2007 Reads and other time wasters

This has been a busy-ish year, what with being enrolled in a Practical Legal Diploma course that ran from 9-5, Monday to Friday then finding a temp job a week after the course wrapped. The last 2.5 weeks have been the only ones where I've had actual time to myself to catch up on reading, bake, hang out at farmer's markets and clean the permanently and incorrigibly dusty apartment I live in.

However, in between figuring practical legal work and other things in between, I did manage to get through some pretty cool reads

The Books

Hmm, 2007 would be the year I went on a fantasy kick again I think. Went off the murder mystery, P.D James and Dorothy Sayers genre that I was on last year. I mean, what with winter being particularly bitter and glum, I sort of wanted some daydreaming type lit.

Confessor by Terry Goodkind
Finally finished off the annoyingly long winded Terry Goodkind series that began with Wizard's First Rule and thankfully ended with Confessor. Umm..nothing to say except that I needed to know the ending and it wasn't badly written enough to not finish it but not so well written that I would relish paying for another of his books. Next time, I think I just won't start. Much like Terry Brooks who just keeps going on with those Shannara books that never seem to end.

P.S I love you By Cecilia Ahern.
I stupidly bought and read and then returned this book.Yes, I am aware it has been made into a major motion picture starring Hilary Swank which hopefully means that the movie has some chance of being watchable. The book was such a waste of time, badly written, whiny,full of worn out, saccharine cliches that set my teeth on edge. I'm everlastingly grateful that Myer department store let me return the book.

Equal Rites, Carpe Jugulum, Hogfather and Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Rediscovering the other Terry. In this case, Pratchett gave me some of the more fun reads of the year.All rather satisfyingly fun and yet with that darker edge to it that I relished. In the case of Hogfather, I rather liked the reference to older forms of folklore and magic. He brought up a common piece of folk magic that I didn't even realise I knew. That most people, at the back of their minds somewhere would know as well. Funny how these old bits of folk lore sneak through our urbanized generations. Read the first two in the thick of winter and they were nice snuggle down in bed with hot milo next to me type reads.

Hyperion saga (4 books) by Dan Simmons
Finished all of the Dan Simmons Hyperion saga which was rather good in its scope and ideas and I liked the Keats references. But honestly, if Simmons could say something in paragraph that would take most writers one line, he would. But the most fun bit was watching the Catholic church take over the universe by working together with cybernetic computer minds that had perfected the technique of resurrection.


Dune by Frank Herbert
This was lovely. Interesting in scope and concept and quite well written. Had me repeating the mantra "Fear is the mindkiller" all year which isn't a bad mantra to have, come to think of it.

There are others, most notably a massively boring and repetitive Eddings series which I bought when sick with a chest infection and regretted and the last Potter book which I assume most people would have read as well. Oh an I think I read a couple of Ishiguro books at the beginning of the year when I still had time. But overall this hasn't been a good year for reading. Mainly lacked time and energy. It was about all I could do to read the newspapers most days and have a long slow read of the Saturday papers.

Happy new year people! And may you stick to your new year resolutions!

Walk with me

I have been out of step and out of whack with everything in my life and at almost every stage of my life.

Sometimes, I think I am just happy to be still alive, still able to laugh and still healthy. And today when I read this blog entry I felt this sense of relief so huge that I am not quite able to articulate its boundaries.

I think I really just needed to know that there are people out there who haven't lived their lives according to the normalcy rules set down by religion or society. I haven't suffered a mental illness before but I've been places and done things I sincerely hope most other people will never get to experience.

This has always made me feel, will always make me feel....somewhat scarred and more than a little damaged. And the reason I try not to think about certain events, or remember too much, is because I'm always a little afraid that my darker memories will engulf whatever joy, happiness or positivity I have in my life and swallow me whole.

But recently, I've started praying and asking...for someone ( hopefully a girl someone) to help me make sense of what happened. To help me connect back the bits of what happened and walk me through accepting it.

I'm taking a few months off. The job hunt will resume when I've weighed up my priorities and figured out the next step.

You go girls!

I'm often surprised at how so few women will admit to being feminist or believing in feminist principles. Feminists and feminism seem to have earned an undeservedly bad name.

I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a feminist. No, it doesn't mean that I hate men. No it doesn't mean that I'm going to burn my bras or deliberately dress like a male. But yes, it does mean that I believe in equality between the sexes in every possible arena and yes, it also means that I believe that true equality in a world where every single important socio-economic institution has been created for and by men is difficult to achieve.

