Unions

I hardly receive wedding invites and the times I do, I am invited simply because of association. Am I and my circle of friends just relatively young for marriage-age, or do I really have that little friends?

Anyway, I usually spend most of the time at the wedding trying to amuse myself and my company with the food, and talking about our ideal dream weddings.

I actually have 3 rather interesting pictures to post, but lunch is beckoning, and its Dad's cooking!

Wendy's Waste

Singapore's 'Wendy's' turned out to be such a waste of time and money :(

Soggy burgers, tiny patties, flat drinks and sweet beef chilli.

To think that I usually associate burgers with laid back, happy, chill-out moments where one can forget aobut weight watching and just sink the teeth into juicy chunks of meat slathered with salty relish and thick sauce in a toasted crisp bun.

What a horrid experience :(

The Great Photograph Excuse!

My attempts to blog are always thwarted by many external factors and 1 overriding internal factor.

I always have to complain about the slow picture upload rate, the wireless connection dial up boxes which can appear in rapid successive troves everytime I do something new and the self-destructing capabilites of Internet Explorer, and sometimes, Moz too.

Then sometimes I just get too lazy to actually come up with a suitable narrative for my blog entries. One which could, hopefully, tie my very random photographs together.


Case in point: Coffee that Jie and I had today.

Anyway, the new year is coming soon and I am excited!

Maybe, I should move to another platform.

At Long Last

Finally. After weeks of hunting high and low for the elusive shaved ice stall in Chinatown. Hooray for Dad and his trademark spontaneous food trips!

I was mistaken in thinking that Mum would order the durian shaved ice. 'Durian should only be eaten as it is, from the shell.' The mango ice was sweet and dense, such that the fresh mango cubes actually tasted sour in comparison. But they formed a perfect harmony of sweet and sour when eaten together.

I had the green tea shaved ice, which was very cool and refreshing and went delightfully well with the fresh red beans. Real red beans! You could actually seperate them bean by bean from the lump, instead of those dark purple paste with broken skins that you find in those run-of-the-mill dessert stalls. My only gripe was that the thick green tea bitterness did not permeate the entire mount of shaved ice, leaving the insides only about half as tasty as the outer crusts.


Dad and Jie went for hot desserts. The walnut paste was very smooth.

We tasted really good steamed milk and egg puddings during our family holiday to Hong Kong. Jie ordered the steamed egg custard with ginger, but it wasn't as smooth as those in Hong Kong. Jie only finished half the bowl.

Chinatown is such a haven for good food!

Its over for now

I have finished my last paper (is there any symbol which would be the equivalent of combing a fullstop wth an exclamation mark and a question mark at the same time?)

Somehow I felt a distinct sadness stab at me once the mechanicised voice chiming 'you may leave the hall' rang this time. I had heard that phrase 14 times before, but today, the 15th was just incredibly poignant. In fact, I even thought the voice sounded sad. So, after the exam, I walked down to Popular to get a roll of PVC wrap and bought myself a packet of MnMs too. I kept telling myself not to get any food from Popular bookstore, cause nobody else does and whatever is n the food rack is bound to be at least 2 years old, or even if it were younger, taste like it were that old. And I was right. Bland chocolate encased around peanuts that were not crunchy, but not even soft. They were simply, tasteless.

Now, I wonder if I looked silly hauling that PVC wrap all the way home without a plastic bag. Or would it have looked worse if I had used a plastic bag?

Anyway, I shall give myself a lot of things to do during this holiday break, though work is not one of them. My head tells me to go to the gym, now. Just 2 minutes ago it was telling me to go to the gym instead of blog, but here I am, to pen my thoughts and post pictures of some glorious food I had a few days ago:

Tender, tasty jiu he, fresh and crispy kangkong and beansprouts soaked in a tangy spicy and sweet broth and topped with crunchy peanuts. $2!

The best ngoh hiang I've ever eaten! Everything about this plate of deep fried Teochew style fritters was excellent, and the hae pia stayed crispy throughout the 2 bowls of sauce I went through (2nd one was topped up for free).
And it was served piping hot, from this stall in Chinatown.

I must go back again. The food there is awesome, and the atmosphere a blast!

Now that I've come to the end of this post, my head is yelling at me to put on my jogging shoes, but my eyes are telling me to just, sleep. What would I do when I get away from the computer? I will find out soon enough.

Keeping the Pieces, Cut.

The long, snaking queue for the ATM at West Coast Market reminded me of you, and I finally decided to cut up those snapshots you took, of both of us smiling like idiots at a blinding light in a made-in-japan camera trap.

I sat in my room. In front of the computer, my mind swathed in Romanticism, Modernism, Literature, Music. Art.

