tell me about it

I be hot and sweaty and gross in school :( Man these classrooms are sweltering. I don’t know how my students stand the heat, in their uniforms all day long. No wonder they’re always begging me to let them take off their ties. Lucky for me I’ve been acquiescing – now I know how they suffer! It’s broiling in here and I’m in a lined dress.

Oooooh I hear thunder. Please rain please!

Anyway I’m in school for meet-the-parents session. Ha – I’ve been the student, cowering in fear of what my teacher might tell my parents; now I’m the teacher, delivering the good and bad news to parents. One day hopefully I’ll be the parent being grumpy at having to attend these things.

So if the student hates it, and the teacher hates it, and the parent hates it…why do we have these things?

It’s going to be a late night. It’s only supposed to end past 7pm. Sniffle.

A reminder of mortality today. We’d gone for a free health screening a couple of weeks ago – civil servant entitlement apparently. Nothing more than a quick blood pressure test and drawing of a three small vials of blood for some basic tests. Blood sugar levels etc. I opted for an extra test for cervical cancer. So anyhoo my colleague got a call today from the medical people and apparently out of a normal 5 for cancer markers, her stomach area registered a 5.6. And she’s really young, really sporty, and has two sons. She’s going in for a checkup to see – they said it could possibly just be an infection. But it’s so scary. I really hope she’ll be okay.

Off to Nanjing tomorrow. I haven’t packed nor have I changed money. Gyarrrrrh.

Off to Nanjing in a couple of weeks for a school trip. It’ll be moderately cool (right now temps are at 24deg C, but they are likely to drop 5-10 degrees in the next two weeks – brrr) and it’s something I really need – to get away from the heat of Singapore. Is it just me or is it bloody sweltering here while the rest of the world (bar Australia, I suppose) is happily throwing snowballs at each other? Bah. I actually miss the freeziness of Europe’s winter. At least I could sip lovely hot spiced ciders all day long. Here I’m just sitting under the fan in an air-conditioned room stark naked sipping iced Fuji Apple.

Of course, it’s the perfect timing for our van’s A/C to break down, so it did.

Would the sister mail some New York snow here please?

Okay I am Glee! mad and have watched 5 episodes in one night with their songs on repeat ad nauseam when I’m not watching them. My husband (glee!), who provided me with the episodes in the first place, is sort of kinda really regretting it. Hurhur. Especially when I wake him up for dinner by putting “Don’t Stop Believing” on repeat and singing loudly to it.

Me (lustily singing): “FOR A SMILE THEY CAN SHARE THE NIGHT IT GOES ON AND ON AND ON…”

Irate Hubba (rolling around in bed madly smothering his face in the pillow): “IT IS GOING ON AND ON WHY IS THE SAME SONG GOING ON AND ON AND ON?!!??”

Me: SOME WILL WINNN SOME WILL LOSE! SOME CAN ONLY SING THE BLUUUUUUUES!”

Irate Hubba: *weep*

Me: DOOOON’T STOP!

Miserable Hubba: Please stop.

Don’t Stop Believing (originally by Journey; covered by Sam Tsui)

One of my favorite songs of all time in (almost) a cappella – and a guy with an amazing (albeit girly) voice. This arrangement is from my new favorite show Glee (even though I have not watched a single episode yet, haha blush).

Michael Jackson Medley (arr. and performed by Sam Tsui)

Sighhhh happy music face on.

I’m currently doing up a post about my wedding vendors – who I used, how much they cost, an evaluation of their services – but I’m trying to do a full review for that complete with pictures and it’s taking some time, so here’s a wedding post to hold you till that comes out.

I love love love Etsy because I’ve always adored handmade, unique crafts and appreciated people who make beautiful things with their hands (that’s one big reason why I fell for the hubba). Here’s a list of local (Singaporean) vendors on Etsy that handmake things that can add that precious, special touch to your wedding day.

All photos in the post are taken from Etsy and belong to the vendors who create the items pictured in each photo.

1. Wedding cards

Fairylovingcreation creates beautiful wedding cards and assorted paper crafts. You can customize with her or you can pick one of her stock designs. Prices are a tad high – the peony wedding invite pictured above is US$3 per card, and the fan wedding programs are US$4.50 each. But you pay a high price for individual handworked items and I think it’s worth it. Just pray that your guests don’t throw them away!

2. Ring bowls

Lovegrowsbygiving introduces a novel way to display wedding rings, rather than using the traditional pillow. The bowl can be used after the wedding to store keys or jewelry and is really rather lovely with its scrollwork and unglazed finish. Prices start from US$14; the one pictured above is US$24. You can also customize the item to have your names or initials or a specific meaningful quote on the bowl.

3. Ring pillows

To be quite honest I detest the lacey, frothy, pale and fake-flowered concoctions that the jewelry places give with their wedding rings. They’re mass-made, machine-made, and look cheap. For my wedding I made my ring pillow from scratch! But you might not have the time or inclination and thus Karenyee’s amazing handsewn pillows are just the thing for you. Using materials like corded lace and silk ribbon, her pillows come in a myriad of deep jewel-tones. They are unique and look so perfectly put together, they’re sure to add a regal and polished touch to your walk down the aisle.

