Goodbye to 2005

Christmas is over and very soon we will say goodbye to the year 2005. Another year is about to begin, and it seems to be a trend for many to set their new year resolutions. This is not a usual practice for me. I do not have a life goal or target to work towards with, my mind will always go blank whenever I questioned myself what I want in life? Sometimes I will ask my friends the same question just to check how adnormal I am but seems like some are sharing the same lossness as me.

Since I have yet to establish any life goal so the next closest will be short-term goals. Firstly I want to abolish my laziness gradually, with that I hope I can care more, exercise more, cook more, eat more, etc etc, more and more.

The next of my list would probably be less sensitive especially towards negative comments. Often I take things too personal. People maybe passing casual remarks but the first thing that came to my mind is always "Is he/she hinting me something? Did I make any mistake?" and my heart starts to race faster. This came especially true when they are from my closed ones, eg hubby. I have absolutely no idea since when this self-doubting behaviour developed? But well, is always never too late to realise I have a problem here. I am going to try Solution A "ASK". Communication plays an important role in anywhere, to avoid misunderstanding and self-doubting I am going to ask rather than keep questioning myself in slience. I have been unfair to myself, I took all self-declared blames and made me unhappy. Come to think about it, I am very foolish. Things could be very simple yet I complicate them. Ok, this "over-sensitivity" has to GO!

Be more tactful in speech? I thought I was pretty cool being tactless?! Hahaha, but this will often hurt people I love although I don't mean it. Maybe I should go slow, talk slower rather than blah out some not so nice phrases. This requires lot of practices and challenging for a kancheong girl like me. But I will try, at least to improve rather than being perfect.

Ok, one year later I will return to this post and review my performance. Hopefully I still remember the existence of such issue ;)

Idle mind

An idle mind is the devil's workshop.
And the devil's name is Alzheimer's!

Out of stock

Guess what?

Yesterday I went to company clinic to get some flu/cold medicines and the counter nurse said "Its out of stock". Hahaha, thats a funny one! Is that a joke? My goodness, are there that many fall ill? So scary!

The Art of Gift Appreciation

Over the past few christmas parties I managed to discover a new trend. The art of gift appreciation no longer exist. Maybe we are too busy to appreciate? Or we are too pampered with overwhelming gifts? Or we no longer in need of gifts to perk us up? I mean we no longer live in those days whereby gifts are hard to comeby. Therefore, we have forgotten how to appreciate a gift. Nowsaday kids get gifts anytime, they will be surprised if suddenly no one give them a gift. Some conversations I heard during my parties:

GG: I want to go home now.

PP: But we have yet to exchange gifts.

GG: Do without me then. I have too much gifts already, you folks go ahead.

Boy: Let me count how many xmas presents I have received.

Mum smiled: How many?

Boy shouted: 5 only, let me see which aunties haven't give me gift yet!

Mum fainted. Dad quickly grabbed the boy to a corner and lectured him.

I have learnt something from the above. They serve as a good reminder to me, to "appreciate". No matter what gift I receive, is the thought that counts.

A GIFT REPRESENTS FRIENDSHIP... a friend who bothers to make an effort to source, buy, wrap and deliver the GIFT to me! Only friend does that. Count my blessings, is my fortune to be surrounded by friends.

Festive Family Party

The date was near, we couldn't wait. We were filled with excitment upon the family party that took place on Xmas Day. We decorated the house with balloons, hanged the xmas stockings and got ready all the presents. It was a pot-luck party whereby each couple would bring a dish for dinner. Unfortuntely we fell sick the day before Xmas and were feeling rather lagtheric but still it didn't dampen the spirit of the festive joy. I prepared a entree platter for the families as they arrived in the afternoon which comprises smoke salmon cocktail, potato salad & cranberry cake slices. The latter was a gift from colleagues so all I did was to slice the cake. The platter was a great hit & almost everything were gone before dinner. So glad that I made that.

Axel baby was most popular among the crowd, his cute little actions brought joy to the family. He is very active and his family has to guard him at all time. He would simply laughed hard and flipped backwards, always needed someone to standby catching hold of him. Axel brought us present too, his poo....haha... Dana is another sweet one, especially when she got excited over our present for her. We bought her a big Chicken Little decal and hubby drew a few cartoon characters inside a sketchbook where she jumped up and down upon seeing it.