Which is why my heart leapt when Julia Gillard was sworn in as the first female deputy Prime Minister of Australia. Just like it leapt when I found out that the new Premier of Queensland was going to be Anna Bligh. I'm so glad that opportunities for women have opened up to this extent in the highly visible realm of politics. I only wish I could say the same of Singapore.

Another Step

Yesterday, I got admitted as a legal practitioner of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

After about 4 years of study, I can finally call myself a lawyer and not just someone who has a law degree.

The actual ceremony was mildly interesting, vaguely like a wedding ceremony except that everyone was wearing some variation of the basic black suit. You go in all suited up and at some point, you swear an oath to do your best and be honest. It was all terribly archaic and over very quickly, thank goodness. I was just relieved that I didn't have any lines to muff.

Umm... So I'm a lawyer now.....wish I knew what to do next. Do I actually try to work at the law thing? Or try something else? Wish I had some answers.

Tea and Papers

Lately, I've been given the good fortune of having a few days off and I've actually been able to spend time just sitting at my dining table, with the Sunday papers spread before me and a pot of steaming hot tea.

Just a quick update for those back home, my course is over and I'm waiting to gain admission as a legal practitioner of Victoria and also waiting for my PR application results. Meanwhile, I've got a very badly paid temp job as a paralegal.

Life has this habit of speeding up, then slowing down. And sometimes, like now, I feel like it moves both too quickly and too slowly. Too quickly because I'm hitting an age where I feel like I should have achieved more. Too slowly, because I want the waiting to be done and for the next phase of life to begin.

But...for that one hour on Sunday, I just relaxed, drank tea, laughed at the comic strips and caught up with the news.

I don't know where my life is going...and that's a thought that enlivens and terrifies me at the same time. Mostly, I feel like I'm just fumbling about in the dark, hoping that at some point, I'll feel a door knob and the door will open somewhere good.

Where ever the next door leads though, I just hope for the occasional afternoon where I can just enjoy tea and the Sunday papers.

Are you for real?

Over the last few days I've been having some rather confronting discussions with Boy about friendship, the nature of friends and how to tell a good friend from the bad.

Boy is a fan of the school of tough love; he'll pretty much always tell it like it is, straight up, no ice or sweeteners thrown in.

I belong to the school of the politically correct. I try and soften things up for people, use every euphemism and platitude in the book rather than tell people the unvarnished truth about themselves, myself or anything.

Basically, I'm the queen of the little white lie.

But I know I'm not alone. I've noticed that in everyone around me as well. Society functions on the platitudinous comments, the euphemisms that pass for politeness. Who wants to hear the truth when the sugar coated white lie is so much easier to swallow.

But it's hard, really hard to make real friends that way. When you can't tell people the truth about yourself, your past, about their new haircut or that they're spending too much...you pretty much can't tell them anything. You can hang out with them, giggle with them over new shopping expeditions but your real self is tucked away somewhere else.

I made a new year's resolution this year to be more real. To speak up more when something bothers me and to tell people what I think during the times when the truth won't be too cruel. So far, it hasn't worked out very well. It's October and I've notched up less than 5 instances of being real to any of my friends.

The thing is, I need real friends. I need someone I can get safely drunk with and cry with over boys with. Or at least someone I can PMS with. I need someone I can be real with.

Maybe I need to buy a dog.

Because we the FatFat club went fishing

And yes, we DID catch that salmon that we're so happily guzzling down in the first picture =)

The heroes among us

It's late and I haven't got the time to say much about this letter.

Besides, there's been so much comment on it already, that there isn't much more I can add to it.

Except that, this man either has a deathwish, or he's just simply a hero. There isn't much to say, except that there ought to be more Singaporeans, more people like him.

People unafraid of speaking up, of being who they want to be.

He's a good man and I hope he has an Australian/Canadian/anywhere but Asia citizenship/PR as a Plan B. Otherwise, life is about to get very hard for him.

Help me remember

Living overseas, there are times when I've been away too long and I start to have this irrational longing for home. I surf Singaporean blogs, indulge in Singlish and starting thinking of hawker centres the way little girls think of unicorns and rainbows.

Which is why this post, is such a good wake up call. Living overseas, I tend to view home with rose tinted glasses that have conveniently blurred out one of the things I detest about Singapore.

I hate the crowds.

