The itsy-bitsy spider...

This piece of news is seriously funny.

Dear CORS,

This is my last semester in NUS.

Never mind that you've never been nice to me the past five semesters, giving me problems in choosing the modules I want to take, the biggest of which is clash in timings.

Why can't you be nicer to me?

This is already my very last semester and it is obvious you don't want to make things easy for me at all.

Why do you want to do this to me? I did you no wrong, I've always been faithful to you!

Argh!

You've saddened me so. Sob.

Hurt,
Erina

I want to be sarcastic but too bad sarcasm doesn't work on everyone and anyone.

Happiness doesn't last, does it?

I just blogged about myself becoming happier and now I don't feel that way anymore.

=(

Life is playing tricks on me, maybe.

Before you say I only blog about sad stuff...

...I just got a little happier! =D

A la MacBook

I think the photo booth function from Apple has been a bit too popular that other brands of laptops put the function in too. That include my laptop -_-

And of course I played with it. Hoho.

Sorry for the bad lighting.

Or it's just that I'm dark.

Test shot.


And then I can add some decorative stuff to the photo. Like a ladybird...


..some kisses *shy*...


...UFO...


...or just frame it up!


I was trying to do some Mona Lisa look but apparently it looked more Mr. Bean.

And I didn't notice I was sitting like PCK -_-

Oh well.

平安夜的晚餐

Growing up in a very very very Chinese family, I've never had any kind of Christmas dinner at home. Not that I ever yearned for one, but it is quite fun if we can have one. So...

I donned the apron!

Well it would be too ambitious for an amateur cook to prepare a turkey, so I decided that I should avoid any kind of bird altogether. Fish is the solution, since it is simple and fast to cook. And there was dessert!

Mum (and later Bro) helped me in the kitchen, but this time I was doing the main stuff instead of my mum. She helped me take out the gigantic Corningware plates and made everything looked so small! Hahaha so pardon the presentation:

The fish wasn't thaaaat small, it was the plate that was big
At top left is the coleslaw, top right is the mashed potato

I apologise if you are looking for something presentable, I was too busy to bother about that! Haha.

The fish was bought frozen from the supermarket at $3.99 for two packs, four pieces each. It said 'Sutchi fillet' or something like that, it wasn't dory.

After some googling I learnt that sutchi is actually a kind of catfish which you see below. The sound of catfish makes me sick in some way or the other, but well, I've eaten it all in.

Striped catfish but I don't see the stripes

The fish was marinated with Worcestershire sauce, paprika (I should've used chilli powder), garlic, freshly grounded pepper and Italian herbs then pan-fried. And then eaten with malt vinegar. Yummy. The fish turned out not bad! Before I knew that it was catfish, that is.

That's coleslaw on the side, nothing much, just shredded carrots and finely-cut lettuce and dressing.

Then there was mashed potato and broccoli, which I think worked out pretty fine. Okay, in fact I think it's good. HAHA. I didn't do much, all I did was to follow the recipe and Bro helped me mash. I was busy with dessert.

DESSERT!! What is a Christmas dinner without dessert?! So I made (for the very first time) an apple tart. It turned out pretty well! Yeay!

Apple tart!
(note my Bro's clean plate in the background! YEAY!)

Haha if you're gonna ask me why there's a + on top of the tart. It's because I don't have enough leftover dough to make a nice lattice =P Aiya, never mind la, not as if I open a restaurant. Haha.


But there's too much crust and too little apple =\ Not that I mind, but I certainly won't like this kind of thing if I buy any pie or tart from outside.


成功！

And so that was the product of five hours of buying and cooking. And quite some money. Because I bought quite a few new condiments that didn't exist in my kitchen (like malt vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, etc.).

Not so Christmasy after all eh? With no turkey no stuffing no log cake. Aiya, who cares!

Maybe I'll cook up a New Year's dinner. Time to hunt for some new recipes =D

Phew

What a relief.

I wish..I wish...

... ...