4. Hair flowers

I got my own set of wedding fleurs from Fleurettejo – one for me, two small ones for my bridesmaid, and two on a hairband for my flowergirl. I absolutely loved the holistic, seamless look that brought our three different outfits together. Jo does beautiful work and also does customizations. Go for the white or ivory ones if you’re traditional, but if you’re a daring bride, let her brightly colorful blooms beautify your hair on your wedding day! She can even do you a matching pair of earrings.

5. Envelope labels, rubber stamps, cards, etc

Zoopri produces all manner of things – customized envelope labels to stick on your wedding invitation envelopes, for example, or if you’re feeling more environmentally friendly you could do a rubber stamp with return address and wedding website instead, which has a lovely charm all to itself. And I’ve always loved Save-The-Dates – though we sent ours out online to save on postage and addressing envelopes. Zoopri has an amazingly comprehensive range of designs, paper goods and services, and you’re sure to find something that will suit you and your wedding theme.

6. Floral arrangements

Strangely enough Zoopri also offers artificial flower arrangements. They’re actually really really pretty and very elegant – and with artificial flowers, you won’t have to worry about delicate transport, or timing to ensure the flowers are in full bloom and won’t wilt halfway through your ceremony. And you get to keep them! These are rather pricey though – the first one above is the cheapest one going for US$65.

Today’s Etsy selections. Lovely color :)

I made homemade cream of mushroom soup tonight along with simple vegetables, garlic mashed potatoes and grilled striploin. The meat was fantastic though I accidentally oversalted the potatoes, heh. But the mushroom soup was really amazing. And so simple to make /: so I’m sharing my recipe. Woo!

Serves two hungry people
Ingredients:
- a whole bunch of mushrooms (I used the plastic wrapped tray from the supermarket; they had three or four different varieties inside)
- butter
- half a chicken stock cube
- half a large bowl of water
- one small sweet onion, chopped finely (I used two large slices from a big onion)
- one small clove of garlic, chopped
- about a generous teaspoon of flour
- half a tin of Nestle cream or about 1/4 cup fresh cream
– pepper to taste

Make sure your pan is smoking hot, then wipe it with a generous pat of butter. Sauté chopped garlic for about a minute then add the onions, stirring until soft. Add the mushrooms into the pan and stir well. The mushrooms will deflate. If your pan seems a bit dry you can add just a little bit more butter to the mushroom mixture. Turn the heat down.

In a separate bowl, pour boiling water over half a chicken stock cube to make about half a large bowl of stock. Of course if you’re more industrious than I am, please use homemade chicken stock. It’s much healthier!

Sift the teaspoon of flour over the mushrooms. Stir briskly with your stirring thing until mixed in nicely. Pour the chicken stock over the mushroom mixture and stir to blend all the flavors together. Allow the soup to simmer for about 5 minutes.

If using tinned cream, shake the tin vigorously before opening. Even after opening, I poured some of the soup into the tin and stirred briskly with a fork to make sure the cream was smooth. Still, the cream tends to break up when it heats up (this was my leftover cream from yesterday’s pasta and the same thing happened. Maybe I shouldn’t recommend tinned cream, huh). Stir the cream into the soup and let simmer for about a minute. Not too long.

Following your manufacturing instructions, use an electric blender to cream the soup. Not in the pan, of course. My hand blender comes with a plastic jug so I used that. Cream for about two to three minutes until there are no chunks left in the soup – depending on how chunky you like it, really. I creamed it thoroughly as the tinned cream was breaking into tiny curds due to the heat and the blending mixed it up nicely.

Another thing you can do is reserve some of the mushroom chunks before adding the soup, and use a spoon to fold the reserved mushroom into the soup after blending it.

I didn’t add any salt to mine as it was the perfect saltiness. Add pepper to taste and serve hot!

It’s really hard to watch my babies grow up. I’ve had them for the last two years and it’s funny to think how intimidated by them I was at first – especially the girls who were so poseur ah lian, combing hair in class, talking back at me, challenging me in class. But now those are the two that snuggle up to me the most in terms of attention and affection-seeking, and I have a terribly soft spot for my whole batch of Normal Technical children. They even call me Mummy. How do I not love them? :/

They’ve officially graduated from school though they’re still doing their NT national final examination, and I get a bit panicky and afraid wondering who on earth is going to take care of them after they leave the school. When they go to ITE. Who’s going to understand them and love them and protect them? How can they possibly be allowed to grow up? They’re all teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood – most are older than 16 already. They swagger about and talk big about things that they don’t really understand. But in reality they have such childlike hearts and minds and many of them have such fragile emotions as they don’t get much in the way of affection at home. Which explains why I’ve become surrogate mother. Aargh it’s so silly because they’re not even my kids but their growing pains are etched on my own heart. I love them to bits.

I know the best thing for them is to go out and experience the world – of all children these are the ones who need to understand hard knocks and how to cope in a rough world. They’re the ones who are largely going to survive with simple jobs and menial work and probably won’t be super well-off (unless they go into the beauty industry and become fabulous hairdressers or makeup artists etc). They’ll need to know how to live with what they have and cope with problems that I have difficulty comprehending. So I know it’s best for them to be…released into the wild, as it were, to learn to deal with the real world, to recognize authority, to learn responsibility and accountability. Sigh. But I’m so afraid of letting them fall down. I can only pray they learn how to pick themselves up and go at it again.

It’s so hard to let go of my babies. How on earth did my mother cope? :(