Let there be music!

I love musicals.

I grew up with a family that loves music. We had a karaoke machine when we were younger with a boxful of VHS tapes of English, Chinese and Malay songs. Family gathering warrant digging out the karaoke machine and everyone having a go at singing. And I remember a time when we had to karaoke for ang pows during one Chinese New Year. My parents also sent all of us for piano lessons when we were younger - one that I gave up at Grade 3 because I decided I wasn't at all musical. My theory was great, my oral was great, I have no problems playing scales, but getting my two hands to play together in time was the most difficult thing ever.

So that was that. But that didn't change how I grew up listening to popular music of the 70s and 80s, and some classical music thrown in on top. And our TV was made of stuff like the Sound of Music (which I remember trying to record, but the VHS tape didn't last long enough and cut off halfway, and I watched it with Brother #3) and King & I (which I watched one evening with Dad). Both of which I still have good memories till now. Oh, and of course we have the singing and dancing of Disney features.

I wonder if watching musicals is my way of escaping adulthood and going back to the childhood filled with song, laughter, happiness. All that sappy stuff, and you have to admit that musicals tend to be more memorable than your usual film. But regardless of why I do it, I finally started on my DVD collection of the musicals I want with a copy of the Sound of Music and Oliver! which I bought to watch over the 2 weeks that Boy is going to be at his parents' because I'll be bored and lonely. Also because he doesn't like musicals - too cheesy or something. I don't understand how he can not like musicals - they're generally so happy. :) Still, I wonder if I can con him into taking me to a West End musical at least once if we ever end up in London for more than a day.

Watching the Sound of Music right now - such blatantly American accents for a film that supposedly has Austrian characters. :P I would've mistaken the accents for those in Gone with the Wind!

And I just realised - I'm only on day 2 of Boy being away and I'm already out of movies to watch. :( In need of a social life, me!

Snow Day!

Hooray! I'm getting a couple of days breather from work and stuff because no one wants their eyes testing tomorrow what's with all the snow and such, so I get a lie in tomorrow. Awesome or what? And work likes me too because that means they have an extra day they can use for me to test if they ever get busy on my day-offs.

What snow, you ask? This snow!

It started snowing again whilst I was at work sometime during lunchtime, stopped for around an hour, and then continued with a vengence. So much that schools have been shut early and people are being sent home from work early just so that everyone can get home.

Yes, a little bit of snow and the whole country shuts down. :P Britain is one of the worst-prepared 4-seasoned country for snow, really. We usually don't get much at all, and this 3-4 inches worth of snow is something out of the ordinary. And snowing for more than a week is definitely something unexpected and surprising (most city councils only have a week's worth of grit in stock!). Whereas Canadians must be laughing at our pansy-ness.

I know I haven't written for some time. No, I'm not lazy. Really. But whilst everyone is busy being snowed in, I thought I might as well put a bit of an update on.

So how was everyone's Christmas?

I spent the earlier part of Christmas week at MJ's for a couple of days because I needed to pass on some Christmas presents to the honorary family. This year is also the first year since I've been in the UK that I have not spent Christmas at MJ's (barring first year of uni, I think). In return I got a load of presents too. What touched me most was that honorary mum decided to cook a Christmas roast meal with the usual pudding whilst I was visiting even though it was a few days before Christmas. It was pork rather than turkey, but still. They decided to have two Christmasses this year, one for when I was around and one when it is actually Christmas.

Which was really sweet of them to go through the trouble. :)

So... presents. I was going to take photos and post them up, and then I forgot. And then half of my Christmas gifts were eaten/used. And now I can't be bothered anymore to track down all of my gifts to photograph them, so instead, here's a list of stuff I got.

I got from honorary family a duvet cover, a turtleneck jumper, a box of Roses, and some Avon nail buffer and makeup stuff from honorary mum and dad. Got a double frog figurine and angel earrings from MJ. I have no idea who gave me a cat calendar, so I'll assume it's from all of them (or Santa!).