To be revealed after Christmas.

Just in case you all say I'm hinting ma. But I've been quite a bitch so I doubt Santa will put me in his list this year. Not that he ever, but still.

Grumpy

It pisses me off that the wind symphony isn't part of the university arts festival just because of the way things are done and decided.

There is just no incentive for me to bother about doing a better job simply because obviously performance isn't a criterion.

If this is how they determine a festival of good quality then so be it!

DAMNIT!

Totally retarded timetable next semester.

On top of that, I can't take the Southeast Asian module I wanna take because of a bloody core module!!!!!

ARGHHHH!

马票也没那么准！

*粗话连篇*

气死我了。



Edit: I was pissed off with the entire thing and found a simple game (freerice.com) to play to take away the angst. And look at what the third question asked.



Of course I know what it is! It's been going through my head the past fifteen minutes!

A little late...

That's why there are things called 'updates'!

So here is an update of the barbecue for Mr. Leonard Tan at

Hazel Park Condominium
A Certain Ulu Corner
Upper Bukit Timah Road
Singapore, Singapore

on 14 December which took me an agonising 2 hours to get there by 291 and 67. Two bloody hours! Next time I better go there by bus-train-bus.

No no, no, no more next time. Hahaha.

Anyway, here are some photos I'd like to share.




The last photo is the ENTIRE lower brass section. Seriously.

GO AWAY!

I wish that everything about you would go away.

The new skin

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, some of you might wonder where this splendid blog layout which is much prettier than the skin on my face came from.

But before that, looking at my most-recent long post, I completed NOTHING in the agenda. If this is some exco meeting, I'd be done for.

Anyway, before I digress, I got the background from here:


It is actually the inside cover of a certain cookbook I talked about in a few posts back. I just have to keep something from the book, don't I? Hahaha. I scanned it in and extracted the design. Hosted it in Photobucket, then set it on repeat in the blog's HTML template. Voila.

Next, the blog body and sidebars. I'm not some HTML queen (obviously, duh) though I had a little bit of HTML education in Primary Six. Sad to say, the lack of facilities thereafter in secondary school failed me. Thus I can hardly remember much. Thank the guy up there for granting me some commonsense, I cleared these


corners that I didn't want out of the Rounders template, available by default on Blogger. This is how it'd look like.


So now you see all the body and bars are sharp-edged, not rounded. And I can play with colours to make them complement my background. =D It's all in Blogger. Not too bad at all!

The photo you see on top, taken by my trusty Zhao Xiangji and edited into a Polaroid by dear Joan, is on standalone. How did I do that?

The guy up there knows what I cleared! HAHA. The next time I clicked preview, the top box was gone and the photo was there by itself, pretty and nice. A little alignment did the trick, to put it in the centre. This is what they call tyco.

Time for bed, it is getting early. Good night!

Done

Yeay, new look. How refreshing.

Notice

THIS BLOG IS CURRENTLY UNDER...ERM....MAINTENANCE!

SO PLEASE VISIT AGAIN IN A COUPLE OF HOURS.

无题

I feel that this holiday is fruitless through and through.

It's not as packed as last December when I had a valid reason for not finding temporary work. There just wasn't time at all.

This December? Too much free time!

Along with the masa lapang I still procrastinated about everything. From clearing up my room to picking up new skills - like driving (sigh) and trying out new recipes. I seriously dunno what I've been doing.

I have no motivation to call up the instructor for to start my practical lessons. Not at all. I wonder what will motivate me. More freedom? Ease of travel? Maybe, but I'm somewhat (and then not) satisfied with the local public transportation system. Oh well. Whatever.

Ah, I've been following the telly quite faithfully.

Little Nyonya - albeit several logical gaps so far - is one heck of a drama. I think I learnt quite a bit about the old Peranakan culture. I wonder how you can tell if one is Peranakan, I don't think I've met any in my entire life and I'm already at a quarter of my expected lifespan! Back in point, I enjoyed the show through and through. It looks like a terrible sobby soap opera but it actually has its humourous moments. A lovely yet heart-wrenching plot, and a charming Young Master Chen to boot.

