tell me about it

This was seen on an ice-cream cart. Note the interesting spelling errors on her tee. How representative of the sort of clothes they sell in China – FAKE. :D Abercrombif and Titch for teh win!!111one

We tried McDonald’s there for comparison’s sake. The burgers are cheaper but smaller; there’s Joel looking sad at his small burger. They also have hot chocolate and banana pie!

Random old person sleeping on a bench in 雍和宫 (Lama Temple).

Random food picture for Matt. Best 西红柿炒蛋 (fried egg and tomato) we ate all week.

This was the skull scepter held by a blue demon at 雍和宫. Interesting to see the skull’s resemblance to Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas.

Me at 北海 (Beihai) attempting to attain nirvana under the fronds of a swaying tree.

A mere fraction of the number of steps we climbed in Beijing

Our very own Charlie’s Angels – the brunette, the blonde, and the Asian chick.

Yan Yan in China is called BIMBO DIPDIP! Hurhurhur.

The view from 北海

Random Buddha photo. This was one of hundreds carved into the wall of the temple at 北海

My camera timer came in useful – Charlie’s Angels posing as a multi-limbed goddess

The eight glories and shames, on a wall in Beijing

Temply thing. Can’t remember where this was.

We ate dog meat. Really. At a place called…狗肉王 (King of Dog Meat)!

This is what happens when you use an online translator to convert your Chinese menu into English. “The temple explodes the chicken cube” we decided was probably supposed to be 宫保鸡丁. Now that’s a classic.

Real hot chocolate with Baileys

Restaurant for people like meeee!

This just cracked me up. I walked around chanting this for half the day.

Another random big mascot thing. I love these things. We need more in Singapore to take random photos with!

糖葫芦 (tanghulu – hawthorn berries dipped in sugar syrup) at the 王府井 (Wangfujing) street market. I absolutely love 糖葫芦. I don’t get fresh haws in Singapore :(

The two British girls ate crickets at 王府井. Me: Congratulations. You’ve managed to eat something the Chinese people in this group refuse to eat.

The sunset from the plane as we left. Sniffle.

China photos! :D Full-size versions available on my Flickr.

At the Summer Palace with Joel, making faces in front of a 麒麟 statue

Cherry blossom

Part of the Summer Palace

Little Suzhou in the Summer Palace

Pretty plants that dispensed flying bits of cotton all over Beijing which looked like snow

Panorama of the view from somewhere in the Summer Palace

Oh yuck. Baoying check it out :D Sea cucumber served in its whole state.

Old men writing calligraphy on the ground with water at the Temple of Heaven.

Panorama of the Temple of Heaven. Pretty.

Why doesn’t Singapore have flowers like these? The gardens at the Temple of Heaven were beautiful.

Hannah and I with Huanhuan the Olympic 福娃 in a 胡同. It’s one of the Olympic mascots – there are five – and I think they are the BEST Olympic mascots ever. The mascots for previous years are just so ugly. The Chinese do cute best :D Except for Beibei. She looks like a tranny.

Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini. 北京欢迎你。 Cheesy but effective and so darn cute. My favorite is Jingjing! Guess who’s dangling on my phone now? :P Actually they’re all just so freaking cute. Except for tranny bear.

Random happy photo of us before embarking on our trek up to司马台。 Happy because we did not know what was in store for us.

Sitting on the Great Wall of China – Me, Bing, Hannah and Heather

There is too much Great Wall.

Joel, Bing and me, halfway through our 10km trek. Tired. Look how much more wall stretches out behind us! :(

Me: “Ooh! A FLYING FOX! A FLYING FOX!” Bing: “Is there any other way down?” Heather: “Well, it’s a 35 yuan, 2 minute flying fox, or walk some more for God only knows how long.” Me: “Here’s my money. Gimme a ticket. No walky.”

Tiananmen, and lookie! Chairman Mao!

Exhausted girls in the Forbidden City

No Scratch!

In the Forbidden City

See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil!

We actually saw this old lady with bound feet in the Forbidden City. She walked surprisingly fast – slower than my usual stride but fast enough for someone with bound feet – and looked quite happy. I saw more ladies with bound feet (two) in eight days in Beijing than cute guys (only one, and he had a girlfriend). All the cute men in China must have moved to Taiwan and Hongkong.

Tiananmen Square.

More tomorrow. I’m tired and the aircon service people are coming at nine tomorrow morning (!!) and I have to not be half-naked and asleep in bed when they come in. Sigh.

BACK FROM BEIJING! :D

Man, what a crazy trip. It has been so terribly tiring. Visited all the requisite places – Temple of Heaven, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Summer Palace, and of course the insanely long Great Wall of China (of which we trekked ten bloody long kilometres over the unrestored part – steps, steps, uphill, uphill, steps, uphill). My Nike Dunks were surprisingly uncomfy; they’d served me fantastically on my Israel trip so I have no idea why they suddenly hurt so much. Now have painful swollen feet :( We walked almost everywhere in Beijing and the estates were huge; we’d walk for five hours in each attraction and still not be able to cover everything. Plus with all the multi-level pagodas we were climbing stairs all the time. Sob, feet hurt. But I needed the exercise, because…

I ate like a starving pig for eight days and have put on much too much weight (I don’t dare to weigh myself to find out just how much) and am sorely missing eating the most delicious 小笼包 and 饺子 for breakfast at only about 30 cents per person. Also delicious 米线 and my all-time favorite 西红柿炒蛋, which only tastes good in China because of their amazingly sweet tomatoes. Sigh.

