today i had no school. but today, i still went to school. which is a feat, well, more than. considering that school is nearer to the neighbouring country than to my home. and i digress. so i was saying, i went to school today. and... i baked! :) i baked one cake and refrigerated the other. so that's not just one, but two cakes that i made today! it's not home economics. it's food and consumer science. whatever the name is. that is the place that i wanted to be! i think? well. grass always looks greener on the other side. hello chocolate mud cake and chilled oreo cheesecake. they aren't the prettiest sounding/looking cakes around but they both reminded me of you. :)

... after 3 hours of messing about in the lab (yes, it is a lab. didn't you notice those hairnets!) :)

and just because i havent had dinner at home properly for a while - stir fried chinese cabbage and baby shrimps, braised lean pork, pankofried chicken drumlets, steamed fish and tofu :) yummm.

so i went to school to take my ten mark test today. i had classmates who were freaking out about failing. and they are older than i. sigh. i guess failure gets harder to deal with age. and so that was that. it was a lovely cold stormy day. good for bad skin like mine that can't take the heat. and then there was english class. guess what the book of the day was? the ITCHY witch. omg. i almost fell off my chair. i sat there huddled in my scarf. and had the greatest urge to excuse myself from the lesson. but i stayed on. and i even read along! scritch - scratch - scritch. hahaha. hilarious really. and i thank God for providence. :) at the end of the day, i really just want someone to ruffle my head and tell me it's all gonna be okay.

it has to be bad if i'm capable of getting a two day mc. i'm diseased. head to toe. bottom of sole. hey. that rhymes :) i discover the rash in never seen before places every single day. so the predicament is bad. and waiting to be referred to the national skin centre. oh if i am to be afflicted for the rest of my life. :/ an unwanted rag doll. prayers for healing please.

this is me looking like i need lots of sleep. at the airport. waiting to entertain my cousins who're on transit from surabaya back to LA. couldn't play taboo at church. sigh. i should've just stayed. since my cousins took forever to come out from immigration. and erm. it's a warning. but dont be reading this while eating or while planning to eat.

i'm having urticaria. twice already in this week. and it's way worse than this. but this is just the beginning parts. and it's all over me. like erm. on my ears and face. not just the legs and body. sigh. please pray. thanks :) let me know if this is too scary. i'll remove it.

so that's my lovely harrods bag that i went shopping for. latest arrival, idyllic cottage picnic landscape that i sorely long for. failing which, i will just take sushi as a happy substitute. this is sushi date #3 in two days. and sushi date #5 in 12 days. an average consumption of sushi almost every -other- day. i want to move to japan. so anyway, that's my lovely girlfriend, without whom i would fail all my evening modules at nus. she offers me her bed and her snacks. i heart her very much :) over 14 plates of sushi and two sides, we had our happy mad conversations as always. :) the world is small. her mad girlfriend is my mad girlfriend at nie now! lol. there are just some people that you can just click with. well. some people even if you feel like you know them inside out, can become totally different people if they choose to. :/ gabriel came with me for cell tonight. and i liked having him back. cell's still the same people, same problems. over a supper of dim sum and mango dessert, we caught up on the past year that we missed out on in each other's lives. i'm no longer his aunt agony, he's growing up and he's learning lots on his own. but there are still some things, he's still insecure about. think long term and i'm pretty sure he can see things in a crystal clear way. but there are things, you'd rather just have them for the moment if not for eternity. i advise better than i take my own advice. but i'm learning aye. and my prayer is for healing for you tonight. :) bless,

