BBQ and lessons

Last night I organized a BBQ because I am having craving for BBQ food. Things did not turn well at the start.

1st lesson learned:
Not to discuss everything on a mass conversation since some will be reading and some will not, it will be better to put as a FB event. I thought that while I mentioned the activity pretty clear but turns out on the day itself, friends were calling my dear to ask what is going on. >.< I in turn smsed, but I guess that was too late, ended up only my dear came to shop with me at J8 for the food. We carried the very heavy food and prepared at his house. This in my plan beforehand was supposed to be more people helping us. I do feel disappointed that the rest took the 2nd option to turn up later at the BBQ, but I accredit that to my poor organizing skills too. I had no prior experience in organizing a BBQ.

2nd lesson learned:
I should have estimated the servings for the total group, come up with a shopping list (with quantities stated) and derived the budget. I went only with research at BBQ packages which I deemed too expensive and quantity may be insufficient. I have no clue as to how much food big eaters need. The budget over run from 10 per pax to 15 per pax and some amount I absorbed.

3rd lesson learned:
Delegation of jobs is necessary. I was thinking if I want the BBQ, I should do everything, but ended up if I had delegated, some costs can be avoided (such as spare paper plates, cups, disposable table top not needed). The drinks was delegated at the last min when dear suggested, everything was really too much to carry.

I guessed that sums up: a bad start. The preparation of food was a bit rush but the worst to come was the transportation of food. We had to stuffed 3 aluminum trays of food into a not-big-enough plastic bag. Thanks to dear for the support. We took cab to ZH's place. The reason we prepare at dear's place was the fact that ZH told me he reassured his parents we will not be bothering them so I think the best is to prepare food elsewhere.

Well, at least everyone turned up, even though a few were really engrossed in their LAN games but they did helped later. My dear provided the biggest help of all - carrying the shopping bags, useful suggestions, helping to prepare the food, doing the BBQ for a large portion of the time... (K) THANK YOU, DEAR.

Lol, my most craved food, the BBQ chicken wings turned out not very nice, I prefer the bacon enoki and prawns. The prawns were expensive but the size I guess worth the price.

The cake which I initially bought had smudge the top when I put it in my bag. I had to change another cake (turns out nice as well). The initial pink cake also very good, despite having marshmellow which I thought will be not so nice, the cake tasted like ice cream cake ^^.

Ah, to conclude, thank you everybody for the support. I may not organize BBQ again because is really troublesome (much faster and simpler to go seoul garden), but the BBQ ended well and enjoyable.

Days without Dom

The day that immediately followed after Dom's departure wasn't well. I used to think I was strong enough to let him go pursue his dreams. After all, the main role of the other half should be to provide support and love to push you to achieve and to cushion your falls. Yet I feel that I failed in that. On the surface, I tried so hard to want him go enjoy his trip, his experience of a lifetime. Deep inside, I was upset about his trip with another girl only.

The first day I suffered depression. The second day was better after Dom tried so hard to find a cybercafe to explain the situation over his side. The third day which is today, I broke down again just from a mere photo of him being so close to the other gal, which he claimed they were not close.
I was upset from the fact that that photo showed nothing except their faces seemingly sticking to each other. I was upset that this was often our most intimate shot together, and he did the same with another girl. That felt like our pictures were not special anymore. I sensed no difference, but Dom told me the difference was that he loved me, but he do not love the girl. Should I be happier after hearing that? When you do not love her, yet still can do such an intimate shot, be it the girl using her camera to take the picture, you allowed her to do so as well.

