A Food Odyssey 2005
Daryl visited Boston for three weeks, and we finally got to spend some quality time together. Of course we did little else but indulge in something that excites us both greatly....EATING loh. =P BU's spring break coincided with his visit, but instead of doing something like snowboarding or going on a road trip, we decided on cooking as our main form of activity. Yeah, there's nothing like a good meal to get that adrenaline (or is it just saliva?) flowing. We cooked at least one meal a day, and big meals they were. We had 3 friends over for dinner one night, and planned an eight-course meal, just because there were so many things we wanted to cook! In the end we settled for just six courses (but of course the other two courses we cooked for ourselves the next day). I'm not sure how much weight I put on...I can see myself getting rounder and unfortunately, i think it's the same for D. He's now back in Singapore (more food!), and his relatives have been telling him that he's gotten fatter, but of course following up with 'oh, that's a good thing'. One day I should put up some before and after pics of us...one from a few years ago when we were fitter and healthier, and one after our most recent binge fest. But we had an awesome time and I suppose being apart for 80% of each year, that's would be the most important thing...

Here's one of our homecooked meals with Chicken Watercress Soup, Grilled Sambal Stingray, erm..some sort of Sambal Tumis with Eggs and Stingray dish, and Salted Fish Fried Rice! My only table is really small, not even 1m x 1m, so maybe that's the limiting factor to the number of dishes we make. Hehe =)

Fried carrot cake (Chye Tau Kweh) singapore style. Sometimes when i'm really craving for hawker food, this is a quick and easy dish to fry up.

D actually baked me a surprise cake for my 24th birthday! Okay, it's really a butter cake covered with frosting (sinful...), and I like butter cake and I like surprises and I like D, so as you can guess I was REALLY happy. And if you know D, baking is not something usually associated with him, and it made it all the more special. I must add, not just because i'm awfully biased, that the cake was pretty damn good. Oh, and warm cake is better than cold cake. So guys, next time it's your girl's birthday, bake her a cake right before she gets home. Make her day. Help her feel better about getting older. =)

thanks for doing all the dishes too D! =)

Mm..will post more pics once I upload the next batch from the camera...i think 75% of those pics are of food. Yum!

snow day
What was touted as the "Blizzard of '05" hit us two nights ago, dumping more than 2 feet of snow in Boston... Luckily I was safely tucked away in the warm oven i call home. Kash and I went out into the streets at night. It was fun to say the least. Jumping into untouched piles of light, fluffy snow, making snow angels, snow-fighting was great. Not something i experienced alot while growing up in tropical singapore! Unfortunately, i don't have digital pics of the actual snow storm to post. The next morning, my poor car was buried up to its windows. It's the first one in line on the left side of the pic.

Here's a close-up! I sure had a great time digging this out of all that snow the next day. *grimace* There were several people out on the streets, sliding/sledding down the hill next to my apartment on rubber tubes and cardboard boxes. i suppose some good things do come out of having such heavy snow.... school today was cancelled! =)

To feel snowflakes upon my tougue..
IT'S SNOWING!!!
Ah, the start of a long and bitterly cold Boston winter.
(woohoo.)

Weimar Weekend
Since it's my last weekend here in Leipzig, we decided to drag our lazy butts out of the house, and take the train somewhere for a short trip. Hamburg, Munich, Stuggart were a little too far away for a short 2 day trip. Does Weimar sound familiar? Yeah, that's the place where the democratic Weimar Republic was established after WWI. It was awarded the coveted title of "european city of culture" in 1999. Many germans make a 'pilgrimage' to Weimar to see several significant historical buildings, namely Goethehaus, Schillerhaus and several museums. We weren't too interested in Goethe's furniture and wallpaper. But I suppose we *might* just pay to visit Sir Stamford Raffles quarters or something right?

Leipzig impressions
I haven't been updating my blog as much as I wanted to. Okay..in fact, I haven't really been updating it at all. It's not that we're boring, promise! Thought I'd put up some pics of Leipzig.... It's a pretty nice town about 2 hours away from Berlin. The downtown area is essentially contained within a ring road, with the main train station (the Hauptbahnhof, one of the largest and prettiest in europe) on the NE side of the ring.

View of street outside daryl's dorm. The tram network in leipzig is super convenient. It's very punctual too! (see the signs showing you the times of the next few trams)

The other picture is the Leipzig Opernhaus (opera house). We went to watch a ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet. Turned out to be modernish ballet (they were wearing suits, dresses and stuff), which I don't like as much as tight leotards and tutus. =P

Mm..will try to share some snapshots of my time in europe in the next couple of posts.

crossroads
It's an amazing feeling, being with someone 24/7 for three months, yet loving every single day of it. It's quite unbelievable that in slightly over a week i'll be leaving Leipzig, and returning to Singapore. Time has gone by in a blink of an eye. A part of me is glad - I miss my grandparents, parents, friends and food =). I want to see how much my baby cousin has grown, and i don't want to miss his first steps and first words. But most of me is sad - I think of the laughter, the tears, the smiles, the hugs, the kisses, the sunsets, the walks, the knowing looks ...and I know how hard it'll be to walk away from what we have shared in the past few months. Well, there's not much more to say about this... we'll just have to prepare ourselves once again for being apart. We should be used to it by now, considering we have 4 yrs of experience behind us. =P But it's never easy...damned heart.

Check this out..
Something interesting I got off a friend's friend's website:
1) Go to google.com (www.google.com)
2)Type in 'weapons of mass destruction' but dont hit the enter button.
3) Instead hit the 'I'm feeling lucky' button.
4)An ' ERROR MESSAGE' appears. READ THE ERROR MESSAGE CAREFULLY, read the
WHOLE error message.