Once More, For Old Time's Sake!

I guess we weren't the only fools who decided we had better get our fill of Taiwanese Porridge at The Oasis before it gets closed down by the authorities, due to compulsory acquisition of the valuable piece of land they're sitting on (or rather, piece of water...). The place was PACKED, for somewhere which served rather mediocre food. As has been our usual habit, we ordered much more than we could eat, and completely OD-ed on eggs. Century eggs, salted eggs, omelette. I think we've eaten our quota for the next few weeks. Urgh..

Outstanding view from the windows. Check out the decor inside as well. Row of large red chinese lanterns - check! Ready for anyone who wants to book this place out for their wedding banquet!
Fatty, but mmm, goes so well with the sweet potato porridge!
Sunday morning, and a birdie's come a-calling!

Lazy Sunday

A most pleasant way to start the day
I thought these instructions to bikers along our 6 km hike was quite hilarious
At the quarry, we took a well-deserved break to take a sip and admire the beauty around us. Then we saw some rock climbers doing their thing. Brings to mind Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible...
A most pleasant way to end the day. Haven't had Gammon Pork in YEARS! Apparently, the average human being passes 1 litre of gas a day. Betcha din know THAT! :P The beans are going to affect this average...

Wu liao!

Spent a couple of hours with M in hospital. Still enamoured with my new toy, I started capturing what I had always thought was such a funny representation of "fall risk" category.
Imagine spending hours staring at this on the ceiling. Days, even. No wonder the old man in the next ward kept shouting away. It was quite sad to be around so many old people (Geriatric ward). The little old lady across from M didn't see any visitors all night. Felt quite sorry for her. Being in hospital always brings back a lot of memories for me.

And the Sun Finally Came Out to Play!

Finally, after DAYS of endless raining, the sun finally came out to play.



Naturally, I had to get out of the house. Mac was chockful of life today. Armed with a loaf of bread, I caused a feeding frenzy amongst the lampans, which lead to a feeding frenzy amongst the gurame. :) Right, food chain still working. On I go for a hike through the trail.

Nice and easy walk through the slightly muddy slippery ground, stopping for a looksee at a little salamander (?). Sorry, not exactly the wildlife expert here, but that's what it looked like. :P The little critter was just sitting on a fallen tree trunk, taking in the sun. No doubt, I was not the only one who missed the sunshine of late. Turning around to walk on and engrossed in all that was going on around me, I almost stepped onto a 2.5-footer monitor lizard, also sunning itself on the muddy forest path. Eeks!


Butterflies were out in full force, busy plant-visiting. There was even a bright blue one which landed on the wet grass around a little streamlet, probably to catch a breather after all that frantic flitting about. Up above my head, a lone bird was trilling away, evidently just as happy as I was to catch the rays that not even the noon heat could deter us from.

Dangers lurk in the forest
Idyllic, no? Just like the view from some beach resort. Right here on the little red dot.

Paper

Never fails to amaze me whenever I see this from the right angle.
Project NH - Laminate flooring removed, and these ching-chong retro tiles unearthed. Kewl! But I'm STILL going for the parquet flooring. In the long run, I'm not sure whether I can live with a floor-ful of these colourful tiles.

Animal Planet

Mating moths *spoken in hushed tones a la Richard Attenborough*. Spotted on the way to work... early start for some :)

Collateral Damage

It's been 3 days since I hiked in the rain with this, and the watch face is still showing condensation...:( Tsk, obviously, my $9 pasar malam watch is not "water-resistant up to a depth of..."

Weekend of Ouches

Fought off the cloud of despair which had descended over me in the morning (I can now officially confirm that having the door slammed in your face, even metaphorically, is painful. So boys and girls, do not try sticking your head through the sliver of a door gap, no matter how much hope is brimming over in your mind!), and forced myself off on a workout to the summit again this last day of the weekend. Seems like the heavens have decided to join me in moping around, and we hiked through a light drizzle, all the way to the top of the hill. Sitting around resting on the pavillion at the top, it started really raining down in sheets. As it didn't seem like the rain was going to end anytime soon, we decided to brave the rain and walked back down to the car. Yes, our bodies were soaked, and yes, I looked stupid with a towel covering my head. But hey, I had a dry head of hair! Yes, this was going to make ALL the difference, having a dry head of hair with a soaked body...("It's a Chinese thing, keeping the head dry", said M).
Looks like a snake bite, hor? Heh heh. Actually, it's the result of reaching out to grab a thorny vine for support...ouch!

Our usual gluttony adventures post-punishing exercise routine continues.

Covet

I want!

Not the rain, nor the horrid traffic situation, deterred me from going about my trawl through the shops for Project New Home (henceforth known as Proj NH).

Umbrella in hand, I checked out sanitaryware shops spied over the course of the week on the way to work ($10,000 toilet bowl, anyone???), and walked through several lighting shops in Balestier.

Yes, I already know where I want my lights to be situated around the flat. Yes, I will be retrieving the lighting fixtures from SC and installing them in Proj NH to save a couple of bucks. Yes, I know where those pendant lights will hang. However, temptations are strewn all over the place, conspiring to bust the budget for Proj NH! Spotted a couple of tempting options today. A delicate little chandelier for the walk-in wardrobe, perhaps? Maybe a nice big girly pendant lamp for the bedroom? *Decisions, decisions*

"Dessert"

After much discussion, we settled on good ole' Yet Con Chicken Rice for dinner.

Traffic in the city on this evening was horrendous. I don't know whether it was the rain, the fact that it was Friday night, or that the rabid mob were all headed into the area to watch the fireworks display that night. I inched all the way to pick up my dinner kakis (almost slicing off the side mirror of a Merc which tried to cut into my lane), inched all the way to the restaurant where I dropped them off, and inched all the way to the carpark to deposit the car for the night.