To say that Singapore is densely populated is like saying that the oceans are full of water. It's so obvious that I shouldn't even have bothered saying it. Most Singaporeans I speak to don't have a major problem with it. In fact, they are perturbed by the "quietness" that seems to characterize many Australian towns and cities (with Sydney being a notable exception; I defy even a person used to the press of crowds in Bangkok or HK to find Sydney quiet).

But the thing is....it's going to get worse. It's already badly crowded and expensive as of now. When we reach the 6 million people mark....

Only the rich will be able to afford cars then....and great as public transport is...it is not the same as having one's own transport and....no more wandering around shopping malls without the roar and press of crowds....and...no more wandering around anywhere without a crowd...

I know I shouldn't be so defeatist and I don't even know why it's a problem for me. After all, I did grow up there and I ought to be used to crowds by now.

Maybe I will again when I go home.

This only works with comfortable shoes

This is going to be one of those days...I can tell.

It's not going to be bad exactly, just frantic and tiring.

I have an audit and a hearing and masses of work that's screaming to get done.

But it's better than one of those days where there is just such poison in the air, where various people tell me the variously bad things others have done to them. Whether it's real or imagined slights, it's still exhausting and poisonous and I feel like I just don't want anything to do with it.

I leave work on days like that with a chest full of poison and exhaustion. But am unable to get into a tram and face other people...all with faces like mine.

So no matter how cold the night it, I walk and walk....across town, in the direction of home but avoiding people and looking at bright lights, the reflection of lights on the Yarra river, clothes, makeup...anything but people.

I walk until I'm exhausted and the poison is drained.

By the time I get home, my heart is pumping, my body is warm and best of all...my mind is clear.

People will always be people. And sometimes, when people have insisted on being well...human, the only way is to walk things off and try to come home with a clear mind and heart.

Bitten by a whale shark

So anyway, I was at the gym doing my usually huffing and puffing thing and I tune into the nice TV they've got in front to distract people from the pain of physical activity and this show, "Thirty things to do in Australia before you die" comes on.

Item No. 3 (I think it was 3, I sort of lost count), was swimming with whale sharks off the coast of Axmouth, Western Australia. So of course the National Geographic channel watching, NG magazine reading NERD me goes...oh wow.

Because whale sharks are just so rare. People could look for them for days, months, weeks and not find them. They're quiet, stealthy creatures that feed on plankton and ghost through the oceans sucking up tiny organisms and being thoroughly unobtrusive. (And yes these facts are off the top of my heard, from the NG article I read at least 5 years ago.)

Axmouth is one of the few places on earth where they can be seen with any kind of regularity at all and apparently, they have to send out a spotter plane for hours ahead of your boat to find the shark so that you can swim alongside it and just be near one of the ocean's greatest creatures for 5 minutes.

I want to swim with the whale sharks and see them for myself and be near that kind of awesome vastness.

I've spent my whole life in urban Singapore lying on my couch (reading NG of course!) and dreaming of stuff like that and now that I realize one of those pipe dreams can really be done, I just can't wait.

Realistically, I know I won't be able to do it for quite a few years because any enterprise that requires a spotter plane is going to cost if not a bomb,then at least a grenade,but now that I know it can be done, I want to do it.

There is this crazy conversation going on in my head right now between City Me and Adventure Me.

City Me (screaming): " You can't do that! You must be crazy, it'll cost a bomb and you might get killed"

Adventure Me(dreamy tone):" I can see whale sharks...in the wild...AND its not that far from where I am now..."

City Me: " It's going to cost a bomb! You might as well buy ten LV bags with the money! What's wrong with you?Why not set some some designer bag or Tiffany jewellery as a target instead of some mad scheme!You don't even know how to scuba dive and the water will be freezing!!!"

Adventure Me: " Let's go see how much it costs then maybe I'll stay in Australia an extra year...... and go by myself even if my other city friends won't come with me......."


*sigh*

Of Aunts and Cakes

One is seldom moved by a blog post, much less a food blog. But today I read a post that moved me almost to tears and made me think of my aunts and of home.

The blog name is Tea and Cookies and a more appropriate name for a cosy heart and tummy warming blog, I couldn't think of. One post in particular, " In Rome, with Aunt Angela" really warmed me to the tips of my toes.

Here's an extract:

"But still, as I bake my walnut cake I think of her. In my secret dream life I get to live in Rome (and why not?). I wake up in the morning to a brilliant blue sky and make my cake, mixing the egg whites, the sugar, the nuts. And when it is finished and cooled I wrap it up and take it down the street to where Aunt Angela lives, still hale and hearty. We sit and have tea and eat our cake, talking and chattering away (in my dream life I speak beautiful Italian). And when I say something particularly funny (I am very funny in Italian), she lays her worn hand on top of mine and smiles at me."