I just realised something. Jamie Oliver left my mind this week. Damn.

心花2 is not as nice as Nyonya wrt the story, the plot. And it gets rather draggy. However I love the characters in the show, especially the bad people. How these characters irk you to the maximum, fwah, I enjoy that kind of erm, sensation. But this doesn't imply I like people in real life to come by and piss me off okay.

What else have I been watching? Hmmm. Ah, Rachel Ray. Talked to Jie Ying at the library while mugging and we were chatting at the cookery section (surprise, surprise). RR's books were on the shelves, so JY told me about her and her shows on Channel 5 at weekday noons. Only the last section of her hour-long show was the cooking part though, it is more like a talkshow in the first three-quarters of RR. Sometimes Most of the time I don't know her guests, which kinda sucked. No I don't mean the guests suck, I mean it sucks that I don't know the guests.

Hmmm so the black box has taken away nearly 20 hours of my time in a week. As compared to just one hour for Jamie previously, every Tuesday on Channel 16.

Ah, the loss of my laptop explains the amount of time I have for the television. That laptop is quite an old one, passed down from my brother who went to get a new laptop for himself. It cranked up and died. Life is unpredictable.

On Tuesday bro drove me down to school to get myself a new laptop =D and here it is, finally, a computer for myself. It's a Toshiba Portege M800 in Cool Pearl White. There were mercury silver (which is like black) and candy pink, of which the former is too plain and the latter too..erm, you know. I chose the white one with hopes of there being a red version but oh well too bad. Don't ask me why Toshiba, that's the brand of all three laptops at home and I guess you get your answer. Not that we're very pro-Toshiba, it's just that sometimes you get used to something and bam you're stuck with it. Physical traits aside, I hope the specifications will do me good and the laptop will last for at least half a decade. But nothing really special I think. Normal $2K laptop. Oh but I love the whole Windows Vista features. Pretty interface and pretty interesting. Thanks to lovely Mum who sponsored me! =D

Introducing the new lappie.





As you might have noticed, I've grown to be pretty fascinated with the glowing buttons.



And so I'm still getting used to the new set of keyboard with the new placement of certain keys. Typing text as usual isn't a problem, but with different locations of the much-used HOME, END, DEL, PGUP, PGDN...they take a little more time than usual.

I was playing with Adobe Dreamweaver - because I want a new blog skin - and that somehow got me into reading blogs. Suddenly it occured to me that it isn't that hard to find the blog addresses of some people, which I actually did find one person's blog. It all lies in the username he/she usually uses. Like myself! I think it's time I change my blog address. Haha, no la, nothing to hide. And ya the blog mentioned. The last post was dated in 2004 -_- but nevertheless, it was still a pretty interesting read.

And while I try to come up with a new blog skin - which I just want to edit from the current templates and testing out on the cool Dreamweaver - I think it's time I give my blog a proper name. Boredom-generating titles (like what I have now -_-) are so boring. Pun-intended. There should be a name-my-blog poll and everyone come up with a name that's suitable for me and my blog. Why not you start first?? Hahaha.

Oh The Mind Cafe opened at Tampines Safra recently. There's a current promotion, Happy Hour from 2pm - 6pm (so I reckon it should be renamed Happy FOUR Hours) at $5++/pax, free flow drink.

I haven't blogged so much text in a while (I think), feels good to go on and on and on. =P

Agenda for the new day: Either clear up my room or whip up something new. Or neither!

