Swing

Uncertainty

2011-08-22T17:28:00.000+08:00

Hi.

It has been a while.

A long while.

Some jinklings-minklings must have wiped out the memory of me pressing the fast-forward, x100 button using whatever smagicz because I had to be the craziest person on earth to even think of pushing the red button. This definitely calls for some serious investigation!

No, seriously.

So, life got in the way. Days were gone in seconds and months in minutes.

Well, just look at it, half the year is gone.

But sometimes, life slows down and by being situated in the period of calm before the storm (i.e slow/slack day at work), it allows you to self-indulge a little and draft a blog entry talking entirely about you, yourself and yourself. So, hello you.

I feel apologetic sometimes for asking people “How are you?”, “Where have you been?”, “What have you been doing?” because by answering these questions myself, I realize their inadequacy. I obviously and definitely cannot summarize my life for the past six months, a year, two years in 15 minutes of monologue or even a one-hour conversation (and neither can you). But hey, no one is expecting a detailed low-down of everything that transpired for the past X months, days or years right? Or maybe you are. Or maybe I am of you?

I hate not being there and I am sure you wish you were here but the truth is that we cannot be there for everything. Although I missed out on X and you missed out on Y, I am still glad that you shared Z and will be here to share future A, B and Cs. Some people try desperately to record and document our lives in any way they can; in ink, in pixels, in cells so that they would have some proof of the happiness, the sadness, the bewilderedness that they experienced at that one point of time. I used to be those people once and still probably am though with much less zeal than before. The main reason was that I got lazy. The important reason was that I realized that moments of our lives are like runaway kites so I am going to enjoy the process of flying the kite. This is not to say that I give up totally and have a “No Documentation” policy, it just means that I will do it when I do it.

All is not lost yet though, here is some chocolate cake I made on I cannot remember when.

P.S I started writing this post since the 22^nd of June and it is now 22^th of August. Everything except this line is 2 months old. I amaze myself sometimes.

Courage and Strength

2011-04-16T17:19:00.001+08:00

Sociology is not for the faint-hearted.

Here’s to all you brave souls.

We are the ones they label deviants. 

We are the ones they never fail to ask why we are doing what we are doing.

We are the ones who question your ‘common sense’.

We are the ones who believe in change.

To all my friends; my kindred spirits: step forth with courage into the society we have tried to make sense of and will continue to make sense of. 

“Today’s the day my life begins. Today I become a citizen of the world. Today I become a grown up. Today I become accountable to someone other than myself and my parents. Accountable for more than my grades. Today, I become accountable to the world. To the future. To all the possibilities that life has to offer. Starting today, my job is to show up wide eyed and willing and ready. For what, I don’t know. For anything. For everything. To take on life. To take on love. To take on the responsibility and possibility. Today, my friends, our lives begin. And, I for one can’t wait.”

             –Becca, Valedictorian Speech on Grey´s Anatomy

Sleepless Night

2010-12-25T10:19:00.002+08:00

She staggered into bed.

She staggered out of bed.

Her vision fades.

Thoughts invade.

The million and one thoughts, all fighting with one aim in mind-to win the war of "her attention" and what a fight!

Sleep had no chance, it had no might, but oh it fought, and damn did it fight!

She closed her eyes, she turned to the left.

She opened her eyes and cursed death.

Helplessly she tries, to make out the time,

but darn those myopic eyes, they must as well mime.

The alarm went off, she got on her feet,

she then arranged her pillows and folded the sheets.

She thought and thought and oh did she think!

Those million and one thoughts, boy were they were finks!

The wire swayed,

the girl dismayed.

What to do now?

How now, brown cow?

She did what she did, what a deed indeed!

She drafted a post, this self-indulgent verbose!

Later

2010-12-20T20:28:00.004+08:00

There are just so many things I want to do but I just never seem to get down to doing them. Like how I wanted to draw Christmas cards for everyone but it is 5 days to Christmas and I there is not a stitch of color on those gleaming white cards. Terribly ashamed of myself, I typed a public apology to my friends on facebook. I HAVE although been thinking about drawing one, scanning it and sending everyone  e-cards ala secondary school style but these are still very green thoughts and I most likely (99.99999%) would not get down to doing it. 

I am the worst sort of procrastinator. I really am. I really think I got through school because of all those dratted deadlines and even with them, I had to go through the "why-did-i-not-do-this-earlier?"-tearing my hair out-crazy cranky phase, including listening to the bf nag about my poor time-management skills to churn out copies of 20-paged,double-spaced, justified, Times New Roman size 12, APA cited, bibliography-ed intellectual-sounding (hopefully) essays. Of course, reading required readings are not one of my strengths either which means that you would see me in the Central Library level 6 almost every day for weeks leading up to dooms-days aka exams days. Although, in order to see me,it does require you frequenting the library as much as I do and that can mean just about one thing eh? Hehe. I have to say though, I would totally take reading readings and taking exams over essay-writing any time! Honest. A note to add? Honours semester really just means doing all of the above at super duper,ecstasy-high speed! (Which is really what I have been doing for the past few months but hey,not trying to justify my tres long absence by the way. 

Ok, maybe just a little! Teehee.

Another example of how my bff frienship with procrastination is ruining my life? I wanted to blog about these awesome Blackberry-Apple Galettes from summer months ago and here I am, writing this post in the depths of December!  

Well, yeah, at least I got own to doing it right? (Albeit it being months late!) Unlike the million and one things sit on my "later" shelf that is smothered with more than an inch-thick of dust and would most likely sit there waiting for the next dust storm! So about these awesome things, what is there really to say about them besides the usual string of synonyms for "delicious"? 

It truly is and you should make them for yourselves. They are my definitely one of new (or should I say old, since months have technically passed) favourite things! 

Looking at them truly makes me want to go out, grab the ingredients and make them immediately but knowing me (from this post),I am still sitting here thinking about doing it. Hope you have better luck at getting your arse off that plushy cushion of yours and start making some of these babies! 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 

P.S If you have time and an ice cream maker, you should try making the burnt sugar ice cream because it sounds just about heavenly!

Living in the clouds

2010-11-24T05:07:00.000+08:00

It is time to come down to earth.

Forever

2010-10-03T01:14:00.000+08:00

I want to promise you forever but I do not believe in forever-s. So for now, love me like i love you and maybe we will get to the place where our forevers go together.

Happy Anniversary my love.

half inspired by this.

Missing

2010-09-27T01:35:00.011+08:00

Missing.

That is where I have been.

Missing.

That is what I have been doing.

Missing.

That is what I will be doing.

Sorry to start off on such a sombre tone but believe me it is anything but. Ok. Maybe it is kind of semi-melancholic. I mean, to be lost in a forest of readings, essays, presentation and deadlines? Sad. To have my friends leave me to fly to Melbourne, Nagoya, Christchurch? Lonely. To find out the bf is almost for definite going on exchange next year? :(((

So yes, my life is dreary and rather gloomy at the moment. Missing my friends and going to miss you? It certainly does not help when my oven decides to be cranky and I have to give up baking which was my provider of solace. Sigh.

Oh well, moving on like how we have to move on in life, to make up for my absence and for those who are missing summer, here is some (blackberry-blueberry) pie!

Is it not gorgeous?!

The beautiful buttery crust, the cute little pastry star cut-outs and the thick berry-full filling?

Tell me, how can I not be in love with it?

Although I swear I am truly and madly a pie fan (like how if you say pie and I say aye!), I hardly make pies. Even if I do, I usually just stick to making the good ole apple pie. But,what? Whyyyy?

A couple of reasons really but besides the fact that good berries at a good price, or rather good berries are scarce here, making pie dough is scary!

Oh sure, there are fool-proof recipes and pie tips are aplenty but tell me, even as you take out your 'followed to the tee' pie dough from the fridge, you are crossing your fingers that it will roll out properly. Your hands shake as you attempt to mimic the professional looking folds in the recipe picture and your crimping skills more often than not fail you. Then, you agonize and pace around (in your head) and hope it will bake beautifully in the oven. Your heart palpitates just a little faster than usual as you cut out a slice hoping it would not crumble in front of your eyes. As you sink your fork into the slice of pie, you wish desperately that the fork would not get stuck in a soggy bottom. You then worry about whether the pie crust tastes as good as it looks as you savour the intermingling of flavours in your mouth. The emotional roller-coaster ride ends either with you heaving a sigh of relief (literally) and filling your mouth full of that darn good piece of pie or with you stuffing your mouth full of your soggy,crumbled, no-good pie to drown your baking sorrows.

Of course, it ain't as dramatic as that or maybe it is but the bottomline is: making pie dough is scary! You have just read a paragraph of baking anxiety so maybe we should all keep calm and have (a look at) some pie!

Are you abit calmer now? I am. I think staring at stars calms me. Even if they are just pastry cut-outs. Haha. For the better remedy, I suggest eating this baby! I mean pies are comfort food!

So you have had your slice and peace is made between you and me, what is there left to do except to have more pie? Go! Make some pie even though it is scary. (What is life without some challenge?) Go! Make some pie even if you do not have berries. (There is always apple, steak, custard and cream!) Go! Make some pie and you will find that the world seems a bit better, your future looks a bit brighter and you will be a bit happier( like I am now! Hehe).

Some pie notes:

I made this gorgeous pie following her recipe. Fantastic lady! Check out her cute baking videos.

I have to say in all honesty though that I think the crust was flaky and lovely and all that but I still prefer the pie crust in the recipe I used for my apple pie.

Graduation Cookies

2010-08-10T01:39:00.002+08:00

First things first. The cookie jar looks like it is wearing graduation robes and a mortarboard no?

Chuckles aside, as you can guess with my mentioning of mortarboards and graduation robes, many of my friends have officially abandoned me and left me to fend for myself in the institution some may call school but students call hell. Of course, for some the walls encase so much warmth as well love that they ensure everyone knows that their school is their second home by wearing their orientation, faculty T-shirts and over that (because the parts of the school has to be kept cold like the LTs and the libraries so that the warmth and love can be felt more intensely) their pullovers which have the letters "NUS" emblazoned in Harvard font at the front.

Chuckles aside yet again, I think in our own ways, our school has been our hell, our sanctuary, our teacher and our friend. By leaving, are we leaving a part of us behind or are we are bringing it away with us because it has already become a part of us? Food for thought eh?

Anyway, for the real food (pictures) for thought, these sweet (noun & adjective) jam thumbprints look simply adorable do they not? I was about to give up racking my brains on how to pack these small jewel of a cookie and found some inspiration and a solution from Martha!

