life's a masquerade

Hoopla! A joint collaboration from my brother and I. However all bragging rights go to my brother. I was dancing around in the background annoying him whilst he meticulously painted, cut and sewed this mask from scratch. We bought the sequin trimming, gold paint, bells and triangular embellishments from Spotlight. The mask was a full faced mask, cut down to size, and the red pieces were spray painted cardboard with gold transfer scratched onto them.

 

goodbye 2009, hello 2010

Instead of doing my usual "year in reflection" type post, I'm going to use this entry to thank everyone who helped me through 2009.

Whether it was listening to me whine on, giving me well wishes and encouragement, or just being good company....thankyou.

I am especially thankful to the very special people (including my family) who helped me through the end of last year. To have friends that are willing to sacrifice their time and attention, despite their own commitments, is truly invaluable. Thank you for not being judgmental of my sometimes illogical antics, and for your advice (which I have since turned into a new year's resolution). I wouldn't be where I am now, if it wasn't for your help. So yes, in response to comments from you guys, I am lucky, "excessively lucky" in fact - to have such people to depend on.

2009 left a very deep impression on me, bringing with it some of my saddest and happiest moments of my 21 years, and thus will be remembered.

Happy 2010 everyone. Stay healthy, be safe, and smile more this year.

xo

Shioking Singapore Trip

It's Sunday morning, and that means obligatory post update!  
I think this has been put off long enough, so without further ado, I'm going to regurgitate the things that happened in Singapore over the three days we were there. We only spent three days there, but thanks to our amazing tour guides, we were able to fit about a weeks worth of stuff in, leaving us uber tired, but happy chappys at the end of it. And when I say amazing tour guides, they really were, giving us a run down on the history and story behind every statue/building/tree/structure/person/blade of grass we passed. Special mention to Kenneth and Marlom for their non stop social commentary, which was sometimes excessive at times, but amusing nonetheless. We learnt everything from the founding of Singapore to the curious subculture of ah-bengs and aliens (the equivalent to our bogans).

When in S'pore, do as the S'poreans do...

Some of our awesome tour guides.

If  there was a word to sum up the three days, it would without a doubt be: food. Wonton noodles, Pop-eyes, crepes, curry, Burger King, sushi, dimsum, cakes, chicken rice, pasta...and that was just at the airport! My first authentic Singaporean meal was one of the most memorable. Kenneth, Yan Yan and Marlom took me to a place with many hawker stalls for afternoon tea. Or rather, "afternoon tea". About six or seven dishes of it. There was stingray somewhere amongst that mountain of food, which surprisingly or unsurprisingly, tasted like chicken!

In an effort to get us to try everything, we ended up having 5-6 meals a day. Which my mind was very open to, but my stomach was rather unprepared for. I felt like hobbit (in more ways than one), being spoiled with second breakfasts and third lunches. Some of the other delicacies I managed to squeeze in were; frogs legs (also tasted like chicken), massive crab, kaya toast, laksa, and of course, chicken rice. One of the nights at about 1am in the morning we even ordered McDonald's over the phone! But what shocked me more than the availability of food, was how Singaporeans managed to stay so lean! I'm thinking the skinny gene must be a dominant trait over there *jealous*.

Team Little Explorer

This picture has a lot of story behind it. On the second day we went to visit the world renown Singapore Zoo, where said picture was taken. To be honest, I'm not much of an animal person..heck, I haven't even visited Perth Zoo in my 21 years of living here. But Singapore Zoo is worth checking out if you ever have the chance to. It's so big, and we never had the intention of checking everything out in the 30C humid weather, but as things turned out, we ended up doing just that.

The group I was in (Team Little Explorer), initially wanted to just ride the elephants and wait for the other group to come back. But as we strolled around, we came across two monkeys. They were hanging about 20 metres or so on vines that hung across the road, and from where we were standing, it looked like one of them was trying to save the other from falling. As we stared upwards, other people naturally came to see what was wrong, who attracted even more people, and eventually causing a bit of commotion, with people shouting at the monkey not to jump (somehow the monkey became suicidal). Thankfully (from the encouragement by the audience?), the monkey didn't jump. And we moved on. But little did we know that we were actually getting lost, and 1.5 hours and 20 phonecalls later we would be desperately asking for directions, following a ridiculous cartoonized map, and having the other group wait for us instead. In retrospect it was pretty funny, and ironic that we saw just about everything except for the elephants. But I'm probably too faint hearted to try anything like that again haha.

Surprisingly, I didn't do much shopping at Singapore. But that was given the limited time we had, rather than the lack of places to shop of course. In fact, whilst mum was in transit, we took the MRT to check out Orchard Road. Unaware that the long strip of massive shops we were on was Orchard Road, we went into one of the shopping centres, with me asking one of the cleaners for directions there. I was met with an expression of disbelief/confusion/whathecrazygirl and "I don't understand". We eventually worked it out afterwards, but not after several people correcting my pronounciation of "Orchard" from or-kid to or-chard.

Weather, food, zoo, shopping. I think I've covered the main bases. There was a lot more stuff of course, but I think I'm in danger of boring you all silly so I'll stop now. I'll just say that Singapore is a very nice place, with everything so conveniently placed close by. It's worth taking the time to explore other stuff outside the airport (it is a very nice airport), and stretch your stomach out in preparation before you go.

