After living what seemed like the new Dolce Vita for the longest time, my last vacation as a student finally came to an end two days ago. Looking ahead, I'm quite certain that my next prolonged period of idling won't be here anytime soon.
And so, I'm feeling quite thankful that I'd been able to busy myself in the past few weeks with lots of catching up (with the same dear old people, of course), checking out ulu cafes, taking long walks around places that I never really got to stopping by previously, etc. Instead of having to meet deadlines or fulfill other academic obligations like we've been doing the entire semester, I was granted the luxury of learning to take things slow. Really slow.
A slice of Antoinette ($9++) at Antoinette's
I learnt to take sips instead of gulps, nibbles instead of gobbles (of course, my Kindle made it a lot easier to do that), and pictures instead of mere snapshots. I made sure that nothing was too serious for me to fuss over, had plenty of time to mull over some issues in my life and it turned out to be such a wonderful time.
Milk chocolate mousse cake infused with earl grey, topped with a bubble that oozes of tangy raspberry coulis when burst. The unusual sweet and sour combination worked quite well for me; both flavours balancing each other evenly.
(I still think the bubble looks like a giant nipple though)
Oh, and this year, I finally learnt how to wrap bak zhangs at Grandma's place.
Wrapping's the easiest part of the entire process; preparation of the ingredients and cooking of the dumplings after they've been wrapped is so much more tedious. With quite a lot of difficulty, I finally managed to make mine decent-looking when tied; Aunt mentioned that the ones I'd wrapped look really tiny, just like the ones Mum used to wrap when she'd first started.
There were a little leftover ingredients so Aunt suggested that I bring them home so that Mum could do some wrapping too. I helped out with the preparation of the ingredients early morning (e.g. cleaning and shelling of salted eggs, chopping of mushroom, garlic and onion) and managed to wrap a few more bak zhangs before scooting off to NIE for a meeting with my practicum supervisor.
I thought my last weekend of the vacation was kind of ruined when I did something regrettable Saturday morning; spent the afternoon kicking myself in bed when I should really have been out windsurfing or making more out of the precious weekend.
Thankfully, I reminded myself that I have the power to turn things round (it's all in the mind!) and things got so much better in the evening. Post-tuition, I met up with a smaller-than-usual KTOWY (everyone will be coming home soon though :D) at Zhen's for a barbecue dinner. The food items bought and prepared by Zhen and her family were marinated and grilled to BBQ perfection; Boss' meat joystick was a big hit (ok, sounds slightly inappropriate), Ah Long's beancurd tarts were delish, and the bak zhangs I brought were just to make numbers lol. Good food is often paired with awesome company and we had much of both that evening. Boss provided us girls with a breakdown of the different types of guys we're likely to come across (generally) in life and I suppose my favourite's the "gong dua dai" kinda guy - sounds cute, no? Don't judge me for picking a favourite based on what it sounds like please. We played In-Between too, for lack of better games, and my luck was unbelievably horrible. I make a mental note whenever I start cursing or saying swear words (raising self-awareness ahem), and records show that frequency is highest when I meet horrible drivers on the road, followed by times when I drop my sail while windsurfing, and finally, when I play In-Between wtf.
Sunday was great too even though we didn't have the best of winds; I had a really enjoyable time surfing and it's also partly because of the trash-picking that we did before that.
Ended the evening with a cousin's wedding dinner and here are some snaps:
with Mumsy
YF
and Yihao! Like he mentioned on Facebook, it's been the longest time since the 3 of us took a picture together.
with the 'little melons'.
Mum and Dad :)
Weddings usually leave me going "Awwww... they're going to spend the rest of their lives together now. How sweet is that..." in my mind, but this one made me have cynical thoughts; maybe I've been thinking too much about the impermanence of life, love, and such of late.
And that marks the happy closure of my final vacation as a student.
Final practicum's finally started on Monday; things have yet to get busy (very soon though, I'm sure), and I'm really happy to be here - I hope I'm not speaking too soon since it's just the 2nd day so far. It feels wonderful to have my own workstation (finally!) and have superiors acknowledge my presence on the first day of work. Not to mention I have really nice CTs too; one of whom gave me a 'welcome gift' on my first day:
I'm feeling really blessed right now.
To show my appreciation for all that I've been bestowed upon,
I should really stop paying just lip service and start working hard! :)
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