Family!

Don't be deceived by the title. This is another post with food! Hahaha.

Met my Mum after work at Lot one since I'm currently working near there. I always thought there's a lot of things in Lot one but after walking around there once, I realised it was just like an older version of Causeway point - nothing much at all. We settled for thai food at Siam Kitchen. I think we over ate. 4 dishes for the two of us. Tom yam soup is always a must order for me whenever we eat thai food, and the stingray looked really nice from the menu. If you couldn't tell, the sting ray is the one with the lady's finger with lots of chilli sauce. I got a shock when it came because it looked so different from the photo in the menu.

I think the nicest dish was the vegetables with salted fish. Not that I like salted fish a lot, I liked the vegetables! After we finished our meal and left the restaurant, we saw Paradise dynasty at the other corner and immediately regretted! Hahaha. There's always the next time though! Whenever I think of Paradise dynasty I actually think of the radish rolls that I had which I felt was super nice instead of the coloured xiao long baos that they're famous for. Definitely going to order that if I visit again.

On a random note, I think it's really difficult to eat healthily and have a balanced meal outside. During lunch I always have soup noodles because it's healthier than the dry version but the amount of vegetables they give is so little. Well not that I ask for more anyway. Haha, still trying to lead a healthy lifestyle whenever I can. I shall look for a yong tau foo stall when I work at Clementi and patronise them everyday. I think my colleague must think that I'm weird for wanting to eat noodles in soup everyday for the lack of other choices, and I really mean every single day><

Visited JB last weekend with my Mum and brother, so it's more food again! My must visit restaurant when in City square mall is the Kim Gary hongkong cafe! I really like this cafe because they serve a wide variety of food and their method of ordering is also quite interesting. Used to really like their cheese baked rice with fish fillet but I don't really like to eat a lot of rice anymore so I would have just wasted the rice had I ordered that. Had a hard time deciding what to order because I didn't want to eat a filling meal since there were other food I wanted to buy, like secret recipe cakes and auntie Anne's pretzels. So I bought all of those, but didn't eat them all on the same day. Bought the pretzel for breakfast the next day and in fact, I ate my white dark chocolate cheese cake only yesterday. Hahaha almost a week later.

My brother's yuan yang and coconut dessert. He ordered the set meal but the dessert came before the mains which I forgot to take a photo of because I was too busy eating already. Hahaha.

My Mum's mango ice dessert, which also came before her 'main' meal. Their order of serving is a little... But the mango ice was nice! 

My Mum also didn't want to have filling food so this is her cheese sausage bites. Okay only in my opinion!

My double cheese mixed mushrooms! Because I love all types of mushrooms. Shared this with my brother and Mum! There's the cream option instead of double cheese but I think cheese would be nicer right!

And I have no idea why I ordered this. The menu didn't state that it's fried fish fillets so I was misled into thinking that it might be grilled. Hmm rather salty so I won't be ordering this again!

Walked around for a bit since they had quite a lot of shops open despite their renovations. And because the area was so huge, the renovations didn't pose much inconvenience to us unlike the ones at causeway point. Overcrowded like nobody's business. And I didn't buy anything apart from food at all! I saw some blazers and skirts suitable for work but they were too expensive. I'm still thinking about the tweed jacket I saw at Mango): Which I might actually buy it if I visit again. The favourable exchange rate makes me really happy. Lack of self control omg.

Desserts at Baskin Robbins! I think you can definitely guess that there is peanut butter in my ice cream since I always proclaim my love for chocolate and peanut butter here. Yummmm.

Auntie Anne's pretzel that I've grown to like ever since Sally ordered this in seaweed flavour, which is the only flavour that I order now. My breakfast the next day which I ate so slowly. I've since learnt not to finish my breakfast all at one go because I get hungry so easily. Instead, I eat them in parts, once at 8, another time at about 10 or 11. So I guess it's a good thing that I work alone so no one sees my weird eating habits.

Really enjoyed the time spent with my Mum and brother since we don't talk that often when we're at home. We're all too busy facing our gadgets at home so I think it was nice to sit and talk while we enjoyed the food.

