Ten things that I like to do

After reading fellow bloggers' list of "ten things", well, below is my list!

1) Hang out at my kitchen. Be it cooking or baking or just simply re-arranging the jars on my island top. Definitely my favourite spot in my flat.

2) Read. Especially cookbooks! Especially cookbooks with A LOT of pictures. I might not cook every single recipe from the cookbooks, but I can IMAGINE myself cooking every single recipe and that is part of the joy of reading cookbooks. ;)

3) Disturb my cats (especially Cookie) when they are sleeping. I have this psycho urge to "kah-jiao"/disturb my mum's cats or my current adopted cat, Cookie whenever they are taking a nap. I'll go and touch their paws, twitch their whiskers, flick their ears... until they wake up and look at me in disgust!

4) Gardening. This is a new hobby which I just picked up when I moved into my new place. Fussing around the planter boxes and checking out my plants give me quite a lot of joy.

5) Shopping at nurseries. Another new past time, I can hang out at the nurseries along Thomson road for hours. Just looking at plants, looking at types of soil or fertilizers available, checking out the gardening tools or those outdoor furnitures or even the water features. I usually only buy 1 or 2 plants, or some fertilizers but I really enjoy window-shopping at nurseries.

6) Dance. I've always enjoyed dancing. I was previously very into salsa and when I was in University, I was very into hip-hop and jazz. I also enjoy watching ballet and try to catch at least 1 performance once a year.

7) Exercise. Be it running, brisk-walking, dancing, swimming, cycling or doing yoga. Working out really release those feel-good endorphins.

8) Learning to play the violin. I'm still at the stage of making more noise than music, but learning to play a musical instrument is strangely very therapeutic for me. Hrmmm, can't say the same for my neighbours and Hub. Cookie, the cat will IMMEDIATELY run out of my flat the moment I play the violin. *Thanks for the encouragement, Cookie*

9) Drinking wines with Hub. Hub is such a wine connoisseur and I've really learnt a lot from him. Through him, I have also become a semi-pro at wines. Now I can easily identify wines from respective countries/regions. Differentiating a Bordeaux versus a Burgundy is easy-peasy for me!

10) Travel during winters. Singapore is so hot that when ever I can, I'll travel to areas with a lot of snow to freeze my ass off. The cold, crisp air, the fluffy white snow, and the fact that I can wear my knee-high boots, coats and scarves fulfill that inner vain pot in me.

Fugly, the pigeon didn't make it...

Despite of my best intentions, Fulgy didn't make it. In fact, it died on Wednesday night. Seems to me that it was suffering from indigestion.

Sigh. I've tried my best to save that pigeon...

Party, we did!

Everyone dressed up to the nines and we had so much fun. Haha... reminded me of our Uni days in NTU! I love my friends!

Fugly, the baby Pigeon

Last Saturday, when I was walking home after gotten my hair styled for the Shanghai Chic party, I came across a baby pigeon, which was walking around with a limp.

Before I proceed, I shall tell you something about myself. As much as I am an animal lover, I simply DISLIKE birds. Ok, I can tolerate them but I find birds stupid, smelly and basically flying bags of bacteria. ESPECIALLY PIGEONS.

I find sparrows kind of cute, white turtle doves very gentle and beautiful, even mynahs seem more spirited. Other than Crows, which I EXTREMELY dislike, pigeons come a close second.

And a baby pigeon stood in my path and it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. At first I thought it was a sick bird but upon close inspection, I realised that it was a baby pigeon. It was making baby chirping sounds and was walking with a limp. It must had fallen from its nest from the nearby trees.

Argh.... I hate pigeons! But I simply couldn't bring myself to ignore that baby bird. So with my head of freshly curled hair, I picked up the bird and brisk-walked home.

Hub's reaction was as expected. “Eeeeek, that bird looks sick. Why dont you just bring it back to where you found it?”

Well... If I were to return the bird to where it was found, I believed it wouldn't last more than 3 days. Anyway, I thought that the bird might be able to feed itself, so I put it in a box, with a slice of apple and a small saucer of water. With that, I headed out to attend the party.

Hours later, when I checked on the bird, it didn't touch the apple at all. Even when I placed the apple really close to its beak, the bird had no idea what it was and continued to make chirping sounds.

Damn... this bird still had to be hand-fed and I have never hand-fed any birds before! I tried to feed it with some cooked pasta and to my horror, the stupid bird had no concept of OPENING its beak. So, I figured that I just had to pry open its beak and force-feed it.

