today i made a small accomplishment- i successfully cooked terriyaki beef on my first try, without a recipe! indeed, this proves that years of ratting about in the pantry has paid off as i have cultivated a highly discerning palate. unfortunately though, my plan to cook a perfect japanese dinner was foiled by the miso soup and deep-fried tofu. damn organic miso and processed tofu! nevertheless, this is only a minor hindrance in my mission to be fully domesticated in the kitchen. in fact, i just saw michelle chong eating kimchi on TV, and my new goal is to conquer korean cuisine...

already, i am well-versed in supermarketing and have devised benchmarks to judge the competence of a supermarket. for example:
1. how many types of tofu and lettuce do they sell?
2. do they sell US Red Delicious apples or only shitty french royal gala ones?
3. how much is a tub of ben & jerry's?

clearly, i am either a talented shopper or a freak with major OCD.

as for the weekend, there was a buffet dinner on sunday with family friends and omg i ate and ate till i had momentary lapses of mobility. me, my sis and mark practically had an entire steamboat to ourselves and we just sat around adding more and more food to the soup then sat around some more trying to finish everything. i think i have eaten enough prawns to last me a whole year. and then there was the international buffet with satay and char siew and chicken and roast beef and so much more food! thank God there was no cheesecake at the dessert table, or i would have had to be wheeled to the car. already the three of us managed to eat every flavour of ice cream (or maybe, that was just me) and jelly and cake available. oh and i have discovered a talent for making ice cream sundaes, having honed the skill of scooping perfectly spherical balls of ice cream from the tubs. things are looking up for my gelato store and soccer-themed restaurant!

just watched xmen 3 and in summary it is about the UBER COOLNESS OF JEAN GREY! she's like the epitome of girl power- exotic, striking, intense... and then of course there's the thing about how she can levitate a house and fragmentise people with her mind. my new aspiration is to be like jean grey. i have decided to learn telepathy and hone my psychic powers so that eventually i will be able to read people's thoughts and move things just by thinking about them. this would definitely thrash being a spy any day! apart from jean though, there actually wasn't much else Xcitement (ha, ha) unless you consider a nearly naked hugh jackman towards the end. this was when jean was trying to kill him but ended up ripping his shirt off his body instead; talk about putting psychic powers to good use! anyway i was quite disappointed that cyclops died so early in the show (and in the most RETARDED way possible, i must say) although james marsden did seem much diminished in hotness from x2 and x1 so his presence was not missed much. on the whole i think x3 struck quite a good balance because its special effects were just enough to make it cool but not mindblowing to the extent that they detracted from the plot or jean grey or made it too unbelievable. after all, i still want to be jean grey ;)

oh, and i have just been given a holier-than-thou-comic-fan movie critique from haynes so, this is as a disclaimer: i haven't actually read any of the comics so i can't offer any valuable comic buff perspectives. i have however watched the prequels and you can bet i'm familiar with the actors, i mean, characters! ;D

yesterday i was forced to watch over the hedge. forced because i vowed never to watch another cartoon after finding nemo, in which the plot of fish finding fish was so boring that i slept through the middle of it. mark says that i am heartless! i suppose this is true though, since i rarely even laugh during shows except at sadistic things or "geek humour" like in who's line is it anyway. anyway, i must say over the hedge was a more pleasant experience than i expected, thanks to the cuteness of garry shandling's turtle and the selfish genius of the raccoon so aptly called RJ. i totally could not recognise bruce willis' voice, especially since it lacks the charisma which hugo weaving's oozes! the other cheap thrill was that avril lavigne was doing a bit part, so i spent most of the movie waiting for her character to talk. i have to say she is quite useless as a voiceover but in my defense as a former avril fan, there WAS once upon a time when being an angsty punk rocker wasn't just the greatest turn off since christina aguilera. my favourite character in the movie is hammy, because i think a semi-schizo squirrel with a major ADHD problem is actually quite endearing.

