Rain rain go away

I have been deprived of sleep for these past 2 days and it really shown on my face.
Jan told me that I have puffy eyes this morning. Anywhere, I was so glad that I was on a full day course today.

I was beginning to be afraid of sudden rain pour coupled with strong winds in early morning !

At the slightest hint of wind howling and rain falling, our dear furry son would frantically wake me up ! He would come to the bed and used both his front paws to wake me up. He would want me to close all the windows in the house ... but that does not appease him because he was disturbed by the howling winds !

I must admit that the howling winds did sounded awful. Reminded me of some ghostly sound effects !

Jojo simply refused to settle down after pacifying him. He went into his house for a while but came running out again. Out of desperation, I carried Jojo and settled him between me and CK on the bed ! I was really dead-tired as I do not enjoy quality sleep most of the time. My eye vision was really affected the following day.

My colleague, Eric used to tease me saying that I definitely have sufficient sleep amongst them. I was really puzzled why he said that ? He told me in hokkien it is because ""Wo wu gao kuo" ! Apparently, I did not have enough sleep if there are lighting, wind, rain and thunder.

Khloe's belated Birthday

Hello belated Birthday to Khloe !
For 1B18 who is reading my blog, I'm sure it's been a long long time sicne you have seen Khloe, a mum of 2 boys already.
We started this cozy birthday celebrations just amongst the three of us since my transfer to LSCT 2 years ago. I love this arrangement, genuine & fun ! We will always held it at Pines Restaurant at NP Alumni Club which is situated opposite LSCT Department. Hee, very near to my block :)
This is the first time I am putting this event in my blog, should have done so 2 years ago but hope it's not too late to do it now.


Normally, we would order 3 dishes to go with the rice.


Khloe with her gift. Hopefully she'll find it useful to put her earrings.









Self-taken potraits ... quite fun doing these poses ! U can tell that we were not expert in taking self-potraits .. couldn't help giggling when taking the photos ! Poor Jan was trying very hard to adjust the camera !

Bellben & Liu Lian

Have mentioned casually to Siew Yen that the IRAS colleagues have not organised any makan session and gathering for a long time especially after Josephine has given birth. Siew Yen has gathered a small troop and we went to Tao Payoh Lorong 8 for crabs and durians feast !

Before going to Toa Payoh, I went to CK's new office environment to have a look and also chatted to a while with the ladies.

Since we have decided to eat crabs, therefore we ordered only 3 side dishes like sambal kangkong, fried beancurd and wasabi prawns. The 3 dishes were all nice and ingredients were fresh. We ordered 3 crabs cooked in different styles. One dish was fried with chilli, the other with butter oats sauce and the third dish with pepper bee hoon style. They were all delicious ! This was only the second time that we tried Bellben, however, the first time we tried was the main branch at Ang Mo Kio.

After a satisfying meal, we proceeded to a durian stall along the stretch of shops. They have a $15.00 buffet eat all you can durians feast ! (only can choose 1 Mao Shang Wong durian & other "brands") There were quite a number of tables and chairs set-up around the area to eat the durians on the spot. We were quite full from the crabs feast, therefore, we just ordered one D24 and one "Mao Shan Wong" durian to share. I must say that "Mao Shan Wong" durian was nicer ! The beautiful yellowish flesh was fragrant, creamy and rich ! You will feel so contented and blessed just having the lovely flesh inside your mouth !

How could this be enough ? The 3 ladies (including me) packeted some durians home. Siew Yen has managed to get a free packet of durians ($4 ready packed durians) for Jojo. Thanks for the lovely time.

(Can you guess which durians are D24 and Mao Shan Wong ?)





Left: D24 Right: MSW

Baby Kate Lynn has grown ...

Amy said in MSN that her baby girl has became "pui pui".
LSCT has gathered the well-wishes ang bao and since I stayed nearest to Amy, so I brought the ang bao to her.

