Simple Life? ~ ComPlEX EmOtIoNz!

Friday, June 27, 2008
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

Tonight we celebrated two friends' birthday. Here are the birthday boys!

Fred & Jose

It was kind of interesting, because we had a roast meat banquet. There were roast duck, roast chicken, roast pork, garlic chicken!! Yummmmmmmmmmmy!!

These pictures are only a small representative small portion of the entire picture. :)

And for dessert, we had almond jelly with grapes! Pretty!

Spot the white almond jelly amongst the grapes!!

And to celebrate the occassion, Tessa and I made a Fresh Fruit Cake.

Cross-section of the cake

Sponge cake layered with fruits - kiwi, peach and strawberry!

The night ended late at about 10:40pm. It's time to go and sleep. Birmingham tomorrow!

6/27/2008 11:02:00 PM
happy* me!!

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

I met up with Wan Ping (Weiann's girlfriend) over the last weekend!

This is her on the left and me on the right of the guard.

We spent the weekend touring Windsor Castle on Saturday and doing a FREE London walking tour on Sunday (of course, you tip the guide at the end - depending on how good you thought the guide did his/her job)

Windsor castle is quite awesome, in the sense that there are still people living in it. I mean, the royal family still stays there! Not all the time though...

So, a little orientation... ...

This is the fortress right in the middle. It is positioned the highest and it's where the Queen and King will retreat to and hide if there were to be any attack. Also, from this height, you can see attackers from a great distance.

End of orientation. Hee.

This is one of the famous Queen's guard.

His side profile.

More of them...

Oh, it's for a change of duty.

Surprisingly, the guards we saw that day were all very young. I wonder where they are from... They look like students... Hmm...

************

Besides Wan Ping, there were this 3 other guys (also exchange students from Singapore), at the same university with Wan Ping.

From left to right: Derek (aka Sista Debbie), Jing Yang and Yisi.

They were nice company. :)

***************

And this is the fortress with me standing in front, taking a touristy picture - a proof of being there! Hahaha =D

***************

The next morning, we went to London for a walking tour - it's an old city tour, meaning we get to know a bit more about london and its history. :)

We started off at the Tower Hill Sundial.

It is supposed to be very accurate. If you can see where the shadow is, you will see that it's near the Roman numeral X. And that was exaclty the time, close to 10am in the morning!

We started off from the Tower Hill and walked along the Thames River, where we stopped at a few stops to hear about some fire in 1666 (Great Fire of London) and somewhen else. And somewhere in history, London was also affected by plague spread by fleas living on rats. And there used to be people living on one of the bridge across Thames River (but I can't recall which one it was). It was brought down in a fire too, with 3000ish people dead in that incident.

Of course, I heard about the silly guy from Arizona who bought London Bridge and brought it over brick-by-brick, thinking that he bought Tower Bridge.

The bridge behind me is Tower Bridge and not London Bridge. *smilez*

Then we went to this city in a city of a city. Bascially we were in this place called Temple and it has its own set of law, rules and regulations. Not all people can stay there. If I didn't remember wrongly, only law students or barristers can live there.

And did you know THAT london is not one, but TWO cities. London City and Westminster City. So in the picture, you can see that there is a statue of the Queen and a sculpture of a dragon above. This is found in the intersection between the two cities. The Queen welcomes you into the Westminster City while the Dragon faces you, welcoming you as you walk from Westminster City, towards London City.

Of course, we saw some other interesting things during the walking tour. I think I might want to do the walking tour again, just to refresh my memory.

That was yet another unrested weekend!

5/14/2008 11:00:00 PM
happy* me!!

Thursday, May 08, 2008
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

After so long, I am back.

I have a problem. I want to get my hair cut. Problem is, I don't really trust the hairdressers here. I don't know how good they will be, dealing with Asian hair texture.

I kind of have an idea of how I want my hair to be. But because of the wavy nature of my hair, I am worried that I would have to end up spending lots of time just shaping it - and I will definitely hate it.

What shall I do?

I want to cut it to somewhat like this hairstyle of Victoria Beckham:

Light, fluffy and short.

Hmm. But I am really worried that my hair will go all curly wurly... ...

And at this point of time, maintenance would be a huge issue as I won't be able to afford cutting/trimming it as often as I could do back at home. It costs at least 15GBP to get a haircut here and it's only at those barber shops we have back in S'pore.

What shall I do?

Currently in an agonising mood with bad hair days... :(

5/08/2008 10:44:00 PM
happy* me!!

Tuesday, December 04, 2007
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

When I was in London on last Saturday, I was shopping for a pair of shoes.

In the end, I did buy a pair. Well, I can't wear them out though. They are these comfy shoes with down and feathers as fillings. So they keep my feet wear when I am at home.

