Year: 2007

Last week, was a crappola week for me. Probably one of the worst weeks I’ve had in a long time in terms of mood and just general happiness. I’m not exactly what sure what the reason was. It wasn’t the weather since it was only gloomy on Monday. I don’t really want to attribute it to it being Valentine’s Week, but I can’t say that being alone wasn’t a factor in my mood.

Friday night, I got dinner with Rich and some of his friends. We ate Japanese and went to shoot pool and play ping pong afterwards. It was a lot of fun. The night was of course, not without gossip. There was a girl there that was jonesin’ me fairly hard and I’ll say that my interest level is low at the moment. I keep thinking back to Choon’s comment about giving a girl some time to really show herself, and she’ll become that much more special. He’s right, that’s where you really really like _love_ someone, but don’t you need something there to drive you that far? Shoot. For once I’d like a girl that I’m excited about.

Saturday, I put in a 60 mile bike ride for training for the Wildflower Triathlon. I need so many more miles underneath me it’s not even funny. Also I went to Li Pei Zin’s house for CNY dinner. They gave me the usual quizes ab out girlfriends and such. Incidentally, Mom, Li Pei Zin says the gilfriend bounty is either up to $10,000 or you have to throw some diamonds in the deal. 🙂 As always it’s a 12 course meal, where we only eat 1/5-1/4 of each dish. I horsed around with the grandkids a bit, and the young one, Eileen, reminds me of Vince. I’d hoist her above my head, and when I’d let her down, she’d scream, “Again!” at the top of her lungs. 🙂 Maybe all kids do this. ha!

Sunday, was dim sum at the crazy packed Koi Palace. We got there at 9:45 and didn’t get seated until 11. We were ticket #94 and there were 74 active tickets ahead of us when we got there! Later on, Lynn and Pei-Sun were hosting a CNY cookie party. We made the crispy cookies called “Love Letters” that ended up being very labor intensive. We had to have a charcoal grill and grill each one in a special tool, and then peel and fold them. Of course, we only had 2 tools, and so it was slow. I think we made maybe 50 cookies which is not much at all. In the kitchen, Lynn was making pineapple tart cookies, and I swear, she made like 500 of them. 🙂

Also my ex, Jocelyn showed up to the party, and I pretty much ignored her. She didn’t show up until late into the evening, which was good, since it was less time that I had to ignore her for. 😛 It was her brithday yesterday, and I’m probably being a hardass for not talking to her, even on her birthday, but it’s good for me anyways, to keep strict separation. Too bad Sunny didn’t show up. I would have found the meeting of the ex’s to be somewhat amusing. 🙂

Also, I’ll throw this little piece of gossip at you. I’ve been organizing a bunch of “singles” events, basically inviting all the single people I know out to do stuff. It’s been a lot of fun, since I like organizing stuffs, and I can say that it hasn’t been in vain, as there are now 2 potential dates? relationships? possible that are coming out of this. Sweet!

Oh sorry, no pictures too since I went cameraless this weekend. Hopefully Choon will be able to post a photo or two in his copious spare time these days. 🙂

Chinese New Year feasting continues…

Grilled lamb and cheese sandwich for breakfast.

Dumplings – folded by hand for dinner.

(some non-canonical folding by Jeremy)

We had a ton of heavy cream and mascarpone that we had purchased for the frosting of our disastrous red velvet experiment last night, so we turned it into tiramisu instead.

Edda is outgrowing her stroller. We don’t use it very often – Edda usually walks wherever we walk, just very slowly and while someone is holding her hand. But today she fell asleep in the car on the way to the dog park, so we plunked her in her stroller and watched while her head tilted all the way back because it wasn’t held up by the mesh seat anymore.

This afternoon, Jeremy and I went to a prayer ceremony at a Sikh temple. A friend’s father passed away last week and they were holding the traditional 72 hour ceremony this weekend. The whole family gathers at the temple to pray and cook. We had a delicious vegetarian meal consisting of her late father’s favorite dishes.

Emy’s birthday is on the 20th and she’s been keen on red velvet cake. Apparently red velvet cake is very hip – we followed the recipe from the New York Times.

In went a whole bottle of red food coloring.

