Chocolate-coated, Cheesy Chillies

Went to G2000 in between work today cos they were having a pretty good sale. saw a nice little dress and a top and asked for m size. e salesauntie (yes, majority of them were salesaunties) asked me to try s as well. i was little reluctant but in e end still tried it. got a shocked cos S was too loose!!!! so in e end got XS. wow!!! i dropped two sizes!!! heh...

This is somethin quite funny... was in a rush to get over to jon's place and decided to bring my last two bananas along w me. walked along e road to get e cab and once i got in and was getting comfy, i realised "oh no!" one of e bananas slipped outta it's skin!

and then there was one...

reached jon's place and paid e cab driver and when i got to jon's place... i guess you've already guessed it. my other banana had also slipped out! ack! tt left me w e banana cob (dunno what's tt thing called so am doing a ris low)

how sad! moral of e story is... Eat your bananas at home or at least put them in a bag if you're bringing them out for a ride...

Wow! Technology nowadays really never fails to amaze me! just tried Skype on my mobile earlier on today and got to chat briefly w aunt lee lee and aunt mamek. So i got vox to see if they had a mobile application and yes they did! cool!

Definitely have a lot more entertainment while travelling from appt to appt!... well... provided my battery can last me e entire day w e amount of stuff i'm doing on it...

I think the new place has been an very inspiring place in terms of cooking. I'm now in this cooking craze stage in which i wanna try cooking new stuff and all..

Just the other day, tried my hands on making fish stock coz i din wanna use the cubes to make fish soup (MSG lah) so i tried... errrr.... i've yet to really taste it yet. Blame it on buying the wrong vege and wrong fish to cook my fish soup so in the end it came out a lil sweetish-bitterish. Yucks. Note to self: never buy china cabbage EVER.

So anyway, am now looking fora  culinary class in Singapore to learn western cooking. Heh... Grace has her baking craze and altho i love baking i dun have an oven, so i thought just use the kitchen to cook stuff lah. It's been fun. But cooking classes are expensive! There's a 6-module basic western class going for $700 and then a more than basic but yet foundation class (which by the way gives 2 Zwilling Henckel Knives and a wooden chopping board as part of the package) going at $1200!!! Really tempted to sign up... but we'll see lah....

So in the meantime, will just try out recipes from books and the internet and see how things goes lah. So far i've had mostly successful attempts at creating my own food so i'm still happy. Heh...

An awesome song by Owl City...

Ok so I was trying out the new phone functions and becoz i have 3 mths free data usage, i decided to just try it before deciding if i wanna take up Starhub's 50% offer on their data usage plan of 1 gig.

So anyway, found that it is super useful lah!!! Whenever we needed to quickly find directions, i just had to go to gothere's mobile site and it really saved us from wandering too much. Usually we will find out how to get to a certain place first but so happened that this past week it's been a lil messy so thank god for the phone!

So then i was home yesterday sufring the wi-fi with the phone and decided to just try updating all my friend's fb pics into my address book. SoooooOO cool! I know this function has been around for a long time coz when Jon first got his phone he was already doing that but I was too lazy and not bothered to try it til yesterday. Oh my!!! I love my phone's function! I realised that coz it was linked to google maps, if i had a contact's address, i could see it on the map and even get directions to drive there!

So i decided to get the 1gig data plan. Hahaha... installed fb mobile and also tried launching my msn on the go while on the bus today. So cool! I got to talk to Joyce on my way to the appt on the bus! So long never spoke to her such that her latest update is that she's leaving for Melbourne next Jan or so! Boohoo!!

Ok anyway, tried uploading pics via the fb mobile and it works! (DUH!)

All in all, very happy with this phone. It's really much smarter than the HTC Touch 3G (duh!) eventho there are 1 or 2 functions that the Touch 3G had that they din include in this smart phone (like i can't cut, copy and paste numbers from one contact to another). Nevertheless they do make up with other things in place.

Grace is thinking of getting this phone for her bday as a pressie. I hope she does coz it's really 'fun'! :-p

Roger came over to challenge Jon on FIFA 2010. LOL. They're still at it now. Dunno who is winning since football was never my cup of tea...

