Hello March!

Somehow almost 20% of the year has gone by?! The days are long but the weeks pass by in a flash. Term 1 is almost over.

And needless to say, weekends feel even shorter.

Spent Friday evening catching up with Gassers and Saturday with some new found friends - feasting at Parkroyal Pickering's Lime and KTV and shooting darts. Haps!

Also trying to pick up something new this month - roller blading! Had a go at it yesterday and I could roll along merrily... but I can't brake. Ahahaha.

I miss my old activities like baking a little but since I don't have all my tools with me, I can't do much. Sundays are usually such a rush for time also - mass, grocery shopping, ironing, evening jog, mask, prepare breakfast/lunch for the week, and before you know it, it's 12am!!!! #wheredidthetimego

Cursory update over, just so that I won't forget what happened in my life during this period. Haha.

It's my birthday!

LOL I've been waiting all year to post this GIF! But then 1 Nov came and went and I didn't have time to do so haha. The birthday weekend passed by in a whizz! Had a staycation and lots of good food. Belly is very well fed now!

Realized I've been absent from this space for the whole of Oct which probably has never happened in my many years of blogging history... *oops* Sorry blog!

From the last blog update, I've booked my flat, grazed my knees quite badly after a fall while jogging, witnessed my sister get legally married, and turned 29. Last year of the twenties! :O

Need to be in school early tomorrow and so I shall update again next time... geez I really need to find some time to sit down in front of the laptop and document my life properly. These days I'm just instagramming, concussing or accessing the internet from my phone.

Terrible! No time to do anything!

Helping out with the decor for Yuanshan's wedding... seems like there are ten thousand things to prepare just for the decor! Aiyo. When it's my turn I think I will turn into a Bridezilla :x

Snippets of the weekend just past:

  

Mostest beaming after Garfield Run!

The pinks and purples at the successful Hen's photoshoot! Was sweltering hot but great fun!

 

Atas dinner at Pollen! Here's my perfectly cooked salmon

And snippets of last last weekend:

 

Up close and personal with a panda haha

 

 Baked some white chocolate macadamia nut brownies

And snippets of last last last weekend:

 

FOOD (belated Father's day lunch)

 

MORE FOOD (great pig organ soup with selected organs) 

 

Brunch on a Sunday!

That seems to quite accurately sum up July. Not including never ending work at work.

I could go on and on and on about last x 4 weekend (meetup with Ichee after 4 or 5 months and melty charsiew) and last x 5 weekend (Hatter Street, cream puff baking class and meetup with Gassers after 3 or 4 months)... but ok I need to sleep, so till the next time, whenever that is. I need to find some time to blog and compose some coherent thoughts!!!!!!!!!

In case I go MIA again, this is what's up:

This long weekend: KL to attend a dinner/leisure trip/get stuck in a terrible jam back home

Next weekend: Yuanshan's wedding

Next next weekend: National Day and I HAVE NOTHING SCHEDULED! Woohoo!!!

Oops another 2 weeks passed! Back from lovely 12-degree weather in Australia and right smack into 30-degree heat and humidity. Baahhhhhhhh.

Wedding updates: looks like I might not be able to get married on my 30th birthday after all because of church venue issues :(
Such a pity coz the date is so nice (and easy to remember)! 
So Plan B is to get married on Paul's 30th birthday! Which is just 8 days before mine heh :D

House updates: selection date was supposed to be on 10th June but we were in Oz so the plan was to ask Paul's mom to help us select. Few days before we left for our trip, we were closely monitoring the leftover flats and erps it didn't look good coz out of the 6 or 7 flats left, all of them were not ideal (think evening sun shining in directly, or in the middle of nowhere with no amenities). To forfeit means we would be penalized, so the best way out was to hope that all the flats would get selected before the 10th.

To be honest when I arrived in Australia I totally forgot that I had the all important future home to select hahahahaha. I was reminded only on the 9th night when we were at the Sydney Opera House, when Paul received an SMS from HDB saying that we need not come down for our appointment because all the flats have been taken! HENG AH! Thank you lucky stars!!!

But the bad news is of course that we still don't have a house and the wait for the next round would be another 6 months zzzzz.

And even badder news is that for this round, there are 142 units and like 1005 applicants -___-"
That's like around a 10% chance of getting. Meh.

OK gotta go sleep soon because I have to run my school's Learning Journey for the school's admin staff tomorrow! STRESS!!! Organizing stuff like this is such a pain zzzzz.