As for the rest of the packaging, it is less complicated although no less beautiful. I did spend an incredulous amount of time at the shop though deciding which ribbons I should buy because I really just wanted to buy the whole aisle. I eventually (very hesitantly) put back the armful rolls of ribbon which I hoarded and settled for some greys, whites, yellows, purple and blues.

For my favourite pairing, I absolutely loved the combination of the midnight blue satin ribbon with the white-bluestriped! I think the combination fun and classic and it was just right for the snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies! Besides, they do remind a bit of the blue ribbon tags they give out to 1st place cookies in baking fairs in America. Oh, and I know you must be thinking, snickerdoodles again?! But how could I not?! They are so irresistibly delicious!

I of course saved the best for last! Kidding. I love all my cookies equally. Not! Chocolate chip cookies still hold the number one place in my heart but these citrus sables provide some stiff competition! I have made these citrus sables for more than a few times but they never fail to fill my afternoons with citrus goodness! They are really afternoon cookies because they are perfect with that cup of tea. But of course, you would not be breaking any rules if you indulge them for your midnight snacking and morning breakfasting!

I know this post is about 3 months apart from my previous one but forgive me for I have a very good reason that can be summed up in one word: SUMMER! /VACATION! It is back to school again tomorrow and I am totally acting like a bad ex, desperately clinging on to the coat tails of Mr holidays. But I know I will have to let go eventually and embrace the Vampire of Doom, Duke Readings Test Presentations-Exams. So, wish me luck in not getting my life sucked out of me too badly.

Mounds of love

2010-05-23T02:06:00.002+08:00

My homemade truffles may not be as good as the ones from here but it was good enough to capture his heart, according to the bf. The story of how we fell in love or rather how he fell in love with me was in actual fact an entrapment in his opinion. It was I, the sultry temptress who employed the clever use of truffles that ensnared his senses and claimed his heart for my own. I know (hope) he jests about the entrapment business but truffles are really one of his favourite things. He gets as excited as a little boy whenever I gift him with these chocolate mounds.

What then can be a more perfect gift than truffles for his belated birthday celebration? In fact, I would go as far as to say that he would rather receive a box of 20 truffles than the crazy amount of things I had baked for him on his last birthday!

Remember how I talked about being a bad friend? I was made a bad girlfriend too because of schoolwork! I had a paper due the next day on his birthday and as I was rushing it, I had absolutely no time to celebrate it with him. Although, I guess I supposedly "celebrated" it for him by flashing a "sign" (pens+foolscap paper) that said "Happy Birthday" at 12am in the library which was where we were the day before his birthday.

We, of course celebrated it properly, truffles and all after our exams and although it was a small affair, it was by no means any less enjoyable.

Many thanks to Brad who bought me a block of awesome chocolate (Haigh's!) from Sydney of which I used to make these lovelies! I would have used the entire block to make these truffles if not for the chocolate mouses residing in my house! As luck would have it however, a friend gifted me with a bar of chocolate from Switzerland which made up for the needed grams! Awesome is it not to have lovely friends?

Since I have made these truffles a million times over with the same recipe, I decided a little change was in order and thus tried out a new recipe. The bf being the bf could not discern between the "new" and the "old" truffles but declared it delicious nonetheless. I thought it pretty tasty although I have to say that I prefer it without the new addition of Grand Marnier. Call me boring but I like my truffles simple.

Some birthday Snicker-whats

2010-05-13T23:06:00.001+08:00

Just showing some Snickerdoodle love I gave my friends for their birthdays!

I have not been exactly a good friend this year and I totally blame school. With all the time devoted to academic work and procrastination, I did not have time to get presents, make cards and bake yummies! Since my holidays started 3 days ago, I have been trying to make it up to them, or at least the few that I met with some snickerdoodles! The next few days/weeks/months will be spent on getting belated birthday presents, laboring over cards and baking a lot of treats!

I do suppose I have to look for a summer job soon with the prospect of my cash running out but I managed to convince myself that I have until after I get my results to decide. I mean, I may be looking for a proper job instead by then so it is no point getting my knickers in a twist about getting hired now right? Of course, I really do need the cash but ah well.

Hi procrastination, I can see you waving with all the resumes I have to write, we are going to be best friends again huh? Blahhh. I have nothing, nothing to put in my resume! Boooo. Well, I am off to to eat some snickerdoodles with some ice cream right now and maybe life will be a teensy bit better.

FITS

2010-05-10T21:39:00.009+08:00

Remember the fashion show I was talking about in this post? These are just a few pictures from then. I am sorry! Quite a few meme-s up there. No one was there bearing flowers for me or clicking their cameras for me as I went down the runway but there were a whole bunch of friends of friends and new found friends who captured the memories and I guess I am pretty lucky to have a few snapshots! The Bf did bring me out for a big dinner although he was not at the show and that is good enough for me.

Credits: from top (Wilson Chua, Llyod Lee, Becky, Elicia, Esther, Vivian, Alison, Farhan)

Mommy Pie

2010-05-10T18:05:00.001+08:00

Happy Mother's Day!
Mother's Day= Apple pie at my house because my mom LOVES apple pie. She knows how to make it alright but she says she is too lazy and so it has become a yearly tradition (burden) for me to make apple pie for her on Mother's day. I say burden because I mean peeling, coring and cutting 7 apples for a pie that size is a ho-hum chore. Besides, I am a very slow peeler, corer and cutter so yes, burden, burden, burden. It almost just makes it worth it with that first bite (I mean, mom's first bite). It was tasty, pretty yummy, tart with a sweet tinge, just the way I like it (Mom, too!) but if I had help with the peeling, it would have tasted so much better (I am just saying)!

There is however an interesting story (as always) behind this 'burdensome' chore of making my mom's day apple pie.

The pictures of the apple pie with the pastry rose? They are pictures of the apple pie I made thinking it was Mother's Day. That was sometime back in uh March. Till now, I do not have an inkling as to why I thought that Sunday was Mother's Day in that week of March.

In fact, I thought it was pretty odd that there was no usual sleuth of advertisements on which restaurants to go to on Mother's day, which florists to purchase your carnations from for Mother's Day, no tweets asking people what they were doing for their good ole moms, no siblings eagerly pushing the duty of getting the present to each other, no friends complaining about how carnations the size of their thumbs cost 2 dollars. Zilch.

I did ask my siblings if they knew it was Mother's day on that particular Sunday. Despite their raised doubts, I was still somehow stupidly convinced that it was and berated them about forgetting about it. So Sunday rolled by and my mom asked me if she could eat the apple pie on the table and I said of course, it is your Mother's Day present! She looked at me and said it was not Mother's Day, Mother's Day was not for another 2 months. We all had a good laugh about it over some pie but two months rolled by and I still had to make one last Sunday for the real Mother's Day! I did try to weasel out of it by joking with my mom the day before, telling her that hey, you ate your present 2 months ago, I am not making another! She pretended not to hear me. How convenient.

So, along with the usual sleuth of advertisements, tweets and complains, Mother's Day was celebrated at my house with some pie. Mom being the happiest of course having gotten two pies this year.

This is a pretty long post with lots of pictures because well, I have time now and I was away for pretty darn long! Truce?

I absolutely love mornings like this with apple pie and Murakami. Simple yet immensely satisfying.

The milk is just there because milk and cookies go together just like milk and apple pie or was it vanilla ice cream? Anyways, I do not drink milk so le brother/s will have to finish it for me later on with his/their slice/s of apple pie when he/they get/s back from school.

Snicker-what?

2010-05-03T19:41:00.001+08:00

SNICKERDOODLES!

I know there is crack down the middle of that snickerdoodle but the other one had two. Well, I know you want to hear the story (or not) but here I go boring you with WHY and other details:

I was on some snickerdoodle making frenzy just before all my deadline (hopefully you got one of them because I think I gave out a gazillion (not really) in school) and not forgetting about ma blog, I reserved like two snickerdoodles to take pictures of. As you know, however, things do not EVER go my way! I asked the bf to hold the box containing these precious snickerdoodles for like a minute so that I could adjust the strap of my bag and he SWUNG the box. There you go. Cr-ac-k. Lovely really.

For people who do not know what snickerdoodles are, like I have explained and tweeted and re-tweeted to the tweeples, they are soft and chewy sugar cookies rolled in cinnamon and sugar! Definitely one of my favourite cookies! They make me craving soft pretzels rolled in cinnamon sugar, cinnamon rolls and basically anything cinnamon-y. Unlike the Triple C though, I can only eat ONE of these because they are swwww-ee-t and I am as you know, not a HUGE fan of very sweet stuff. I am a lemon/tart girl through and through.

I have not found the ULTIMATE snickerdoodle recipe though so if you have any favourites, please please pretty please share them with me!

P.S 2 more final papers to go! I missed my blog and it looked so forlorn without new content that I gave in. See you all soon. I promise you apple pie!

P.S.S I forgot to change the post date and time and goodness me, this post is "late late late" by close to 1.5 months!

Alive

2010-04-12T01:02:00.002+08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates.
I promise I am still alive.
Half-dead but yes, still alive.

Stay rainbow cheery till I am back!

Oh, here is a video, blog and carbonmade which you will definitely loveeeee.

Reunion

2010-03-17T21:56:00.006+08:00

I know, I know.
Very belated but here it is anyway!
So every year on Chinese New Year's Eve, my mom would be slogging in the kitchen to prepare the food for the reunion diner, 团员饭 (tuan yuan fan). (Of course I help!) These are the pictures of some of the DELICIOUS dishes my mom whipped up. Sorry for my lousy angling but I hope you will still feast generously!

盆菜 (Peng Cai)/Fortune Pot
This is one of my favourite dish! As the name suggests, it is a sumptuous pot of chinese delicacies. I heart the prawns, sea cucumbers and the quail eggs most. I do not like abalone although it is considered the delicacy of all delicacies by many Chinese and my sibling chopstick fight over them. I got sick of eating them every Chinese New Year! Same goes for those mushrooms which I did not touch for similar reasons as the abalone. When I was a mushroom loving kid, I was given at lunch and dinner a towering bowl of all sorts of mushrooms. Well, you can pretty much guess one day, I got so sick of eating them and threw up so...

鮑魚 (Bao yu)/Abalone
These are the sliced abalone which everyone lovessssss! (Except me of course) I shall not go into details on how abalone from X is better than Y because of Z reasons.

五香 (Wu Xiang)/Ngoh Hiang

In simple terms, this is a deep fried meat roll which consists of minced pork meat, chestnuts, onions, spring onions mixed with a generous amount of five spice powder, seasoned with sesame oil and soya sauce. My paternal grandmother does it the best maybe because she is Hokkien and this IS a hokkien dish. Sad to say, I do not like this dish either. No traumatic experience of over-eating it like abalone and mushrooms by the way. It just does not "click" with my tummy.

