Have an hour to kill before boarding, I reckon. Hope my phone battery
lasts till then. So exciting!
Anyway, I'll be back on Monday night / Tuesday morning.
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In a bid to procrastinate some more, we decided to sneak out of the office and get ourselves a drink from Coffee Bean. How could we resist all the Christmas drinks that the coffee chains were churning out? Peppermint this and caramel that. Yummy.
Anyway, dark chocolate peppermint latte in hand, we happily skipped back to the office, content that we managed to kill another 15 minutes of our day.
Fast forward to last night, or early this morning specifically. My eyes were WIDE AWAKE, and my mind was racing and I couldn't fall asleep! I tried watching a couple of episodes of Scrubs, tried reading Dead Before Dark (which *always* puts me to sleep, stupid Sookie), but nothing worked.
I looked at the clock and it was already 3am. Then 4am. And by the time I finally dozed off, I'm pretty sure it was time to wake up. So now, I'm sitting on the train on my way to work, with huge bags hanging under my eyes and my brain in snooze mode.
Have a flight to catch today. I guess I'll have to sleep on my way there. Yay! Less than 24 hours to my holiday! :D
- travel extensively. Lol ok this is quite vague. Naturally, if I had the opportunity to travel to every country in the world, I would. (Alright, I'll list 'em out.)
- travel to Tibet in 2010. There's something about the Himalayas that just draws us to keep going back. Hopefully, my citizenship application goes through and I'll be able to go next year.
- backpack around Europe, alone. This was supposed to be my grand holiday for 2011, as a birthday present to my 30 year old self. I think everyone should try traveling alone at least once in their life. I've not worked out the logistics for the Europe backpacking trip yet though, and knowing me, it'll probably be largely unplanned.
- see snow. I've never seen snow! But apparently snowflakes aren't as magical as the movies make them out to be. Lol.
- travel to the US. Honestly, the States isn't really a country that I yearn to go. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that my sister is moving there, it wouldn't even be so high up on the list. Too many other interesting countries to visit.
- travel to some country that ends with -stan or something like that. You know, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc. I think it'd be fun.
- eventually travel to Japan (haha and South America and all the other countries I've not been to before)
- make ketchup. I've made mayonnaise, butter, kaya, paneer, and I'm pretty sure a lot more other things from scratch. How hard can it be to make ketchup?
- wear a white wedding dress for my second wedding. Haha well first I'd have to meet someone and want to get married again, but I missed out on the white wedding dress experience the first time round. I think I'll be more involved when it comes to planning my second wedding. Lol.
- ride a horse and gallop across the countryside. Not trotting around in circles or being led by someone across the beach. I want the real deal.
- live on my own. Interestingly, I've never lived on my own before. Need to work out the finances though.
- work and live overseas. It's going to be such an experience to live overseas, to immerse yourself in the culture of another country. This will probably be a hard one for me, seeing how it took me 6 years to apply for my citizenship. How am I going to settle any of the paperwork needed to get the necessary visas and stuff? Lol.
- buy property. At least have a home to call my own.
- pull out a tapioca by it's roots. And if I get the chance, carrots and potatoes too. Lol.
- have a pet snake and a puppy. (Not necessarily at the same time). I've owned quite a number of rather bizarre pets, the weirdest one being a snapping alligator turtle (or was it the Madagascar hissing roaches? Hmm) , and somehow I've always been oddly fascinated by reptiles. And yes, I know a puppy is not a reptile. Lol.
- dive and see 1. a whale shark 2. manta rays 3. mola mola 4. barracuda tornado 5. hammerheads. Actually, I'd just like to pick up diving once again. It's been too long!
- reproduce and have little bonbons. According to Kumar, the leaf reader, I'll have 2 kids. Yay!
Hehehehe I'm sure there are more. Shall think about it and add on if they come to mind. *grin*
Paneer is surprisingly simple to make. You just need to heat up a litre of milk till it almost boils. Turn off the heat. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Stir until it curdles. Strain it through a
cheesecloth (or in my case, clean nappies), and press it with something heavy. Voila!
Went to Nicole's first birthday party today and had lunch there. The Penang laksa was pretty good, and the rojak was yummy but I had to skip the kueh pie tee cos I think there was pork in the filling.
Headed to town and had coffee with Michelle and had a nice chat about our upcoming holiday plans. I tried looking for that book, but none of the bookstores stocked it.
Decided to do a quick run at the gym, and survived for 20 minutes before caving in and giving up. And then I met my sis at the Sheraton hotel for dinner and drinks.
We had the buffet at The Dining Room and I stuffed myself silly on cold prawns and roast beef. Was so so so so stuffed. Had a nice catch up and was feeling rather sad in the cab on the way back home when I realised that it'd be hard for us to do stuff like this when she migrates to the States next year. :(
Got home and chatted with the young grasshopper and watched some (ok, 14 episodes) of Scrubs. It's now 3am and I think I'm going to try to do that deep breathing thing that they always do at the end of yoga class.
I had a yoyo of a day yesterday. Had a good start when Joe popped in just before lunch with some cake because he was in the area. Always good to have cheesecake. Lol. Then I had a mee siam for lunch (with 2 limes *slurp*).
Was planning to go to Borders after work, so decided that hey I might as well get a Macbook too. (Yes, don't you love my logic?) My only concern was that they didn't come in red, which the Ki said was easily rectified with the use of skins.