omg, i'm beginning to like cartoon characters! if i keep this up, i might start liking babies or wanting to carry them and then i might drop them or something disastrous like that and it is SO NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

apart from that, it has been a rather ho-hum week. i've been having a backache which has systematically radiated from my neck to my tailbone, so moving about and sitting down has not been very fun. this is despite extra yoga and the fact that i'm probably more fit than i've ever been in my life (which is not much, haha) so it is quite infuriating. luckily though the great singapore sale has begun, so there's at least something to occupy me. i hit robinsons on friday armed with the buying power that is The Mother, and actually got a shirt and a pair of pants that doesn't make me look like an elephant. but they're both only appropriate as office attire, which only means one thing: more shopping!

as for the birthday gift list, i've decided that it's too materialistic, even for me. now that i've started earning my own money, i don't actually feel compelled to buy things all the time and can actually walk away from stuff which i really like but don't need even though they're on sale, AND i don't think about them afterwards and feel incomplete or sad because i didn't buy them! this is definitely something. there are however, a few things which i suppose i COULD appreciate. like plain diamond (or even crystal!) ear studs to replace my most favourite crystal ones which are missing the back pieces now. or a nice medium-sized bag which can fit an A4 paper in and will look good on my shoulder in uni. or a pair of wedges with a ribbon around the ankles which i have been dying to own since i missed out on them on chinese new year. or a cute pair of flatties or slippers which go with jeans. or a nice comfy sweater with a zip in the front and a little hood at the back! teehee. not necessary of course, but definitely welcomed ;)

since saturday life has started to look up, which is a good thing because i spent the majority of friday night moping away and thinking about how nobody in this whole entire world loves me. i was looking through my uni package just now and struck with the realisation that i will be a student again sometime very soon. invariably, i was filled with panic and my immediate thought was that i must play as much as possible from now till term starts. this is an ambitious plan, but i will have to stick to it because it is for my own good.

i've also been up to two big things, the first being my plan to Get Fit For Real. this is involving regular jogging sessions with the moose as well as pilates and yoga everyday :) hopefully, this will help us avoid the untold embarrassment of entering uni as shapeless and unfit losers. i have been wondering if the size of a person's butt is in any way proportional to the amount of time spent on the couch watching tv, and this is providing quite a strong motivation to get up and get moving. perhaps becoming fit is really so simple, after all.

the second big thing i've been up to is laptop shopping. i was set on the vaio for the longest time but i hear that sony doesn't even manufacture their own parts for the vaio AND the one i want is quite pricey :( so now i'm deciding between the acer travelmate 3020 series and the toshiba portege M400-S933, which also happens to be a tablet pc! they're both 12.1 inches except that the acer is lighter at 1.5 kg though it excludes the external disc drive =\ then, there's also the lenovo thinkpad which is supposedly the most durable and the fujitsu lifebook which i still think is the chioest yet! so many choices, so little money :(

i just reread the previous post and i can see how it came from a moment of excitement :p this is uncharacteristic of me, because i am always calm and composed and in control of my emotions. anyway i left out one even better piece of news- mark got offerred medicine too! and since he's in ocs he'll most probably get to disrupt NS, which means we might even be kinda like classmates again! this beats him being a 9-5 army clerk hands down :D HAHA

omg i'm so childish.

in other news! on friday night i met walker nic and chrees for dinner at swensons, where we talked and laughed so loudly that everyone sitting near us turned to stare. it was highly embarrassing, but then again these are the people whom i've skipped to PE and danced in the canteen with, so it's nothing i wasn't used to. as we were leaning back in big comfy restaurant chairs and laughing away, i realised that i was experiencing what would probably be a rare moment in months to come- the company of my favourite classmates outside the world of school and tests and all things horrible. then we started teasing each other about what we revealed in earlier I Have Never sessions and Bad Tastes and Crushes Who Turned Out To Be Gay, and once again the sentimentality of the moment was lost on pure immaturity. i will miss them when they all fly off to UK in a few months :(

marks' birthday is on thursday which means he'll be stuck in the safti shithole when he turns 19! nobody should have to spend such a momentous occassion in camp. anyway we went for a premature birthday dinner today to celebrate and there was so much food that i was quite very stuffed by the end of it. plus i tasted the cheesiest cheesecake i've ever had in my whole entire life, and considering how i've been on an extended cheesecake crusade, this counts for a lot. i was kinda sad that i wouldn't get to see his reaction to my present, but he managed to pack it into his humongous ocs bag and carry it off to camp. so at least he won't be in a presentless shithole on thursday, which we all know would be a terribly traumatising thing.

