Dragon Boat Festival

Life w/o students is still so so so busy. Cos of the planning work required for nx batch of training. No time to post last week cos of my stay in reservist. I'm juz taking a 10 min breather now to post my happenings during the Chinese Traditional Festival --- Dragon Boat Festival aka 端午节 celebration.

I took part in a "Dumpling Making Competition"!!!

but no award one..

This informal competition took place at my aunt's place among 3 teams.

1st team -- 5th aunt and family
2nd team -- 4th aunt and family
3rd team -- myself and my 2 elder sisters

1st uncle and family was appointed to judge for the best dumpling.
during the judging, they were tasked to eat 3 unlabeled dumplings made by the 3 diff teams and choose the one which they tink is the most tasty.

result??

We won!

Let the pictures speak for themselves.

just check it out...we made over 400+ dumplings in total

23 kg of glutinous rice, and 23 kg of Pork!! thats equivalent to half a pig!!! and my uncle bought the 23 kg of pork becos he bought it by mistake when he was actually tasked to buy 23kg of rice...

the traditional charcoal cooking

gas stove to assist the cooking...despite of dat, the cooking of the 400 over dumplings took a total of 9 hours!!! 3hr x 3 batches!

Our masterpiece..this piece was wrapped by me :)

In fact, the dumplings did make me think of one special person....she used to be an expert in this too..

八个春天已过去

现在的你在哪里????

Soya Bean Milk

!st time in my life I've attempted to make soya bean milk by myself....


dun ask me how cum i got a big pack of soya bean left at home....so rather than leaving it untouched and to get spoilt, i took the hassle to turn it into "My brand" of soya bean milk.

from soya bean --> soya bean milk is reali a tedious process.

wat i did was to wash the beans in water 1st, drain off the water
then add in boiling water and baking soda and let it soak for abt 5-10 mins
drain and rinse several times
add hot water and grind
filter
boil

and

SERVE!

I'm tasting the fruit of my own labor. how abt u?

Time for Green

On leave tmr...to haf a good workout (i hope).

Time for green for 1 week --- for reservist... meeting the same grp of frens whom we've spent 2 yrs together in Bedok Camp II. The above shot was taken in 2002 Mar in Thailand.

gonna cut my hair short :(

Will be back at work on 18 jun. Piled up work and Plant Pre start up journal will be my bedtime story for the time being...until i'm done wif it.

in case i lose my memory

Today was juz happening to look thru some of the old fotos which i've taken in the past. and when it comes to the students fotos, i was shocked that i've started to forget names. There's one student's name whom i simply could not recall. it was until i checked back one of the videos i took for them during their practical training that i finally managed to recall his name when his friends called his name in the video. and becos of him, i decided to crop the class fotos i've taken for all my classes i've taught over the past year and write down their names.

It's simply for a pure purpose...juz in case after many years and any of them reali happen to see me on the streets again and decide to call me, i can haf a medium which i can easily refer back to and recall who dat person was.

in fact, i do all these things in all the foto albums which i keep. all the way from the time when i was in secondary school. i do keep track of all the names of my classmates and friends who appeared in my foto albums, so i'm doing nothing new here actually. All is done juz in case if i reali lose my memory for any reason, i can retrieve the memories from the fotos and labelling which i've done all these while.

So here they are....shall post their shots in chronological order:

13 Seasons

For the past 2 days, me and this same grp of friends were immersed in a mood of celebration...for one of our pal, whom is one of my best friends too. Time reali flies and we haf known each other for 13 years, and this is the 14th one. From kids who teenagers and finally to adults, we've definitely been thru many journeys together, be it bitter or sweet. Perhaps dats y we cherish this friendship so much even after so many years, and i believe there are many more to come.


Had one particular incident that i wish to share...We were at Vivo, trying out this new restaurant called "Mussle man", which is suppose to be a seafood restaurant. The moment i entered the restaurant, apparantly the lady boss came to speak to me, boasting how good the food is and how popular her restaurant is:

Lady Boss: is this your 1st time here?

Me: yes

Lady Boss: Oh!! i'm sure you are going to love the food here!!! Even though this restaurant was opened in a rush, but we haf strong backing, strong backing from the people in the kitchen. Btw, for your infomation, some minister juz came to patronize our restaurant today!! We would bever be able to attract them to patronize the restaurant unless we haf the great quality food!

Me: Well, i believe whether i'll know very soon whether i'm going to like to food here, and if it's good, i'll surely come back again (as if i care who patronize ur restaurant). :S

Anyway, when we were seated....the plain water took sooooooo long to come... so i decided to ask for assistance from one of their waiter.

Me: (raised my hand) excuse me.

Waiter: (saw me) gimme a second....(he continued to arrange the utensils on the other table)

Many seconds (in fact minutes) have passed, and he seemed to forget that he still owed me the '1 second', and he still happily arranged other tables and doing other stuff..

Me: (getting impatient, asked another waiter for help)

Asked for bill at the end of everything......

this time rd, the '1 second' guy came to our table wif the bill (was amazingly swift)

Me (smiling): Oh yes!, finally your '1 second' is over (still maintaining the smile)

and i dunno how to describe the expression on the Mr '1 second' face

My friends all burst out laughing after he left.

As we were leaving, the lady boss did not forget to ask how i find her restaurant...

Lady boss: so how's the food??

i hesitated to reply.....

Lady boss: maybe the service was too slow is it????

Me: do u haf any feedback form?????

Lady boss: not at the moment..we are still in the process of developing the form...

Me:...ok...(very relunctantly said).i haf no comments then (and smiling).....(i guess she knew my answer)

So am i a difficult customer?? u judge for urself.

Rating for restaurant: good sea view from the restaurant, but i certainly think that the food at Fish and Co is better...(dun wish to comment on the service anymore)





Dessert was much more fulfilling at Bakers Inn..check out these shots:

birthday boy
birthday boy and beloved

5 cups of ice cream

Similar shots taken using 2 different phones

The rest of thursday was spent at West Coast bowling alley, and a late nite home that caused my double eye bags to pop out again for the whole of friday......

Despite of dat, the birthday boy's desire to sing had resulted in all of us being pulled to meet him again on friday nite..i was already half dead by then after a whole day facing the comp at office and ZM and XY had already been to the KTV earlier on the same day...

I then decided to take videos of his personal concert

<离人>: excellent song by 林志炫 , but "ahem" when it comes to.... (the 1st half was sang by the birthday boy...2nd half by ____)

动力火车's <无情的情书> became <致命的情书> when the mic reaches his hands..."p

But who cares?? we all enjoyed ourselves at the end of the day..