It was so much harder than I imagined, but when I finally closed the open blades onto that line, an imaginary one that I drew in between us, the cutting got easier. But I did pause, after i severed the first image. Initially, I thought we looked like two tourists trying to toggle a neoprint machine in some Kabuki Cho parlour. I was completely unaware that you had actually slotted in a coin, and thus the camera caught me at the point where i was staring aimlessly outside of the box. Now I remember, I was actually looking at the escalator, feeling very absurd then at the thought of feeding the hungry camera trap. But then you paid for it. So it was fine with me. And you. You really looked like one of those cheaply thrilled individuals who get high over spending ridiculous amounts of money on tiny, garishly glossy photographs. The cheesy smile on your face, which was pressed so close to me as I looked away from the screen, looked like a knee-jerk happy reaction to another of your cheesy, cheap thrills.

Cut after cut was made till the frozen moment broke away into 8 fragments. Then Mum had to enter the room. And ask me what I was doing. Please, I do not want to go through the trouble of explaining it. I am already annoyed, so fed up over the upcoming test on Monday which has rendered me the only one in my group of friends who is not enjoying their holiday already. Did you walk in on purpose, at that specific time? Or was it just another of your unannounced forays into the study room?

And so I put the scissors down and returned to Chekov. And i placed the cut pieces of you and me back into the pink packet, thinking that, I rather have cut pieces of You and me, than to throw them away.

Somehow, I feel so much better, to see You and Me, cut.

Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve Trip 1

The long drive across various highways and a concrete skyline finally yielded to nature as we turned into Kranji. Soon enough, we were coursing along an uneven bitumen segmented with a single white line, meandering through smaller roads pockmarked with casually parked heavy vehicles, and we reached Sungei Buloh.

We were promptly greeted by a lizard enjoying an afternoon dip.

We met the above-pictured when we crossed the bridge connecting the carpark to the wetland reseve.
I was hoping that it would swim nearer to us so that I could capture the nuances of its scales. But instead it began swimming away, toward the thicker vegetation. It coursed deeper into the depths.

Till we could not see it anymore.
The lizard's disappearance was promptly sufficed by us encountering a larger one soon after. I was apprehensive about taking this picture since this lizard was only about 1m away, and there was nothing to actually seperate us from it i.e. we were atop the unfenced broadwalk. Jie had to reassure me countless times that taking a picture of a monitor lizard 1m away was highly unlikely to result in a display of behaviour akin to celebrities against nosy paparazzi, sharp teeth and claws at that. I held my breath as I pressed the trigger. The lizard did not move, but we did. And made our way to the project site.

Jie's project involves measuring plankton levels and water composition at specific points along Sungei Buloh. Simple string and paper tags were tied along the way as reference points.

The tide was high. Even Jie was surprised that the water level was verging on overflowing the boardwalk. I really should have taken a photograph of the side of the boardwalk with the water almost up to the path, but I happened to be kneeling on the boardwalk then and hence snapped at it from top-down. I hope the shards of reflection in between the wood is a good gauge of how close the water was to the boardwalk.

I was kneeling down to get a good shot of this:

This is the apparatus Jie has to use to capture the plankton. It resembled a coffee strainer not only in terms of apearance, but also via the gestures required to operate it. First, immerse the appartus into the swampy broth.

Next, raise it up and down a couple of times to steady the mixture.

And pour the mixture into the specimen jars.

Certain parts of the reserve were adrift with junk. And the water on the right side of the boardwalk was coated with a film of oil.

A piece of driftwood rests in between two examples of its source.

The boardwalk was surrounded by a whole variety of trees. Some of which were very uniquely shaped.

I could not help but wonder if the trees were irritated, assuming they can feel, by myraid of organisms clinging, possibly freeriding, on them. I assumed the worst for the trees and plucked one of the shells off.

This is how they look like flipped over.

The black circle tucked in the lower left corner is actually a coiled structure that works like an anteannae. No sooner after I flipped it over, the black structure uncoiled and began poking its way around, before the brown soft portion extended like a snail and flipped itself shell up again.

I had always wanted to have a closer look at the adhesive devices that molluscs use to attach themselves to other objects so firmly. Had I a pair of laboratory gloves, I would have ventured as far as to touch the soft innards as well. Half of my curiousty left unsatisfied by the absence of protective tools. I better remember to bring some along next time.

The trees were also invaded by a host of crabs.

And had their roots perched on, very occasionally, by the highly elusive mudskipper.



Jie was much quicker in spotting them than I was. I recall walking along the boardwalk, having the morning quiet interrupted by soft splashes of water coming from totally random directions. Those splashes would catch me totally unaware but they went by so fast that I barely even had time to see the movements in the water, let alone capture it in a photo. I had my walk disrupted so many times by the mudskippers that I actually began to suspect a crocodile at work. So I walked back to Jie, who was collecting the 2nd reading at that time to declare that the splashes were becoming increasingly disconcerting.