After work, I fed Jojo, Minnie & Rooky and myself before leaving home for Amy's house.
It was a not too bad walk there. As usual, Jojo was too excited and jumped if any heavy vehicles passed by. We reached Amy's house about half an hour later.

Yes, indeed the I saw a more "pui pui" faced baby this time. Kate Lynn has grown bigger and it shows more on the face.

Kate Lynn sleeping soundly after feeding


Very hard to capture a still picture of Paige & Jojo

So touching advertisements

This video clip was sent by LL. Very touching ... HS just happened to come over my cubicle and we re-watched the video together. She had seen this video before and mentioned that the brains behind the string of Petronas advertisements have passed away. What a pity ... but luckily more of the videos were posted on web.


Got $$$ ... no doubt good, but what is best ? Best to have people who genuinely care and love you in your old age. Oh, this advertisement just tugged at your heart !
If you are so emotional like me, don't watch in office !

Many more heart-rending Pertonas advertisements can be found:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=petronas+advertisement&page=1

A walk to Bt Batok Reserve with Jojo & Daddy

Oneh Oneh Keledek & Tapioca with coconut sauce Recipe

Recipe of Oneh Oneh Keledek (provided by BC)

INGREDIENTS
1 small sweet potato (aprox 200g)
2 tbs plain flour (50g)
1 tbs tapioca flour (25g)
Green colouring or pandan juice
1 cup grated coconut
Salt to taste
12 pieces of malaka (peanut size)

METHOD

1. Scrub the sweet potato and boil until tender. Drain well.
2. Peel and mash the sweet potato.
3. Add the plain flour and tapioca flour and knead to form a pliable dough.
4. Add the pandan juice/green colouring. Mix well.
5. Divide the mixture into 12 parts. Shape into balls with a piece of gula melaka in the centre of each.
6. Half fill a saucepan with water and bring to the boil.
7. Drop onde-onde one at a time into the boiling water. The onde-onde is cooked when it floats to the surface.
8. Drain well and roll it the grated coconut. (mixed grated coconut with salt first)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tapioca with coconut sauce




INGREDIENTS
500g tapioca
1 litre water
100g sugar
2 pandan leaves
100g gula melaka

Coconut sauce
400ml thick coconut milk
100 ml water
2 tbsp sifted rice flour
1/2 tsp salt

METHOD
1. Peel tapioca, cut into chunks and soak in water for 1 hour. Set aside.
2. Bring 1 litre of water to a boil. Add tapioca chunks & pandan leaves and boil till tapioca is soft. Add sugar & gula melaka, sitrring over low heat till mixture becomes syrupy. Set aside tapioca pieces and allow to cool.
3. Combine all coconut sauce ingredients an bring to a boil. Drizzle over tapioca. Serve.

(BC, hope ur mum will enjoy the tapioca)

Housewarming with 1B18

Date : 19 Sept 2009


This morning, I woke up with excitement !!!! Why ? Because my dear friends were coming to our home later ! They always promises good fun and interesting topics to last the day and night !

CK and myself tried to tidy the house a little bit.
He has also made the ice jelly the night before (adding in green pigment too). This easy-to-made and yet refreshing dessert is especially great after savouring the oily food.

Esther and Colette were our first guests at about 10:30am. Andrew headed for his project assignment meeting and would join us later in the evening. As you can imagine, Jojo welcomed them with all his little heart ! I prepared a simple lunch of fried yellow mee and kuay tiao with fishcake, carrots and xiao bai cai. I was a bit anxious as I am not extremely confident of my own cooking especially cooking for others. However, I was glad to see that my two guests finished the fried mee .. hee, maybe they were hungry :)


Colette and Jojo :)

While we still have time, CK and myself prepared the bacon with golden mushrooms, adding the various cocktail cans into the pre-prepared ice jellies, cutting the rojak ingredients (mangoes, pineapple, green apples & cucumbers) ... getting ready for the BBQ tonight.