Trust them to know my obsession with cats. :D

Boy decided to go down to his family's for Christmas, so we went set off on Christmas Eve after he finished work at 5pm. Horrible driving conditions though - dark evening/night sky, poorly lit most of the way, patches of ice on the road and fog so thick we couldn't see past a couple of metres in front of us. Couldn't wait to get there.

Presents from Boy's family include an Elizabeth Arden makeup set and Estee Lauder's Beyond Paradise EDP from Boy's parents, Nina Ricci's Nina EDT from Boy's brother, and box of Lindor Lindt milk chocolate truffles (not pictured) and a pretty compact mirror from Boy's grandparents.

Also got a present from my Secret Santa (from work), which is a gift box of Bailey's truffles and a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream, and a litre bottle of M&S Irish Cream. Not tried either yet, but sounds good enough!

Last bit of Christmas shopping + treat for self!

I don't know why I'm so lazy at blogging considering that I used to be the blogging monster! Anyway, today being my day off, I went out to finish the last of the Christmas gift shopping. It was blistering cold though, and snowing. Ugh!

Saw in a fair trade shop a really gorgeous necklace that I thought MJ would love, so I bought it. :s

<3

Only problem is, I absolutely adore it too! *sigh* The box is mine as the necklace did not come with a box but I need something presentable to put it in. So tempted to keep it for myself, but I won't. I'll be good. What the necklace did come with is a set of matching earrings. Now these I've decided to keep for myself because MJ has staunchly refused to have her ears pierced all this time so she can't wear these anyway. She only wear clip-ons.

Hooray, new earrings! :)

So I am appeased by the fact that even though I don't get the coveted necklace, I still get it's smaller earring counterpart. It's really just to restrict me from running out to the shop again to get another set for myself!

Close-up shot of one of the earrings.

So cute. Love it. :)

Malaysia Trip Summer 2009 Pt. 3

Because I'm really a very lazy person and because there are way too many photos that made up the 2 days I stayed in KL during the summer, this is all you're going to get for Malaysia Trip Summer 2009 Pt 3. Also because I don't remember much that went on now, other than more eating and drinking and walking around and meeting friends and general nice life.

LL and her boyfriend hosted us whilst we were in KL and were very gracious and patient with us, even went as far as to drive us all the way to Malacca to try out the famous satay celup. The following is a collection of photos taken whilst we were in KL.

Photos in no particular order.

Needless to say, it was a very enjoyable trip and we sampled plenty of Malaysian food or food with a Malaysian spin to it. :P

And I just notice something whilst going through all those pictures from the last tripe. My hair went through a crazy growth spurt in the past 4-5 months! Compare:

Left: Taken July 2009 . Right: Taken November 2009

Mad. o_O I need a haircut soon anyway, it's way overdue.

Human photos at Dragon-i

I haven't really written about the rest of my Malaysian trip yet, so I shall do so as soon as possible. In the meantime, to follow up on the last entry I did on it, here are some human photos to accompany the previously published food photos for that night at Dragon-i@Sunway Pyramid.

The girls.

With my best friend from secondary school and college.

Guess who?

Oh, and I'm really fat, so I totally need to lose weight at some point in time. I've not decided when yet.

Work's Christmas do!

I went for my work's Christmas do yesterday night. Since I had nothing better to do during the day and the previous coat of paint that I applied for my brother's wedding has since chipped off, I painted my nails. But I have a most horrific collection of nail polish available - all which I was given free during promotions and whatnots. I have shimmery pearly pink, glittery nudey brown, glossy hot pink, deep raspberry framboise, and a strange purpley colour. Didn't like any of them, and I seem to have misplaced my sheer creamy strawberry nail polish I used in Malaysia.

So I ended up painting my nails with the pearly pink, found it too boring and bland, and started to add bits of hot pink to it. Voila!

Attempt at self-painted nails.