The moment the bird swallowed something, it finally dawned upon its tiny brain that it was food and started pecking at my hand frantically. After a few trails and errors, and some research on the net, seemed that I could feed the bird with a combination of bread and cooked fish (Cookie's leftovers).

It has been 3 days and the bird is still alive! And it is not limping anymore! So in the mornings I have to wake up 15 mins earlier just to feed it before I head out to work. Cookie, the cat is curious of the little fellow but so far, leaves the bird alone.

I just hope that the bird can grow asap, and learn how to feed on its own and I can then set it free.

It is still the ugliest bird ever and so, I've named it, Fugly. If anyone has any experience in feeding baby birds, please kindly share! If anyone wana adopt Fugly, even better, PLEASE contact me!

Theme Parties!

My group of friends from the university is really into theme parties and all of us, for the past occasions had put in tons of effort to out-dress each other!

Some of the theme parties that we had:

- Pyjamas X’mas 2006
- Cartoon Characters 2007
- Green Party at QH’s housewarming (can’t rem the date)
- Retro Party 2008

And tomorrow will be “Shanghai Chic” at China Club! Looking really forward to tomorrow’s theme party since the last one was in 2008. I really appreciate the time and effort that my friends had put in to organize a party for 16 pax!

All of us, already in our 30s are still making a fool of ourselves but seriously, without this group of friends, I believe my life will be dull as hell.

Above are some pictures from … yes, the Retro party. It was so so so fun and we spent a good 30 mins just laughing and taking pictures of each other. Kudos to my Hub, who was the key organizer for the Retro Party; he managed to rah-rah a few retro items from fellow friends and relatives, and also took the trouble to rent a few rarer items from a cute, little retro shop at FarEast Plaza. It was really hilarious to pretend that we were our parents in the 1970s…

I hope tomorrow’s party will be a blast!

We re-potted 2 cuttings of mints, I chose pineapple mints. The leaves are so pretty!

I was thinking of buying this tub to plant some edibles until I realised it cost almost $80 each! *w/o the plants!*
My "lecturer" for the workshop. She is so young!

We attended this workshop with our neighbours, who are also avid gardeners. Had a good time bonding with the neighbours!

Gardening workshop at Hortpark, 19 Sept 2010

Hub and I, together with our new neighbours attended a gardening workshop at Hortpark on Sunday, 19 Sept.

It was my very first time to Hortpark and what a beautiful park! I was like the "mountain tortoise" who was wooing and ahhing at everything . The workshop was conducted in a very comfortable air-con lab, and we had a very young and pretty "lecturer" teaching us how to do stem cuttings, and how to plant some edibles like Kangkong and pak choi.

To be honest, I expected the workshop to be more enlightening especially since we paid $15 per pax! The workshop was really for beginners and the "lecturer" simply went through some gardening basics. Nonetheless, we got to take home some mint cuttings, some seeds and 2 packets of soil.

All in all, it was good fun bonding with our neighbours and a great way to spend a Sunday morning. ;)

Plants in the bathroom

I've always wanted to have plants in the bathroom... simply because I can then shower and water the plants at the same time! (kind of silly, I know...)

Other than that, I've always enjoyed the company of plants... their quiet existence calms my mind and since bathroom is a place where I relax, thus, I should place some plants to make the bathroom even more relaxing right?

Unfortunately, I have 2 very small bathrooms. In fact, the master bathroom is so small that, I have to place the sink outside of the bathroom, just to have a decent shower space. The above picture will be a dream bath.... where I can, hrm... have "live" audience while I sing in my shower. Heh...

Nonetheless, I am quite determined to place plants in the bathrooms. I will definitely work on the idea!

How much is "1 cup"???

The measurement of "1 cup" really baffles me! I just had a failed attempt at making Banana Cake. ;( Since it was a failed attempt, I'm too embarrassed to post any pic.

The recipe called for 2 cups of plain flour. My measuring cup indicated that 1 cup = 200 ml. But when I googled "1 cup", WikiAnswers and many various websites indicated 1 cup = 236 ml or 240 ml. Then there were also websites that indicated 1 cup = 250 ml. Well, I figured that 10 ml shouldn't make too much of a difference. So I used 480 ml (2 cups) of flour.

But as I was folding the flour into the wet mix, I knew that something was wrong. The mixture was too dry... but I didn't know what I should add to a dry mixture. More eggs? More yogurt? More milk? I had no clue...