I kinda adore them. Maybe because they make me look very cartoon when I wear them. Haahaa. They are blue and have a little Snoopy behind each of them!

Here are some pictures of them!

Close-up of the Snoopy at the back of each side of the shoes

A full view of the shoes

A peek at my legs in the shoes

12/04/2007 08:03:00 PM
happy* me!!

Sunday, December 02, 2007
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

This weekend was the beginning of December! And it was kind of a busy weekend for me. I did quite a lot of things.

Could you imagine, walking at least 4 days' worth in just one day? And trying multiple things for the first time in another day?! I walk about 2 miles to work and another 2 miles back from work every weekeday.

On Saturday, I went with two gals to London for some shopping. It coincidentally was the VIP Day - VIP standing for "Very Important Pedestrian".

So what happened was that a few streets were closed to traffic for a period of time (from 10 in the morning to somewhen in the evening). That was fantastic! We had the whole road to ourselves!! :) And you could cross the road wherever you wanted to! And also, as a consequence of that, there were a variety of performances on the road! Pretty interesting...but it was extremely crowded.

We walked down the entire of Oxford Street (from the Marble Arch end) all the way down to where the Oxford Circus tube station was at the other end. It was a long stretch. Of course, that was discounting the fact that we were in fact doing more walking when I was in the shops doing shopping. After that, we met up with another two guys and continued to walk to Chinatown to have dinner in this Japanese-Korean fusion store to have dinner:

The food there was not too bad. Then we had a walked down to Picardilly Circus and moved on Regent Street. Over there I saw this store that I like a lot. And I saw this bag that I kind of absolutely love! This was the second bag that I saw that day that I like:

The first one that I really really like was the MIU MIU one that I saw in Selfridges&Co. But there was just a slight disappointmend - it was 575 pounds. :( The bag above was only 1/10 of the MIU MIU bag. But it's still expensive.

From Regent street, we took a little detour to Bond Street. There were a lot of high end pricey shops there! But the shops were already closed. So there was nothing much to look at. It was pretty quiet. So... We walked back to Regent Street, then to Oxford Street, and to Paddington Street (in order to take a train back to Slough). :)

So that was a tiring day.

Today (Sunday), I woke up at about 8am in the morning and tried making Tau Su and You Tiao. Tessa made the breakfast together and Kelvin contributed a Malaysia Brown Sugar Cake:

This is the first time we prepared breakfast and such an elaborated one. The You Tiao tasted really funny and didn't look right. But well, overall it was still a good breakfast! :)

The other thing that Tessa and I did today was to cut hair, for Kelvin. This was the first time we are cutting someone's hair... And the final cut:

The Front View

The Back ViewWith a little styling

So this was an eventful weekend. This is the first time that I did so much in a weekend so far (including updating my blog, hehe)

12/02/2007 10:34:00 PM
happy* me!!

Saturday, November 24, 2007
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

I went to watch Avenue Q last night!

Actually I wouldn't have known about it if I haven't read Fidel's blog some time back :)

It was really funny, silly and cute!

I liked it a lot! And I thought that the UK cast was better (not that I have seen the original one, but I did hear the CD wth the original cast).

I would want to go and watch again, if possible! :)

And when I was on my way to the theatre yesterday, I saw someone with the 'series' of beanies that I adore! And guess what, he's another Japanese (I heard someone speaking Japanese to him). :(

11/24/2007 08:50:00 PM
happy* me!!

Friday, November 16, 2007
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

I was at Istanbul last weekend.

It was my first trip out of UK! Yippee~~! =)

It's quite a nice place, I would recommend people to go... But it's quite a big city. If you do intend to go, spend at least 3.5 days there (meaning 3 full days and one half day in the city). Istanbul itself can be separated into three main parts - Asia side and Europe side, which is further separated by the Golden Horn. It is an interesting place, even though I don't understand anything that they were talking about.

The weather was not warm like what many will perceive it to be. It was in the single digit and everyone who was out on the streets had their coats on.

When I got back to UK, I was in for a shock. Because it seemed like I had missed the start of winter as it became REALLY cold, just over the weekend. Just these few mornings, one can even observe frost on the grass and every breath seems like a puff. It's reaaaaaaaaaaally cold. I don't particularly like cold weather.

I am safely back in UK and I thought that I should do some shopping tomorrow to get some essential winter stuff. That reminds me. I saw this beanie that I like a lot. It looks something like that:

I saw two different people wear them - slightly different design. I like the other one better. It was a plain white one. I have a feeling that this particular kind of design is very popular in Japan (I can't find it in Istanbul anywayz). Why?! Because both of them who were wearing this design were Japanese! =)

Haha, my quest to finding THE beanie! *chuckles*

11/16/2007 09:31:00 PM
happy* me!!

Monday, October 29, 2007
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

(To the tune of Twelve Days of Christmas...)