so on monday i was a diseased girl. urticaria. the worst ever. it was really scary. but having settled that, i was back at fish and co. on thurs night. so let's start over. the problem about having just one free day in a week- which will cease to exist from next week onwards, is that everything has to be done on that free day. so this thursday's agenda was: haircut, lunch with gf, bible study, dental, shopping and dinner. and in between there was supposed to be time to breathe. but btw the haircut and dental, there were no times when i wasn't rushing to the next item on the agenda. :/ i left the house at 930 for my haircut at 10am. but because i was dreaming, i missed the bus and had to wait for the next one which took forever but there were no cabs in sight for the longest time. so my haircut lasted from 1030 till 1pm. i really have the most perfect hairstyle in the world. we're speaking proportion and length symmetry. the style itself is like crap. oops. hahaha. well. he spent lots of time on me. i shouldnt be mean. lunch was supposed to be at 1230 so i cabbed down and got there an hour late. my poor girlfriend. and we had an hour's lunch before i had to run off to taka for my bible study which i was late for by 15 minutes. we finished at 1555, 5 minutes to get to mount eliz for my dental. my dental was till 1710 and cost me a grand total of? 200. to get what done? just cleaning and taking an opg of my mouth. for a wisdom tooth i have no want to extract till later. MUCH later. rarrr. so my friend was supposed to meet me at 1700 but he only arrived at 1815. so meanwhile, i went shopping for a harrods tote bag :) tonnes of things i want to buy from town! but after my dental bill? i should be eating grass for the next month :p so the boys finally got together and we sat down for dinner at... 8pm. at my lovely fish and co. these boys are my project group mates for a marketing class we took together in nus. there are some friends i've made in four years. just. some :) and because we wanted to just laze around and talk, we went over to sakae to have my kakiage. sakae part #2 for just one day itself. i was fed. stuffed. full and happy. i stayed out for 13 hours and got home at 11am. amazing. i loved my day out. aside for the jawdropping dental bill and random waiting for boys, the company was faaaantastic. thanks for stuffing me till i'm full sunshine! boys who bring me out and treat me like an 11 year old princess. ;)

just because i have a chocolate cake. :)

it's at times like these i don't mind being academically challenged. as long as i put good food on the table and i know their tummies are all taken care of when there are happy smiles on their faces :) mummy says she's lucky to have a daughter who cooks. it's something i'll always smile at with humility. i'm just glad the food is palatable. :) how to tell a fish is cooked? when it's eyes turn white and of course when the meat comes off easily. it was a huge golden promfret. the longest i've ever taken to steam a fish. and it's been a while since i had steamed fish. fried eggs (six eggs. boys. haha) with preserved radish, au naturel chicken soup (boiled with scallops, dried abalone edges, wolfberries and black mushrooms), crunchy stir fried dou miao with an assortment of fishballs/fishcakes. and that's dinner for five on a saturday night. from my home to yours, wherever you may be :)

and just because my mummy loves us, she takes on the fruit store holder's ranks when daddy leaves for work overseas. which is just too often. :/and just because mummy loves me? :) peanut pancakes! mmm.

what i love. yesterday was fun filled. the plan was to go home and stay home after cell. since i wasn't meeting any of the boys for supper i thought i'd spend friday night at home. but noooo, half way through cell i got a phone call asking if i'd like to meet my aunts at mustafa. it couldn't have been anything but blessed. but of course that'd be my preferred friday night itinerary. :) so mustafa for mad crazy shopping it was :) my aunt leaves for jakarta monday early morning and my other aunt has been caught up in the travel frenzy that i hardly see her home anymore :( so mad shopping aside (we took turns in giving away a substantial portion of our income to the chocolate section of mustafa ahah) we just HAD to drop in at swee choon. we're talking about the family next door to my grandma in days of yore. when they still lived at 129 desker road. no we do not get free dim sum and no they do not charge us less. we have no qualms about paying. we frequent that place a lil too much for the standard of food that's being served. but don't ask me for a favour and ask my aunts to try desserts that you make and expect us to pay for that dessert. even professionally, it's unethical. ugh. sorry. i'm asian deep down inside. people relations are something i hold pride in. aside from the fact that trusting people is sadly bordering on the impossible nowadays. so at least my carrot cake was nice and fluffy. the ones i ordered for take away leave much to be desired- blackened and half the original size) the rest? mediocre. hahahah.
going back there for dim sum is just one of the idiosyncratic things we can't explain for. sometimes you just long for things to be just as they used to and then you realise that the places might still be around but the people have changed too much to ever be the same again. it's one of the things that i put too much thought into- bringing people to places that i love. anyhow, it was friday night and i got home past the hour of twelve. but being no princess, nothing bad happened. i got home and had to start clearing out and restocking the cupboards. yay daddy's home from bangkok! :) hellllllo PRETZ.

