Rainy Saturday ...

and I am stuck at home. I have to finish writing a paper but I rather play around with Picnik and change my Facebook profile picture. :)

白头偕老

In exactly a month's time, S, a very good friend of mine, will be getting married. We were uni mates and go a long way back. :) S wants her friends to send her a photograph each so she can put up a photo montage for the wedding. All of us will be a part of her big day that way. I think it's incredibly sweet of her, and as always very creative. This is my photograph for her and her husband-to-be. I hope it gets her stamp of approval!

Strangers part 2

Groom takes a smoke while waiting for his bride outside the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple.

Big discovery!

Our friend, Ow, introduced us to this coffee stall in Chinatown Complex Food Centre. He is their regular.

Aromatic and potent strong, a cup of can-die-for Kopi costs 70 cents and Kopi-O is only 60 cents. Where to find in Singapore??

Chinatown Food Centre at Smith Street has a lot of food stalls selling delicious and cheap food. The trick is to find a table that is in an airy spot. Otherwise, prepare to sweat buckets as you enjoy the good food.

Goon is me

One of my recent buys is a new blouse with polka dots and looks kinda frilly. I have to say it's very not me! The fact that I don't have clothes of this material made me clueless when I was ironing it. I soon learnt that a very hot iron was not a good idea at all. Look what happened ...

Yup! I ruined the new top even before wearing it for the first time! A small but gaping hole and some runs. If this were stockings, I would have dumped it. :(

Strangers part 1

Canon held a photomarathon recently. It was impossible to ignore the tons of photographers that were everywhere in town.

I couldn't resist taking photos of these 2 photographers. They were doing something called panning and panning is something I haven't mastered.

I wonder how their pictures turned out.

This week's manicure

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month so I went with pink this week. :)


Just so I remember, this colour is OPI's 'Miso happy with this colour' (J06).

Lifesavers

These are my friends who made life bearable at the last work place. :) We met up for dinner last week.

Lizzy with her 2-month-old baby, Leandro.

He's quite an easy baby and Lizzy doesn't care who carries him or how he is being handled and so she freely passed her baby around the table!

At one point, he got really cranky because he was sleep deprived.

But have no fear, for Supernanny is here! Z is fantastic with Lizzy's baby. He carried Leandro with one arm, ate with the other hand, gossiped along and laughed loudly with us women. And the most amazing thing was Leandro slept soundly on his chest throughout it all!

Long Flat

Generally, I love Moscato but this one I do not fancy. J who knows his wine better doesn't mind it so I guess it isn't that bad. ;)

I love how their menu looks like a magazine

Domani is at Ngee Ann City Basement 2.

I was told their desserts aren't too great but J was bent on eating something sweet. Lucky for us, their Mango Parfait turned out to be really yummy!

Mango Parfait

When it comes to chilli crabs, we still like this place!

More food pictures. These were taken before Lily's maiden fall. We had dinner at No Signboard last week. Thankfully the food tasted much better than it looks in the photos. :)

Sambal Kangkong

Sotong Youtiao (Fried fritters with cuttlefish)

Seafood beancurd

Chilli crab, our absolute favourite!

Lily fell!

And my heart broke! Luckily, she didn't.

To be accurate, my bag fell and Lily was in a 'sponge' case inside my bag.

This happened in a toilet in Suntec City. I thank God that the toilet was clean. Well, it looked and smelt clean and the floor was dry; I don't want to think otherwise!

I had hung my bag on a hook at the back of the door and as my hand left my bag, it slipped off the hook and crashed onto the floor! My iPod, keys, packet of wet wipes all spewed out of my bag. I screamed, grabbed my bag off the floor, took out my camera and started snapping pictures to see if Lily was working, all the while cursing inside the toilet cubicle.

It was only later that I remembered to pick up my things, wipe them clean and dump them into my bag.
Lily looks none the worse and the pictures I snapped after her fall look okay too. I'm still praying that the body and 2 lenses are not damaged in any way.

From Sanrio land

Can you guess what this is?

A box of tissue paper!

No time to shop, no time to take pictures, this is about the only thing new in my life this week. It's pathetic.

This week's colour

OPI's 'Extravagance' (DS026)

It's actually a very dark maroonish purple under bright sunlight. Indoors, it just looks brown or black or that I have very bruised fingernails!

I appreciate you too

In the first year of our marriage, I badgered J to get me a Georg Jensen Fusion ring. He said maybe on our 10th anniversary, he would. I bargained and asked, "How about our 5th anniversary?" 10th, he insisted. And that was it, I never asked for the ring again!

Sometime this year, he led me to the Georg Jensen (pronounced 'Yorg Yensen' in Danish) store to try on the ring. I was reluctant or at least pretended to be. But as it turned out, the Fusion ring (1 ring is made up of 2 or 3 parts/pieces) was too big and chunky for me. I was terribly disappointed because I had my heart set on it.

Then we spotted this. The Fusion fixed ring. It looks like 3 parts put together but is actually 1 fixed piece. Size 48 fits me perfectly but after I saw the price, we left the store without buying.

Yesterday, on his birthday, J gave me the ring which he on the quiet had gone to place an order and waited over a week for. He told me it is a token of his appreciation of me and the 7 years we have been together.