'They are mudskippers. There is one over there.' Came the calm reply, and hence the photographs.

'The crocodile is at the main bridge. It won't come here' - another calm, experienced reply to allay my fears. For a moment I pictured a crocodile rising from the water, and since the tide was so high, sliding torpedo style swiftly across theboard walk, a trail of the oily water in the wake of its destruction as it opened its jaws to devour everything in its path.

Fortunately, that did not happen. The only other reptiles we saw after that was a rare sea snake and a smaller lizard with skin so dry it resembled crushed old paper.

Have yet to identify the species, but we do know that the snake is poisonous! Jie was really happy to see it since this was the first time she encountered a sea snake for herself despite her numerous trips to Sungei Buloh.

Here is the lizard, its appearance of which i find to be less shocking and revolting in picture than in real life.

Thank God for the wonderful display of his creation, though it sometime scared me to bits! I shall be back to Sungei Buloh once my exams are over, and hopefully, we would get to see more animals next time.

Sungei Buloh

Does learning always become fun when there are no exams attached?

Maybe so!

Accompanying Jie for her plankton reading @ Sungei Buloh was an amazing opportunity to get in touch, literally, with nature. Surely, one trip to a wetland reserve would not suffice should I harbour plans to change course, considering that I spent more time taking pictures rather than actually taking water concentration readings or applying some statistical skills to it when I get home. But, it was a good chance for me to rekindle an interest in the life sciences. Yes, rekindle, and not kindle. There really was a point in my life when I considered reading marine biology at a university level. Alas, that would have prerequisited the 'triple science' combination, which I did undertake at secondary school level, only to switch completely at junior college, save for H2 Math. I blame a certain discipline, which till today I am convinced has only taught me how to exert a better force and the right angle in opening doors, for kiling my interest.

Anyway, while I contemplate on a suitable narrative to string the whole load of pictures together, here are some for a preview:

A black snake we encountered on our way back. It coursed gracefully through the undisturbed greenish water, slid up the muddy bank (time of photo capture), before it disappeared through the thick vegetation, whipping its tail about in the process.

We made coffee in the swamp.

No really. This coffee strainer look alike was one of the devices that Jie had to purchase for her honours project.
This was the furthest my phone camera could zoom to catch the monitor lizard in motion! I was amazed at myself for not screaming at the reptile, as I always do should I encounter their smaller counterparts at home. Instead, I was in a hurry to whisk out my phone before they slithered their way into the undergrowth. We spotted so many monitor lizards today, including one which was perched, posing on a rock, basking in the mid day sun.

Jie would probably have a lot to correct me about at this juncture! Is the curtain of hanging branches and leaves called an 'undergrowth'? Or are the cluster of low lying bushes atop the muddy bank to be addressed as 'vegetation'?

There is so much I do not know about the Life Sciences. Would any student of the aforementioned discipline who happens to be reading this correct me along the way (excluding Jie cause I know she would!)?

I think I would be maintaining a series of entries on my field trip journeys. Watch for more to come!

The Meme

Exam distractor ahoy!

1. You have to eat the same thing for the next three days. What do you pick?
Lotus Root and Corn Soup - comfort food

2. What's your favorite holiday?
Christmas =) Love the relaxed spirit. (same as Jie!)

3. What's a song that really annoys you?
I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world.

4. What's your favorite cartoon character?
Jonathan, from 'The Little Mermaid: Beginnings'

5. Who/what are you fangirling over the most recently?
シドの明綺！

To Market, To Market

I accompanied Dad to Vivo City's Sheng Shiong a couple of days ago. We journied there after breakfast at Tiong Bahru Market, where Jie and us braved the sweltering heat for good $1 Tausuan.

I was still burning when we reached Vivo, and was so tempted to cart home a bottle of cordial and a plastic bag full of this:

to make quick cooling ice balls. Until, I saw an identical tray a couple of steps ahead. Look what it contained!

I almost retched at the thought of stuffing my face full of fish flavoured ice, thinking that it'd be the most disgusting gastronomical related thought I could encounter that day, until I saw this:


Somehow, I've managed to relish Pig intestines both large and small, especially if they're done with brown sauce and served with kway chap. I've tolerated Pig stomach doused in a peppery broth, grudgingly pushed grainy bits of liver down my throat, and made my way through crackling rinds encasing pork knuckle, but I've never managed to chew on Pig tongue. Maybe someday I will.

On to more interesting items.

There were oranges.

Which did not smell very sweet, so we did not buy them, and neither did we pick up their smaller counterparts

And I would have picked these up:

If not for our earlier decision to serve up some simple Aglio Olio.

On to a meme from Jie's blog, to be updated next!