tell me about it

Hi all!

Hope all of you are not too stressed and overworked. End of the year is here, and it’s time to celebrate the holiday season and God’s gift of love…

I just thought I’d like to share my prayer point with all of you because…I need your help!

I am leaving tomorrow (today!) for Paris/London on a work trip – bringing 15 underprivileged Literature students on a Lit trip. These kids are bright and smart and are A1 scorers, but come from poor backgrounds and all but two kids are on school financial assistance. We want to give these kids a chance to travel and to extend their learning, opportunities that they normally wouldn’t be able to have.

We’ve managed to raise about half of what we need for them already (we believe that children shouldn’t be given complete handouts – they have worked themselves to pick up about $1500 of their tab by their own) and we need to raise the other half – soon. We are looking to raise now about 17k to pay the bill, and if there’s any left over it will go into seed funds for next year’s trip.

Rest assured you are not paying for rich kids to go on a shopping jaunt. The itinerary is so packed and I have created and designed a comprehensive learning package for them to do that there is not even any allocated time for R&R! The two kids who are not on financial assistance have paid their trip amount IN FULL by themselves, but as part of the group they too are working and playing an equal role to raise funds for their friends who cannot pay the full amount – we believe in paying it forward. One for all, all for one.

Why am I sending long chatty emails at this time…? Because I would like to appeal to you to help out…………

We are not asking for handouts (though of course if you would like to give a no-strings attached monetary gift, we wouldn’t say no!). Our students are hand-decorating boxes to sell to raise funds. The boxes are filled with lovely things and make great Christmas pressies. See the attached file below for info and to order. We’ve already lined up some corporate sponsors who have indicated their wish to buy some boxes, but we still need lots more help – $17k worth of help, so every little bit counts.

I’ll be off tomorrow and only back on the 8th, but please go ahead and order whenever you like. Please help our children for Christmas :) Sponsors can also request for a simple photojournal of the trip, compiled by the students after they return.

thank you all and much love,
Beth

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Isn’t it depressing when constantly scheduling daily visits to the hospital in all the in-betweens of your day becomes almost natural to you?

Too familiar.

“My grandfather on my mom’s side?” I once replied flippantly in response to a question. “He’s strong lah. He’s like Lee Kuan Yew. He’s never going to die.”

And now I eat my words as at age 83 my grandfather lies frail and fragile in a hospital bed. How tenuous our grip on this life. How fleeting our mortality.

“做老人是很辛苦的,” my aunt murmurs as she gently strokes his hand which is fitfully jerking and shifting under the cotton blankets. They’re still stained with blood from last night and I flinch from the obvious indication of his condition.

God grant grace and peace.

Am I a shameless fangirl or am I a shameless fangirl? Okay, not completely shameless – I’m feeling a teeny bit of horror somewhere that I’m grinning like a fool right now.

The Backstreet Boys (minus one, because Kevin will always be a part of BSB – geez, listening to myself makes me want to throw up a little bit in shame) performed at TRL about two hours ago – and I ALREADY HAVE MY MITTS ON THE VIDEO!!!!!!!!

*BEAMS*

Oh man, this is totally nostalgic. They still sound amazing – how many boybands nowadays sound this good live? – and although they’re all a bit pudgy, Brian’s velvet voice is still my absolute favorite and Nick Carter is still the necessary evil of the band, whiny and annoying but aiyah it wouldn’t be BSB without him. Though I miss Kevin’s crazy bass.

IS THIS NOT WONDERFUL?!

Check out how all their screaming fangirls are……..my age.

:D

ok this is insane i just crawled into my super dusty archive area to dig out my backstreet boys cds. i have them ALL. teehee.

No matter how she twisted and angled herself, she couldn’t find that sweet spot, couldn’t settle her body comfortably on the wooden bench. She propped her heels on the edge, put them down again. Sat sideways; but then she couldn’t see the water. She gave up, and just sat.

And sat, for what seemed like ages, though her watch proclaimed it to be a mere three minutes. She checked her phone – still no message – and flicked it open and shut, open and shut. The mocking screen announced that another minute had managed to crawl by.

She sat, staring at the water. Trying to will time to pass quickly.

Another minute, then another.

She sat.

