Kung Fu Fighting - The Panda way....

hiiiaaaaa, watch out for my flying kick.... oops... bounced you off my fat belly... ooooiiiooowwwww

Party Party!

Discovering a new species?

C has a curious look into the lower drawer of a refrigerator....

He discovered something interesting....

Something that he has never seen before!!

is it a new species?



NAH, its just good old potato growing in a dark and fuzzy place....... in search for light......


hee... anyone has similar experience before?

Wii Wii Wii All The Way Home

Yes, you can guess from our title that Wii have invested in the latest Nintendo craz.... Wii game set!

When I first saw the games in the set, I thought that the graphics interface were not as amazing as the Xbox or the PS. HOWEVER, after owning it, I love it! It doesnt go for the realistic 3D line but instead, the games that we have are fun, nonsensical ones hee....


Yeah, Dance Dance Revolution! I've been looking for a home version of this game since I see young kids dancing their way to a hippy waist... I shy lah, so I made Ad buy it for me. hee. Its really tough to master the moves! I think I need to find the cheat codes for it hahaha

What is a game of boxing without some friends??



You are guaranteed a super workout after 3rounds of boxing.... I promise you, this is a very good workout that comes with the basic set of Wii Sports when you purchase the game console. I still have yet to figure out how to bat at the baseball, anyone care to join me in a game of baseball? hee...

Wii Fit is a game that has rocked the world since its released in Japan. When the US set was launched, we fought HARD for our set too! hee.... (sorry Jr :P)


Yes, you will sweat it out with this series of Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics and Balance games. I love the Yoga and Aerobics. It has a personal trainer who will lead through each posture or exercise. Best of all, it helps to correct your posture! We both have bad posture when it comes to standing or sitting, standing on one leg, wrong center of gravity placed on the foot which leads to slouching and backaches. There's also a tracking feature on it to record your progress! A real good investment!

Here's our friend YL playing soccer...


Our latest investment is..... Mario Kart!
Very fun game! Lots of interesting courses and funny stunts you can pull on each other... *cant stop laughing*


There's another MUST HAVE game called Rayman Raving Rabbids. Its a series of ultra silly games, best played with 4players, its out of this world games is definitely a great way to end a stressful hectic day with some laughter! HA HA HA

Party @ The Neos!

Finally we had the chance to visit the long awaited dream home of The Neos.

Trashing the house here we come!!!

Eating and more eating at their giant table....


What's their young master doing at a corner?? hmm......


*tsk* *tsk*

we all had great fun exploring The Neo's new home! Thank you for having us!!

Kids Update!

Latest addition to our family is Baby Xin, she's cute and curious about the world! Enjoys a good cuddle and lots of physical bonding! One drooling babe too!



We are all young right???


Singing Junior...



How to resist such a sweet sweet smile??


BabyA and his french fry....


Baby K with his strong interest in Ad's phone hee hee.....


A young lady waiting for her 2front tooth!

Recycle!

Its good to see that recycling is happening in the neighbourhood!



Before we started recycling at home, we did not realise how much "trash" we actually accumulate! We clock about a full bag every fortnight! and there's only 2 of us at home!! *embarrassed*

Lego World @ Jenad

The spirit of Christmas has brought a new series of addition to our family - Lego World has began!

As a young kid, I remember being "rewarded" for my good grades with Lego when I was in P5 & P6, they stuck with me for the longest time until I had to shift rooms and finally parted with them to my nephew (which I regretted deeply cos I "earned" those Lego with my hard work in school! - in those times, Lego was a true luxury! Those were the only toys I had from my parents...)

Long after I met Ad, I found out about his craze for Lego brought him to competitions and even winning the top prizes for himself! I was amazed! (and secretly impressed also lah!)

So last Christmas, with the help of some friends, we bought him a giant Lego set consisting of a crane and a few trucks! We had alot of fun building the up!!

Here's the line up for the trucks hee....


Close up of the biggest and the mini-est one....

Jenad's Tirumisu attempt!

Are you wondering where is the end product??

It was so delicious that we forgot to take pictures of it!! Yummy!!! Must do it again!

But this time, we'll be more prepared to get a bigger espresso coffee maker... I had to boil like 10times! *tired*

But most definitely well rewarded with a yummy dessert!!

Yeah!

*success*

Way Cool!

What is the cool bit?

hmm.... the video? the sound effect? the bulldozer being automated? or the MOUNTAIN of Lego bits? I cant decide... can you?

ENJOY!



