Photos

Chicken Ballotine at Miss Clarity Cafe. Quite well done.


There was this Chinese thing on TV and some of my classmates were on it! (xinyu and jingya!)


My best bowling score ever :D 118! Okay, deep inside, I was silently happy.





Collected new photos today! Will post my favorites soon, once I can get the scanner to cooperate.

it was a stupid morning.

Someone once told me, in a rush of excitement, that our school is very much like a microcosm of Singapore. We're small and we're not exactly that well known but yet somewhat well known depending on how you define "well known" so that's a grey area. Just like Home.

Sadly, barely 15 minutes into my school day, it became rudely apparent that it was no longer merely a microcosm of Singapore. As the assembly in the parade square found themselves gripped by fear of seismic proportions when names were spat out, purportedly for breaking rules on attire, I realized that No, that's no longer the case; the fear, the uncertainty, the arbitrary rules that offered no room for appeal and forgiveness — it can't be a microcosm of Singapore if all that I felt at that moment was silent, furious protest akin to the reactions during the Islamic revolution in Iran!

I hate it, I really really do, when rules and the punishments they attach to it are so arbitrary, especially when a large amount of demerit points are involved. It certainly does not justify the nature of the so-called "crime", since those called were not even aware of it in the first place. It could have been an accident, the shirts becoming untucked without them being aware of it, and thus being caught and mislabeled as "an act of defiance". (I'm sorry, but I've also found that term being abused and thrown around like a perfect supported and legitimate reason to slap on the punishment, but I'll save that for another diatribe.)

They speak of learning from your mistakes, of second chances, and of the school being your second home. Yet, are the measures being put in place really effective in solving the messy attire problem? The cost of enforcing discipline and carrying out periodic and senseless crack-downs certainly does not justify compromising on the respect and voluntary cooperation of the rest of the populace. I'll wait and see what happens next.

他们治标不治本，实在是太可惜了。

yes/no/maybe/I don't know

So the chinese paper today was relatively easy, but I'm quite uneasy about the listening comprehension and paper 1, because the questions had a veneer of do-ability, but the phrasing of the questions caused me to doubt the validity of my emphasis of a few issues.

Furthermore, I had forgotten to bring along a jacket into the exam hall. I was more or less popsiclized for the entirety of the chinese exam, and by the time I got to the comprehension section, my muscles weren't responding as well as it should have been and I had to take an added amount of time and effort to ensure that my words didn't become messy scrawls. When I had finally completed paper 2, my teeth were chattering and I had to borrow cheekit's sweater to protect further heat loss.

And I'm pretty stoked about tomorrow's talk by Patricia Herbold, the US ambassador to Singapore. I'll finally hear for myself why all the TIME magazines we're reading are becoming quite annoyingly elections-centric, and why I'm throwing Obama and Clinton around on Facebook, and why the world does not care about our cabinet reshuffle.

I had a strange dream-within-a-dream when I collapsed for a rare afternoon nap today. (Apparently, chinese exams are akin to slow-reacting tranquilizers that you sit for and then fall asleep later.) I dreamt that I was at some drama camp and I was queueing up for soyabean milk, and I remember laughing to some random character that it was going to be the longest wait for soyabean milk in my life. Later on, I fell asleep in my dream and I had this confusing nightmare in which I was being attacked by an entire ant colony.

It was a strange afternoon.

明天的华文考试

为了准备明天的华文考试，我会用华文来写作博客上的日记跟大家纷想我对这几天的事情所想到的感想。

Hmm，世界上最库的辩论组到了我家制做“杯子”蛋糕！（哈哈）可是，我们想作的糖（放在蛋糕上的frosting）没能做得到，令我有点失望吧。但是，我还觉得到一丝的成就感，因为这不仅是我第一次做这样得蛋糕，效果还令我们都惊喜得赞不绝口。（不好意思，我忘了拍些照片让你看！你可以到angeline的博客看看吧。）

星期六中午，我们到miss clarity咖啡店庆祝亲爱的mingting的16岁生日。我的 chicken ballotine 装满了热气腾腾的蘑菇，吃得津津有味。可是，我桌的侍应生居然态度恶劣! （很想写一封投诉信）

除了这件事，我们的午餐还是很好的， 相信大家都吃得津津有味！

对明天的华文考试，我觉得很绝望。我绝望，不是因为认为自己没准备得好。我只是怕到了考场就立刻名落孙山，在自己的紧张中把一切复习的成语和俗语都忘掉。能考得优秀的成绩也许是个不会现实的盼望。

So let the dim light shine
Over my eyes
Let me eminate the dim light
Of an overcast day
In the bleakest of springtime


Dear Nora = cool.