The picture was later taken down, but the damage was done. The heartache was there. The argument he defended himself was I was physically close but not mentally close to her. Sigh~ I felt like I was tearing myself apart, with two personalities fighting inside me - one telling me just open one eye, close one eye, let him do what he felt right, the other one was like my boyfriend wasn't even considering my feelings when the photo was taken. His friend defended that he felt obliged to the girl to take that photo when she was his traveling mate, but really what obligations does my boyfriend owe her? I know I was easily jealous and still is, but I tried to control my negative feelings by distancing myself. I don't wish to add additional stress or pressure to your already stressed period overseas, what should I do? The time zone difference also meant that while I can be still upset, it was time for you to sleep. While I upset till I cannot sleep, you will be busy till cannot entertain me at all. Sigh~ so much for understanding.

Forgiving and moving on, I played badminton with his friends in the late afternoon. The court beside my house was too windy and so we moved to another court. At first it was the glaring Sun made it difficult to spot the shuttlecock. After when we played for a while, one racket's strings torn and Jon put on the cover and continued playing despite strong air resistance. Some time later, a group of kids asked to join in the game. I have only 4 rackets (2 good ones and 2 lousier ones, incl the chui one), Dom's friends came so far just to play badminton so was not very nice to ask them let the kids play. The kids asked like three to four times whether they can join in to play. I was hesitating because of previous experience (table tennis session same thing happened and not very pleasant), and because of the mindset that one must learn to share and that it was better to brighten someone's day than to spoil it. I gave up the good racket I am holding, thus the kid joined in. They were even passing my racket around, pushing who should go first when the friends were waiting for them to continue the game.

Anyway, the kids do not really know how to play but yet they tried their best to enjoy the game. Dom's friends also went very easy with them, kind of defeat our purpose of exercising but then, they are just kids, so we should be good examples to teach them to share?

The game continued for a very long time, we were taking more turns to rotate than the kids. One simply played very long and the rest watched on. Even when someone hurried the kid to go off for some activity, the kid refused to leave the game. Eventually after a lot of persuasion then that kid passed on my racket to the next kid. The vicious cycle continued. Eventually, the kids made us passed three rackets to them. The only friend in there playing was not even getting much shots since they were like playing among themselves. All their moves were not very correct and when I tried to correct them, they just said "forget" and preservered their stubborn ways. One even tried to teach me, I was like "he is just a kid". For one thing, I never tried hitting many times despite the fact that I can reach the shuttle cock was because he was in the way and I was scared of hitting him. He blocked me from hitting and keep missing too, quite frustrating. I guessed my limit was reached when I told them a number of times not to scratch the racket on the floor and they still do, saying that was how they treated their own rackets. They were holding the good rackets (both of them). They despised the lousier ones and did not know how to treasure other people's items. What can I say? Kids... can I have the rackets back? My friends wanted to play too. One was like so relieved "Ah I was feeling very tired." I was thinking then why did you not give up your racket? The other was like "Why I have to give up kind?", giving me that very reluctant look. We ended the game then and returned to my house to play Uno stacko. :D Much happier I supposed. Haha, Zong keep crashing the tower of blocks.

We had dinner at the marketplace after I checked if my Dear dear Dom went online. He was still sleeping, so we left for dinner. A day just went by, one less day to seeing Dom again?

Before Dom left for United States (Promises)

This is another backlog. After Dom left, I think I have been quite hardworking on my blog. :p

An entry about the things we did before he left, promise to cook for me finally fulfilled after like 5yrs of waiting and my anticipated trip to Changi Boardwalk. :D
Dom Dom in my house kitchen, cooking potato patties and lemongrass chicken shrimp (from here) without lemongrass and with shrimp being replaced by big prawns.

The total damage of the 2 dishes came up to $45.20!!. The prawns taking a huge portion of the cost, being that Dom cannot find cooked shrimps ($7.95) so he bought a box of frozen big prawns ($28.90). Oh well, in any case, we just used a portion of the prawns. He cannot find lemongrass, neither do I know where to get it, so we skipped that ingredient. Oh, Dom also replaced big onions with small onions with the fact he don't like onions at all so the smaller the better. He never buy any spring onions because he don't like that as well. >.< The taste was quite nice, and smelled yummy. A very good start for someone who cooked for the first time.