Ok, now we are very inspired... let's see how far this inspiration will take us... hee hee

Baby A learns MORE

Baby A is delightfully picking up phrases from everyone around and everywhere... so we thought we might as well check in some of the instrumental phrases....



did you notice that he was bowing his head while he was reciting O$P$?? He must be the most friendly ah long out there... hahaha

Then HOW?????

Long long time ago when this blog was first established, blogger was an independent blogging tool, not bought over by google yet.

So we happily registered ourselves and did all the nice settings to the blog. (noticed that the side bars were customised?)

And then, Jen BS-itchy set up her own blogger account using her g-account and started blogging from there. Very easy, very smooth operation.

As time passed, blogger merged with google and all the blogger account holders were forced to have a gmail account as well.

So now... we lost that initial email account/settings etc... and so we'll never be able to remove all the dead links on the side bar nor add new links to them. (I'm so sorry contest junkie, you are the reason why we have this Then HoW situation cos I wanted to add your site to my blog... now *sigh*)

Then HOW????

How was your weekend?

My weekend has been SHORT! yes too short to start with....

Watched a DVD on friday night and slept in late on sat.

Wanted to clean the rest of the house (because we started clearing things out from our study a couple of weekends ago and felt that the de-cluttering exercise was so liberating that we should extend it to the rest of the house) but guess what? the progress is slow.

My greatest fear: that the process if decluttering is slower than the process of purchase/gifts...

over the past few weeks, while we were actively decluttering, our family and friends were also actively contributing items BACK into our household... hmm... we'll need to put up some signs to tell everyone to hold back their "goodies" till Christmas for us, at least let us enjoy some SPACE first. hahaha

Anyway, sat was a super lazy day coupled by the fact that we were sleep deprived, so we spent a good deal of the time catching back our sleep.

Spent the evening at a girl friend's house and we talked about everything under the sun particularly make-up while Ad went on to do more cleaning up at home and did his mooncake shopping for the year... (see what I mean by slow speed of decluttering vs fast rate of purchase?? *tsk* *tsk*)

When we returned home, what was meant to be putting the mooncakes into the fridge became a "lets clear the fridge now" exercise. We spent the next hour, discovering the amount of sauces, pastes, drinks, food items that we had (hee hee) and YEAH we got more space in the fridge!!

well, after we stuff the box of mooncake into the fridge, we are like kinda back to square one with the not so much space left thingy.... *sigh*

Sun was a even shorter day. We sprang out of bed early to go to church, it was our church's Food and Funfair day. Time to take out those dusty coupons and utilised them! yeah, we were excited about being able to purchase something with our coupons as with previous years, we were always not in time to catch the stores by the time our Mass has ended...

After Mass, we cheong out to the funfair again and yeah there was MORE food available, we ate and we ate and we ate. So guess what was the BEST afternoon activity to do???

SLEEP!! hahaha

oops, with the afternoon GONE, its time to get ready for a wedding dinner.... ironing, washing up, drying my hair to style it, putting on make up (including my first attempt at eyes... hey girls, i did it!!! Ad says it looks GREAT!!), finding the right pair of shoes, bag, accessories etc....

the weekend is GONE just like that.

How was yours??

BBQ!

Yes after a long absence of charcoal burnt food in our diet, Canticle has revived BBQ!!

The night was filled with food, alcohol, games, fun and laughter.... kids had fun playing squash, table tennis, swimming in the pool (Big Brother R included hee) as well as the good dose of running around playing catching.

While there's a strong rotation of chefs at the pit churning out large amount of good quality food to feed us, its the gang of RED that takes the day like a storm!

oops sorry, that was mostly just ME hahahaha
the others in the background are the accessories

After a long time, I finally got to hug and play and take picture with one of my favourite young man!!!!

Travelogue Series : Perth

Travelogue Series : Beijing

An evening walk

Last night Ad decided that we should put on our walking shoes and start to a causal neighbourly walk in the evening.

Brillant idea I thought. I asked, Normal walk or Brisk walk?? hehe

Ad stunned and shocked for a while, erhm, brisk walk?

Good idea I thought it'll help me burn some calories and finally see the effects of brisk walking after hearing so much about it. (can lose weight wan right?)

Then the big question came.... How to brisk walk huh? Do we have to walk alot faster than our normal casual walk? Do we swing our arms by our side? Do we need to have proper warm up and warm down??

hmm... too many unknowns. So we decided on what we know best. Casual walk! haha

Next was target destination.... to Thomson? Walk there and do what there??

