Tis the time of year!

REACH for the stars!!

The streets are all decked up in pretty lights this year. Feel like I'm in a fairy tale... hey, the theme this year is based on the Nutcracker Suite.

It's getting more and more frustrating to walk and drive along Orchard Road!! It's perpetually JAM PACKED!! Thank goodness my Christmas shopping is done and I can avoid going there now!! *phew*



Trying to blend in with the Mannequins (even Chewie in all her white glory). LOL..


An early greeting to all my friends and family -
Merry Christmas and a VERY Happy New Year!

Christmas in Singapore 2007 with CHEWIE !!

Christmas With Friends

December 25, 2006 - Christmas Day

Thanks to our hostess (and her home-made specially roasted turkey), it has become almost an exsingers tradition to gather for a Peranakan meal and gift exchange on Christmas Day.

We all contributed, in our little (very little) way, to the feast.

Wai Kuen brought her sister's brandy-irrigated fruit cake all the way from Ipoh! After 2 bites, I felt a little 'happier' ;-)

Su/Boon brought "Sweet Maltese Wine of Superior Quality". Notice the cute label of photostated quality.. LOL.. Being a sweet wine, Ed and I loved it.

I brought 2 trays of low-fat, low-sodium beef shephard's pie but I think the low-x didn't score high points.. sigh..

I also prepared little tequilla-cointreau jello-shots (with strawberries) which were pretty potent I was told. The kiddy jello-shots (no tequilla, with kiwi) did not harden because (according to Karilyn) kiwi fruit prevents them from hardening! What do you know.... Gotta remember that!



Steph, who is also Peranakan, brought her mom's ever popular kuei pie-tee. Something about the hei-bee in the bang kuang (or maybe it was the chilli) made it so yummy!



Ed dazzled us with his tiramisu (FINALLY got to taste it again after SO many years)!! Creamy, sinful but this is truly how tiramisu should taste like!!


Mag's mom prepared all the traditional favourites - Curry Chicken, Beef Rendang, Ayam Buah Keluak (my favourite!), Nonya Chap-Chye, Ayam Pongteh and Bakwan Kepiting (soup). ALLLL yummmikinsss!! The Beef Rendang was specially prepared by Mag's mom upon the Beng's request - who UNFORTUNATELY could not make it because she was down with the flu!! What perfect timing! Shin Joo had to collect her prezzies for her and she reported later that Beng looked terrible.. Poor thing..





Finally, the freshly roasted honey-glazed turkey. This year's stuffing was a special Quinoa Stuffing that Mag invented. I loved it but I wish my tummy had more space to eat 2nd and 3rd helpings!!



*zoned out from all the eating and the jello shots*

To see more faces (cos I seem to have mostly food pics here. hehe..), go to kakatua's entry.

Kurt Wenner - google eye extraordinaire

Merry Christmas, one and all!!

Today (24 Dec), I somehow got to a blog which brought me to another blog.. well, that's how it is with surfing - one thing led to another and I got wind that Kurt Wenner was here at our National Museum! Slaps my forehead for missing this - duh!

YOU KNOW HIM!!! He's the guy who sketches on the floor. Actually, there are many artistes who do this but this guy is exceptional.

Heck it that today was Christmas eve and all, I had to go and collect the log cake anyway, so perfect opportunity for me to pop by the museum for a peep! Found free parking (yay!) behind The Substation by the way!



The new museum looks sparse with its high ceiling and cold metal fittings.

I got in the way of some kids playing a life-size Snakes & Ladders game, and also saw this kid whose mother had "pinned" him onto a metal wall with magnetic strips! LOL.. Cute installations but I wanted Kurt Wenner!!



I was praying that these VIOLENTLY swaying chandeliers would not fall on my head as I crossed the bridge! haha...



Finally!!! I caught a first glimpse of his work! My jaws almost hit the floor and damaged his art-work! It looks like nothing at first, just a very well drawn street art. But when you look through a fish-eye lens, you will see the WHOLE portrait rise up three-dimensionally and realistically!





