feel my cutesy mittens

Went to visit the cutest baby in the world today! My nephew! He's turning a month-old now :) I've taken many photos but I'm keeping them to myself for now. Selfish, I know. He shares the same name as me, and some of my sister too. I love his hair.

Yeah, you can imagine the conversations already, and they all tend towards the general direction of "Hello First Samuel! Second Samuel is sleeping inside." etc. etc. (If you are familiar with the two books of Samuel in the Bible.)

Travelled a few light years from Pasir Ris to town after that, because Esther wanted to go shopping. Let's just say that the concept of personal space had to be conceded to accommodate such contingencies involving the Post-Christmas Sales crowd on a Sunday. We went to Robinsons, Isetan and Tangs, but I didn't even try on anything because the continual feeling of claustrophobia had totally ruined my mood. Anyway, I also met Angeline at the men's wallets section! I think I understand the emotional nullity she speaks of when reminded of spending Christmas at the men's department. There is nothing exciting about working in the men's department, because apart from the fashion-house-type labels, everything else comes in varying shades of grey. Or brown.

In other news, I had a dream-within-a-dream about collecting my O level results. It was nice, and then it turned into a nightmare, depending on where your priorities in life lay and how your value system works. I'll tell you more if you ask me in person!

Tomorrow's gonna be really packed because I have three parties/gatherings to attend. Will I survive the day? Will I reach home in time to hide my sleep-deprived-driven lapses into insanity? Will I uncover the sinister truth of what really causes kayaks to capsize... really? Are there still disappointments to be found in undercooked chicken wings? Stay tuned for further details of my somewhat stultifying life!

everything's dead pretty when it snows

Christmas is over and my birthday is coming soon. Strangely, above all the nifty kitchen appliances I have dreamt of acquiring and other random material things, all I want for my birthday is for two very important people in my life to be friends again, and as naive as that may sound, I've rarely been more sincere all my life.

By the way, have a great new year, everyone! To my horror, I find myself still writing Christmas cards.

Christmas is like, so 24 hours ago. Yawn.

my favourite kind of feeling

One hallmark of the 21st century is the capacity of the individual to broadcast information to 6 billion other individuals around the world, often by running to the nearest computer to type away furiously before hitting the send/publish button in a matter of minutes. This is one such instance.

I mentioned my Herculean task of preparing Christmas Eve dinner for my family (with the help of my mother thank God) last night/early this morning, and amazingly, things have worked out well! The mystery meat dish, by grace, worked out itself to be a fluffy and beefy shepherd's pie, the vegetable course that I left to divine providence became the wild arugula and pine nut salad with hyssop and sesame from Israel, and the roast chicken, in all its majestic succulence, came out of the oven as the angels wept from the heavens above. I also sautéed some eggplant as an afterthought and it wasn't half bad either. The mushroom soup, as usual, was nice and warming — perfect for a very rainy day. The roasted potatoes, chestnuts and onions were really good, but I'll have to stop here, else I'll end up lapsing into song.

As always, I have photographs! And as always, my grandparents, coming from the days of antiquity, were very puzzled by my shutterbug behaviour at the dinner table, in a very endearing way.







(Also: this collection of photos is dedicated to anyone eating alone on Christmas Eve, be it at a park bench in the rain, a noisy staff canteen, or beneath a quilted duvet nursing a cold. Don't say I'm a heartless and insensitive Scrooge!)

Am I loving the weather now, or what? It's so cool and rainy.

It's Christmas Eve

I'm back from CCIS, my sister has a new iMac with a huge screen so merry xmas dear sister may your wishes and dreams continue coming true etc., I'm shrugging off a backache, I'm planning for tomorrow's/today's dinner way too late srsly, I hope I can find avocados at NTUC tomorrow, and my workplace is getting messy again.

Anyway, the menu for tomorrow is:
Mushroom Soup (from fresh button mushrooms, it makes you view the canned variety with contempt and disgust)
Roast Chicken a la Zuni Cafe (that I did not have enough time to season. !!!)
Potatoes that I will miraculously roast in time for dinner together with the chicken
Some random salad that only by grace will appear on the table
Another meat dish that I will leave to Providence
And if we're our immune systems are feeling particularly strong then, cured salmon that my mum made that still needs one more day of curing (!)

And do the nation's pretentious shop regularly at borders, or what. Everywhere I turn to, there's no avoiding the twangy accented complaints from random locals who use "audacity" and "impertinence" while griping about imperfect cupcakes/sulky staff who have been obviously underpaid this holiday season/smudged lip gloss. I'm also ultra peeved at the unbelievable mark-up rate for books there that I can buy at amazon.com for slightly more than half the price without shipping. Sheesh.

yeah feeling chic and subdued yeah

Oh! 80% dark chocolate bar, shall I compare thee to a summer's day? You are a swathe of warm sunshine after a spell of rain. You are the sweetest of all candy in the least showy way. You set my heart ablaze with light and newfound clarity (?). Etc. etc.