To give ourselves some motivation, we estimated that if we walk to Balestier, it'll be dinner time by the time we reach there. Cool! Lots of great food along that stretch of road.

So we put on our walking shoes and started our walk.

We cut through a few blocks in the neighbourhood and realised that we do have alot of stray cats around. Like 3 in a small area of 20m radius. No wonder there's a need to look into the stray cats issues. I bet there's really alot of cat-lovers who go around the neighbourhood feeding these cats. Cos they dun look a wee bit hungry to us. Just having a relaxing evening lying around the void deck.

There was one cat however, still had its native instincts to hunt for rats hee.... Ad spotted it carrying a rodent in its mouth, scurrying to safety before it devours its dinner. Cool! That's how cats should be doing right? I mean their natural instincts is to hunt down rodents. Thus getting rid of the pest. The natural food cycle.

We crossed the giant overhead bridge towards Balestier, marking the halfway point of our walk?? It was barely 15mins before we started our walk haha. Then I realised that I should have worn white top and a blue long pants hee hee... Cos this bridge is the favourite spot for TP standing behind one of the pillars with their handycam. Wonder if I stood there in the same position would have any effects for fast travelling vehicles. Erhm, I doubt so, peak hour, too many vehicles travelling on the expressway that time. No chance for them to speed. No wonder there's no Uncle White there at that time haha

We arrived at Ah Hood Gardens. Hee.... what a local flavoured name. Imagine filling up in the address column as Ah Hood staying in Ah Hood Gardens. Robin Hood Gardens would have sounded more glamourous.

We walked spotted a coffee shop that has a huge banner that says that its got Hotel Standard Chicken Rice at coffee shop prices. Hmm.... too early to stop now for dinner, we'll come back for it on the way back....

We were walking by Caltex Petrol Station when Ad started walking towards one of the parked vehicles next to the pump... He knew the driver of the vehicle! haha... What a small world.

It turned out that this person is a teacher from my alma mater! What a tiny world! Like that also can hor...

We continued to discover more of our neighbourhood on our feet and spotted a telephone booth! haha.... its been a while since I last saw a phone booth in the middle of the pavement with a working phone in it! Card Phone. Who uses it these days?? Not even sure if the book stores still sells the phone cards hee abit retro hor??

As we walked further, we realised that our stomaches are growling.... its 745pm! We've walked for about an hour! We headed back... along the way we found an Italian Resturant serving beef, soup and salad in a pretty upmarket set up and the prices are also very Up Market ah!

As we move towards the chicken rice (supposed to be by the famous Mandrian Hotel Chef) and reached there in time to buy the LAST order of their chicken rice. Hmm.... chicken is not bad, not as tender as the Boon Tong Kee one, rice is soft and chewy but again not as nice as the BTK one haha... so the verdict is... BTK is more expensive but nicer!

8pm we started eating.... one of the bus that will bring us back home pasted by.... I figured it will take another 15mins before the next bus comes along. We ate at our normal pace and before we know it, we are done eating, its 815 and guess what?? Our bus is coming!!

Yahoo! We jumped out of our seats, ran 20m and we were at the bus stop waving madly for the driver to stop the bus for us. haha

Yep, that's how our walk ended, with a yummy dinner and a bus ride home! :P

Marriage Celebration 2007

Each year, there is a group of dedicated folks who would work very hard to put together a day of activities to celebrate being married.

This year, we were roped in to help with directing traffic for this event. We thought that its held at our own backyard, would not post any problems at all.... but needless to say, we have met with some interesting situations that teaches us not to take anything/anyone/anyplace for granted. haha

here's the team of traffic wardens....



with our light sabres hee.... was alot of sweat and hardwork getting over 400 couples into their respective venues for the talks and 1000 into the church to attend mass. At the end of the long day, covered in smelly "uniform" we retreated to feast at railway haha

Botak Jones in TP!

Botak Jones has finally arrived in TP!



In the industrial park somemore haha.... one evening, after much hype, we finally went down to try out the food.

To kick start the night, Ad ordered their Hoegarden....

foamy and in a huge glass, yum yum

the food was ok, but the mint sauce that went with the lamb chop was delicious, it went well even with fries hee

there was a bar with a pool table next to it. a pretty relaxing place to chill out if one is not too particular about airconditioning. With a definite place to sit for sure!!

But they are CLOSED on sundays hor....

Bubbles!

Not the powerpuff girls bubbles....

but real giant bubbles!

hehe... Ad bought a gadget that comes with some illustrations on how to build giant bubbles.