Since I was already "committed" to making the Banana cake, I might as well finished it, dry mixture or not, I simply just put it in the oven and hoped for the best...

As expected, the cake turned out to be too dry. So... maybe I should have used 200 ml = 1 cup instead?

I am so confused.... I guess I just have to try another time to figure it out!

Beatrice and Virgil

During the long weekend, a wonderful friend, D gave me a present, a book, titled “Beatrice and Virgil” by Yann Martel.

I am familiar with this author as I have read his award winning book, “Life of Pi” for at least 3 times. I enjoyed “Life of Pi” so much that, I insisted D to read it and in fact, bought him a copy as a present a few years back. And now, D returned the favor. ;)

"Beatrice and Virgil" is a captivating book, once I started, I could not stop. Luckily it was rather easy to read (but hard to digest), and I was able to complete the book in a day. And after that, I could not stop thinking about the book.

It’s the way Yann writes, the way he describes that make you go "hmmmmm". There is a particular section of the book where the lead character describes a pear to another character that has NEVER seen nor eaten a pear before. The description is so vivid and full of life that, I really felt like eating a pear at that very moment when I was reading the book.

Now, I ask myself how I’ll describe a simple object or event that I take for granted everyday, but yet, someone else might have never experienced before…

1) How would I describe the aroma of freshly ground coffee to someone who has never smelled coffee?
2) How would I describe the sight of a butterfly resting on a flower to someone who has never seen a butterfly?
3) How would I describe the thrill of sprinting down a slope to someone who cannot walk?

By forcing myself to describe each object/action in details, allowed me to internalize and then truly appreciate the very object/action that I’m about to describe.

The book is easy to read but hard to digest… the book is about the Holocaust and how 2 different men, but with the same name dealt with it.

How would you describe the horror that you have witnessed to someone who has never been through hardship?

How would you describe the pain and anguish that you have suffered to someone who lives the privileged life?

How would you describe the senseless violence that you have gone through to someone who has never been through unrest or war?

Personally, I find the ending of the book too abrupt and there are parts of the book that I do not understand. Compared to “Life of Pi”, which I think has a better closure and development of the characters; “Beatrice and Virgil” seems a little chaotic and unfinished. But is that intentional?

Nonetheless, it is a worthy read. Highly recommended.

p/s: so is "The Life of Pi"

Pizza vs Foccacia

2 weekends ago, I tried making some pizzas. Recipe for the crust seemed easy enough and my brother even made some self-made kimchi as topping. The dough wasn't as sticky as I thought it would be and the crust turned out to be very crispy. All in all, my brothers and I had fun making and eating the pizzas...

So, thinking that bread-making would also be as easy-peasy, I made grand plans to make some foccacia bread on the following weekend. I was especially inspired by another blogger, Petunia and her very delicious-looking picture of her grape-with-rosemarry foccacia.

But my first bread-making experience turned out to be a scary one!

It started all good on the Saturday morning, until I really couldn't figure out the recipe as provided by Petunia. The proportions were in "cups" and after translating the measurement to "ML", it still seemed rather strange to me. So, I last minute googled another recipe which I thought look rather simple and easy to understand.

Following the recipe, I mixed the dry and wet ingredients together to get a REALLY sticky dough. In fact, it was sooooo sticky that I freaked out a little, and ended up adding more flour. But, it was still very sticky! After 5 mins of trying to knead the dough, I gave up and dumped the sticky dough to my KitchenAid. I used the dough hook instead to knead the dough.

So while my KitchenAid was kneading the dough, I was clearing up the huge, sticky mess that the dough had made on my table top. I had pieces of sticky dough all over and, I tell you... these sticky bits refused to be washed down the sink! I had to use boiling hot water to dissolve the bits.

After almost 8 minutes, my KitchenAid started making weird noises and I peeped into my mixing bowl. Woah, the sticky dough just got STICKIER!!! Argh...... so, I freaked out once again and added more olive oil. By now, I doubt I was following the recipe anymore...

I stopped the KitchenAid (in case the sticky dough spoil my prized KitchenAid mixer), and decided to knead by hand all over again. So, I kneaded and I kneaded and I kneaded, but the sticky dough simply refused to yield... and it continued to be as sticky as ever, so I added more and more flour... until a "smooth, elastic dough that stretches" was finally formed.