I feel as if I'm in a narcotic haze after going through all 130+ of 成语.

we'll become silhouettes

My blogging's getting very food-centric these days.


But anyway, this is the peanut butter and chocolate brownie from P.Osh, a brownie gallery at dhoby x.change. ("Brownie gallery" sounds really classy, haha. And is there anything oh-so-hip about placing full-stops at the most inappropriate places with no formatting whatsoever?)


The brownie base was really warm and moist. Maybe it's just my personal taste, but I didn't quite like the peanut butter. With the chocolate icing, the whole brownie felt a tad too heavy. I think I'll be going back to try the other flavours.

By some amazing coincidence, I met my sister outside school today! We went to ajisen ramen for lunch, and I had two buns from breadtalk from their new "japanese" line that snazzed-up otherwise run-of-the mill creations with exotic terms like 'sakura' and 'hokkaido'. That is, however, not to say that the buns were altogether bad and worth great admonishment and disdain. The hokkaido dome I had was soft and fluffy, but felt more like a blander version of those coffee buns of yore. (okay, maybe not to such a great extent, but coffee buns were getting kinda overdone before they started to vanish.) 'Sakura' bun with pink cream was slightly better, but still adopted the crackled-sugar texture for its dome. I think I expected more from breadtalk, it being so forward-looking and all.

Today —

You know how it's so odd to sit on your couch watching White Chicks on TV and laughing, and then realise that someone who sat at that spot and laughed too had just died? Someone who played the recorder with you in primary school, who sometimes frightened you with his age alone, yet seemed to be able to last forever, as if an unshakable vestige from memories that have long faded, of people standing in front of Fords, wearing the British Army uniform, grinning toothily? I first learnt of his death when his son called.

You know how something bad is going to happen when the person on the other line introduces himself as child/relative/cousin of so-and-so? How you instinctively reach for a pen and paper because you somehow realise you have to take down the address of the wake/timing of the funeral? And then the inevitable announcement to everyone else, where you have to keep a straight face without swallowing? I had to continue scooping claypot rice into my plate without looking too affected.

You know, right? You really really do? Because I was just about to lose my faith in humanity (I know—once again, for probably the 34th time this year. I'll probably lose it again sometime next week, but I blame hormones for these annoying vacillations from euphoria to despondency).

(oh, by the way, anyone wants to watch Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day? Assuming we won't be frantically mugging for chinese next tuesday.)

Weekend

omg, this is so seriously cute.

I think I'll stay home in the morning and read The Bell Jar tomorrow.

What I did on half-day monday

Actually, I wanted to revise A Maths, but I realised that I left my textbook under my desk, much to my dismay. Anyway, I tried to come up with something creative to make using the bottle of sea salt that I bought a few weeks ago!


Intended to make macaroons but I guess those are way beyond me still. The meringue shells came out of the oven flat and embarrassingly un-macaroonish. They tasted quite good though, so I thought they would go better with a generous scoop of plain and creamy vanilla ice cream.

I think I'm much happier with the salted caramel that I had intended to use as the ganache, which was really sweet but had a pleasant subtly salty edge to it. I think I'll skip the meringue shells and dive straight into making the caramel the next time. Watching sugar melt and caramelise is such a euphoric sensation for the olfactors.

2 more Homecoming Day posters

Ach, here are the 2 other posters to publicise the Woffee Haus! The wonderwoman one somehow pays homage to last year's Ice H(e)aven stall. (Is that the correct stall name? I can't remember already.)



and the other one,

Second-most important day of the year!

No, of course I have not forgotten about Esther's birthday which fell, sadly, on Homecoming Day. (that's 3/4 of a special day donated to charity.) Anyway, she has received lotsa cool stuff due to her reputation as funky and arty-farty, like a box of macaroons from her DG that I know my dad really likes but doesn't want to admit it but will go out to buy it anyway so yay us.



