tropicana ~ life is a kaleidoscope
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Yuletide Wishes

Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Merry Christmas, everyone (Notice there's no exclamation at the end of the sentence because frankly yours truly is not actually brimming with enthusiasm over Christmas celebration this year as she's stucked in The Sandpit). Bah.

To those on holiday abroad, have a fun and diarrhea-free time.

To those on holiday in country, eat more, drink more and be merry more.

To those who are probably suntanning on board a yacht now, have fun and please come back in one piece (Sure hope you guys stocked up on Stugeron).
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Of Christmas Came Early

Thursday, December 13, 2007
Joanne threw a pre-Christmas dinner on the 8th (yes, we're going to have a post-Christmas and New Year dinner as well) and invited a bunch of people over. More like a potluck dinner, actually. And everyone had to come dressed up. Joanne, I very the give face lor, I went with heels eventhough my house is just 10 steps away.

My first Christmas dinner with a whole roast turkey complete with stuffing! I must say, the turkey was VERY nice with homemade gravy. And the stuffing as well, made with breadcrumbs, sausages, celery and mince beef (I had to chop the bread into small pieces by hand, cos Joanne plain refused to use those ready made breadcrumbs).

Then I had to rush to supermarket to get the ingredients for cheesecake. I was floating all the time due to lack of sleep (Just came back from Osaka). The worst part was, I couldn't find Philadephia cream cheese and had to make do with spreadable cream cheese. Due to the consistency of the cream cheese, I had to bake it for more than 3 hours. I was so tired I took a nap and woke up at 30 mins interval to check on the cake. Imagine if the alarm decided to not work, the whole house would be burnt down.

At about 6pm, people started to arrive. First to come were Neiqy and Sherry, with their angel hair pasta and chicken meatballs in tomate sauce.


Chicken meatballs in fiery red tomato sauce


Paul and Nina then came together with their goodies. This Paul is crazy. He made 3 containers of mashed potatoes, each portion is enough to feed 20 people. Suffice to say 1 container is still sitting in the freezer, most probably to last until the post-Xmas dinner.



Very spicy fried ribbon pasta with tuna


Creamy mash potatoes


The star of the day - Roast turkey



Mess with me and you have the same fate as the turkey


Roast paprika chicken wings



Chicken rendang


Curry devil


New York cheesecake with strawberry coulis


With so much food, I'm proud to announce we did a pretty good job in devouring the food. Everybody had at least 3 helpings. I was expecting to have a lot of leftover for the cheesecake as everyone was full to the brim, but only a slice remained. Lukman whacked 3 pieces of the cake.









Since I'm sure I'll be working on my birthday next month,
this substitute my birthday cake


Standing (L-R) - Rahim, me, Paul, Patty, Jojo, Kim, Sherry
Sitting (L-R) - Lukman, Neiqy, Joanne, Nina


Everyone will take turn to go back Malaysia for Christmas and New Year, starting with yours truly. Joanne is in Korea now. Next, Jojo and Jac will come back. I'll be spending Xmas in The Sandpit and New Year eve on standby though. The though of it is depressing. But for now, I'm happy resting at home, eating Mama Tju's cooking.

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Of Busy, Busy, Meeno Mo

Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Hectic, hectic. These past few days have been a whirl of activities.

Came back from KIX (11 hr 45 mins) and straight away went to Joanne's place to help her prepare for the pre-Xmas dinner. At the same time my 2 new Korean housemates came (They were in the KIX flight I operated, talk about coincidence). And then I had to go to supermarket to get ingredients to bake a cheesecake.

I don't know what went wrong, but I baked the cheesecake for 3 hours. 3 hours! I was falling asleep and waking up at 30 mins interval to check on the cheesecake. More about the Christmas dinner later, as I'm using 52 kbps dial-up now and it's slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter jam.

Oh ya, I'm back in Melaka. Home. Sitting down and typing this entry while sipping Amarula. And happy.

I'm so low-maintenance, no?
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Of Fruitless Day

Thursday, December 06, 2007
Want to hear something funny?

I checked into the hotel in Osaka at around 4.30pm, changed and went to downtown Dotonbori. As I only have about 1000 yen left from my previous Osaka trip, I didn't bother to change into more yen as I was thinking I could do so in town, as long as the money is enough to pay for my train fare.

So there I was, all excited and hyper (that's what happens when one passes the threshold of not sleeping for 24 hours) and hungry, making my way to town.

And I fucking walked for 3,4 hours without managing to find a money changer or bank in sight. In high heels. And I tried putting in all the cards I have into God-knows-how-many ATMs and every single one of them was rejected. The ATM here uses biometric identification for God's sake! I'm still on chip, OK?

And the best part was, I found this nice restaurant which I thought would have offered credit facilities. Luckily I asked before sitting down and ordered ten thousand items from the menu, because no, that restaurant doesn't accept credit card. And their ATMs fucking use biometric technology but their restaurants don't even recognize those nifty plastic cards so essential in this modern age of cashless spending?

So this auntie here had no choice but to go back to the hotel and had something from the room service.

Moral of the story? Eat in-flight. Look what happened the first time I saved my stomach for food.

But only applicable to crew, please. Passengers should just sleep the moment their asses touch the seat.
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Of Troubled Mind

Saturday, December 01, 2007
I cried today.

Talking to Ken Lee. Bitching with her. Pouring out my problems to her. I miss that bitch.

And it was cleansing, the crying. Sort of like spring cleaning for the cluttered soul.

Do you ever feel that you have everything but then you have nothing at all? Why am I being so complicated? Why can't I be mediocre just like others and be contented living a normal life? Why do I have such high expectations for myself and others and then get all upset when these expectations are not met? Why do I have such rigid ideals? Why am I so....weird?




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