When you look through the fish-eye lens - the picture suddenly makes sense and each character pops to life miraculously. You can even see the little details like the town and people's reflection on the pond. The rocks around the edge look deceptively real, just like his other works.
For this installation, Kurt has drawn a depiction of the life of Iskandar, the last King of Singapore. You can see how huge it is by size of the people standing next to it.



This is how it looks like flat on the ground.



Kurt has this amazing ability to see things in another perspective and is somehow able to translate it into something flat. I decided to find out just how much distortion he has to deal with. Using Photoshop Elements, I skewed and transformed two small details of the painting. Click to see enlarged photos and be amazed.



This guy's been attacked by a head shrinker from Beetlejuice! LOL..


While viewing Kurt's website, I couldn't help but notice that the floor art featured in the website are not cordoned off or barricaded by these red straps. Why, you wonder.. read on...

There was a kid that almost ran onto the art-work but was pulled back just in time by his mother. Later on, I heard another mother (pushing a pram) telling a guard that they should put up higher barricades so as to prevents kids from running in! That's so typical! Blaming authorities for their kids' misbehaviour!! These people should look at themselves first before blaming others for their failures! Their kids become total BRATS because parents let them. If the cannot behave in a museum, they shouldn't be allowed in! I will not compromise my enjoyment of art for brats!



Still can't get enough of the art-work? here're more photos :





To see his work-in-progress when he was still here in Singapore, you can go to Sparklette's blog. She's got some pretty awesome pictures there too.

Va Va Voom

36 Seah Street
This is our third visit to this little Vietnamese restaurant and this time I remembered to take out my camera.



We like this restaurant because it serves simple but tasty Vietnamese food and it's not overflowing with crowds like most places in town! Finding parking around the Seah St/Purvis St area was HELL(!!) and we resorted to paying a hefty $5.25 for parking at Raffles Hotel. By the time we got here, it was past 8pm.

We would always order the sour plum (S'ng-buei) drink with soda because it's so refreshing. For appetiser, we had Morning Glory salad with Chicken, which we initially thought would be kang-kong. It turned out to be this shredded greens which looked like spring onions but didn't taste as pungent. It went well with the fried onions, chillies, peanut and plum sauce. Yummmms...



Here's Mag looking like she's enjoying squeezing the lime into the beef soup!



Oh! The Authentic Grilled Pork Noodles was good! The grilled pork had a light charred taste which we love. Mag's complaint for this dish was - there are too many tau-geh's (bean sprouts)!! No matter - they went into MY tummy!



What's Vietnamese food without Beef Noodles, right? The wholesome hot beefy soup can make anyone warm up and feel right at home! I didn't really like the beef balls though - too 'beefy'! LOL... Next time we shall order pure beef slices.



We paid a very reasonable $23 for our dinner and hey(!), there was still time for shopping!! We walked through Raffles Hotel, smelling the REAL pine tree on the way and chanced upon a choir Christmas carolling! They were not bad at all. Tenors were right up there and sounded very pleasant. Can't say the same for the girls though - they could do with more anchoring and support.

Found out that it was the VJC choir (that would explain the high standards of the boys, hehehe...) and it almost made us wish we were singing in a choir again! We quickly shook that thought from our heads and hurried on towards Raffles City.



Is the theme of this year's Christmas decoration "o-biang Christmas Trees"?? Yesterday I saw a pink tree. Today, it's this weird green tree with strange fuchsia coloured flowers. Bizarre..



And the "late-night shopping" was a farce! What late-night? All the shops started to turn off their lights and close by 10pm!

TWO more days to Christmas!!!!

Fisher The Band

Fisher the Band has some great Christmas tracks on their website for free downloading. Very nice music for a quiet Christmas in front of the fireplace. Err.. oh yeah, we don't have fireplaces in Singapore - Christmas in the Tropics, right. Oh well... ;)

Read their Biography. It's great that they let people download their music for free. If people like their music, they would naturally just buy the CD. Their song "Beautiful Life" is used in a Toyota ad. One of my faves is Dirty Girl - it's got a catchy tune and beat.

Enjoy!