Otogicco

I have a recent fetish for this Japanese red riding hood called Otogicco... She is really cute! The mini love affair started when someone gave me a Otogicco-in-sitting-position clip (for holding pieces of paper upright)... Actually I have seen her previously in specialty stationery stores like Wood Would - but I have long gotten over my sec-sch-buy-cute-stationery phase. Plus - these stuff are always quite ex, so I have not made any rash irrational decision recently by spending say $10, $20 on a little notepad/ stickers and such... But maybe I shall hunt for some Otogicco paraphernalia when I go to Japan next week!!! :D

I have blatantly capitalised on Otogicco's cuteness for a mini office b-day celebration mailer heh. Yes, our COS is over!! (Not like I was part of the core group of long-suffering souls... but I think I will benefit from the less tense atmosphere in office from tmr onwards)

I turned 28 over the weekend... just 2 more years before the big '3'...! Was ill most of the week; but thankfully semi-recovered on Sat... Nice sis got me a relatively atas-looking little cake (which I chose) from a neighbourhood mall in Tampines on Fri night. It was a breakfast cake :)

Didn't end up doing anything particularly special; but sometimes being able to enjoy simple things in life is a blessing too... Only on my bday do my parents and sis crowd around a little piece of pastry to sing in unison FOR ME! And on this day you suddenly hear from and receive well wishes from many friends; but there are also some you hope to hear from but don't... heh.

I never really know beforehand what to wish for before blowing out my candle. This year it was the same. For now I still have the luxury of time to wish that I will figure out what to do with my life soon...

My summer lemmon mousse cake! I kinda liked how the lemon slices resembled bicycle wheels heh.

Tulips from someone special :)

Woke up with a bad sore throat this morning and decided to take one-day MC... there's so much work to do but v little motivation to get to them... bleah :(

On a brighter note, I have been taking Illustrator online classes the past few weeks, and am discovering how powerful and fun this program is! Alas, it is extremely extremely expensive and have yet to figure out a way to get hold of the software after my trial version expires :(

A simple homework piece I did for this week! The jap characters just read "Pretty flowers!" haha. These few simple Japanese characters have made the whole picture look a lot more poetic-looking... isn't it? Maybe I am biased.

Cooking Class @ TOTT

Pre-Valentine's, we took a cooking class together at Tools Of The Trade (TOTT) at Dunearn Rd. The class was called Cooking To Seduce: Kamasutra in the Kitchen, but obviously it was nowhere as suggestive. The only faint association with the title was the supposedly aphrodisiac nature of the dishes we were taught.

The class was pretty packed (we were typically given only up to 15/20 min for each dish) but quite fun. The cooking studio was really new and well-equipped with modern and chio kitchen utensils (which could be bought next door at their in-house store). The electric stove was also a bit too high-tech for me and I cldn't quite figure out how to operate it without assistance from the staff. Or maybe not that it's high-tech, but just that I seldom cook!

I realised that chopping is an essential and important skill to acquire... Cos we had to chop up stuff for practically every dish, my hands got a little achey at the end after chopping lotsa spring onions, leeks, lemongrass, ginger etc.

Our tom-yum soup... actually it isn't that difficult to make this after all :)

Oyster fritters in batter form. I was terrible at deep frying these - and transferred my frying duties to D halfway after a blob of hot oil leapt out of the pot onto my right forehead!

Time to savour the rest of the dinner! (The greenish looking thing is actually our ginger-crusted salmon; while the bowl of brown liquid is raspberry choc sauce for our fruit spring rolls. The oyster fritters with pomegranate chilli jam were gobbled up during class :P)

There was quite a bit of washing up to do throughout the class... but luckily kitchen assistants helped to do the more mafan parts...

Happy Valentine's!

Yoshitomo Nara@SAM

Just a bite-size post today about a talented Japanese artist who draws cute little girls with evil streaks... Though they all display some kinda rebellious behavior/evil gleam in the eye, they still somehow manage to look so cute. How come he so genius...