Youngest brother and his girlfriend were very cute. They had their own camera and acted like tourists going around my house to snap at any spots that were interesting to them. They liked our bed best, the girlfriend was posing on our bed and had a lot of close-up nice shots. What a unique couple...hahaha...

The dinner was great after having to wait an hour for baking my stuffed roasted chicken. We had porkchop, ceral prawns, sweet & sour prawn, fruit salad in addtional to the big roasted chicken. Our dining table is abit small so everyone had to squeeze in for the food. The dinner was completed with sparkling juice and coffee wine. Hmm, really a bad choice to buy the coffee wine, too sweet to our likings.

After dinner, dessert was served. A xmas logcake from youngest brother and his girlfriend, we even sang xmas song before cutting of cake, pretty funny. As usual we had a gift-exchange session, some were happy with their gifts and some were complaining. But it was a fun scene to hear about the complaints.

Xmas Gathering 22 Dec 05

Dedicated to Esther & William...

Last night we were warmly ushered into the Christmas of 2005 by Esther & William. We held a Xmas celebration at their new home, the weather was so cold but our hearts were warmed by their hospitality.

The whole night event was captured by Evie in her blog (http://evielow.blogspot.com/2005/12/xmas-dinner-22nd-dec.html) therefore I shall not repeat the story. Will focus on some fun acts whereby Evie had no space to add in her blog ;)

The house was tastefully decorated with their love. I declared the most interesting part of the house would be the "erotic" washrooms whereby no lock was installed, ready for surprise anytime!

What is Christmas without turkey's cousin (chicken little)? We had chickens, sushi, salad, sausages, log cake and red wine... Joyce's sister labeled us as PIGS!!! We are not, we left 1 chicken untouched for the hosts as next day's breakfast :) We had a fantastic time laughing our heads off over every single jokes, we can practically make jokes out of everything...so capable :P

Caught Joyce under the big cushion from the comfortable sofa! Wonder what was she hiding from us??? Food?

From a chicken's view "对面的女孩看过来", oops Evie saw me! And here came Evie the back-stabber!

Esther was so touched by Joyce's gift, a set of hand & nail care hamper. She instantly tried the hand cream, probably her hands have been suffering from the renovation works for long. Poor girl. And I was overjoyed upon receiving gift from Jasmine, xmas hand-towels just in time for my festive home deco.

Guess everyone were abit high after some wine, Joyce stood up to parade her shawl & accessories given by Esther while Evie proudly presented her blink blink dangling earrings.

Jasmine got herself a doggie doorstopper while Lye Soon received a set of his favourite Addidas socks from 知音 Evie.

Smilie William got our Xmas CDs which happened to be Esther's lemming. Think the wife will confiscate the gift...hahaha... Everbody were happy with the gifts! PERFECT!

我终于成功了

好不容易才可以使用中文输入，真是费了一番工夫。由于我的汉语拼音一向非常烂，输入对我而言简直是困难重重。这篇文章可是坡天荒的处女著. 就这样不可以再写了, 因为我会的只有这些些. 失败的我太对不起中文教学, 真是没脸见人 我想我还是比较喜爱于适和阅读吧?

以上算是篇文章吗? 太不像样了! 刊登出来(blog)可是篇笑话:(

Its time of the year

Every year, without fail I will receive an eCard for my ex-ex-boss. It is so heart-warming to receive his greetings even after I left the company for almost 4 years. During my 3 years stay in that company, I can't say we were very close-working colleagues. Just normal boss and subordinate working relationship. Only talk when neccessary kind of thingy.

Although I know he wouldn't need to lay a finger to do such mail, all being well taken care by the Secretary but I still feel the warm when received it. A feel of not being forgotten. So good...

"You've just received an eCard from XYZ, Director.....blah blah blah....."

Those Were The Quiet Days

I realised something lately, I do talk a lot. Especially to closer friends, I will share my stories with them. Not only that, I am very crabby. Keep talking nonsense and laughing over my own jokes. I can sense that I have upgraded to a chatterbox, unlike in the past when I was quieter. Kept more things to myself where there were no answers. I wonder what happened these while that attribute to the change in me? But few things I am sure are I am happier, open up more.

P.S. Happier? Maybe my friends are suffering from it...hahaha... Nevermind, they will understand that their sacrifices are very worthy :P

On-line recipes

Today I discovered 2 on-line recipe sites :)
http://allrecipes.com/
http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/
Will be trying some of the recipes...hopefully turns out NICE!!!