lastly, i have a new phone! it's the dark blue razr so now i can finally say that i own a poser phone! i've been eyeing it for a while but since i'm cheapskate i waited till the price dropped to cheapskate level before trading in the useless piece of crap which was my previous phone. i am proud to say that i wasn't even vaguely attracted to the pink version because the colour was DISGUSTINGLY OBIANG and even my sister (who is going through this annoying punk wannabe phase) was able to resist temptation. the problem now is that i have to get used to smsing on a japanese phone now, which is proving to be very trying especially when the damn dictionary works in the most retarded way imagineable. but whatever, at least i have a phone which will fit into the back pocket of tight jeans, and clearly this is any girl's priority ;)

I AM GOING TO BE A DOCTOR!!!

i can't believe it. a part of me feels insanely elated, while a part of me knows i am screwed. since applying i have managed to psycho myself into believing that blood is not an issue, but the truth is that i'm petrified of bleeding people plus there's the whole thing about how i'm a hygeine freak. but i suppose we will have to cross those bridges when we get to them. i just hope the first patient i get doesn't puke all over me. or worse, die =x =x what have i gotten myself into, i wonder.

the past few days have been rather quiet, and ranged from pleasant to depressing. during the week my life regains some sort of sloth-like routine consisting of large amounts of sleep, tv, and food. i am getting comfortable with living an aimless existence, and this worries me because it bodes poorly for my life in uni. on top of this, my OCD and paranoia have intensified, explaining daily runs to the postbox whenever i hear the postman's motorcycle outside. i have also become more particular about hygeine, especially the sterility of my pillows and blanket. lots of people do not understand this hangup, including my sister, who regularly rubs her dirty jeans on my bed in order to piss me off. i can't explain why but the thought of my bed getting dirty makes me feel immediate panic, and the compulsion to sterilise whatever's been contaminated. when i read books, i don't even let their covers touch my blanket because who knows who's touched them and where they've been before that? i am definitely turning into some kind of neurotic freak, but my consolation is that at least i have a clean bed.

on saturday evening there was dinner with my mom's relatives who were down from perth for the week. it was at patara, where i was smart enough to remember what happened the last time i had tom yam soup at a thai restaurant. it was not a friendly feeling, that. anyway, whenever eurasians gather they like to reminiscence about childhood and "the olden days", so again i was left quite amazed at my grandaunts' abilities to talk continuously in a manner that almost eliminates the drawing of air between sentences. i felt tired just listening to them! but 'twas quite an evening, i must say.

on sunday my sis and i tried to bake a chocolate cake for our mom because it was mothers' day and we felt guilty for forgetting about a card. luckily there was a spare box of some betty crockers' super moist chocolate fudge in the pantry, which i descended upon and portioned into a little heart-shaped baking tin. however, a few minutes after we put the cake into the big under-utilised baking oven, the electricity in the entire house short circuited. so then my dad was woken up and had to rush downstairs to restore order, which meant that the mom was also alerted to our plans. so much for a surprise! what's worse though, was that we tried to bake the cake in the stupid tiny half-dead conventional oven afterwards, which was a huge mistake because the oven doesn't heat evenly. so, the top part became completely burnt, and after half an hour the inside was still liquid. it was the saddest fudge cake ever :( it wasn't even edible, AND we're talking about a supposedly foolproof betty crocker idiot mix! nobody ventured to try the cake, which i think was a huge waste because i later realised that some parts actually vaguely resembled chocolate pudding...

