Thursday, December 4, 2008

Off yet again



















Come 5pm on Friday, I will shut down my computer, gather my stuff and hop on the train to Changi Airport. I love Changi... My family and my aunt's family will be in Kuching over the long weekend. We have a hectic weekend planned. There are relatives to meet, a cat musuem to visit, waterfalls to seek out and a beachside pool to lounge by. Oh yes and seafood awaits! Whee.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

My favourite lozenges



















If I MUST be sick, these lozenges make it more bearable at least. Argh!

I had a very busy week and had ambitious plans to meet several people over the weekend. But it is not to be...oh well.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Growing a tree



















Last Sunday, we put up the wall stickers from France.
Mademoiselle D worked hard on beautifying her room wall.
Then D & I sat under the tree.
Sweet dreams, baby.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

A Date

I cannot wait to get this movie on DVD and round up my mum, aunt(s) and cousins to watch it. Alicia Keys! Jennifer Hudson! A feel-good movie with the kind of plot I love! We'll plonk ourselves down in the TV room, turn on the aircon, sip honey-and-lemon-tea, munch on honey soy chicken chips, and have a good ol' bonding and cry-fest*. Bring on the tissue! I love my family.

* Notes:
Tis best to let the tears out during the movie. Once I stoically watched The Notebook with assorted family members sniffing all around me. When the movie ended, the credits rolled, said family members crumpled up their tissues and happily moved on while I remained in the TV room with a huge lump in my heart - argh.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Polaroid fun!



















My Polaroid dreams have come true! I'm crazy happy :)

This very cool app turns any photo into a Polaroid shot. Best friend can't locate her Polaroid camera? The company's stopped making the film? No problem! Whee.

I turned this photo of Mademoiselle D into a Polaroid shot. She was oblivious to the cold and kept trying to get rid of her mittens. She had such a good time seeing how they stayed with her no matter how much she shook them. Ah, kids.
Publish Post

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A sunny day by the Seine



















For Carolyn. Didn't get to the tea place but I took a photo of the books for you! Thanks for all the tips and links - much appreciated :)))

Monday, November 10, 2008

Finding joy in the everyday

I have 2 best friends. I know, it sounds like either my grammar or counting ability is dented.
But yes, I have 2 best friends and the incredible thing is that we've known each other since we were in primary school.

And now they're mothers!

This is Keziah, who just turned two. I got her a storybook and a dress. In a fit of creative inspiration, I 'wrapped' the dress in a girl-pink chocolate tin. Guess what she liked best?! (And guess what she's getting for Christmas....?)

She had a great time filling up her tin with the stones in the courtyard. Such a cute reminder of finding joy in the simplest of things.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Oh Joy



















"Trust you to see the beauty in something as simple as that", said my friend.
'That' was the sight of a delicious chocolate pastry accompanied by the best ever coffee mocha, which (I knew from past experience) would be so delightful I had to stop and arrange them for an impromptu photo shoot before proceeding to wolf them down.

The art of giving a gift



















The Eiffel Tower (complete with vintage LV ribbon, in a nod to Paris), for my aunt & uncle's collection of bronze-gold artefacts, and a sparkly top from H&M (cunningly rolled up to conceal the sequins), which my cousin totally hearts.

Oh, I'm in the mood for Christmas gift-giving. It's not as much about the mad rush to remember everyone as it is to remember everyone who's special in your life.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Back home (II)



















I had a very good break from everything and enjoyed a long holiday with my best friend and her family. I somewhat miss Mademoiselle D's cheekiness and charm.

Nevertheless, I was very happy to get home. To be slightly corny...this is home truly....where a great breakfast can be had for 7 Euros...for a party of 5 adults! Above photo: Good stuff at Changi Airport's Yakkun Toast.