By then, my table top was all messy again. Argh...

Anyway, I could finally start proofing the dough. I put the sticky dough into an oiled bowl and cover the bowl with cling wrap. The recipe indicated 1-2 hrs of proofing until double in size.

So while the dough was proofing, I rushed down to RDA to fulfill my volunteer duties. 2.5 hrs later, I was back and yup, the dough was double in size by then.

I transferred the dough to a square baking tin and let it proofed for another 1 hour or so. Ok, by then my guests would start appearing any moment, so I just had to send it to the oven. A quick dressing of sea salt, cherry tomatoes and thyme leaves from my dying thyme, and in the oven, it went.

25 minutes later, I presented: the Foccacia bread. It was edible, thankfully. Despite of all the additional olive oil, flour and more flour! The bread did not rise as much as I would like, but... at least it did rise!

After this experience, I think I'll just buy a foccacia bread from my Delifrance! Pizzas are definitely easier!

p/s: Thanks E for taking such beautiful pictures of the bread. ;)

Some people just have limitless amount of energy, not any old, how energy, but POSITIVE energy.

As much as I can, I try to let myself to be surrounded by these people; to breathe in their positive vibes and bask in their positive glow. After that, I’ll find life is good again and I’ll be so damn happy and thankful that I’m alive and healthy, with a good head on my shoulders and 4 useful, working limbs.

The irony part is that, these people aren’t my high-flier friends who are making big bucks, but they are the parents or children whom I worked with, on every Saturday. As some of you may know, I volunteer with the RDA – Riders for the Disabled Association of Singapore, and it has been 2 very rewarding years since I first stepped into RDA.

I’ve learnt how to be grateful, how to have an open heart, how not to take things for granted, how vast a parent’s love can be and how strong and resilient these children/teens are. Sometimes, I feel ashamed of myself whenever I feel down, I mean, how bad can my problem/issue be, as compared to these children and parents who have to face everyday.

If they can make the best out of how little they have, the more I should work hard and accomplish what I have set myself to do. I started off with the thought of volunteering my time and give what ever little contribution back to the society, but it turns out that I am the one, who is receiving and learning so much more.

Next Saturday, 18 Sept 2010, RDA is organizing a fund-raising Fan-Fare where there will be Pony/Horse rides, Face-painting, Games, Food and Drinks stalls. Coupons of $20 will be sold on that day, and if anyone of you happens to be free or around the area, do come down with your little ones, to “horse” around with us! All funds raised will be donated to RDA.

I will definitely be there, of course. I am most probably taking the afternoon shift – 2.30 pm – 5 pm or so.

Add of RDA: 5 Jalan Mashhor, Singapore 299174. Tel: 6250 0176

RDA is just next to the Singapore Polo Club, behind the row of nurseries (FarEast Flora ..etc) along Thomson road.

2 begonias have died... ;( so, I've decided to grow herbs instead. Mint is quite hardy, the basils are puny, but at least still alive. The frangipani is doing ok, I see many green leaves sprouting. *phew*

Spot the "Botak" plant... These are "Japanese Bamboos" or, at least that's what I've been told at the nursery.
Ginger is growing happily. A rather no-frill, easy to grow plant. Hopefully I'll have free gingers to eat soon!

I bought this Thyme just 2 weeks ago, but its roots are turning black and the leaves are dying too. Hiaz, to minimize my loss, I cut all the healthy leaves and froze them. Doubt it can hang on much longer...

Cookie, the curious cat was checking me out... until she saw another cat at the car park.

My plants after 3 months

So it has been 3 months since I moved in. Time to review my planter boxes...

Begonias -> Not much of a success. 2 have died, the remaining 4 seems ok, but they aren't looking all that healthy and happy to me. Hmmmm...

The herbs -> Mint is good, the basils... barely surviving. Thyme died. ;( Still considering whether I should get a pot of Rosemary. Argh, but I don't want to be a murderer... Luckily, the ginger is doing alright. The pineapple plantets (not in the photos) seem ok too. Hub commented that the "herb corner" is looking untidy and ugly. That kinda hurts my ego abit... But, that's how herbs are, aren't they? Any tips to "beautify" the area?

Japanese Bamboo -> Not good at all, the first batch had almost all died. So, I bought a second batch and some are showing signs of stress again... leaves are turning brown and dropping everywhere. I'm getting a bit discouraged, maybe I'll just get another breed/type of plants instead. Argh...