cooked!

what's there to do on a friday night after a delicious thai dinner at mr yes please?

well, there's always prawn fishing (or prawn killing, as M calls it) beside the jurong bird park! my very first prawning experience turned out to be a very fruitful and therapeutic one - quite a spotaneous and fun way to spend the night really!

on the long ride there (we were in siglap, so we traveled across singapore just for the prawns)...

we discovered jimmy's camera

no wasting time...once we got to the "farm", the guys got us our rods and we immediately attacked the murky waters. i was the first to catch a prawn - super beginner's luck - but the guys soon caught up and overtook me. while it was terribly exciting everytime a victim got hooked up, a lot of our time was spent waiting...

waiting for a prawn to bite...

jimmy waiting...

hen and pecked waiting...

and waiting

gracie - my expert hum hooker and prawn handler - stopped reading in between helping me with doing the icky stuff (like actually touching the hum and the prawns), to try her hand at fishing.

"nah you take it, it'll look like you caught it"

gracie caught a prawn! arhaha

gracie tells the prawn off for making her wait so long

the last 2 hours were excruciating...with very few prawns being caught by the guys...and none biting my bait at all.

jimmy potter works his magic

the whole night was much fun though...

i caught a leaf

and a basket

of course, i caught prawns too

five to be exact! *grins proudly*

happy prawnerwomen!

we caught a total of 20 prawns...

our catch of the day

and the rest very kindly allowed me to take them all home so that i could surprise my mother with our innovative way of spending a friday night. she did this to them the following afternoon:

cooked!

yummy!

bread bread we love you!

the 3 of us finally got together after what seems like ages (even though it's prob just been a couple of weeks or something) for some taitai gaigai where i bought myself my national day outfit (muahaha), a lovely new skirt and a pair of old-school german aviators!

dinner was at the wonderful pete's place at grand hyatt where we ate an enormous amount of bread with delicious sun-dried tomato spread and balsamic vinegar in olive oil:

bread bread we love you!

full even before the mains arrived

still, the mains looked so good that we had no choice but to gobble them up too...

yummy creamy lasagne

silky cod and the bed of vegs everybody wanted to steal

finally, a perfectly-done steak

cleaned our palettes with some refreshing dessert:

my favourite sorbet to round up our meal

i love my girlies. and i love pete's place too!

only 10 in the morning and i'm already bloody pissed off.

got up bright and early for my 9.30am dental appointment, rubbed shoulders with the work crowd and got to OUB centre with 10 minutes to spare, only to be told that my dentist is on urgent leave.

"SHIT. they didn't call you to cancel?" were the receptionist's first words. then she flipped through her record books and said "oh they called you but you didn't pick up".

well yes, they did. ONCE. last thursday, right smack in the middle of the afternoon when i was in class. i called back half an hour later and nobody answered the phone.

seriously, what's the point of having a receptionist when she can't even do her job right? basic rules like:

1. if you have to cancel on someone, you make sure that someone gets the message
2. if you call once and someone doesn't pick up the phone, call again. there's the rest of thursday to call, and friday. even this morning would be ok.
3. you try to make special arrangements so that the person you've inconvenienced gets priority when making her next appointment. it's called service recovery.
4. you do not say "SHIT" when you're talking to the customer.

i hate incompetent receptionists.

blue-tack zoo

bored and stuck in class a day before graduation, my table decided to make full use of our resources and created a zoo:

blue-tack zoo

helped keep me from falling asleep (for a while at least).

we are healthy!

the cousins decided to have a badminton gathering yesterday, so we headed to the club for an evening of rackets, shuttles and nets. it's a pity that some of our top players were missing in action, but it was nice spending some family time this way.

we are healthy!

daddy came along, but without the rest of the older generation around, he left most of the baddy to us.

in action

red-faced and tired

can't resist taking a group photo (but the uncle who helped us take this shot must have been pretty tired coz his shaky hands made everything rather blurry):

the fam

one of my coaches from when i was still training was at the club too, coaching some of the little kids, and she recognised me from the way i play and said that i haven't changed much looks-wise, but that my baddy seems to have improved haha she's tickled by the fact that the cousins have got together for a game (she coached most of us at one point or another), and even suggested that we get the rest and have a mini family tournament. now that would be quite a sight.