Great job, Dear dear.


Changi Boardwalk

Starting off with our plan, we saw the map and I was quite greedy, wanting to explore the whole of the Boardwalk. There were 2 routes, both also very long. Dom estimated the time for the whole walk will probably be 2 hrs for each route. I estimated our bus journey via no.2 will be 2 hrs as well. Ended up we overestimated the time for the entire trip. We will reached there, according to plan, at about 1pm, to have lunch at Changi village. We should set off our first route at about 2pm (the route around the buildings) and finished at about 4pm, to take a short break (1/2hr) and by the time we set off on the 2nd route (along the coast) should be late afternoon to evening hence should be very cooling and filled with nice scenery of sunset. Upon finishing, we shall have dinner at Changi village again.

Overestimated bus trip let us reach at 12pm instead of 1pm. Our lunch ended at about 1pm. The first part of the journey ended at 1:47pm. Even taking a short break, we were very well ahead of schedule. Before 2pm we embarked on the 2nd route. We finished at about 3pm. How to eat dinner at that time? We just have some snack and moved on to go Suntec city, stopping by National Library for my toilet break and Bras Basah Complex to check out some books.

Riders Lodge Part 5

The last day of our Malaysia Trip, I mean, Kulai trip. The itenary was so simple but oh well, we had to eat breakfast at the resort (or hotel) instead of some coffee shops elsewhere. In any case we have booked a taxi with the resort (or hotel) to go IOI mall for some shopping :D. After that, following Mosmos's instructions, there will be a bus stop near the Kulai Hospital to return to Singapore.

Cute Kitten in front of IOI mall captured my attention. IOI mall basically has a number of clothes shops that sell quite attractive clothes, but the clothes cannot fit me :(. The Malaysian ladies are so skinny, plus I put on a lot of weight during my trip. Ah, I bought some souvenirs here for my friends. We have pizza hut as lunch, quite worth it due to the currency exchange. There was Paparoti I think or was it Rotiboy? It has evolved to selling shakes as well. Aww~ but what a pity I am carrying big bags small bags and was feeling super full then. Thus cannot takeaway nor eat the buns and drink the milkshake.

We finished at about noon or one, around there. There were a few taxis outside, but the taxi drivers don't look very friendly so we shall stick to the taking bus plan. First of all have to find the Kulai hospital. In my impression, a hospital will have the red cross sign so should not be so hard to find?

I was terribly wrong. The building did not resemble a hospital. Luckily Dom have GPS (GPS right? Not GPRS hor) that helps to identify that building as a hospital. We have to walk on to see if there was any bus stops. Reaching there, there was like 2 bus stops in opposite directions. I have no idea which direction to take so I asked the locals. The school boy boy also have no idea which bus go to Singapore but he said should be opposite direction. We waited for the traffic lights and during then Dom said "Why not jay walk?" Oh well, in Malaysia, I kinda heard that the traffic lights are mere guidelines, and after I said that, even during red light, a car just sped through.

At the bus stop, I had to enquire with the mama shop auntie. She cannot really speak English well, so we used a bit of sign language. Dom asked how many bus and she replied "Satu". Amazing, one communicated English, one replied Malay still can make sense. Dom have no idea what is satu. Luckily, NPCC last time trained me some malay words. :p

At the bus stop waiting for bus pictures~

原来 There is no direct bus to Singapore. We need to take to Larkin then there will be bus to Singapore.

Ah, on the road to Larkin, I have no idea where to drop, forgotten it should be a terminal (hence the end station). Using Dom's GPS again, made us kan cheong for nothing. It was me who have no idea how it works, thus when it reached 0m left and the bus continuing moving I panicked. The 0m was actually the end of a phase.

