Chinese New Year Prelude

What seemed forever to arrive is all over in a flash....
Before the CNY came, I was very enthusatic about it. Being able to eat bak kwa, mandarin oranges and other CNY goodies plus getting all those red packets were just some of the highlights. I was hoping to visit some of my friends house during the new year too.

The day finally arrived with me working on the eve of new year itself. A 8-3pm and then followed by 10pm -5 am the next morning. Minutes before 12, chinatown was fully packed and almost impossible to walk. At 12 midnight exactly, the air was filled with large crackling sounds, so much so that everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to the direction the sound was coming from. The firecrackers had already started. It was soon followed by a salvo of fireworks. And it lasted for..........1 minute XD. Work ended about 4am, so I had to grab a taxi back home. I had to walk all the way to CHIJ kellog before I was able to get a cab home. About 3 cabs went past me despite me trying to flag them down.

I finally reached home about 5am . Feeling abit restless, I tossed around for quite some time before falling asleep. Only to be awoken by my mum in the morning, too tired to notice the time....

Its time for a revival

Wow I just realised how long I haven't posted. Ever since my laptop was down, I wasn't able to do much surfing. I did have a desktop but it was mainly used for playing World of Warcraft and msn XD. I did use the desktop daily, until my ancient monitor gave way. So the last resort was to use my PS3's internet browser capability. It is able to fufil my basic nessessities but I had to go easy on it, if not it will hang XD. Finally got back my com and I will try to blog frequently but until .....

Back to school - not that I actually like it.......

After a really really long hoilday, its finally back to school, not that I actually like it. However, the end of this holiday feels more different from the others. Usually, when the hoilday is about to end, I will get this dreaded feeling of not wanting to go back. It gets stronger and stronger until the day before school actually starts. In fact the dreaded feeling never got to me till the day before school actually started. Its probably because I spent most of my hoildays working and not actually playing (the was plenty of playing but not as much as the previous long hoildays). Well its the fact of meeting new people excites me, just seeing not actually saying anything though. Just thinking about it makes the feeling course through my veins. Well we have to see what happens next then whether its for better or for worse.

Totally Classified

During the computer convention (Comex) at Suntec, I was begining to wonder why other people was able to buy what they wanted and I have to pinch and scrap. Was it because their allowance was far more then mine or I had poor money management? In the end, I did a rough calculation on how much I spent in August. True enough I had almost spent all my money except for the $25 which was still sitting in my bank, waiting to be withdrawn.

The following Monday(3/08/07), I started searching the newspapers for jobs(Classified section). Eventally I found 3 jobs that I was interested in. A cashier at Shell 7-11(pasir panjang) , a waiter at Westend (pasir panjang) and a coffee maker (not the machine XD) at coffeebean. I then went for the walk-in interview on Tuesday itself. First to Shell 7-11 unfortunatly the boss wasn't around so all I had to do was to fill in my application form. From Shell, I proceeded to the Westend, some restaurant with western cusine. The main reason why I chose that place is because it is within walkable distance, about 5mins walk from home. When I reached the Westend, I tried calling the one in charge but nobody picked up. I then tried calling 5 mins later and it was engaged. I finally called 1 last time and nobody picked up again. Feeling irritated and annoyed, I left for Tiong Bahru Plaza for the coffeebean interview. In fact, there was no walk-in interview, all I did was fill in an application form and it was done. I went home after turning in the application form.

On Wednesday, the in-charge of Shell called told me I was hired and I was to start work on Thursday at 10pm. When Coffeebean didnt call me the next day if I was going to be hired, I started to get slightly worried. I eventually called them on Friday and arranged an interview on Tuesday 11/08.

If it looks easy to make, its actually not.

For some reason, I had these popiah cravings each day. So much so I went as far as to search for popiah recipes on how to make and prepare them. Finally on 24/7, I went to Queenstown to buy the popiah skin ( $8 for 1/2 a kg and $16 per kg). I wanted to buy some sweet sauce for $2 per bottle too but I didn't have enough money as I had gotten myself some popiah beforehand. I bought the rest of the ingredients on sunday, which consisted of, lettuce, turnip, eggs, beansprouts, crushed nuts and sweet sauce. I started to wash the turnip and peel it once I got home. Since the kitchen was kinda busy during that time because my sister wanted to prepare for her western dinner, I went to sentosa and met up with maddy, mervin and SC.

When I got home from Sentosa, my father had already prepared the turnip. He had boiled it with chicken broth. The next day, I began making my popiah.