So one fine day... I really mean one fine day (which is like 2yrs AFTER we bought the bubbles maker).... We went to make bubbles!

smart designs

I always enjoy looking at smartly designed furniture. One of such are the benches available in Vivocity Basement.



This bench-cum-table is a clever space saving idea, fully functional and gives the user different options! so clever!

I got a model to show how it can be used differently hee hee....





If you are interested in using my model for your photo shoot, feel free to contact me! Where can find such a smiley model? hee

Girls Night OUT

Malacca II

Malacca I

Baby A in the bath tub

What can I say?? He's adorable beyond words!!

enjoy

Baby A the DANCER

Baby A's first exploration trip to the airport brought out this super duper cute part of him (which we dunno how long it'll last, so we better enjoy all we can while it lasts hee). He dances to music! Different moves to different beat! Truly amazing!! He's such an expressive kid!

In this shop, he was happily dancing away, when I took out my camera to start to film him, he came towards me, so I told him hey can you go back there and dance again for me??

HE DID just that! turned around and started dancing!! just 16months old, amazing!

Easter Vigil @ St Teresa's

This year was a really special year for our choir, we were scheduled to sing for the Vigil Mass!!

To make it more meaningful, we have a special kid who is getting baptised on the same night with his Godpa from our choir as well.... cool eh??

the warming up practise....






here's a snap of the baptism.








what a night....

ReCycling Day Tomorrow!

Every alternate wednesday mornings, the contractor contracted by NEA to collect recycled items come by our neighbourhood and pick up nicely filled up yellow bags along the corridor.

Without realising it, we are happily filling up our bags every 2 weeks! Its amazing how much plastic bottles we use, how much paper we trash, cupboard from cornflake boxes, paper and plastic bags, boxes from toys, gifts. facial packs, toothpaste etc. (yes, at this point I've to clarify that we CANNOT recycle styrofoam.... politely pointed out by Otterman hahaha)

Its an amazing culture that we've established in our home, now guests will automatically asked if we're recycling the can drinks/bottles and help us rinse them so that we can drop it into our recycling corner the next day when its dried. (let's hope that these good practises will diffuse through their thick skulls enough for them to start their own mini-recycling corners at home hee hee)

maybe I should challenge all those who are reading this blog, to just try it out today, collect recycl-able things that you were thinking of throwing into the bin. Just put them together for a week (you don't have to worry about ants or bugs because cardboard and plastic and paper do not encourage them to grow/hybernate, just need to rinse coke/bottles twice with very little water to clean them and it'll be alright too! my house is the BEST proof) and you'll be amazed how much "trash" there is. If each one of us just put in a tiny bit of effort to recycle, we'll live in a cooler place (reduce global warming from reduced deforestation). Make better use of the resources around us.

Also, its a great way to teach the children about environment, bringing the classroom back into the home, living out the "stories" that teachers maybe teaching them in the classroom. Giving them a chance to practise good habits from young and learn good value system of the 3Rs - ReDuce, ReUse and ReCycle!


I'm happy to see my two bags full of recycling material waiting for their collection in the morning tomorrow! :D

Boo Hoo Hoo

came home tonight to find this...

let's hope its a one off incident, not some sick prank or a potential waterfall happening along the corridor....

On my desktop

Our Godson Baby A is so photogenic that we cannot stop snapping photos of him, with each shot, he's curious look of this world is captured.

the love of my life now on my desktop....

Qi Qi is 1!

yes, our lovely niece Qi Qi turned one last month, she has such a huge birthday bash that she could hardly recognise herself... why do I say that?? hee....

just check out how she's dressed in....

check out the happy faces of two grandmas, one grandaunt and a set of parents hee... yes u noticed that CK got decked in his Korean Hanbok again, in our hot, humid weather, he was definitely not a pretty sight hee

check out the house! We were welcomed by the happy birthday banner!


Qi Qi had the most interesting birthday cake that I've seen to date, its a rice flour cake weighing over 5kg, flown in from Seoul, hand carried by grandma who just arrived the night before the party and its HUGE! Interior is filled with nuts, rasins and berries, giving it sweet, sour, crunchy texture in addition to the super filling baked rice flour. It measures 30cm in diameter with a height of 15cm hee hee

Oh oh, the round ball ball on the top is glutinuous rice balls with different fillings of bean paste, peanuts etc, I would say that the ingredients and the texture is pretty similar to our chinese cooking but just using a different combinations of the ingredients to come up with such an interesting cake.

And the birthday song was sang..... with a lovely family photo....