Year of the Rabbit

I received a bad piece of news on the last day of the Tiger year... my favourite colleague has decided to call it quits and she broke the news to me minutes before we knocked off on Wed afternoon. Her announcement came as a shock to me as I wasn't quite expecting it. Not that the thought of her quitting never crossed my mind (and in fact I've ever planted such an idea in her head...) but I suppose these events took place a couple of months ago so when 'disaster' finally struck, I found myself feeling rather upset. Hai... but hopefully, my fav colleague will move on to a more fulfilling job that makes her happier :)

That aside, the long CNY break was pretty good. Had a one-day staycation at HFC, during which I had a mini museum-cum-photo outing... Also exercised on Sat morning, followed by a nice (though brief) meetup with C & J, Jap classes and other self-enrichment activities. The thing that spoiled my weekend though was an urgent request for talking pts that came in yesterday night, which I had to get out by tonight... Boo!

Here's a pic I took secretly in the Singapore Art Musuem (SAM) shop... Of a rabbit coaster. More pics to come later - hopefully later this week...

Naruto!

I was digging up the songs I used to have on my school laptop.... and discovered several gems... including drama serial/ Anime theme songs... This is the anime show that got me really hooked for a while... the only anime I watched close to 100 episodes... the anime that got me sobbing for no reason in the middle of the night once/ twice(?) in Washington DC... (which got C pretty concerned) For the uninitiated, Naruto is this anime series about ninjas (quite popular I think abt half a decade ago? there are Naruto movies too, i think) - it looks a bit violent, but it's really not that bad. Aside from the cool ninja moves, the show was also about friendship, determination, perseverance and such...

This version I found seems to have the clearest graphics... But I think whoever made this prob liked Lee a lot (the green guy with the bowl-shaped hair and 'bandaged' limbs) though he wasn't the main character in the show. If I didn't remb wrongly, I my favourite character could have been Hinata... this soft-spoken timid girl with short hair... (some semblance to my own character could have been part of the reason why I liked her. I must have liked her for other reasons too, but my memory fails me now) Nonetheless... listening to the opening song again gives me a warm fuzzy feeling...

Beautiful Life

My sensei coincidentally posted the theme song of one of my fav Jap dramas... brings back fond memories... I think I went and bought the DVDs in Sg; then finished most of the drama while snuggled in bed at night while I was in Berkeley... I shall rewatch it some time soon heh.

"Disfigured" for now... :(

I just met with a tiny mishap at Netball class just now... the first 'sports accident' in 3 classes... and I am now disfigured by two reddish scratch marks on the right side of my face (the area in btwn the nose & upper lip)! Someone wanted to intercept a ball thrown to me and accidentally swiped her fingers/fingernails across my face! The pink scars look roughly like ">"(just that the two lines dun meet)... I look a bit like I got into a cat-fight with someone bleah :( I hope they heal soon and leave no trace.

I baked a little cheesecake yesterday... using a Muji instant cheesecake mix :P It tasted pretty alright, but the surface turned out a little pockmarked and speckly. I was also expecting a fluffy moist Japanese cheesecake - but mine turned out pretty solid bleah. Aiyah, I think I prob did something wrong somewhere... shall try again next time!

And yeah, my cake had a snaking fault line that cut right thru the middle...

Time-out Tanjong Pagar

Over lunch today, I decided to give myself a lil break from work and from my colleagues. I had my little me-outing to the Duxton hill area for lunch and some book-shopping - while everyone else headed to PS Cafe@Ann Siang Hill for expensive overpriced lunch. The plan was to go to this new bookstore Littered with Books at Duxton Rd after checking out a new crepe place in the same area... and maybe pop by Flor bakery and treat myself to a cake or some freshly baked cookies. However, I also stumbled upon a newly opened photography school two doors down from the crepe place, and climbed up some creaky steps to walk into a shophouse full of nice photos... What a nice little adventure!

