Unpolished Gem

Fulfilling new year. The stomach's very contented! Yesterday night's holborn dinner was a blast! The food was great, we all ate till we exploded... our 14 course holborn dinner! of which 6 were desserts. Hmmm.. fantastic stuff and then we played asshole daidee which was so funnny! It wasn't a bad way to spend chinese new year at all! Today, had steamboat! Dao pok, mushroom, vege, meatball, fishball, seaweed, crabstick, chicken, fishcake..And Cassandra made super nice Sushi.. ooh lah lah. Woah, not at all deprived here. AND we had Bengawan solo cookies, pineapple tarts. Erm.. bah kwa, shrimp rolls, eggy love letters. You seeeeee, woah, real Chinese New Year style man! None of the essentials missing except angpow and family. Here are some pictures of our holborn dinner and singsoc CNY dinner at Chinatown. Oh yeah, had HC night rehearsal today... and i saw the 2002 prom king. Okae, hope none of the HC night ppl reads this. Woah, he's good looking man and he's gonna cat...

AH! Chinese New Year is coming! And... to kick off the festivities, i'll be going for a CNY dinner at Chinatown later, followed up by a hall steamboat on Saturday followed by another steamboat (thanks to Kahmei's kind invitation! Another steam boat, hurrah!) Yeah, no angpows! The closest i got to tasting Chinese New year food was just now at Andre's place where i had mini bahkwas and shrimp rolls! And Jiawei and Watson made pineapple tarts, can u believe it and it tasted great! Not bad.. FLorrine and i are going to attempt making tang yuan and almond jelly.. her idea, so ambitious! i'm not in the least bit confident, but you never know how wonderful it might turn out (DONT CHUCKLE!) Anyway, my father said he'll keep the ang-pow money for me... like anyone will give me since i didn't go to their house to bai4 nian2 right?!?! Hope the next few days of eating will be fun! Anyway, first week into our intensive rehearsal and i'm tired man! Coming home late at nig...

Erm.. i'm kinda amazed by my energy level these days.. little sleep but still managing to survive pretty well. I started my day at 8am.. out of the house by 11.30 for rehearsal and then the SPN mentoring thing... and i spent the next 6 hours walking around, drinking coffee, eating dinner... looking for dessert... ended up eating Local desert... like.. ICE Kachang! the most expensive ice kachang ever!! Guess how much? cost almost S$9?!?! Haha, anw i'm beginning to convert less and less which is not a bad thing i guess. I met my mentor... she's this quite hips "bad girl" in the sense that she's discouraging me from doing internship in year 1 (Gasp!) To like enjoy life more... err.. rebellion! She was saying about how there are few job opportunities for Ibankers in Singapore etc and how she felt weird going back to Singapore because all her friends seemed to have moved on and she's enjoying herself really much in London staying with 2 other guys from America ...

AH!! My senior who went back to Singapore just shocked Florrine and me by giving us a box of Chinese New year goodies each! Just minutes ago.. i was asking where my pineapple tarts are right.. there u have it! Right on my table now! And there is More kueh lapis which i finished yesterday ... loveletters.. peanut cookie. Ah so happy! Thanks Kelvin!!! Even though you won't be reading this... you just made my day!! Cheers ;)

I just watched Narnia (lagging :( .. haha) And i love it! It's great! Aslan's so mighty and the beavers are so cute :) They have this epic war fighting scene, realize many shows have it.. like matrix.. lord rings.. and just many shows lah.. seen enough strange creatures man... Haha. And i watched memoirs of a geisha too but on the comp.. maybe that spoiled the experience a little.. but i didn't find it that good... so luckily i didnt watch it in the movies.. a little disappointed cos the show's so highly anticipated! Anyway, i just have to compain about the horrid peaches i bought by the roadside... total crap. It's like dry and sticky and bitter... gross. the worst peaches i've eaten in my whole life! Shouldn't trust that guy to pick the peaches... i'm NEVER buying from him again. and he still said CHEERS so happily after we bought it... bet he must have been sniggering that he finally managed to get rid of his peaches.. GROWL. I just realized that many...

