#SANTAHASBEEN

Not working so much this year for me.
How about you guys?

In a warm-up post to get all warmed up for the season, and we still having the humid and terrible pouring clouds, here's my Joyeux Noel hamper, gotten from my cousin who's a master at the baking and cooking. Definitely a house kitchen master!

And you can't find these anywhere else...

TROPICAL STYLE GINGERBREAD PEEPLE.

Where else can you find?
Only in Singapore you'll have your Gingerbread people in bikinis and trunks (the surfer girl is my personal favorite but she broke her arm. /awww), and tux and a dress (out of ideas, my cousin say) whom she drew out of a non-hardening glitter food gel. Glitter!

What's more, she baked the most moist and soft pumpkin bread that is just right in its texture, and orange peel chocolate muffins that are so delectable and substantial as it is so dense once you bite in - after a pop in the microwave.

•lovely Joyeux Noel food hamper!•

•tried to save the surfer ginger people to a better place, while the girls lost an arm and...•

•lost her head. Michon naba. Kekeke~ Oops.•

I was dropping by for Feliz Navidad dinner and Midnight Mass and to visit my cuteeeeeeee pie Grace, the baby girl niece who turned 1 last month.

and boy SHE GREW A LOT. I WAS SHOCKED TO SEE HER walking and crawling on the floor with her adorable chubbiness I can't explain in words and her dad - my cous say, "she's still underweight though."


So here she is like when she was 4 months old or something...

•my favooooorite picture. LIKE 1 million times•

And now she's 1 year and 1 month's old... AND, THE BIG CATCH IS THAT SHE KNOWS THE CAMERA. She poses once I snapped and the flash blasted, and she started smiling and her face puzzled off as if she was thinking, "What face or pose should I do now?"

Speechless.

Too cute to believe but she now doesn't recognize me... TT_TT
Looks more like her mom now!

What is your Buon Natale wish? Here are some quotes taken from my dear T-list pal which I echo the most:

"@pyosaurus You know you're old when no one gives you presents anymore ):"

A sparkling blessed Christmas, dear readers and friends! Missed out what happened in the previous weeks of mine? The big issue of Adeline Chia, K-Pop party madness, and MAMA 2011 and other event coverages. 


Need some virtual love? Check out my T-list on the left here as I'm spamming some tweet-y love today for some #fangirl #kpop #food #christmas #presents.

Watch out for the next post in 2012 of what made my 2011 THE YEAR FOR ME. (NOT Y.O.U. since I'm still solo. It's going to be 'YEAR OF US' once Key's on my side.)

the KTCHN corner.

Here's the place where all my cooking dilemmas and taste journey to develop where life forces the girl inside me to do something to feed my rumbling tummy at a student's budget price! But taste of course, absolutely matters, a French would comment.

About two months back when I don't feel like going out to eat I was wanting clear chewy noodles, and so I've got a big whole pack, which could last forever just for me! It is a lot.

Soup was standard where I mixed it in, and this time is something without recipe!

Ingredients A:

Clear Chinese/Korean noodles

Carrots (I always try to add this vegetable to nourish my eyes!)

Crab sticks

Ingredients B:

Tofu (I love the shrimp flavored tofu)
Ready-to-eat Fishcakes (or any kind)

Chopped garlic

Spices: Fish sauce, tom yum paste, pepper, salt, butter (in a change of oil)

OK, make sure you've got a rice cooker which saves your life and uses minimal electricity (better than gas) for steaming ingredients A till cooked. How do you know it's cooked? Of course when the noodles has gone transparent and you felt like eh, it dissolved into water?!




See the noodles are invisible in the rice pot... and the being cooked ingredients B.

On the cooking stove, for ingredients B since I only had Teflon pans which is OK, anything goes, melt the butter as oil, add in the garlic which adds the wonderful aroma and the whole house would think you're born to be chef till it's bit burnt brown, then slide in the tofu, pre-cut. Add the spices as desired, the whole ratio of tom yum paste now.

So you'll get a brown fried coated tofu in the end, make sure both sides are cooked, then turn off, waiting for the noodles to be cooked along together.