However my lunchtime outing plan was a tad too ambitious. Turned out that I was stuck in Littered with books for a good half hour or so and ended up having no time for cake. The books at Littered with Books all look so pretty it I felt like buying every single title! There only seemed to be a couple of copies of each book so each book felt particularly unique and it made me feel like I was picking them off someone's home bookshelf, not a bookstore. I ended up buying a C. S. Lewis book and a cheem book by A.C. Grayling that is supposedly a good read and will hopefully inspire me to reflect about the meaning of life... ;) I am building up a stash of unread books in my already cluttered room bleah.

My Monday Horoscope said...

You are focused on creativity and should find that ability to dream up new ideas and plans is equalled only by your ability to bring them to life. Show the world what you can do.

Not that I am a fan of horoscopes... but mum is..! (more for fun lah) So she showed this to me this morning when I was gulping down my milo... The english a bit convoluted, but uncannily today's msg actually spoke to me somewhat. Show the world what I can do eh...

Today was a depressing day... so had to have music therapy at night.

10,000 hours to become an expert at anything...

I just had to log in a short post about this 10,000 hr-rule cos for some uncanny reason I was told this twice today by 2 persons under pretty diff circumstances... Yesterday I was just reflecting on how I have not become really good at anything so far - be it tennis, photography, Japanese, baking etc although I like and enjoy doing all these things. I tried to figure out what the reason might be... and concluded that I am just not a very determined person and get easily distracted by new things :(

So this morning, it was somewhat consoling when a guest pastor, as part of his msg about it being human to err, shared this interesting piece of trivia. Then when chatting with Y just now, she highlighted this to me too! So Y pointed out that this implied that someone who practices XX for 8 hrs everyday...wld take abt 4 years to be an expert. If you're more normal (and devote say 8 hrs a week to this activity) - you will become an expert in... 28 years! When things are put in that perspective, it really feels not that bad that I am not an expert at anything... heh.

p/s: did a google of the 10,000 hr thing and it's apparently a common theme in Malcolm Gladwell's book - Outliers. Maybe I shld go read that some day :)

It's cool how some things turn out well though you totally didn't plan for them...

So I ended up taking Japanese lessons again - this time focusing on Japanese conversation. Was just catching up a little with an ex-colleague via sms this Monday - when she shared that she was currently taking Jap conversation lessons... and after a few emails with the one-man show sensei, I signed up and went for my 1st lesson yesterday!

I was slightly apprehensive initially 'cos my Jap has been deproving ever since I stopped classes 2 years ago... Thankfully class was small and setting not that intimidating; our friendly sensei also prompted everyone to speak up by asking leading questions etc... Though I was terribly unfluent, I cld still largely understand what went on and it turned out pretty alright in the end. Yesterday's lesson was about how to describe lost objects... and I learnt what polka dots are called in Japanese - mizutama (水玉 - literally "water balls")! I thought that was really cute cos it's so literal and visual...

And so I discovered that Japanese is one of those things I have some unexplainable affinity for - even after having abandoned it for a while, my interest in learning it hasn't really waned and it remains as enjoyable as before. Though I was never good enough, learning it is just a very happy-fying thing to do :) Hopefully, one day, I will be good at it..

The other KK

There really isn't very much to do at Kota Kinabalu if you aren't climbing the mountain, we realised... during the trip. So it was a tiny relief that our 2nd night was spent in the city area, at a hotel right next to supposedly Borneo's largest lifestyle hypermall - 1Borneo. And that's why I could stroll to Starbucks on a Monday morning to enjoy green tea latte and banana choc muffin and have the whole 2nd floor of seats to MYSELF. Heh. This was an urbanite's failed attempt to connect with Mother Nature...

Though there wasn't a whole lot of stuff to do, I totally didn't mind it. We were still sufficiently entertained throughout the trip... I watched a Twilight movie (the first one) for the first time - on cable TV from a not-so-cosy-but-passable chalet room in the middle of the Borneo rainforest... and found myself empathising with Twilight fans... I think I was quite taken by the interesting idea of dating a vampire and the neat stuff they cld do tog in the forest, like flying around etc haha. D cldn't quite get what was so cool with that pale vampire named E but got quite enchanted by the vampire family's house. We later discovered (after cheapo-ly flipping thru some Twilight movie book at a Harris bookstore) that the whole house was just a specially constructed movie set... a really nice one though.