Did you notice there were some interesting items in the front of the table?
There's rice, noodle, $50 dollar note, a calligraphy pen and a book....

did you guess it yet?? YES, like the anciet chinese, who used to put similar items at one end of the room to let their toddler crawl towards the item that intrigue them the most, here, Qi Qi was given these 5 items to chose.

CK guessed that she would zoom towards the plate of goodies to eat as she naturally enjoy Food.

However, our dear girl, took a long hard look at all the different items set before her.

She thought long and hard before she finally decided on this:


amazing huh??

Baby Baby Baby

Our favourite godson (who is to date also our one and only hahaha), has started dancing to different beat, different music and looked super adorable!!

He is also a super duper chatty baby, we will have no lack of topics to cover....

having fun with Photo Booth

one of the cool things about the Mac is its Photo Booth software... hee.... cos with Peppermint, it comes with a webcam!! Which is great!! and totally underuterlized until I started with Photo Booth....

yep, Photo Booth software comes FREE with a new Mac ;-)

one of the willing "models" was Otterman! haha, hard to believe that this fella would open up the software on his own to take a photo of himself with his NEW mobile phone SLING... which is actually a cup of Cuppacino hee...


always wondered what would it be liked if i had a bigger mouth.. (similar size to Ad's hee cos he can always seems to stuff MORE food into his mouth than me....)



i gues Ad wanted to try to be Jackie Chan or Jackie Chueng hee... both with HUGE noses!! They say big nose people have good fortunes! shall we use this as a pinup photo??


then we kinda "forced" our godson baby A to take a "family" photo with us also hee hee


then we had an extended lim family photo shot hee hee....


does it look like we are having fun already?? yes... u bet!

Visitors from the Wild

YES, finally we were able to do this dinner thing which we have wanted to with our wild friends from nature, Otterman, Ladybird and Lekowala. It started with a phone call from Otterman about finding a contact to change his harddisk on this 14' iBook to check if it was just the harddisk that was down or the whole machine's lifespan has expired. So Ad told him "SURE, He can do it!"

Ladybird reviewed that Otterman nearly forgot to bring the iBook!! aiyo!! It was left in his office on thursday and Ladybird went to pick it up from his office on thursday afternoon. THEN on friday itself, he forgot to bring it out of the house AGAIN!!! Seems like Otterman dun really want this iBook to be fixed so that he can get a Mac Mini?? hahaha

So we planned for a simple dinner which consist of Ocean's FishHead Curry (hahaha, the food was so good that we finished it without taking any pictures! *Slurp* sorry too busy)

After some chit chat, the table was cleared and Ad started his "mechanical" job of labouriously removing the many screws from the iBook, it was close to some 30 screws of different sizes. In addition to having to use a pair of chopsticks to dislodge the shell from the internal parts, it really looked as if he was doing a surgery.... From what he thought was a simple, straight forward process, it became a 2hr+ marathon surgery hahaha

He started from the back, removing the battery (which was really the easiest part) to unscrewing the butt screws (which has about 3 differnt types of screws and close to 10 of them), Ad spent about 10-15mins trying to dislodge the white shell from the main body.... after numerous tries, he finally found the perfect way to do it, using a wooden chopsticks hahaha

Yep, we thought that was all that he needed to get to the harddisk.... but NO, there was another silver/aluminium sheet that shields the rest of the body, covering another 10 screws....

When all the screws were removed, we saw the internal organs.... woah, no joke... its not easy to access the harddisk, its really in the HEART of the iBook!

After taking a serious look at it, he decided that it was too tough to get to the harddisk from the back, so he put back all the screws, clip the white base back to the back of it and tried to start from the front........

He removed the dusty keyboard which Otterman quickly took over to dutifully clean it and Ad continued on his open-heart surgery only to find that the version of the service manual that he was using was NOT for this model & batch of iBook hahaha! Apple made 4 revisions to this 14' iBook, each revisions have its own manual and slightly different internal organisation and how its internal organs were organised.....

u know what that means??

its means that Ad found out that he has to open BOTH the keyboard side AND the back to get to the harddisk hahahaha

*imagine the look on his face*

But my very determined Ad went on to re-open the back, unclipping the back cover, this time he was like a pro, can do it very quickly hahaha

From Jenad hse wit...

then he checks the manual to ENSURE there's NO mistakes....

From Jenad hse wit...

And finally.... *applause* *applause* Ad did it!!! He finally OPENED the iBook! hahaha

From Jenad hse wit...

