I love it! I love it! I love it! Every time I add a new post, readership shoots up! This is surely motivation to write about more interesting stuff and of course more often?? It feels more satisfying than working!!
Should I *”fry my boss cuttlefish“?? So tempting! And recently 宝贝 has been begging me not to work but spend more time with her. She’s been sticking to me like super glue on
my short stints at home during her waking hours.
But but blogging can’t bring in enough money (although so many people have been telling me to monetize my blog. But I simply don’t blog often enough for that). Sigh! Earth to Zhiwei! Earth to Zhiwei! Back to reality please!
Ok back to work….. Sighhhhh….
fry my boss cuttlefish – direct translation from Chinese 抄老板鱿鱼 = to sack my boss aka resign from my job.
This is surely my very first Halloween party! I have never thought much of Halloween. To me it was more of an *”Ang Moh” festival, a big dress up party. Well it still is! hehe.
Halloween happens on the 31st October and you can wiki it here. In short it’s the western version of our “Qing Ming”, during which, the spirits roam the earth and it’s also a time to remember our loved ones who have passed on.
Anyway, on that fateful 31st October (just 2 weeks back. I know. It took me 2 weeks to put this post up. I had wanted to, but…) evening, 宝贝and I were enjoying the evening breeze after her dinner at the porch. I was home on sick leave as I had caught an Australian bug on my last day in Western Australia. 2 little monsters (1 dressed in ghoulish black from head to toe and holding a huge red fork, the other with a “terrifying” mask and holding a grand big hammer) came up to us.
“Aren’t you going for the Halloween party at the function room?” said the little monsters.
“Erm… What party??” I said.
“There’s a Halloween party at the function room today. They dropped the invitation in your mailbox. Don’t you check your mailbox??”
He’s right. My mailbox is always overflowing. Sometimes, I do admire the postman for being able to stuff things in, up to the brim. “Oh. I haven’t checked it yet.”
“That’s right. You just came back from Australia. You can get prizes for playing games at the function room! And there will be trick-or-treat later and you can participate by sticking the pumpkin on your door and the children will come trick-or-treating. But you need a Halloween costume.” They eyed 宝贝and me from head to toe. We were dressed in T-shirts and shorts. Not very Halloween appropriate.
“She doesn’t have a costume. Sigh…”
“We have a Halloween hat. She can wear it. I’m sure they will allow her to participate.”
They ran back to their house and I vaguely heard some yelling and rummaging and emerged with a huge orange hat and thumped it on 宝贝’s head. “There! She’s dressed for Halloween! But she needs a bag to hold the sweets.”
宝贝 insisted on carrying her Strawberry Shortcake knapsack. 2 year olds now have their own opinions! I wonder what I was like when I was 2! So dressed in her Halloween hat, Wellington (it’s drizzling) and her pink bag (not exactly Halloween colour though), the 4 of us scrambled to the function room.
And wow! There were so many children and parents (?? Children I can understand. But so many parents! Is everyone on sick leave, or do these people not need to work? Envy!) dressed up to the nines in their costumes. They took this very very seriously. We’d probably missed most of the games because it was goodie bag distribution time. Our ghoulish monster helped 宝贝 collect her goodie bag. She’s one of the younger ones, who didn’t quite get the picture of the on-going.
The experienced monsters told us that it’s time for trick-or-treat. Of course, we followed the instructions of the experts. We were told to look out for doors with the orange pumpkin stickers. There were extremely elaborately decorated homes, complete with orange carved pumpkins, placed eerily along the steps. Dark lighting, “blood splattered” walls, Halloween banners etc. I was utterly impressed with my neighbours. It’s my first Halloween party after all (*suaku mah). There were adult witches, Hannibal, ghouls, you-name-it-you-get-it. And I was in… still T-shirts and shorts…
Coming back to the trick-or-treat, the 2 little monsters led 宝贝 up the stairs, flanking her at both sides (they really look after her very well), knocked on the door and yelled TRICK OR TREAT! Doors opened and the adults pretended to cringe in fear and offered trays and trays of sweets and small toys to the fearful monsters. 宝贝was initially very reserved, but after a few trial runs, she was also yelling TRICK OR TREAT alongside the older kids.