The uneventful holiday ended with a mini drama when we were stuck in the rain and jam on the way to the KK airport. And just when we thought all traffic had cleared, we found ourselves getting stuck in a most nasty jam leading all the way up to the departure terminal... Thankfully, the rain caused havoc not just outside but also within... so flights were delayed and we found ourselves quite early for the flight despite arriving only half an hour before...

Here are some pictures (pretty irrelevant to my lil trip summary above) from the trip to show! :P

Pretty nice dining area at our Mt Kinabalu hotel

Lovely flowers at the hotel "garden" - the chalet was somewhat dismal (mainly cos it was cold and damp), but the landscaping at the hotel was done up quite nicely

We managed to get a good view from our hotel as it was perched all the way up on a little hill too :)

The peak of the mountain seemed to be permanently obscured by huge clouds

Seafood dinner the 2nd evening - Grilled tilapia with belachan sauce. Fresh and delicious!

Happy 2011!

It's the last day of 2010.... and I am sniffing... :( It's been a great week of meeting up with friends etc but I ended up sleeping really late for most of the week and now the sleep deficit is wreaking mini havoc on my well-being. Am flying off to Kota Kinabalu to spend New Year's day - not climbing the mountain but chilling near the mountain... hopefully running nose etc wld go away and I'd get a nice lil break before everything starts getting crazy again next week..

Here's wishing all of you a great 2011 ahead! The new year starts off with a really cool date - 1/1/11... :)

After a one night Christmas getaway in Bintan and a self-extended long weekend today, I feel so reluctant to get back to work. Luckily this week would be a short one too, with a key highlight being J's wedding reception mid-week, followed by half day on Fri and then another short weekend getaway to Kota Kinabalu! December is a lovely month...

Here's wishing everyone a belated Christmas and a great 2011 ahead!

Christmas cookies.... that I didn't bake :P

This being Christmas season, I have, in the past week or so, rubbed shoulders with the 10,000 other shoppers in crowded malls to do last min shopping and to buy gifts for nice ppl. Bagging good deals/ bargains has an effect similar to a sugar rush, but at the end of the day, shopping tires me out and the feel-good feeling wears off relatively quickly.

On the other hand, I find snuggling under my comforter to read my mags/ books at night while listening to music very therapeutic and soothing. I guess I'm a loner at heart and such low-energy, peaceful me-time recharges me... Having to interact with too many ppl can tire me out and some part of me just wants to hide in my lil cosy corner to chill and do nothing of much consequence :P Looking back at the year past, feel like I hardly had such luxury of time to do nothing at all by myself... Maybe I need to stay someplace with a slower pace of life, where folks around me aren't always striving to achieve this/that and working so hard all the time...

KL weekend getaway!

My weekend trip started on a Sat morning with a bad 1.5 hr jam at the Malaysian checkpoint... but thankfully the rest of it was good. Most of it was spent hanging out with D's frens at various eating places/ living rooms and dining areas, who spent 75% of the time reminiscing about their good old sch days in London :P Thought I could squeeze in some shopping; but ended up taking random pics and walking around hotel area in the short one hour I had to myself this morning.

"Alfresco" dining area outside the hotel... the mall area connected to the hotel had wide pedestrian walkways flanked by restaurants and cafes... which reminded me of the States actually, e.g. LA! :P

Sneaked some quick pics in a cute home decor store.

Above: Snowman candle! Below: Wouldn't it be nice to have some "fresh" flowers on your dining table everyday :)

Also met the friendliest and loveliest little girls on this trip - D's friend's kids. They were very intrigued with my DSLR and wanted to play with it... So I let them fiddle around with it...
This, is what appeals to a 6-yr old in a magazine store...

The bunch of adults were so all happy to be able to have A&W for lunch, now that A&W can no longer be found in S'pore. This is the power of fond childhood memories later in life...

