The first day of Chinese New Year.

And other than the visiting I did, the dog ate the sun. You're bullshitting, you say. Well, maybe because it's the year of the bull cow ox. So I bullshit instead of, uh, lionshit.

Anyway.

My family and I set off in the late morning (it used to be early morning but I became lazy) to the temple first, then to three other locations for visiting.

Dad wore a checkered shirt that I bought online by mistake and matched it with incompatible suspenders.


Mum wore a purple blouse with black slacks.


Bro wore a brown tee and pants.


I wore a dress that made my brother go 'WAAAAAAAAAA WHY SO RED' when it was in fact burgundy. I like my dress.


First stop was to visit a temple at around the Tampines Link area.

Anyway, RC informed me of some solar eclipse that was gonna happen. But it was very cloudy I worried that the sun would have no one to ask for help from when the heavenly dog started to munch on it.

Gloomy.

And then we headed on to my maternal uncle's place where my sister's family met us there too.


Put a straw hat on my dad and I'll be convinced he's a farmer, not a taxi-driver. Haha.

Distracted by the teevee

A closer look at how my dad's suspenders look like

I have no idea where they came from.

Eating chocolate

Chasing after a dog

This is how life is like when you have a little kid at home. Life seems to revolve just around him.

After a couple of hours we headed to my paternal 2nd aunt's place, then to my paternal 1st aunt's place. =\ No photos were taken there, but I visited Felix as usual, this is what I do every year.


There were some tuba scores at Felix's, and I found this score. The song Fever, I'm sure many of you heard it before.


How on earth do you play a piece smoochy-ly??

And because of the eclipse, my dad brought an extra equipment out - DIY eclipseculars. I made that word up.


Failed attempt =S The lens reflected myself instead. And the sun was...kinda moony. However at that time it was a little covered by the moon already.

Anyway, here's how the very old eclipseculars look like.

I don't know if you all will find this box familiar, because this margarine is so long ago.


My dad got the piece of glass a la lens from a hardware shop that closed down long ago.


In other for it to be more user-friendly...

...my dad slit the box so that your forehead can fit snugly to the box...

...and this is where you place your nose. Cool eh.

Dad made this in 1995. When I was in Primary 2.

And for some reason we kept this antique with us for the past nearly 14 years.

Still, thanks to it I manage to get good views of the solar eclipse.



And then it got REALLY cloudy.




Then I got bored so I stopped.

Dad added an extra detail to the box.

Same ol' handwriting.

Heh.

Hope you all are having a great CNY!

Turn of the year in the lunar calendar

Happy Moo Year!

Thanks to the melamine scare in China, I have no 大白兔奶糖 this year.

Big find.

I was in the midst of room-cleaning when I found treasure. Right smack in my room.


This was the bag I ran away from home with many years ago =P I think I mentioned about the event before somewhere in this blog.

But I didn't go further than the lift lobby that time.

All the way to Obama

=\

真希望可以马上把缺点改掉。

Year 3 Semester 2

Today is the first day of school.

Today is also my free day.

The above statements imply that I haven't stepped into school.

Which means that I am still in holiday mood.

Darn. School's at 8 a.m. tomorrow. How disgusting is that.

Extreme Makeover Part 1

Of course I'm NOT the one going through a makeover. I don't need one, do I?

HAHA

Anyway, I'm talking about my block. It's undergoing a repainting job.

Now it's (faded) light pink/pink/white, and it has been this way for like, nearly 15 years.

You can see that the left section has been painted white

Nooooooo. They wrote that below my neighbour's window. Must be cracks or something.

I wonder how my block will look like when they're done painting.

The White House?


The Cinderella Castle?


...

OK la, I ought to stop dreaming. Enough!

1000th post!

And this 1000th post is about junk food. HAHA.

That is the fried zucchini from Carl's Jr. Very nice! I'd rather not eat any kind of junk food for a week to reserve my calories for them. Haha. I don't know how to tell you, but it's really quite nice. $3.70 for a serving.

I'm finally back to Carl's Jr. after so many years =P But just for the fried zucchini!

Bread-a-baking

My first go at baking! Bread. Wholewheat oat bread. My favourite kind of bread =D Got the recipe from Martha Stewart, but due to limitations I didn't follow totally.

I was kinda worried because I am not experienced at all, and with a cranky oven, it could fail easily. And there weren't anyone at home who baked bread before! The closest was mum who made char siew bao in her younger days. I've never seen her bake one, so you know how long ago it was.