As could be expected with 2 foodie fiends on a night out, we over-ordered and over-ate. Half a chicken, big bowl of soup, egg foo-yong, sambal kang kong, and 4 bowls of rice between 3 of us. And as if that wasn't enough, this was what we had for "dessert" ("Might as well, since we're already in the area, and the car's parked", says P).

My favourite drink, any time of the day!
Soft fluffy bread...
...with a generous layer of kaya and that signature chunk of butter!

Catching Up

Tried out Fabricco's at Dempsey Village, the hip new hang-out location.

Food was nice, the space out there and the free parking beats Holland V anytime! Couldn't get enough of my new camera-phone...Cutie Clare sure stole the show! Seemed she had gone from "toddler" to "small child" overnight. How time seems to fly! *another lament about the passage of time yet again*

Project New Home!

   

Strewn with pieces of furniture bagged from various sources...renovation works start next week! Yippee! :)

Sweat

 

YES! We finally found the correct entrance to the bike trail, and hiked 6 km around the hill. I think we need bigger bottles of water for our future hikes...my legs were pretty weak by the end of the hike. Took us about 2 hours to get through this. Thank goodness we eschewed the summit...

Lesson learnt - brush the sand out of the sandal as soon as you feel it. 'Else, the consequence is developing a blister on the sole of said foot...

Anniversary

"Happy 1st Month Anniversary!", someone once said to me, much to my surprise (that he'd been keeping track) and amusement (people actually mark these occasions? Of course, this same person caused me much angst and grief for NOT marking an important occasion recently. But that's another story for another blog...).

Without much thought into what I was going to do with it, I started this blog almost a year ago. I was told that starting it would be the easy part. Keeping it going would be the hard part. Well, isn't that how it is with everything else in life?

92 posts later, I'm still at it. Not quite a labour of love. More of a rambling record of my life in the past year. And boy has that been a bit of a roller-coaster ride! I'm not a great one for remembering the details of events or things. I blame it on genetics, since I'd never had a good memory for these things anyway. I'm not much a diary keeper either, so this, is my diary of sorts.

It started as a venue to record the random thoughts and pictures that cross my mind and life as I go about my life every day. There were days when I got a bit sentimental. Some days, blissful. Some days, pensive. Some days, elated. Some days, depressed. Some days, just plain bored. Most of it is recorded here, for those of my friends who cared enough to keep in touch in this manner. And for me to remind myself of the year that flew past.

Happy 1st Year Anniversary (soon) to me. *pat on back*

Karang Guni

Project New Home has commenced!

The past weekend was spent moving various pieces of furniture bagged from friends and old homes.

I know. Pre-renovation is NOT an appropriate time to move furniture into the new home. But these pieces had to be cleared out of their old homes before the deadline, and so, Ah Ho and his gang will have no choice but to put up with shifting the pieces here and there as they go about refreshing the place.

Heaving and shoving pieces of furniture up and down stairs is not funny any more. Not at our age! We're just not "that strength which in the old days moved earth and heaven"! Sigh...Still, I had fun planning where each piece would go, and where I would have what lighting options. Finally, I could rest my butt on something other than a piece of newspaper on the floor as I indulged in my daydreams. Surprising myself, I actually managed to take a short nap, curled up on the 2-seater sofa, with the outside traffic noise providing a low constant hum of a lullaby! I guess I could get used to the noise level there afterall!

"This year's southwest brought some rain and gust". Trusty weather man's report came a little late...Got caught in a passing shower as I was riding around this weekend, I now know the discomfort and inconvenience of the life of a rider. Having a pair of wet jeans on is NOT glamourous in the least, regardless of the cool bike you're on. And the raindrops! Oh, the raindrops! It felt like little pieces of rock were being pelted at my body! I really appreciated the shelter and protection of a car for the rest of this weekend.

I can't WAIT for my new home to be ready...

Waiting

我等着你回来,
我等着你回来...

This fat cat has apparently become a shadow of its former self, because its mate had passed away...poor kitty...

NDP Preview

As per past years' practice (well, it was only started last year, far as I know...), JA got a room with a view of the NDP Preview 2 weekends ago. So we duly trooped down for our dose of patriotism this year, armed with our camera phones to capture the occasion. As part of the celebration of the impending birthday of our nation (and more accurately, because traffic would be horrendous), I rode in on my little red Vespa. It was sweet revenge when I zipped past the Mercedes coupe that had overtaken me rather impatiently on the road, on my way in to the carpark, while he sat stuck in a queue, waiting for entry. HAR HAR).

Woohoo! Fireworks!

Night scenery from the Room with a View

Weekly Workout

We thought we'd seek out a new route this week, and detoured over to the Quarry. Beautiful scenery, but we must've missed the trail somewhere, because we kept walking around in circles! Gave up after 20 minutes and went back to our usual route...

Past the little "burrow"...

Feeling virtuous was not enough for us. To reward ourselves for even sticking with our weekly hikes, we've settled on scrumptious dinners post-hike. :) Our little troop is gathering strength, and we're four-strong now! Good number for a zichar dinner after the hike!

Another little treat after an earlier hike - Cold Rock Ice Cream. A concept imported from Australia, it seems. They mix different flavoured ice cream together, and you can add various "toppings/ingredients" such as nuts, nutella, M&Ms, peanut butter, cookies, dough bits, etc in together. We'd tried out an absolutely divine version of this in NYC. I regret to report that this came nothing close to that. Next time, we'll stick to Hagan Daz.

Everyday Life

Yet another unfortunate owner of a "jialat" car license plate, roaming our streets

My reward after my first solo ride. *smack lips*

Interesting...

The MP3 spotted!