On that food-centric note, dinner yesterday was nice. I had broccoli and cheddar soup in a cardboard sipper cup in one hand with a lightly toasted garlic pretzel in the other. It was enough for me to carry on with that arduous task that lay ahead at the Christmas Village. Ominous sounding, huh.

(And Lewin remembered that I like matcha candy while in Hokkaido! Thanks Lewin!! Although he couldn't find any, I still got the white chocolate biscuit that I still like.)

My last day of CCIS duty is up next! I think I have to be more prayerful and patient because I'm not the sort to forgive bratty youngsters dressing up a megajillion times their maturity level, though thankfully I can still grin and bear it without using my booklets as a weapon which will be horribly detrimental to Christmas cheer among many other things of course.

hands in the snow

Back from watching Yes Man with the guys from church (and Jan)! I didn't really like it because of the shallow story line (pessimistic guy is depressed and bitter about life in general after divorce), the unsurprising twists in the plot (boss requests protagonist to come up to office, protagonist expecting to be fired is instead posted to management), and the lack of depth to most of the characters ("flat" characters remain unchanged despite much of the plot revolving somewhat around them too).

Anyway I'm feeling so blah right now. Like, oh Christmas is coming. Blah. I'm going for CCIS later. Blah. I am reading Sophie's World again. Blah. I have Christmas parties to attend. Blah. I haven't got Christmas presents that I wanted to give. Blah.

Maybe everyone at some point considers a need to become a Yes man but right now I'm more of an Embracing the Negative Because Other Choices Cheese Me Off man.

my roman holiday (iii)

I left off at Masada, an ancient fort with a tragic story.



Ein Gedi:



Jerusalem! The ubiquitous dome was glimmering in the sun, though if you see it in the morning it looks mostly dull and matte and incapable of pretty reflections.



I'll stop here for now, because I'm behind time for many many many photos too. Ah.

there is none like you

If you would allow me to indulge in the usual clichés, I'd say that time's flying past and I have to hold on to something material periodically to reassure myself of the perpetuity of time and the cyclical nature of events that keep my sense of existence in check, while questioning its validity at the same time if these were to recur all the time.

Having just seen a week and a half float away while in Israel and then another one after returning from YF camp, I'm whizzing through time with alarming celerity once again and looking at the piles of unwritten Christmas cards with an abjection, a seasonal grievance I set out for myself. How curious, I know.

YF camp was wonderful. My group was awesome and dynamics were for the most part great. But apart from being just really fun and exciting, I've learnt that I've got to interact on a deeper level to understand people's needs better, and often this entails stepping out of our comfort zones and stooping down to different levels. Sometimes I guess it's so hard and I have a melodramatic mental image of myself leaning on a wall and crying in the rain as I slide down because it's something I hate to do. I do not know why, either.

Anyway someone was telling me how, and I'm paraphrasing here, this year's camp seemed watered-down, in that the messages and group discussions seemed to be rather superficial and only cautiously scratched the surface of potentially complex and debatable issues, and there was a devolution such activities to playing group games, perhaps an indication of avoiding and shirking the need to tackle sensitive topics.

I guess I agree that I wasn't directly learning anything new from the messages since it was about the gospel message in general, but having said that, it did remind me of our stake in the grand scheme of things despite our relative insignificance in it. We were also put in a situation where we could display what we've known all along, like the love of Christ and being salt and light to the world. But it was difficult to remind myself who the camp was for — that it was catered to the newcomers, that sort of thing.

And Andrea's back from Korea! I'm excited too because it's a first-overseas-experience kinda thing.

what I want for christmas... really

• Audiophile headphones from Sennheizer 
  
• The new MacBook Pro
• An iPod nano
• The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper
• Ulysses by James Joyce, because I can't read it within the borrowing window and the chronological periphery bounded by the "forgot that I borrowed it" and "return before it's overdue" date.
• A record player
• Sushi keychains
• Holiday in Reykjavik
• Cuisinart ice cream maker
• Ankle socks, because there is a warp in the space-time continuum near the back of my washing machine that socks tend to disappear into.
• A bonsai Cypress tree
• Subscription to Monocle 

Ah well... maybe next year then!

bored on a Saturday

Instructions:
- Look at the list and bold those you have read
- Italicise the ones you want to read
- Underline the books you really loved and strikethrough the ones really didn’t enjoy
- Reprint this list in your own journal if you want to… you know you want to.