A&W curly fries! I loved these as a kid... But the older ppl I went with claim that curly fries was a later addition to the A&W menu and the classic A&W offerings were the coney dog and rootbeer float. The coney dog I had was slightly disappointing 'cos the hotdog was pretty hard and un-saucy enough :P

Charming neighbourhoods & cool buys!

If you're suaku like me, you prob haven't been to the part of Tiong Bahru with the retro pre/post-war flats. I havent... till this morning! (On a lighter note - whenever I meet J's mum over Christmas, she never fails to ask me when this place would get SERSed or upgraded... and every year I never fail to disappoint her by my sheepiness in giving her an answer) Deep down, I hope this place never gets redeveloped, else Singapore would lose another of its little rustic corners to high-rise skyscrapers or yet another shopping mall...

I went by Tiong Bahru actually because I wanted to check out Forty Hands - a new coffee joint that also serves brunch/sandwiches, cakes and stuff. We managed to get a table inside despite it being overcrowded with yuppy-looking folks and youngsters. Seriously - where do they come from!!! A spectre is haunting Singapore - the spectre of yuppies colonising all the cool cafes around. Anyways. I treated myself to a flat white and a truffle mushroom sandwich... I don't actually think the food was great, but coupled with the hippie/cool ambience, I think I'd prob go back again :)

I also took some random pics using my E72 just before I left - but it led me to discover a cool function on my phone... and I ended up with pretty interesting shots speckled raindrops heh...

After lunch, also decided to check out the "affordable photo fair" at Objectifs at Arab Street - for photographers to exhibit cum sell their works... I didn't end up with any photos, but found a pair of nice berms and a cute pink-rimmed belt at one of the Haji lane shops instead. A couple of yellow spots on the belt suggested that it's pre-loved, though salesgirl claimed it wasn't.. Anyways, since the spots weren't too visible and it being the only piece left, I still got it cos it was relatively affordable and vintage-looking.

Shophouse facade at Kampong Glam

Nosherie refers to a restaurant or other place where food is served.

Was wondering what this word meant when I walked past MUNCH Saladsmith and Nosherie at Marina Bay Link Mall just now.. MUNCH has a shop at Robinson Rd and they serve pretty decent sandwiches. Seems like their business is doing pretty well and there's now a branch at the new mall... But "Nosherie" is a slightly pretentious word leh. Where did it come from... somehow cannot associate something as weird-sounding as 'nosh' with food.

I have two Le Sportsac pouches... a green imitation one with cute lil birds & fruit trees I got in Taipei some years back and an authentic one with blue & brown prints I bought from a dept store in Hong Kong... and they are both missing :( They have always been staples in my bag so I really dunno why they are missing... and the only (though not very plausible reason either) I can think of is that someone pilfered them when I was on course at CSC... cos otherwise I wouldn't have left my bag unattended... Have searched high and low for them but they just cannot be found :(

My nice mum, upon hearing the plight of the lost pouches, decided to search my wardrobe for them (without telling me lah). Was a lil mad when she messed up the cosy hiding places for my various lil pouches by tidying everything up and putting everything tog in one of my bigger pouches.. but ok lah, my chaotic order was restored when I pulled out everything and placed everything back into their less orderly but nice, un-cramped positions. But in the course of the search, my mum discovered this other nice organza/batik bag I own... I think someone nice gave it to me but I cannot remb who gave it to me anymore... :( It's a nice consolation, but I still miss my lost pouches...

Earl Grey "Creme Brulee"

Last night after the purchase of 6 pretty little ramekins, I came home excitedly to try out a baked custard recipe... lifted from an Appetite mag I flipped through while waiting for my food in a cafe :P This was supposed to be a chamomile-infused baked custard.. but I substituted the chamomile with my fav earl grey tea. I was also too cheapo to spend like $40 to buy a blow torch, so tried disguising the un-caramelised surface with fresh fruit instead!

The recipe was a failure though... and looks can be deceiving. Beneath the calm surface lay a cold gooey mixture that failed to solidify... oh well, I will try again next time :) And prob with a proper deep baking pan for the water bath too.