The last Friday

So the last Friday before I started work, I met Amanda! Because I bought a voucher for Japanese pasta at our favourite restaurant. Okay maybe not a favourite but a place that we want to try more of their menu. It's actually my first time buying such vouchers because I'm always afraid that the food wouldn't turn out to be nice or we would be disappointed or it would expire before I get to use it. But since we ate there before it wasn't a problem! 

Amanda's squid ink pasta. Definitely better than the one we had at Liang court. Of course it has to be better since the price is also a few times more.

Mentaiko cod roe and prawns or something. I tried something new and was rather disappointed because it was quite dry. Not that it wasn't nice, but I like my pastas with more sauce. But I think it's healthier this way since there wasn't much oil.

 Found ourselves at cold stone after walking around to digest the pasta. This was super good! Because it has all my favourites! Peanut butter and chocolate. It even had bits of Reese's peanut butter cups. And I loved the waffle cone as well. Let's order this again next time okay, Amanda!:D

Silence

The entire day, I've uttered a record of less than a hundred words. Oh the wonder of cold war or silent treatment. I think I've bonded with my laptop more than anyone or anything today. I certainly don't relish more of such days because I simply hate guessing games. I hate back tracking my actions and guessing where I have gone wrong. Period. 

I need to quit my self-righteous thoughts right now. After doing some reflection I finally saw where I was wrong. 

And I have so much more to learn about watching my tone and attitude. So irritated at myself for what I did. While I'm not rude by nature, I get irritated/annoyed really easily and it shows through what I say though I try very hard not to let it. I wrote about watching the words, but I forgot about the tone at that time. The tone is so important because most of the time, I get annoyed at others' attitude that they show. It's like the silent words, if you get what I mean. 

There's always a lesson to learn everyday , and I learnt it the hard way. And I had to. That's how I always do. 

So here's an advice for people who're reading this space. Don't use the attitude that you hate being given on the people you love the most. We always tend to mistreat the people closest to us and take them for granted but we can't do that, for you never know when they decide to leave you someday. Start treating the people you treasure the most right today!

No one is perfect but no one said that you can't inch towards perfection day by day, right?

I wonder

Have you ever been in a situation where you feel as if something is not right, but you force yourself to think that it's really just your paranoia speaking. Yet in the end, it turns out you were right in the first place. I really hate being in such situations because it's like I've convinced myself to stop thinking about it, but the next moment it comes back to me, even worse than before. I've got a very sensitive receptor (??) to conflict and anger. Just a little or minute change in a person's attitude and I'd be able to detect if he/she is angry at yours truly. And I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It might be better to just feign ignorance and live in bliss (at least until an outburst occurs, if it does occur).

And I end up trying very hard to recall what I have done wrong the whole day to warrant such a silent treatment. Right now I'm feeling so isolated in my own home. Not truly alone physically, but so alone in actual fact. I think of all methods of anger expression, silent treatment hurts the most and is the most ridiculous of all. And you know my ability to scrutinise and recall the whole day's happenings to guess what I did wrong. The problem would be solved so easily if I did something really major to piss someone off. But right now, after thinking for 3 hours I still can't figure it out. I mean if you want to get angry at me you've got to tell me the reason. How would you react if I did the same back to you? Which I did x years ago to which you never noticed.

Right now I can only think of self-wallowing and self-justification incidents which is kind of like a self-defense mechanism. It's like I've done so much, not to claim credit under normal circumstances but this isn't under normal circumstances. But you probably just notice what I've not done, or done wrongly.

I hate this feeling and well, I doubt you're feeling any better. Probably better than I am, by just a little.

Enough of all these analysis that is getting me nowhere. I can only hope tomorrow will be a better day. It must be, and it will be.

Such nice weather to snuggle up in bed with a book and that's what I'm going to do with Freakonomics, which is quite a mind-boggling read compared to the fiction I usually fancy.