It was pretty tiring to comb the entire estate (it’s really big!) and 宝贝’s legs weren’t very long. Her little knapsack was full to the brim with sweets and toys, and she was laughing because she participated with the older kids. As usual, it ended with a scary photo shoot.
Happy Halloween! Monsters Unmasked!
2012 Halloween Checklist
1. Halloween costume for 宝贝
2. Halloween costume for moi
3. Carve little pumpkins for landing decoration
4. Get a cool pumpkin basket for 宝贝’s treat collection
5. Prepare goodies for the kids
*ang moh – hokkien dialect. Direct translation : red-haired. Fond nickname for Caucasians.
I’m not a big fan of popcorn and I probably eat it once in a few years. But I have had popcorn twice in a short span of 3 days!!! Overnight popcorn addict!
It all started with a tub of popcorn from the Sands Theater at the Marina Bay Sands. With nothing much to choose from, we bought a tub of Butterscotch popcorn during the interval of the Lion King. (Hey! I should be writing about the Lion King, instead of popcorn!?) It was heavenly!! Totally different from the crappy popcorn (which really put me off popcorn!) sold at the cinemas! Every popcorn was almost a perfect sphere and evenly coated with butterscotch. When you put it in your mouth, it simply m.e.l.t.e.d… ahhh!!! The great about the butterscotch coating was that it wasn’t overly sweet. Therefore, it was simply effortless to devour the entire tub before you even realised it!! And the best thing was, I was so busy eating that I didn’t bother to find out which company made it…
Today, I was strolling through Parkway Parade basement looking for a snack. I was actually contemplating buying an Auntie Anne’s pretzel, but didn’t as I just had one recently. Then I came across a popcorn shop! The memory of the wonderful popcorn “popped” into my head. But waaa!! $8 for the smallest bag?! hmm… Could this be the popcorn that I ate on Sunday? Maybe I should just give it a shot? It did look expensive enough though, but where’s the butterscotch flavour? Hmm.. Maybe I remembered wrongly, it’s possibly caramelcrisp?? And the cheesecorn looked yummy too. I asked for a sample and the cheesecorn was tasty. I’m such a sucker for cheese stuff!! So I dug into my lean wallet (sigh!) and ordered a small bag of Chicago Mix, which comprised of 1/2 cheesecorns and 1/2 caramelcrisp.
Remants of my Garrett Popcorn!
There! The remnants of my Garrett popcorn. Half gone… And there goes my dinner as well.. I hope I can still stomach my dinner!
The Verdict: I still prefer the Marina Bay Sands Theater Butterscotch popcorn! After eating the Garrett’s one, I realised that they were not the same! The Garrett ones were not as round… and the caramel initially was yummy. But after a few, it was simply too sweet for me and it made me very thirsty. The cheesecorn was a nice change. I ended up hunting the cheesecorn amidst the caramel ones…
So which company produced the heavenly butterscotch popcorn?! Google is simply amazing. Just type, Butterscotch, popcorn, marina bay sands theater and voila!!! The Cornery appeared! Mystery solved!! That’s the best popcorn on earth!!!!
Being can packed in the MRT like a sardine had already soured my mood! AND standing right behind a long haired girl certainly didn’t brighten up my day.
Well, if I were a guy, I might have been fantasizing about washing my face with the lass’ hair, except for the fact that her hair wasn’t that of the quality seen in shampoo advertisements and that applied to her face as well. (Now now, that’s really a meanie thing to say. As you can see, I’m not my sweet self now.) And yes, I believe I have ever written about the strange fetish men (especially my good friend, Mr. Kong) have about long hair. I told him that he should date Sadako (the victimised long haired lass from “The Ring”), the date would surely be a memorable one.