About 2:30pm, Esther and myself have decided that we could go ahead to prepare the necessary ingredients for the rockbuns so that when BC came, we can plunged into the baking straightaway. Not too sure why, one thing leads to another, Esther finished the kneading of the dough and we were ready to bake the rockbuns ! Yes, not forgetting Colette who assisted by adding in 2 packets of raisins into the dough !
Soon after BC, JL and Min Min arrived with another round of friendly welcome from Jojo ! To Jojo, the more people the merrier ! Tiang, came in soon after with the otahs !

BC was here to coach us how to make Oneh Oneh. Unfortunately, I was not very involved in making this great dish as I was busy monitoring after the rockbuns baking. Once in a while, I'll peeked and see how it was done. BC has photocopied the recipe for me. Very tempting to try out next time !


Our master, BC, hard at work !

Her great helpers, Tiang and Fang together with master to roll the doughs.

Ah Fang, Ryan and Kim came and in time to roll the doughs ! They bought 2 toys for Jojo ! Thank you so much ! Woof ...



After the rockbuns were all baked, I tried to help out with the Oneh Oneh. I boiled a pot of water for the small greenish round dough and put quite a number of the dough inside. Poor BC was very busy scooping the boiled dough with the small drainer ! In fact, a few doughs were burst and the gula-melaka might have flowed out. Opps, my fault, I have been too greedy to put in so many doughs into the boiling water.

The rockbuns got real good review. All thanks to Esther who did all the kneading of the dough.

CK proceeded to the BBQ pit to do some ground work like setting up fire and waiting for the on-line BBQ items to come in. Meanwhile, we have not been idle, we were busy taking out all the rest of the BBQ stuff to bring downstairs.

JL, Ryan and Kim have went for their long-awaited swim with Dean sitting comfortably on a decking chair monitoring them ! Ah Fang and myself loitered around the pool for a while trying to capture some photos and videos of the kids playing.


The threesome having a good swim.





Kian's sis family came too, I brought them to the house to take a look first as it was Reginia first visit to our house.








Time flew by quickily, by the time I settled down for some food, it was already 9pm. We would need to clear the pit by 10pm. Think we ordered too much food, there were quite a lot of left-over especially chicken wings and otahs. Of course, we could distribute the food to everyone to take home.

LSCT Non-Acad Team Building 09

Venue : Down Town East Pasir Ris
Weather : Kinda rainy
Spirits: Especially high during bowling session and makan session
Staff: Non-teaching staff namely the Admin staff, Technical & Research support



One of the ice-breaker games "Who can build the highest tower" ? Our team got the highest for this game.


Fun during bowling ... we played 2 games and were actually quite exhausted by then. Opps, age is really catching up !


Bowling or Rolling ?


We went to a vegetarian cafe for lunch. (on your own) The food is pretty good ! Seldom see Japanese and Italian vegetarian dishes !


Hmmm ... the vegetarian salmon looks like the real stuff, doesn't it ?


Overall, our team "BK" got tied up as first team with another team called "KFC".


A group photo as usual before we left the premises.

Carrot Cake

Recipe

Ingredients
1. 150 ml canola (or sunflower) oil
2. 3 eggs
3. 50g sugar
4. 175g self-raising flour
5. 1.5 teaspoon baking powder
6. rind of half orange (grated)
7. 1 teasp ground cinnamon
8. 150g carrots (coarsely grated)
9. 50g walnuts (finely chopped)

CK has eaten the only orange in the house, therefore did not put in he orange rind. (skin) But the cake still turn out ok.
U can grate the carrots even finer. I find the carrot we grated was too coarse.

Method
Put 1,2,3 in mixing bowl - whisk until smooth
Add 4,5,6,7 - whisk until smooth again
Stir in 8, 9
Pour into greased baking tray
Bake in preheated oven (180oC, 20 min)


Recipe courtesy of Dr Hedy Goh