Dry A out of water, then finally mix together with tofu in the pan! Add spices to your like again. If it looks cooked then it should be done - turn off the stove!


And here's a measly look-like meal however the taste was surprisingly more than adequate! :)

Adding chilli powder before I removed it, immediately after I slurrrped it up and it was good, and thus there isn't any final food impression image. =P

 • • • •

Recent health conscious leads me to get fresh vegetables and lots of free time this week (no class drrrt drrrt) and cook like my mom, always a portion of greenery just plainly cooked.

Easy, simple, a change from fried brown things!

Spices and prepare: chopped garlic, fish sauce, chicken stock/concentrate, butter
Vegetable: anything green and doesn't have natural taste (e.g. spinach has another way of cooking and it has its own taste beforehand) like chaysim, watercress...


How to do:
Melt a bit of butter and garlic as usual till it has the aroma.
Add  the rinsed out vegetables, then spray over the spices as needed. Chicken stock needs only a bit.
Wait till the vegetables' leaves crinkle, meaning cooked!

You could see the fishballs and garlic on one side and freshly cleaned and added into the pan on the other side, the vegetables.
Pour accordingly
Prepare rice in bowl, so when the vegetables are cooked add on top of the rice with the bit sauce left (fish sauce, chicken stock) so the rice would also have taste.

Done! Healthy simple meal! Ones in the mixed vegetable rice stalls (esp. Singaporeans) are full of oil.

Fright Call and a City Hall Walkabout.

Woke up at 11AM today, officially slept at 1AM, a total of 10 hours hibernation. Gah, holidays really make me love my bed up to the notch. I had this weird dream, something like myself in a game and I have to save this dinosaur or whale or something that looks like a dinosaur but it's dying in the sea and I had to retrieve some power gem for it to be alive again (it was dying) then not far away it was the nemesis' castle but somehow after me riding the car I ended up on a boat then gave my grandma who became like the queen or even the evil person behind or hell dunno a leg massage. YES A FOOT REFLEXOLOGY THING. -,-"

weirdness...

Yesterday I had the i.drawwws... meeting, a collaboration with the SDEA to create an interactive and a drama-like situation like what we do everyday IN SINGAPORE (not at home). The theme is 'communication' and thus what we do everyday by communicating, and in Singapore, is thru the approx. 10 million colors thru this 13 inch window screen (aka the white macbook of mine) is how we communicate: seeing and typing, not seeing and talking. Facebook, MSN, YM, blogs, and a whole lot of variety of platforms where we can share our thoughts candidly and anyone can see and comment on it.

The meeting was at 1PM and I planned to go around 12+ a bit. BUT THEN MY WALLET WENT MISSING (this reminds me of Vanessa's hilarious post! heeheehee) and I frantically tried to search my shipwreck room; I do remember last night after coming back from grocery shopping I took out some cards that made my wallet too thick, then I do remember putting it above my pile when I went in and left it at the bed...
...
......
.........

GYAAAARHH WHERE IS IT! Clock was ticking after eating lunch at 12PM and I was ready to go and filled my bottle and it's gone missing! Not inside the bed, drawers, in the plastic bags, in the pile, anywhere! I don't remember putting it anywhere! OH DEAR... what if what if what if what if what if what if whatif what if what if... I checked my drawers a couple times but it's not there. Clock ticking to 1PM! Anyone who's going to the i.drawwws thing I had to call since V needed me to pass her note because she cannot come and she wanted a space - pass it on to Dahlia.

So in the end after calling Debra but then she was also not feeling well thus not going, Derrick was the only candidate who would go there. And yep, he is going and I forwarded the note.

It was close to 1.

Few minutes after,

I FOUND MY WALLET.
In the 2nd drawer I already tried looking. I think my eyes are an eyesore already how can my eyes missed the wallet just there onthe right side on top of my PSP and I just saw it after 1PM...
2(@#*%Y@#LKFH:DSJ; KJ(P*#L#P@(*Y(*P@HIOHLKJF*JFP(*@#@(P#*Y%(@#*YL

ANNOYED!