After I got home today, I
  • Unpacked. Washed my laundry.
  • Opened my mail, i.e. credit card bills. How sad that we hardly get snail mail anymore. I think I will do up a batch sometime and surprise some people.
  • Showered. Exfoliated. Ah, my feet love L'Occitane Shea Butter footscrub...
  • Caught up on blog happenings. Added a few more to my bookmarks of blogs to read.
  • Transferred over 800 photos into my mac.
  • Took a short nap. Urgh, jetlag.
  • Had a yummy noodle soup cooked by my dad. Soup is so soothing.
  • Did a sorta check-in to work by calling Bee, my great ally, to get the scoop on things and to find out how everyone was doing. Our favourite chicken soup lunch place has a new dessert - chocolate fondant! I have high hopes for it and can't wait to try it.
  • Took a longer nap, mildly roused by a jolly good thunderstorm in the afternoon. Welcome back to the tropics.
  • Dinner with my parents and the recounting of holiday goings-on.
  • Upped the present-giving a notch by adding trim! It's all about the presentation, baby.
And tomorrow, it's back to work...

Back from Paris

744 photos in my camera are being downloaded onto my computer now. Next, the photos from my iPhone. But first, a nap. I am falling aleep. xxxxxxxxxxxxx

We had a great time.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Friday, October 31, 2008

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Monday, October 27, 2008

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

2 more days to pack!

My trip stuff is all over my brother's room. He's away right now so
I've hijacked his room for Packing. So many people have been so kind
to let me clothes for the cool weather.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Youth Ministry



















There are days when I feel like giving up.
But today is not one of them.
Love the wildly pink hearts.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Inspired

I had grand plans for lugging my friend's polaroid to France and taking loads of shots of the sights, then using them for cards and framing them for gifts. Alas, said polaroid is nowhere to be found. Oh well, just as well since our hands will be full with bags, stroller and Mademoiselle D, the 1.5 year old I'll be escorting to Paris.

Anyway, I could still do this: take photos of letters and turn them into names or something. Merry Christmas!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

You give me (F1) fever















I had a VIP box at the first ever F1 night race!
Well, it seemed like that anyway.
My aunt's suntec city office overlooks the F1 circuit near Raffles Boulevard where there are 3 curves in the road quite close to each other.
So I joined her on Friday night when the teams were doing test runs.Perched myself on her office table, munched on a carl's junior burger and fries, slurped my coke, and watched the cars go round the circuit like newbies on Need For Speed (here we go now). They went round the corner gingerly. They got better at it with every lap they took, and the progress was really cool to see. Above them, long lines of cars passed by serenely on the Benjamin Sheares bridge (why am I not surprised that there's a wikipedia entry?). Incidentally, Dr Benjamin Sheares delivered my father. How cool is it to have been delivered by a man who later became Singapore's 2nd President?

Back to F1. The cars were very loud. And that's an understatement. There was an incessant buzzing sound, which was loud and clear even from an enclosed office space!

I expanded my knowledge of the F1 universe... In addition to the instantly-recognisable Ferrari red, I can now tell a Mclaren-Mercedes car (orange and black...but looks like red and black). And a Honda (err I think it's white and green).

I wasn't an F1 fan but it's much more interesting to me now.

Hello again, Saturday

Saturday morning again! My morning for seeing what other bloggers have been up to this week. As an aside - remind me not to have a stereotypical Chinese Singaporean wedding. I want something different! Inspiration here.