Many thanks to Kenneth, Yan Yan, Marlom, Lip Yong, Ash, Brady, Zhiren, Qi'en, Caleb, Pravin and Justin for their SHIOK hospitality, and making it such a fun trip- there were a lot of memories in there :)

i'm ba-ck...again.

Sorry peeps. I realise I haven't been updating in like forever, but things came up in the last few weeks which have kept me from sharing my fantastical experiences with y'all. Anyway, I don't even know where I'm going to begin. So, so, so much has happened (dejavu?). And yes, after re-reading my last entry, I realise I was being really unfair for leaving a teaser from the Singapore episode, and then disappearing for a month! Don't you hate it when they do that with season finale episodes? Cliff-hanger ending FTL. Although, I'm probably being slightly pretentious by comparing my last entry to a cliffhanger -haha. The fact that I managed to verbal diarrhoea a whole entry on weather (of all the things I did) is beyond me. *Shakes head at past-self*. Anyway, rest assured because I now have the time to share just as exciting updates to rock your world- or anticlimax it.

i'm ba-ack.

I got back on Thursday night, but I've been lagging out for the last couple of days, so please excuse me if I haven't given you a shout since then. In fact updating this blog was one of the last things on my list, but Sunday mornings have this effect on me, like the air smells different or something, and there's just this peaceful feeling of nostalgia that makes me want to reflect on things. It's these lazy Sunday mornings that are part of what makes Perth home for me.

Anyway, if you haven't already gathered from my sappy sentimental intro, it's been a pretty packed last three or so weeks. I've experienced so, so much, in such a short period of time, that I am still trying to digest everything that has happened. I attempted to keep a diary of all my exciting adventures, but not surprisingly, for reasons already mentioned, it never made it past the first entry.

In short though, Singapore was -as a Singlishman would say- damn SHIOCK. Everyone was so nice and accommodating, and it made our stay extremely fun. I have to say though, the weather was like a wet blanket trying to smother an unsuspecting tourist (yours truly). Okay, I exaggerate. Apparently the weather was actually quite good the three days that we were there, because it had been raining or monsooning or flash flooding a few days prior to our arrival. But if there's anything I learnt about Singapore, it's that you should never judge the weather from indoors. And for a girl who always dresses for the wrong weather, it was a hard lesson learnt. In my defense though, the aircon inside the airport was about ten degrees, give or take a couple. So when I'd first landed, Mum and I adventurously took the MRT down to Orchard Road, with me looking ever so cool in my jumper, and totally not looking like the obvious, unprepared tourist. And that was fine...until we got off, made our way out of the airconditioned tunnels, and then got blasted with a hot air hadouken. Mmmmm, nice.

Hahaha, but flash-floods and hadoukens aside, the weather isn't that bad. Apologies to my s'pore friends, as I'm sure they've heard it all already- I went on about it a little longer than I intended to. But what else would you expect from a pasty asian who sets up camp in her room during summer?

Haha, anyway...it looks like I shall continue this in another post, because Dad's made breakfast. I hope it's rice noodles!

Much love to y'all from Perth :)

hiatus.

Yup. I'll be spending the next three weeks or so in Singapore and China, so lack of internet access means no enthralling reads for a while.

But before you all start clapping, I'll try to keep a journal of funtimes and goodstuff we encounter. I say this hesitantly though, knowing my track record with diaries (see first ever post - it's a miracle this blog still exists).

Anyway, so my flight's tonight, and I still have a long list of stuff to do (packing included)..

Tc& I'd better see most of you in three weeks :)

P.s. I'll give Aan a proper status update when I get back :P

chop chop kali pok.

"Some people, I tell you, just because once only, can say you became very famous writing and speaking broken English, suddenly everytime people will telephone you and ask you, can do this can do that. Like I so free like that."

An exerpt from the Singlish Oxford Dictionary Lip lent me. Honestly, this is the second time I've opened it since it was first given to me, but I thought it would be interesting to get myself acquainted with the funny mix of English and Hokkien before I go and visit them in Singapore. Two pages into reading the foreword however, my head is already spinning...ahh

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Had a good weekend for the most part. Sadly, couldn't roadtrip with the guys to Busselton, but enjoyed myself nonetheless at Essi's housewarming and Bev's 21st. Had the best Korean food in Perth one night, and Japanese delights at the other :) Also spent the night tripping myself (and other unsuspecting people) over whilst wearing an oversized yukata.

Yes, I made a card too. If you look closely, the cute little characters on the front are actually bacteria and microorganisms, tied up nicely with a white ribbon, haha. (Bev's a clean-freak y'see :P)

 

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Anyway, this kali pok needs to clean her room and start thinking about packing, so I'll see y'all laters :)

harry potter, dumbledore, and cat.

Post-exam celebrations~

Whipped up some cards for the November babies. Hopefully this is a welcome change to my incoherent rambling type posts.

- Zhi Xiang's 20th - 

- Caleb's 22nd -

- Brady's 22nd -

 

These cards gave me an excuse to go and visit Jackson's. It's one of my favourite pastimes: going to shops to stare at things that I can't afford. Haha, but as overpriced as their stuff is, they have a range of gorgeous paper, which I could spend hours looking at. Or at least long enough raise looks from the cashier lady..

Speaking of awesome paper..

+1 if you know where it's from!