Wormy

Love this picture of a secondhand book store in Khao San Road, Bangkok. Meh now I sort of regret not browsing through.

Anyway, I'll be going for my second press trip to China this Sunday! I should be packing my luggage now... but there's no motivation to. It's not really sinking in that I'm going away or that it's basically a free holiday. Ok not really free since I have to write lots of things about it but still, it's a good deal for me. I've been super busy at work trying to finish up all my articles for the two magazines and it's killing me. But thankfully I'm almost done. I still have to write a couple more short news pieces and I'm good to go. Ok no time to waste now, be back on 10 Sept! 

It's not everyday we get to picnic

It used to be only wq but now, we are all in our twenties (omg) and meetups are getting pretty infrequent. Unlike three years ago, when we would just pile into wq's car late at night and zip off to for yummy pratas at Mr Prata or hang out at Henderson waves and take crazy multiple pictures. That's also what made our little picnic get-together last Mon public holiday so special. Nobody knew but I swear there was a particular moment when everyone was laughing at something during our silly shark-eating game (see picture above) and I had an out-of-body experience where I just saw everyone having fun, enjoying each other's company from a third person's view and wanted to sob with joy. I sound totally insane but for a brief moment, I knew that our group, our friendship - no matter how much we quarrelled, how frustrated we get with each other, how many times we exit our whatsapp group in anger and get invited back the next minute like nothing happened (lol haha) - we will be sticking together for the long run. Thank you God for friends like these, so blessed is me! 

Second year

Exactly one week ago was our second anniversary. Jotham is the only boy I want to be counting the years with. :) And look at us going to Nex in matching AA tee shirts (I now "own" that purple tee of his hehe), only in different colours. Belated "celebration" by cooking steak at home. I think this is our second attempt to cook together. Burnt sweet potatoes fries courtesy of yours truly ): My mom came home when we were eating, took one look at the burnt fries and said "Better throw it away, it looks cancerous." So much support hahahahaha Nevermind, I will only get better.

Nomming in Bangkok

Took me an entire week to stop procrastinating but I must write this down while the memory is still fresh. Bangkok is good for many things, but nothing will beat the food (ok shopping comes really close). Especially Bangkok's street food. Embarrassingly, it's only my second time to Bangkok, my first time was a press trip I wrote about here. Basically everything is pretty new and exciting to me so please don't judge me. 

Above picture shows my two ultimate favourite drinks - freshly squeezed orange juice and passionfruit juice. Thailand's fruits are really, really fresh and exquisite; oranges are tiny and passionfruits (or is it  something else?) are so pretty! Plus they come cheap like 20 and 40 baht respectively so we drank them everyday.

Usually if I walked past anything deep fried (especially on a hot, sweaty day), I would have given them a miss. But Jotham specifically texted me to ask me to look out for fried bananas, and we found them! Apparently, it's his favourite Thai street food.

Random mango sticky rice store. Almost didn't want to buy them because we were so full after our zi char style street dinner (btw we paid over 200 baht for just tom yum soup aka kena ripped off) but thankfully we bought it back to our hotel to eat. So, so, so good.

Street vendors lining in the middle of Khao San Road. This backpacker place is probably the best place  to scour for street food! We went there on our first night and our 5-day overeating started there but so worth it.

Coconut ice cream in Chatuchak. Delicious on a hot and crowded weekend.

Banana pancake in Khao San Road. Surprisingly we didn't see this banana pancake anywhere else in Bangkok! There's nutella, chocolate and lots more other flavour but we got the original one. If the passionfruit juice is my favourite drink, this is my favourite street food.

Nothing special really, I just like steamed sweet corn. In fact, I have sweet corn ready with my lunch tomorrow!

Phad Thai in Khao San Road. No joke, that place is a food paradise. The only thing I didn't really fancy was the chicken kebab. It was sort of dry with lots of weird sauces on it and dropping all over my shirt as I attempted to eat it. Not a fan. 

No idea what this is, the auntie told us "pancakes" or at least, that's what we heard. But it has a sweet taste to it!

Green curry noodles at Platinum mall. Unsure if this is how green curry is supposed to taste like or they just watered it down to cheat tourists' money but I definitely prefer Singapore's version.

Had a cheesecake and tea in a cute Japanese cafe to wait for the rain to subside. This happened almost everyday. So we went to lots of cafes. And restaurants.

Another cafe in Siam Paragon. Just needed aircon after Chatuchak lol.

Ventured to Sukhumvit area and found a little soi (10 or 12 I think?) with lots of Korean bbq restaurants. There were lots of Koreans too so we thought it must be of reasonable standard so we went in to eat too. Good choice because we paid only $34 for two in total which, unfortunately, will never happen in Singapore. If you do know a place like that in Singapore, please let me know thank you. Will be grateful for life.

Above three are in Sukhumvit soi 11, a cool hippie street with lots of restaurants and bars and lots of expats. We went to a Mexican restaurant and a Spanish tapas cafe there (on different days) and were the only two Asian girls. Again, we pretty much ordered without looking at the prices and ate our fill. And yes, that is a Paul Frank Volkswagen bus/van mobile bar. Someone needs to set this up a bar like this in Singapore and I need to own this Volkswagen.