My weeks in food photos

Returned my graduation robe with Su xian two weeks ago so we got the chance to eat at Hwang's at Utown again! Haha and I had my favourite bulgogi. So coincidental that my two visits to Hwang's was with Su xian. Ordered rice cakes to share too! My first Korean meal since I came back from Korea in June! I love kimchi and meat! Su xian had the kimchi fried rice which she said was nice as well. I always stick to my favourite while she always tries different food. 

Met my mum at Jurong Point and we went shopping for work clothes. Yes I'm starting work soon! And my wardrobe is full of casual clothes which I feel aren't suitable for work. And I still have a grand total of 3 formal shirts, one formal skirt and 2 pairs of pants. Haha I guess it should be sufficient if I mix and match them differently. Had dinner at a random restaurant called Ambushed. It's a German restaurant I guess, since they served quite a variety of sausages, but sadly we didn't try them because my mum and I were calorie conscious. We still had a nice meal though all we ordered were starters and not main courses. The beef balls with fries tasted really good. I love how compact these beef balls are like those pizza hut serve, albeit in a different style with cream and cheese.

Ordered rosti as well. I liked how crispy it was on the outside and soft on the inside. I didn't really fancy the sour cream though. I like my food plain, without sauces usually.

Watami at J cube with Su xian again! Haha because she needed a white dress so I lent her my sunbeams dress. Ordered bibimbap which was super worth it because it was under the student meal and the portion size was still the same as the full priced ones. I think it was $6.90 only, and we ordered fries to share too so it only came to about $11 each after adding the service charge and GST. So cheap! But I don't think I will ever have the chance to order student meal again because you need to order before 6pm.

These look like so much food but you must note that these photos were accumulated over 3 weeks or so! And I didn't post them because I've been busy with my health checkup for work, helping my grandma with cooking lunch, completing a cross-stitch and watching Smile, Donghae.

Photo of these very nice tasting grapes from Korea! Really not exaggerating at all!! My grandma's friend gave them to her. You know how those gummy candies have grape flavour? I never understood why those smell are grape flavour, but I finally did when I smelt these grapes. And these grapes are not like the kind you get from supermarkets. It's like once you bite into the grape, the skin comes off from the fruit immediately. And the fruit is like jelly, except there were seeds in these grapes. I'm definitely going to buy grapes when I visit Korea again. The good thing was I got to have these grapes all to myself! Because my family didn't like them. I wonder why.. Maybe I have weird taste.

If this doesn't hurt, does this mean my feelings have never been real? If the tears do not come, does this mean that I'm not truly sad?

But why does this feel so surreal. I don't want to accept this. But I guess I will. Because we all move on someday, eventually.

Always keeping this faith.

Red turtle cake

I love these ang ku kueh! Or red turtle cake directly translated from hokkien. I love the peanuts and the soft and slightly chewy skin bought from outside. So we decided to make our own last week since we had a lot of crushed peanuts. Found a recipe online and my grandma and I made them the next day. It's not that difficult to make, but I think it would have been easier if I didn't have to use the mould and just made them round. Some parts cracked when we knocked them out of the mould and we had to re-piece them back on. It was also quite difficult to roll the peanuts into ovals since they kept falling apart, but I managed it in the end. 

Completed products before going into the steamer! There were many cracked ones but I only chose the nice ones to show here hahaha. 

Fresh out of the steamer! I know the colour looks quite off because of the colouring that I added. It's a different kind of red from the one they normally use. Soft and chewy when it was still hot! But when it turned cold, it was a different story. It was so hard! Hahaha that's why we're beginners, and also because we didn't have enough sweet potatoes, which I think was the main reason why it was so hard. Looking at the photos make me feel like having one right now but there's no more at home):

Well I guess I understand why they price it at $0.50 each outside, because it takes some effort to make them individually, which will justify the price. But if they use machines (I don't know how also), then that's a different story altogether. 

Mooncakes galore

I think my family has the most number of mooncakes this year as compared to the previous years. So many different boxes this year! My favourite box has got to be the lantern-like looking one from Marina Bay Sands that my dad's friend gave, but my favourite mooncake would be the TCC one! My mum and I finished a small TCC mooncake last night which tasted soooooo good. It was lotus paste with a bailey's filled chocolate center.