I also have many random funny China signs, including their very inventive and creative “Keep Off The Grass” signs like the one that said “小草微微笑，请你旁边绕”. Hehehe. So cute lah :D

Okay photos when I’ve uploaded :) I’m gonna be super busy these few days with moving out of hall, redoing room at home, and settling into post-graduation life. MOE is already sending all sorts of letters and stuff and I’m feeling the heat feeling the heat!

Off to bed now – I need to get some good sleep. Didn’t sleep well in China all week because we were always scrambling up at 8am to make full use of our days, plus for some reason I just never could get to sleep well over there; always waking up throughout the night and having odd dreams and thinking too much.

I need to recover from my holiday :/

The kitty has a thing for my bag. Can’t leave it opened for more than a minute or she’ll go schlep herself inside and look inquisitively around.

Me: Sash what are you doing?
Sasha: Meow.
Me: No, get out of my bag!
Sasha: Meow!
Me: I am not bringing you to China.
Sasha: Meow.
Me: Aw. I’ll miss you too.

Goodbye, SCI.

Goodbye, lovely little hall room.

Goodbye, Singapore.

See you folks on the 28th! I will definitely try to update at least once from the free Internet within Changi airport; and I’ll try to post some stuff when I’m in Beijing.  Leaving tomorrow on SQ (je t’adore SIA), boarding time 3.55pm.  No idea what my flight number is.  Brother is taking care of that sort of admin stuff.

China China oh how I’ve missed you :) Oh and Bing too!

Photos when I’m back :)

I’m gonna make myself some Dulche de leche!

It means “sweet milk” and is actually caramelized condensed milk, called ‘milk jam’ by some people in some parts of Europe. I got this recipe off David Lebovitz (who is an amazing American chef/baker/foodie person living in Paris and whose blog inspires an excess of saliva in the mouth).

Dulce de leche is fantastic swirled onto brownies, in yoghurt, on bread, just about anything really.

Dulce de Leche or Confiture de Lait

From David Lebovitz’s book, The Perfect Scoop (Ten Speed Press)

Preheat the oven to 425° F (220° C).

Pour one can (400 gr/14 ounces) of sweetened condensed milk ( not evaporated milk) into a glass pie plate or shallow baking dish. Stir in a few flecks of sea salt.

Set the pie plate within a larger pan, such as a roasting pan, and add hot water until it reaches halfway up the side of the pie plate.
Cover the pie plate snugly with aluminum foil and bake for 1 to 1¼ hours. (Check a few times during baking and add more water to the roasting pan as necessary).

Once the Dulce de Leche is nicely browned and caramelized, remove from the oven and let cool. Once cool, whisk until smooth.

Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Warm gently in a warm water bath or microwave oven before using.

Spoon warm Dulce de Leche over Vanilla Ice Cream or smear it on toasted slices of baguette for your morning breakfast, as I’ve been doing.

1. Have your media player handy
2. Choose one (1) song from your music library whose title starts with the first letter (or number) of your screen name
3. Repeat this process with each successive letter (or number) in your screen name until you run out of letters (or numbers)
4. Post up your results.

J – ‘解脱’ by Zhang Hui Mei Such a very sad and sweet song.

A – ‘Armenian Dances II:III. Lorva Horovel’ by Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra Ah the beautiful band days from sec sch. We played this for our SYF competition and got gold for it.

D – ‘Dirrty’ by Christina Aguilera Hoho. Still remember when this song came out. The MTV was scandalously scandalizing, what with chaps and red underwear and dirrty dancing

E – ‘Eat It’ by Weird Al Yankovic Incidentally, I have 21 songs that start with the word ‘Every’. And Weird Al rocks.

I – ‘I Heard A Rumor’ by Bananarama Talk about retro :P

T – ‘Teddybear’ by Toybox EH what what I really liked this song okay!!

E – ‘Elephant Love Song Medley’ by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman I’m going to name my first son after Ewan :P

From Kaixin’s blog :D

Something about case modding really really excites me.  I love how these people can literally create gorgeous artwork from scratch that combines technical knowhow with electrical knowhow and pure artistry to produce some of the most bloody brilliant cases I’ve ever seen.  I absolutely love reading case mod project logs.  I love seeing the case come together, read how they get their ideas and put the whole thing together.  It doesn’t matter if I can’t tell a rheobus from a potentiometer, I’m just so fascinated with watching them work.

My favorite case mods are on bit-tech.net.  Click on the pictures for the links.

Orac³ by G-gnome

Weapon of Mass Destruction by G-gnome, one of my favorites, and also what started me on case mods.

The extremely stunning Doom 3 mod by Crimson Sky (a close second, if just for the sheer detail put into it – an airlock door that actually opens, a sliding metal screen, and everything kitbashed and scratchbuilt.  Absolutely astounding)

Blackmesa II by PilouX

Hypercube² by Gert Swolfs