Like A Boy

That's what I look like now, at least according to Mumsy.

Over dinner, she couldn't help but look at me for 2 seconds longer each time she did and joked about having two sons. So not funny, Mummy. Hur. She's finding it really hard to believe that I cut my hair to such a short length and insists that I must've been through some trauma, and keeps asking me if I'm okay.

from Siaos' holga - long hair, no more!

Of course I'm alright! I'm just bored of the long, generic tresses that I've been spotting since god-knows-when... and it's really annoying when I tell YF or Mumsy that I've just had a haircut and they go "Got meh?", but it's not really their fault because I was such a chicken to initiate any bold changes to the hairdressers, conforming to the very safe option of 'just trimming the ends' each time. So, I've decided it's time for some radical changes!

Instead of the usual "trimming the ends" this time round, I told the hairdresser I wanted to have my hair "really short" though I really had no idea what I wanted the end result to be like. In a way, I guess I sort of left it up to her to decide for me, not such a bad thing since I find making choices to be quite a chore sometimes. I was so happy when she snipped away inches of hair and couldn't help but grin to myself, a change finally. I hope she didn't think I was kuku or something.

Anyway, I used to hate cutting my hair; hated the way I look after hair-cuts and every time Mumsy brought me to the hairdresser back in primary school, I always ended up in tears. Looking back, I don't understand what I hated about it so much! 

Changes are a great welcome for me now, it's just so boring being boring.

I am sick and I feel like shit.

It's horrible. Starfruit juice with salt, tasteless bland kway teow tng, bitter (x 100000) traditional chinese medicine, and an impending asthma attack. I don't want all of these ):

The herbal medicine was the most vile-tasting drink I've ever had, and every mouthful sent shivers down my spine. I cannot tell you how disgusting it was, you need to try it for yourself to understand what I'm talking about. Thank goodness I finished that cup. *shivers*

Just Some Quick Ones

I hate sore throats, and I'm having one right now. Sucks one lor, especially when I'll be going for a holiday in a few days' time. Downing water every 15 minutes now, I hope it'll work to make the sore go away.

Attended Doug's belated 21st birthday party on Saturday, and met up with some of the lifesaving girls. Great time to catch up; they're all missed.

that's a big cake from Awfully Chocolate

ZZ's back in Singapore. For good (I hope)!

I missed windsurfing over the weekend. Thought it might be a good idea to stay out of the sun so that the throat will get better, but, it seems like my masterplan didn't work too well.

I've jumped onto the Restaurant City bandwagon two nights ago.

Totally looking forward to payday, even though there's no mid-year bonus this time round. I'm pretty broke and pretty much detesting this feeling.

Lunch With One Of My Favourite Uncles

I made my way back to Temasek Poly this afternoon; the first time since at least 6 months ago.

Met up with my "favourite uncle" from TP, and from Biz Park, we made our ways to Mensa 2 for lunch. I was reminded of all the fun times we had back then; laughing at how the chicken rice stall seller looked like Jay Chou, idling in between breaks. Fun times, fun times.

Uncle Sam's pretty much the same; something funny's sure to pop out from his mouth every now and then, and it's usually about me. Hur. He introduced me to "the nicest Mango salad" you can find (in TP), offered me a slice of sweet mango and chicken while I had my yummay Kway Chup. It was like a reunion with an old friend; the familiar taste of the soup, tangy chilli sauce, textures... simple but familiar-tasting meal that I thoroughly enjoyed.

So over lunch, we basically talked about everything under the sun... About people, places, ourselves... and he was telling me how the students like to have cup noodles outside lecture theatres these days. I find this trend absolutely ridiculous for two reasons; it's not like there's no nice food in TP, and do they actually prefer the taste of artificially-flavoured tom yum noodles to the real thing? I guess you can attribute this to... the power of peer influence.

Anyway, lunch was over really quickly. The students are having their mid-sems right now and he's got a paper to invigilate. Till the next time we have lunch together, hopefully we'll be having Design's Muslim food!

this is us, in 2005. qinsheng, ahseng and dj at the back. how time flies.

(Not-so)-Korean BBQ/Steamboat

Siaos drove us to a super ulu place for a Korean BBQ and steamboat dinner last night. After a short while of Siaos trying to find the place, we finally arrived at Aroozoo Avenue. It's really just a two-minute drive from Kovan, but the place is really well-hidden amongst the private housing estate, and you'll probably never ever hear about it if I didn't blog this. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration.