TGIF :) it was a mad downpour this morning but thank goodness i got to school virtually untouched by rain. the assignments have been coming at me hard and fast. the classmates are behaving too scarily for words. *shivers. thank goodness for lunch break to digest the latest additions to the assigments pile. the healthy ytf from the stone age uncle- only a mad friend like mine would come up with such meaningfully apt nicknames. hahahah. the wrong kind of influence. we have a zi char stall at sch. mary tried salted fish fried rice. sufficiently decent. one more edible stall at sch. check! :)

and after another two hours of horrendous power pack english tutorial. i was a freeee girl! :) mmm. a few hours more before cell group started for the both of us. guess where dinner was? sakae. hahaha. zek i really feel like you now. spending every cent at sakae. hahahha. but i'm happy. for the company and the ambience. that's worth every single cent. :) notice i didnt say food. there are tonnes of better jap places around. but not every place is a 'lazy' place. i have a 'lazy' list now. for people who want to be lazy for a while. onn ray's next stop is kuriya's happy hour. and brendon's promising sashimi in the next two weeeeks. arigato gozaimasu. hai! ahahha. here's sharing some of my favourite foods at sakae. just some of them :)

i like how life's working out. yesterday i had some kickass oyster omelette at this nondescript coffee shop further up in the north. old people new ties. today i had a date with the boys. they're late, later and latest. it's tough being the only girl. hahah. it was good though. a very late lunch at 4pm. at my very familiar sakae. mix fry agemono, salmon sashimi, kakiage and my spicy salmon gunkan. a lazy hour and a half. i'm getting a little too used to this lifestyle. :)

dinner today. poor daddy's still ill. please keep him in prayer aye? he's off to thailand tmrw. i hope he'd be okay when the morning comes. it's been too long. :/ chicken fillet/prawn/golden mushroom and green leafy veggie vermicelli noodle soup. :) have a blessed sunday.

even after getting home at 430am and eventually hitting the sacks at 5am. there's us up and about for lunch at wisma :) not thaaat old.

then as adoring fans, we went early to get front row seats at indochine. which saw us showing our shameless support and spending a lovely idyllic saturday afternoon enjoying the breeze, songs and quiet company :) that. is the life.

home is where the heart is. hello toorex i have missed you much :) when a jack russell misses you much, you better make sure you're prepared for a kiss. then run to the toilet and get yourself dettol-ed. but i love him anyways. thai fish curry, fried garlic chicken, egg omelette and green veggies. i am loved.

too old for zouk, too young for st james. :) just kicking back your shoes and chilling out for a friday night. that's just dinner caught on film. two rounds and a hoarse throat. baked lagsana and a kickass sandwich. a lethally seducing lifestyle. good times :)

to start properly, today after lunch and watching too many silly propaganda videos on IT management in classrooms:
we went to grab some top notch fabric from the supplier of AC banners (at least for our batch) hahafrom the very sweet parents of sunny (who has to pick up the tab when he gets home in a year :)) - who kept their shop open till evening time on national day just so we could meet at a convenient time and find our way there together.

and sometime soon that fabric would be made into a lovely dress. for an equally lovely girl. :) hello my happy couply friend. singular. since it's 1+1=1 in their case. :)

and totally off the mark but just for the record, i'm a strawberry pocky snob. and this is what i like. :)

dinner was? chinatown dumplings and zi char from the restaurant just down the road from my house. and a very happy national day to you too. :) the significance of august the 9th has increased dramatically since being in the education business but still i havent sat through the entire national day parade screening. :/

JDC. my sesame + almond paste yun yong :)

what's cooking for lunch? minced pork, mushroom and scallop porridge. my crunchy chinese lettuce abd crispy cuttlefish. mmmm-mmm. :)

school is REALLY not that fun. can you believe? :) thank God for good girlfriends at school.