Ok ok, I don't just spend Saturday mornings online. I like to:
  • Wake up when I am ready to. Which is about 7 or 8, depending. Yes it's early but I sleep early too. And anyway I have a whole weekend waiting for me!
  • Have breakfast. A very important meal indeed.
  • Adjourn to the living room sofa with coffee cup, plop myself down, put my feet up and read the Straits Times from cover to cover. Flip, flip. Sip. Ahhhh. This morning's paper had a special on dementia and its growing occurance here. Very The Notebook-like, only much less romantic. I feel sad whenever I read about people who need help. I have so much, and there are people out there who would be happy with even a fraction. I'm chewing on what I can do. Meanwhile, it occurs to me that by staying gainfully employed, the work that i do contributes to keeping the economy going and the (meagre) taxes I pay help run programmes to help people in need! Cool.
  • (When my ankle is well) Insert: Take a walk with mum in the park by the sea.
  • Yes, my ankle still hurts. Maybe I should have an x-ray. I can hear my family going I told you so, or as they say in my family, THERE you go!!
  • X-ray is a cool word, no? It is about the only word I know that starts with the letter X. THE LETTER X! HA HA HA HA! (I'm thinking about The Count from Sesame Street right now, if you wanna know). But, I digress.
  • Mosey on to my room, turn on my iBook, check email, surf blogs or update mine, do online "errands" like settle bills.
  • Tidy up my room, like my messy table top which has just accumulated piles of books to be read or paper to be recycled, cards to be written. My to-be corner.
  • From time to time, roughly every 3 months, I take stock of how I'm doing financially. I think about my daily and other expenses and about financial goals. I realised that I was being pretty aimless so as a result of my ponderings, I've just opened a mysavings account.
  • I realised that I don't do the same regular stocktake for my spiritual health, which ironically is more important to me than my financial health. Time to address that.
p.s. I had Abba songs in my head the whole week. Help!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Mamma Mia!

I love my family.

Tonight we watched Mamma Mia! My mum and dad, rarely seen on the movie circuit, joined us for a movie choc-a-block with Abba tunes. The movie had a pretty staged feeling at times, and it was seriously campy and cheesy in many parts but that's what you'd expect and besides that's what I was there for!

Funny moments:

My family are great sports and make things fun. Singing & jiggling along with the songs. My teenage cousin slouching in her chair with the embarrassment of it all (but singing along herself in Take A Chance On Me). They really should have a Abba sing-a-long movie screening.

The ladies in my family get weepy at touching scenes. The key Touching Moment in the movie was when Meryl Streep sings about seeing her daughter grow up. At the back of my head I was thinking, bet mum & aunt are feeling choked up now. At the exact moment, my cousin whispered to me: Got tissue (for mum & aunt)? Ha!

At the end, Meryl Streep and gang do a campy song & dance and then Meryl Streep asks if we want more. To which my aunt promptly yells, YES! And then they do a second song and dance! Ha ha!

My aunt sending an sms back to uncle (who opted to stay home) to dig out the ol' Abba cds! Abba fest!!

Ahhh... back to work, with lots of happy memories to smile at.

Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me...

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Yet another Saturday

Things I would like to do.

Cook risotto, one of my favourite dishes in cold temperate countries.
Make cute face-shaped (a la 27 dresses) blueberry pancakes or other things like pizza.

I have yearnings to make food in my own kitchen, where I can dilly dally to my heart's content and follow my own schedule, and have friends over to dinner. Being at home with my mum is lovely but she thinks I move too slowly! In her kitchen, I'll always be the kitchen hand. And when my grandma (Master Chef)'s around, my mum's demoted to kitchen hand and I, the grandchild who hops in and out of the kitchen to try a bit here and there but am otherwise of no help!

I think I'll just clean my room.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

I slowed down

The prize for most creative bruises on a foot must surely go to me. I slipped on a step (or maybe it was two) at my aunt's home on Saturday. My left foot is puffy like it's been steamed or something, and my toes have been shaded in interesting variations of aubergine. And I just discovered a bruise on the underside of my foot yesterday!

I hobbled to work Mon to Wed. In tevas sandals and jeans (because you know, tevas would just look weird with anything else). Grandmas and grandpas and pregnant women whizzed by and left me in their dust. Working types eyed my foot quizzically.

I never realised how impatient commuters generally are. They walk really fast, cut into your lane abruptly, sometimes brushing against you a little with their bag or sleeve, all of which signals lady, you're moving too slowly.

In the midst of moving slowly, I slowed down. I had a newfound sympathy for people who could not move like regular folks. I noticed the people around me - how they walked, what they were wearing or doing, their body language.

And a slightly sad/alarming thing was, there I was walking by slowly and some people I knew would walk past me not even saying hello. Either they're as blur as I am or worse, I just never took the time to talk to people and now, I'm not someone they would bother to stop and talk to. Eeks. So slowing down has been good for me. I'm reminded to take the time to talk to people, look them in the eye, find out how they're doing.