I've finally completed the #100happydays challenge; Day 100 was on Tues.

It started off as a thing or campaign on social media to make you find the little joys in everyday life but then. I realized. Sometimes my days really don't have much joy leh. Or rather, every other day is really much like a duplicate of yesterday and today and tomorrow. --> Drag self to work, sit in office for 9 hours, -insert post work activity-, concuss, rinse and repeat.

In those 100 days I've got some days with absolutely nothing to show. Or at least nothing in pictorial form. Happiness is such an intangible thing, it can't be captured with a camera if you're really feeling it right.

Sure there are things or material objects that are photograph-able that make me happy but there are only so many food pictures to show LOL. Already, ~80% of my #100happydays are made up of food hurhur.

I think I'm already quite content most of the days even without #100happydays. Being content = being happy? Just that this kind of forces me to search for something in a day that can be quantified and marked as HAPPY. 

And it's good that it's only 100 days coz I don't think I can keep at this any longer haha. Just look at the 1 photo a day photoblog that I tried to do in 2011. That lasted consistently for like maybe half a year haha which is not bad liao.

Anyway, been seeing lots of those juice cleanses/detox stuff online lately and it looks very appealing especially to a person who is constantly trying to slim down. *looks at round belly* I would love to try it if not for the price. 18 bottles of fruit and veg juice for $300+? Can't afford. Not something to be done when I am in debt with a super tight budget.

I think I will save it for closer to the wedding when I need to look skinny for pictures or when I need to squeeze my 水桶腰 into a dress. Maybe it can help me drop those last stubborn 1 or 2 kgs! Trying to up my exercise regime again but I can't find any satisfactory kickboxing/boxercise class that is as good as the one at my old employer's. Unless I go sign up for the gym membership coz the instructor is conducting classes there. $$$$$ zzzzz

Now my thighs/hamstrings/legs/bottom half are aching thanks to I dunno kickboxing or T25 but my belly is still as huge as ever :( but YES I WILL GET THERE HELLO 49KG FIGURE!!!

*blows dust off blog*

My poor, long suffering blog. Always here when I am angry or upset and I need an outlet to rant. But when things are calm and peaceful, it goes down the pecking order and gets ignored while I get distracted by Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and what-have-you. Ever selfless and giving, my blog doesn't fight for my attention and always waits patiently in the shadows. *pat pat*


And seriously how many social media platforms do I need?! Haha recently I hopped on the Dayre bandwagon (it's like microblogging on the go - if Twitter and Instagram had a rendezvous and had a kid, Dayre would be it).

But well nothing fascinating has been happening... or wait has there been? OK let me share some recent bakes:

Went for a log cake baking class last Saturday and this ended up as dessert for the Nepal celebratory dinner!

I asked my mom to buy lots of Christmas cake decorations back from Phoon Huat. Haha. Shall attempt to replicate the log cake again closer to Christmas.

 Banana Walnut Muffins

I'm pretty sure I baked something similar before but since I only had 3 small bananas left, I went to google for stuff that I could make with 150g bananas haha. So specific. But anyway I liked this version a lot, they were incredibly soft and fragrant. As with all banana+walnut combinations, it could do with some choc chips but I ran out of them.

Been really tempted to buy a lot of stuff lately, like a hand mixer, the Olympus Stylus XZ-10, and the Babyliss Big Hair 42mm. AHHH CONSUMERISM IS EVIL!!! All these are just wants and not needs. Like my Olympus E-PM1 is still serving me well but sometimes it's a little bulky to carry around plus I want something that can transfer photos from camera to phone using the wi-fi card. -_-

And I want a hand mixer because it's more handy and convenient instead of having to lug the huge mixer out of the storeroom when I want to bake something simple.

And seriously I always tie my hair up so why do I need the Babyliss product so that my hair can look like I just stepped out of the salon?

OK I shall convince myself that all this is not needed. Coz if I buy all these then essentially I will have nothing leftover from my AWS.

#firstworldproblems

And recently Paul got himself a second-hand bike and I've never ridden on a bike before (save for one time in Cambodia) so this will take some getting used to! Riding a bike requires lots of planning and also the mood of the skies. I wanted an orange helmet hurhurhur but I guess most riders like boring colours because there are absolutely no orange helmets out there unless I spray paint it myself. So my helmet is pink. Haha. Wave if you see a pink head that looks vaguely like me on the roads!

Woah~ before I know it September's rounding up to an end!