Used oats, wholemeal flour, bread flour etc. and of course yeast to get the dough you see below. I was supposed to let it rise for 1 to 1.25 hours.

1429hrs - It was smaller a little while ago, I was cleaning up the area before I washed my hands to take these pictures. When I first covered it in cling wrap the dough was in contact with the plastic

1448hrs

1508hrs - The rising slowed down

1520hrs

1534hrs - Like no difference hor? Haha.

It was kinda scary because I could hear some 'activity' going on in there, the active yeast doing its job. Somehow like bubbles popping away. It was as though the dough itself was alive! Creepy.

Then a little kneading and pinching and pushing later, it became a ball and rested peacefully on the baking tray. And then there was another 45 minutes to rise. Rise what? Hasn't it risen enough already?! (coming from an impatient person haha)

45 minutes later
It looked like it was flatter instead of fatter lo =S die die die. Haha

Then I scored the top with a big X.


Pardon the ugly hole in the middle =( Haha I didn't do the shaping part well enough.

Then you sprinkle the top with oats...


And into the oven it goes!



Ta-daa!

The colour is so nice =D

Not as hole-y as bread should be

And in the end. The crust was damn hard (but sis found it nice) and the inside was a little too moist. And not hole-y.

I'll try again!! But baking bread is time-consuming. The never ending wait for the yeast to complete its work. I said I will try again because I can't just leave the ingredients there right. HAHA. And the next time I better lower the temperature a bit, I think my oven is a little too hot. Anyone has an oven thermometer that I can borrow for a little while?

~~~~~

Oh remember the apple tart I baked for Christmas? I forgot to post this. Had it with vanilla ice cream!!! Oooh la la. Heh.


It was super nice with the ice-cream too.

And whatever I am/was wishing for has got to do with this heh heh heh =P

I learnt (from Facebook and an uber busybody friend haha) that a couple from secondary school is going to get hitched this March. The guy's my age, the girl is two years older.

My oh my. This is scary. I can't imagine myself at the point of marriage yet.

But still, congratulations to the both of them!

Tsk. Tsk tsk tsk.

I was somehow more relaxed about bidding for modules this semester compared to the past since it's my last.

So no matter how expensive my modules are, I should still be able to afford it I guess. With all the points accumulated from the past five semesters.

And I looked forward to splurging on my modules.

In Round 1A on 2 - 5 Jan I had three core modules to bid for. I placed 291 points on each of them and didn't really bother anymore.

In Round 2C which took place today I had an elective to bid for. I placed 999 points.

And then.


Bloody hell, I only spent 4 bid points for this semester.

Tangerines and technology

I was surfing around facebook when I saw this advertisement.



Splendid! Now you can buy mandarin oranges online!

I find it a little amusing because mandarin oranges for sale isn't an online advertisement you'd see everyday. It's not like clothes or tuition or books but fruits.

To add on to that, via Facebook.

Of free gifts and luck.

Mum got a lo hei plate from Shop N Save this morning, after spending over $30.

She came back and complained that the cashier didn't give her that plate until she asked for it. And then she went on about the cashier being greedy and wanted to keep the plates for herself etc. Aiya. This is human.

So here's the plate.


And as you can see, along the circumference of the plate there are pictures of the Chinese zodiac and telling you how your fortune will be like this year.

I was born in the year of the rabbit (or hare), this is what mine said:


So if the good luck never comes I won't be able to reveal my hidden talents lo.

In the kitchen

And I cooked again!

Was so excited to cook (haha) and I made 葱油饼 (loosely translated as spring onion 'biscuit') and onion rings.

Onion rings!!! I used Martha Stewart's recipe - The Best Onion Rings (and it was really the best!). It's just that I don't have cayenne pepper and cumin so I replaced everything with paprika and it turned out great! The batter was a bit watery though, so mum added more flour into it. It's just that I didn't expect so much onion rings =S So there are a lot of leftovers. Ask me for the recipe if you're interested okays. It's really good!


And then the 葱油饼. Disastrous. Everything turned out to be alright, except for the 葱油饼 itself. It tasted very salty and tough. Eeks. I'm never gonna make it again. Haha!


But it looks okay. Still edible la, just that I didn't like it. And the spring onion smell was overpowering.

This was the 葱油饼 I ate in Irvine which was good.


I think I'll stick to eating that at a restaurant.