as for yesterday, it was shopping with walker day! which was unexpectedly fruitful because it turned out that taka was having this huge bazaar sale on SHOES AND BAGS! now that is a sale worth waiting for, ha ha. anyway i found this pair of URS shoes which look quite like the ones which i've been eyeing for a month, and they were only $19! i felt so gratified after buying them, because it means that i've saved about 66.67% of what i would have paid if i'd bought the other shoes the day before. i'm now thinking that if uni doesn't work out, i could become a personal shopper. i think i have a natural nose for sniffing out good buys! plus, since being a personal shopper would presumably not seem like a job at all, it would mean that i'd be free to work on my gelato store in the meanwhile. then, once i've established my monopoly in the gelato business, i'd be in a better position to start my restaurant, which would then satisfy all my lifelong ambitions. i am an easy person to please, after all.

oh, and i'm still thinking through the birthday wishlist, so you might want to check back regularly :D

today has been quite a full day for me! i was up at an ungodly hour in the morning to rush off to debate training, where we did an impromptu on This House Supports The UN. this gave me a sense of deja vu for more than one reason. i remember prepping this motion for the first round of nats in J1, so i thought setting this would be highly intelligent since i already have a set of full cases and research materials. unfortunately i woke up too late to locate either, and was further hindered when i realised my toenails were rotting and needed to be repainted. so you'd imagine i was pleasantly surprised when i found i could actually give a full debrief on the UN and its track record without saying 'i think this is something everybody should go back and research on' too many times. then i remembered that once upon a time i did have quite a hand in organising RMUN, hence the knowledge. till then i actually thought i was experiencing a moment of innate intelligence :( 'twas a sad realisation!

after that i was whisked off to a reunion at my paternal grandmother's place, where tons of aunties took turns feeding me. upon my arrival, it was determined that i "look better now" that i've "put on some weight", hence the need to ensure the continuance of this trend. from then on, i was thrust with chicken rice, laksa, various other dim sum thingies, and 3 different kinds of cake: carrot, chocolate fudge and CHEESEcake. of course, i had no choice but to succumb, though i did draw the line at quail's egg in the laksa and hard-boiled egg in the rice. anybody who knows anything about me should know that i hate egg in all forms, except when it's processed into chocolate or cakes. other than that, it is no point trying to trick me into eating egg- i have evolved a highly sensitive egg radar and can smell egg even when it's disguised in sushi or custard puffs. i am the supreme food connoisseur.

eventually, i was released from my hostage situation and free to meet someone for a movie and dinner. we caught MI 3, which was really really heavy on stunts right from the start. plus the sound system in the cinema must have been on maximum, because whenever there were explosions the resonance was deafening and i literally cringed a few times. the movie reinforced my belief that tom cruise has been majorly losing hotness since katie holmes, who is clearly one billion times uglier than nicole kidman. there is a theory that if you're around ugly people a lot you become ugly too, and tomkat certainly prove this is true. luckily, jonathan rhys-myer was unexpectedly more attractive than he was as gay sports coaches in bend it like beckham and matchpoint, so the show was not completely devoid of eye candy. plus, he does speak some sexy italian for a while, which i got to observe better because walker gave me advanced notice yesterday ;D also, i have concluded that lawrence fishburne definitely does not have as much charisma as an intimidator as hugo weaving had as V in V for vendetta. barring moments of Mr Anderson lapses, i still think his voice oozes incredible sex appeal, which is something i suppose guys will never understand. if i was mean i guess i would define a sexy voice as the exact opposite of one of my debater's voice, which is like the epitome of testosterone-less gaydom. i have never been a nice person, ha ha.

for dinner we had to settle for sakae, which wasn't even having their sushi buffet promotion. this was a huge step down from the jap ala carte buffet at tsubaki which the boyfriend has been craving for for months. he was horrified that the restaurant is now closed for weekend lunches but is determined to conquer the buffet on his next book out. he is extremely picky about his food and hates being associated with places frequented by "noobs". we also discovered a ben & jerry's parlour in the middle of suntec, where i was eventually swayed towards chocolate mint and hence deprived of trying dublin mudpie, which is the week's best seller! now i will never get to eat the most popular flavour of the week :( i was also reminded of my standing ambition to start a gelato store, which will have a name that's much easier to remember than ben & jerry. it will be called GELATO STORE. simple, pronounceable, fuss-free, and the added advantage is that everytime someone says 'i feel like getting something from a gelato store', there'll only be one place to go! haha!