帶子(Dai Zi)/Scallops
Fresh scallops stir fried in Mom's special sauce is sooooo yummy! I think there are two types of scallops here but I am no scallop expert so they would just be called scallops. This dish is usually adorned with boiled broccoli at the sides or would be stir-fried together with the scallops with eggs.

Vegtable Stir-Fry
I have to admit I do not know what this dish is called. My Mom basically just stir fried some chopped cauliflowers together with mushrooms, tofu, carrots and some vegetarian beancurd thing sprinkled with crispy deep fried soy things. Sorry for the poor description but I really do not know what they are called and neither does my Mom actually. This dish was one of those forgettable dishes. I love vegetables but this just did not cut it for me.

Roast Chicken
This is just down-to-earth roast chicken which is very very succulent. Do you know roast chicken is one of my comfort foods?

Fried pork cutlets with/without cheese
The "cheese pork cutlets" are the ones on the right side and the "normal" pork cutlets are the ones on the left. Um. Actually, I forgot. I made this dish all by myself. I mean how hard can dipping pieces of pork into beaten egg, flour and breadcrumbs be right? Wrong. The deep frying part was tricky because the oil and to be at the right temperature and I had to "know" when it was done. It was not too bad but not great because it was done by yours truly. It would have been ten times better if my Mom did it herself. Really.

燒肉(Shao rou)/ Barbequed Pork meat
This is my absolute favourite! I can never get sick of this I swear! My maternal grandma made this with her broiler and having eaten numerous pieces of it at lunch, I could still stomach another ten pieces at dinner. My Mom begged (ok, asked) my grandma to cut her a portion so that she could cook one dish less and I really do not mind, it is soooo good. To be honest, I like it wayyyy more than those sold in the stores. Man. I feel like eating those right now

now.

Q is for Quiche

2010-03-13T23:18:00.014+08:00

E is for Etch-A-Sketch.
Yes. This post is dedicated to Chah.

This quiche was made for her for our lunch date in school which never happened. She was suppose to bring her E and I my Q but the sleep monster captured her whole and ate her alive. Really. My friends were all blatantly happy about her fate though because they got to eat extra slices while others that did not have a slice were happy they got one.

We usually eat quiche on Fridays because my Mom is too lazy to whip up a full ten-course meal for dinner. We get sushi and fried rice more often though because there is always the danger of my Dad coming home for dinner (which he usually does not on Fridays) and he does not think anything besides rice qualifies as proper food. My Mom usually makes the quiche although increasingly, I have been tasked the task of making it because well, like I said, she gets lazy on Fridays and besides I definitely can bake better than I cook or roll sushi.

Quiche is really quite easy to make that if I ever become a Mom and I got lazy on Fridays, this is what you get kiddos! I mean you just
1.Whip up some shortcrust pastry
2. Stir together cream, eggs,a dash of pepper and salt and just a bit of milk
3. Stir-fry some spinach and ham with onions
4. Press your pastry dough onto a fluted pie pan.
5. Poke the bottom with a fork.
6. Add 3 and pour 2 into the pan.
7. Sprinkle some black pepper over the top and bake. and Voila! Dinner/Lunch/Tea-time snack/Breakfast/Picnic food/BfGf bait/you get the idea.

Yes, I do.

2010-03-07T03:31:00.008+08:00

Some business

2010-03-07T03:09:00.004+08:00

No. I am not opening a business of any sort. (Although, I do take commissioned orders.)
Yes. I designed it (all by myself).
No. It is not for fun. (It was fun designing it though)
Yes. It is for tomorrow's fashion show. (Say what?)
No. I am not the caterer for the show. (Double boo!)
Yes. I am modelling. (I know right?)
No. I am not tall. (Sigh.)
Yes. It is for a good cause. (Please come!)
No. It is not invitation only. (Please come!)
Yes. I would love to meet you! (Please come!)

P.S
No. You better not steal my pictures. (Nothing will happen but someday... you will know.)
Yes. You can credit me if you use them. (Thank you for sharing the love!)

Where are you?

2010-03-01T02:24:00.003+08:00

I miss you, I really miss you, so would you please come back?
I know you had to leave but I need you back.
Demons are haunting me and they tug and drag.
They tug and drag me into the deep dark depths.
I need you to hurry.
I need you to come back.
Come back my sunshine.
Come back.
There is nothing exactly wrong but everything is not right.
So please, bring along laughter and all things good so that we can dance all night.

Birthday Cake

2010-02-13T01:40:00.002+08:00

This is my very first attempt at making a whole cake. No, really it is. The other attempts were either disastrous resulting to cake gone south or I had much help from the mom. So, it comes as no surprise if I tell you the cake was not pretttyyyy. My cake decorating and frosting skills are awesome FAIL. It was quite tasty nevertheless.

I used this recipe for the cake and sandwiched the cake layers with a layer of frosting+strawberry slices+strawberry puree. The cake layers turned out a tad bit hard and I guess I have myself to blame for it. The recipe stated that I had to bake the layers in two separate tins but I obviously do not have two tins of the same measurement. Oh and I did not have the exact measure either! Although my mom has a very impressive range of baking equipment, we alas, still have missing ones. The big mistake I made was that I substituted the required tin with the smaller one I had which was 7-inch and let us just say that the cake was threatening to explode it's dress. Haha. I will if I am making this again use the larger one which is the 9 inch and cross my fingers and pray that the layers would not turn out too thin. OR, well, I suppose of course I could go out and buy an 8-inch tin. My oven is not big enough to contain two tins so I would have to bake it one shot.

I would recommend this recipe if you are looking for a strawberry cake base because it really packs alot of strawberry punch in those tight crumbs and although my cake layers did not turn out pink, I am sure yours probably would. Oh! Please check out the rest of the posts on the blog! On second thought, perhaps it is unnecessary to ask you to do so because they look absolutely delicious and you know what is good.

Here you go, Happy Birthday!

Edit: I used the brown sugar cream cheese frosting which was soooo yum.

Strawberry Sunshine

2010-02-11T00:54:00.001+08:00

If there is one thing that is always in my fridge, it would be strawberries. My mom for some reason or another seems to like buying strawberries alot. Not that I am complaining but I was about to when she went crazy and bought 9 250g packet of strawberries. I mean it is one thing to like something alot and it is another to finish perishable likings. I obviously was not eating them fast enough and no one in my family really eats them except my mom and my sister (occasionally) so I grabbed a few packets and made some strawberry mousse using this recipe.

I have never really made a mousse before to be honest and using heavy cream too! It turned turned out prettily so I am glad. This is definitely not the best strawberry mousse and honestly not my cup of mousse either but the bff and my mom seem to like it much. It was abit tooo milky-tasting for me and if left out too long in humid weather, it would turn mushyy-ugh. There was a problem with the recipe because it omitted the step where I have to add in the required lemon zest and lemon juice so I guess it turned out just a tad bit too sweet. I may tweak this recipe and figure out when to add in the lemon zing and maybe it would turn out just lovely.

In the meantime, catch some sunshine in a cup.

Absolute Laughter

2010-02-06T21:59:00.004+08:00

Credits to Trevor Wong.

Lemony Goodness

2010-02-06T19:35:00.015+08:00

Reading the blog of someone who is a lemon addict can be rather boring sometimes because you know that once not in a blue moon and very often, she will post lemony stuff. This post is about lemony stuff yet again and I am not apologizing. Haha. I know this is a bit overdue because I have been talking about giving out lemon-syrup loaf cake slices to my friends in school on my twitter and there are noooo pictures of it. I just uploaded a couple of them on my facebook but this is the proper post on how yums this is.

I mean would you just look at that?! I must have flipped through Nigella's How To Be A Domestic Goddess a million times ever since I got it for my birthday last year but this is the "christening" bake. What better way to "christen" a recipe book by making some lemony goodness? This Lemon-syrup Loaf Cake may seem like just an "ordinary pound cake" and I think it would probably be without the immersion of the syrup. I found the cake itself did not have that an intense lemon flavour but paired with the syrup, ohmylemon! It IS good. Thus, it is no surprise that i love the top part of the cake more than the bottom. The next time I make this, besides letting the cake absorb the syrup through the holes poked by a skewer, I am going to double the syrup and dip my slice of cake in it to be lemon-fied (satisfied lemon-ly).

Oh. Did I mention that Nigella writes one of the loveliest recipe books I have ever come across? It is like reading the thoughts in her head while she makes the yummy things in her book or like watching her on TV in text. I will definitely be baking more from this book!

What did I do with the leftover lemon juice from making the cake? I made this:

Lemonade Ice Pops!

Grapefruit Ice Pops! (Not really lemony but still citrus-y eh?)

Perfect.

2010-01-27T23:46:00.004+08:00

Cheery

2010-01-27T14:30:00.003+08:00

Overload of brownies these days but here is one for you to chase those blues or mean reds away.

Orange Cake II

2010-01-25T02:23:00.000+08:00

I was tempted to leave this post wordless but knowing me, I am a woman of "not-so-few" words so if you are just here to check out the orange cake I baked (that everyone on my twitter list probably knows about by now), you can click the X button on the top right hand corner of the browser like right now. Oh. If you are wondering why the photos are a bit different than the other posts, that is because I took them. My brother finally declared he was not going to take anymore photos for me unpaid and I am too broke to pay him. Nah. Of course not. It was a matter of timing and if you are really interested in the real reason, you know what to do!

So. Orange cake.
The second orange cake.
I have been reading this blog for awhile now and her Sicilian Orange Cake has been on my to-do-list ever since she posted it up. I did not have Sicilian oranges on hand so I used the normal variety. Like the last time, I did not have all the required ingredients so it was a trip down to the supermarket at 12.45am to grab a packet of self-raising flour. Luckily this time, it did not involve any cooling (no fans) and it used relatively few bowls and things so that means less clean up. Yay! It was a pretty straightforward and uncomplicated recipe which did not require much time which was perfect for a very lazy student who needs the last hours to try to finish up her readings. It turned out quite superbly beautiful as you can see and I absolutely adored the color of it. Being the Amy that I am, I baked this cake ~~the night~~ on the day in which I have a 9am class and so it was rushrushrush to make the icing and take photos of the cake before I rushrushrush to school. I did not have a lot of time to do everything so I am pretty pleased the photos turned out alright.

I was of course late for school. By the time I sat down, I was ravenous and proceeded to take out a slice of the orange cake which my mother lovingly packed for me while I was rushing to stuff my books into my bag and started eating, oblivious to the fact that the lecturer was having a round of "Let me see if I remember your names". It was not till the person next to me nudged me that I looked up from my cake, holding my fork in mid-air and realized that he had reached me and obviously could not remember my name, my chinese name. I stupidly told him my name with my fork still in mid-air and I swear I could see him making a big cross on the name sheet he was holding. Ah well. I think I am going to fail that class. Haha.