<--------- all the ingredients for my popiah

Took out the eggs and boiled some water and tried to make hard boil eggs. I didn't put them in hot water long enough and they didn't become fully hard boiled ( the center of the egg was still abit runny). Using the hot water that was left from boiling the egg, I used it to cook my beansprouts. While the beansprouts are being boiled, I shelled the prawns. I then reused the water to boil the prawns. Next I microwaved the turnip and washed the lettuce.

the popiah's base ---------------------------->

I laid 2 pieces of popiah skin then spread the sweet sauce over it. Placed a piece of lettuce and started adding the ingredients one by one. First the beansprouts, followed by peanuts, prawns and finally the turnip itself.

^ ^

my very first popiah made (dont know if my 2nd popiah made

you can even call it a popiah) XD

Thats all for now, gonna try making some kaya toast next.....

The simpsons movie outing on 18/08/07

Levallon arranged for us to meet at 1pm at sommerset MRT station but as usual there were late comers (I was one of them). After waiting for everyone to arrive at sommerset (the last few people to reach there was me and mervin), we headed down to cineleisure We met up with chilly and sea_gal soon after at cineleisure itself. We went to get tickets for shucks and viva and proceeded to the food court for our lunch. As I was not going to be watching the movie with the rest of the gang, I passed on lunch at cineleisure and went to Hong Lim Complex at chinatown intead, after the rest went to the theater.

My 2 rules of eating at hong lim complex:

1) Eat crayfish horfun if you go there before 3pm XD

Well sadly I didnt get to eat crayfish horfun but I managed to get prawn horfun (they ran out of crayfish and chicken by the time I got there).

It still tastes as good as ever. The prawns was quite fresh and give quite a fair bit of them. Asked them for extra gravy though XD.

Cost: $3.50 ($4 for crayfish and prawns)

2) Eat mincemeat noodles / wanton mee / nasi lemak

Well since I cant eat all the 3 above, I picked the mincemeat noodles (ba chor mee). It been almost 4 months since I ate it. After taking the first bite, the taste of vinegar tingles my taste buds. With the 2 pieces of fish wanton eated and the bowl of soup drunk, I decided to try some curry puffs.

Cost: $3 for small---------------------------->

$4 for big (extra wantons and more noodles)

After completing my lunch, I decided to try out the curry puffs recommended by some TV show. I then headed back down to cineleisure to meet up with those who went for the movie. We didn't have any idea on what to do next so we walked aimlessly around orchard until we reached Plaza Singapura. Mervin and sk wanted to listen to some arcade sounds but we didnt even go to the arcade in the end. We went to comic connections instead. We roamed around Plaza Singapura waiting for Grace, Jade and Jenson to arrive. In the mean time, we checked out a music store and levallon bought a 881 OST for his mum. Then we checked out Gelare from story above while we continued waiting. While we are looking at how they were making waffles, suddenly we saw Jeremy walking to Gelare and buying himself some brownie ice cream. After Grace, Jade and Jenson arrived, we headed down to Merridian for dinner. Monich and Ivan arrived about 30 mins later. It was Monich's first outing and I didnt expect him to be that tall despite people saying he is. We sat at Merridian until 9pm when called saying that there was going to be fireworks. And surely enough, there were fireworks. I didn't get to see much of it though as a most of the trees were obstructing my view. From then on we went back to plaza singapura, this time to starbucks. I bought some vanilla mocca drink and it tasted horrible. Nick joined us while we were at starbucks We countinued to chat till about 11pm then it was time to part ways.

Time flies when you are having fun....

The week when the WCG is going to be being held always excites me unfortunately for me, this year happens to be a major disappointment. I was hoping that there will be something to look forward too despite the small advertisement on the newspapers (none of which mentions the activites going to be held at event itself). We reached the convention center about 1.45pm and managed to catch the cosplayers in action. The place the definately more lively that the previous time we came. Now after seeing what we needed to see at the WCG, its time for the study outing.

This time the study outing is held at the Orchard library instead of the usual National library near bugis. Managed to do a few sums before I became hungry. Me, wen wei, seng kwann, mervin and jeremy when down to takashimaya's food haven to get some food. Mervin got his takoyaki while jeremy got his mua chee, takoyaki and brownies (I wonder how he can spend like that....). We all finally settled on a garlic loaf each from st. leven for $1.40 per loaf. It was good stuff. We back up to the library, stayed there about 1hr before we left. We then headed to meridian's food court for dinner. I had Ban mian, it was average but the soup was tasty. After dinner we went to plaza singapura as loco wanted to go to the arcade. We saw a lady who was dominating in one of the machines. She won abt 3 bags worth of sweets and plushies. Well everyone went their seperate ways around 10.15pm.