My foot is getting better and I should be ok after today's trip to the doctor's and a day's rest at home. I'm raring to go and can't wait to re-start brisk walks in the park. Just as soon as I buy sports shoes.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Make-believe for grownups


Things I would bring to Paris


One of the reasons I loved the Sims was all the house-building, appliance-buying and home decorating I could do. I could spend ages in build mode, with unlimited cash (using the beautiful cheat codenamed "rosebud").

So you can imagine that all I could think when I found this site was, uh-oh.

It's a deviously easy site to use. It has beautiful clothes and shoes and bags and accessories. You drag and drop items you like. You delete them if you change your mind. You move them, resize them, flip them, bring them to the front or relegate them to the back. You put an outfit together. You try out different combinations with the same item. You add backgrounds and fonts. You share items and parade your collections. It's online shopping-meets-online community-meets-the sims-meets-photoshop-flickr-and-dafont all at the same time.

Signing off for the weekend...

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Crafty

Another cute craft idea. Love the simplicity and charm of this birthday card!

The weekend's almost here! Already?! It was just yesterday we were at the red dot museum! The week's flown by. Which is good.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Chocolat

There are days when you need to break out your emergency stash of
chocolate.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Sunday Afternoon



















Finally made it to MAAD, the Market of Artists and Designers, which is held on the first weekend of each month. Well I don't know about the 'bustling weekend market' it was billed as but it was interesting. The folks from the proletariat poetry factory made me wish we hadn't disposed of our old typewriter...saad... I liked their whole set up, the cute red jumpsuits and the whole i-am-a-slave-to-the-poetry-machine thing (read about them here).

Then on to Chinatown for dessert. Just a taster, though - we have got to make it back there for a whole afternoon of exploration and culinary delights!

In the evening - a date with my cousins to watch Camp Rock. "b-t-w, your lip gloss is sooo not glossy anymore"...ha ha! That is my new favourite lame line which I shall be using with great relish at the next opportune opportunity with the JB-besotted teens in my life.

On a more serious note... my grandma had a health scare this morning, though it turns out it is probably just vertigo and she's resting well at home right now. Still, she decided to divide her jewellery among her 5 daughters and 11 grandchildren. I don't know what to say. Sigh.
Publish Post

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Sweeeet!

Free iphone wallpapers by interesting, talented artists.

Letterpress. Like these by Linda & Harriet and those by sweetbeets. I would love to go for a letterpress workshop but I haven't found anything available here. Trust me, I've been googling a lot on this.

More letterpressed stuff and other stationery by papersource.

Very cute handmade felt barrette project.

Super cool storytelling with custom-made books. Hey, I could do that! Although I'm reminded that I only got through 2 days (or was it 1 day?) of the recount of the first all-grown-up trip with my best friend to Phuket about 7 or 8 years ago. I think it was about a year after I'd started working and we were young(er) and the world was ours to explore. The project is err on an extended break.

My Official Saturday Food



















The wind chimes by my balcony door have been working hard all morning. As you might realise by now, I enjoy my Saturday mornings at home. A leisurely morning with leisurely activities (or non-activity) accompanied by Official Saturday Food. Which to me is along the lines of porridge & assorted side dishes. Or bak chor mee. Or porridge with a delectable combination of mushrooms, minced meat, dried shrimps and diced long beans cooked stir-fried together and mixed into the porridge pot. Ooh, it's the best. Today though we had plain porridge with stir fried vegetables coated sparingly with eggs, steamed bak chor and garlic and needless to say my much loved Bee Cheng Hiang pork floss. Yums.

And oh yes, I'm going to Paris in October :)

Stationery fantasies















I was much amused by this photo from all*over*print. Time to dig out my collection of stationery sets!

Friday, September 5, 2008

Fri nite out















A Friday night out actually requires some effort on my part. I'm one of those people who get energized by peace & quiet rather than going out and painting the town red. Still, once I'm out I enjoy myself. Even if I do get sleepy at a really early hour (let's just say some of my friends' toddlers sleep later than I do).

