Unsavoury Bird's Nest

So that was what I had for dinner yesterday. Kudoes to Dad's culinary skills, speciality being the art of turning the simplest of foods into the tastiest of morsels, using the simplest equipment. This corn was simply plucked from the chiller, seasoned with pepper and salt, steamed over some careful timing, and was as delicious as ever.

And today we were slapped with a shock. I still cannot put a finger on how those mynahs squeezed through a hole so small, carted along with them so many twigs and plastic substances, sanitary pads inclusive, to create a mess so huge it reeked of rotting vegetation. Pictoral Evidence as follows:



This was only the bottom half.



And here's the top.



And they even found time to spawn. That white spherical object, above the lump of plastic, is actually a hatched egg.

As if finding this mess in my grandma's house (where we used to live) was not a shocking enough surprise, the process of finding used sanitary pads, plastic sheets, feathers and live cockroaches pop up amidst the heaps of twigs as we cleared the stinking mess had to be interrupted by the false homeowners aka the mynahs, launching an assault on the house. So yes, while Dad continued to scrape through the heap and Jie and I rushed to close the windows (seal all possible routes of entry!), the only word that ran through my mind was - hitchcock.

I was not exaggerating. What kind of birds take over your house at such an alarming rate and even leave warnings to mark their presence?

A cockroach with its innards ripped out, shell left behind intact. Remember those movie scenes where the protagonist walks into the killer's home only to find a skull? Yes, that was it.

So after 30mins of cleaning and fending rabid mynahs, the house was restored to its proper human-habitating status again.

I cannot stand to have the post end this way.

This is better!

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 Christmas Season

So yes, 23 hours and 7 mins of Christmas Day has passed and I finally have the chance to sit down and blog about the things that happened during the holiday season this year. The family did have a Christmas lunch (and dinner) today over at my paternal cousin's place, but I have no photographs to show simply because I was too preoccupied with playing Rock Band and Rummie. In fact, Jie and I got so caught up with Rock Band that we didn't even manage a full lunch. Hunger only started to set in after we reached home and hence we begin feasting - almost immediately - on the leftover turkey, siew yoke and popiah that we brought back from lunch (hence the earlier parenthesis).

However, I am blessed to have another Christmas lunch to attend this Saturday and I am rather certain that I will return back with a full stomach as well as a camera bursting of pictures. Simply because this lunch would be over at my maternal cousins' place, the group of relatives to which I am comparatively closer to.

Hence, apart from the above-mentioned lunch and Rock Band, the only other thing the family did today was to attend church. I had expressed my feelings for the music event in an earlier blogpost with a picture of Gazette's Uruha. Now that the music event is over, part of me is still sunken in such an emotion, namely because of 'key' troubles with a classic christmas carol. But, I shall have to chuck aside my humanly sentiments in favour of what He has to say.

On this note, Mum and me took a trip down to PS 2 days ago and were happy to see this as part of the decoration:

Almost like a 3 dimensional version of my Sunday School books. Lovely. I bet it struck a chord with my mum, the ever so hardworking Sunday School Coordinator.

Then we headed over to Spotlight, since Mum decided to (gasp!) sew the curtains for the new house by herself. Entering Spotlight was awesome. Encountering rows and rows of fabric like this

and this

put together in a technicolour tapestry! A feast for the eyes.

But of course we were looking for raw materials for curtains, and so sifted through stacks of this

and more of it!

And I simply had to laugh when I saw this

The use of a literary device - the fricative! Was this divine intervention, or what? Maybe God was hinting that school is starting soon and I'd better snap out of holiday mood. On hindsight, it appears that God was indeed making his presence known as well. Here is another testament to that:

How often is it that 3rd Commandment appears in print medium apart from the most famous book in the world? And here it is on a piece of fabric designed for clothes!

Well, we emerged from the divine Spotlight with good stacks of lace. Now the hardest part would be to get down to sewing the curtains. We barely completed the first step - unpicking the extra strip of fabric along the top - and boy it was so much harder than expected. But heck, there's so much more work that needs to be done for the new place I'd just grit my teeth and work with the needle and thread, and 2m long piece of lace.

Yesterday we encountered a rather disappointing incident regarding the new house. However, it did produce 2 rims of silver lining as well. Firstly, it served a bigger incentive to get the new house ready for habitation ASAP. Simply because that disappointing incident could have been avoided if the place was ready. Secondly, it let us to discover the way to cook corn in a toaster. Mum did it a la barbecue style, with silver foil and all. And it emerged excellent.

As sweet and juicy as it would have emerged from a steamer. I had 3 chunks to myself.

A delicious Christmas Eve dinner. Speaking of which, I still have not given up my dream to host a lavish Christmas banquet for family and friends, and I believe I would be able to host it over at the new house. Next year maybe.

And, before I hit the sack, Camello (the crayfish) started to freak me out again by attempting to crawl out of the red tub. The creepy sound produced when his feelers and claws scraped against the smooth plastic surface convinced me that he had to go for real. So, this is what happened of him:

Good riddance. May you enjoy your new home @ Pierce Reservoir. Bet your fellow shelled counterparts will declare you King of the Puddle, since you definitely outshine them in the size department.