recently i've been going through what i call a breakthrough phase in domestication- i've begun cooking! i am proud to say that i can now add chicken soup, stir-fried chicken AND prawn noodles, fried vegetables and mango salad to my list of accomplishments. this includes various permutations of pasta and fried rice, plus lots of baked stuff like the usual tarts and brownies and cookies. mark says that baking is cheating; i agree that instant betty crocker mixes make everything too easy, but then again i have yet to be treated to anything coming from a boy's oven. i think baking must just be a girl thing, like playing with barbie dolls and make-up.

anyway, my latest achievement: oat porridge! i know it sounds disgusting (and trust me, it looks disgusting too) but the trick is in the honey. my mom's friend told me that instant oat stuff is devoid of nutrients and might contain carcinogenic compounds from processing, and given that i'm a hypochondriac freak, this was enough to make me buy a 1kg bag of rolled oats from the supermarket yesterday. have i mentioned how i love supermarketing? i think when i start uni i'll have to make it a point to go supermarketing every week, cos it's like shopping except for food! what more could you want? i can already tell what i'll like most about married life, ha ha. anyway, the organic rolled oats called for a pot and a real live fire on the stove, which is more trouble than anybody should have to go to for breakfast, and meant i had to spend close to 20 minutes in total stirring and monitoring the stupid oats while they bubbled away like unidentifiable albino gravy. lucky liberal amounts of honey and milk saved the day, so i was quite pleased with the outcome. which is a good thing too, because it'll be a while before i'm through with the 1kg bag...

last thing! i know my birthday's coming up, so i'll be compiling a list of stuff which i want. this is to make it easier for you guys to buy me something which i'll like. of course, it's always about you ;)

so, the major event of the past week was The Interview Day, which i must say went a lot better than expected. one memorable moment happened during the second interview, when this doctor told me that "neurosurgeons live in the dark and rarely get to be out in the sunlight" and what do i have to say to that? clearly this question was made for me. i told them, flatly, "please, look at me, i'm this pale all year round! does it -look- like i get much sunlight on a normal basis?" this evoked a bit of a snort from the interviewer, and i'm not sure what the snort meant. i couldn't tell if it was a friendly sympathetic snort or a ohgodyou'resuchafreak snort. then again perhaps being a freak is a prerequisite for medical school, in which case i am certainly on my way there. sometimes i really disgust myself with my stupidity, immaturity, and insensitivity. i guess the good news is that i at least possess self-awareness. oh well, like i was just telling aud, i'm just waiting for my cool gene to kick in. and when it does, watch out world. HAH

anyway, yesterday was quite a different day. i spent the morning shouting at my kids for about 2 hours after a particularly annoying debate friendly. the debrief lasted longer than usual because the teachers were somewhat agitated, which in turn irritated me even more. sometimes i feel like my kids suck the blood right out of me, and then do the same crap all over again. especially after i spent an entire day explaining to them importance of human rights, only to hear them later deliver the very profound point of how "when we trample over human rights, people become unhappy, and the economy suffers". SOMEBODY KILL ME PLEASE. i practically shouted till my throat almost died and i needed lunch to revive me. the teachers tell me to be more forceful with them, so i didn't even feel guilty about asserting myself. i must assert myself more.

after that was hong's party, where the barbeque was wasted because the food mostly wasn't cooked properly. i hate eating burnt stuff because burnt stuff is carcinogenic. i feel pained eating food that's black on the side, and this includes toast of any shade closer to black than white. see, my snobbyness extends to all aspects of life.

today i had good food cos someone took me for lunch at sizzler. the salad bar is quite formidable, especially since it's got like all kinds of stuff including nachos and potato wedges and 3 different kinds of soup and pasta and ice cream! of course there's no way to eat everything but i was quite fascinated by the ice cream dispenser. when i'm rich and have a big house i will have an ice cream dispenser in my room, and will perfect the art of swirling the ice cream cone to get a completely symmetrical sundae. i will also have my own gelato parlour, which will sell 100 flavours of gelato which don't melt in the sun. it will be like the gelato stores in austria where they use scoops which look like spades and give you HUGE chunks of gelato which balance precariously on tiny cones. i have so many big plans, i can't wait!