Once on the bus to Singapore, I felt so relieved. Yet that was not the end. We had to alight at the Malaysian Customs and was such a long queue. Ok, long queues. We managed to cut our queues in half when a new station opened. While waiting for our turn, I heard someone shouted new station and wanted to follow but Dom pulled me back. The crowd formed a new queue which dispersed after someone said false alarm. Haha, lucky we never change. This process repeated itself for 3 times? When I finally reached the counter, the Customs Officer was like rolling his eyes at the then again happening pattern and laughing at the false alarm. It was after I cleared, that a new station truly opened.

Following that was a series of queuing for bus, boarding bus, alighting and more queueing. Finally reached my home at about 8 plus pm. Truly exhausted, poor Dom still have to make his way home.

Riders Lodge Part 3

Breakfast on the second day looked good. As what Dom had predicted, ah, it was my favourite BOH tea.

Strangely Dom had no trouble eating so much eggs. I never expect so much drinks. Dom was like telling the waiter orange juice and the waiter replied that the orange juice was fixed item, just have to choose between tea and coffee. I chose tea and I realised I had to finish one whole pot of tea. >.<

I felt super lazy and getting fatter each day so we went out to have a short walk nearby. Behind me was the golf course. The lessons will only start at about eleven. Thus we slowly walked back and this time I brought the camera to take pictures. The horses were really huge and quite scary to stand behind it lest it kick suddenly.

As there were limited sessions for beginners and in order to reduce our costs, Dom and I were to ride at the same sessions throughout so taking pictures had to trouble the trainers there.


This white horse that I was riding was a different white horse, much more obedient. Although the walking speed is very slow, so much that I lagged behind the rest again. I guessed I have not grasp the technique of horse riding yet. After the session, we went to take some pictures with the horses. I was really afraid to stand beside their head initially, scared of getting nipped. What ended up was this brown horse next to me actually licked a place he not supposed to - hamsup horse >.<










Our lunch with salad was to be finished in a rush, so as to rest a short while before our last session of horse riding begins. As I were thinking since the first two sessions I have gotten white horses, I can give up hope of getting a nice brown one, thus I decided no point in bringing my camera. Alas, my last session was the nicest session with a huge BROWN horse with a faster gait. Guess the trainers there got sick of waiting for me so better choose a faster one for me. :p

Riders Lodge Part 2

We reached Riders Lodge after about half an hour ride on the taxi. The place is situated like out of nowhere kind.
Being tired carrying so much stuff around, our check in was smooth and we had welcome drinks - fruit punches. The bed was huge and nice. The only thing which I wasn't used to was the flies. They are almost everywhere, okay, except in the bedroom. At least that was the situation on the first day. We rested for a while since we will be having one (horse-riding) session in the evening on the first day and two sessions tightly packed together on the second day.

Really excited to have close encounters with the horses, I hurried Dom to go with me to the stables to beo and touch the horses. Dom was like "Wait, we can take a nap first then later just go earlier for the session then can take pictures with the horses."

Ok ended up we never take pictures then because of the horse riding I need to use both hands and was scared the camera may damage from any falls. Anyway there was plenty of time, so first session no pictures taken.

The ride was quite exasperating for me because the horse was so unwilling to move, so while seeing the rest move quite smoothly, my ride was having quite a number of hiccups. Towards about the middle of the lesson, the instructor had to ask me to hold a whip next to the horse just to pressurise him to walk. I never really whip the horse or anything. The attitude of the horse did progressed a bit.

After the session ended, I felt I am soaked in sweat, but the horse wasn't any better since I was quite heavy.
We bathed and rested a short while then had to go down for dinner.

Our dinner was quite nice, surprisingly very filling.

Riders Lodge Part 1

This is my first overseas trip with Dom Dom.

We set off early in the morning, meeting at 6:30am at Tanjong Pagar Mrt Station to go to the train station together. Our train was scheduled to depart at 7:40am. We did not really know what are the procedures for boarding the train so we blindly followed what the rest of the people did.



