Danceforme

In the midst of Emed posting, and on a Good Friday. There’s finally time to make our way down to the Botanic Gardens, albeit on a rainy late afternoon. 2 of my favourites of the garden, and my boy =)

Odd it is, that I’d turn to blogging again when I’m stuck at home with tons of patho notes to mug peruse. At least it’s pots, slides and the bf tomorrow, and then the exam next week.

And no more mugging this CNY =p
The sun still shines on a gloomy day!

caught a nice bit of sky when doing the P.M.S photoshoot

The little baby’s departed Oakland, California yesterday, according to FedEx tracking update, and it’s reaching us on Monday. That and an autographed Happytreefriends tv series DVDs and a buddhist monket trexi.. hurhur. Kudos to happytreefriends for the generous prize and YC for watching 2 hrs of glorified gory (to provide the quiz answers). I’m a lucky lucky girl. =)

And finally a uber clean desktop with a pretty background!

“Some monkeys keep setting new bench marks and gold standards or re-labelling them for the rest with strained resources to chase and copy, often blindly or for the wrong reasons.”

I think I quite like psychiatry now, with quirky quotes as such.  Now shoo and go read up on the oedipal complex. Psychiatry’s where normality’s the anormaly.. Hah!

 In case you haven’t quite realised yet, that’s a soft-toy elephant punching my camera lens, hurhur. The perils of late-night mugging again =) I’m prone to having silly little thoughts at night.

And in any event whereby you’re interested in a 9-day Chiangmai and Bangkok trip, or if you’re looking for company to venture somewhere SE Asia, drop a note ya?

Back to my psychomed and pharmaco mugging again.. I’m loooookiiinng foorrward tooo cchrisstmass! The christmas lightings are up =)

Haven’t been reading as much as I used to, save for the likes of talley and my dear oxford handbook. I quite miss fiction, those little tales dictating my tears and laughter, and the nonexistent characters I fall so deeply in love with. No more such luxury these days. Oh well. 

24 reads so far..

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett 34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl 
      It’s a happy story tt the movie quite unfortunately mutilated. =(
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas 
       Looking for the film.. the one in French. Let me know if you have it kae?
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton 
      and the wishing chair series!
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
      Read the one by Somerset Maughm.. counted?
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 
      Someone lend it to me!!
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

Me so dumb. Gonna fail end-of-posting test. Me sad. =(

Woot darlings, purple swirls make cupcakes seeexxy!
Had some left-over blueberries after baking YC a blueberry cheesecake last week, and decided to finish the remnants of the ingredients yesterday. Cupcakes are easy to make, especially if you have a mixer at hand. Simply mix the ingredients, divide them into cups and send them into the oven. This time though, I decided not to mix the blueberries in with the rest of the ingredients. Uniformly blue cupcakes don’t sound too enticing ya? Adding the berries last to each cup individually and then swirling it with a toothpick gave a much nicer effect — sexiness., though I kept worrying that the berries would get burnt in the oven. Thankfully they didn’t =). It’ll be nutella cupcakes next time round.

Anyway, I’ve been to 3 different celebrations for YC’s birthday. Stuffing myself with good food on the various occasions made it feel like chinese new year all over again. Many many more pounds gained.

And here’s the cheesecake I baked, still in the oven. The cake tin sits in a pan of water in the oven to prevent cracks from forming. The top got a little charred (miscalculation of height of the cake) =(. But no worries, I easily sliced it off once the cake was frozen, and added blueberry toppings.

We did pizzas too. Mummy got her friend to help make the crust. Bread machines are really good for this. So YC and I just had top it with fillings and loads of cheese and send it into the oven. Yummy.

Mummy and I made onek-oneks too. No photos of those unfortunately.

And so, with some grilled chicken wings and nacho chips we are set for our little tea party =)

Dinner that evening was at 8881, a hawker stall in some industrial estate. YC kept raving about the hotplate oyster omelette there. But much to our dissappointment, the stall had switched management =(. Dinner was uneventful, apart from guessing the waitress’ age and witnessing a brown rat run past.

It was back to YC’s house for the cake. Here’s us posing with the cake. 
The auto mode of my cam sucks. 

And the cake I baked. It tasted like a normal cheesecake!! =)

Then last Tuesday after school and malay lesson, YC’s medfac buddies and us went down to Samy’s curry restaurant (my favourite curry place!!) for another mini celebration. Samy’s isn’t quite what one calls authentic Indian food. The indian spices they use aren’t too strong, it’s pretty spicy and very very tasty. A pity though that they toned down on the spiciness, I quite like the tangy taste they had initially. And KW managed to got us the most chocolaty cake ever. The Project Shop has nice cakes =). Anyway, Samy’s located at the previous civil service club on Dempsey Road. That’s a nice quiet subcity area with a couple of wine bars tucked away in a corner.

And on Wed night, YC’s parents treated me to an ala-carte buffet at the Saltwater Restaurant (The Changi Village Hotel). They had small little portions of asian and western delicacies. Quality wasn’t fantastic, but I like their satays and salads. Could do better quantity-wise too, currently it’s only a slice of codfish if you make the order and likewise for the rendang lamb. Service, on the other hand, was fantastic. Staff visited us occassionally to make sure our meals were going smoothly, and they even had a small surprise for YC. At the end of the meal, they gathered round and sang him a birthday song. We got a cocktail each and a whole chocolate cake on the house, heh. Photos are with YC since I forgot my cam.

Gotta run now, YC’s coming. We’ll be going jogging later to lose the pounds we’ve been loading. So so fat now. =(

Tutee’s gonna move.. I need another job pretty soon. Anyone who knows anyone else who needs any tuition let me know ya? Preferably a weekly 2 hr session for upper sec. Thanks.

Pandan chicken involves a great deal of spices. And it's especially hard work with the additional grinding and frying if you aren't keen on store-bought pre-ground ingredients. Daddy's friend gave us huge leaves out of the pandan plant in his garden, and so we decided on pandan chicken for dinner! Here's how to churn out those aromatic, tender morsels.

Ingredients:

Chicken, 4 - 6 skinless breast, cut into pieces around 4cm*4cm
(I used thigh meat since Mummy usually stocks quite a few packs in the freezer)

Pandan leaves, 12 - 16, rinsed and cut into 8cm long pieces

Toothpicks

The marinate:

400ml coconut milk

4cm ginger, peeled and finely chopped
(I used only the juice — rid of the fibres hurhur!)

3 garlic cloves, crushed

4 tbsp coriander, finely chopped

2 lime leaves, shredded

1 lemon grass stalk, finely chopped

2 large chilies, finely chopped

2 tsp turmeric

2 tsp ground coriander

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp soft or grated palm sugar or soft brown sugar
(Sub gula melaka if you want an additional frangrance)

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

Method:

To marinate, toss all ingredients into a bowl until well combined. Leave marinated in the fridge for 5 - 8 hours. Wrap chicken in pandan leaves by taking one piece and wrapping them one day and then wrapping them the opposite way with another piece. Secure with toothpicks. Grill till firm and cooked thorough, or steam or bbq them.

Serve with sweet Thai chilli sauce.