Amateurish food-styling with my mum's dish cloth haha.

Fresh out of the oven! Cos I didn't have enough ramekins, resorted to using my silicon cupcake cups for the rest... But there's just something about these pretty ramekins that tug at your heart, which romanticises the experience of savouring these lil treats.

The Letter T Song

I discovered a really cute cover of Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah" - A Sesame Street song that literally has a plain white "T"... aww, so cute! I was a bit dense and only realised that the T was going 'te-te-te' towards the end...

My 6-day Econs course ended on Wed... and the past two days were back to dreary days of eye-straining staring-at-comp-screen-all-day work. Skived somewhat while on course and as such accumulated quite a bit of backlog at work :(

I think these sorta long milestone courses are helpful in providing me a better sense of what sorta stuff goes on in other stat boards and ministries. And I was pretty fortunate that the ppl taking this course were pretty nice and non-cliquish; and I found myself (surprisingly) somewhat comfortable chit-chatting with most of them. It's actually a pretty stark contrast with my workplace - where I find myself being more AS most of the time; and keeping to myself a lot more. I dunno, maybe just fewer ppl my frequency bah and nature of portfolio doesn't require v much interaction and discussion with fellow workers... (I remb when I shared something like this with J and GM they like very shocked like that... maybe I look relatively pleasant but am a strict friend-picker at heart)

Today I ventured for the first time to the nearby Cedele for a wholesome sandwich set of chicken avocado and roasted veg soup. Over lunch, my fav colleague also shared with me her woes and frustrations with work here... Personally, I shared some of them and seriously didn't know how best to comfort her or make her feel less bad. Also had to balance conflicting interests - my self-interest in having her stay in the division and her long-term interest to look for something she might be happier and better off doing... Hai, in the end I also dunno what to say... I genuinely thought she's doing not too bad already... but i am apparently rather unconvincing leh. :(

It's getting harder and harder to resist spending $ in the city area these days. There's like a retail revolution in Singapore and new malls/places keep popping up it's crazy! I briefly walked thru the Raffles City basement last Sat and found myself surrounded by a gazillion new shops/stores. While I appreciate the greater variety of retail outlets/ places to go to/ cafes & restaurants to dine at, also wonder if the inundation of retail choices will make us more and more consumerist/ materialistic... such that we just dun remember to appreciate say, the wonders of nature anymore...

Yay, the long weekend will be here soon!

After a micro/macroeconomics crash course yesterday and today - I feel like I have reabsorbed a teeny bit of econs knowledge... Sadly, many other concepts/ stuff I've learnt are but distant memory :(

Though I still have to work after the course, at least I saw some 'daylight' yesterday, reaching home by 7pm! And I came home yest to a beautiful sunset... Sadly, half the sky had turned dark by the time I whipped out my cam... why is miss sunset so shy...

"Red sky in the evening"

Would also like to share an interesting video on what motivates us - it's something we watched in class yesterday. The arguments are interesting but ideas not entirely ground-shattering lah. But I thought the cartoonist was amazing... :P (bleah, dunno why YouTube video is oversized)

I've about to dive into a crazy week - Going on a 6-day Econs course from Tues onwards; while it's nice to have a "break" work will also inevitably pile up! I'm somewhat apprehensive that when sitting thru the week's lectures I would realise that I barely retained anything from college. But another part of me is looking forward to the course, as it would be nice to get myself un-rusted and learn more about how economic concepts are applied in the local context.

It's the halloween weekend and yest evening I picked up an IS mag at Heart Bistro. They had a feature on all kinds of phobias... and a top 10 list of weird ones. This is pretty bizarre -

Arachibutyrophobia - Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth

What about the fear of cheese sticking to your teeth?? You know, when biting into sandwiches with slices of cheese in them... Wonder if there's a phobia for that. Heh.

I finished the Le Cordon Bleu book! I count it as a tiny accomplishment, because I've been pretty bad with completing any book the past half-year or so... For some reason attention span is pretty short now and end up book-surfing, with several half-read books lying forgotten in some corner of my room bleah.