#970 Yeayyyyy

Yeay finally! A laptop to call my own! =D

title-less

I look back on something I did today, purely unintentional, and wondered why that happened, why I behaved that way, why I reacted that way. I hope i didn't relay the wrong message to whoever's involved.

~~~~~

language error of the day

"ERINA~~"

"JAMAAAAA!"

"Wa, so seductive."

"Is it? So you mean you were seducted?"

"Seducted? Is there such a word?"

"Eh?"

Together: "'Seduced' laaa!'

"Oh ya! Argh shit!"

And then dear jama couldn't stop laughing.

Oh well. I said (by accident! haha) 'seducted' maybe because I was influenced upon hearing 'seductive'. 

(An attempt to redeem myself hahah) On second thoughts, it should be 'seducive' instead of 'seductive' ma. Since 'seduce' is the root word. 

Aiya! Who cares! Haha!

Oh erina

Stop being pessimistic.

hello world!

i'm blogging using my brother's htc touch hd! what a chore. -_-

A new kitchen tool

The vivacious vegetable peeler.

Razor-sharp serrated teeth, promises to peel the thinnest of skins and to work efficiently. 

That includes stabbing your palm when you weren't careful. 

Ouch.

I was just talking about this yesterday.

A loan from the library

A really good one.

Sooooo good that I don't wanna return it =X I wanna keep it for myself! Haha.

Many recipes that I wanna keep. Howwwwww? =(

There are many many (what look like) easy-to-cook recipes in there, and most, if not all, only take about half an hour. Perfect. And a super nice book to go with it. For unexperienced cooks like me, it's a bible! 

Mario Kart Love Song

Play this song, it's not bad.

V1:

You be my princess

I'll be your toad

I'll follow behind you

on rainbow road

Protect you from red shells

wherever we go

I promise.

V2:

Noone will touch us

if we pick up a star

If you spin out

you can ride in my car

When we slide together

we generate sparks

in our wheels and our hearts

Chorus:

The finish line

is just around the bend

I'll pause this game

so our love will never end

Let's go again

V3:

The blue shell is coming

so I'll go ahead

If you hang behind

it'll hit me instead

but never look back

cause I'm down but not dead

I'll catch up to you

Bridge:

Don't worry about

Bowser or DK

Eat this glowing mushroom

and they'll all fade away

Chorusx2

to the mushroom cup

and the flower cup

and the star cup

and the reverse cup

walalalalala

walalalalalawaluigiiiiii

COPYRIGHT 2008

Music and Lyrics by Sam Hart

I dunno how many of you've played this game, but I do play it on my DS once in a while. Plus the lyrics, I think the song is really sweet.

Like..updates?

I realise I haven't been blogging properly. Or just blog about really ignorant and meaningless stuff. And I don't see much updates about myself, and you call this a blog? Online diary? Phweee.

Anyway, here goes.

Laptop! 

With this you're expecting that I have a new laptop?? No wayyyyyyy. My laptop konked and never woke up =( It died all of a sudden, without warning. That happened about three weeks ago and I'm now used to life without the laptop. I'm now very worried about the data saved inside. =S *crosses fingers* I hope I can extract out almost everything!

Teevee.

Ouhhh all the shows on TV I've been watching these days. It's so un-ME. Simply because I used to watch only an hour on the telly a week. And now it's like..Erm. Around three hours a day? Thanks to the laptop which betrayed my trust. On top of that my dad changed the cable set-top box to the Hubstation which implies that I can record shows that I wanna watch but will miss. Oh boy, the amount of entertainment inside.

In the name of convenience.

Oh shit the curiosity. My brother wondered if my camera's memory stick could be read via the multi-card port (I don't know the exact name but you get what I mean) and guess what?! Nooo!! T_T I pushed the memory stick way in and in the midst of trying to get it out, it got further in T_T T_T T_T SOB! My photos!!!! T_T I'm sorry guys, our photos are at risk. So now we have two laptops to send to the repairman. Greatttt.

Movie.

Madagascar 2 is damn funny. I think I practically laughed throughout the show. Which was less than 90 minutes but I reckon it's somehow enough already. The storyline was not bad, I think you people can consider watching it if you need a laugh. Madagascar 1...is not exactly compulsory. Just find out what it is about and then watch part 2!

There are other things that I can update but most will need photos and I feel so empty without them =( Sighhhhhh. 