I gave the other slice I brought to my lunch buddy for that day and shared my half-eaten piece with my good friend who obviously did not mind it being half-eaten and both of them declared it REALLY GOOD. I have to disagree though. I thought that the orange flavour was not pronounced enough perhaps due to the kind of oranges I used and that the cake was so so so sweet that I could only taste the sugar. I felt like I was eating a sugar cake. Although I have to say in all fairness, it was still a pretty good cake and it will definitely taste awesome for someone who has a sweet tooth. I might try this again maybe with less sugar next time but you should try making it and tell me what you think eh?

Making this orange cake unlike the other made me realize that maybe that is what we all want in life, to be simple, uncomplicated and amazingly sweet. Of course, we do not always get what we want and sometimes we do not even know whether that is what we want. Life is full of confusion, doubts and probably a large dose of sorrow but someday, we will get an orange cake day and maybe everything will be alright again.

Meet me, will you on an orange cake day?

Orange Cake I

2010-01-24T00:18:00.010+08:00

Orange Cake.
How did I embark on the journey to make it?
It is quite a simple reason really. I asked my BFF1 what her favourite cake was and she replied "Orange Cake" and so Orange cake it is. She however did not get the cake that I baked for her. What happened?

Before I get to that, I have to tell you about the whole process of baking the Orange cake 1. Nic was set to go back to Auckland and I obviously waited till the last minute to bake her favourite cake having just texted her the ~~day~~ night before she was set to leave. I did not even have to do much digging for the recipe because I already know which one I was going to make. This one. The recipe I agree is a tad bit tedious and maybe a wee bit complicated but I was determined to make it anyway. One problem was I had only 2 eggs in the pantry. Not a big problem although it was nearing 12am because I had a 24 hour supermarket just 10 steps (ok, 100++ steps) away. So ingredient problem solved, I proceeded to boil the oranges and boy it took a looooong time! It was not too bad though because I was working on her card in the meantime.

The oranges were finally done but I had to wait for it to cool and smart me decided I shall leave them on the table near the fan so it would cool faster right? WRONG. Technically if you did it that way, it would be correct but for me, things went so wrong and I think I may have actually died. A bit melodramatic but you judge for yourself and no, sorry, I do not have a video of what happened. It would definitely be one of the top few videos on #I should have died I should think. SO, I placed the plate with the boiled oranges on the table and reached out to switch on the switch for the fan and as soon as the switch went “click”, there was immediately a very loud “BANG” and a lot of crazy whirring sounds and for a moment, I was in shock before I quickly reached for the switch. My mother suddenly appeared from my room and stared at me and then stared at all the things and the floor and she did that repeatedly for like five times and finally asked me what had happened. What happened? What happened?!?! I actually do not know and I was pretty much in shock myself. However, judging from the debris on the ground in which the blasted metal casing of the fan lay halfway across the room and the blades of fan, cracked and splintered, decorated my living room floor in all sizes and shape, I gathered that the screws that held the casing of my fan was probably loose or something and it flew out when I switched it on. My mother finally asked me if I was OK and I apparently was because if I was bleeding or lying in my own pool of blood, my mother would have probably screamed/shrieked when she came out of my room instead of alternating her views between the floor and myself, let alone asking me if I was OK. IF I was actually switching on the switch while standing in front of the fan, I probably would be typing this (or not) in the hospital (or not) and so I really thank my lucky stars that I was standing behind the fan when I switched it on.

Death averted and debris swept, I proceeded to finish baking the cake in which my near death experience (luckily) did not leave me paralysed with fear and I got it done quite successfully, out of the oven and cooling on the racks. It was 5 am then and I had to go get ready to go to the airport. You would think that there would be no more drama after that no? Oh, I was sooo wrong. The cake was still pretty hot when I needed to leave but I was pretty adamant about cutting a slice to bring it with me, after all the whole point of baking the cake was for Nic! In all of her goodness, my mother tried to help but uh the cake was destroyed because of that. It just fell apart and stuff and it was quite a heart wrenching scene which I could not really remember for that exact same reason. That was what happened to Orange cake 1. I guess the only good part out of this was that I manage to finish the card for my BFF1 so she did not exactly get zero things from me and that I ate some of the broken up pieces and it tasted pretty good so I am definitely making this cake again. This time I know, it will not involve any fans.

Making this orange cake made me realize that sometimes even if you escape the worst of things, you cannot escape the bad things that ARE going to happen sooner or later and to be honest, I really do not know how to handle them. Not one single bit.

P.S Sorry for sounding so :( but that is just what I have been feeling these few days. Not that I am not dark and twisty all the time but just more so these days. I hope life is treating all of you good though.

Brownie-off

2010-01-05T04:20:00.013+08:00

First bake/s of the year!

Brownies were my first bake of the year!!
If I seem excited, it is only because never in all my baking life did i come across the terms "first bake" till recently and I got to know of it just in time to use it, so pardon my excitement over oh-so-trivial things. So, excitement aside, no, not really, I was very excited to make brownies for my first bake. Many of my friends were all "uhhhhh.okkkk.Tell me why are you excited again?" when I told them I was making brownies. They pointed out (some more dramatically then others) that my homemade list had at least 2 or 3 posts on brownies so it was nothing very revolutionARY so what is the BFD?

I told them in the voice you use when you are about to reveal a big secret that I was going to make THE BAKED BROWNIE from my spanking new BAKED recipe book. After standing there after revealing my news with a very super wide grin on my face as though I was going to gloat to my brothers about seeing Santa eating cookies and milk on Christmas Eve for about 10 seconds, I realized they had the same faces they had before I told them anything. There was one particular friend who laughed at me on Facebook saying "Haha! baked brownies". For those of you who are a bit slow, yeah, brownies are baked, I do not think their birthing place was anywhere else besides the oven. I finally realized that there are not many people that know what THE BAKED BROWNIE is unless you are in the U.S, you watch Oprah or you love baking and like me stalk a million and one (not that many) baking blogs and tastespot, foodgawk, etc every day so for those who know it, you know what I am talking about!! Awesomeness.

Of course, I would need to taste the real BAKED BROWNIE to know how mine fared but without eating the real one, like always, I always seem to have some missing ingredients and not do something right so I cannot really call it THE BAKED BROWNIE. Not yet. Until the day I can declare I did it perfect from step 1-10 using all the correct measurement pans and ingredients can I actually proclaim whether that something is THE something. I know it sounds just a tad bit extreme or I am making excuses for my poor baking skills but yes, there it is, really.

What did I miss out this time? White granulated sugar. I had a bout less than 1/4 cup left and so I used that 1/4 cup and added 1 +1/2 cups of light brown sugar when the recipe called for 1+1/2 cups granulated sugar and 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar. I also put in a bit less of the dark chocolate because I am damn broke (IKR, it is the starting of the year and I am broke already?!) and that I had no time to go to the specific places which sold Valrhona here so I only bought 3 bars of 100g Lindt 70% Chocolate when they asked for 11 ounces. I also thought the Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder was the dark unsweetened kind but I am thinking maybe not? If any cocoa powder expert is reading, please comment to enlighten me on this? I am also confused as to the instant espresso powder that I bought is actually instant espresso powder. So ingredients confusion+problems aside, I did not have a 9-by-13 inch so I used a 9-by-9 inch and I do not know if I overmixed, overbeated the batter at any point of time. So after all that...

So yes. That is my BAKED brownie. I "googled" THE BAKED BROWNIE on tastespotting and I realized they all looked different and I think none of them looked like the one in the book. If you have the book, you can compare mine with the book but mine is probably higher because I used a 9-by-9 inch instead of a 9-by-13 inch. Before I talk about the taste, I also on the same night/morning (it was after 12am) baked my go-to-brownies in which I used the Alice Medrich recipe using no chocolate and just cocoa powder.

The Alice Medrich recipe is my go-to recipe because it is very simple and you cant go wrong with it much and that it requires the least amount of equipment and that means less washing up to do. I absolutely detest washing dishes. Bleargh. I added nuts into my brownies this time which I normally try not to because my brothers both detest eating nuts almost as much as my dislike for washing dishes because I was bringing some to a party and some of my friends <3

Then it was brownie-off time!

I did a little survey while my friends and family were happily munching on these brownies and almost all of them preferred my go-to brownies to the BAKED one. However, this is as they say not a very fair experiment and there will definitely be a "re-match" once I master the art of baking THE BAKED BROWNIE and make sure there are no nuts in the Medrich one. Looking forward to it!

I know this entry is already super long and if you are tired reading, feel free to click the "X" at the top right hand corner. For those who like me love long letters and blog posts. Here is a rather long P.S. I used to when I started baking hate brownies because I never seem to get it right. It always turned out a flop or too cakey. Then one day, I found my go-to recipe for brownies and I decided to give brownies a second chance and the rest is history as they say as I never looked back. I am not really going to espouse any grand theory or morals here but sometimes, all it takes is some faith and luck!:)

Truffs

2010-01-02T01:27:00.002+08:00

Truffles and I go a long way back.

I remember the first time I made truffles without knowing what they are, how they looked like or taste like. I thumbed through a recipe book of luscious chocolate dessert and decided I wanted to make those lovely sounding things. Besides, the author of the book made them sound so darn easy, the ingredients did not look intimidating and I did not even have to bake it. At that time, I was only just starting to know the oven, scales, eggs and flour so I had just about the same amount of courage as an ostrich. My family had the same amount of courage as I did. However, the truffles turned out to be one of the most delicious tasting things I have ever made ever then.

Well, most delicious, really? I guess I am pretty biased but it was not just towards my own culinary skills definitely. I remain forevermore a chocolate lover. So anything chocolate is probably yummy although they have to pass through the selection process. I am a strictly no white chocolate, partial to milk and love only the darkest chocolate kind of person. I do not use the language of chocolate connoisseurs to explain why I love the chocolate and I do not want to pretend that I know what good chocolate is. However, what I do know is if it makes me go "OMG" in my head or if I make sounds which remotely sounds like horse grunts or if I keep saying" This is sooooo good" when I savor it, it is to me, good chocolate. I love a plain dark piece, I love rochers (dark chocolate nut clusters), I love chocolate in desserts and I definitely love a good dark chocolate truffle.

Chocolates are probably the most well-known comfort food maybe second to ice cream and the rest of the lot and they deserve their #1 place. Chocolates fix my bad days, celebrate my good days, excite my drab and boring days and the list goes on. It is like having an imaginary friend just that the friend is not imaginary and it probably will never bitch behind your back, abandon you, steal your boyfriend and probably will only disappoint you if they do not taste good. Of course for me, I will still have my Lemon BFF, so all is good.