But it was 1 already. What can do. I wanted to go but it was shining hot!
So I opened my laptop instead... then called Vanessa what time we want to meet in City Hall, and she's like "Uuuuhhh, I haven't shower and today's the day where the school calls us..."
"Why school calls? ... OH!"
Today was like the D day and the school was gonna ring us if we didn't get to get our first choice in what we want to major on. I was not fretting about it and definitely not making this as a hindrance.

But alas.

A few minutes after Vanessa told me about that, an unknown home line number called me.
"Hello?"
"Hi, is this Raisa Tanawi I'm speaking to?"
"Yes this is me"
"Oh yes, this is from LASALLE"

I THINK, I WAS SHOCKED and I got HEART ATTACK.
...
....
"Oh yes, why?"
"We would like to ask you about the volunteer for the opening night, on the 25th we're going to do some goodie bag packing. Can you help us on that day?"



SO, BASICALLY, THE FRIGGIN' FREAK FRIGHT CALL was about PACKING GOODIE BAGS.
(=,=)"

O|--|_

how doomed.

THAT, was over. Then I started to get ready to go when I told Derrick I found my wallet and are you guys gonna be still there I'll arrive in half hour something.

The Arts House was close by to City Hall, exactly in Parliament Rd. It is a nice private gallery with a jazzy cafe that would let me sit for hours and hours reading to my likes. The surrounding and environment is different compared to the buzzing city life, and in this place people could just escape the hectic life and get in touch with everything artsy. :)
When I came it was in the middle of a discussion in a circle. Yikes.

This is the cafe and the outside of it. Also said that they also publish books, so anyone wants to speak out and publish their stories, essays, poetry collection... Well here's one place you literature peeps so keep an eye! Another place is booksactually's mathpaper press but I think it's so exclusive they hand bound it. I think it's too pricey by then, no one wants to get it.

Continue! The rest of the spaces have been shown before in the first meeting of this project, so I didn't have to take images, besides, it's all up on the facebook group for i.drawwws...

Personally, I would like to do something traditional. Thinking that now we communicate not by talking anymore but only by looking and typing. My mind started whirling when I watched the morning show (why suddenly I have forgotten her name? Allen right?) where Zac Efron came as a guest, and when she asked "do you have facebook or myspace or, how do you keep in touch?"
He replied "I don't have them all. I prefer to call my friends."

Yep, that got me to think. Nowadays we never call our friends but 'wall our friends' or IM them. We just stare at the cold words that has appeared, emotionless.
No dramatic voices accompanying it or gestures that we can't see through the phone but somehow I still do that like I'm talking in front of them, those hand movements that are automatic.
Yes, things have changed in our way of communication. Peeps says that without a mobile, you're a total goner. If you're lost it's going to be very hard to contact and all. It's true, but then,

what happened to the peeps a hundred years back who still used snail mail that took weeks?
I think I could have died from waiting maybe, for an important news or something.
However, looking at the competitve world with over population we need to stand out and be fast and grab it while we have the chance, that fast pass tickets that finishes like hawt cakes. If we work slow, as in sending out mails rather than e-mails which could arrive any minute later, I think 100 people would have passed us day by day while we wait in front of our red mailbox for the news.

I'm actually sick of being fast. Everything with the computer. Why not handwritten? Why not snail mail? Even these days handwritten and traditional outcomes has been stamped as antique and more worthful (derrrrr...). Writing comes from the heart and our emotions can be felt, yes felt by the pressure of the pen. If we're mad, thick embossed letters would appear. If we were to write fast, super hopefully legible cursive writing, lightly, would be the outcome. It shows through handwriting, and the snail mail uniqueness is in the postage (who likes to collect) especially getting it from overseas pen pals.

Connected to this project, snail mailing from overseas (planning to do it while my summer holiday to Africa) to my Indonesian friends and them collecting it to make a collection would be nice although it isn't art at all.
I have a typewriter at home and I really love it, I hate computers and I hate typing to it because my eyes would hurt. That could be interesting if I were to type like in the lawyer's court where one (I've forgotten the original word for this) would record the whole talking through a typewriter. Speed typing!
For the sculpture I had the idea to make all the kinds of wires we have, from long internet lines, to those spiral telephone lines, and what else? Pouring out from the window, as the plan was to be, to show that our communication is not by the mouth and eyes anymore but through these objects we speak.

