happy father's day!!

we had wanted to keep it as a secret but it was too difficult, esp when food had to be prepared earlier. and he was, of all sundays, NOT playing golf in the morning.

so, we had to tell oz on sat night that the three of us were going to cook him a father's day dinner.

a 4-course dinner.

xru cooked this pumpkin and sweet potato soup, creamy and delish :-)

accompanied by home-made baguette

wei has mastered grilled portobello mushrooms, yum yum :-)

the entre was wagyu ribeye, my contribution.

and this dessert, pavlova, was put together by the three of us.

of course, there was red wine and laughter in healthy doses.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!

time-out

strawberry frozen margarita and a chilean white. lovely after dinner drinks on a lovely balmy sat evening at the beach.

and a much needed break from back to back online mahjong.

it's esp bad when you have two soul mates with their own laptops on the bed, cursing and swearing when the game doesn't go their way...

for me, i also needed to be torn away from my Macbook which was assuaging my never-ending obsession with korean dramas.

on sat night, when our search for the elusive KL black noodles proved unsatisfactory, we decided to not go home to our laptops as yet. instead, oz suggested driving out to east coast park for drinks.

his instincts were good. he was spot-on in locating a beach hut which served drinks right by the sea,  a place he had seen on his walks in the mornings.

it turned out to be a most relaxing evening. it was the place to chill, to people-watch and to sing along to the loud 80's music they were churning out.

sunset bay, it's called. not quite aptly named considering it's located on the east side of singapore but that's not impt.

what's impt is i have found my own slice of heaven without having to leave this island state.

it's like having your mojito and drinking it too :-) 

roaring good times

this time,  the roaring comes not from my ear but from my laughter, MUAHAHAHA...

i can hear now, i can hear now!

no, i don't have a sick eardrum, just a very congested one.

so congested no ordinary ear drop will work. instead, a vacuum thingamajig was called for.

yes, now i can laugh. but it wasn't so funny when you are seated in the hot seat, squirming in embarrassment as the ENT doc seemed to take great delight in showing you the chunks of gunk he had fished from the depths of your ear canal.

lesson learnt: NEVER, NEVER clean your ears.

                         not with your finger, not with your towel, and esp not with cotton buds.

this lesson cost me two hundred bucks.

roaring bad times

as i stood by the sea this morning,  i knew i have to see an ENT specialist fast. 

though i can hear the beautiful sounds of the lapping of the waves and the chirping of the birds, the roaring in my right ear tells me something is not right.

what was thought to be a simple case of hardened wax is not to be; another doc has told me that my eardrum looks 'not very healthy'. i had to seek a doc in penang where i was for the past few days with wei after pain set in and the ear was no less clear. 

and he advised me to seek specialist help or i could turn deaf.

just saw my family doc and he's setting up an appt for me. ASAP, he said.

it's no fun when your hearing's half gone. i am irritable. and hot under the collar though tanks are all i wear in this sweltering heat.

:-(

faux pas ma

yes, that would be me, mother of all faux pas ma's.

everyone in the family knows how paranoid i am about the main gate being NOT shut. it started some years ago when i got up to pee in the middle of the night and happened to look out the window and saw the gate WIDE OPEN. 

at about 2.30 am.

the last one in, probably wei, had forgotten to shut the gate. and it's easy to forget when one just has to press the button on the remote control. you press it open and walk right in and into the house.

images of robbers, not even bothering to wield knives because of the easy entry, appearing right before my bed haunted me for ages.

so now, i check the gate a few times a night. right before i sleep, and when i get up to go to the toilet. 

or when i toss around in bed. i have mastered this art of jack knifing in the midst of tossing, (my bed is right below the window) glance out to check status of gate and plop down back to sleep on the other side.

anyway, wei had friends over last night. i stayed up to, what else, watch my korean drama.

at about 12.30am, i heard the wooden door being locked. which signalled that her friends had left.

on cue, i looked out to check and found the gate WIDE OPEN!!!

i flung out of bed, whipped the door open and yelled in my shrillest voice yet : WEI!! YOU FORGOT TO CLOSE THE GATE!!

she immediately replied: mom, my friend is still here, about to leave.

oh.

i slunk right into my room and collapsed on my bed where xru was and we both rolled around in helpless laughter.

five mins later, wei came up and explained that one of them returned to look for his mobile phone. with the family waiting outside in the car, wei didn't bother to shut the gate.

apparently, the friend was in the midst of searching for his phone when my shrill voice punctuated the air.

he froze.

and said: wah, your mom damn scary.

the next time he comes around, i shall be really nice to him. and will speak with a voice 2 octaves lower. 

^o^

new york/atlanta

(started this post more than a week ago. then got caught up in an eighty episode korean drama which is causing me to have severe eyebags and no life. taking a breather from sword-wielding action to finish this.)

anyone looking at the photos taken during our trip to new york will surely go:

huh??? no statue of liberty? no empire state building? no times square?

yes, that's right. 