Chatted with Tanu to get an approximation of how much we'd be spending in December so I'd know how to budget my monies and later found out that the place they wanted to stay at Sakleshpur was fully booked.
My mood sunk and I feel feeling a little sulky, even though they were proposing another place to go. (Which I have yet to learn to spell and pronounce lol.) Finally cheered up some when the young grasshopper showed me some pics and Tanu was describing how beautiful the place
was.
Happily bounced out of the office to meet LGG and to Borders. They didn't stock the book I was looking for (argh) so I just went to the Apple shop to make my purchase. Unfortunately, the discount that I was eligible for was only available for online purchases!
*cue dramatic sigh and pouting*
Went to Pete's Place and had a really nice dinner with LGG and Ching. Then headed up to the bar at Mezza9 to have martinis. Chatted for the rest of the evening before heading home.
Managed to catch the young grasshopper online for a bit before he left for Hyderabad. It was nice to chat for abit and then I went to bed.
My body is *still* aching from Wednesday's hot yoga class. I think I really need a massage. One more day to the weekend!
Anyway I'm on my way to work and I'm *so* late. Hehehe.
Had a chat with the young grasshopper last night and he's got me all excited about my trip up. He said that this would be a food trip where he'd bring me to eat all kinds of different cuisine. Yay!
He's also going to visit his parents these couple of days and I asked him to grab a couple of recipes of some of the dishes that I tried at this Bengali restaurant the last time I was there. Hopefully we'll be able to recreate it. How fun!
Also, I asked him to get me cheesecloth. You know, muslin. I'm going to get some (clean) cloth nappies from my colleague today and going to attempt to make paneer with it, but I'm not sure if it'll work. If not, I'll check out the shops but at least I know I'll be able to get the muslin when I'm there. Paneer, here I come!
Lots of people have been asking me why I want to make paneer. Why not? Plus the ingredients are more commonly found than stuff needed to make cheese (rennet) or tofu (calcium sulphate i think).
Anyway woke up this morning aching all over. Went for hot yoga last night and worked muscles that I forgotten even existed. Ouch. But it's a good ache, I guess. Just feel like sleeping in. Hehehe. Nevermind, this time next week I'll probably still be sleeping in a bed in the middle of Bangalore with the young grasshopper by my side.
Went with Bento Set and both of us were grimacing at each other while attempting to contort our highly inflexible bodies into the various pretzel-like positions. And more grimacing as we were made to hold the pose. *groan*
Class was from 7.45pm-8.45pm and we left the office late and didn't have the time to grab a bite before. The result of all that sweating and stretching and groaning and balancing? I'm sosososo hungry now.
Wanted to get something before heading home but I'm reluctant to spend too much eating out (eyeing that netbook, you know). So now I'm heading home and wondering whether my stomach will start digesting itself in the meanwhile.
Ah well, 2 more days to the weekend! So happy. Hehehe.
But it's so cute! And so tiny! And so (ok not *so*, but relatively) cheap! And so light! And have I mentioned that it's so cute! Plus it comes in red!
Hmm. I know I should wait till Sitex comes round but if I get it, I'll want to bring it with me on my trip. Then at least I can read ebooks (although I can just go buy a tonne of real books, so cheap in India!) or watch more Scrubs (try and finish all the seasons?). Might need to keep oneself entertained while the young grasshopper does his work.
Aah. Decisions, decisions.
Thankfully I've got a pair of flip flops in the office that I can happily slip my unbound feet into.
Anyway the weekend passed by so quickly, as it always does. Had to work on Saturday, so spent the day in the office. I was having the sniffles, so it was quite embarressing inside the conference hall, being the only person who kept on sneezing and sniffling away.
Was supposed to meet up with Lenny who is back in town for a holiday, but I was on medications and didn't feel up to an evening of partying at the Butter Factory, so I bailed. Stayed home, watched a bit of Scrubs (my latest obsession), and slept.
Didn't do a thing on Sunday. Made egg salad and had that for lunch. Was in bed the entire day, finishing up season 3 of Scrubs. 5 more seasons to go!
I wanted to buy one of those tiny laptops so I would bring along on my upcoming trip to Bangalore, and they aren't too expensive. I think you can get one at under 800 bucks. I want something small and light (portable!) and of course cheap. Sitex is coming up but I'll be in India then.
Ah well, let's see how it goes. :)
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I know I've been talking about this for the longest time, but honestly, I've never really seen the urgency for it. Everything that everyone said about ease of visa applications etc just weren't all
that relevant to me because I didn't have any plans to go to the States and my Indian visa, though expensive ($500!), was paid for by my company.
However, there've been recent changes in immigration policies from the Chinese embassy and now they are not issuing visas to China for Philippines passport holders in Singapore. So if I wanted to get a visa to China, I'd have to go to the embassy in Manila and apply for it. *faint*
So this was the incentive for me to get the necessary paperwork going. Otherwise, the China/Tibet trip next year wouldn't be possible, and I'd miss out on another epic holiday.
Plus, my sister would be moving to the States next year and funds willing, I'd also want to visit her there next year (and maybe squeeze in a little side trip to New York to see my ex-boss).
With all these upcoming plans, let's hope my application gets approved in time. :)