Tonight I had dinner with my folks and a family friend, auntie esther. Oh, and as the saying goes, it never rains but pours... a couple of days ago, my colleague bought these pricey & exotic mooncakes. Turned out my dad had a liking for them, so I got him a box yesterday. Kinda nice to be extravagant with your nearest and dearest. Then tonight, guess what auntie esther happened to get us...??? So now we have TWO boxes in the fridge. My dad is a happy man indeed.

Tonight's adventure consisted of dining at Shatec's Rosette restaurant just off Killiney Road, about 5 minutes from Somerset MRT. Rosette, housed in an old colonial building together with a Shatec-run 3-star hotel, is a place for Shatac students to train on the job. It was cute to see them so earnest and in deep concentration - "Hello sir, how was the starter?""Could you give us your feedback about the main course?" I don't think I've had so much attention in a restaurant before, nor so many people smiling at me over the course of dinner. The place reminded me of a similar set-up in Hanoi for disadvantaged kids to learn a trade. I think this place is a great idea.

For $28 nett, we had a salad and scallop appetiser, soup, a little sorbet, stewed duck & duck confit, strawberry mousse for dessert and coffee. To keep things simple for the students, everyone gets the same menu with two choices for the main course. The food was decent and thoughtfully presented. Surprisingly, the place was almost full. Not your usual fine dining crowd, there were whole families there to support their kin, bunches of student types there to see their friends in action, squealing at the sight of them in chefs' attire or other uniforms. So it was a pretty laid-back atmosphere, though not for the students who were kept on their toes!

mmm....Mocha

I heart my favourite cafe mocha! From coffee culture at Biopolis. It's the best.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Handmade musings



















I'm dreaming of handmade things. Cards, jewellery, prints...pretty artsy things. I wish we had cool craft-y flea market type places here, and a groundswell of artistry and craftmanship. I'm slowly browsing through the vendors exhibiting at the renegrade craft fair in Chicago.

6 months ago we were at a timeout-organised flea market which turned out to be ok-ayyyy. Pity it was a wet and rainy Sunday and there were just a handful of people wandering in to look. I remember some nice decorations for kids' rooms made by a Bali-based artist though, and I got a pretty necklace from these folks.

I like browsing people's shops in Etsy (oh what a nicely whimsical name for a craft haven). Like this one called Made by Hank. The pictures above are details of some of the bags this lady has made. I'm always drawn to POCKETS and HOOKS (in caps because they make me go Oooh! They just appeal to the ORGANISER fanatic in me...). I LOVE COMPARTMENTS for phones & keys. And the words she's sewen are so cute! I would do that...but for cards or little booklets, not for bags :)

I wonder if I could make anything for sale....just a little cottage industry. I wouldn't be surprised if handmade stuff is already or will be a big cottage industry in the next few years.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Saturday mornings are good for room cleaning



















What a difference a week makes. Today was the perfect sunny day to clean my room and change my sheets. I've been slowly recovering from a nasty flu and had to combat the germ-y feeling I had. I love a fresh clean room!

Friday, August 29, 2008

A pair of homebodies hits town


Tonight's dinner: French, Roman & Japanese... i.e. French onion soup, Caesar's salad, Tokyo chicken soup and ice lemon tea at The Soup Spoon, where the good folks apparently live for soup... The French onion soup was dee-li-cious.

Hazel and I, two self-declared homebodies, braved the crowds at City Hall to have a nice night out. Turns out I'm not the only person on this island to love notebooks, stationery, craft stuff and whatnot!

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Mooncake Season



















I hold in my hand a $6 mooncake. That's right, a Mini Snow-Skin Mooncake with Champagne Truffle & Ganache. Whoa, Nelly.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Movie Nite!



















My first movie preview. Whee.
Despite the poor reviews, I enjoyed the movie. It was a welcome flight of adventure. Then again, I have been a fan since I was about 7 and had a crush on Luke Skywalker...