We sat in the economy class, each ticket is 7sgd. The cabin was air-conditioned and the seats were reclined seats. It was comfortable except for the fact that I did not know food can be brought into the train and was feeling hungry when a family whipped out their aromatic breakfast. There were tiny cockroaches here and there too, one was on my seat, luckily Dom Dom alerted me to it. Fortunately that was not big enough to make me scream the whole cabin off :p.

The train trip was relatively smooth, with short queues at the Singapore Customs. The disappointment came when we were at Johor train station. Train was not moving for more than 2 hours. It was supposedly to arrive at Kulai station at 0927h but at that point in time we were still at Johor station. Train started moving at approx. 10am. We arrived in Kulai at 1025h.



Using the map I printed out the day before, we managed to navigate to the Giant Hypermarket nearby. Though it was a supposedly 400m walk, the walk seemed super long and tedious due to the poor conditions of the pavement. There were huge holes due to broken drain covers and one can simply put the whole foot into the holes easily. We were hungry and settled our lunch at Marry Brown Restaurant.



The fish fillets were hot on the outside, a bit cold and tasted slightly raw on the inside. There was a slight flour taste in it as well, making it not nice if without the tartar sauce. The rest was quite okay. We went into the supermarket to purchase some tidbits to prevent us from being hungry in the hotel should the food being unable to satisfy. Never did I know that that was 多此一举, ended up we carry a huge bag of stuff which we never get to use and had to carry throughout the trip. After exploring the whole shopping mall, we sat down to have teh peng and milo peng which were very nice and thick.

There was so much time to spend since the taxi which we arranged with the hotel was to arrive at Kulai station at 1:30pm. We walked back to Kulai KTM at 12:45pm.



A sight of a cute Kulai cat before we saw our taxi coming in at 1:05pm. The taxi driver arrived early and was surprised to see us arriving even earlier. We explained that we had been shopping before returning back to the station. We proceeded to board the taxi to Riders Lodge. :D

Backtrack - Hay's dairy

A backtrack entry due to my lethargy, this was a visit to Hay's Diary with my Dear dear.

We took the MRT train to Choa Chu Kang, and took bus to the location. The bus trip was really long, but at least it dropped us near our destination. We had fun feeding Alpine grass to the goats. There was a bit of musky smell in the paddock area, which reminded me of the goat milk I drank when I was young.

The goats were fun to watch and play with. There was one goat which made an "Ahhhh" sound that really resembled a human howling. Another escaped out for a few moments of excitement and fun.



Look at that goat! He was so heavy that each step he took made the ground shake as though the T-Rex escaped from Jurassic Park to the farm. He trotted along the path and greeted other goats as if to announce his smart escape to his fellow friends. However, his joy was short lived and once again, he was back into his pen.



Before we left the place, we bought a bottle of chocolate goat milk to try out. It tasted nothing like what was in the past. The taste was like HL chocolate milk, minus the sweetness, with the sweet aroma of chocolate. It was pleasant but a tad expensive compared to cows' milk in the market.

P.S.: I had my digital camera with me, but I forgot to check the battery level. When I reached there, I took 2 pictures and it displayed critical low level and auto shut down. What a disappointment, but it was my fault. Luckily, I still have a spare hand phone camera, even though the quality was poorer.

Jia Hao slimmed down :p

Pictures of Dom & Co. after watching the movie "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". We settled at KFC to chill out after the show.

The effects of gimp helped Jia Hao and I slimmed down. The effect seemed to be more significant in Jia Hao compared to the rest. Hope this will be a motivation for him to slim down in real life, but if he really don't feel like, well at least photos can be altered to look as though he gave up on his "nua"ness. :p

Aerin and Qianhu

One fine day, My Dear dear and I decided to go for fish spa. We met at Raffles City to have lunch before going all the way down to Choa Chu Kang to take a shuttle bus to Qianhu.