- 867 graduation -

4 months of highs and lows,
4 months of intense study,
4 months of fun and bonding,
4 months of patience and tolerance.
it hasn't been so long a time,
but it's time enough for us to build unforgettable memories.

from the getting-to-know-yous
to the tearful farewell;
from the boring classroom
to the lightning-fast, well-executed performance on stage;
from 21 individuals brought together by sheer fortune
to 1 batch 867.

on 27th july 2006,
21 special people earned their wings.

my first aussie roach

finally, got the old flickr working since i can't seem to be able to make use of blogger's direct photo-posting function anymore. here comes photos from my flight to brisbane!

streets of brissy - can you spot me?!

brissy with wendy

boots-buying

a couch in the majestic regent theatre

lovely loo wall

brissy's shopping street reminded me of melbourne, 'cept that perhaps it's not as bustling, and the mix of the old and the new is not so distinct. just as there's crown in melb, there's also a casino in brisbane, and since we're there, we decided to go in so that wendy can get a feel of a casino, and i can try my luck at roulette!

won $90 at the casino!

yeap, 90 buckaroos!!! looks like a year and a half of loss of practice hasn't diminished my money-making skills!

wendy brought along her birthday present (a lomo camera) given to her by her bf, and we had some fun fiddling with it:

playing with the lomo cam

my maomao jacket!

dinner and my overdone steak

not bad for a first experiment...next time, we'll try to make all four frames in each shot more different!

oh, and guess what?! i saw my first australian roach!!!

*gasp* look what i spotted!!!

i didn't see a single roach in my 3 years in melbourne. only 1 day in brissy though, and i stumbled upon an injured and dying one - good thing i didn't study in brisbane! heh

brissy seems to be my last australian flight for the next couple of months - which sucks. i'm missing melbourne and hoping i'll get to fly there soon - everyone else seems to be going there except me! it's a conspiracy, i tell you! hrmph

please say a big HELLO to mr macrotten - my new black apple macbook!!! *grin* (i'm trying to get photoshop for mac, as well as to figure out why blogger doesn't want to let me post photos - mac experts, some help please!!!)
-----

being cooped up in a room, stuck in a slow and painfully repetitive seminar, makes for a frustrating day. not to mention the fact that we're not given enough time for practice and everything's just haywire.
-----

some people are just plain annoying and disgusting.

it doesn't matter that you don't accept my suggestions. but you said you'll discuss it - did you? did you throw it to the floor and reach a consensus? did you get back to me to let me know your final decision? did you even listen in the first place?

nevermind. you're in charge, i respect that and i go along with your ideas. i still do my best for it.

but don't turn around and be downright despicable and try dipping your filthy hands in to spoil something of mine that at least put some sense into the whole event. you don't even have the basic courtesy to inform the people in charge; you don't have the guts to tell it to us face to face, and actually give us ample time for possible action; and when you tell me that this person said this and that person told you that - seriously, stop twisting other people's words. if i want to know how they feel, i'll ask them. if they're unhappy, they jolly well have mouths to voice out their displeasure.

it's not so much your tactless suggestion that disgusts me, but the way you went about handling the whole thing.
-----

fuck, i can't wait for this to be over.

one starry sky
two aircrafts, albeit at different altitudes
"don't crash into me, ok?"
"haha i'll fly by and paste a sticker on your plane"
=)

- sikh in china -
falling ill before a flight is not a good sign
neither is throwing up onboard even when you've got nothing in your tummy
except for water the color of your lozenges.
plane food makes me wana puke.

a 2-hour catnap after touchdown,
i felt a tad better and decided that nourishment was necessary,
so wendy's boyfriend came to meet us
and we went for peking duck at the famous da dong restaurant
(recommended by the straits times' correspondant in china).

it's warm and stuffy in beijing,
but i was abnormal, so needed to keep my sweater on.
the peking duck was delicious -
freshly roasted and expertly cut up;
crispy skin and flavorful meat.
it wasn't really tender enough though,
but yummy anyway even though i didn't have much of an appetite.

i went back to the hotel to get more rest after
since the fever returned and the throat's terribly sore,
and left the two lovebirds to spend some alone time
before they swung back to the hotel to pick me up around dinner time.

we headed over to xiu shui jie,
which was a street but is now a building
with floors of rows and rows of fake goods.
shoes, clothes, bags...
nike, adidas, ralph lauren, louis vuitton, coach...
spoilt for choice, but didn't buy anything
other than a mao mao jacket
that wendy's bf help me get a good bargain for
muahaha

we took a cab to hou hai (it's a little like boat quay)
for dinner by the lake.
the food wasn't too bad
and i was amazed when my hot chrysanthemum tea came in a tall glass
with the flowers floating in it.

hocky - i bet you don't know what heineken is in mandarin!
(hint: top right corner of the collage above)

it's also wendy's birthday!
i got a cake from the hotel lobby
and formed a sneaky plan to get the staff to send it to our room
when we got back for the night.
it got delayed though -i don't know why-
and when it finally arrived,
i had to wake wendy up to blow out the candles and cut it up haha

the birthday girl, cake, and the one candle that managed to stay on it.
happy 20th my dear!!!