I want to exercise. I want to sweat! (don't mean to sound gross.. haha) But it's impossible because it's winter now! I want to start feeling fitter! Growl... i'm too scared of the cold to run outside. Come spring, i swear i'll get my butt off the chair and RUN! I realise i'm no longer afraid of raw meats. Like how back at home, whenever i saw mummy chopping the chicken or cleaning the fish, i'll be so scared i dont' even want to go near it. But uh huh, things are different now, throw me a fish i'll remove the scales and dig out out the intestines, no problem. i'll break the bones of the chicken, no sweat. Craving for... ice-cream... sweet stuffs like pastries and chocolate cake. Ahhh...

That lovely thing called Kueh Lapis ... just 4 tiny slices and it's enough to send me into bouts of euphoria... the smell, the touch, the look. Ah, you won't believe how happy it can make u! Not to forget the tau sar piah, i haven't tried the ma ti shu but i have no doubt how wonderful it'll taste. Anyway, my IR teacher just praised me for my IR essay, another thing to be wildly happy about! Couldn't stop beaming when i was talking to him. Ah, happy things! First day of school came and gone, rather smoothly i would say. It was nice seeing everyone again, back into the school mode and our new found resolutions to study hard this term. Let's go!

Come tmr, my supplies will arrive. Even though you already know what's in store for you, it's still like receiving a present! Wheeee! And i'll get contact lenses finally! No more bespectacled Jillian, i'm going to be a different person man. Haha. Just found out about free news articles that you can get from straitstimes, limited but good enough. Feel an inexplicable joy reading local news, the SPRAY and GROPE article just reminded me of how meilin got attacked by those foreign workers in orchard road, thankfully nothing bad happened. Those people are so daring and it's damn gross, never go to orchard road on new year or christmas eve. Brrrr.

winter wonderland hurrah!

Can't believe the holidays are over! I've survived not going home and in retrospect, perhaps it wasn't as bad as i thought it'd be, what with so many people heading back to beloved Singapore. One whole month of holidaying, shopping, studying, relaxing sure doesn't sound like too bad a holiday huh. I could do it again next year i guess( i mean, next dec), but travel is essential during holidays, else u'd be bored to death. Mummy has been calling me pretty often during the holidays, don't worry mummy, i'm fine! Never asked why you're calling me so often simply because it'd sound weird ( ie.. mummy, u just called me yesterday?) But, i appreciate it lots anyway, i love you and all of you back home :) I'm kinda looking forward to school starting, can't wait to get busy again but of course i'm dreading the studying bit, well that's what i came here for so i shall try not to complain about work. I've devised in my head how next term ...

Adeline and me blogger is being very unfriendly! Its taking forever to upload the pictures! growl. ENJOY the pics anyway! Ah! they keep uploading the same pic and i can't delete it... next time i'll try to upload the winter wonderland picture. THis is driving me NUTS!

After huffing and puffing our way up! TRIUMPHANT! The mountain we were about to scale... the Scott monument in edinburgh i love edinburgh!

I'm back! Edinburgh is BEAUTIFUL! We all (okae, just the girls) fell in love the first time we saw the place. It's quite a hilly place, but all the walking's worth it. It's an ancient wonder! Stayed with Adeline when we were in Edinburgh so that saved us one night's accomodation :). We climbed this mountain called Arthur's seat, the view was great but it took us (okae, only jia wei and me ) hell long to get up, cos we were unfit and unhealthy! And we munched on cookies, pringles, chocolate digestives practically throughout the whole trip! And gasp, i gained 2 kg so far, how's that! Everytime we had to climb a slope, both of us would look at each other in mock horror, and always ask for camera breaks or food breaks in between, all because we needed to REST. Feel like a fat old woman lah. But, ah, Scotland is so pretty! Glasgow is boring though, just a good shopping area. The 2 days we were there, we travelled out on both days, first day, we went to this place...