Though I still find some parts pretty cliche, there were actually a few pretty entertaining/decent chapters somewhere in the middle of this book lah. But I think I'm pretty sure I won't want to be a real cook. Doubt that I'd really enjoy all that poultry boning, food-to-be murdering, getting guts out of fish etc. Nonetheless, this book and the lil baking projects I've embarked on recently made me feel like cooking/baking actually builds character and quick-wittedness. If anything, I've certainly felt like the ingredients prep stage/ baking process are good training for one's perseverance, patience, and 'crisis mgmt' skills. Heh the book also taught me how to curse in French... something I wld think in my head but prob wun say out loud when say, the only egg you have and need for your recipe rolls off table-top and commits suicide. Merde.

Sesame treats

Decided to try out another simple recipe from my Okashi recipe book this weekend; and made some cookies - packed with white/black sesame goodness :) Once again, I met with some little mishaps - burnt a batch of sesame seeds and one egg rolled off table-top and committed suicide. But other than that, cookies turned out looking pretty decent lah. I dunno if they taste like what they are supposed to actually ;) As they are on the drier side, they should go quite well with a cup of tea/ latte.

你是黑的还是白的...? Decided to try out a 'zen' arrangement while laying out the sesame seeds for light roasting... After finishing this, I was reminded of Kyoto's Ryoanji, this famous Zen garden that I couldn't quite appreciate heh...

还是 chao da 的？Being good at following instructions, I disregarded mum's advice and roasted them for 10 min... Alas! By the 8th min or so, my white sesame seeds were all gone case... (Somehow the black ones got more resistance, not that chao da actually.)

It's always wise for first-timers to buy some extra ingredients... 2nd attempt was more acceptable ;)

Cookies are but butter in sheep's clothing...

The dough mix, finally done! It turned out a lil gooey, no wonder I have to refrigerate it for at least 3 hours.

Ready to be baked! They look like pumpkin kueh speckled with sesame seeds or something..

Not anymore! Cookies fresh out of oven...

Mine came pretty close to the real thing lah ;)

Made more bite-sized ones too!

I used to get somewhat upset when XX is grouchy and unapproachable; cos I for some weird reason held myself partly responsible for someone else's bad day... I think I'm beginning to get out of such nonsensical reasoning... in fact, felt slightly annoyed today when XX let her bad mood get in the way when we tried to ask her something. Sure, perhaps we disturbed her while she was trying to concentrate on something impt, but felt that it was slightly uncalled for and not too professional. But fine, I can accept it that ppl have bad days. It's a Mon after all, and I was also having problems keeping my eyes open the whole day...

I am trying to live by a new 'motto' - to never let anyone look down on me. I might not be very smart, worldly, successful & whatever, but the most impt thing is to try to live with integrity and kindness, be comfy and love myself for what I am and learn to count all my blessings... heh. Of course, this business about accepting yourself is just a general guideline, not an excuse to allow myself to do whatever... like eating 10 frozen yogurts a day. A person who eats 10 frozen yogurts a day can't be me...

I must be fated to buy Eat, Pray, Love lah. Due to the movie release in Sg, the Penguin version with Julia Roberts on the cover was going at $12 at Somerset 313 Harris! And so I got it. It even came with a 14-day True Yoga pass... which I'm so not going to use, but shall offer it to colleague so as not to waste it :P

Also did a couple of 'new' things this weekend, such as turning up at someone's welcome dinner party and volunteering. I've been wanting to volunteer for the longest time, but I never got down to doing it. Decided to act on this "whim" today and spent a couple of hours this afternoon at someone's cavernous basement trying to sort out donated kids' books for sending over to kids over in Thailand - to stock up a library that recently burnt down (books included)...! I was quite tempted to read some of the books I picked up... but didn't really in the end. I found a Moomin book and a cute monster book, and even one that taught kids how to draw diff kinds of cartoon dinosaurs..!

Really not looking forward to work tmr, but well, all good things have to come to an end. Till the next weekend...