It's not fantastic, but at least it's not boring! I'm not very good or steady with my hands when it comes to painting my own nails, unfortunately. And the only reason why I've started to paint my nails in the past two weeks is that I actually can grow my nails during my holidays. They're getting clipped short once I start back at work next Monday! :( I was told in uni that if we were people who wanted to keep our nails long, we were in the wrong course.

Ate soft boiled eggs for breakfast and then a pot of Muller Light raspberry yogurt for lunch to prepare myself for a 3-course meal for dinner. Was picked up at 7.20pm by NC, EY and DO in a taxi and we were off to ASK where we had a table of 15 booked for us.

Merlot plus free champagne for ordering from their Christmas menu. Yum!

Bruschetta - For something that is so full of raw vegetables, I loved it! It's so flavourful and light at the same time! I can live off these stuff...

Christmas Calzone - folded pizza filled with pepperoni, ham, pancetta, beef meatballs, tomato sauce, green chillies with mozzarella and caramelised onions. Nice and spicy, but the bruschetta was better in taste.

Chocolate Nemesis - the melted chocolate in the middle pudding with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. I just wish the ice cream isn't already so melted by the time it got served!

The food took forever. We got there at 7.30pm, and we finished at around 10.30pm! Two people didn't get their starters until half an hour after everyone else did, and one person's starter was a whole hour later than everyone else's! And KN didn't even get to have her dessert since she was to be picked up at 10pm by her partner, and we weren't served dessert by then. 3 hours for a 3-course meal is mad, considering that we had 10 courses at my brother's wedding and that took 3 hours at the most.

And we didn't even get the £10 ASK voucher (to use in January) we were promised! :(

Of course, you probably want to see the people photos now and not just the food photos, however much you like food. :P Thankfully my eyebags are not as obvious as usual - proof that a good holiday is all I need to get rid of them.

NR, me and CR.

NR, me and CR again because CR wants a smiley photo.

HF and I.

Me and LM.

Me and KN, the ex-boss.

I had fake lashes on, which everyone found extremely interesting. EY was like, "Can I touch it?" CT (the other optom) asked me to look down so that she can have a look from the top to detect the line, and she couldn't (I covered it with lots of eyeliner and eyeshadow!). And then there was the discussion where everyone admits to trying to use false eyelashes at some point in their lives and found that they always gets stuck at the wrong place. Personally I still struggle with them, so I never bother with them unless I have a lot of time to get ready.

Everyone liked the dress too - they thought it made me look like a Grecian goddess. Haha!

Apparently I have been missed at work! Awwww. <3 So sweet.

During the dinner, DD kept flirting with the table next to us, which was conveniently a table full of men with one woman (who is a lesbian) who were also on their work's Christmas do. They ended up coming along with us after dinner to Lloyds Bar next door for some drinks and dancing! Poor NC had this guy who thought she was stunning and was all over her the rest of the night, hanging on to her every word! Hehe.

HB and HF, the youngins that they are, kept dragging me onto the dance floor. Was fun, but decided to call it a night before midnight since I have to cab it home and cab fares gets hiked up after at midnight! ^^

BK mini-pancakes and syrup

Woke up craving for something sugary sweet and fattening, thanks to someone. And since I am supposed to be on a diet because my mother thinks I'm fat, I have banned myself from getting anything junk-foody from our grocery shop. That includes any Belgian buns, cinnamon swirls, ice fingers, cookies, cakes etc. Raided my kitchen and there wasn't anything there that would satisfy my sweet tooth, so I waited around for Boy to wake up.

Went out to BK and my wish came true with their new range - mini pancakes and syrup, available all day! :D

Pack of mini-pancakes. They're so tiny and cute and fluffy!

Buttery pancakes + syrup = <3!

They were goooooood. And because they're so fluffy they're almost ball-like, biting into one gives you the satisfying explosion of warm, moist, buttery goodness.

But just to make sure I don't break my "diet" (probably only until I get back to work) any more than necessary, I've bought myself some bananas and Muller Light yoghurt to stave off future sweet cravings. :P Delicious food or not, I need to behave.