It came upon her slowly, barely unnoticeable at first, but gradually the hairs on her arm began to stand. She shivered in the chill night breeze that had sprung up out of nowhere. Then she smelt it – cloying, sweet, a thick flowery scent wafting through the air. Goosebumps standing along her arms. The smell growing stronger. A nervous glance around proved that no one was near.

Calmly but quickly she grabbed her bag, muttered a quiet “Sorry, sorry”, and walked briskly out of there. Out of the cold spot, out of the waft of scent. Back out to the main road. She shivered again, this time not from cold, but from sheer nerves, as she left the area as fast as she could. Heart thumping.

Don’t look back.

Oh, the gorgeousness.

From Revolve Clothing. Out of stock, unfortunately, but with a price tag of US$350, might as well be.

Best. Japanese. Food. Ever.

Kandagawa, at Hotel Royal. Smoked duck with yuzu sorbet, spinach salad with bacon, zaru soba, sashimi, black pepper beef.

It was…it was. Wow. Absolutely delicious.

Best EVER.

About $60 per pax for dinner.

Its heart was all aflutter
Along then came the 8.15,
*toot toot*
Peanut Butter!

I never realized how perfectly beautiful the pairing of chocolate and peanut butter could be until I tried Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. And then the light dawned, and my eyes lit, and a whole new world was opened unto me.

So I made peanut butter cookies with chocolate icing :)

* 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 cup butter, softened
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/2 cup peanut butter
* 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
* 1 egg, beaten
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 tablespoons milk
* 1 packet of peanut butter M&Ms

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Cream together the butter, sugar, peanut butter and brown sugar until fluffy.
3. In a small bowl, beat the egg, milk and vanilla together until smooth. Pour into the peanut butter mixture and mix thoroughly.
4. Sift the flour, baking soda and salt into the peanut butter mixture. I blended it lightly with a fork before whipping it for about 2 minutes with an electric whisk.
5. Loosely crush the peanut butter M&Ms in a mortar so that you get chunks. Fold evenly into the batter.
6. Shape into about 40 balls and place onto a baking tray.
7. Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes.
8. Allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

Topping:

* 1/3 cup butter
* 3/4 cup chocolate chips
* 1 tablespoon of peanut butter (more if you like)

DIRECTIONS

1. Melt all ingredients together in a hot water bath.
2. Dip each cookie face down in the melted chocolate to cover the top.
3. Allow to cool and then start smacking the eager hands reaching out for your cookies!

How blessed to be loved by a man such as he.

I bought a box of drawers from Ikea and decoupaged it!

This is what it looked like originally:

The drawers are not fixed, and are reversible…so I decoupaged both sides of the drawers. One side green and one side red, so that I can switch them around to match whatever location I put it in in future :)

This is the green side!

And this is the red side!

And true to my klutzy nature I managed to kiap the side of my hand in a pair of pliers and hammer the edge of my thumb, raising blood blisters. Bah moron.

For the paper, I used cardstock from Made With Love – C will tell you how ridiculously long I queued (half an hour) for the red paper last Thursday. The store was having some sort of promotion and women were thronging the aisles like aunties at a buffet. Poor C stood around fuming at the inefficiency while I patiently lined up and made apologetic faces at him. Was inwardly quite mad as well, but I think my years in the service industry always makes me sympathetic in the end. Somebody had the bright idea for the cashiers to cut out these tiny little sticker things as reward points or something; people made the cashiers wait while they ran off into the shop to get more items to top up to a certain amount, signed up for membership cards etc, while the queue snaked all the way out of the shop. With only about ten people in front of me, I lined up for a full half hour. My face was quite black too, especially with this super annoying deh girl in front of me WHO WAS SQUEEZING HER BOYFRIEND’S ZITS WITH HER BARE HANDS TWENTY CM AWAY FROM ME.

*shudder*

But when I finally reached the counter and saw how poor-thing-frazzled the cashier was, yet putting on a cheerful and polite front, I smiled at her and asked her if she was having a bad day – “Long day, more like it,” was her woeful reply, and she apologized for making us wait so long, and I said it was OK, and I hope I made her day a little better by not complaining like a fishwife :)

Anyhoo, so here’s my crafty project for the week – my pretty box. Using the red side for now to justify the crazy long wait for the pretty cardstock :D Also because it matches the similarly Ikea paper file folders beside it. Teehee.

I would have liked one more – this one – but I couldn’t find it at the Alexandra Ikea. :( If anyone sees it please let me know!!