I used the traditional way of course through the stomach to capture hearts and le bf's heart (and stomach) stood no chance against my truffles. After I gave a box of truffles to him (which he lost, leaving it behind together with my first Christmas present to him on a taxi) on our first Christmas date, he fell in love with me. No, it does not happen that way but hey, do you really want to the know the real story? After using so much truffle-bait, it somehow became somewhat of tradition to give the bf a box of truffles at Christmas. This year (or rather last year, because it is 2nd of Jan 2010 now) due to my laziness, I bought a box (late and ate one out of the box) and it is yummmms. I know because I ate one.

There is a cute little story (pardon me for using cute, I have limited vocabulary) which led me to this box of truffles. It all began with Lingyi's suggestion of eating a cheapish lunch at Maxwell and shopping at Ann Siang Hill which ended with visiting this lovely chocolate atelier before we headed home. We were walking to the train station when I spotted a sign that said Chocolate atelier and up those wooden steps we went. Pushing open the glass door, I was somewhat transported back into time for a few seconds (only because I worked at a cafe which sells amazing chocolate and things) and then I found myself looking into the face of my friend from school. I have to be honest, I was shocked. I mean how often do you pick a shop randomly and find your friend working in that shop?! Well, at least for me, it does not happen that much because I always seem to have some cafe or shop I want to check out because it is supposedly 'good' and would not be that surprised to see my friends working there (just because I have awesomely cool friends). After overcoming my initial "shock", I proceeded to try one of their truffles and being a dark chocolate "fanatic", I chose the darkest they had and after the last trace of it has been melted and incorporated into my soul, I wondered how (on earth) could I stand not eating truffles every day? Of course, I would be the size of earth if I ate truffles every day and not mentioning the fact that I am not exactly my canoeist brother or my salad-eating aunt would probably mean it would take no time for that to happen at all.

Of course, good things are meant to be shared and I spread the word about the yummms truffs. I told my truffle loving friend about these truffs and he immediately asked me, "Are they better than Royce's Nama?" I told him to try these and decide for himself! Oh and you should too! Especially for those who are looking to capture hearts, do consider truffle-bait! If you are a Susan, please buy, a Bree, please make.

Truffs.

Oh! Almost forgot. Happy 2010 everyone!

I guess my truffle journey is a bit like a mirror of pretty much everything that matter to me. Baking, food, chocolate, pretty things, family, bf, bffs, friends, surprises. Nevertheless, it is not complete, no, not without lemon. And books. and TV and ... So anyway, yay to having a new year to make all those mistakes you made last year and more yay to the new year being a good year this year filled with all sorts of things that makes you bright and shiny.

DizzyDizzy

2009-12-27T15:26:00.001+08:00

Me: I don't know why I am so dizzy today.
Him: That is because you have been running through my mind the whole day.

I <3 French girls

2009-12-10T16:29:00.000+08:00

Especially this one.

Just for laughs

2009-11-29T15:57:00.003+08:00

My Year #TweetCloud

Top three words: haha, love, hahaa.

My #TweetCloud out of a month of my tweets. Top three words: haha, hahaa, lemon

My #TweetCloud out of a week of my tweets. Top three words: haha, hahaha, hahaa

I am officially a laughing hyena who loves lemon.

That just sums me up:)

Lemon Cravings

2009-11-27T18:06:00.008+08:00

I am a lemon-junkie and I am proud of it. No number of Lemon Anonymous meetings can ever EVER make me give up this addiction. Well, firstly, it is most unlikely that I would join L-A anyway.Haha!Joohander recently tweeted that if he were to do a search on all his tweets on the subject-lemon tart, I would win hands down and damn well I will!No one (at least on my twitter list) seems to crave lemony things as much as I do!Or if they do, they are not twit-junkies who tweet all the time about their lemon cravings.

A confession though?

I am not really just a lemon-junkie but I have a crazy obsession with sourish, tartish things.
Hence, people always chuckle and ask me if I am preggers when I complain about wanting to eat all things supremely sour and I would always reply welll, if I am preggers then I would probably be eating raw lemons by the truckloads.

One thing however that I have been craving ever since I sunk my teeth into my first homemade one would be a lemon tart. To be honest, I have never eaten any lemon tart besides the ones I have made and I know I must be missing out all those incredulous tasting ones made by 'real' chefs but when you are craving something real bad and you want to remain in your PJs, homemade ones will do just fine. (In fact, more than just fine.)

I did make a suppppperrr huge mistake when making this though and I kicked myself a million times after. It turned out alright (ok, more than alright) but I do not regret kicking myself. To all those making this, please please remember to beat your eggs in a small bowl and whisk some of the warm lemon mixture into the eggs when the butter is melted and scrape the warmed eggs back into the saucepan and cook over low heat and not do what I did which was to crack the eggs and egg yolks into the saucepan with the lemon juice, zest, sugar, and butter. Sighhhh.

Now, I just reallllly really wished the markets were selling Meyer Lemons and Key Limes because I have been ogling at delicious looking Key Lime tarts and desserts using meyer lemons since foreverrrr!! However, I know I will never get them unless I disapparate to America which obviously would not happen except in my dreams.
This may very well be one of the tasks one needs to accomplish if they wished to marry me!
In that case, move over Mrs Claus! :P

Before I leave you to eat my tart, I have some news!

Yessssss.
My family has finally acquired two clickety-click black boxes with our last one firmly in the ground and probably fossiling right now. However, I am a total idiot at operating DSLRs or cameras in general so I may not be doing much justice to the precious machine in my hands but I promise I will try to learn as much as I can so if you can, please flood me with all kind of tips you have:) Meanwhile, my brother has kindly agreed to help me and so the photos below are mainly credited to him while the few others are by yours truly.

And OH!
Exams will finally end next Wednesday!:)
Although, I have to admit, I have not been studying much and among other things have been playing Diner Dash Seasonal Snack and re-reading my Harry Potter books! :P

In other news, I <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1OuAMeyOP04/Sw-v50c4epI/AAAAAAAABHs/4Yw_PYXitws/s1600/DPP_C0002.JPG">

I used David Lebovitz's recipe.
You have to try it and obviously, his tart looks sooo much better than mine.

Fix me

2009-11-24T16:13:00.002+08:00

Fix You

Coldplay

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I

Tears stream down on your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Songwriters: Berryman, Guy; Buckland, Jon; Champion, Will; Martin, Chris

Ting ♥

2009-11-20T00:18:00.008+08:00

happy birthday ting!

p.s post pics of your dinner+zouk+sabai soon!
p.s.s i really love the black and white pics.

Perfect for Halloween

2009-10-25T18:49:00.001+08:00

No?

Death row

2009-10-23T22:43:00.007+08:00

Yeah.

The usual:
Too many things, too little time.

Blog more soon.

P.S I may, scratch that, WILL be bored so I will be twittering.
So you know where to find me. kind of.

<3

Who wants to be a tart?

2009-10-10T17:06:00.012+08:00

I do not want to be a tart but I do not mind tarting up.
Hehe.
I love tart things and I definitely do like tarts as well!
Tried a little mix and match tarting for my sister's farewell to her colleagues gift.
Whipped up a batch of fruit tart bases, lemon curd and some chocolate filling and Voila!

The ones with the chocolate base is made using the original recipe, just cute-sized:)
Did some meringues too but they did not turn out too pretty so no pictures! (they are all gone anyway so...)
The Bf is getting all 3 by the way.

P.S What kind of tarts do you like?

Halloween is here!

2009-10-09T01:00:00.005+08:00

Not.
There are still many days left to the end of the month!
However, it is really Halloween for me the end of the month because EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING is due then. After which, it would be 2 weeks to exams.
Sighhhh.

I really want to update about 7atenine but I am really not inclined to because I do not have photos!Well, at least after the dinner at 7atenine and the loveliest daiquiris at Orgo, I can finally say that we are finally 3 years old! It is no more, 2 years plus nearing 3. Yays.

I always love our JT-girls outing because we are always so so so crazy!
Oh! I did some baking too.
Will update this with photos maybe in the next post.

In the meantime, to celebrate my 100th post,
let me keep up with the theme of this post and give you pictures of me!
The lighting and the sucky VAIO camera really makes me look like so ghostly as you have previously seen in this post.

By the way, I am learning alot more about Marx and Weber in one of my modules so I may like to redeem my ohsoidiotic post from before.

That's all.

Oh and my eye bags look horrendous!

Overdue and fined.

2009-10-05T01:13:00.005+08:00

Here's the promised photos from my birthday:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=135971&id=547670906&l=8ac44a3f29

HAHA.
Bet you were expecting a whole mess of pictures but noooo, I am way to lazyyy and that is really convenient.Just to highlight a few things if not already obvious in the photos, I made all the food!! I was mad tired and it was so crazy but I am a happy birthday girl.

If you were wondering about why I had to blow out so many candles on my birthday cupcakes, it is really because my friends all want me to live till 100. No, really, they think I am an old hag that is celebrating her 100th birthday. Ok, seriously,they love me so much that they want my saliva all over the icing. It is really too bad I didnt make a 100 wishes while blowing out all those candles though, because I would have wished for another 100 wishes for each of the 100 wishes, one cannot be too greedy and wish for a million.

I love my friends. No, seriously, I do:)

Then on my birthday itself, or rather the night before, I got smashed like OMFG. Here's one pic of me with Ting that doesnt look toooooo bad. Ting looks gorgeous as usual.

Onwards to Lingyi's party at casual poet.
Theme was bohemian and I am so not a "wild-child" but the party was pretty wild because of the awesomeness of the people at my table. Love you all for playing "happy family" in Chinese!:)

My Table

We must have saw enlightenment.

They made me do it.

My hand-drawn card!

*Reminder to Ling to send me close-up shot pls!

I love my bff <3

At Roy's very short-notice party.

I am supposed to be his MISC friends but the NS camp people were nice enough to let be an honorary member for the minute. HA

Bf and I went to Little India to do our fieldtrip report and I got to eat this yummy thing:

and here is a touristy pic of me!

Was going to update on my dinner at 7atenine but I think this is long enough:)
Plus I am lazy.

Lemon dreams

2009-09-26T00:55:00.004+08:00

It is so hard not to take another spoonful of you, lemon curd.
Delicious yummy lemon curd.
I am so glad you are there sitting nicely in a jar in my fridge, somehow knowing that I would come for you.
Oh, lemons!
What would I do without you?
I would be like a fish without water or my sister without her TV.
I will zest you and slice you,
squeeze you and dice you,
make sure you are nice you.
Lemon tart,
lemon slice,
lemon cookies,
lemon ice,
lemon lemon,
lemon lime.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you my lemontine.