Before he came, i had already heated up the otah from my perpetual otah supplier (aka Aunt Mamek), the fish that granny made (stuffed with fresh green chillies and deep fried), and stir fried lettuce, cooked prawns and finally made fuzhou fish ball with soup. Wow, i was amazed at how quick it was to prepare so much! hahaha.. mainly coz the first two dishes were already pre-made. It's like eating home cooked food away from home! heh...

So we were eating and all, and then RR said he was on his way, so i asked if he had eaten and he said no so i offered to use him as my guinea pig and made him bacon angel hair with tomato. tried a little and i must say, i'm getting pretty good at cooking out of inspiration! hahaha.. Self praisal is good most of the time ok! heh...

So anwyay, it's a very simple dish lah, bacon first so the oil can be used as the base. Heated that up with garlic, then put in the angel hair pasta and just stirred it a little to get the flavour in. Then mixed the Leggo's (this is the BEST brand) tomato paste with some italian seasoning, pepper, chilli flakes and then water and poured that into the pasta along with the basil leaves i just bought. Tada!!!! hahaha... i bet someone has already created this somewhere lah, and it sounds really like my previous invention of chicken tomato'd fillet; but in the end it's still something i came up with on the spot. How nice!! :-p

Gonna make my pesto mix now. Can't wait to use it for breakfast tomorrow. Yum Yum!! :-D

Made soymilk pancakes for dinner yesterday. Must say that my 'culinary' skills must've improved ever since i shifted to this new place. Hahaha... This is my muse! (besides the fact that my bf's pretty picky about the food he eats! LOL)

Substituted milk with soymilk and din add any sugar coz was gonna eat it with turkey breast ham and stuff. Not too bad i must say! Gonna try making it again this Fri when Bev and Roger comes over. Will be a lil more creative. Maybe will try one small batch with cocoa. Hope it turns out well!

Anyway, just in case u wanna try, i used 1 cup flour with half a teaspoon of salt, then i mixed in one cup of soymilk with one egg. I would've added raw sugar/honey but again, it was for dinner and my tummy never recognizes sugar as a fulfilling meal.

I wanna try making my own pasta next. Will update on how that goes. Shd be pretty easy! :-p

Heh... So narcissistic this post... But I am kinda proud of myself these few days. hahaha..

Firstly, I made pesto on Wednesday from scratch! Actually, it's easier than it sounds! I didn't use a mortar (din have one at home) so i used the special blender that Aunt Teng bought for me and blended the basil leaves, salt, pine nuts and olive oil altogether. Simple! Done! It tasted pretty good if I must say so myself!

In the morning (yesterday), I tested my pesto mix on the multi grain bread (trying to live healthier here. TRYING being the key word and am still TRYING) and it tasted oh so yummy!!! Would've been yummier toasted but I was in a rush (make up is now taking up a lot of prep time in the morning!)

In the evening (yesterday), I made a warm prawn salad tossed with the pesto mix. It was delice!!!! Jon seemed to like it to (and he's a tough nut to crack when it comes to food) so kudos to myself! hahaha

Then this morning, I had a breakthrough in my cold calling at Tamp! 2 cases in an hour. How cool is that! I know it may sound simple, but stopping strangers on the streets can be really nerve wrecking, not to mention trying to encourage them to sign up for whatever I was trying to recommend!!! So I was kinda quite happy lah. I mean all along i see ppl closing (even Jon has had his share of closes) and I only had leads which led to almost nowhere for now. So it's very encouraging to know that I do have that skill, just have to believe in the law of large numbers.

But i guess i'm most proud of myself coz of my hp. I got it free!!! Yes yes, Starhub's always giving away free phones, but usually lousy ones or on very high premium'd plans! And my phone was really dying on me, going bonkers more likely so eventho i made a promise to myself I won't be changing phones like how i did last time, i really had to give up on my HTC Touch 3G. At first, I wanted the HTC Hero. Something about the curve of the phone just drew me to it, but in the end, Jon did the research for me and concluded that HTC Diamond TouchPro 2 was much better in terms of performance. So I settled on that. The good part was Hero was about 200 more expensive, so I saved on that.