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Wall Stickers


Back in the old days, I would from time to time splurge my $1-a-day pocket money on stationery sets from the school stationery shop (for some reason, we girls always referred to it as "auntie bookshop"... as in, meet you at auntie bookshop). I can't remember when my fascination with stickers began but they've always brought a gleam to my eye.

My attention is currently on bigger stickers - wall stickers, that is. I have a nice, blank wall that I could decorate.
1, 2 & 3 from wink, 4 from here and 5 & 6 from blik. At the moment, it looks like wink will be more attainable...available from Ig's heaven stores.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Saturday mornings are for...blog surfing

I love Saturdays. Especially cool, slightly overcast Saturday mornings when I have nothing on for the day. A free and easy Saturday = bliss. Normally I try to go for an early morning walk with my mum but it rained this morning and so I happily slept in.

Among other things, Saturday mornings are for blog surfing. I just added a list of blogs that I visit often. They're a mixed bag - Karen Cheng is like an alternate universe (life as a 30 year old Chinese Australian with a husband, a house and 2 kids), metrodad is a guy in New York with one stylish kiddo and with whom I have almost nothing in common but find moving/hilarious anyway, and the usual suspects like the Sartorialist and the Fashion is Spinach lady. Karin has beautiful photos, the kind I would like to take myself. Random inspirations has cool design stuff that inspires me to concoct some of my own craft stuff. Nachosan, who I stumbled upon in flickr, has breathtaking photos and loves using his Japanese wife as a muse. In short, I love design, photos, fashion, life.

The fun about blog surfing is also in looking at what people whose blogs you like find inspiring themselves...and it goes on....

I want a prosumer camera of my own! Boo hoo. But I wouldn't spend so much money on one. Right now, anyway. I'm busy trying to win one through Today newspaper's current contest tie-up with Nikon... suggest a caption for their Olympics shot of the day and you might have a shot (ha ha) at a camera...ooh I hope I win.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

A quick note

"A hundred years from now, it will not
matter what my bank account was,
the sort of house I lived in, or the
kind of clothes I wore.
But the world may be much
different because I was important
in the life of a child."

Author Unknown

I thought this was beautiful.

Things I've been up to: coughing, coughing and more coughing. I was on medical leave on Tues and spent a good part of it sleeping (= not coughing = good). On the bright side, I had more time to linger over reading the Bible and started memorising some verses too. Also, I've hardly been snacking thanks to the state of my throat and am feeling lighter!

Friday, August 8, 2008

National Day Feast

There's one day of the year that I don't need to think about what to
wear to work :)

Thursday, August 7, 2008

A Tower of Tarts

A container filled with
Buttery
Sweet
Juicy
Handmade
Pineapple tarts!

Yums.

Some foods are tied to special seasons like tarts, bak kua, chap chye
and steamboat for Chinese new year.

But in Singapore you can have them all year round, much to the
detriment of my waistline...

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Be smrt...go green
















I'll admit, I like taking part in contests. But I do it selectively, like if it's a government-linked group wanting to give away free ipods, train rides... yes, friends, it all started in primary school when I won a Rainbow Brite boat (p.s. I couldn't for the life of me remember the name. Ever have a nagging feeling like you have something back in the deep recesses of your brain? Well that's what the web is for - and I got the name thanks to folks who care about 1980s cartoons!). After which I went on to win an exercise mat in Primary 5 from an F&N draw. I remember all these events with great fondness because in those days, we didn't have a lot. And going anywhere seemed to be such a great effort for a kid, especially since we didn't have so many options like today when we hop into a cab quite easily, or take the train to the nearest station (and then hop into a cab). So in the case of Rainbow Brite, I remember a really troublesome journey with my family to get to some faraway place called Goldhill tower just to claim the prize. And I remember feeling really bad at troubling everyone! Guess what, the toy is still in my cupboard!