It was an 'Aww' moment for me. :)

So here it is, my appreciation ring. :)

I hope we will never fail to be there for each other in the many years to come.

37

Tissot Men's PRC200 watch

I fell in love with this the moment I saw it! It's a perfect birthday present!
Don't you just love the yellow hands??

I know it looks brown in the pictures but it's really a black face watch with black leather strap. The interesting bit about it is the strap. You don't buckle it the usual way. Instead under the leather strap is a metal bracelet with a clasp. Apparently it's designed this way so the leather won't crack so easily.

Happy birthday! Every day I thank God for you! :)

She was pivotal in his life

A single rose, two kisses, a last goodbye.

Madam Kwa Geok Choo's Funeral @ Mandai Crematorium - 06 Oct 2010

Need practice

So bear with me.

I tend to whine about my inability to take food pictures. J 's analysis is that I don't like food much hence the food pictures don't turn out well. I'd like to think it's just a lack of interest and not a lack of talent!

Anyway, I'm not giving up yet! Here's a set of food pictures I took when we had dinner at Zhou's Kitchen.

Xing Hua Dumplings 兴化云吞

Fried Four Seasons Beans 炸四季豆

Peking Duck 北京鸭

Fried Ee-fu Noodles with Duck Meat 炒面

Red Bean Pancake 豆沙窝饼

Some food bloggers not only take fantastic pictures, they also make their food reviews come alive. Me? I only have 2 words for food, tasty and blah. So here's a very feeble attempt at a food review.

The Peking duck and fried noodles were really good! Delicious and not too oily. In constrast, the dumplings and fried beans were kind of blah. (See?) But the most disappointing dish was the dessert. I love red bean pancake but don't know many places that sell it. In fact the only reason why we ate at Zhou's Kitchen was to try out the pancake. In the end, I had 3 pieces and called it quits. Too many sesame seeds, pastry was too flaky and the red bean paste was not smooth and sweet at all.

On a separate note, I like the decor in the restaurant. They hung kitchen utensils on the walls!

This one in the last picture is called 炸勺 (zha shao). I believe it's used for deep frying.

El cheapo me

I like home furnishing magazines. I love looking at expensive furniture I cannot afford and beautiful homes I will never live in, pretty much for the same reason.

The other day I saw 'Home & Decor' running a promotion. It's something I read occasionally but the subscription rate wasn't that attractive. Then this caught my eye!

The Serta Sheep!

I've always wanted one but not been willing to part with an exorbitant amount of money for it. Fortunately for me, the sheep is one of the freebies I can choose from if I subscribe to the magazine for a year.

In the end, I did not get a 12-month subscription. It being the last day of the promotion, the promoter willingly gave away the sheep with just a 6-month subscription ($27). Can you say YAY?!?

Here's a funny TV commercial with the Serta Sheep.

Home alone

I mentioned that working from home has perks. Well, here's another.

Cups and cups of freshly brewed coffee without having to walk to a cafe!

And you can run to the toilet as often as you want after all that coffee. Nobody will wonder why you keep going in and out of your office.

Consolation

My laptop crashed last week and my world was thrown into turmoil. I lost precious data. It felt like the sky fell on me.

Which explains the lack of posts. I was in no mood to take pictures.

When the IT people finally replaced my harddrive with a new one, I spent many painful hours over the whole weekend RE-TRANSCRIBING hours of lessons from my project. In general, it takes about an hour to transcribe 10-15 minutes of classroom talk. The hardest thing is listening to one teacher and many students ALL trying to get a word in at the SAME time. And as if this wasn't bad enough, Child A often sounds the same as Child B and Child C and every other child in the classroom. Don't be mistaken, transcribing is really no brainer work but that does not mean it is not TEDIOUS!

By Sunday, I felt I deserve a little something as a reward for working over the weekend. After all, it was not my fault my laptop died so dramatically. There had been no warning signs.

So this was what I got!

Aren't they pretty??

Initially I thought they were 5 inches. Turned out they were only 4. Oh well...

Retrolicious shoes from Charles & Keith ($59.90)

Mystery solved!

The other day I called for a cab, waited for ages before it appeared and actually had to flag it down before it would stop for me. Still I didn't think anything was amiss. I just thought the driver was not very smart.

Upon boarding the cab, I recited my mobile number out of habit.

Hi, I called for a cab, my number is 945xxxxx.
Huh? You called?
Yes. (Why else would I board your cab?!?)
Oh.

Silence.

At this point, I was really convinced that the driver wasn't too bright. Just as I was about to ask him to drive me to Heeren, the driver spoke.

Are you Mr Peter?
What??
Mr Peter. Your handphone number is correct but I'm expecting a gentleman.
Mr Who??? Do I look like a man??

The driver pointed at the screen.

Some operator at Comfort Delgro must not like me much! He/she changed my name to Mr Peter and so while the number is right, the name is so wrong!

Which explains why I have been getting strange looks from cab drivers recently whenever I booked a taxi. One driver called me on the phone while I was in his cab to verify that I was the one who made the booking. Another driver probably figured I'm no Mr Peter and even cancelled the booking fee. Not that I'm complaining!