Breakfast At BB's

I was wondering where to go for SEP (if I got it, that is) and I've figured I wanna go to the UK!!!

There are four unis available:
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (North East England)
University of Sheffield (South Yorkshire)
Strathclyde University (GLASGOW!!!!)
Delft University of technology (Netherlands)

I hope I can go to these places. Looking at my CAP, however, I feel a bit cynical. I will pray very, very hard.

Anyway, I came to this conclusion because I had breakfast with my oldddd budddy Meei Yunn this morning, at BB's. It's always super duper fun whenever I'm with her because she's just crazy!! Anything goes with her, there's no such thing as impossible...hahaah...And then she told me all about her adventures backpacking in the UK and I soooo wanna go there!! And while I'm there I am going to Scotland. Yes. I MUST GO SCOTLAND. If I don't get Strathclyde. And Ireland. And go all around the UK. :) :) I just hope I can go there. Pray. Pray very hard.

I should be going in year4, I guess. First sem, probably. Wonder if Bo Kheng will still be in Scotland then, then I can get her to take me around haha.

I took loads of pics of dimsum but I will upload them later cos my cam is upstairs and I'm lazy to get up. They look very nice :)

Here they are:


Beautifully soft on the inside, packs a crunch on the outside with a distinctive sesame seed taste!


This one was lovely. So soft and gooey! The prawns made this dish very sweet.


A teensy bit dry, but not bad! Slightly peppery.


This one was moist and tasty!


Our feast...Lor Mai Kai was a bit too oily and the Xiao Long Bao too salty. But who's complaining? If not fr Meei Yunn I'd have had to go without dim sum for...for...probably forever!! :) She belanja-ed too!! Thanks sweetie!! *MUAKS!! *MUAKS!!

Now I'm a bit full for lunch hahaha. I'm feeling rather excited about the new semester. Are you feeling excited? I'm excited. There are so many things I want to do!! I loved this hols and I don't want it to end. But I'm also excited about my new semester and the new things I'll be learning...Design 4, Architectural Construction II, Design with Environmental Systems and Theory of Urban Design. Maybe, just maybe I'll take an elective. But should I? 24 mcs is alot already. I got my mcs for Planet Earth, so it actually isn't very important for me to take an extra mod this time around. But sometimes electives can be fun to take, especially when its something completely different. It's fun to study those when you're sick of your major :)

Ohh, the food above made me hungry...And I remembered I forgot that I had photos of another day out with some form 6 mates!!


We had Big Apple Donuts for breakfast! Bobo was my model for the day as Hui Yin and Lianne are seriously camera shy haha.


Tom Yam for lunch!! We visited the Gardens for this, and it seems that the Food Court at the Gardens only just opened!! Lianne got a complimentary discount card and I got my Tom Yam at 10% off...it was nice, but not great (food court food, but not bad!!)

We went to Kim Gary's for dinner. Hui Yin had discount vouchers for Kim Gary, so we die die had to go!! It expired end dec, haha.


Drinks and stuff...


BOBO and her chicken cutlet and sunny side up egg. She dissected the egg by removing the yolk carefully...and...I'm sorry, chicken.


This is not rabbit!! It is Hui Yin's seafood platter dish thingie!! It was huge!! Look at BOBO's fingers for scale.


My meal...CHEESY WASABE SOMETHING SOMETHING!!! It was really wonderfully cheesy...there wasn't much of a wasabe taste, though...Sigh...but oh the cheesy-ness!!! Sigh Sigh Sigh...


Me and BOBO!!!


Hui Yin and BOBO!!


Hui Yin and me!!!!

We had to take the photos like that because there were three of us and we didn't want to trouble other people haha...Lianne wasn't in the pic cos she left after a Mango Ice at Kim Gary's...and she wouldn't want me to put a photo here either :)

I'm soo glad I've been in Singapore for nearly a year and a half (sooo short??!!? O.o) and I am still in touch with all my old buddies! Though I have the strangest feeling that for my F6 outings, they arrange one everytime I'm back in Malaysia...I guess I'm the only one they can't meet up with just anytime...only even though they can meet up just anytime they don't!! Unless they're studying in IMU together. A lot of them ended up in IMU!!! Hahaha, anyway, so glad to meet up again...

Yuta!

Oh

I am going to have 28MCs next sem.

I have developed a taste for food blogs. They always have these great pictures in them. Anyway, I think I shall share a recipe with you all. It's one of the few of mine which is tends to be successful 85% of the time, if I don't modify it.

Herby Yogurt Chicken

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, skinned and cleaned, salted and peppered.
1 tbs chopped fresh herbs (thyme, rosemary and oregano)
2 tbs diced garlic
2 tbs diced onions
1/2 a cup of yogurt

1. Mix everything together around the chicken.
2. Marinate for anywhere between overnight to 15 minutes.
3. Grill in microwave oven for 30 minutes.
4. Carve and serve.