But what really stole the show was not the open heart surgery that took 2hrs to complete, instead it was Jen's Xaxvi Aerostep which got our guests really excited into a step, jump and run hee hee....

its an exercise mat which has similar concept to the dancing mat, it has its own console (about $150) and the mat cost about ($150) and the teacher is Jackie Chan....

Jen doing demo....

Jenad hse with otterman, ladybird & lekowala

Otterman doing his thing...

From Jenad hse wit...

Ladybird showing her endurance... she did 30mins on the aerobics mat for Jen hahaha

From Jenad hse wit...

in the end, our guests had a "friendly" competition on the mat which does an age assessment of the competitor by a series of jumps and steps... gues who won??

From Jenad hse wit...

hahaha....

we were all rewarded with a heavy dose of ICE CREAM!! yeah yeah so much for burning those calories hahaha

The Perfect Half Boil Eggs

YES!! No more worries!! NO more over-cooked or under-cooked half boil eggs in the morning!!

Very *embrassingly* we've been having half boiled eggs at the coffeeshop downstairs our house which usually cost $4.20 for 4 half boiled eggs together with a cup of kopi and milo. Which is enough for us to buy a whole tray of eggs and a pack of refillable milo/kopi hee so we figured we might as well do it ourselves.

But hor, we always tend to OVER cook the eggs or Under cook it, seldom ever perfect.

Then the OTHER problem is: we tend to forgot the other 6 eggs in the tray/fridge hahaha

we came along this gadget which is pretty retro cos I remember seeing my aunties and uncles use it in their homes when I was a kid, we thought it'll be fun to try it out at home hee



So after putting in 4 eggs, I filled it up to the line (with 4 eggs icon) with hot water which I just boiled....


as I was watching the water drip away into the container underneath it, I noticed some white stuff coming out of my eggs (2 of them to be exact)!
I broke the eggs!!! ARGH!!



I totally did not expect the eggs to crack when I dropped them into the container, I guess I must have been too anxious to cook them haha

so after all the water got drained away, (leaving behind 1inch which Ad claimed it will NEVER get drained away completely), we removed the eggs and tried it, yum yum, it was abit on the over cooked side but still delicious! hehe

In our 2nd attempt, we had PERFECTLY half-Boiled Eggs!! hahaha

3 reasons contribute to this success...
1. the eggs were NOT broken hee
2. the eggs were chilled (not room temperature like we just bought)
3. we removed the eggs when the water level could not drop any further ie. cannot leave the eggs with the remaining 1inch of water

So cool!

next time u come to our house and wanna eat half boiled eggs, just ASK and you will b given!!

we'll just charge coffeeshop rates hahaha

Jap Dina!

Yeah!! Ad is back on form one of those nights last week, he prepared Theme Dinner hee....

It was Jap NIGHT!!

woah, its been a very long time since we last had themed dinner, besides Instant noodle theme or frozen pizza theme haha

And the food was so yummy, I ate and ate so fast, that I almost got indigestion. hee

Welcome Sony!

I just realised that we're pretty sony people when we got our latest sony product: speakers!! yeah yeah!!

now we've got a set of sony tv and speakers in the living room.....





yeah yeah yeah!

Jen's Bday Bash in BKK

YEP, this year, Ad gave me a huge treat to be away for once during my bday, I havent been there in like 15years, so my memory of this place is like temples, flooding market and trees lined up along the road that was not green but GREY haha.

All these changed during our short stay in this city now filled with activities for a tourist...












can you guess already? BangKok lah! haha

Canticle CNY

Yes its abit delayed action but better late then never right? hee....

Canticle is the name of the choir that we are in from church, so we "arm-twisted" D&S to host the CNY party since their place is HUGE hee hee and we had a ball of time there!!

We chatted, ate, played cards, drew, stacked up lego tiles, and even tried to solve the mystery of the zip....

there's this children's activity book which has a list of items that you can search for in the main picture, teaching kids about clothes, television, microwave etc and no one has ever found the ZIP! haha yes we are still trying....

then the tradition of celebration comes with BlackJack and Alcohol, which both dun always go well hand in hand.... at least for Martin hee hee.... soon the effects of alcohol was knocking him out, from sitting up to see his cards, he's laying down and almost doing a full face on the floor half way through the game haha


Then at one corner of the house (see that's why i tell u their house is huge because one corner can host over 10 of us playing cards the other corner can have kids doing other stuff), there's LEGO! Ad's favourite!!
Check out what he built at the request of a pretty young lady (*tsk* *tsk* do I have to "fight" with her for Ad now??)