The parking there's free for now; the EPS is not yet activated, so... I guess it's quite a good time to visit. We got seated in one minute, since it wasn't quite dinner-time yet. You get to choose two out of three available choices for soup base, and we went for Pork Ribs and Herbal Chicken. In case you're wondering, the last one would be Tom Yum.

chicken, mutton, pork, beef, fish... just about everything

Didn't waste too much time idling around. Once the server went off to get our pot of soup-base, we headed for both the cooked and raw food stations to fill our plates. The cooked-food selection wasn't too impressive; it consisted of a variety of pork dumplings, and some sweet/savoury red-bean paste pastry. The variety of raw food for the steamboat and BBQ was pretty standard, I suppose... Free-flow of drinks; you get to choose from from orange fizzy, apple fizzy (green some more) and your standard cola (not Coca Cola though), and they even have ice-cream (free-flow again) for dessert; King's Strawberry, Ripple, Sweet Corn, Chocolate, Mint Chip, etc.

rou bao zi; this was just okay.

The bill came up to about $10 each (by far the cheapest bbq buffet dinner I've ever had, in Singapore at least); they're having a promotion where ladies only pay 50% of the usual price from Mondays to Thursdays. To be really honest, I think the food's just alright, I think Shabu Shabu's still my favourite so far; in terms of variety and quality (and best chicken nuggets). I don't have too much complaints for that price that I'm paying though, and I'd definitely come back again for a pig-out session with girl pals! Or maybe, just my mum and me. For only $10, I think this is the cheapest BBQ/Steamboat Buffet you can get in the whole of Singapore (for ladies).

Post-dinner, we took a walk around the compound and here was what I spotted: Pukka - a really small ice-cream parlour, Sicilia - an Italian restaurant that was void of customers (I wonder how do shops like these survive), The Cavern - a sports restaurant-and-bar in one, a Japanese-grill restaurant (can't remember the name, paiseh), and a prawning pond that's opened 24 hours daily.

one of my greatest weaknesses...

And despite all that free-flow ice-ceam we had at the BBQ place, we settled at Pukka, the ice-cream place and ordered a cone each, Siaos & me. I'd really wanted to just get one scoop in the cup but Siaos was like, "the cone is nice lor", so I just had to get my ice-cream in a cone. They have the usual flavours, and some really unconventional ones; I got myself a scoop of Ribena and Siaos had a scoop of Butterscotch. The Ribena-flavoured ice-cream tasted just like Ribena, though the texture was pretty foamy and it's really more of a sorbet than ice-cream. Siaos' Butterscotch-flavoured ice-cream reminded us of Island Creamery's Burnt Caramel; and it's something that I'd dig. If I'm ever coming back again, I'm going to have a scoop of the Cheesecake ice-cream!

And yes, the cone was nice.

This Aroozoo place looks like a pretty nice place to chill out already!

Bruise Progression

I think Siaos would love to give it a good rub. Hur.

Results Are Out!

I didn't do too well, my GPA dropped a little but I'm not too bothered. I'm just thankful that I managed to clear all the modules and am still eligible for the application of exchange programmes, provided they do not change the minimum GPA requirement. It's over now, so there's no point brooding over it eh? Chew on it, and move on... there's always the next semester to look forward to friends.

I've been bingeing on Bourdain's No Reservations videos on Youtube for the past few days and it's totally making me hungry. I want a taste of that Lechon (pig slow-roasted over a fire on a pole) from Philippines, Babi Guling (something like Bali's version of the Lechon), Poutine (thick-cut potatoes with insanely fattening toppings from Quebec), Yak Tea from Tibet (buttery teh tarik apparently slurps), Banh Mi (airy baguette sandwich from Vietnam), Ton Toro Sashimi, Ramen from one of those quaint little ramen shops, live octopus from Korea with it's tentacles still wriggling, a bowl of piping hot beef Pho... and I could go on forever with all that food goodness. He really does have the best job in the world you know, travel AND food.

I never really thought much about our very own local food, I mean, the tastes are something so familiar to me and not all that special right? I do realize I've been taking things for granted. I don't think life would be the same if I had to grow up without all that lard-filled Char Kway Teow, Laksa, Rojak or Ice Kachang. I'm totally craving for a serving of sweet and sour bone marrow now.

Ah food. Speaking of which, Korean bbq tomorrow evening with the girls and Rob. Looking forward to that!

ps. the accommodation for the KL trip is settled, time for debt collection soon!