I want my lovely photos =(

Nothing good has been happening to me. I often wonder if the embarassing things that happen to others will ever happen to me. Oh man, I am scared. =( don't bug me don't bug me!

=\ 

It's the holidays!!!

But I'm not happy. I think it's because..I feel so aimless and unaccomplished. Sigh.

People change.

You're a disappointment. No longer the same old friend I used to relate to easily. 

As vicious as you are to people around you, I can do the same to you.

Hmms.

I think I wanna go hiking or tour around Singapore like a tourist.

Sigh

Woke up in the morning, saw the newspapers on the dining table, and then learnt that the Singapore hostage in Mumbai was killed by the terrorists. 

A heavy feeling came over me because somehow or the other I thought that she'd be save and sound and nothing will go wrong. I never thought that something like this could happen to a Singaporean.

Life is so unpredictable.

Damn you militants, thank goodness you're all dead. May your terrorist peers disappear from the surface of the earth this very minute.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of the deceased Singaporean.

And this kinda started a moody day for me. 

Sighhh. 

Wanted to cook today, but turned out that no one's having lunch at home except for mum and I. Couldn't really cook already, so I just didn't bother anymore and nua-ed around the house till now. I wish I could do something fruitful =( other than studying, that is.

Sighh.

Of names and definitions

Prelude: I'm finally off the four days (plus maybe two weeks of studying) of hell. A paper each day for four days, I'm down to one paper left - due next Wednesday. 5 days to nua and of course, study for the last paper. 

Anyway.

I've been going to the public library the past week to study. And being a library, it has tons of books that I always love to flip. Cookbooks, travel guides, some fiction, non-fiction from the recommendations rack. 

One fine day I came across this book "60,001+ Baby Names" and miraculously I found my name! Finding my name in such books is hardddd. And I'm quite happy that I found mine. Just that I don't know how accurate the stuff inside the book are. Oh I saw the book at Popular Bookstore too.

Surprise, surprise. Considering that my name was more of a random one that my dad (I think) concocted. 

Erina (American) peaceful

WORLD PEACE! HURRAY!

真是人如其名。Hahah just kidding la.

My Chinese name is lín wăn jīng - 林琬菁.

My parents have no idea what it exactly meant. -_-

Honestly I don't like how it sounds like, kinda...uncool. And outdated. (I recently got to know someone who likes names with 'wan' in it, but I don't really understand why =P) Well at least not as 'cool' as 'Erina' IMO. =P Evergreen.

But I like how my Chinese name looks like. 

林 -> forest (well this is my surname, not exactly counted)

琬 -> a fine jade

菁 -> being used to name/describe a flower, more specifically 韭菜花. You know, koo chye? If I'm not wrong, flower of the chives. =\ Okay not very cool. 

But very pretty righhhhhhht.

What I think is implied from my name is...the essence of that jade. Hurhur. Okay la, depends on how you look at it. My mum told me that one of my senior cousins came up with this name. (NOT limshizi!)

And if you happen to wonder how my dad came up with 'Erina', well guess my brother's name first. 

Eric? 

Right.

My sis?

Erin.

Bingo.

And then there was me. 

E-R-I-N-A! E-R-I-N-A! E-R-I-N-A! And Erina was her name, oh!

Pardon the 'high-ness'.

唉。

这几天还真是恐怖。

也算不上后悔，只是...只是非常恐怖。

完了完了。

I'm so dead. T_T

A weird question

I was quite bothered about the existence of a banner bearing a mind-boggling question in the heartlands. This was at Tampines Bus Interchange in the evening yesterday (Thursday).

Wonder what's gonna come.

What about women from say, the red-light district? Hmmmmm?

What do you think?

P.S. It said, exposed this Thursday, but it was already a Thursday when I saw it. Shrugs.

唉。

考试要到了，得更加油咯。

突然觉得这个学期并没有想象中那么应付得来。

好怕。

Schadenfreude!

I'm happy and so satisfied!

I say it suckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuckasuck! It sucks to be me!

Hoho.

Thank you for your company! =D

Josh Groban

I can't stand it. Kacak sekali!!! Haha

Random

I read on yesterday's mypaper that they are planning to use the melamine-tainted milk to manufacture bricks. Hoho. So much to reduce wastage.

