Banana Pudding and The Simple Things in Life

Today WY, Kenny and I went to pick KC and Zhenying from the airport. After that we took a long detour in order to find the French restaurant where we had our graduation dinner, cos WY wanted to eat their excellent vanilla ice-cream. It was super yummy so the extra time was worth it. After dropping KC and Zhenying home, the three of us went to eat at Denny's on Miramar Road. I saw a stack of colouring sheets and WY helped me steal a piece. She also helped me ask the manager for crayons haha. The stingy parker only gave us 2 lousy wax crayons - orange and blue. So we had to make do and try to colour a weird looking boy holding, of all things, an axe. Ok never mind. After a while we got bored and so started to play a game on the back of the paper. And I started drawing the kind of stuff that I used to draw as a kid. Clouds, the sun, birds. Felt so happy doing that. Doing something of no importance, that wasn't going to contribute to my future career, and doing it just cos I wanted to do it. How many of the things that we do nowadays are really things that we want to do?

Ok I actually resolved not to let my blog become one of those heavy-going "make-you-think" kind of blogs so I shall drop the previous topic. When I got home I offered to help my housemate Clara prepare for her party today. So I made this vanilla banana pudding thing with Nilla cookies. Looks yummy eh? Sigh cooking is so fun. Feels a bit like an art project each time.


The ugly colouring sheet at Denny's. For heaven's sake provide a nicer picture. And more crayons please!


Back to childhood days. Note our "person-who-cancels-the-last-one-loses" championship, and the rest of the stuff I drew, including a falling leaf, peach, whole and sliced orange, flower, butterfly, sun, clouds, lightning, birds and a setting sun by the sea. Miss taking art classes in school. How come all the classes we take now are only for practicality's sake?


Top view. Vanilla pudding with cold whipped cream on top, garnished with sliced bananas and crushed cookies. Aesthetics are as important as taste!


This is how it looks like from the bottom/side of the bowl.

Failed Pandan Cake and Sambal Sotong

Today I attempted to make pandan cake. Whoa the thing that was produced... looked nothing like cake. Looked like pancake, more like. My friends were trying to console me by saying that it tastes good but argh. I think I was too lazy and maybe didn't whip it enough. Not enough air introduced into the cake mixture to make it rise. This marks my first official cooking failure in the United States -sniff- Never mind la the sotong turned out quite well. Win some, lose some :) I'm gonna make pandan cake successfully one day though! Don't believe I can't do it. Hah.


Sambal sotong with onions. First time I really get to eat sotong here and its like my favourite meat! I hunted high and low for sotong that didn't look rotten and wasn't priced sky high.

Oreo Cheesecake

Went to send Carine's friend Seraphina off at the Greyhound bus station yesterday. After that I had lunch with Carine before starting to make oreo cheesecake. Was too tired to cook. The one thing about cooking or baking is that you actually see how much fat and sugar goes into the stuff. Quite horrific. So I'm never that quite keen to eat my own stuff. Haha.


The remnants of my oreo cheesecake. No baking required. If anyone wants the recipe just leave a comment or tag!

Cooking Time!

Busied myself with cooking this week. I figured I should cook as much as I can before I go back since I won't really cook anymore when I go back to Singapore. Anyway I still have a huge box of stuff from my mum to cook. On the list: laksa, satay (?), sambal sotong, chicken curry, chicken rice, emperor chicken, asam fish, konnyaku jelly, chicken soup and maybe pineapple rice. Where got time to cook so many things? Argh! Must make some sort of schedule. And I'm gonna be spending so much money on meat and stuff haha. But never mind. Its fun to feed people :p

And I skipped work today cos I was too tired. And more happy news for me was that tomorrow (Friday) is a half day at my office so since I only work in the afternoons I don't have to come! Yay!!! A nice long weekend is waiting for me. Really should get started on my work though. Have been playing too much. Bah.


Tuesday's food: rice, prawn omelette, random vegetable and tofu dish and chicken soup with button mushrooms and white fungus. Yippee! Note my trusty jar of diced garlic which helps to add flavour to my dishes :)


Prawn omelette.


I had no vegetables with me so I just grabbed some stuff from Cafe Ventanas to cook.


Wednesday's fare: rice, vegetables, onion omelette and mai4 pian4 xia1. Plus the chicken soup from Tuesday (not in pic).


Yay! Yummy mai4 pian4 xia1. While frying it the oil jumped out at me and burnt my hand. Hmph. But it was fun trying to make something you get to eat in restaurants.

Dinner at La Vache

Had dinner at a French restaurant called La Vache today. It was a huge gathering for the Singaporeans, in honour of those graduating and the exchange students since we're leaving. Food was okay but the turnout was big. Met some interesting personalities :p


My food for the night. Scallop entree. Also had escargot, raspberry sorbet and vanilla ice cream.


Group shot. There were a lot of people I met for the first time. Back row from left: Jose, Xinyi, KC, Kok Lim, Shan Shan, Kenny, Fong Ming, Desmond, Andrea, Siliang, Gene, Weiqi, Yixin, Ching Yan, Sangyu. Front from left: Tat Yang, Wan Yue, Carine, me, Huimin, Jason, James, Logan.

A Random Thought

Today I was carrying out a massive cleaning of my room. The place was so messy it was hard to find space to walk. Did laundry too. Anyway on the spur of the moment I opened my kitchen cupboard and decided to take a photo. I think I was mildly surprised at having hoarded and accumulated so much cooking stuff! A lot of people have told me its amazing how I went from not cooking at all to the stage I'm at now. Think I'm starting to agree :p


My personal food store.

Car Breakdown!