And as part of her birthweek celebrations, I have decided to give her cool random stuff every morning for a funky start to her day! I am such a wonderful and caring brother, uh huh. ;)



After lunch today, we went out to Raffles City where we had a rose meringue and a sea salt and caramel macaroon from Canelé. The caramel sel macaroons were so so good. The meringue shells were crisp and soft in the centre, with bittersweet caramel oozing out with every crumbly bite. I also liked the sea salt that added yet another dimension to the complex caramel flavour, allowing the filling to have a light and satiny texture that melted in your mouth with a salty-sweet aftertaste which really complemented the rich shells.

The rose meringue, which we ate at home while watching Gilmore Girls, was too sweet for our liking. It yielded a very one-dimensional flavour that, after a while, started to resemble that of ordinary candyfloss. However, the texture of the meringue was almost perfect, in that the outside of the meringue was dry and crumbly, while the inside was soft and resembled marshmallows.

The Week of Dinners Pt.4

Ok, so I'm a day late in posting this. But here it is, anyway.

There was Speech Day/Homecoming Day on the 12th. I received a $20 Popular voucher, yay me. (Quite surprised that so-called 'upper-tier' awards i.e. holistic awards are Kinokuniya vouchers instead. It's not like $20 kino vouchers costs more than $20 popular vouchers, right? Rant rant rant.) Unproductively sat in the chair for like, forever, as the speeches dragged on slowly. Was wasting my time in the hall as mr yong was in the choir room went about praising the graduating batch. Missed the highlight marking the end of my xm chorale days. Depressed. Dejected. Woe. Woe. Woe. (etc.)


Mingting, about to get dunked.

Homecoming was fun. It rained just as it started, which was quite a disaster. There were lightning bolts everywhere in the sky above us, and stalls in the parade square watched helplessly as their businesses slowed to a halt when the outdoor power generator had to be switched off. I watched my favourite paper bag to put shoeboxes in disintegrate when puddles started to form by the stall.

(Propaganda starts here)
However, just as we started to believe that things would take a turn for the worst, 401's Woffee Haus found a strategic location to permanently position ourselves! In front of the mini stage in-between the canteen and the parade square, the Woffee Haus soon established itself as an important hub for routes connecting the Parade Square to the Canteen, serving waffles and iced coffees to tired home-comers when they stopped for refuels and re-servicing (like, there were canteen tables nearby so they probably checked their nails and reshaped their hair while resting). Thus, there a vibrant cosmopolitan culture emerged out of a melting pot of peoples from different stalls and sectors of society, but all united with a single desire for 2 things: delicious waffles and icy coffees! Some also desired jelly, and were quickly satiated by our supply of konniyaku.

Of course, there were occasional periods of dissent among the Woffee Haus community, such as the egalitarian argument that all waffles should be equal and sold for $2, regardless of the size of the waffle machines that they came from. There were also periods of food shortages, since the Woffee Haus was resource-scarce owing to the cramped conditions and people who wanted to stay on despite their shifts ending, and also due to the fact that demand for the waffles and coffee was so high that pragmatic measures had to be put in place, such as by reducing the amount of whipped cream added on the coffee. Rumours of egg-wielding terrorists were also rampant, when eggs were thrown by outsiders in other stalls in the parade square. Nevertheless, the Woffee Haus managed to overcome these obstacles owing to a stable team of stall managers free of corruption, with the foresight of establishing cordial ties with other stalls as well. (Lending paint and paintbrushes, haha.)

At the end of the day, there was great economic success! We earned $1150-ish in coupons, which was a really big achievement! (Feels like reciting Recollections.)
(Propaganda ends here)

Anyway, I'm really really happy that our efforts have paid off!

Then there was also the farewell dinner for the sec 4 debaters! I'm quite shocked that I have suddenly reached the age where everyone's giving each other farewell presents barely 4 months into the year. We went to Pizza Hut at Heartland mall where we were thrown a delightfully cheesy feast (and the viewing of Lucas' new hair, which drew mixed reactions).


Liren: Come, have a slice of this delicious chocolate cake!

I'm really grateful to them for organising this event, even though I was completely zoned-out due to the exhaustion from the Week of Dinners. The cake was quite good, surprisingly; I'm now awaiting the tiramisu with much anticipation!



And the gifts are really cool too! I'm just wondering how on earth I'm gonna get that little scroll out of the glass bottle without inadvertently showering myself in a cloud of glitter.

See more photos here. :)

The Week of Dinners Pt.3

Hey, I'll reply to all your tags soon, once I've gotten past this hectic and traumatising Week Of Dinners.