Anyway, the cooler prizes I've won to date are a printer and an ipod. I wouldn't mind winning a year's worth of free transport! So I've signed up for the smrt thingy where you log in your ezlink card number to double your chances of winning. What I wanted to share was the website which I think is very amusing. The top banner shows a bus and a train whizzing by green hedges (hallo, Singapore where got trains next to green hedges??!), while the cars at the bottom don't move at all. And if you mouse over the cars, they'll give off different horn sounds! I did it accidentally and it gave me a shock!

Although if the website was being completely honest, you'd see/hear people in the cars laughing at a lame joke on class 95, and people in the trains squashed like sardines and eyeballing and tsk-ing at people who don't move in to the centre/give up their priority seat or who take up sooo much space with their newspaper or disturb the peace by playing their handheld games with the volume on. That's mass media for you!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

A Walk Down Haji Lane



















Finally got down to pulling the Haji Lane pix together. This photo spread is dedicated to the gals who gamely walk down odd streets with me and share my love of a good adventure looking for the perfect spot for afternoon tea and great photo angles!

On this trip, we finally got to try Food for Thought, a self-described "quirky little diner where you can get great homestyle comfort food at a good price". The peach crumble with vanilla ice-cream was yummy (but it can get a little too sweet so make sure you have friends to share it with)! Food for thought is not at Haji Lane but is a short stroll from Bugis Junction and Bras Brasah.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

At Henderson Waves

Recently we had a work outing to the southern ridges, all in the name of team building and healthy living... I'd always wanted to check out that walk. It was swelteringly hot but I had a good time anyway. Was left with cool photos and a sun tan :) this photo was taken in one of the so-called 'Henderson waves'.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Sudoku, I love you



















Last Christmas, I bought my aunt a book on sudoku puzzles. She's really cute - she does the puzzles on her way to work and she uses the book as her diary as well, scribbling things like what she did the day before, who visited her and so on. So far, I was just an outsider to this sudoku madness. Then a few months ago I walked into my brother's room to find him hunched over the newspapers, staring intently at (so I thought) the movie listings. I ended up standing next to him for the next 45 minutes while we tried to make headway on the puzzle. Still, I held out. Me, I was just a casual bystander. Then last weekend, I finally got hooked. And this is the first puzzle I've ever solved completely :)

Friday, July 18, 2008

Night at the museum

With my mum at the national musuem, exploring before the night festival starts. I enjoyed showing her the fashion and food galleries. She was very much interested in the making of a cheongsam and the illustrations of fruit. My mum's cool to do explorations with.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Things that make me smile

One morning, I spotted a couple on this baby blue scooter. It was so
perky, amidst a sea of black, grey and nondescript vehicles, that I
was inspired... Very amelie-like! So when I saw it again, this time
parked on the pavement, I just had to take a shot!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Wi-fi, wi-fi everywhere

Bedok bus interchange is cool.

Monday, July 7, 2008

That's marvellous, darling

Funny story. Picture this: my colleague and I are walking along city link mall.
We're feeling snack-y but haven't decided on what to eat. We round the corner, and all of a sudden she grabs my arm in excitement: "Amanda!!!!!"... "Ooh," I squeal, "how... MARVELLOUS!!" We take a look at the new shop and find out what it's called...

This is not one of my lame puns - cross my heart, it really happened :)

p.s. In case you're wondering - my verdict is: it looks posh but doesn't taste as nice as cold rock ice-cream, and it is expensive! Give me a pint of belgian chocolate any time. Or chocolate overload. Or artic roll. Yums.

Friday, July 4, 2008

How Sweet

A less happy meal, ha ha.

Getting older is... Feeling the pinch of paying 5.85 for a meal and
finding out that the next guy paid for a $2 set with almost the same
thing. Ha ha!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Cooling off

Perfect Sunday afternoon: escaping from the scorching heat, retreating
into an ice-blended haven, saving money with a new coffee bean card,
watching youtube videos with iphone and free wi-fi. Ahhh.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Judging blogs by their cover

I've been thinking about a design for my new blog, There are so many great examples out there, I am totally humbled! Now this one, called web designer wall, is SO pretty :) The possibilities for my blog are endless, wheee!