Replace the following lyrics -

Five golden rings,

Four calling birds,

Three French hens,

Two turtle doves,

And a partridge in a pear tree

- with the following:

Well, it's not Christmas yet... But we just came up with this.

Maybe we were bored

maybe it reflects our diets here.

Here goes:

Five... Jaffa Cakes!!

Four bags of Crisps

Three Diet Coke

Two bananas

And a Fruit & Fibre in the morning~~

Hee. What a hearty breakfast!! :)

10/29/2007 08:50:00 PM
happy* me!!

Sunday, October 28, 2007
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

I need to post about a few things in this one entry.

Because I have been lazy and haven't been updating consistently.

Well, last start with recent days.

I have been eating well - too well & too much - these 2 days. If I carry on this way, I am bound to go back Singapore FAT.

Tonight, we organised a mini dinner gathering at our place.

We kinda had a four-course dinner:

Starters

Dorito chips

Main course

Rice with Green Curry

Dessert

Green Bean Soup

For the dessert stomach

Japanese cheesecake

The dinner was served with beer (Stella Artois) or apple cider (Strongbow).

- courtesy of Kelvin

And after the entire dinner, we had some white wine.

- courtesy of Edward, Freddy & Joseph

I forgot to take a picture of the cheesecake. :( Sad. But it didn't turned out too well. Japanese cheesecake is supposed to have this fluffiness to it. But mine was pretty dense, so it was more of like pudding/custard-like filling instead. I guess it was still not too bad, as it was finished even though everyone was quite full.

---

And Yesterday, Anngie and Francis came over to my place to discuss on the Istanbul trip. YESH! I am going to Istanbul in November. I can't wait actually. It's going to be GREAT FUN!

So yesterday - all thanks to Anngie's fortune and because Kelvin owes her a meal - Kelvin cooked dinner yesterday. It was quite nice, although I thought it was a bit too salty for my liking.

Anyway, we had Fried Rice with baked Pork Belly!

A pity that I didn't take any picture of them.

A mention on the baked Pork Belly. It was supposed to be a replicate of the Chinese Roast Meat. It turned out quite fine. And I thought that it tasted like Shilin XXL Chicken Chop in Singapore. It must have been the Five Spice Powder. Hee. :)

Before I forget how to make it, I should document it here:

1) Wash the pork belly.

2) Marinate the pork belly with Five Spice Powder and salt for about 20 min.

3) Put the pork belly onto the baking tray and spread a generous layer of salt on the pork belly till the entire surface has been coated with salt.

4) Put it in the oven (which has been pre-heated to 240 degree Celsius) and bake it for about 20-30 min.

5) Remove it from the oven and scrap off the salt layer.

6) Poke lots of holes on the pork belly.

(this is to allow the oil to ooze out and make the skin crispier when it continues to bake)

7) Bake for another 20-25 min.

8) Serve it warm - with rice or on its own!

---

And I know that this is a bit late, but I need to mention something!

Last Thursday (18.10) was Tessa's birthday, so we had a little celebration for her!

We baked her a lemon cake.

We took some pictures, sang her a birthday song, cut & ate the cake together! It was a simple affair. I hope that she liked the cake :)

---

Even earlier - the weekend before Tessa's birthday, I went to:

Windsor

We went there to just watch the change of Guards.

And we tried this fudge there. So thick and chocolatey and nice!!! :)

Yum-yum...

Oxford

We went to Christ Church and walked on the streets to soak up the atmosphere.

And we had steamboat for dinner.

Stonehenge

We happened to go in for free because of a misunderstanding.

Bath

This admission is expensive. 10 pounds plus. But it was entertaining, especially entertained by this man in the picture! (",)

For the pictures of these places, please visit www.picasaweb.com/yueping.chloe =)

---

*But all in all, I had loads of fun!*

10/28/2007 12:12:00 AM
happy* me!!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007
eVeryDay ShD b a hAppY dAY! :)

I always thought that I would be one of those who have no problem to leave alone overseas - away from friends and away from family.

I think I'm so wrong.

Maybe I can be carefree and not bring my mobile with me while I am overseas for a holiday, that is all but a short holiday. I like being uncontactable when I am away.

But these days, I check my emails more often than I usually do. And it is kind of sad that you don't see as many emails as you would expect. I wonder what the others are doing.

I seriously miss many people.

And while I am creating memories with new people I met, I also realise that I am missing out a lot of events going on in lives of people I care. The saddest thing is that I won't be there.

People do say keep in touch, but reality is that with the things going on with each one's life and and being in different time zone make it really difficult some times.

I guess maybe I am slow in adapting. Or maybe I just need to make more initiative in keeping in touch.

Well, expect to hear from me soon then! =)

10/16/2007 06:02:00 PM
happy* me!!