huilin

Taken by Liyana whilst the 4 of us were scrambling on the scree-covered incline to get up to the base of the Old Man of Storr.

Lawrence has kindly done this new page up for me -  http://www.lavanderblues.com/photos or simply click the link “my photos” on the left. My photos can now be viewed individually and in their entirety (instead of the cropped/resized ones that are in my collages). There’re also links to the flickr site (also’s lawrence’s) where the full-sized photo is stored and can be downloaded. This page will probably be more frequently updated than my blog posts since they can be automatically uploaded from Aperture on my computer. More photos to come – I have a tremendous backlog from April 2009, that includes pictures from Edinburgh, London, Melbourne and now Penang too, which I promise to slowly upload. School’s reopening tomorrow too, and the prospect of m5 does not bode well at all. Keeping my fingers crossed for what’s to come in the next 9 months.

Yesterday, Lawrence and I took a trip to the Mandai Zoo (despite the sweltering heat we’re having these days) to visit the animals and to try out his new camera. These are some of the nicer shots that I took on my trusty Canon G10. We managed to catch the orang utans when they were out for a phototaking session, and I was absolutely enraptured by them.

So I know that I’ve been away from this blog for the longest time. Its not all been because of the exams; I have to guiltily admit that 2 weeks of the glorious Holidays have passed before I even thought of logging in to my now dilapidated Wordpress account to even type a few measly words. Things have been in a state of limbo – piles of mess around my room waiting to be cleared up before the CNY, errands to be run (Dresses to alter, grooming, random CNY shopping etc), books to read etc. I must say that this life of rest and relaxation suits me well.

I’ve got a bunch of new neighbours – Malaysians who own garment factories in Cambodia. Huge family, constantly noisy. They reminded me of the Mafia when they first moved in, what with their big black cars with tinted-windows, huge family, lack thereof of men seen in the house etc. We were invited to their housewarming last week though, and they do seem nice enough. We’ll see.

Twilight has been occupying much of my attention too. Its amazing, because the book is not too well written, but yet I can somehow still sit in one place and not move for 7hrs in a row, just reading and reading and not even stop for toilet breaks or anything. Madness. I’m glad that’s over.

Yesterday was an accomplishment for Chiara, Rous and me! We cycled from ECP macs to Changi village, stopped for dinner, then cycled back. 28km in total – not a tremendously great distance by some standards, but I feel accomplished anyway. I was a little nervous about the return trip as it had gotten dark by then, and we were totally unprepared with zero bike lights, and we’d pass through quiet stretches of woody areas. We were also rushing, as the bike shop uncle kept calling to hurry us as he wanted to close up for the weekend already. Midway back, we entered into a stretch of the bicycle path where the street lamps were not turned on and it was pitch dark, with trees all around us. We were completely alone too – or so we hoped anyway. It was pretty scary, especially when it got so dark that we couldn’t see the stretch of path ahead of us. All I could feasibly see was the back of Rou’s white tshirt about 1m ahead of me. Just as we decided to turn back, all the lights came on suddenly, making us jump. The rest of the path was well-lit and I suppose we all made it back in one piece. My legs currently feel toned and nice with all that pedalling.

Will post pictures soon. I’ve just been too lazy to edit and sort them out. Stretching out in my clean and neat room now, with scented jasmine notes from the oil burner. I’m pretty pleased with it after clearing out a lot of junk, stuffing my June-Dec notes into the cupboard and rearranging some of my books and ornaments. We’ll see how long this lasts – hint: The Relatives are coming on Wednesday.

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.

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!

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.

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.