• 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
  
• 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
  
• 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
  
• 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
  
• 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
  
• 6 The Bible
  
• 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
  
• 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 
  
• 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
  
• 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
  
• 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
  
• 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
  
• 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
  
• 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 
  
• 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
  
• 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
  
• 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
  
• 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
  
• 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
  
• 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 
  
• 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
  
• 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
  
• 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 
  
• 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 
  
• 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 
  
• 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
  
• 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  
• 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
  
• 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
  
• 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
  
• 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (okay, first few chapters at least)
  
• 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
  
• 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
  
• 34 Emma - Jane Austen
  
• 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
  
• 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
  
• 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
  
• 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
  
• 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
  
• 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
  
• 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
  
• 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
• 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
  
• 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 
  
• 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
  
• 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
  
• 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
  
• 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
  
• 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
  
• 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
  
• 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
  
• 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
  
• 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
  
• 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
  
• 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  
• 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
  
• 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 
  
• 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
  
• 60 Love In A Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  
• 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  
• 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
  
• 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
  
• 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
  
• 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  
• 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
  
• 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 
  
• 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
  
• 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
  
• 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 
  
• 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
  
• 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
  
• 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
  
• 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
  
• 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 
  
• 76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
  
• 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
  
• 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
  
• 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 
  
• 80 Possession - AS Byatt
  
• 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
  
• 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
  
• 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
  
• 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
  
• 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
  
• 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
  
• 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
  
• 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
  
• 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  
• 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
  
• 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
  
• 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 
  
• 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
  
• 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 
  
• 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
  
• 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
  
• 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
  
• 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
  
• 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
  
• 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
  

welcome to my random world

the pains of being pure at heart :D

things I'm doing now:
post-YF camp recovery
planning my imaginary trip to Iceland
eating candied pecans

my roman holiday (ii)

Day 4

Qumram, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Its aridity and desert conditions sun-dried my skin despite me cowering under the flimsy shade of my jacket draped over my head. 

The Dead Sea!

The water was cool and inviting - a pleasant respite from the scorching sun if not for the early sunset at 4 pm and the freezing winds. I floated in the water, but forgot to bring a book to do that touristy "Hey I'm reading in the Dead Sea!" thing that is always a huge conversation starter. Due to the freakishly high mineral content in the water, the small abrasion I had on my little toe stung like concentrated phosphoric acid was splashed over it and then mopped up with salted lemon peels. OK, maybe I exaggerate. The pain makes you feel alive. (There were also more salt crystals than sand, which fascinated me to no end.)

We went back to the hotel to spend the rest of the day at the spa! Saunas are really relaxing. Steam rooms are... steamy. I couldn't breathe properly and spent the entire 10 minutes inside worrying about drowning in the steam and the staff finding my body crumpled on the floor the next morning. Also, I've never seen so many muffin tops in one room in my entire life. 

Day 5

I'll start with breakfast. Lots. Of. Cheese. <3

The second plate is the most unhealthy I've had yet: pasta with heavy cream and a huge dollop of creamed cheese on my alfalfa after a split seconds' contemplation. Yum :D

Masada. We were about 300 m below sea level during this stretch of the journey, too.

Anyway I'll stop here for now because I have a long week of sleepless nights ahead of me! I'll complete the unfinished businesses when I return!

my roman holiday (i)

(Honestly, not exactly Roman unless you count Israel as being previously part of the Roman empire. Yes I have sacrificed my reliability to squeeze in pop culture references, I'm as shallow as a wading pool.)

But to cut things to the chase: I'm back home and I have a (coveted) Mediterranean tan/sunburn and not put on a single pound. Be in complete envy! I went running along the Galilee in the morning chill and survived the risk of pneumonia, had salads every day, emerged out of the Dead Sea with soft and supple skin (not really), drank lots of pure spring water, and slept 8 hours every night!

Anyway, here are some pictures, before you start thinking Israel is some mega-sized health spa. I have many, many, many pictures and that is an understatement.

Day 0 - 1

My favourite feeling

"Yeah, I hope so too else I'll never be able to get back home."

International Airport in Israel. Here, I caught a cold that would plague me for the rest of the trip.

First kosher lunch

Migratory birds!

The view from Mt Carmel

Day 2

I stayed in a kibbutz-run hotel while at Tiberius, near Galilee. I wept with joy upon seeing the cheese selection at its breakfast spread. The desserts that I had for dinner weren't bad as well because they served meringue mushrooms :O :O :O 

A stream. Pastoral huh.

Touristy

In decreasing levels of sanity.

I hope that thing in the sky is just a speck of dust ;)

St Peter's Fish & Chips. Didn't like the fish but the chips were good.

We went on a boat ride around the Galilee

Day 3

My favourite kind of tree! :D

Sunrise

Donkey ride

Lunch in a garden! I had grilled chicken.

Anime eyes!

Sage 

Bedouin-chic. Haha. We had to don the traditional, no, ancient, garments of cloth and headscarves but we got to eat really good pita and humus inside!

These cute critters have really cute names. Coneys. Aren't they cute?

Golan Heights

I'll be putting up more pictures of the Dead Sea, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv soon! :D