Apparently cochineal is a dye made from bugs. It freaked Jeremy out that we were pouring bug remains into our cake and then I freaked out that we were planning on serving red velvet cake with bug food coloring to vegetarian friends tomorrow night. Was I going to tell them that the cake wasn’t really vegetarian because it had red bug juice in it? Or was I not going to because if we hadn’t googled it, none of us would have been the wiser? But then Emy noticed that it said artificial on the label, so therefore it was made from fake bugs and the cake remains vegetarian.

And, whoa! It turns this bright red color!

But then, 10 minutes after the cake goes into the oven, disaster strikes and the power goes out in our whole apartment complex for about 90 minutes. No oven, no internet, no videos. We decide to swim in the unlit pool.

When the lights come back on, the cake continues baking, but it turns out all greasy and flat.

We are so not hip.

Martin, our friend from Dresden, just moved here and tonight we invited him over for CNY reunion dinner.

Jeremy made this huge leg of lamb. Ruby was a lucky dog tonight!

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/02/egg_drop_make_v.html

Reminds me of High School, Although, our design was 10x lighter and much much cooler.

Vince played hooky today. He went out to breakfast with me – ordered a Milo Dinosaur (an iced Ovaltine with Ovaltine powder drizzled on top).

Then he went to the dragon dance performance at Edda’s school. He is sitting next to his main squeeze in Edda’s class – the very blonde and glamourous N. Edda’s in the 2nd row – grouchy because she didn’t sleep very well last night and it is getting pretty hot outside on the asphalt parking lot.

A moment of peace to catch up on last night’s missed zzzzzs.

This is such an unusual sight for Edda – she’s using her hands. Well kind of. She’s resting her hands on the rope/bar and ever-so-softly grasping them as she is swinging – every moment resisting the urge to put her hands in her mouth.

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Scientific name: Clerodendrum myricoides ‘Ugandense’
Common name: Butterfly bush
Location: Singapore

I’m pretty much .0001mm away from canceling my climbing membership. It’s fun. I like it. But week in and week out, I always end up feeling left out on a limb to hang. Granted, I totally understand people have different priorities than climbing. I totally understand. Let me repeat that, I totally understand – it’s expensive, it takes some dedication, people have definitely much more important serious life events happening. I get it. I get it. But I’m out there, standing alone at the gym, waiting for people to show up, when they say they will show up, and they don’t and I feel like an idiot. Is climbing not fun? do people not enjoy it?

I wouldn’t mind doing it on my own, but climbing requires a partner, someone else to show up at the gym. In the past 4 months, I don’t think anyone has asked me if I want to go climbing with them. I’m always the one pushing it. Maybe cause I still think people are interested in it. Maybe I”m wrong. Maybe I’m being too pushy. Maybe my hope that it is a fun thing for friends to do it expecting too much. Is climbing not fun? Do people not enjoy it?

Ugh. The only thing that’ll save me from dropping it, is if these folks that I met at the gym are willing to partner up with me. But I’m pretty much done asking. If people are interested in climbing, then they know where to find me.

We’re now www.justregularfolks.com! Pretty cool, huh?

Edda expressed her displeasure quite loudly this morning when we dropped her off at school. Apparently she thought she was coming with us to eat breakfast and to climb to the top of Mount Faber. We forget sometimes how much she understands and so this morning in the car we were happily chatting about the morning plans and maybe she was pleased that Vince wasn’t coming with us (he had already been dropped off at his school). She made her crooked, sad, pouty face when we pulled into the driveway next to all the school buses.

Jeremy’s been preoccupied with Edda’s crooked frown. Since she constantly mouths her right hand, that side of her face is stretched out and droopy; when she frowns, she frowns extra deep on the right.

She didn’t miss much, Mt Faber is not very exciting (especially since all the restaurants were closed and we were starving).

Later on in the day, we did find something more kid friendly.

For Valentine’s day, Jeremy treated us to massages and a dinner out while he took care of the kids. We went downtown to a hotel’s spa and the masseuses gave us shower caps and disposable panties to put on during the massage. A little strange, but whatever. Both Emy and I checked “firm” for massage pressure, which might have been a mistake – it was kind of painful when she tried working out the knots in my upper back. Apparently I have a very stiff back. My masseuse implored, “Must come back every week!” Hmmm….

The hotel lobby was decorated for Chinese New Year!