I show who she is, then u folks out there will tell me if I have a cause for concern...

so pretty young thing hor?? *sigh*

here's the finishing touches to put in a Priest into the church that she requested for...


One whole day of fun fun and more fun, sorry no more photos after that cos I'm having too much fun to be taking pictures anymore haha...

Baking Success

We've been trying (I said TRYING because we haven't got it quite worked out yet hee hee) to eat more healthily by baking our own bread.

The most beloved Guardinia bread has been rumoured to have too much preservatives, additives etc rendering it unhealthy to eat. (think about it, when i buy the $1.55 loaf of bread, the bread stays fresh for about 5-7days, but when I buy the S$1.90 loaf containing almost double the number of slices of bread, it stays fresh for more than 9days! how could they do it without adding MORE preservatives?)

So before we bought our own bread-maker and totally forget about using it, wasting our $$ and precious space in our house, a friend with a bread maker at home loan hers to us. (see, those who own it would hardly use it ha ha ha)



Ad was busy with his guy friend doing the guy thing at the time when we needed to go and get the bread flour for making bread for the first time. So he gave me the IMPT assignment of getting the right bread flour. Best is Organic he said. Orh! I remember organic flour organic flour and I found it! Organic rye flour! Yipee!

We set it up according to the instructions and something tells us that something wasnt right when the flour did not rise after 2hr and the pile of flour, water, oil, yeast, milk powder mix looked the same before and after....


it was rock HARD! ha ha. nope it did not mix well, I bought Organic Rye flour, not Organic Rye BREAD flour! ha ha ha... notice a missing word? the most import word?

aiyo, how would I remember so many things? headache you know?

After a few days of troubleshooting, asking around, we found that the Jasons' supermarket at Orchard Hotel has the MOST variety of bread flour. So Ad throtted down and bought himself some real bread flour and our 2nd attempt was not too bad. :)



Yippe! success!

Dancing on Ropes

Was at the National Museum of Singapore recently, it was newly opened and vowed to woo new generations of Singaporeans to visit it.

We were tempted to skip the "trip" there but was heavily pursuaded by Ladybird to go for just a "short while". Which turned out, a choice that we both agreed was worth it!

As we entered the clean and cool atrium, greeted by some funky displays which we cannot make out (must be I not artistic enough, confirmed by my Fs in my Art & Craft classes hee hee)

There was a information & cashier booth by the right side which had a queue of people buying tickets and digging for more brouchures to bring along, but there was not gantry or big signages to tell us which are the exhibition halls that require tickets to enter. So we just bravely climbed the stairs up without any tickets. At the back of our heads, we were wondering if we'll have to make a trip back down to get the tickets ... you know, one of those things that happens at museums when they do not tell you anything, make you walk up in vain kind?

As we entered into the newly built up wing of the museum, there was a old to new transistion of the museum. Dome shaped roof has transitted into transparent glass, allowing maximum light into the corridor leading to the new wing. There was a crowd gathered at the new wing. And we wondered what was going on anxiously, like little children entering the museum for the first time.

We found alot of people gathered around the bridge overlooking the first level below and found that there was a dance performance on the first level platform. After like 20secs, with the thick crowd, we could hardly peep through to see the dance, we wandered around and found a great piece of art on the floor. It was by a famous street artist that does 3D chalk artwork that is so life-like that you think that there are things sticking out of the floor. Through enough, when we peered through a wide-angled lense, we saw that the figures in the artwork looked as if there were layers! Amazing!

There were some information around the artwork about the artist's work and his talks around the world. He happened to drop by Singapore, found out about the NM's openind decided to contribute something for us. In 3 days, he drew out this huge canvas of chalk-street-art (measuring approximately 5x5m). Its really worth a trip there to take a look and be awed by how beautiful art can be. (yes, it takes alot to wow me because I totally lack imagination and never thought of spending a cent on a piece of artwork)

What I marvelled about this piece of art is its creativity and the artist's ability to bring that creativity across to the masses. You will be amazed that you can transform creativity and art into $$, but designing beautiful architectures or homes. Its a great way to combine interest with livelihood.

Then the music started again. With the crowded thinned away at the bridge, we went back to peer downwards, to our surprise, there were alot more dancers on level one, all strapped up with a harnes onto a rope each and when the music started, they started to pull themselves up on the rope!

Two dancers were inter-linked via a roller, so when one dancer goes UP, the other dancer actually moves Down. So You can imagine how much effort it'll take for BOTH the dancers to be moving UP the rope..... it'll take ALOT of pulling... but they made it seem so effortless.

check it out!