Today we were riding in Kenny's car when suddenly all went quiet. Turns out, the engine had stalled! His car kinda ran out of gas. So Carine, Lynn, Bernice, KC and I got out of the car and stood/sat on the separator in the middle of the road. I have no idea why, but we weren't in the least grumpy and in fact were pretty much happy campers! After a while a policeman came and told us to push the car to the roadside. So we all got behind Kenny's car and started pushing. It was so fun :) Halfway through the car started rolling really fast cos it was slightly downhill and we had to run after the car to keep up with it. Later while Kok Lim was driving Kenny and KC off to buy petrol, Lynn, Bernice, Carine and I waited on the pavement and stood under some trees. The sprinklers for the grass were on so we played with the water. And Lynn and Bernice, being equipped with bagels, scones, muffins, Snickers and what-have-you, started spreading jam on the bagels and offered them to us! Unbelievable. We actually had a lot of fun with this whole car breakdown thing. For the life of me I can't imagine why. This just goes to show its not what you're doing thats important, its who you do it with :)

After dropping Lynn, Bernice and KC off at the San Diego Zoo, Kenny, Carine and I went for lunch at Tajima, a Japanese restaurant on Convoy Street. Food was good! We had chicken teriyaki and tempura. I felt sooo happy eating good food with good friends. Following that we went to Coldstone for dessert, coffee ice-cream with chocolate chips and walnuts. Had a good chat and realised that our time here is really running out. Will miss everyone here tons and tons and tons.


Lynn, Carine and I


Kenny the small boy-boy trying to fix the car


Bernice, Carine, me in front of Kenny's car

I House Semiformal was a Blast!

Had so much fun today! Went for the I House semiformal with Carine, Gillian and her friend Gloria in Kenny's car. Turned out, it was a lot better than the ERC semiformal cos we knew a lot more people. Took sooo many photos :) Happy looking! I think its cool how they're so many people of so many nationalities.


First picture of the day with our personal chauffeur Kenny!


With my I House girl Carine. Love you dear! Haha.


With Clara my housemate


Misako (Japan), Annika and me


Me and Ed. He's such a dear haha. And he cooks well too!


Hyo Seok and Jinny from Korea


Finally I have a shot of my housemates all together. From left: Kristina (Germany), Grace (USA), me and Clara (USA)


Me and Reina (India). She makes really good cookies.


Eirik. He lives directly above me and always plays noisy music. Haha.


Yosuke-kun! Very nice Japanese guy.


With Misako and Kaoru (both Japanese)


With Kohei (Japan)


Carine and I being trigger happy in the washroom.


Me and Jon Boam from the UK.


With Sarah, someone I met on the night. She was telling me how she liked my dress and asked me where I bought it :p


Me and Misa. I like our pink and blue dresses side by side.


Me, Misako (Japan) and Aree (Thailand)


Me and Jolien from Netherlands. She's one of the first international students I got to know.


With Haruna (Japan)


A picture with Dina. She's a sweet thing :)


Me and Seijo from Japan. She's so pretty!


Nick and Gillian. Nick lives in the apartment above me. Very nice (and huge!) guy.


My date and I :)


Me and Sarah (Pakistan)


Me and Lydia (Korea)


Carine, me and Gillian on the dance floor haha


Isabel (Chile), Lars (Germany), plus me


Picture with John the Greek DJ. He offered Carine and I a place to stay if we went to Greece!

Asian Culture Night and the Fake SIA Girl

I have been so busy this past week its unbelievable. Class, work, numerous trips to the supermarket to buy stuff for Asian Culture Night (ACN), ACN planning meetings, fashion show rehearsals, and having to cook for the event itself. Don't know how I survived it all. But, like any thing that you have to work really hard for, I think I did reap the rewards. I was so happy I did it in the end. Asian Culture Night is this thing where there's asian food served and asian themed performances. During the initial planning stages, there was a choice as to whether one could do entertainment or food. Somehow I ended up being involved in both., deciding to cook as well as be an SIA girl for the fashion show. Just prior to the event I was really regretting taking on so much stuff, cos for the chicken curry we cooked, we had to make something like 8 pots. Stayed up till 2 plus on Friday night so we could get a headstart on the cooking. Then I had to attend the fashion show rehearsals and that took up a lot of time too. But I made a lot of new friends from it and I'm glad I did it.

Its funny, I tried to keep the fashion show thing under wraps cos very paiseh la. But dunno how come everyone came in the end. Word really gets around! I guess I'm glad my friends came though. It wouldn't have felt the same without them. Someone said I did Singapore proud! And Carine told me to stop studying and go be an air stewardess. Yah right. Haha.

Right after the fashion show I had a lot of photographs taken. Felt like some 明星. Then went to pick up Lynn and Bernice from Solana Beach. Nice to see them after such a long time. Following that the Koreans and Japanese had a gathering which I was invited to. Quite fun! See the last two pictures for an idea of what it was like.

Hm I suddenly feel like I'm about to collapse. Dunno how come I can tahan for so long. Might probably elaborate more on today's happenings and upload more pictures once I've managed to get them from the million cameras they're all scattered in :p For now, blessed sleep! The first time I don't have to wake up early in... I don't know how long. Lovely :)


Valerie pushes out the trolley.


Valerie waves to the audience.


With my I House pals: Gillian (Hongkong), Aree (Thailand), Annika (I'm not very sure where she's from), me and Carine.


Thanks for supporting me guys! Can't believe you all cheered so loudly. Finally I feel a bit proud to be a Singaporean. Hahaha. From left to right: Tat, Carine, KC, Kenny, me, Desmond, Sangyu and Xinyi.


Hyo Seok and Ginny from Korea. Hyo Seok can sing realllly well. She won the singing contest for Asian Culture Night!


The three cool rockers - Suk Woo (Korea), Jun (Japan) and Tat (Singapore). They're sooo good.