Favourite snow skin mooncakes! We haven't finished them yet, yes, not even till today. Hahaha. I shall eat them slowly since one large mooncake is about 800-1200 calories, so even if you divide it by 10 or 12, it's still quite a large amount of calories! So the most you can eat a day is one or two small slices. Why does nice food always contain the highest amount of calories. Oh well, it's a good thing we only have these during Mid autumn festival.

Bite back your tongue

Thought of something that happened last week and I remembered a quote I read before

"Words cannot be forgotten, only forgiven"

I find it so true, don't you think? Once you've said what you want to, once it leaves your mouth and your lips, you have no control over what the other party interprets it as, so I told myself never to say things in a fit of anger, because you never know if the other party will remember what you said for life or get offended if they don't show it.

I, for one, tends to remember what others say to me in a quarrel, not on purpose but my brain just has this inherent ability to remember all these nonsense, and somehow, I remember them for a long long time. I don't remember it all the time, but just sometimes, I get reminded that this person called me a ____, or that person said I was ____. And when I get reminded of it, a flash of irritation comes and goes. Maybe I have never forgiven that person for their words, whether they meant it or not.

So, I've learnt to only say things when I mean it, good or bad because I don't want to regret my words ever.

Lies

Getting so infuriated as I watch dramas. I hate watching the mean characters getting their way and the impeccable timing of dramas that make the characters meet or not meet each other gets me so annoyed.
Although I know that the evil will never triumph over the good, and that all the truth will be revealed in the end, I still can't help but get so irritated watching the mean female character, really!

If there's one thing I've learnt when watching dramas, it's to never tell lies. Common knowledge but it's amplified so much in dramas, because the lies will get bigger and bigger and you never get to live a day in peace, getting paranoid over every little thing that others say, worrying that others might tell the truth. So just tell the truth, for while the truth may hurt, it will never ever come back to haunt you, unlike lies.

Busan Vacance

I don't usually like songs like these, always a ballad lover! And other songs that catch my fancy. But Running Man got me replaying this song over and over after they played it on the episode. It's so catchy, and much nicer than what is so popular currently, might I add. No idea why this is called Busan Vacance anyway, but I guess they should be referring to vacation, right?



Just started watching Smile, Donghae even though it has 158 episodes. All for Ji Chang Wook! Since he's the lead, Donghae! Although he looks nicer in Bachelor's vegetable store and the female lead Wang Ji Hye is prettier than the current mean girl that he's still in love with in Smile, Donghae.

My ASOS top came today, which was the icing on top of the cake! In such a good mood today because of the Watami I had today and some good news that I shall not reveal yet! My mum's satisfied with the quality of the clothes so I foresee more orders which I can happily combine with her. Hahaha. My mum has become like me, in her words. "Always buying clothes". But it's so addictive and such a happy hobby.

GEK1509 Introduction to the nanoworld

I wonder if anyone has thought of taking this module other than my friends and I. Okay not that we were really interested in anything NANO, which is ten to the power of negative nine. I disliked all physics modules except science of music but we were out bidded like crazy for other modules (because we were year ones) and had no other choice but to bid for this, which we got for one point.

The content was so difficult, but not really a problem since the mid terms were open book if I remember correctly. Either that or the formulas were provided so you don't need to memorise the formulas. The questions were kind of blah, a little common sense here and there. Perhaps I don't have much, that's why I didn't do so well for them. Assessment was all in MCQs so it's quite a good thing if you don't like essays. Oh and you can't skip lectures because they gave surprise quizzes which are counted towards your final grade. Skip at your own risk! There was a group assignment, which was a term paper. We could write on anything as long as it was related to the topic of nanoworld or scanning tunnelling microscope.

The lectures were really boring. My friends and I started talking once we got bored, and I remember we took turns to bring snacks for the lecture. Mostly physics stuff like schrondinger's equation and all those stuff. The lecturers were really nice even though their content was boring. Once, there was a demonstration which was rather interesting though! The ball could float in air because of some gas they used, but for now I really can't remember what demonstration it was.

In all, I don't recommend this module! Unless you love physics, I highly doubt you'll enjoy this.