P.S. I'm coming online whenever I can and whenever I want to. Some of you should know that my laptop's down! =(

=(

I'm so fed up, nothing's going my way =(

Again!

Grrr my laptop died on me again. =(

我的长寿剧

必须懂得约束.

My dad in an apron

We had crabs todayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

YEAYY!!!

My dad cooked crabs. =D

Say hello to Chef and Mr. Big Pincers

Three crabs
Two crabs to go into the gravy
One into the steamer
Into a wok of boiling water they went!

I remembered when I was younger I cried when I saw my dad killing the crustaceans. And he threatened me by not allowing me to eat. (But of course I ate, crabs ma!) This time when I saw him killing the crabs, I ran away! =D

Adding tomato sauce to the wonderful boiling mixture

Someone called my dad while he was cooking. In the midst of the distraction, my dad forgot to spice it up HAHA. So it was just plain tomato sauce with no chilli. =\ A bit no kick, but oh well.

I was reading the papers when my dad came over and stuck the price tag on the lifestyle section of ST. -_-


And my dad happily cooked when he realised something amiss - the huge pincers only had a blob of flesh inside!!!!

LOOK! So irritating. =(

I wonder if it's something with the crab's anatomy or it shrunk or what. -_- But crabs don't shrink do they?

Aiya next time don't buy from Giant.

Ta-daaaaaaaa! =D

All the flesh....gone.

The steamed baby

And deep-fried mantous!

P.S. My brother just came back with durians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAY

Clifton Springs Chicken Wings

Today was my off day (yeay!) and I decided to laze around the house.

So in all, today I didn't really do anything important.

Oh and I cooked! My first time at baking chicken, uh, drumlets.

Yeay. Recipe from foodwishes.blogspot.com. Thank you Chef John!

I think it was not bad for a first try =D

Before baking

During baking

After baking

The sauce

Ta-daaaaaaa! After drizzling the sauce over the drumlets. Yeay!

A very sad love story

This clip made me tear ='(



Now don't scroll down yet, until you finished this clip.










Did you believe that it made me tear? HAHA

Random

Nick asked me to blog this.


"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
i shd go slp
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
but talking to my army fren whom i bumped into today
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
haha
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
he's steward now!
airy-na disoriented says:
is it!!
airy-na disoriented says:
then what happened to you?????????
hahaha
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
pls lor
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
is i dun wan lor
airy-na disoriented says:
ya la ya laaaaaaa
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
haha
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
ahh wadever
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
haha
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
jus now he ask me to go join sia la
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
he said i got the height go tthe looks
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
*luff1
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
oops
airy-na disoriented says:
HAHAHAHA
airy-na disoriented says:
nick you're so bhb
airy-na disoriented says:
your friend in SIA also?
airy-na disoriented says:
but if you can go become a steward....i think i can go become a stewardess liao.
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
-_-
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
i shd blog this
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
den see the response
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
*luff1
airy-na disoriented says:
kns
airy-na disoriented says:
i should blog that
airy-na disoriented says:
many will agree.
airy-na disoriented says:
i also got the height got the looks what.
airy-na disoriented says:
HAHHAHAHA
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
*luff1
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
ok lo
airy-na disoriented says:
if looking like a gorilla (or is it chimpanzee? i forgot) can make it to SIA i'm sure a gorgeous lioness can too
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
lets go be air crew
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
ARGH!!!!!!!!
airy-na disoriented says:
HAHAHAH
"U"-Nick ©: Life would be much easier if I had the source code. says:
euks1
airy-na disoriented says:
ah gu gu gu