Anyway, went down to Starhub and found out that because I'm a hub club subscriber now, i can upgrade me line every year instead of waiting 18 mths, so was quite happy about it. Then i found out that Diamond was about $300 after i signed up for the 2 year plan based on my subscription. I asked about the trade in for the 3G and they gave me $200 for it. Now wat's left is the remaining 100, which i was unwilling to pay actually, considering i really din want to change my phone but bohpian. So i asked if i could get a voucher from Starhub and the customer svc guy told me to call the cust svc hotline to request.

So i did and the woman who answered said it'll take 3 working days. Damn it! Just when i got excited i had to wait again!!!! So anyway on Monday, Jon said we better go get the phone since it was a public hol and work shdn't be disrupted midweek if i shd get the phone. That sweetheart of a boyfriend even wanted to just pay for me (seeing how stingy i am this time! hahaha). In the end, i called starhub again and requested for an urgent voucher coz i din want to disrupt my mid week work (exactly wat i said ok!) and in the end, they put up an urgent request and someone called me within the next 10 mins!!!! COOL!!!! So they gave me a $150 voucher! How cool is that! Now i have $400! hahaha...

Then came the bad news. They checked for me availability of the phone and there was no Diamond available in all stores! ARGH!!!! But based on previous experience with Jon's phone, we decided to just go down to the svc ctr in tamp and try our luck coz sometimes the system checks are delayed and lo and behold, they had 5 sets. What's better is that there was no queue! On a public hol no queue! Cool!!!

So in the end, i had to just forgo the extra 50 coz it could only be offset with a handphone. But i was SUPER happy coz if i didn't try calling in, then we would've wasted $100 and I would surely have been pissed when Starhub calls me 3 days later to tell me i have a $150 voucher to use! THANK GOD!!!!!!

See... these are moments to be proud of myself. hahahaha.... I know it's so self praising but sometimes we gotta see the good in ourselves and be positive and proud of ourselves. This gives us the arsenal to make the coming days even better coz we're on a roll! Will always try to remind myself of this!!! :-)

How cute that Dad's bday post is straight after Mom's bday post eh?! His bday is 2 weeks after mom's bday (with granny's bday in between on the 1st Sep)

So all 3 weekends were back in JB for bdays. Quite cool to see my whole family for 3 weeks in a row.

Daddy's bday was on Sunday so we had the chance to visit the new church grounds and I even managed to catch up with Sandra and Joanne! HOW COOL!!!

Dad got a very cool pressie from aunt teng and aunt mamek's families- a saxophone. But wat was cuter was their card (errr, a paper cardboard with everyone's sigs on it) and the wrapper (a mixture of xmas wrappers, and according to faith, wrapped in the car on the way into JB. lol)

Had dinner at Tapai Tang and we (Jon and I) were amazed at the amount the children's table could eat! We were one person less than the adults but ate as much, if not more! LOL. Must be coz of the hunger and coz actually it's there's no more 'children' already. LOL. Hahaha...

Anyway, a lil catching up to do:

Gran's bday celebration was held in Mutiara. Booked 6 tables at Mei San coz it was her 80th bday. How cool! Each family did something for granny (impromptu-ly) and it was very fun lah. Food was ok only coz by the time we arrived (after all that traffic on the Sat) the food was quite cold liao.

On Sun, the whole family took a drive to Tanjung Piai, the southernmost tip of the asian continent or something. Errr.... Company was good, but the place? Hahaha... Let's just say I felt like I was in a ghost movie cum "The Hostel" cum just a really bad kampung house. Goodness! Luckily i had my family there with me lah... It was a wonderful 2 days (not counting the venue lah)

Didn't take any pic. Ever since I had my HTC I haven't been camera whoring. How sad!! I missed the days I would just anyhow snap pics and all... Looking forward to a better camera phone in the near future.

Aunt Lee Koon's back in Malaysia. Had breakfast with her and Aunt Teng this morning and took a short walk to find her scarf tie thingy. She came back in time to join us at Tg Piai so it was truly a family reunion, errr, just missing Aunt Lee Lee :-(

Anyhow, it's back to work and to work harder! I think the closest bday's in Nov (my sister's) so from now til then it's HARD WORK!!!!