Hainanese Boiled Chicken

1 whole chicken with skin on
1 knob of ginger
1 tbs soya sauce
1 drop of sesame oil

1. Put ginger and chicken in pot breast down and cover with water.
2. Turn flame down the moment the water boils.
3. Simmer for 15 minutes. Turn chicken around.
4. Simmer for 30-45 minutes depending on chicken size. DO NOT OVERCOOK.
5. Remove immediately and put in a basin of ice cold water.
6. Remove skin, carve. Serve with soya sauce and ONE DROP of sesame oil.

Vege Dish

1 head of broccoli, floretted
2 medium carrots, sliced
mushrooms
10-15 prawns
a bit of garlic
salt, pepper

1. Blanche broccoli for 3 minutes.
2. Blanche carrots for 5 minutes.
3. Heat a bit of stock/olive oil in a frying pan, put the garlic in.
4. When it smells nice, add mushrooms, stir around till cooked.
5. Turn off flame, add prawns and stir around WITHOUT FLAME.
6. Put broccoli and carrots in a nice bowl, add a bit of chopped thyme if you like. 7. Pour your mushrooms and prawns on top.

Tom Yum Goong

My favouriteee!!!

2 cups prawn stock/chicken stock
prawns, peeled and de-veined if you like.
lemongrass
lime leaves
lime juice
sliced chili padi
mushrooms if you like
tomatoes if you like
cabbage if you like
Tofu if you like
tomyum spicepaste (well, it simplifies things)
(other if you likes: chicken, fish, squid, shellfish)

1. Add spice paste to pot with lime leaves. Add stock.
2. Add the if you likes. Add chili padi.
3. Bring to boil, then simmer till dinner. Add lime juice to taste.
4. Turn off flame just before serving. Add prawns (with flame off) and stir around till they turn pink. Serve.

I am hungry lah...

Justin Chen ROCKS

You gotta love this guy.

Da On

Might as well upload pics while I'm on! :) My gold improved and so my date went really well. I had FOUR dates rather than the expected three! So glad!! It has been ages since I've seen Lianne and Shi Hui, and Lisia and Jin Yi. Dates with them are always fun. There are people whom you can talk about absolutely anything under the sun with, and these group of friends are just that to me. We share the same interests (well, we connect each other's interests, if you get what I mean) and each of us has something unique that we share with one of the group individually and once we get together you could call it...synergy, meaning that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts! :)

The food was pretty good...if you happen to like kimchi. The company was even better!


We ate at a Korean restaurant at Pavilion called Da On.


Sauteed kimchi with beancurd. Shi Hui loved it. Lianne refused to take even a bit. The rest of us were somewhere in between. Remember what I said about connecting interests? Haha.


The rice was good. Had something crunchy in it.


The guy barbecued our meat.


I wanted to take a clearer one but the meat got cooked.


What you do, is you wrap the barbecued meat in the cabbage, and then you pop it in your mouth.


Lisia's Korean teacup was super cute.


The plate was cute too.


This was where the spoon and the metal chopsticks were put, isn't it cute!! (I did have a slight obsession with tableware. The waiters and waitresses looked very bemused.


We had some strange chilli thing and chopped garlic and peanut-ty sesame oil thingie to eat with our other stuff. Yeah, I rather liked the tableware. I didn't touch the nicely chopped garlic!


Herbal ginseng chicken soup. It was tasty.


A beautifully cut watermelon. I took the photo, and then the others were allowed to eat :)

After that we went to times bookstore and walked around reminiscing of the times we had together...sigh. I miss those times.


Have a very Merry Christmas, everyone!

Ooo, Yuta!!


He plays the harmonica! :)

It's Christmas Eve

Christmas isn't Christmas,
till it happens in your heart,
Somewhere deep inside you,
Is where Christmas really starts,
So give your heart to Jesus,
You'll discover when you do,
That it's Christmas, really Christmas,
For you...

I found it rather difficult to find the lyrics for this song, and a version I found said ''give your heart to people" rather than Jesus, in an effort to become politically correct. I think the original is more accurate though :) This is cos you can't really discover the real meaning of Christmas unless you know what Jesus' birth is about. I don't think giving your heart to people helps very much, because people can break your heart.

This song has been playing in my head all through December for some reason and that's why I HAVE to share it with you all. Its a really nice song because its so simple, and the reason for Jesus' birth is so simple too, if you care to listen. Storytime!! (haha, been babysitter for too long)

Long time ago in Bethlehem, (cue: the song!! ...so the Holy Bible Says, Mary's boy child, Jesus Christ, was born on Christmas day!!) a little boy was born to Mary and Joseph. Just a year ago, an angel visited Mary just before her marriage to Joseph, and told her that she would be with child, and no ordinary child, but one who would be the messiah, or the savior!

That night, angels visited some poor shepherds in Bethlehem and told them the good news of their saviors birth!! (cue: Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her King!!). The shepherds were very, very excited, because it had long been prophesied that a messiah would come. So they asked the angels where the baby was, and then they rushed to the stable where baby Jesus was sleeping in a manger (cue: Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the Little Lord Jesus, laid down his sweet head...) and worshiped him.