Anyway, dinner today was good. My cousin and her husband came back from Arizona, with their three little boys with really cool names (Andrea, they'll make your name seem conventional, really!) and equally cool hairdos. My favourite was the sautéed vegetables with garlic and butter. The broccoli and cauliflowers were all really soft and buttery, they seemed to melt in your mouth.

But what happened during speech day rehearsal was pretty shitty, as I would have expected. Get one stressed teacher in charge for speech day and a few boo-boos, and you get a major eruption that can't be measured on the Richter scale. And it happened after I conducted the choir for the last time ever, too. (Besides, there was a surprisingly unprofessional and uncalled-for interruption during the 2nd song which really threw me off-focus.)

I guess visitors to our school tomorrow will only see the superficial veneer of respectability for posterity. They would have no inkling whatsoever about the ironic lack of respect for students who work their asses off for something they felt so much for, only to have whatever dignity they had torn to shreds in front of the people they inspired, and be accused of tarnishing reputations (if that's the most important thing that matters to some people).

So, when you sit there and watch Speech Day 2008, please remember the people that have worked hard to produce it. Also, spare a thought for everyone who has been affected by something that I would feel is akin to a Soviet kangaroo court.

I am so glad to be finally able to graduate.

The Week of Dinners Pt.2

Have just returned from tiong bahru market. Some of us from yfc were celebrating a birthday and sending off someone to the army as well. Was quite a good time of fellowship.

I'm am so sleepy right now, but I can't even fall asleep yet because there are the gemx (don't. even. ask.) notice boards to settle, something that I was informed only at the last minute, if I may so unhappily add. Yet I feel tranquilized, and I haven't had a decent 6-hour sleep since tuesday night. So I'll be pretty cranky these few days.

So I guess I'm feeling irate that these things happen all the time, yet we are always taught to handle them face-on and bite the bullet to get along with it. There's no room for your opinion.

Well, I'm starting to think it's all bullshit, so there. Will someone please satisfy me with reasons good enough to justify the expected reactions towards such contingencies?

The Week of Dinners Pt.1

I'll be really busy these few days being present at dinners for four days in a row. (but they'll be at cool venues, so it's cool).
Like today, my sister celebrated her birthday at Jumbo at Serangoon Gardens. (of ALL places, really. It's more of a place where people go to celebrate their aged parent's birthdays/50th wedding anniversaries/promotions.) We agreed that we vaguely felt ourselves slip into a warp in the space-time continuum because when we entered, it seemed almost as if we had entered the mid-nineties, where people wore strange padded clothing and had coiffed hair and big earrings. There was, of course, the apparently obligatory piped-in music in which we were subjected to by listening to repeats of instrumental versions of West Side Story songs, and, oh the horror, Edelweiss.

I think the entire notion of having dinner at a seafood restaurant is an extremely nineties concept.

I don't enjoy seafood dinners, because it's always the same menu and everyone somehow manages to agree on ordering prawns all the time. (The ones cooked in liquor and left to allow their proteins to coagulate in their own broth.) And seafood dinners are the messiest too, because of the extremely high odds of splattering prawn juice/crab juice/chinese tea/sweet sauce all over yourself.

We went for dessert at a place that people would call a 'hip joint'. It has cool bar stools, cool high tables, cool red tables, a cool couch area, and a cool ice cream/liquor bar. It also has a cool name: Ice^3 (which is supposed to be read aloud as "ice cube").




Was impressed with their mudpie selection. Had the Alcoholics Anonymous (top-most picture) that was supposed to be boozy, with the rum and raisin ice cream and all, but was more raisiny than anything else. We also tried the Butterscotch mudpie that tasted slightly similar in terms of the ice cream's custard base, but had a sweeter, buttery edge to it. However, my sister's strawberry cheese sundae/parfait thingy (i can't remember its name) was really good. It manages to achieve that sweet-salty strawberry cheesecake flavour, and has a creamy, sticky texture that is oh-so-sinful.

Anyway, leaping now to a different topic, I have completed this year's NAPFA! Quite happy with this year's 2.4 km timing of 11.11 mins (which was the same as terence who was running with me). I think having a running partner is a good way to keep up one's pace, because we had this mutual perception that the other was less tired than himself and therefore one had to keep up.

