or the ultimate form of romaticism, but if you've never experienced even the slightest hint of it for yourself, i tell you, you're totally missing out on one of the most special emotions you can actually experience in life. on the positive side, at least it makes you grow emotionally. :)

little miss mean

"to look good.. just be around ugly people"

improvise on it..


haha.. this just came off my head! so random! kinda reminds me of the t-shirt printed with "i'm with stupid". heh. if any t-shirt printing company wanna use my slogan please give me my commission first! :p

sweet little things called donuts

doughnuts or donuts.. either way you spell it, the folks here on sunshine island cant seem to get enough of it. the craze for these sweet little things have gone way over the limit with queues clocking over an hour of waiting time and similar shops selling the popular snack sprouting all over the island. think macs hello kitty saga plus QUICKLY's 泡泡茶. what horror!! what's more.. the variety of donuts are getting fancier by the minute, really pattern zui gah badminton man! (direct translation: pattern more than badminton. not so direct translation: there are many designs or a wide variety, and in this case, there are many flavours for the donuts) it seems kinda absurd that girls especially are willingly being duped into putting these round sugar-coated deep-fried dough into their stomachs and they are still going back for more! argh! *faints*

having said that, moi has to admit to eating these sugary delights moi-self. *oops* heh. and nope! i wasnt THAT crazy to specially queue for them. the very first time i had them was because my dear mum queued for them while waiting for us (i.e. when she had nothing else to do) haha.. subsequently my kind-hearted mum queued to buy for my relatives and her friends and bought some for us as well, even though we have told her that we didnt particularly like the donuts. her reason for buying them was because the queues were "short". erm.. haha.. anywayz, i personally think they taste OK only and it is definitely not worth waiting over an hour for them. only get them like once every few months or so and when the queues are short.

they do make perfect gifts though. not only do they bring much joy and excitement to the receiver, but it will definitely touch him/her to know that you specially queued to get the donuts for him/her. boyfriends, husbands and secret admirers do take note! :)


donut factory @ raffles city was the first one that caused quite a stir that eventually led up to the donut craze.

as far as i remember, one person is entitled to buy up to 2 boxes of a dozen each.

the plain ones that are sugar-coated. =) they look cute dont they. heh. not 881 but 888 when put together.

the fanciful donuts! this pic was taken when we first bought them quite awhile ago. i think they have added more flavours.

this has nothing to do with donuts but they do brighten your day as well. will leave it for your own interpretation. :) i'll help you out by giving you a clue.. donuts are round and so.. happy guessing! hahaha!

double whammy!

2 very unfortunate, not-so-happy things happened to me today. i really felt like crying then, but dont worry folks, i've gotten over them. i dont recall if i have mentioned this before, but i have the uncanny ability to get over unhappy things pretty quickly. one candy bar and someone who shares a silly joke (even if it is like lame) usually does the trick. =) *sheesh* now everyone knows im easily pacified. hehehe..

even so, i dont really wish to recount what had happened, except that both were the results of oversight on my part. never in my 2 decades of life would i expect not-so-happy thing #1 to happen to me! like seriously NEVER! but it did. even till now, i honestly find it very hard to understand HOW IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE that it was possible for that incident to happen to me. hmm.. i guess adidas was absolutely right in believing that "nothing is impossible".


when i was talking to prof K about it, a hundred and one things raced through my mind on how i could have prevented it from happening, but as her sincere sympathetic-yet-helpless eyes looked back into mine, i knew very well that they were all useless. there was nothing that the both of us could do really. yes, all i can say is that i am to blame. i paid a price for this precious lesson and of course i am disappointed, but i fully appreciate the moral behind "it's no use crying over spilt milk". what i can do is to learn from my mistake and pray to God that it will never happen again. yes, i may have fallen but it has also made me stronger, and it has definitely pushed me to work harder. let me hear some "YOU GO GIRL!" from y'all :)


i always remember what pastor had said - "when you face a setback, it puts you at a position for a greater blessing from our gracious Father in heaven." i guess i have been trying too hard to do things with my own effort that i have forgotten that i needed God so much for everything, that it would be so much easier depending on Him. it's my bad that i have allowed work to get in between my fellowship with Abba. i do need some quiet time with Him.


something else which i re-learned about myself from this episode is that at a time like this when i needeed somebody to talk to, i did not turn to people closest to me. instead the first person i turned to is merely a regular friend of mine. so if i dont talk to you about my problems, you know i love you very much! if i do, i also love you very much! :p somehow it just seems easier for me to talk about disappointments with someone that im not so close to. after some thought, i think it boils down to what i want from sharing with that somebody, and also, i dont want my dear ones to share my pain and carry it with them while im down, it hurts me. isnt it kinda ironic that i always try to be the first person to be there when my loved ones need me, but when i need someone i usually turn to any regular guy first? STOP!! the second part of the sentence turned out sounding kinda wrong. haha.. please dont get the idea that im 随便 k. haha. well, whatever it is, im fine now. it will probably return intermittently to haunt me for a few days, but i'll be A-OK in no time. *yeah!* :)

im extremely thankful for the people whom the Lord has placed in my path to make my day much better. i love you JESUS!

imperial herbal & sinchi tcafe

OHANA and i went to imperial herbal & sinchi tcafe @ vivo for dinner last week and you can find fotos of the dishes we had below. we've been to the restaurant a couple of times since it relocated to vivo and we are always satisfied with the food they serve, which is similar to tung lok signatures'. i was very fascinated by their appetiser cuz they reminded me of cordyceps (aka 冬虫夏草), but they are actually called di shen (地参) and they have been dry-roasted to give that crunchy bite as a snack. imperial does sell them in packets like keropok if anyone's interested. i usually go for their well-known herbal soups but i gave it a miss that day cuz i was feeling pretty full and poppit wanted to order the candied yam and sweet potato dessert which we love. imperial has established itself as a medicinal herb restaurant as most of their dishes are prepared with chinese herbs and there is also a TCM practitioner there for consultation. upon request, he will help you diagnose any health problems which you may have and prescribe some herbal medicine for you as well as suggests some herbal soup which you can order at the restaurant to improve your condition. i feel that tung lok has a better variety of dishes, but at imperial, you can be sure that their soups and dishes are packed with lots of nutritious goodies. we will be going for their dim sum next time so do stay tuned. :)



the two types of chilli sauce with the very interesting looking appetiser di shen (地参).

a closer look at di shen (地参). they look like dried worms right? haha. but they taste something like potato chips minus the salt (sorry if the image is not so clear cuz i took the photos with my phone's camera).