One of my aunts threw a small dinner party for me before I left Singapore, needless to say, all my other aunts showed up with more food and dessert in tow than I could possibly finish in a week of dinner parties. (Isn't that just what aunts always do?)We sat in her tiny condo speaking a polyglot mix of Teochew dialect, Bahasa Indonesian and Mandarin Chinese and happily digging into all that glorious food. One aunt who happened to have a prior dinner appointment that night, came before her other appointment, ostensibly just to sit and chat and wound up eating a full dinner anyway. I don't recall all the things that were eaten that night, apart from an amazingly simple and delicious fried chicken dish, but I think I'll always remember that evening and how wonderful just being with family can be.

I've included my 6th aunt's fried chicken recipe below and its simplicity still astounds me even as I'm reviewing it.

My aunt's ridiculously simple fried chicken recipe

Ingredients:
I kilogram of chicken wings
1/2 a tablespoon of salt
2-3 tablespoons of ground ginger powder

1)Marinade the chicken with the salt and ginger powder for at least 3 hours (overnight marinading yields the best results). Be careful with the salt because for some reason, with this dish, the salt goes a long way as the fluid from the chicken is released in cooking.

2)Heat oil in a wok over medium heat until oil is hot. This is a deep fried dish, so be sure to use plenty of oil, enough to cover most of each chicken wing.

3)Fry the chicken in batches till cooked through.

Alternatively, the marinaded chicken can always be roasted if deep frying is considered too unhealthy or too much of a hassle. The result is also good, yielding a crunchy,tasty chicken wing as well, but will be understandably less oily.

Beautiful cake and beautiful people

It's a lazy saturday morning so I decided to stick up one of my birthday pics. Here's my cell group and I at Meiji Japanese restaurant with the gorgeous cake that Rowena (second row, middle) baked for me. It looks like it came from a shop but it doesn't! She did it all by herself...and it tasted fabulous!I don't know why we all look so flushed, it could be just my camera settings but then again maybe it's the excitement of being near a fabulous cake that we're all about to eat *grin*.

Happy Birthday to me!

Last year, on this exact day, I threw myself a party and cooked for 20 odd people and while I had loads of fun, I was also very stressed and exhausted.

I mean, instead of hanging out with friends and chilling, I was running to the kitchen constantly and checking that the food didn't over/undercook.

This year, I decided to just celebrate quietly and gently with several different, smaller groups instead which worked out much better.

Sickness and health

This was going to be a post about designer bags and how we all seem to crave them.

But before it can become a post about designer bags, it is first going to be a post about my being sick in bed today with a cold and sore throat.

Being sick is sorta fun when I'm at home in Singapore. I get to stay in bed and re read all my favourite books and sleep whenever I want which is my idea of a perfect world. And whenever I feel like a meal, my mum gets me one and when I need medication, my mum doles it out.

But sick in bed in Melbourne is a different creature altogether. I have far fewer books here, no mum to send me to the doctor and provide me with delicious healing soups that have chicken and ginger in them. So in Melbourne, one of my goals is not to get sick and when I have even the slightest suspicion that my body is about to fall prey to a virus, I take medication like it's some magic pill from the fantasy books that will zing all the virus and sick from my body.

But in spite of my best laid plans, those damned effective flu viruses waited for a week when I lacked sleep and was stressed and then pounced.

I'm 25, but I really really want my mummy right now.

I'll talk about designer bags tomorrow.

Smells and Scents

When I first met the Boy, I was so attracted by the way he smelt. He had this great perfume/cologne on that I just loved the smell of.

Fast forward a few months and I discovered that it was the masculine version of my favourite perfume, Tommy Girl.

Funny how our noses always turn out to be right.

The incredible brokeness of being

Mainly, I just need to whine about how broke I am.

See, my parents generally give me plenty of money and I am incapable of sticking to the damn budget they set me even though I know it's a perfectly reasonable one.

I sit down and do my accounts every so often and I've just discovered that I've overspent by about a week's pocket money. *Big sigh*

Which means I am going to have to be very very careful for the next month. Thank God I actually make myself sit down and do my accounts though, if I didn't I'd overspend even more. At least, this way, I know where I am.

