announcement

so…

photobucket, the site that has been hosting my photos for more than ten years, from the very beginning of my blogging days, has suddenly decided that it no longer wants to do that anymore.

which is why my millions of photos on both houseofdays and lemonbarleystrawberry are no longer available.

and of all time, they have to choose now, when i’m so occupied with planning my holiday, setting up my new laptop, and you know, flying from one end of earth to another, sigh…

i’m at a complete loss now. i guess i can always look for alternatives. i’ve tried googling and apparently, i’m not the only one who is shocked and caught at a loss by photobucket’s sudden, swift and merciless cut of service, so yes, many kind-hearted techies are already putting up advice and tips on where else to host photos.

but i’m just so busy, and reluctant to sign up for new accounts, and learn how to navigate a new system. i’m very bad with technology, and also unwilling to change or learn when it comes to such things. i mean, my last phone lasted me for like i don’t know, four years or something, and i still refused to change it until D bought me a new one, and forced me to use it, hahaha!

it’s not just hosting the new photos, you know, it’s also the transferring of the old ones. call me ocd or whatever, but i cannot stand having that fugly dummy image anywhere on my blog, which means i have to migrate all my old pictures over too? who has the time for that, man.

sigh…maybe it’s all meant to be. it’s really, time to move on?

brunch, birthday, and babies etc.

la la la! i just turned THE BIG 30!!!

but 30 is the new 20, haven’t you heard?

life is still chock-full of fun, friendship and occasionally, sprinkled with wonder and spontaneity too, in other words…COULDN’T BE BETTER, totally swimming in YAY!!!

like just the other day, some random weekday actually, vincent and i spent the afternoon taitai-ing away at orchard.

before an impromptu saturday dinner with the church crew, which wendy couldn’t attend because of her mission trip to myanmar, but no love lost, since we had…

an exclusive one-to-one dinner date the following friday, hoho! an early birthday treat for 老娘, so happy!

another early birthday gathering – a casual brunch with D’s old friends.

a new branch of cafe melba at the new mediacorp premise, just as family-friendly as the one valerie and i went to at dakota, but with much better food, hiak hiak.

while the small kids got entertained by the bouncy castle, us big kids got entertained by the even smaller kids, hahaha!

boo!

we are obviously not ready for kids.

then as mentioned earlier, every other month should have a wedding or two to celebrate. i guess we have reached that other month already, hahaha!

samuel’s turn now!

judging from the amount of time, effort and money we spent on dolling up ourselves, you know how much we had looked forward to that big day, hahaha!

finally, with the little time i had left before embarking on my upcoming killer-weeks of non-stop, back-to-back flights, i also managed to squeeze in one last birthday celebration with my bffs.

featuring a very rich boss and sponsor, hahaha! look at all those ca$h in keryeongs hands, woot!

alright, that’s a quick update on my latest. photos from my celebrations with D shall come in later, like much later.

just to preempt you, i will be going on a short break from blogging now ok?! because 1) my parents bought me a new laptop for my birthday, and i have no time to properly set it up 😦 and 2) the next three weeks are going to be DAMN HECTIC because san francisco-seoul-auckland-london non-stop, yo!!!

see you later then, if i survive july, we will have so much to catch up on, so stay tuned! 😉

matcha earl grey jelly

remember that very happening post about my green nails that matched my green top that matched my green drink?

yes, that post.

which is just like this one.

so arty.

starbucks always brings out the best in us, no?

splash!

believe it or not, this was our attempt to visit the science centre last week. yes, the science centre that nobody goes to anymore. nobody of our age group, at least.

till today, i don’t know what was the exhibition D wanted me to see, but i believe it was a good one, or it won’t be so crowded. i mean, this is the science centre we are talking about okay, at jurong east, and not even that near the train station, so there won’t be any other reason for the crowd lah, yeah the exhibition must be good, hahaha!

having said all that, though, we decided not to enter the exhibition in the end because the place was closing, and i had dog-sitting duties that evening, and couldn’t bear to leave nemo alone at home without food for too long, hahaha. okay that’s all to my very pointless, anti-climatic post.

outfits of the summer lovin’

my latest obsession – summer shorts!!!

so comfy comfy that i feel like i can roll about in happiness anytime, hohoho!

rendezvous part II

after our previous successful girls’ night out, here’s another spontaneous meet-up with gladys, driven by our late-night hunger, hahaha!

as you can see from the spread…really very hungry, hahaha!

upper bukit timah used to be the go-to place for us, west end kids, on weekend nights; a place for the squad to fall in together, many a time on rather last minute notice (and that’s the fun part!), to see and be seen, in shorts and slippers, drinking milo dinosaur late into the night, sometimes way beyond curfew, because recklessness is for the young, hahaha!

i don’t know at which point in time did upper bukit timah lose its appeal, and whether it is just for my friends and i, or for everyone else in my generation, but yeah, those late-night suppers are already a thing of the past, and i didn’t even notice what we’ve lost until this time when gladys and i came back to this street.

“i wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” – andy, the office

swee choon serves swee food!

i’m so creative with my titles hor, hahaha! i know it makes you cringe when you read it, but it sounds so bad that it’s good, don’t you think?

in an attempt to venture out of our comfort zone, D and i decided to have a more oriental-style brunch for the weekend.

everybody’s favourite dim sum place, swee choon.

i love old-school chinese restaurants.

drunken chicken and xlb.

so good they deserve a close-up each.

delish!

the drunken chicken is especially good because you can taste so much wine that it’s hard not to think that the chicken is really drunk, hahaha! a bit on the salty side, i have to say, but makes a good appetiser nevertheless. xlb may not be as good as that of dtf, but close enough, i think?

the pork and century egg porridge, on the other hand, doesn’t quite meet expectation, me feels. disclaimer: i’m not really a fan of pork and century egg porridge to start with hor. people who like home-cooked cantonese-style congee may like it better; for me, it tastes too much like sick-time comfort food.

first picture shows the pan-fried carrot cake, which is surprisingly good. “surprising”, because i’ve never had a really good carrot cake in any restaurant before, and so don’t really expect much when it comes to this dish. however, swee choon’s carrot cake is freshly made, not too oily, crispy on the outside but soft on the inside (without being too mushy). in one word – PERFECT!

in comparison, the other fried item – banana fritter or something (i was totally not interested, and didn’t take a bite, so not quite sure what it was, hahaha!) is not quite worth mentioning, according to D.

next up – egg yolk bun. is that the name? i cannot quite remember, but you know lah, hor? quite a common dim sum dish what!

another amazing dish! the first picture is of me opening up the bun to show the steaming hot yolk lava in there but the perfectionist photographer in D insisted on showing the egg yolk gushing out as the bun was being torn open. thus, the hands in the second picture are his. i already had my bun in my mouth because i was more concerned about it turning cold, hahaha!

as you can judge from my enthusiasm in elaborating on the dishes, i’m very impressed by this popular dim sum supper place. why do people eat dim sum for supper, i have no idea but yes, swee choon is indeed, wow cow chow!

and to end off the post, here’s D looking totally fueled for the day from the good food, and me looking cuckoo bird, because i don’t like selfies, remember?

where got people take photo with wet tissue one right, you tell me? tsk.

girls’ night out!

it’s been so long since i last had a spontaneous girls’ night out with my bff. ♥

dinner, dessert, shopping and supper late into the night – one of the bestesttt friday nights i have had in singapore so far, 好幸福哦, hoho!!!

a piece of amsterdam a day I

land of bikes