tell me about it

Happy birthday to my best friend Denise. :) We may not spend so much time together anymore but you’re always super dear to my heart. AND I have a birthday pressie for you, which I will definitely pass to you…within the next month :P

Happy birthday to korkor Shaun - the big brother I already have! You’re such sunshine in our lives, big clown brother you.

And happy first wedding anniversary to Shaun and Leanne. Love, love, love.

*happy sigh*

Christmas is coming and this year I think I might just eschew my perennial egg nog for mulled wine. I’ve wanted to try this for a long long time and I finally remembered to look up a recipe online. The following one is cobbled together from several recipes - I’ve adjusted sugar and other ingredients slightly. I’ll try this out and let you know how it went.

Sounds so yummeh!

Simmer the following ingredients for 20 min. It’s better if you steep in the refrigerator overnight, but if you prefer, strain & drink right away. Serve warm.

* 1 bottle of fruity red wine (Spanish wine is a good choice)
* Sugar to taste (from a few tbsp to 1/4 cup depending on your wine)
* 2 cinnamon sticks
* 3 whole cloves
* 1 tsp grated nutmeg
* 1/2 tsp toasted whole black peppercorns
* 1/2 tsp allspice
* 1/2 vanilla bean
* 1 star anise
* 1 sliced orange
* 1 sliced lemon
* 1 cup cognac/brandy/sloe gin

Today while walking from Wisma Atria to Takashimaya, I noticed that the new wall-to-wall ad in the tunnel featured the Fox Fashion Pass (I assume some sort of loyalty card for Fox apparel store).

I turned to Xing Jian and Michele.

“You know what would be really cool?” I gasped. “They should rename it Fashion Fox Pass!”

“They could have this brilliant tagline! ‘Avoid Fashion Faux Pas - get the Fashion Fox Pass!’”

From , “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”. Terribly funny and distracting during Lit class. Here’re some of the more appealing ones :D

I like this one because I’m always doing this - sizing up how easily zombies can get in, ever since watching Sean of the Dead. I figure if I’m in hall, I’m hiding out in the toilet, because there’s running water and a number lock on the door. Safe.

Sweet :)

Wrote this during class, as part of an exercise to rewrite a narrative into a recount :D

I went to the woods two days ago with a very great mind to eat a little girl up. Fortunately for me, a girl called Little Red Riding Hood came by, looking delectable in her shiny red coat – but there were many woodcutters working nearby and I did not dare to do anything at that moment.

I schemed and plotted and planned to get my jaws around this tasty little girl. I asked her, “Where are you going?” Little Red Riding Hood replied, “I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother.”

I put on my oiliest, smoothest voice and told her I would visit her poor ailing grandmother too. I told her I would go one way while she should go another, and we would see who ended up at her grandmother’s house first.

She took the left fork in the road while I ran as fast as I could down the right fork. It was not long before I reached the old lady’s house, and I rapped smartly on the door.

“Who’s there?” her voice came, old and quavery.

I could barely stop myself from sniggering as I put on my best little girl voice. “Your grandchild, Little Red Riding Hood, who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter from Mother.”

She told me to let myself in – could it really be that easy? – and in a flash I pounced upon the old woman and chewed her up. She was tough and stringy, but oh, how she whetted my taste for fresh, tender little girl meat.

I took the old woman’s clothes and put them on – all the better to trick the little girl with – and got into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. It wasn’t long before a timid little knock sounded at the door.

“Who’s there?” I asked. I could sense that she knew something was up, because of the hoarseness of my voice, so I softened it as much as I could. Stupid little girl, she fell for it and came right in. I licked my chops.

“Come get into bed with me,” I invited. My voice quavered with greed, but she thought it was because I was ill. She stripped off her clothes and climbed into bed with me. I could barely stop myself from drooling on the bedclothes.

I can’t precisely recall what happened next, some inane conversation, but the most exciting part of my afternoon commenced as I fell ravenously upon her warm, sweet little body and gobbled every last bit of her up.

Burp.

If I am lost for a day; try to find me
But if I don’t come back, then I won’t look behind me
All of the things that I thought were so easy
Just got harder and harder each day
December is darkest and June is the light
but this empty bedroom won’t make anything right
While out on the landing a friend I forgot to send home
Who waits up for me all through the night

Calendar girl who’s in love with the world
Stay alive
Calendar Girl who’s in love with the world
Stay alive

I dreamed I was dying; as I so often do
And when I awoke I was sure it was true
I ran to the window; threw my head to the sky
And said “Whoever is up there, please don’t let me die”
But I can’t live forever, I can’t always be
One day I’ll be sand on a beach by a sea
The pages keep turning, I’ll mark off each day with a cross
And I’ll laugh about all that we’ve lost

Calendar Girl who is lost to the world
Stay Alive
Calendar Girl who is lost to the world
Stay Alive

January, February, March, April, May I’m alive
June, July, August, September,October I’m alive
November, December, you all through the winter, I’m alive
I’m alive

Lions for Lambs is being panned by critics all over the place but…I actually kinda liked the movie. Sure, it was a little preachy and a little in-your-face with its preachiness, but I thought that the point of the movie wasn’t to, uh, make a point per se, but to make you think.

It made me think.