At Raffles City, I saw Aerin restaurant and roughly recalled it being famous for some dish, but I cannot recall the what dish was that. Anyway, the food tasted decent and I ordered my carrot cake. It was famous for Apple pie or something along that line, and I missed it due to my forgetfulness.

The trip to Qianhu was quite fun. While waiting for the free shuttle bus, there was this old lady who waved her hands about to create way in between My Dear dear and me. We were like looking at her dramatic ways when there was so much space behind me and behind Dom. She purposely want to walk in between us, so we just let her through.
There was so many fishes at Qianhu (being a fish farm, it was expected). A few fishes left deep impression in my mind like the fairy kois (they really looked fairy like), the stingrays (they don't keep still) and the discus which were really colorful unlike what my mother used to had. The highlight was the fish spa, which was the main purpose too.

This was by far, the cheapest fish spa I can find, $10 per 1/2 hr. The sucking fishes which we were familiar given being shown on television were the smaller size. The big ones were scary in a sense. We saw them approaching and I wondered if their bite will engulf my whole toe...
they turned out to be extremely gentle and the image that formed in my mind was like we were king and queen with little servants serving us diligently (haha...). The experience was really fun and I did enjoyed myself a lot.

一个迷你聚会

大家，久违了。 前些日子正在忙着考试，接着又举办了一个迷你聚会和一个生日会，身心疲惫，所以部落格直到现在才更新。



在这聚会之前，我添购了一架新的数码相机 Canon IXUS 860 IS。 这些照片都是我兴致勃勃拍摄的作品。
我们首先到<<别府>>吃拉面, 我本人是认为叉烧还不错, 但同行朋友却觉得很腻, 很倒胃口。感觉不好意思，因为是我介绍他们去的。以上图片以左到右：九州ラメン，照り焼き鳥のラメン w/o chicken, 照り焼き鳥のラメン with chicken, チャシュウラメン。



吃饱后，我们到诗情画意的鲤鱼池继续我兴致高昂的拍照旅途，顺便一游附近的宠物店。再来，我们去电脑科技展逛一圈，为 Jon 搜集买手提电脑以及数码相机的资料。在新达城的节目告一个段落，下一站是我家。
我为此大扫除我家两天，累得像只趴在地板喘气的小狗。拜二刚考完，拜三和拜四忙着收拾一间，这个聚会正好在拜五举行。所幸男朋友在进家门那刻惊叹了句　“好干净”，一切努力没白费。：）



开牌咯！大家玩不算真钱的麻将，互相切磋手艺。我一上场就以“杠上开花”让大家目瞪口呆，后来又赢了多一场，再接再厉。：Ｄ　见好就收的我让位给客人Jiahao去继续奋斗。两位资深“老”辈Jon和Zihan不再手下留情，把Jiahao 和Dear dear杀得片甲不留。Dear dear 最可怜，到最后只剩两片青盘子。感谢妈妈烹煮一道道的佳肴来款待客人，其中还有我最爱吃的炸鸡翅膀。＊偷笑＊

原定计划是去芽龙吃甜品，但因为大家吃得挺饱，所以改为继续玩其他游戏。几场参杂着＂Ｄｏｇｓ　ａｎｄ　Ｂｏｎｅｓ＂的＂Ｈｅａｒｔ　Ａｔｔａｃｋ＂让大家笑得东倒西歪。Zihan 为了夺得"bone"，而"bone"在争斗过程中滑落Dear dear's 的大腿下。。。　后果可想而知。天下无不散之宴席，在大家告别前，我们玩Uno Stacko。场面依然轻松搞笑，Jiahao 说到曹操，曹操就到。没人除了他中"Draw two"，但他竟幸运地成功过关。烫手之芋到了Zihan，他拔出砖块时迟迟不敢松手，整个构造也在摇摇欲坠。只见他一松手，“啪”的一声，整座“高楼”立即坍塌下来，同时也宣告了挥别时刻。大家回家后准备后天的生日会。