The October Feast

I nearly forgotten about this feast till I saw the photos from Evie's website. The gathering was initiated by some greedy girls after hearing that Evie had cooked a nice "curry" crab dinner for her family. We never tried "curry" crabs before therefore kept pestering her to cook for us. So I volunteered my place and we held the feast on 15 Oct. Each of us will cook a dish and we ordered tiramisu *BIG YUM for this*. Evie reached my place first to prepare for the killing. Not bad for a novice I must say, she did it well and clean, merciless of course...hehehe... I was inside the kitchen watching the whole cene and suddenly this girl took out a pack of "chilli" crab sauce. She is a big sotong, kept telling us "curry" crab...hahaha... Esther can step down from her sotong throne already, Evie will be a better choice to lead the sotong clan. I made some party sticks, don't know what were those called...hehehe... Joyce as usual arrived with her speciality - fried meehoon. We were very busy eating and checking out the kids as one of them turned violent. He is no other but my Yukie (notti boy behind the bars) kept chasing after Mickey and Moscow donating love-bites. See poor Mickey (black boy with tee) and Moscow (golden head) layed flat on the floor, must be very exhausted from the chase. No more friends for Yukie!

Sheet End

Machines are afterall machines, you just have to pray for a working one. It was just our luck to waste $4 on a machine that ran out of paper yesterday. It is one of those Neo-print machines whereby you can posed for a series of pictures printed out as stickers. 7 of us were happily posing for the 16-in-1 stickers and who knows there was no print at the end of it. We waited for quite awhile but still nothing came out. Coins were unrefundable and no one responsed to the hotline. We walked off feeling cheated but guess we just have to take it that machines are not 100% reliable...haiz...

P.S. Guess which one is me?

So sticky

Laundry is not my household routine, hubby does it...hehehe... But check out this picture, I was washing my credit cards & NRIC!!! An unusual task, isn't it?! All thanks to a wallet I bought from JB with pocket linings not stitched on. They were glued...errgghhh... And since then all my cards suffered the fate of being sticky.

However due to the stickiness, it added some spices into my daily marketing. Whenever I make payments using NETS/ credit cards, the cashiers will tend to have a ?-look. They must be wondering why the cards were sticky... yucks! The most interesting part will be they avoided touching the sticky parts and hold the card in awkward position while sweeping on the machine. Some of them will take a look at the owner of the sticky card, although I felt embarrassed but I do enjoyed observing their reactions. There was once my facial therapist asked about the stickiness of my card worrying that I melted a candy inside my wallet. Told her, nuhz it was my wallet's fault...hahaha...

My cards have been sticky for more than 6 months I guessed, finally I bought a new wallet and that will be the end of all sticky stories ;)

About me

So bored, what a boring Thursday...

Although not many people know about my blog but for those who happen to spot this entry, care to answer these:

Q1) What is your first impression of me?
Q2) After knowing me for awhile, any differences from the first impression?
Q3) What is the top thingy that you think I should improve on?

Oil painting

Hubby used graphic editing to create this oil painting for me.

I like it, find that is nicely done!

A better person

Striving to be a better person... or a better chef? Or a better wife?

I cook more nowsaday and begining to enjoy it. No longer feel the intense and sweating over a few dishes. Don't know why I got so tensed up in the past over cookery. Very satisfied with my performance lately, I cook at least once during the weekend trying all new dishes which I never cook before. Let's see how I fare:

1) Spring onion & ginger pork

2) Spare ribs with bitter gourd

3) Teochew style steamed fish

4) Portugese spicy steamed fish

5) Prawns in XO scallop sauce

6) Black pepper steamed crab

7) Liu wei soup

8) Sweet corn soup

9) Lotus soup

10) Green radish soup

11) Craypot rice - FAILED, too much water

12) Yong Tou Fu with wine prawn broth

13) Pancake - FAILED, don't know why still

14) Breaded chicken chop

15) Curry chicken

16) Baked chicken/fish in unagi sauce

17) Mushroom ham pasta in cream sauce

Hmm, not bad. I must keep trying new dishes...hehehe...

Sun-kissed wall

Just re-painted my study room, had one of the walls in sun-kissed colour! Is pretty refreshing as it resembles sunkist orange..hahaha... Rearranged the table to face the sunkist (yummy) wall too, it made the room more spacious. The shelves from Ikea were installed by hubby, how skillful he is to install them without my help. Should give him a pat on his shoulder.