Did two more designs for Woffee Haus. Look out for them in school tomorrow! :D

so we had this conversation in your head

My voice is hoarse and raspy from cheering at the volleyball c boys and c girls' north zone finals, where I realized I sometimes hate being an SL, but in the end, love being an SL because it's rewarding and sometimes comforting? Because I can't stand some people and their blatant insouciance, even though it's their own naivete that we blame sometimes? But then I realize that all I've done was to interpret their actions superficially? And I'm caught in a rut of speaking in questions?

And I hate the word 'maturity'. It's so overused to the point where the precision of its definition is lost, perhaps due to the perceived array of attributes that it connotes. To me, the only thing it connotes is age, and can refer to things like wine and fruit. I'd be ever-grateful to the person who describes others as more than just 'mature' or 'has potential'. To be frank, I was once guilty of generalizing good qualities with the word 'maturity', but apparently seemingly 'mature' people can too lack better judgment or sense of decorum at times.

Blah blah blah.

Random questions derived from current circumstances: Does coming to terms with an artistic nature necessarily mean being surrounded in a non-conformist environment (read: slob) and playing Jenga with stacks of books precariously balanced on a single paperback? And does this entail ignoring a dead beetle the size of a medium-sized pebble under the scanner?

Chinese lesson today was awkward, in more ways than one.

I guess I've fulfilled this semester's quota for High-ness during the volleyball matches. I can't really grasp the concept of snapping into a state of glowing enthusiasm and exuberance on demand. And now I've got a voice to match my stoicism.

Totally woffeelicious

I have come up with the first poster designs for 401's WOFFEE HAUS on Homecoming Day! (By the way, 'woffee' is a portmanteau of 'waffle' and 'coffee', if you haven't already noticed.)

I keep getting the feeling that something's missing, though. Have I, as the graphics designer, left out the customer in the pursuit of coming up with aesthetically-pleasing designs to suit my own tastes?

And I need an outlet to bitch about Speech Day. >:( Seriously.

(Slaps forehead)

And how could I forget to blog about the new committee for XM Chorale?!

President - Tengyong
V.P.s - Wendy, Nicholas Lim
Secretary - Mark
Treasurer - Sherry
Q.M.s - Colin, Caroline
Librarians - Yuenling, Abigail
Sop SLs - Yingjie, Jean
Alto SLs - Weiting, Jiale
Tenor SLs - Stuart, Nicholas Wong
Bass SLs - Daniel, Shawn

Woohoo! JIA YOU GUYS!! I'm so excited for them!

And it has also just dawned on me that I'm no longer the president!! Feels super 百感交集。Like Olivia said, I'm already... an... old... bird... (sob)

Time's flying too quickly! I demand of it to slow down. ¬¬

Frankennothankyouma'am

Okay, so while trying to come up with ideas for flyers for 401's Homecoming Day stall, I got bored and ended up doing a strange collage of the facial features of CTITW into a sort of frankenstein-like creature.

It has Angeline's (and some of Mingting's) hair, my eyes, Andrea's nose, Shiyun's mouth and Mingting's body. It has skin grafted from every one of us.

It kinda scares me, in a way.


Anyway, Xinfony was good. My favourite piece was Cloudburst by X-winds. Noah's Ark was pretty well done as well, just as I've heard my sister practise a zillion times for the past few months.

The rest of the photos can be found on Facebook!

In brief:

On tomorrow's Xinfony -
It's Xinfony tomorrow! I'm kinda excited for my sister, who is sitting next to me, frantically churning out Jia You Cards from her sorta fancy stationery mill. (Actually, just our collection of our mum's vintage knitting patterns that were nearly thrown out from the Great Clean-Up of 2006, and scraps of card stock.)

On sea salt -
And after begging my parents to get a bottle of sea salt, I have finally given up and went out to buy a bottle for myself today. Will see if it really adds a different dimension to whatever I'm gonna make with it.

On homecoming day -
The hour of celebration draws on apace! I have only just realized that I'm supposed to do flyers and posters for Das Wofee Haus! (where 401 will be selling waffles and coffee, which will make you look so hip and cultured, although I still question the cultural quotient of waffles and coffee even though you can hold a skinny latte in one hand and chomp on a nutella waffle with the other and look like an extra from the set of Friends.)

On the pursuit of macaroons -
Will be walking really really close to cedele at Raffles City so I might pop by to grab, like, 3 macaroons. By the way, I hear that Pierre Hermé, renowned French pastry chef, is coming to Singapore for this year's food festival. :D I want to go for his masterclasses!