So what's new with me besides declaring my love for lemons with a seriously sucky "poem"?
I have been MIA for the longest time and to be honest, I think i gained like a million and one pounds from eating too much and moving too little. I promise I will post up pictures from my birthday party that was in July, it will have to do without the video because Manda Tay has not sent me the vid. Also pictures from my BFF, L's party and maybe some pictures of something baked. I baked for the first time today since I made mint brownies for JT when he just came back and my mom ate like almost all of it (even though I ate alot myself). Hopefully I get to bake more so that I can stuff my friends crazy with happiness when I go back to school. hehe.

2009-08-19T18:06:00.001+08:00

FML.

Hardly Photobooth-ic

2009-08-07T22:23:00.004+08:00

Just in case you missed the point of this post, here's a hint: Roses are red and so are you.

Blueberry Boy-Bait

2009-08-04T00:08:00.013+08:00

Not exactly fishing for any boys here but I wanted to make these upon hearing the name!It just sounds intriguing does it not?Anyway, this is the original recipe from a Chicago teenager for the Pillsbury $100,000 Recipe & Baking Contest 1954, or so it says.

This "bait" is pretty good but not WOW if you know what I mean. (Or I am just plain fussy about my food) I think I will give Nigella's recipe a try before I decide to bait any boys with this dessert. She promises it to be more Britain-style in her book How To Be a Domestic Goddess, ( which I recently got in my bunch of birthday gifts ) and that just has me excited, not baiting British boys excited, but then again, British boys are pretty darn cute! :)

Prolonged interlude

2009-08-01T02:26:00.002+08:00

You will just have to be a little patient waiting for my birthday post.
In the meantime, here are some light and fluffy scones!
*with orange marmalade
Tea, perhaps?:)

A little strawberry interlude

2009-07-30T21:46:00.005+08:00

Birthday post will be up soon!
In the meantime, enjoy a little strawberry interlude:)

Redeeming this post.
Oh. P.S I cant wait for this.

not again.

2009-07-30T21:38:00.001+08:00

what is wrong with my blogger?
argh.

edit: omg. i just checked out this help forum and i cant believe pressing control down and f5 really works.

5 Birthdays and a Wedding

2009-07-30T00:38:00.022+08:00

Ok.
First off, it is going to be a long long post with pictures (thankfully), but still, a warning is nevertheless necessary.
I know. This is what happens when I put off blogging for 2 long!
HOWEVER, it was not because I was lazy, well a bit but more of because of this:

Anyway, the kind people at blogger has fixed or somehow its miraculously fixed so yipee!

It was actually going to be 6 birthdays but I think that will be too much of an overload so here is the first five plus a wedding and the next post will be the 6th birthday, which is mine by the way. Oh, I think I am going to squeeze in an event I did too way back in early July.
Hehe.

First up, the wedding.
Samantha's and Gary's wedding.
Nothing much to say except that I do wish the couple everlasting happiness:)

Cheers *wine glass toasting

ICP Event

I met very very lovely people at this event I was working for and we did get to see many you-tube worthy things but alas, we cannot post, we cannot post it up!

Gala Dinner

My Lovely Ladies

A deep conversation

Amy (me): Pleaseeeeeee
Tianfa: Uhhhh, my gawd, you are giving me a headache.
Kim Tee: Oh man, like seriously.

Tianfa: No.
Kim Tee: Yeah. Hell no.
Amy: Whattttt. no fair.

Meet the Lion Mascot and check out our cool hair!

Elaine's 21st and Elaine's Daddy's 50th
To welcome you, we have two handsome flower bearing guys,

Some gorgeous decorating!
One of the best I have ever seen and this picture is just a fraction of the pink wonderland.

Strawberry Cupcakes I made for the birthday girl.
Jamie claims it tastes like the Strawberry Cheesecake flavour B&J Strawberry.
I on the other hand was not too happy with this icing.
The icing was much better when I 'trial-tested' this cupcake but somehow I achieved that consistency by a careless hand and for the 2nd batch, I could not "accidentally" get back that texture anymore:(

This is a picture of the testing cupcake:)

I initially wanted to adorn all the cupcakes with ribbons but I was rushing for time as the first batch of icing I made was horrendous and I had to redo it:(
I did not even have time to do Elaine's card.
Do not worry Laine!
You will get you card:)

No party is of course without the camwhoring!
So first up, some umbrella fun!

I love this picture! its sooo sweet and cute!!!

Oh. Just so you know, the party's theme is pink (like obviously), but my bf here owns nothing of that color so nautical it is. Haha.

Then it was torture the bfs.

Mine first.

Then Jamie's Weijie.

Then both.

Finally, some of Jamie dearie and me:)

We were trying to capture my back.

Happy birthday again Laine!!:)
Many thanks to Lingling, my bff toooooooo.

Rueben's RELAC 21st party

Le birthday boy.

The bestest company EVER.

Charmaine the Prada Girl

Disclaimer: She does not own anything from Prada but she owns enough YSL, Marc Jacobs, Hermes (just to name a few) to fill up my whole bedroom probably.
Nevertheless, lovelylovely girl:)

And of course, MACARONI!:)
Welcome to the haus of QQ!

Lady QQ

Her awesome bubble shooting bra,

which Ken was obsessed with.

Gaga/QQ-fied girlies.

Happy birthday Lady QQ.

En's 21st.

Then, i got tipsy and started kissing everything,

Ting especially.

I also started taking photos of everything.

Won my first game of beer pong!!!!!
HA!

Clubbed abit.

Oh yes and the guy in the middle bullied En's MOM to drink a lychee martini.
Video of that on facebook, courtesy of Amanda Tay.

Christina's poolside party

Her big bear present.
Come back soon Chrissss:)

OMG.
That was insanely long.
Sorry.
Look out for my birthday post.

In the meantime, sleep tight, good morning:)

In the rough

2009-07-15T04:15:00.004+08:00

lookbook.nu

2009-07-12T19:24:00.000+08:00

First post.

The Bf says

2009-07-12T01:59:00.001+08:00

"Love is your Achilles heel."

Totally.

Birthday Wish List

2009-07-02T01:32:00.008+08:00

I know it is a bit too early for this but since I have problems posting pictures, figured I could do a links post. And yes. I have decided to have a party.

THEME: RIBBONS AND TIES

Wish upon a star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away.

#1 BAG
#2 IPOD + itunes Gifts
#3 BAKING STUFF (Items 2105-9958,2104-7778)
#4 Whole set of Haruki Murakami's published works except What I talk about when I talk about running + Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
#5 Whole set of Roald Dahl's published works
#6 Cook/Bake BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS
#7 Vouchers from here, here, here, here (when it opens at Ion)
#8 Cookies from here
#9 Jewellery like this and this
#10 Something from here and here
#11 Ksubi jeans
#12 Geometrical stuff stuffs stuffs
#13 Something handmade from you.

13 is not unlucky.

P.S I have decided to highlight the #1 BAG item. Pardon me for my oh-so-not-subtlety!

Dark, happy,gloomy and shiny

2009-06-29T00:29:00.029+08:00

If dreams are where one feels real but knows everything is fake, then is reality where one feels fake but know everything is real? If that is true, then perhaps the next question to ask is, do you feel that everyone and everything around you, about you is unreal? Because that is exactly how I feel nowadays. It is not a good or bad thing, like how dreams are easily categorized into sweet dreams and nightmares but just more of a feeling that I have-feeling unreal. Like how I do not know why is it that my hands can move across the keyboard, or how I am talking to my sister about my brother who is talking about my father who is talking about my other brother...Just so you know, the last thing I need someone to tell me is that you can move your hands because of this nerve and this muscular jerk reaction what-not because science does not explain everything and it can never explain everything, it definitely cannot explain why I am feeling the way I am right now and I pretty much do not want a fancy new "illness" named after this feeling.

If you are lost, please come towards the light (i.e this paragraph) even though I do not promise you that you would get out of those murky waters you were wading in before. In short, besides feeling unreal, I am currently:
1.grappling with the absence of the bf at arts camp(well not really grappling because I usually do not meet him that much anyway, this is just as usual, just that I miss my daily calls)
2.having a cold war with my dad (tlda-too long don't ask)
3.lamenting the fact that it is going to be double tuition a week again
4.I have not decided on my party venue YET and I have not test-trialed any of the party food YET
5.pretty sure i am going to run out of money soon
6.worrying about what to wear to the wedding reception on sunday
7. you know, i do not want to bore you with the rest.

That was a pretty depressing start, so to show that I can actually be happy and shiny. Here's some photos from facebook.

OK. Alot of them.

First up, Wency's 21st

That's me with her present! These:

Strawberry cupcakes! Made using Martha's recipe, modifying by adding a dollop of stawberry puree as filling to make it more strawberry-ish. It is not the best strawberry cupcake and my first strawberry cupcakes, so I would really appreciate recipe recommendations!

My gorgeous friends.

Oh, warning for the below pictures, abit risque! Nah. The provocative ones can be found on weini's and jamie's blogs and fb. It was clearly an 8 Days commercial fail. We could not stop laughing evidently.

Earlier, we were playing heart attack and I got tooo violent I think. So violent that one of the straps of my dress broke and Weini being the domestic goddess stitched it back for me.

Then it was cake cutting!!

Love you Wency!

Then, it was the NAFA meet-up at the most gorgeous condo ever. The pictures do it no justice.

And we met a crazy but very cool ang moh!

Yesterday was Candy's birthday celebration! We had a blast, BG, Weini's bf definitely wins the funniest bf award. HA. You should see the facebook pictures. Anyway, we played some twister,

cam-whored,

martial-arts-ed,

got pregnant,

candid-ed,

and rode a bike.

I did some drawings lately, one today actually. But first, the pancake recipe I drew for Ling:

And my 2nd polaroid ever:

This then is today's "masterpiece"- Zhulaiha's letter!

before,

after. (after my artsy brother's input)

That was one hell of a long post.
But hey, made up for that hiatus didn't I!
Hehe.

Edit: I made a whole bottle of chocolate chip cookies for Candy and I FORGOT to take pictures of them! BOOOOOOO
Edit 2: I cannot wait for Alice.

I am in love

2009-06-17T22:38:00.005+08:00

With all these geometry!
Here and here.

Take it from the math-hater.
You will love these too.

P.S Birthday *HINT*

Thanks to childhoodflames.

Hwan

2009-06-16T16:02:00.004+08:00

Cookie Tins

2009-06-15T00:22:00.019+08:00

Yes.
Something baked.
Yet again.