Not long later, three wise men came from far off lands (some say they came from Iran) following a bright star that positioned itself above the stable where Jesus lay. They brought with them gold, frankincense, and myrrh (cue: come they told me...a rapapumpum, a new born king to see, a rapapumpum...our finest gifts we bring, a rapapumpum rapapumpum so to honor him rapapumpum when we come...)

Like the little drummer boy, none of us have large gifts to bring. What we have is our lives and how we choose to live it. We also have talents that God has blessed us with. The wise men knew the worth of Jesus' birth. Most people don't know it, unfortunately, and the commercial Christmas we have nowadays are just ploys by people to make money out of other people.

If only they knew! Then Christmas would give you warm shivers down your spine and gladness and safety that a good God looks down from heaven and is always ready to listen to and guide you.

Jesus grew up and did a lot of wonderful things (cue: it's all in the B-I-B-L-E!!!) for mankind. Mankind did not appreciate it much, though. So because some jealous priests in the temple hated him for exposing their hypocrisy, they worked the people against him. Thus, it came to be that God's own people, the Jews, and sent Jesus to death on the cross.

It must have been the devil's greatest hour. Here, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was being killed! He must have laughed with glee. But then, Jesus' death was part of God's plan. When Jesus hung on the cross, he took the sins of Adam and Eve, of you and me, he took lying tongues, murder, adultery, jealousy, pride, lust, greed and carried them on him. When he did this, he looked so ugly in God's eyes that God turned His face away from His only son.

Then Jesus died. When he died, many things happened at once, all of great significance. Lets take a look at the underworld. In hades Jesus descended, he has to go there because he possesses evil, and all evil is bound for hell. The devil laughs, he thinks that he has won.

Now lets look at earth. The sky grows dark, and hailstorms begin. In the temple, the curtain is ripped in two. This curtain for many, many years has separated the Holy of Holies (where God's presence is) from the common people. Now that Christ has taken all of man's evils, it is now possible for men to enter God's presence. (Some say that some of the Jewish priests believed in Christ when they saw the curtain rip cos they knew the prophecies).

Back to the underworld. The devil looks around him. Something is happening on earth. And what on earth is Christ doing? He has stripped off the sins of men and is wiping his hands. Sin is now in its rightful place. And Christ is getting ready to return to return to his rightful place. I bet the devil was wringing his hands now. His plans aren't quite going the way he wanted it to.

Back to earth. Christ has been dead for three days. Guards have even been placed at his tomb just in case he wakes up so that they can keep him dead. Then wolla, he appears to loads of people!! To his disciples, to the women who mourned his death.

Ok, I skipped some of the underworld bits. Well, Jesus was a man without sin. He was also God. (lets skip this theological debate) So because of that, he was able to overcome death and hades and come back to life, and not just life, but everlasting life.

And so Christ was the first one to overcome death, and that is also his gift to us. All we have to do is give our hearts to Jesus (cue: you know the deal...), believing that God loved us so much (dyou think a hating god would do that?) that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believe in Jesus shall not perish but have everlasting life.

Hmm, I've written too much. It's Christmas now. Disclaimer: The above is MY version of the Christmas story (hope you liked it, if you bothered to read it, thanks!!) and the original (and far more detailed and exciting story (extras such as the story of Abraham, Moses, Joseph etc included) (Oh, let me tell you there is loads of blood, gore, passion and betrayals in here as well) (erm, that's for those who like the stuff) is available in the B-I-B-L-E) Copies of this are available in most bookstores, and also available through your nearest Christian. I think I may be available.

Gold

I'm wondering if I ought to be happy or very, very sad. I am habing a bad, bad gold. Bery, bery bad gold. In bact, I dink this ith the worth gold I'be had bor a long, long dime. Id ith a scientifically proven fact that colds tend to make one feel extremely low (or was it the flu?) but anyway, I am feeling terrible, and I look the part.

I have to get better tomorrow because I have a date with three secondary school friends. I miss them loads and I can't put it off because JY is flying away in less than a week's time. Hope I get better before tomorrow.

I am having a cold during Christmas. :(

On a happier note my cap has improved and I didn't fail Planet Earth. :) Thank God, thank God, thank God. My cap was so bad last time that even if I hadn't s/u-ed Planet Earth my cap now is still better than last sem's cap. So means I have really improved and I am very happy despite the fact that I have a bad, bad cold.

I hope that my cap will continue to improve in the future. I have broken senior's predictions that cap goes down every semester so I think I won't believe in predictions any more. Feel much better and less bad about myself. Thank God for my results!!!

Pray my cold will improve and my cap will improve too.

Cheers to that!!

I checked up on flus and colds and I think I have the flu. The symptoms of the flu are achy head and muscles and chills and decreased apetite. I don't have a high fever tho, so means that I may have a cold after all. I'm glad I'm not a doctor because I think I will diagnose everybody wrongly. I am also glad I am not a student doctor studying in imu because their finals begin on dec 30th and they have to study during Christmas. I wonder which is worse, studying during Christmas or having a cold during Christmas.

I am quite sad about that because I can't meet up with two of my f6 friends due to this exam.

Okay I will stop my ramblings because if I sit up too long the headache comes back.

Oh dear, here's Yuta, I nearly forgot to put him:


He is very handsome.