huilin

Things are a little crazy here, studying for the Pathology Final. WIth somebody’s well-intended, but screwed up suggestion to move it out of the yr 2 syllabus to the already overwhelming yr 3 one (a decision that was quickly reversed for future junior batches due to its poor feasibility and multitude of complaints, hence only affecting us) – and the intensive yr 3 timetable that resulted in me skipping many lectures and being very lost in the few lectures and all the tutorials that I did attend, this subject has been an extremely bumpy ride.

That was a year ago. But now, because Paeds ended merely 1.5 weeks ago, I have a grand total of 3 weeks to learn, understand, and commit to memory the entire syllabus from scratch. Whee. What a happy new year indeed.

Christmas for me was waking up early on Wednesday morning to bake these for Lawrence’s family party, Cel and Chiara, followed by the extremely fun party at Lawrence’s cousins’ place, and a restful Christmas day.

I think I made about 50 cupcakes in total, not all are pictured, which took me the whole morning to toil over by myself. As you can see, I went a little crazy over decorating them with hearts, sprinkles and white chocolate chips. But I was really happy with the yummy end result.

This year, I’m a little like the Christmas grinch – there’s no mood in me at all! Perhaps its because of the upcoming Patho exams in just a mere 2 weeks time that I’ve barely started studying for. The thought of all the post-Christmas sales starting today that I can’t go for (yet) does not detract from that too.

This is a little Shanghainese eating house tucked away in Duxton Hill. We’ve been going there for years and years, and every time, there never fails to be a queue forming outside this little eatery. The owner is a sullen guy whom sits by the door and is generally mean to people, but no matter, the food more than makes up for it. It serves great handmade dumplings, xiaolongbaos, Chinese pizzas amongst other things. How you order is also quaint, as there are photographs of the food placed on every table and all you really have to do is just look and point.

Chased away the post exam blues with a trip to Wala with Lawrence and his cousins. The band was awesome, just as I had remembered from last time. This was the first time I saw an electric violin in a band too.

Had a wonderful lunch with Pooja today at the Swiss Baeckerei in Frankel Ave, one of my favouritest cafes in the East. It opens for breakfast-lunch-tea, and has wonderful scones, crossaints, cheese twists, cinnamon buns and eclairs. They bake their own aromatic breads, and serve decent sandwiches, soups and pastas. We had a fantastic time photowhoring over our Croques (she had a Croque Champignon and I a Croque Monsieur), and oogling at gorgeous Anglo-Chinese toddlers. This was followed by a jaunt to her new place in Kembangan and a shopping trip to town for some cosmetics. Yay!

One of my favouritest dessert-combinations ever. This version, the best I’ve tasted so far, is from Ah Chew’s Dessert at Liang Seah Street. Other favourites from there are their sesame paste, and their ginger milk pudding.

Courtesy of our wonderful hostess Cel, whose maid cooked the most delicious grilled chicken, pasta salad and shepherd’s pie. Yums =) We had fun playing pool, mahjong and chilling around watching movies in her living room too. Good times. =) Will miss this CG much as we move on to different groupings for M5 next year.

For lunch 2 Saturdays ago, Lawrence, his mum and I trooped down to Red Star for some dimsum after hearing so much about it. It’s this restaurant tucked away in a nondescript HDB block in the Havelock road area that claims to be one of the 4 top restaurants in Singapore. Of course, this dates from the time when Sg was still small and pre-metropolitanised by all the international cutures. The place itself is vast, a huge room with round tables and elderly waiters and waitresses pushing pushcarts of fresh steaming dim sum for you to choose. I was glad we came here though, the food was good (I LOVED the egg tarts), and the price was reasonable.

Happy and full from yummy dimsum.

This is a much belated post. Lawrence and I celebrated our 4th yr anniversary at Morton’s a few weeks ago. It was a really great experience, since we had excellent steaks, nice booth seats, and the best part was that our server truly went out of his way to make our day. We got a cheesecake on the house, and even a card with our photograph and the signatures of all the staff on duty that evening.

On another note, I can’t believe that its been 4 years already. wow.

Still alive, not really playing Catan as Li suggests in my tagboard. Capping off 2+weeks worth of mega-studying/sleeping for the Paeds EOPT, hoping to throw in a good showing for the long case tomorrow in a futile attempt to beef up Friday’s dismal excuse of a theory paper. Xmas is drawing near, but am not remotely in the celebratory mood. With luck that will change tomorrow, when we finish Paeds for good. I desperately crave a haircut, amongst other things. Alas, it will be a short-lived joy, as we have to quickly pick up the books again to swot really hard for the Patho finals. Not a good feeling.