I thought about how George Bush is facing the greatest slump in approval ratings that any president in the history of the United States. I thought about how Hollywood is determined to have its say, even if their government won’t listen. I thought about how if a local filmmaker produced a film like this one, in a local context, he’d probably become the local example of why you don’t make films like these in Singapore. I thought about how if Singapore went to war, it’d be my father, my brother, my husband out there fighting and dying for the country.

(Okay, so maybe my father’s too old, and my brother would probably migrate his butt somewhere else, and I’d be begging my husband to do the same.)

But that’s the whole point of the movie. Made me realize that if there was a war, I’d be one of those cutting my losses and running, not staying behind to defend the country, or wanting my loved ones to stay and defend the country. And so I wonder - despite my inherent love of Singapore, even though I don’t think I’d ever want to settle down permanently anywhere else - why I have no desire to give up anything in its defense.

Maybe it’s just because I don’t like pain and suffering and losing my loved ones to war, and if I had the means to run, I would.

“What do you mean, it’s not a real mouse?”

Wouldn’t it be nice? :)

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know it’s gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through

Happy times together we’ve been spending
I wish that every kiss was never-ending
Wouldn’t it be nice

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do
We could be married
And then we’d be happy

Wouldn’t it be nice

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But let’s talk about it
Wouldn’t it be nice

Good night my baby
Sleep tight my baby

On the enthusiastic recommendation of my brother and his wife, Clarence and I headed out to Alexandra this weekend in search of Il Piccolo.

Lately there’s been a rash of Western stalls operated by Westerners opening in random kopitiams all over Singapore, and we’ve been having quite a bit of fun ferreting out all these little places. Botak Jones (Clementi), Crazy Angmo (Bishan), Il Piccolo (Alexandra). Western Chow at Lorong Ah Soo is next on our list. (By the way, Botak Jones beats Crazy Angmo hands down. Not even gonna bother with a review.)

Since we had the car this weekend, we picked the more ulu place to go first - IL PICCOLO. It’s located along the little slip road that leads into Alexandra Food Village, the first little kopitiam that’s on the left, directly after the left bend, along the first row of parking lots you see. It’s deceptively quiet - we got there at about 8.30pm on a Saturday night and all the other stalls were empty.

You can’t miss the stall. It’s riiiight in the middle and they have a huge-ass LCD screen that continually replays their Channel U spot over and over again. Men will enjoy watching Michelle Chia sexily slurp spaghetti (say those three words ten times, fast), and it’s quite enjoyable to watch the chef cooking on TV. The owner’s an honest-to-God Italian dude with a penchant for army pants and a Filipina Thai Asian girlfriend wife cashier who can’t really speak English (or Italian), so point to the menu and say the name of the item really slowly to tell her what you want. Plus point: she won’t know if you accidentally mispronounce the Italian name of your dish. Hurhur.

Shaun recommended the gnocchi and just about everything on the menu, so we eventually picked Frutti di Mare spaghetti for me, carbonara linguine for him, and Gorgonzola pizza to share, with homemade tiramisu and panna cotta for dessert. The prices are reasonable, about $7 for a plate of pasta and a small pizza.

Seafood spaghetti! This one passed the test with fresh juicy sweet prawns (I have a very high standard for prawny things. I love prawwwwwns) and tons of garlic chunks. Luckily for me I have a tolerant boyfriend who doesn’t mind garlic breath :D though I must say the garlic was simmered enough to lose most of its fragrance to the sauce, so it’s still a pretty safe bet on a first date. The clams were okay, squid was a tad too chewy, but the sauce was sweet and yummy, and I spooned up every last drop including every last slice of garlic. I prefer thinner spaghetti though.

Puppy took one sip of his cream sauce and pronounced it good. Real cream, rich flavor, could probably get better elsewhere but for the low price, this is definitely good enough. The ham bits are really tasty and add kick to the sauce. He gobbled up everything too.

The Gorgonzola pizza topping was bloody fabulous - the cheese is gorgeously melty and savory, the onions are just yum, but the pizza base is crappily soggy. Not good. The crust is thin and crunchy and passes the test, but the pizza base ends up soggy and doughy. I had one piece, took a bite of my second and relinquished it to Clare. Not a fan.

But their pasta rocks!

Okay, I didn’t take picture of the very bestest part of the meal - the dessert.

I once lauded Spizzico as having the best panna cotta in town - lusciously velvety creamy vanilla pudding with lashes of lemon sauce and strawberry topping, but at a hefty price of about $9 I think, not something I’d have every other day. Il Piccolo has a beautiful panna cotta, just the right consistency and rich creamy flavor sitting in a pool of brown sugar sauce and a perfectly browned top. And. It’s. Only. Two. Dollars.

*dies and goes to heaven*

Their tiramisu is $2.50 and quite yummy too - though the cocoa powder is unattractively slopped onto the top. I used my spoon to spread it out evenly though that makes it damp. It’s a capalang tiramisu without perfect layers of sponge fingers and mascarpone, everything’s just haphazardly swimming around, but when you’re spooning it into your mouth it all gets mixed up anyway so who needs layers? We licked up every last bit of the dessert and sad to say the stall was closing so we couldn’t have seconds. Too full anyway.

Yay, Il Piccolo. Will definitely want to go back - it’s a nice place to go to after a shopping jaunt at Ikea (unless you’re carrying tons of bags, then it’s a nice place to go before a shopping jaunt at Ikea). I want more cheap and delicious panna cotta. Don’t go too late though. The place closes up around ten.