This morning hubby told me that one shelve dropped and created a loud bang last night. My dog and him ran to check out the damages while a pig was still sleeping soundly on the bed. Luckily no damage done as the computers were not positioned directly under the shelves.

I am not a carnivore

I always labeled myself as a meat-lover beacuse I take in lesser vegetables as compared to meat. And whenever I am questioned about that, my childhood incidents of choking on vegetables will always surfaced. But lately I start to eat more vegetables and fruits after learning the fact that my liver is very overloaded with all the meaty stuffs.

My ex-colleagues organised a birthday gathering yesterday at one of the CHIMJES restaurants, Carnivore. The name of the restaurant sounds very meaty to me but I don't mind to try new stuffs. It is barbecue Brazilian style and the meat is served on skewers hot off the grill. We rushed and managed to be seated before 7pm in order to enjoy a better deal at $29.90 per pax. The waiter distributed coaster to each guests and explained how the 2-sided coaster works. One side being "Yes, please" while the other is "No, thanks". By flipping the coaster and the staffs will take the cue to serve accordingly. Pretty interesting concept. However, we realised they kept serving us despite our coasters were displaying otherwise. They didn't go by the rules. But that is understandable as any leftover will be disposed, no such thing as to reheat and serve again I guess.

Overall I am not impressed by the food. They are too saltish to my taste. I wonder is Brazilian cusine more towards the salty side? And the concept of carnivore is too meaty for me, the thought of having so much meat in a single meal is actually quite scary. But I am glad that I am not a carnivore afterall, I still love to have a balanced diet *phew*.

Long-awaiting kopi table

The only furniture that was lacking from my house is probably a coffee table. We shifted into this current flat since 2002 and we couldn't find a suitable table for the living room. Are we too fussy? Or simply lazy to search? Perhaps both. And since we could live without it for so many years, is no longer a rush for us to source for one.

But ever since we gotten our new sofa, the urge to get a complementing coffee table gets stronger. Maybe is like a jig-saw puzzle situation, we want to fit in the last piece. To complete a home.

We were waiting anxiously for the stock to arrive from Ikea and finally last Friday I received good news. We made our way down to pick up the table immediately and brought some other stuffs of course. I never fail to leave Ikea empty-handed, no wonder Ikea is so popular over here. As fengshui consultant advised more warm colours & lightings will be favourable to my hubby, we bought an orange table runner and some tealight holders for decoration.

The TCM Approach

It has been quite awhile since I wanted to try chinese medication for my skin problem. All these while I have been taking pills from skin specialist but I don't like the idea of consuming long-term drugs. Still I hesitated for long worrying the hassle to brew chinese herbs and the horrifying taste, these will put me off.

Hubby persued and accompanied me to a free chinese clinic near my place. I registered and was immediately attended by an old physician. He felt my pulse from both hands and didn't find anything unusual. I told him my problem was probably triggered from my chicken pox atteck last year. He suspected my body toxin was not fully dispel during that time resulting my skin problem. After prescibing detox pills for me, he also advised me to take in more vegetables, fruits, water but lesser meat especially frying food.

I paid $2.20 for the medicines and left the clinic. So far, my impression of TCM is alright, not as bad as I thought. I was given pills and syrup ready to consume, no brewing or bitter taste at all...hahaha.... Guess I watched too much ancient chinese drama :P

Really hope that this approach is going to work for my skin. So tired of taking drugs to relieve the itch...

My Crabby Recipe

I bought 4 small live crabs but I didn't get any special sauce for marination. Therefore I decided to use whatever I could find in my kitchen and came up with my very own version of recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

4 live crabs

SEASONINGS:

Rice wine

Ginger

Spring onions

Garlic

Hua Tiow Jiu (chinese wine)

Sesame Oil

Soya sauce

Sugar

Pepper

Peppercorn

METHOD:

1) Kill the crabs which I can't do it. Therefore I choose to drunk them with rice wine & throw inside the freezer for few hours before I chop them into pieces.

2) Marinate the crabs with seasoning stated above. My kitchen actually got quite alot of stuffs...surprisingly...hahaha...

3) Heat up the wok, pour some oil and throw in the crabs. Stir fry for awhile, add some water and cover lid to steam till fully cook.

4) Ready to serve.