slept for nearly 24 hours after i got back to singa land
and i'm feeling much better now that the fever's nearly totally gone
and i'm actually feeling hungry again.
hopefully the sickbugs will magically disappear
in time for my flight tomorrow!
*goes off to hide in bed again*

my batch got ourselves a class t-shirt!

nice and simple
-----

congratulations on graduating, ros!
it's great to finally put a face to your name!
-----

i'm running a temperature.
i'd rather run a marathon at the moment.
-----

"empty vessels make the most noise"
this has been so apparent to me lately.
it is bloody annoying when there're the ones doing all the work
and the others just stand around criticising
without even bothering to find an alternative.
-----

i'm glad i've got the day off today.

- dinner, last night -
it was a tossup between da paolo and graze
at rochester park.
we settled for graze in the end,
seeing that we've been to other da paolos.

the restaurant was nicely done up,
as are most of the villas in the area,
though we both agree that the table could have been wider -
there's hardly enough elbow space!

we started off with some soy drowned beef tataki
that came with a dollop of strange-tasting, lime green colored sorbet
that i later found out was "hot cucumber" flavoured.

for mains, he had the chicken on a bed of veg
doused with some fusion thai-ish basil-ish sauce
that tasted quite tomyummy to me.
i wasn't as adventurous,
so i went with the salted, peppered and olive-oiled tenderloin
served with a small salad and a shiraz reduction.
the steak itself was a tad overdone and a little too salty
but i liked the charred-ness of it.

to end off,
we had a complimentary dessert platter!
the waiter stunned us by turning up with a large plate of dessert tasters
that we didn't remember ordering.
it was only after the staff set it on the table
that the GM appeared and solved the mystery -
turns out the very-PR-savvy GM knows him.

the chocolate cake filled with warm french dark chocolate
that oozed out so very sexily
was definitely my favourite.
there's also some vanilla thing that he's partial to,
strawberry sorbet and chocolate ice cream that weren't cold enough,
goreng pisang that i didn't touch,
quite a scrumptious apple crumble,
and an unidentifiable mushy red&white pukey thing
that tasted plain weird.

alien foodstuff aside,
it was a rather yummy adventure.
so yummy that i had to go to the gym today
and work real hard to try exercise a bit of the sin off.
*pats on my tum*

returning to australia
a full year and a half after my graduation
was rather like a homecoming.
granted it's the wrong state,
but the aussie twang, the smoothies, the glorious cold,
the VB, the shopping, the walking, and the food...
they're all still there.
it's great to be back.

and you know that it's gonna be a fanastic trip,
when your first sight of sydney's a bird's eye view from the cockpit
where you bid farewell to a million twinkling stars
only to be greeted by a beautiful sunrise.

a mad rush to put on our penguin coats,
then it's off to the hotel we go.
situated right smack in the middle of the city,
the newly-renovated, sleek & modern hotel
proved to be big on comfort
(especially when brekkie was ordered up)

a big breakfast (of the non-maccas type) and a 4-hour nap later,
wendy and i hit the city -
we started at qvb,
trooped over to david jones/myers,
then bussed down to circular quay,
slowly picking up guys along the way
(namely bigben, tazzy and glenn)
before a slow, after-dinner walk to darling harbour.

dinner at this german place at the rocks proved to be scrumptious
though i so should have ordered the veal instead of the sausages!
i wasn't satisfied on just them long pieces of processed meat,
so we went on to conquer pancakes on the rocks!

a long queue at the well-known eatery
meant that we had to sit on the steps to wait our turn,
but the pancakes and caesar salad were definitely well worth our time.
gracie, we even took an MX, just for you!

"so where the bloody hell are you!??!?!"

thanks bigben, tazzy & glenny...for taking time out to gaigai with me =)
-----

and......here's a special shoutout to my favourite animal in the world...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAZZY!!!!!!!! *muacks*
-----

on to the world cup (since it's the biggest event on earth right now)...
my poor aussies got kicked out all coz of a stupid referee
who really ought to be shot.
and sad as i was that england got the boot,
(bloody hell, i lost $2! haha)
i have to admit that they do deserve it -
shoddy football, bad temper and all
(though that busybody of a ronaldo should really be beaten up).
my poor beckham...almost made me want to cry.

but we're down to the final four now,
and i'm wondering (along with the rest of the world)
who's gonna bring the cup home this time round.
looking at it now, i'd say either france or germany.
maybe i'll root for germany,
because she's the host nation
and also 'coz she's got one helluva fine(-looking) coach.