Mea culpa,I guess. I've just been a tad reckless for awhile. Plus I think I get carried away shopping when I'm in the mood. I so need to stop shopping.

I just read the last sentence I typed and started laughing to myself. Me? Stop shopping?? *wild laughter* AS IF THAT WOULD EVER HAPPEN.

Never mind, I think I shall just try to be careful and also maybe get a job.

Rooted

Last year I received a visit from an old friend who came to Melbourne for a holiday. I realised after a few days that she,like so many other Singaporeans, are pretty much stuck.

I see that even in people who study here or have been living here for a few years. Everything in Singapore is "better", ie. the people are nicer , the food is cheaper/better/tastier, the weather is nice and warm as opposed to freezing in winter and hot in summer and the ang mohs here are racist, the people at home are not racist (!!!). (Ironic, because the term "ang moh" which they bandy about freely, is in essence a racist slur. ) They are confused even by Chinatown, because the dialect of choice here, as in so many other Chinatowns, is Cantonese and not Hokkien. They realise that their accent, so accepted in Singapore, sounds harsh and out of place here.

Basically, they cannot and will not adapt to life overseas. They must have things they way they were used to at home. And at the end of the day, I am sad for them. It is not that life is better here or worse in Singapore. Mostly, it's about the ability to embrace new things, to adapt to new living environs, cultures and mindsets and this seems severely lacking in quite a few Singaporeans I've met.

It's a worrying trend, because unless they are very sharp and very able, staying in Singapore generally means one is pretty reliant on the government. They, like so many Singaporeans I know, have an almost child like faith in the "gahmen", and this worries me because I have absolutely no reason at all to trust the Singaporean governmentl. Just read this, this, this or this.

Be globalized, friends. If one ship sinks, you must have the ability to clamber aboard another and survive. Life is a rat race and we like rats, must know when to leave a sinking ship.

Quote

" I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Frank Herbert, Dune

Test Pic

FINALLY. I finally figured out how to resize photos so that blogger doesn't take a millenia to upload photos.

Yes I am THAT bad with computers.

Anyway, here's the photo from the Belgian Beer Garden that I meant to put up ages ago but was thwarted by blogger.

Looking Back

I finally caught up with an old old friend today. And we worked out that I hadn't seen him for 2.5 years and then found out that along the last 6 months that I hadn't spoken to him, he and another very old friend had both quit their respective Masters programs and were now back in Singapore. Z is now job hunting and C is working at her dad's company.

I realised somewhere along the phone conversation that I was close to tears and realised why.

Those two and I were best friends. We were a triumvirate once. All through late primary, secondary, college and university, we hung out, celebrated birthdays together and found first boyfriends together.

I missed them when they weren't there and realised that they like so many other friends were just some of the casualties of the last relationship I'd had. It was my fault mostly, I'd stopped confiding in anyone, even my nearest and dearest about the crap I was going thrgough. Which meant that for as long as I was in the middle of the crap, I was pretty much unable to talk to or connect with anyone meaningfully for awhile. And the guy in question pretty much discouraged me from talking to them about it as well.

So today, a year and a half after my breakup, I finally made the first move.

I picked up the phone and called them. And realised how much I'd missed them and how much they would have helped me if I'd just been smart enough to talk to them and tell them all the stuff I was going through.

I still miss them so much. And I wish I'd been a better friend. And I will never let another relationship keep me from my friends again. It's just not worth it.

9 AM and I want to be at church already but I can't go

So it's 9.42am on Sunday and I'm sitting in front of my computer killing time because my cousin who is arriving today has yet to call to say that her flight has landed. I know her flight has landed because www.melair.com.au says so but the fact that she hasn't called yet worries me.

I've been in Melbourne for 3.5 years now and this year, my fourth and final year, it seems that my relatives have woken up to the fact that I don't have a housemate this year and they're flocking to Melbourne like a gaggle of geese. Bad metaphor, I know.

Why don't I have a housemate? I did find myself one but the person in question was the wrong gender so my loving parents nixed it and I found myself having to look for another. Then I realised that I didn't really want to live with 1) Someone I don't know very well 2) Someone from church 3) Someone who might have problems with the Boy being constantly around to use my Internet.

In the end I just got too lazy and decided not to bother looking. If one turns up, well and good. If not...well as it turns out, I'm too busy to be lonely anyway.

Hence the relatives attack. I've had people here every month now and I'm awfully tired. I like having them around. I really do. But it does get a wee bit exhausting.