After the first dance was over, there was two dancer that came down the sides of a wall..... my my, they were doing a couple dance! They made it seems so light and graceful! Yet they were dangling on the side! (I almost wanted to take up dancing IMMEDIATELY)

the picture is NOT tilted wan hor....



We thought wow... two wonderful dance, how great this experience is. Just then, a lady hopped off from the side of the bridge where we were standing and started to dance in mid air as well! ( I was too caught up in watching her with my mouth wide open to take pictures hee hee....)

here's some later shots...






Definitely a great trip to the National Museum of Singapore!

Great recommendation Otterman, Ladybird, Al & Rob!

jenad happenings

Flight details or menu?

Went to check out the budget terminal one day and found this really interesting concept of the old analogue version of the flight information display board being used as a menu for the Hans!

Innovative way to preserve some bits of our aviation history. I like!



It really caught me by surprise that it was a menu instead of the flight information, courtesy of Ad, I kinda got tricked into believing that it WAS the flight information!

I think I must have been almost blind! ha ha ha...

close up view for YOU Nah!


jenad happenings

Happy Grilling

One of the things that Ad loved to do is to cook!

His latest fetish is to grill stuff.... why because after eating delicious beef, he went on to research about how to grill them the PERFECT way. He found out... not only does he need fresh beef to have fantastic tasting beef, he'll also need a grill pan to cook it to perfection.

(I secretly think that its his excuse to go SHOPPING for MORE kitchen stuff!!!)

Nonetheless, he found his perfect grill pan.... one that has got a temperature sensor (to tell you when the pan is HOT), one that has got grooves that allow the oil from the meat to flow out of the meat so that the meat would taste yummy and best of all, it has a circular rim around the outer zone to drain away the oil that oozes out of the meat. So its infact healthier to get the grilled meat!

(because in the real bbq/ outdoor grill condition, its over a live fire where the oil can drip onto the charcoal, so it wont go back into the meat...)

Hence the ultimate Tefal round grill pan (dun be fooled by the square ones, they do not have the oil oozing out, being drained away function!)


can you see that the red tefel logo is almost all RED? You cannot see the lines anymore, so it means the pan is really hot hot now, good time to put the meat onto the grill pan. (its quite dummy proof lah... plus its non-stick, so dun even need to put oil on this pan, can save more$$)

For our virgin use of this grill pan, we have Salmon! yummy!!! It was with the recipe that came with the grill pan, so it worked wonderfully well, we loved it!

Salmon grill: fresh slice of salmon, coated with a thin layer of olive oil, light salt & black pepper.
Grill 3mins on one side, 2mins on the other. or until the skin turns crispy brown.... if its a thick slice of salmon, then you may have to cook it abit longer...



after cooking... check out how happy Ad is...



jenad food

Nuts over doNuts

There seems to be a new craz in town. First it was the bubble tea, then came the papa beard now its doNuts!

This long crowd of more than 20 people in line, stopping human traffic in the T-junction was hard to miss at the new Raffles City basement.



And when you look up at their menu, you would think that they are copying the famous american Krispy Creme....


*tsk* *tsk*

nothing beats a good warm donut... have tried one really good one that leaves you savouring for more?

happenings

Hello 2007

We were invited to our pal's house on new year eve to start the year with them and our bunch of good friends. It was a very entertaining start to the new year despite the shocking news of bombing in bangkok's city center....

Besides A&W's Lindy Hop swing dance mini-performance for us, we found our little godson swinging to the groovy music as well! check it out!





We had so much food, drinks and desserts that we had to pace them out with the game Catch-Phrase which we borrowed from D&S hee hee... after a few disruptive rounds (because babyA keeps trying to press the buzzer as it goes beeping hee hee) we found out that the ladies are better at it. Girl Power!

For the countdown, we could hear the neighbourhood going 5 4 3 2 1 Happy New Year! So we joined in the shouting match! Not my neighbourhood, I dun have to worry about being thrown out for being too noisy ha ha ha

Then it was time.... to do the most childish thing we have in the house... Sparklers!

Its amazing how much fun and laughter we drew from burning sparklers in the corridor.... BabyA was scared initially, but after our continuous assurance, he was excited by it. :)

In the mist of sparklers and counting down, Ad & Al spotted fireworks from across the causeway. Woah.... so cool! they had fireworks along the entire coastline, we just needed to walk along the corridor to spot them hee hee.... Needless to say, BabyA was also mesmerized by the fireworks.

I think at the end of the night, he could spot fireworks in the air from a mile away.

Happy New Year!



friends jenad