6 days in new york and all we had to show are photos taken at the metropolitan museum of art and niagara falls.

blame the freaky weather.

when we were there three weeks ago, new york city was wet and cold. so cold that i didn't want to take my hand out of my coat pocket to fish for my camera in my bag.

i was prepared for a cold spring, not freaking 2℃ !! and it was the day we took the hop on, hop off bus! we didn't alight at the touristy spots, preferring to stay in the warm bus. just twisted our necks around to catch the sights.  the only hop off we did was to take a ferry to staten island. 

or at least that was what we had in mind.

two steps into the cold and i felt my insides screaming in protest. as if the chill had gone right into my bones, intestines, organs...and all had became frozen. imagine carrying a freezer in you.

we valiantly walked the length of the path to where the ferry was.

looked at each other, teeth chattering, body bent with arms deep inside pockets. 

pathetic sight, really.

we could see the lady in the horizon, no bigger than my pinkie.

ok, so we have seen the statue of liberty, we decided, so we quickly walked away to wait for the next bus, haha...

the thing about NYC is that there's really no need to take pictures. cos we have 'visited' it so often, on tv, in the movies. it's just a lot more exciting being there.

we had a thousand and one things we wanted to do but only did maybe ten! factor in severe jetlag, upset stomach, freaky weather, delayed flight (from buffalo), and serious shopping, there's isn't much time left. 

managed to catch the hugely popular musical billy elliot, walked to times square and broadway, visited a flea market that was so disappointing, bought a hotdog from a street stall, ate mind-blowingly good pizzas, crappy chinese food at chinatown, great bagels with cream cheese, calorie-laden breakfasts, spent a whole day at woodbury commons premium outlets (with a large suitcase that begs telling in another post. if i feel like it one day), another whole day at niagara falls, and great, great shopping along 5th avenue.....

anyway, a look at the few photos we have:

caught unawares on both counts...

i know it's art but it's damn freaky-looking, to be honest!

for the record, i didn't take this picture.

a freezing, blue sua teng lang in niagara falls, in front of the famous horseshoe falls on the canadian side

trying in vain to capture the gloriousness of the falls. truly spectacular and inspiring.

the falls are less magnificent but more photo-friendly on the american side.

after six days in NYC, we flew to atlanta where oz had his conference and i, my date with more shopping.

met up with angela and ming. and sam.

dinner at justin's

soul food takes some getting used to. i found my pasta far too salty and heavy.

we visited the georgia aquarium, a very impressive and interactive place.

err, those fish behind are real, though they look deceptively wall-paperish.

this jellyfish was pretty in pink.

nemo: sigh. another sua teng lang.

lunch at a tex mex place which incidentally, served truly great margaritas.

at the coca cola place, the polar bear was so animatedly cute, we made a pact to imitate its endearing grin.

well, it looks endearing, i look idiotic :-D

the different flavours of pop available for tasting. the above from africa tasted weird. 

though i am no coke fan, nothing beats the real thing, really.

first heard of The Varsity on tv, on travel and discovery channel some months ago. apparently, it's like an institution in atlanta so had to visit and take mandatory photo.

with the kind of volumes it claimed to be churning out daily, you wouldn't expect fries like this, would you?

not only were they gross looking, they tasted bad too. limp, soggy and oily.

well known for its hotdogs. there's two slaw dogs behind the fries and a naked dog behind the onion rings which, btw, were bad too.

i honestly think the $1 something  hotdogs at ikea taste much better.

maybe we just like our food differently.

ok, end of post. time to go back to my korean drama....

bat attack

a petrified xru sms-ed me a few evenings ago when i was out with the ladies. it said that a bat had flown in and was eating the bananas.

truth be told, my family and bats have been living in harmony for a few years now.

no, no, no, we don't transform into gotham city bat fellas when there's a crisis :-)

some bats have made their home on two of our palm trees for a while now. you can tell which of the fronds are their homes. there is a nicely bitten circle all around the frond so that it collapses like an overturned umbrella and the bats just snuggle inside.

we do not know how many residents we have but we have seen at least two on some nights when we hang out on the deck. closer to midnight, they will fly in really low, and disappear into the trees.

we leave them alone, they leave us alone.

until last wed night.

i had bought this huge bunch of bananas, pisang berangan, confident that they would be polished off in no time. i always say i raise monkeys in this household from the way bananas are consumed and disposable razors are used up but the latter is material for another post.

anyway, this time the $4 bunch ripened over days and nobody touched it. yes, $4. that's a lot of bananas i tell you.

the sweet smell must have attracted the bat (cos i can't think of any other reason why it would fly in).  it zoomed in on the bananas and started feasting. that was when xru freaked out and sent me that sms.

it must have been a scary sight. bats aren't exactly lovely looking creatures. a bit ominous, if you ask me. 

when i reached home later, i saw half a bunch left, the eaten bits having been thrown away.

the following night, the bat appeared again. must be the same one, right??

i was sitting at the dinner table and when i saw this black apparition swooping into the living room and heading for the kitchen, i panicked and screamed, something like, the bat, the bat, and maybe i said bananas too, i dunno.

whatever it was, the bat changed its mind and flew straight out again.

 

that's when i decided to put temptation away. i froze the bananas.

learnt this tip from the internet. i always thought that mushy fruits cannot be frozen but they can. ok, so they look terrible when defrosted, all brown and limp but the taste is not compromised at all.

and how did they end up?

as banana nut muffins "-)

yesterday, i baked two batches and brought them to the cancer soc. it was new voice club day. annie was so happy to receive them i almost made a promise on the spot to bake every week for her. but bit my tongue. better not promise what i may not be able to deliver.

btw, the bat came back a third day even though there were no bananas. maybe it's tired of the outdoors?

we keep our windows and doors closed a little early these days.