Ok, this is taking me way too long and my eyes are hurting. And I need a haircut. Bleah goodnight world.

How ML and I spent our weekend

Stuffing ourselves with food, shopping and dodging the rain the Bangkok. I shall not be lazy like my Sydney trip and write in details about our Bangkok trip so that years from now, we can look back and appreciate the good ol' days. But now, my head is hurting so snuggling in bed comes first.

Weekend pancakes

Every other weekend (or public holiday, like it is today), I make pancakes for breakfast. Or lunch, if I wake up too late. Since the beginning of the year, I've made so many variety of pancakes like smashing bananas into pancakes (ok not too bad), chocolate chips pancakes (yums), slathered insane amount of peanut butter on wheatgerm pancakes (thus nullifying any nutritious quality if it had any in the first place) and the usual ones with bacon and egg, etc.

This morning, I made oat pancakes with almost expiring blueberry/cranberry jam and scrambled eggs and cherries on the side. Even added some flaxseeds to the batter for texture which I bluffed Melissa was "special flour" (she asked why there was a weird crunch) or she will probably refuse to eat it because she generally rejects everything that is relatively good for the body. The jam made everything beyond sweet and I wonder if I'm overloading my body with sugar, but never mind. It's National Day!

It makes last week's oat pancakes with smashed avocado look pretty bleak. :( Btw, I think my overusing of avocados over the past 6 months in salad lunch is making me sick of it. I want to gag whenever I taste it. Is that even possible? Is there an alternative? Meh.

Ok break's over, now back to finishing this article before I pack extremely lightly for BKK. 

Again, I need an iPhone

When your extremely lousy phone produces pictures like these, no amount of photoshop and/or colour editing will save it so I won't even try. An iPhone is definitely high on my save-$-to-buy list so I can finally legitimately document an obscene number of pictures of the all exciting/mundane things in my life.

1. I truly believe I need this amazing grey with white polka dot tea set in my life that I found in the Franc Franc shop in Vivo. It is grey. With white polka dots. Grey and polka dots. Possibly the two main colour/design I want in my future home. Actually, I believe owning any one thing from that shop will greatly improve the aesthetic of my life. (Again, Blackberry camera just makes everything look less attractive than it should be)

2. So today, after an unusually early morning at work toiling over this article which I cannot reveal here because it's unpublished yet, I went to Mad Nest for a media tasting. It's a mix of art gallery supporting local talents and cafe which serves Japanese, Italian, North Indian (omg masala and naan) and all-day brunch food. Ok sounds pretty weird when I type it out here but it's really good, I especially like the Japanese menu. But that's not the point. It's at East Coast Road and after the tasting which left me really full and sleepy, I grudgingly hailed a cab to go home although I dreaded the bound-to-be $30 cab fare. While half suffering from motion sickness because of the uncle's excessive braking, I looked into the press kit and guess what! $25 cab vouchers! Hallelujah God is good. Honestly, I never they existed but they came at the right time so I ended up paying only a few dollars. I'm always extremely grateful when PR company/the shop owner genuinely takes care of you instead of seeing you as just another "medium" to "get your name out there". 

3. Nothing much except my geek brother has found a way to connect his TV and his laptop together and is using both simultaneously to watch shows and play games. I have no words. But he is a genius.

4. My new luggage tag from Rockstar! And now I'm afraid people will steal it off my luggage alamak. But anyway, I'm  looking forward to Bangkok with ML this coming Friday! Going there to eat Phad Thai and mango sticky rice and whatnots like a king and shop at Chatuchak like a queen. Be back with lots of pictures!

It's almost 12mn now so happy 47th birthday, Singapore! Although I have a love-hate relationship with this country (just look at the weather and peak-hour public transport man lol), Singapore will always be home no matter where I am physically.

Advices I would give myself if I were unabashedly honest

It's a cold rainy Friday night and here's what I would like to keep in mind for future references.

Don't hang out with people who make you feel terrible about yourself. Don't allow yourself to feel terrible about yourself. Don't judge. Remember this, "Care more about your character than your reputation; character is who you really are, reputation is how people think of you". Envy will suck the life out of you. Sort out your real friends from your part-time friends. Keep the real ones very close. Don't give up on people. Quit worrying about growing up. Quit worrying about school. Quit worrying about the future. Just quit worrying. See the brighter side of life. Always be thankful. Give thanks as frequently as you can for even the smallest, slightest, most insignificant matter because at the very least, you have something to be thankful for. Appreciate your boyfriend. Appreciate your family. Learn to love and be loved. Stop this "You only accept the love you think you deserve" kind of mindset because if that's true, no one should be accepting any love from any one at all and that would be sad. Love endlessly. Love unconditionally. Don't doubt yourself so much; you're always your worst enemy. Start believing in yourself. Lastly (for now), be humble, but don't be a pushover.

Reminder to self

Happy August everyone!