Citrus Sables.

As you can see, I was trying to be artistic.
Pass?
Hehe.

Thank you Zhulaiha, for the lovely paper doily and the measuring cups + tins!!
Check out her very cute baking supply shop and photo blog too:)

I had a whim to put the sables into cookie tins and my mom suprised me with these:

I am shocked that these tins are still here.
The story: I was once crazily in love with these and I obviously had some/quite a lot of cash at one point of time (in the past) because I bought like 8-9 tins at one visit.
You must be thinking, ahh. they were probably cheap.
Well, (*drumroll) each tin will set you back at least 30-35 bucks a tin.
The last time I was back there was on the bf's birthday and I bought a tin of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for him.
Anyway.
The point is, I grew horribly fat from eating those things. ( I did give some away, but still.)
It was so delicious, I really could not stop popping.

This 2 were my favourite if I remembered correctly.

The rest.

Check out The cookie museum if you are free, they are located at the Max Brenner's stretch at the Esplanade.

Ahhh. back to those Sables.
I think I am going to be real fat soon because I cannot stop eating them!
Damn.

Oh.
GAT 10
Edit: Gat 11. GAT 10 was the lemon meltaways.

Sherms

2009-06-13T02:08:00.005+08:00

To the most wonderful friend, Happy birthday.
I wish I could be there to smother you with kisses and hug you like a Mama Bear but alas.
No matter.
You know you are in my heart always.

Vanilla and Lemons

2009-06-12T18:39:00.011+08:00

Introducing my baking girls: Manda Panda, Ting
Ting bakes quite often but Manda not so often.
That explains what happened when we made these:

Looks yummy no?
It would have been disastrous if I had not realized I had added the whole bottle of vanilla essence into the mixing bowl.
Thanks to Amanda who read the recipe and asked me to measure out 2 TABLESPOONS of vanilla.Well, there I was thinking that sounds like a hell lot, but there were weird recipes so I did not think too much into it and just measured it out, only to find that I had emptied the whole bottle. So that is when I was like: "Manda, are you sure its 2 tablespoons? We finished the whole bottle!" She looked back at the recipe in her hand and said,"Uh." Ting said," Amy, you look." And I did- it was obviously 2 TEASPOONS.

Anyway, I should have known!! Since I bake all the time. Alas, we corrected by the means of measuring 2 tsp from the pool of vanilla essence mixed with egg yolk and the remaining vanilla essence and egg yolk went south and that was that.

The last time we baked was at my house and we made a tart with pastry cream topped with strawberries:

Heart you girls deep deep:)

I made my first lemon meltaways the day before too! I refrigerated the dough upon realizing that I was to refrigerate it not freeze it so the dough spent a few hours in the freezer. I baked it a bit too long too I think. Ah well.
We all have 'Amanda moments'.

A bit random, but here's Max, Ting's fat fat dog!

In other news, I sat through hours of 'hair-perming' torture with Ting.

Dinner at Basil Alcove was yummyummy (as usual:))

2009-06-10T22:11:00.001+08:00

#11 Someone who will make me laugh every day.

2009-06-10T20:59:00.005+08:00

#10 Someone who will stand by my side and love me every minute of the day.
from here

2009-06-09T00:53:00.004+08:00

#9 Someone whose kisses and hugs make a bad day seem almost alright afterall.

Lemon Tart

2009-06-08T23:30:00.004+08:00

I am sorry for being on a roll with sucky pictures:(
My house resident with the only working good picture taking device of a handphone has gone to camp leaving me with no choice but to use my other house resident's handphone camera to take miserable pictures of my fantastic tart:(

Oh well.

It was my first time making lemon curd and I would definitely make them again!
Macarons next? :P

Oh. I just indulged in a little reminiscing.

Edit: GAT 9 (hehe)

Ghosts

2009-06-08T00:21:00.002+08:00

I woke up at an unearthly hour today hence the pictures:

GHOST.

Nah.
Vaio Sucky In-Built Camera plus flourescent table lights= Geisha without red lips/Ghost.

I did wake up at an earthly hour to go potty though and I could not get back to sleep even though I laid 'comatose' on my bed for almost two hours.
Oh well.

P.S Please do not stare too long at my face or you might just start imagining something in the black space behind me.

BOO!

Pancakes

2009-06-08T00:02:00.006+08:00

PANCAKES!
You have been missed!
Yummyyummyfluffyfluffy pancakes!

Serve's up!

Amy in her wonderland

2009-06-05T22:20:00.005+08:00

Someone! Please get me this book for my birthday!
Available at here. Maybe at borders too?

I was just sitting at the library today after an afternoon of giggly fun baking with Ting, Manda (pictures probably updated later by them on facebook) and poring over every illustrated version of this book I could find in the Children section and I almost wanted to check all those books out but their weight knocked me into my senses.

I liked the original illustration by Sir John Tenniel the best.

I wonder.

Cake in a pie pan

2009-06-05T00:45:00.007+08:00

I have been doing quite a fair bit of baking nowadays and even though the weather is making it doubly hard to be in a hot kitchen with a hot oven but I have been risking the fact that I might get burned alive to churn out these baked goodies! Yays! I made a strawberry cake today and they said to use a pie pan! Weird. Oh well, maybe I am too amateur to know that cakes can be baked in pie pans. This turned out a tad too sweet but it was still good. One thing I would change about the recipe though would be to add the strawberries only after the cake batter have been in the oven for at least 10 minutes so that the strawberries would not create such horrifying 'potholes' that made me think of this summery cute strawberry cake as some ghoul mask for halloween.

Let me start off with the not so horrifying ones shall I?

Ok. Getting scarrier!

Closing up. Do not scream.

And BARGHHH!! It is going to eat you up!!!

Apparently I am turning 21 soon.
As you can tell.
That was pretty idiotic.
HEHE.

Appy Cuppy

2009-06-01T18:00:00.010+08:00

YAY!
Lots of cupcake porn!
Haha.

Made apple cupcakes/appy cuppies today.
Do not ask me.
I cannot remember.
I cannot remember when I started to "baby-fy" words like that.
It probably is the hung-over-ed effect of baby talk with the bf.
Ha.

Nude Shot 1

Nude shot 2 with some leftover apple filling.

Nude shot 3

Leftover apple fillings

X-ray shot 1

X-ray shot 2

Fashion shot -Look 1

Fashion Shot - Look 2

Fashion shot- Look 3

Fashion Group shot 1

Fashion group shot 2

Yum yum.

Pink baking

2009-05-30T02:57:00.006+08:00

It was a pink day perfect for baking and even more perfect because I was baking with the sweetest pinkest darling! Here are some not so pink pictures from our pink-ish baking adventure:)

Elaine with her painstakingly made profiteroles. I was her shifu(master)! (or so she says.)

Will you meet me again one pink day?

♥

P.S Laine, if you rather not have your picture up here, just msg me k. You do look lovely though.

Alison's card

2009-05-27T00:30:00.005+08:00

I just received pictures of the card I made for Alison, (a million thanks to you Alison for taking them) so here:

Front

I actually wanted the dresses to look like they were falling from the sky but I drew them too big! Hehe. Since the back is polka-dotted, figured I would polka-dot the front too!

Inside

The girl was not very well drawn! :( I do love that page sososo much though!

Back

Brollies! And if it is not obvious enough, the dots are like raindrops!

To Alison: Know you are not exactly feeling rainbow-y now but I do hope you feel sunshine-y soon! Maybe you can try watching more episodes of Boys over Flowers to cheer yourself up! Tee hee.

Tea, scones and Rolly-Polies

2009-05-26T02:20:00.009+08:00

Be warned: Overload of lousy in-built vaio camera pictures of moi.

Tee hee. Thought I would recount today with lots of pictures of me! It was quite a day with my 2 literature major friends and oh it just made me think of how grateful I am for days like this:)

First it was picnic with Meiling! She brought a mat, a lovely assortment of teas, thermos of "hot" water, bubbles and camera! I brought lemon scones, fail but tasty cranberry scones, scrambled eggs on toast, marmite on toast, butter-sugar toast, strawberries and those tea cups I am holding up in the above 3 photos! It was such glorious weather! We thought it would be so unbearably hot but the wind played with our hair as the ants crawled into our shoes as we sat on the carpet grass under a tree at the roof terrace of esplanade. It was quite a funny sight for the tourists visiting the roof terrace and we got quite a shock when two policeman walked past us for fear of chiding us sitting there. (cos' I think we are not allowed?) Oh! and we saw a rainbow! :)

We were supposed to be deciphering poems in Alice but I think Meiling forgot! Hehe. She did lend me "The Little Prince" though and I am going to read it later while waiting for my super long hair to dry!

Then it was off to dinner with Lovely LY and we drank soup at Cedele and she ate my fail and lemon scones! After that we walked around for a bit and drank our nightcap Starbucks. Liiiinnnnnnggg, should I buy both the coral and blue flower hairbands? I cannot stop thinking about it!! The darling gave me these from her Vietnam trip: Cute rolly polly dollies!!!

OK. Those last 2 are up there just because I am a camwhore.

P.S Look how long my fringe is! Time to trot down to the hairdresser's!

Pie in the sky

2009-05-24T01:22:00.007+08:00

Pie in the sky.

Literally.
Kind of.
(Should have photo-shopped away my hand.)

OK.
This is kind of lame!
I know what you are thinking- why on earth does she want to position the still hot apple pie (as deduced from the pink oven "mitt") at such a precarious position.
Others are wondering- my gawd. if she drops it. my gawd.
The things I do to try to get natural lighting.
Gee whiz.

Nope.
Still no camera.
Had to wade through seriously sarcastic waters to acquire the very good camera phone from one of my household resident.
Seriously.
The things I do to try to get a picture of my pie!
Ho hum!

Made this today for a seriously overdue GAT using mum-tested newspaper recipe adding a pinch of salt not mentioned in the recipe when cooking the apples for this apple pie! I wanted to add some cheese to the crust a la Pushing Daises style but the bf and family are no big fans of Roquefort, Gruyère, Camembert, Black Brie... OK.cheese in short.
Strictly speaking, I am no connosieur in Cheese and I certainly am no true blue cheese eater but I do enjoy fresh Parmesan on my pasta, those mozzarella on my pizza and in this case, I reckon apple pie with a hint of cheese crust would probably be on my list for 'cheese-food'.
Hehe.
This is GAT 8!
(Not counting the super big treat he got for his birthday)
Long hiatus eh?

Those that are interested in knowing what I have been up to besides swiveling my pie plate outside my kitchen window, if you are on my facebook, pictures probably say a thousand words~
Alternatively, check out the pictures on Weini's blog!

