Farewell Shoes

Today I bid farewell to Pazzion. Thou have served me so well though I exploited thee. Thou has shielded my soles from torrents, sun and pain without complaint. And today thou shall enter eternal rest. Obit.
On a better note, I have yet to finish blogging about my time in 黑社会. Thai-style dishes were fabulous as well.

Made a mental note to order some Hoegardden if I get these dishes the next time I visit. Caloric counting activites can be dismissed in the light of the beer-belly inducing mixture of chilled Hoegardden to wash down crisp, spicy crunches of popcorn sized-chicken and crab.

Plagued by one (or more) of the 7 deadly sins

I confess that I have a lot of schoolwork to do, but I am not doing them. And I do not have a good reason for not doing them. The crux of the matter is, I am too lazy to get them done. My sloth has overwhelmed me to the point where I am aware that I might be receiving a result slip, some few months from now, with UUUUUU on it, accompanied by an academic warning letter, but still, here I am wasting time.

So why am I blogging? Because I have figured, under some twisted kind of logic, that if I had to waste some hours of my life either by sitting around doing nothing or blogging, I'd take up the latter.

I shall begin with something I forgot to blog about yesterday (another syndrome of sloth: Forgetfulness. Hell, what is this coming to!). Anyway, after weeks and weeks of catching it every wednesday 8:30p.m. and rewatching episodes on youtube as some kind of inspiration before I work out, I finally had my 2 seconds of Ninja Warrior, on a double decker bus no. 143 no less.

It happened when i was descending the top deck to get off at Harbour Front, only for my gripless John Little Sale slipper to live up to its namesake at the 2nd last step. The slipper slipped. Ok, my reaction time and sense of balance is not as astute as that of 綾子三宅 and that sent me tumbling, almost! Thankfully, I happened to be hanging on tightly to the bars on each side and so, for 2 seconds, I was actually suspended above the steps of a double decker bus ala one of the 3rd stage obstacles!

Cheap Thrill huh.

Today began with me waking up much later than usual (sloth. This habit has to stop. God Help me please.) and Jie and I joined a friend for lunch at West Coast Plaza's BBQ Chicken.

I chose the typical cafe offering i.e. set lunch. It began with this:

The liquid contents were nothing to shout about, nothing to complain about. Really fitted into the 'typical cafe soup of the day out of the can style of thing' category. But I did have an issue with those square objects you see floating in the yellow broth. This is the first cafe I know of that actually drops salt cubes into the soup of the day. Seriously management, if you want to get customers to rip more items off the drink menu, how about offering some authentic Korean style concoctions instead?

And the sodium overload persisted with the chicken as well. Mine was called 'Hot Hot Drumlets' .

But it was sufficiently spicy :) And the chips were real chips, the fluffy type, without the aid of flour.
Ok so I had a good lunch. But at $11.90 for the whole set, I don't think I'll be back anytime soon.

Strangely, typing this post has given me a renewed sense of vigour to continue with my pursuit towards becoming superwoman. Here I Go!

The Big Fat Snail

The recent disruption in my frequency of blogging daily has been due largely to a lack of blog-worthy materials, and unfortunately, to a smaller extent due to me getting back into the momentum for school. Today would have passed as yet another day of me doing nothing productive, but with it also being the last day of the holidays, I simply had to dig into every nook and cranny of my life in order to find something to blog about.

Ok so I will ramble about yesterday's movie.Jie and I went to watch 崖の上のポニョat the Tiong Bahru GV. We had intended to head down to the more lively VivoCity instead, but detoured to Tiong Bahru Plaza when we realized that the evening shows at the former were already half-full. And it was a good thing we did, since the best movie experience is none other than in a relatively empty cinema which does not compromise on screen or seat quality. Boy do i hate jostling with crowds, crowds with handphones, for the matter.

We had 40mins to spare before the movie so we trudged down to the basement for some Ajisen Ramen.

The broth had been spiced to suit the local chilli-addict standard, but it was marred by the fake 卵 plopped like a disc in the bowl .

And then we went up for ポニョ. This 宮崎tale only warmed, but didn't tug hard enough at my heartstrings and at times I got annoyed, rather than cooed over the rebellious eloping ポニョ. However, I did leave the theatre feeling sad, since every 宮崎 film inevitably reminds me of his masterpiece 千と千尋の神隠し. (I cannot believe they ended the film without letting 千尋 see ハク again.)

I also learnt that carting those obscenely overpriced movie house goodies into the theatre serves more than the purpose of providing GV with about 90% of their revenue. It helps the viewer mask the pungent odour of the cheesy mayo(yikes) hotdog emanating from the tween in front.

Today started with breakfast at Wang Jiao with Jie, Clarise and Yong Xiang. As we made our way to our common destination, we encountered many of these:

I would have wanted to place my ruler beside those snails so that the picture could tell how remarkably huge the one on the right was. However, convinced that no amount of washing and detergent would be able to rid my ruler of snail secretions, the faithful mathematical instrument (which has seen me through countless math exams) stayed within the pencil case. That pretty much leaves me with typing out the characters 4.5inches to express how large it really was.

Fortunately, the snails did not spoil my appetite for lunch, or maybe it was just the company which helped.

And, why did KFC shrink their chickens?

On a more serious note, I am starting to feel the 'school starts tomorrow' dread I have been experiencing every 1st jan for the past 12 years of my life. But since I have promised to make every semester better than the previous one, I shall undergo a drastic change and wake up tomorrow with a grin and voracious appetite for my books - even as I sit at the computer playing the finger dash for another module which my school has robbed from me.

Yes, I must increase the intensity and quantity of time I spend on school and even C work, but several things still must go on!

Here goes another list:

1. Jogging (Pounding the pavement as ガゼットblasts in my ears is the best way to unwind.)

2. Swimming (I am no good at this, but since Dad and Mum already paid so much for it, I have to. Besides, my knees will thank me in time.)

3. Gym-out (I am no gym bunny, but this shall be my West Coast substitute when it pours.)

4. 日本語 (Yes this has to go on)

5. Anything related to Piano and Cello (I am so tempted to physically squeeze my brain for the juices to spawn some form of song/musical.)

6. Driving (Damn those haphazard instructors and the freakin difficult examination up ahead. But for the ability to control something on 4 wheels, I've already gritted my teeth.)

A Red and Rare Dinner

Slapping on a facial mask is one of my most treasured forms of therapy, albeit only for 15mins a week. So when I do paste that turquoise muck all over my face, all I want to do is zonk out (euphemistically speaking: purge my mind). However, today's affair with Gatineau was starkly different with me rushing to prise my laptop out of its shell once the muck had settled and I had rinsed my hands of it. I had stumbled upon some blog-worthy material from my home cooked dinner today.

My sucky camera didn't do any justice to the piquant bowl of Red Wine Chicken Mee Swa. A dish unique of my Hakka dialect group, it is the product of gently boiled chinese red wine, tender chicken pieces and smooth strands of mee swa. What I loved most about it was how the wine was so skilfully cooked that it surfaced only as a soft undertone beneath the chicken stock.

And there was no better way to enjoy it then with slice after slice of red chilli.

I'm very blessed to have Eden jiejie, my family's skilled domestic worker who has lived with us for 20 years. Nothing beats home cooked meals this way.