A crabby weekend

Last Friday I purposely made a trip to cold storage before heading home. Had a strong crave for crabs and I was in luck, live crabs were available at 4 for $10. After much struggles to squeeze the crabs into a small plastic bag provided, I went home happily thinking of how surprise hubby will be. Before I managed to reach home, hubby ringed me asking why am I so late? Dinner was getting cold. Strange... I wasn't late... He realised he made a mistake, he cooked too early...hahaha...

When I reached home I passed him the bag of crabs and warned him to watch out for the claws. His expression was curious and asked me why I buy crabs? Before I could answered him, I walked passed my dining table and saw a plate of crabs :O My hubby cooked crabs for me!!! So touched, what a coincidence?!

Hmm, I should have called him to check first. We always buy the same thing at the same time resulting duplicates. Same magazine, same book, same food, etc...

So both Friday and Saturday we had crab feasts ;)

Such a little fellow

Cody has been with us for two years plus, how time flies. Remember when I first saw him he was 7 weeks old by the name of Kato, sounded like a pair of "scissors" to me. Blackish tiny little furball, looked more like a rat. Frankly speaking, it wasn't love at the first sight but it was fate that we bought him as his birthday falls on the same date as hubby, the Perfect 10 (10 Oct)! We spent quite awhile choosing a name for him and finally settled for "CODY", it was derived from binary CODE (1010).

At two and a half months old, the home-breeder sent this little fellow to our house. We were very excited to welcome our new member. I applied for 2 weeks leave from work to settle him in, my boss was laughing at me. To prepare Yukie, I told him about his little brother but I guess he didn't understand what I said. When breeder let him out from the cage, we saw an angel! Gosh, he was such a cute little piglet with a so-called unique pig rim surrounding his muzzle. Must be a greedy piglet...hahaha... This little fellow barged into our house with no fear, checking out all places and was playing with Yukie's toys. I guess Yukie was very surprised to spot something new in the house, he didn't know how to react to this. But after awhile, Yukie started to learn that little fellow is going to stay for good and he began to worry that we no longer will love him as much. No matter how we assured Yukie he still could get over it. Being jealous, Yukie started teaching Cody "his" house rules. That was when little Cody started to fear Yukie and became more timid, therefore Cody formed the lowest ranking in the household.

Cody is a happy boy. He got excited very easily, be it time to eat/ walk/ meeting new friends, he will jump up and down whinning non-stop. He is very smart and time-conscious, he will remind us whenever it's time for his meals. And I love it especially when he comes to inform me that Daddy is preparing his food in the kitchen. He will do it in a way that he dashes happily to me, kisses me and quickly run back to the kitchen few times in a roll. He loves to kiss me (licking) but if anyone including me trying to kiss him back, he will turn his head away. Such an attitude baby! Loves to kiss but not being kissed. He loves to dig and hide himself under a towel/rug, maybe he is feeling more secured in the dark? But no matter where he hides, Yukie is able to hunt for him down. Picture on the right shows his lion style after ransacked our blanket.

Cody remains pretty small size unlike other male siblings whom are much bigger. Small is good, always a puppy in everyone's eyes and always entitled the compliment of being CUTE. He is such a lovable boy. A joy to have him. A treasure in the house. Our Little Cody!

Token

Is just another normal working day for me until I discovered something on my working desk. Is a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates with a tag written

"Dear codyukie, thank you for your effort to arrange for my blah blah blah...."

From:XXX

Although I am not really a big fan of Rocher but a gift on my desk is really a surprise! I don't expect it because I am just doing my job, not really something loud to shout about. And what really shocked me is who this token is from.... :P Anyway it made my day :)

Never try never know

It was like any other Tuesday whereby I turned up for my flute lesson. And as usual my "F" is out of pitch at a high percentage of 8/10. Real bad player! Believe my teacher couldn't take it anymore when he stood in front of me and requested a continuation of "F" pitching. I did not get any better so he further request me to play a mis-pitch "F" once, followed by a correct "F". Upon hearing that, I questioned him "Hey, I didn't mis-pitch on purpose alright?! How could I be possibly mis-pitch if I can play the right pitch?". Teacher simply asked me to try. Well, since he asked for it so there I went trying.

To my surprise, I actually achieved what he asked for. A mis-pitch "F" and followed by a correct "F". After a repeatation of this practice, teacher asked me whether I could spot any difference between both. I nodded my head. I got it. I knew my own problem. He smiled and said next time you couldn't get something right, try the method ;) I guess if I didn't attempt to try his method, I will never know what went wrong. Never try never know :)