I guess that is what is on my mind. Whewh. The meeting finished at about 4PM where went directly to Raffles City, and it was (thank goodness) drizzling. I didn't bring my umbrella, shockingly. My two BFF in Singapore: umbrella, sunglass.
Waiting for Vanessa to come down went to see some stores. WOW!
Has the sale started yet? Everything's on sale already!
Have seen TOPSHOP, River Island, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins... but nothing came to my likes (AKA BUDGET... :P) there's this nice printed of a lion/leopard sketch on a white tee... $29.90
A black dress for any occasion left in my size... $79.90
Some other long drapey T's but too overpriced as usual for a TOPSHOP tag. That's why besides one black holey leggings with one thick grey leggings that I probably won't use unless I go for a vacation on a winter time, I have nothing from the store compared to my first roommate in Singapore that has almost a quarter from it.

Quite bored in looking at clothes for the past few days, we met up with Putra, and it's been a while since I last saw him, way when I still had long hair. Planned to cook dinner in his place, we headed to River Valley Rd. and it's the first time I went, and the first impression of the whole apartment is nice! Secluded and looks private, small, with a very exhibited swimming pool sandwiched between an even floor numbers, maybe floor 10? Made from glass, and at night it's gonna be a pretty full view for men looking up from below, or not a pretty sight at all when a whale swims but super keliatan at night most def... XD

(SORRY SORRY PUT, pis men! (^^)V)

Went to Cold Storage beforehand and bought that semi-instant carbonara pasta 3 packs, then a big bag of Cheetos curly swirly whatevs, and water. It's on the house today! Wheeheeheeheehee

Up to his little place, a huge rice cooker that looks more like another mini AC somehow and a large LCD TV, and a superbly messy dining table that now looks like where trash will go, with all those plastic bags lying (PUT GO GREEN DONG...), however not afraid with that stolid face of yours that only *glares*.

Teehee.

The TV was clicked on and Putra tried to search a good channel to watch. After watching Eminem (who?) 'rapped' like stupid shit I wonder why he became a singer, I said "Change."
So the channel was changed to E! Channel which was better, but slightly disturbing with Pamela Anderson's so-called Girl on the Loose reality show. Stoopid chick trying to be sexy but you're not. But I do respect her that she does something good, which in the episode we three watched was when she auctioned her car for PETA (organization that protects animals and would speak up when a celebrity like the Olsen twins wearing real fur or skin). But the rest was just back to her shabby image. Blah.

Blame me for being a bit querulous today.

The cooking didn't go smooth, FYI. I knew it. Should have used that sturdy and could be depended on rice cooker rather than cooking on pot, and I knew that it would start bubbling and spilling the water cream when Putra covered the pot with the lid. A hasty move. Less than a minute the pot was covered it was spilling its guts out of the lid.

So Vanessa took over and resolved the problem by not staring at the TV but concentrate on 'stirring continuously for 7 minutes' as the package says, while Putra and I still glance to the TV. I mean we all can't help stirring right, so basically we're waiting for the food to be done. After pasta check, we were ready to eat the pot (inside it of course!) till' it was finish! (maybe, most probably).

But alas, after about 3 refills I was stuffed. It WAS, pasta. Couldn't eat anymore. I think I was half ful after eating the big bag of Cheetos. In the end at 9PM Vanessa gtg, so I followed as well. I wanted to walk, but I think after looking at the map then went down the road I couldn't find Clemenceau Ave where I had to go then turn right, straight till' I found Dhoby Ghaut. So from the bus stop I was planning to walk straight on, somehow it felt OK but I guess to accompany Vanessa. And my feeling was right! Just straight on was back to the Church-SMU-Bugis St. way. Could've just walked, I ate too much and wanted the food to come down.. But next time. Now I know the way. But I do want to know the Dhoby way. So someone next time...!

Then I'm back in my 7th heaven room typing this. *yawn*