So after the next lot (from Hongkong) I'm going to tell my mum to start discouraging people from coming in July specifically because I'm looking at my timetable and my course hots up around that time. I can't juggle too many things because I start losing my marbles and then the act is over.

Cure for a bad day

1) First, you shop. Not just window shopping. But you have to buy something. Preferably something that is an enormous bargain. Like cute earrings for $2.40 because they were 75% off.

2) Then you go home and cook. Cook a great meal. One that involves unhealthy but heart warming foods such as melted cheese or fried chicken wings. Which you proceed to eat despite trying to cut down on fat because you're trying to lose weight.

3) Eat dessert. Make sure you have something both chocolatey and gooey. Or hot and sweet like Milo, hot chocolate, horlicks...Or if it's an especially bad day, you should have all of the above.

4) Hug someone. Preferably someone you know of course. Nothing cures a bad day like a few cuddles.

5) You watch a massive amount of American sitcoms/dramas. Such as Friends, or House or Grey's Anatomy.

And if you're still feeling down, rinse and repeat until desired result is achieved.

Turn it around

Today is like some neverending bad dream that just goes on and on.

I know it's just a bad day but I'm just so down that I can't stand it anymore and I have to vent my spleen somewhere which is why I'm typing this post out in school where I know there isn't any internet privacy where the school's tech administrator will probably discover my blog.

I don't care.

I'm tired.

I think if there are two words I say the most it would be "I'm tired". I just say it alot. But I mean it every time. I AM tired. Most days I wake up tired and then proceed to get more exhausted as the day wears on.

And it doesn't help that I have masses of work to do. That I don't KNOW how to do.

Today the Boy isn't helping either. He's all pissed that he got a parking ticket and full of righteous anger and I just don't want to deal with it. Mostly I just don't want people to get pissed at shit like parking tickets and totally fucked up things like traffic jams. Although I have to say that since the Boy is involved in my bad day I suppose it just got to him too which is understandable.

Why am I just so screwed up? I can't do anything right. Why am I just so enormously stupid?

There are no answers. There never are.

God, there has to be some answer to this cosmic question. Otherwise everyday is just Sisyphus-like and wears on and on.

I hope the day, my life,gets better.

Post script:
It's just so appropriate that today is the 1st of June though. The first official day of winter. I want to not be here. I want to be at home in bed snuggled down with a book and some milo with loads of condensed milk.

But I can't go home for another few hours so I'm going to be here pretending to do work, pretending to listen in class for another 3.5 hours before I go to the gym for 2 hours and then I finally get to go home.

Belgian Beer Garden

I meant to post a few days ago, only the thing about starting new blogs is that I tend to forget the username and pass word I made up for the blog.

I logged into blogger at least 3 times and got so mad at myself for having a memory like a sieve. Honestly...I need to take brain supplements or something.

Anyway when I finally remembered how to log in and all (My God I sound ditsy), I thought I'd say something about the place I went to with my cell group last night. The place (Belgian Beer Garden) was new to me even though it was only a few tram stops down the road I live on. It had a lovely atmosphere, wood panelling and a deliberately ye olde fashioned pub look.

Plus, I finally found a beer I actually quite like. Stella Artois!!Who would have known beer could taste so good? Most beers are just bitter and sorta yucky tasting but this one.... it had texture!Flavour!

But beer aside, the food wasn't bad really. The beef stew thingummy I ordered wasn't exactly fantastic, but MY's beer battered fish & chips turned out beautifully. The steak was so-so but really the highlight of the meal were the cream sauce mussels we ordered to share. They were sooo good. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of mussels but those were really juicy and yummy. And the sauce..oh the sauce was to die for. So much cream and white wine and mussel essence....I drank a spoonful of it and almost swooned.

I wanted to stick up a picture of the place but blogger refused to cooperate...again and again. So no pictures just yet.

I'll do what it takes till I touch the sky

It's 2007 and apparently I like writing more than I knew. So this is the new pad and the newest test blog post.

And typically, since its midnight and I'm using match sticks to prop my eyes open, this is going to be short.

My old one? Anonymous, picture free and heavily verbose. My new one?Let's just say that I feel a deep seated need to relive my 15 year old self and post giggly, badly spelled posts with a million photos of myself being embarrassing kiddy. Yes, this is going to be THAT kind of a blog.

So there.

Oh, a because I like to cook now, as opposed to merely liking to eat, there'll be the odd recipe here and there too. And maybe the odd poem.