On with the story… Yes, I was standing behind this long haired girl who strangely had this super duper absolutely irriating habit of turning her head to flick her hair around! For WHAT?! The train was simply too packed to allow her the space to do that (and she’s eating into my personal air space. That alone, has already offended me lots!) and every eligible bachelor was probably nose deep in his iphone. (I have observed that 8 out of 10 passengers were cross eyed at peering into their iphones.) All she had achieved was to irritate me as her long strands or prickly hair kept entering my nostrils!
My first horrified thought was,”Eeks!! When had she last washed her hair?!” The consolation thought was, I had not cleaned my nose that day, so maybe that might have helped clean up my ample supply of dried mucus, otherwise known as “pi sai”. I had not really come to a conclusion on which was more unhygenic? I bravely endured the thought and ticklish feeling until it was getting pretty unbearable. (I was referring to the ticklish feeling. I was secretly relishing the thought of my many pieces of “pi sais” sticking to her hair. Evil eh??)
I could feel my hand creeping up (against my will, of course!), to tug at her hair to stop the swishing! As my disobedient limb almost reached her hair, she decided to alight. Sigh… I could have given her some aid in hair lengthening…and I could almost envision myself looking really apologetic to her and pointing behind me, mouthing, “sorry! he pushed me!!”
Bedtime (7pm) she was lying on the bed, trying to sleep.
宝贝 : 爸爸嘞？
婆婆：睡觉了。
宝贝：妈妈嘞？
婆婆：睡觉了。
宝贝：brandon哥哥嘞？
婆婆：睡觉了。
She practically named everyone she knew.
婆婆：睡觉了。
宝贝：(sat up in disbelief, open eyes wide): 哈？！全部都睡觉了？！
Taking stock of when I’ve last blogged, it was a good 8 months (omg!) ago. Sitting here, waiting for my turn to see the doctor is probably the best time to keep off my iPhone games and of course numerous other distractions!
Excuses and distractions :
1. My princess
2. iPhone and iPad games
3. Work, work and more work
4. Busy being a couch potato
5. Just more excuses
Hopefully, installing the wordpress app on my iPad will better facilitate this. I’ve tried it on the iPhone. It was simply a pain to write volumes on it. It was more effective for twitter or Facebook. Short, sharp sentences. Trying to justify my iPad purchase, is of course, one of the reasons, instead of utilizing it for gameplay. :)
Oh my! I’m paying for my unsystematic organisation of my blogs. No categories, no tags. Now I’m painfully categorising them. Keep it up Zhiwei! It’s a good start. Almost 300 posts! Not a lot for almost 9 years. But then again to click on every single one of them is killing good old moi!!
Ok. My new year resolution for the year of the little tiger cub is re-org 10 of them each day. Now that wouldn’t be too daunting a task for me!!
After that I will re-org my room! And my shelves! And everything!!
I can hear some people sniggering out there! I will show ya!!!
A close friend of mine has just lost her mother. Although she has been bedridden for years but loss never comes easy, especially someone who was so close to you and have loved you unconditionally.
Emotions welled up in me as I read her last entry in her blog.
So often in our busy lives have we forgotten our loved ones who have given us their love so unconditionally and been staunchly supporting us. Partners may leave us one day, friends come in and out of our lives but the only consistency in our lives is our family. I have made my new resolution that I will not wait til tomorrow to see them, care for them and love them. Cherish the present because tomorrow may never come.
I love you, Mommy, Daddy and Grandma!! And of course my little brother who has always been there for me.
What? Yet another return?! Why doesn’t she just leave for good?
I can just foresee all these remarks about my “long-awaited” return. Guess I haven’t accumulated enough fans to want my return. BUT! Nevertheless I will persevere and hope that this will be for good!!
Thank you for all your support and undying love! I will endeavour to make this blog even more bitchy (or should it be bitchier??)(ok i have checked. I’m right. It’s more bitchy) than ever! HUR HUR HUR!