Some moments from Sandy's wedding before I forget: 

 Typical props... or rather, food for gatecrash + a love poem

 

The bread that we didn't get to use due to time constraints

ROARRRRRR!!! Brothers you are VERY LATE!!!

One of my favourite photos from the day!

Another nice group shot! Glad to have these lovely ladies in my life! :D

Then we move on to domesticated Si Yi:

Went for a 5 course Japanese meal lesson to learn how to cook miso soup, tempura, omu rice, chicken katsu curry, tofu cheesecake! Taste - 6.5/10, curry was wayyyyy too salty :x

Lemon drizzle loaf from The Meat Men - recipe here 

Candied lemon was too sweet :x

Sweet corn ice cream bread - saw this insanely easy recipe on Facebook and gave it a try. Just 2 ingredients, mix. But I got the measurements wrong and this turned out kueh-like. #fail!

Gave it another try with chocolate chip ice cream and it turned out better, but bread was really dry. :x

I guess the quality of ice cream affects the bread. Recipe here.

 
And I can haz Tim Ho Wan char siew baos! Queued 50 mins to eat there!

And miscellaneous happenings:

 

Sandy's hen party on a boat! Got a little giddy after that though :x

 Our completed lego caravan! It's pretty cool, the inside is furnished! :)

 

You can't find clothes cheaper than what I was selling at the flea :x

 

And yes look who received her long service award yesterday. Haha. Technically it's 5.5 years already!

It keeps raining in the mornings. Makes for very conducive sleep-ins.
Unfortunately it also means I'm always late for work. Very blatantly so. I just happily stroll in after 930am or later every day whether rain or shine. If I find another job I have no idea how I am going to adapt to the normal hours of working haha.

Speaking of which the job search has been very stagnant! Why nobody wants to hire me? :(

Sigh. OK on to happier things. Long weekend that just passed:

 

Baked egg tarts on Thurs. The egg custard didn't curdle like it did the last time so that's good! I originally wanted to bake a Lemon Drizzle Loaf from this video I saw. It looks so gooooooooooooooood! It's the way the shot the video I guess haha. But my mother asked for egg tarts so ok lor. Haha.

Then I went for Muay Thai and kicked some ass (I wish). Haha but it's a very tiring sport and I say that even as I do Boxercise regularly.

Staycation at Wanderlust Hotel on National Day! It's a boutique hotel so the rooms are quite quirky - each level has a different theme and we got the Pantone Room on the second floor. The room is entirely decked out in a single colour so there's a red room, a yellow room, a blue room, you get the gist. We got the green room and proceeded to look like Shrek coz of the green tinge hahaha.

 

It's a small room and these capsules are the toilet and shower, right in the middle of the room haha. The bed is just adjacent to the toilet!

 

The bed is good for huggling hurhurhurhur

 

Yup so that's the longish room

 

The French (? I think?) restaurant on the first floor called Cocotte where we also had our breakfast

 Being a boutique hotel, there wasn't any swimming pool or any other facilities, but they did have an open air jacuzzi on the second floor which was right next to our room.

To catch the fireworks from the parade that night, we walked from Bugis all the way to Promenade MRT station. Took us a good half an hour I think. Aaaaand we were then blocked by a tree when the fireworks came on. Bahh.

I did girly stuff on Saturday, met some Ichee folks for lunch, and on Sunday enjoyed an afternoon dip in the MBS infinity pool thanks to free passes hurhur.

 

And yup so that wraps up the long weekend. Weekends can never be long enough though. :(

Next break would be Nepal in Oct, and I'm not sure if that's a break or not coz I think I'll be trekking every day. OH NO I AM SO NOT PREPARED FOR NEPAL!!! Have not been training at all! Yikes!!!

My office is super noisy now with consultants talking over each other (zzzzz) while here I am, sitting in my tiny corner, trying to tune the noise out. This is what happens when your confined office space (i.e. the Jail Cell) doubles up as a meeting room.

Here's my activity filled weekend. I really think weekends should be a 3-day long affair. 2 days to play and meet people and one day to rest and recuperate! Sounds good? I'm a strong proponent of Me Time. ME TIME IS IMPORTANT PEOPLE!!! Don't lose yourself in the middle of all the hustle and bustle. Take time to chill, slow down and do whatever nonsense that you enjoy!

And lately I miss my Me Time :( Don't get me wrong, of course I don't mind being busy and spending quality time with friends and all but yeah. It sometimes gets a bit. Overwhelming. Like I can't even say yes to impromptu meetups and Nepal training sessions now because my weekends have been filled up months ago. When in the past I was probably the freest and the first to agree to everything. Rarrrrr.