For those who are lazy though, let me try to sum it up with a string of words:
Potter, Bf, Catwalk, Elaine, Birthdays, Young Victoria, New Jeans,School,Hagen Daaz,ETC.
Ha.
Lazy to continue.

To have a party or not that is the question.

Pinkdot cupcake

2009-05-17T03:20:00.005+08:00

You are looking at probably the only photographed cupcake I made for the pinkdot event!
Speaking of which, I took a cab, paid peak period surcharge reached there like 5 plus only to miss CASS then I was too shy to give out the cupcakes so I pratically dragged Liz around and then I had to rush off to Alison's birthday party. So, I was basically at Hong Lim Park for like 15 minutes giving out cupcakes and that was my first experience at an event like Pinkdot. Crazy eh?

Anyway, I hope Alison had a blast at her party and that she remembers to take pictures of my card! Well, I would not dare to hope that she took pictures of the cupcakes I made her. Oh well. It really SUCKS not having a camera! Anyway, they werent very pretty I think because I was in a rush. Note to self: Do not ever ever make anything in a rush. STUPID.

I have this really odd thinking: Happiness always does not seem to last or rather is shortlived? Somehow, like you can generally have a really happy day only to have one thing spoil it in the end. Or that you can be happy for maybe several weeks then all the happiness would be "erased" by some unhappy event which is more unhappy than how happy you were. I dont know. Maybe its some cycle of happiness.

2009-05-12T03:58:00.002+08:00

#8 Someone who does not let me go to sleep sad and crying.

Zhen yi

2009-05-12T02:10:00.007+08:00

Happy Happy Birthday Zhen yi!
10 years it has been and oh what wonderful 10 years they were.
Do not even think about getting out of my life.
Love you.

The card.

The pictures are a bit blurry but thanks Zhen yi for taking them for me.
It sucks to have a spoilt camera!
Grr

The Party.
Zhen yi the star flanked by 2 weird friends.
Ok Esther.
1 weird friend.
I was really happy or laughing for some reason.
A bit uh.
But oh well.
It IS me you are talking about.

Failed kiss attempt.
Zhen yi the irresistible.

Sorry Samantha.
This was the only decent picture of me in that whole album.
I was either looking seriously deranged or doing some weird things in all the pictures.
I am so un-photogenic.

Wishing you all the happiness in the world my dearest friend.
Happy 21st.

Manda's 21st

2009-05-06T23:54:00.001+08:00

Happy 21st Birthday Manda Panda

Awesome party.
It was a tad too hot and sticky though.
Enjoyable nevertheless!
Made Manda a card!
Couldn't take a picture cos my cam is spoilt but oh well.
We got her T&Co. earrings!
Hope she liked it among all her wonderful gifts including her very sexaaaay thongs.

Ok.
I look like a midget.
Well you can see me on tiptoes!
Ting, Ling and of course Manda were all so soo gorgeous!
Forgot i had such gorgeous friends sometimes.
Ken and Phil are like the best remedy to any gloomy house-elfs!
And Terence-hahah.hope you didnt write her name all over your exam script.

Cannot wait for Friday.
It is hopeless to hope i wont screw it up but it will be the last paper i can screw up.
So.
W-h-a-t-e-v-e-r.
I am so done.

2009-05-01T23:20:00.001+08:00

#7 Someone who respects me.

Say No

2009-05-01T21:16:00.004+08:00

I bet you were going to say " to drugs?" *winks

I have been trying not to be to upset about screwing up my 3 papers so far, the last one I did on Wednesday was by far the worse. Yes, I am afraid my CAP this sem will sink to oblivion. Oh well. 2 more papers to go! One tomorrow then the LAST ONE on FRIDAY! I know. Everyone is going to gloat and has gloated for some at my miserably sad fate. No matter. This is not going to bother me!
MUCH.

Distractions, distractions, distractions, I have been really cutting down the time I come online, I have not checked my friends list on LJ for a few days now or more I think but I could not resist tastespotting and a bit of facebooking and finally I have yielded to abit of blogging now. Besides the internet, I am sad to say I have been rehooked onto re-reading Harry Potter! I am crazy and totally mad I know! I have finished the first 3 books and am starting the 4th one now-it drives me crazy! I had to pry myself away from those wonderful wonderful things and concentrate reading my coursepack, it was most excruciating mind you! They are however a great form of motivation for me to finish reading certain boring articles but then I ended up getting sucked into Hogwarts for much too long! Tsk.

There are many NOs we have to say in our lives to people, to things , to distractions , to FOOD and whatnot but there is one NO I would really like to say to and that is NO to Identity Mobilisation. More in this article. (Click on the word, article. I think maybe I ought to mention that in my previous post, the word Pinkdot which appeared twice are hyperlinks. It probably was not very obvious was it?)

Good luck to me for acing the last 2 exams to balance my pathetic papers before!
SIGH.
Being too hopeful am I now?

Pinkdot

2009-04-26T22:42:00.007+08:00

I am supporting the freedom to love!
Will you?
Come join us:)

Pinkdot, Pinkdot.

I will be making cupcakes to give away!
As in its not part of the event or anything,
I just want to make some to give away to random people at the event!

See you.

Vera Wang Fall 2009

2009-04-25T19:34:00.005+08:00

It is the time of the year again.
When i dream of wearing the Vera Wang.
Ha.
Collection 2009 is out.
From before, this collection (Vera Wang Spring 09).
I realized i cannot seem to link this post to the source of where i ogled at the Vera Wang Fall 2009 Collection because it is a locked post so all you guys should just create a livejournal account and join runwaym to see it!haha! after you join, click here!:)
Its a real cool community where you can ogle at runway models and collections! (OBVS)

I like these from the post there:
(click to see them larger)

Dream a little dream of me.

Exam blues

2009-04-24T18:01:00.005+08:00

Tomorrow's my first paper.
Wait a minute for reality sinking in.

Ok.
Now wait another minute while I go scream.
NOT.
Bah. Exams.

P.S Sorry WJ for not making it to your party! I know I would be missing a most fabulous time! :(

Bah. Exams.
Good luck everyone. See you all after those blasted things!

Something to be cheery about:
#6 Someone who hides my presents and make me solve riddles to find them.
This is Tramie's contribution which share my sentiment:)

Birthday Party

2009-04-23T15:03:00.004+08:00

I changed my mind.
I think I am going to have a birthday party after all.
I could not get to sleep last night because my head was full of ideas on where to hold it, what to wear and ...
most importantly, I thought up a whole list of food to make for the party.

Hmm.
We will see.

2009-04-22T19:07:00.005+08:00

I know i posted twice today.
Just one more!
Haha.
I really really like this quote:

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable with seeing two men holding guns than holding hands- Ernest Gaines
( I am not sure if its by this person, the font was in cursive and its hard to see)

I found that quote here: Jerica's Starbucks Planner

2009-04-22T18:58:00.003+08:00

#5 Someone who makes me want time to stop there and then every time we hug.

Addiction

2009-04-22T18:53:00.005+08:00

I WANT TO BAKE.
I WANT TO BAKE.
I WANT TO BAKE.
I WANT TO BAKE.
I WANT TO BAKE!!!
ughhhhh. I HATE EXAMS.

I seriously want to bake something.

2009-04-20T17:47:00.003+08:00

#4: Someone who will suggest and buy me anything i want to eat because i am hungry.

2009-04-19T20:47:00.002+08:00

#3 Someone who will buy me cocoa nibs that i like from The Chocolat Factory when passing by the shop.

2009-04-19T15:56:00.006+08:00

#2 Someone who will "baby-talk" with me.

Things I want in a Lover

2009-04-18T20:05:00.008+08:00

I want to do my own list.
Inspiration from here:
1001 things i want in a lover
Thanks Alvin for introducing this to me.

#1 Someone to wake up next to and feed me pancakes and scrambled eggs in bed.

Breakfast Skies

2009-04-17T23:08:00.006+08:00

The Bf's 21st

2009-04-17T00:36:00.013+08:00

*Please be warned that this post is picture-heavy!:P

First, food porn !
The bf did not want a big birthday cake and he mentioned in passing that he really likes having many many cakes/baked things at one time.
And SO..
I made 8 different things!
It was pretty crazy and all especially with project deadlines and presentations but its ok, being a panda is like my second nature anyway.
I just need a real good concealer! (hopefully the new Clinique one I bought today is good)
Oh yes. being the idiot that i am, i forgot to bring the jello-cheesecake :(
Before I delivered all these baked goodies to him, I did a "Love Actually" scene at 12am! (which only Jamie knows what it is about!)
Ok. on to the food.

1. Meringues
(These are my sister's favourite!)

2. Strawberry-Nutella Wantons

After I took those photos, I had to rush off to his house so bear with the not so pretty food porn!

3+4. Honey Financiers + Lemon Spritz Cookie with Lemon Buttercream
In the first picture, you can see the lemon spritz cookies in the plastic box. (Forgot to take pictures of them) The honey financiers doubled up as the birthday cake too.

5. Truffles
His favourite, it was also the first ever 'treat' he ate that I made before we even got together. I secretly think he got together with me because of them. HA. Oh yeah. you can see the meringues in the background.

6. Puffs stuffed with Lemon buttercream from the Lemon Spritz cookies (Too much buttercream left from making the cookies)

7. Almond Chocolate Toffee Crunchies
I made extra for his "surprise" K party and I think general comments were that its too sweet. It IS chocolate and Toffee! HA. (That is his hand btw!)

The "You have to try one each!"

"Cutting cake" ceremony!

Isn't he the cutest!
*Please do not gag:P

Some "us"cam-whoring
(Obvs I made him do it)

Cue to skip because its meme-photos after this.

Wore that outfit with my trusty heels:)

THANK YOU JAMIE+WJ FOR LENDING ME YOUR CAMERA!
The absent-minded me left the camera at his house when we were preparing to go out and so no more photos of the rest of the day!:(
What an idiot right?

Anyway, we went to the cookie muesum at the Esplanade to have tea and I manage to stop myself from buying 8 tins of cookies like how i did the other time when they were still called the V Tea Room.
Dinner at Au Petit Salut.
Ambience was good but food was disappointing! :(
We had the 5-course meal with perrier and campari. ($250)
The good: Foie gras (AMAZING)
Passionfruit souffle
Lamb
The Mediocre: Lobster Bisque
Salad
The Bad: Beef (5-course)

Then it was off to his K-party!
Pictures of that would probably be on facebook or Aaron's blog!

Ok. That's kind of it for the bf's 21st.
No big party(his request) but it was a pretty amazing 21st:)

__________________________

All my projects, papers, presentations, lectures are officially over!
YAYS.
However, exams are in like 1 wk or sth.
SIGH.
FML.