Ah well what was I going to say? Oh yes. My activity filled weekend!

Was at Legoland on Saturday after we postponed our original trip in June due to the bad haze. It was pouring really heavily in the morning in Singapore. Throughout the day the rain came and went and came and went. And the roller coaster stalled 2 out of the 3 times we were on it. Meh. There's just something about us and theme parks!

  

Einstein made entirely out of Lego

 

Hello Ribena Berry!

 

 

Miniature Singapore

 

Taj Mahal

 

Forgot what building in China

 

Angkor Wat

 Went home with Ninnnnnnja Banana and Purtato!

 

And this iz the tower we built to test its stability

And then I went to play mahjong/poker/I'm the Boss again at Mabel's house (looks like we are moving Headquarters soon!) and I won money again! Yay! Mabel's house has good fengshui :)

Sunday. Stumbled on the St. Anne's church 50th anniversary carnival. Dropped by VivoCity for the Hair for Hope event but the queue was so long we decided it was not worth the wait. Nua-ed a bit. Went for baking class!

 

The BEFORE: Cranberry cream cheese country bread

 The AFTER: warm, crusty buns (but a little hard) haha. Actually the before and after photos don't look any different except for slight browning.

And yup so I had no time to jog, iron or nua and watch Running Man. This is why I need a 3-day weekend! Hahahaha.

But I am trying to consistently watch a little bit of Running Man a day since I now have all the subbed episodes from 1 to 153! Making good progress, I'm going to start on #17 soon!

Been feeling rather sloth-like and blubber-like lately. Even when I climb stairs, I feel tired and lethargic! The stamina has gone down greatly thanks to a whole month of no-swimming and no-jogging (thanks to my frequent weekends away and the haze). I used to be how fit and healthy! Now it's like.... nua blubber blubber blubber nua sloth and nom nom nom nom (from the non-stop eating).

THIS GETS SERIOUS GUYS! Can't run away from the glaring fact - it's the extra 3 kilos that I've been carrying around. ㅠ.ㅠ

I IZ NOW AN OMNOMNOMIVORE

 *weeps in despair*

Haha oh well it's "happiness weight" as the Saint says but honestly I can do without it hahaha. Happiness weight, you can find someone else stick to! We can be happy without the extra weight right?

ANYWAYS! The point of this entry is. OK I don't know what's the point except to share that cute OMNOMNOMNIVORE picture hahahaha because that describes my life now perfectly.

Oh oh oh and I'm also pathetically broke and dying and eating grass and I can't wait for July 25th to come BECAUSE I IS NEEDING MY BONUS NAO!!!

Oh oh oh and also as our luck would have it, the grey smelly haze followed us to KL while it was all clear blue sunny skies in SG. Zzzzzzz. But ok that's it to all the travelling, no more travelling for me till October (Nepal!). I just tried to pay my income tax and the AXS machine told me I have insufficient funds to pay by NETS. Yes that's how broke I am. Haha. Of course, it's not like my taxes are some ridiculously high amount or something. Monkey here earns peanuts. Rahhhh. *slinks away*

Feeling pretty stoned today. -_-

Flu medicine making me drowsy and spamming Vitamin C to fight whatever virus is lurking in my body while it's still relatively tame.

Wanted to post some photos from the 2 hens' night I attended but I realized all the photos I have from Corrine's hens' party are so cui! We didn't even take a proper photo lor. :(

Haha. Never mind, here's some from Mabel's Hens' night at W Hotel. I expected W Hotel to be bigger and glitzier, but it was still nice. I guess the snazzy decor makes it different from other hotels, but it's still a little overpriced IMO.

We took an Away Room which came with our own private plunge pool!

Even the standing light got zhng-ed

1-2-3-4 Gwiyomi

 Cheers to our bride-to-be!

 And from Corinne's Hens' night last weekend at MBS:

 I believe this photo of the pizza at Pizzaria Mozza is the best photo I took that entire evening because all the other photos look cui. #truestory

We were so chill that we didn't even prepare anything. 

Last minute party stuff courtesy of Xiuhui haha

The 40 degrees hot tub and steam room 

It's gonna be a busy month of May with 2 weddings over the next 2 weeks and then it's Genting and Sundown, then in June there's Phuket and diving! I'm broke but heck. Spend now worry later LOL.