Can YOU keep a secret?

My turn :) Random things that I'd rather keep to myself, but here's I'm sharing them to you. Pls, keep it to yourself ;)

1. Once when I went to my friend's 'huge' 17th birthday party, i was asked to take part in one silly game which required me to go up and down the stage to pick and move stuffs. Not a good choice for a party where you were not equiped to run up and down some stairs. And here's the 'best' part, when I was about to went down, I somehow stumbled and fell off the stairs, luckily it was only 4 or 5 flights of stairs, but it was in front of hundreds of people, and it ain't just people guys, they're my highschool friends (my highschool crush was there too!!) . Imagine how embarassing was that!! And what made it worse, as I remembered I fell to a position which is not graceful, at all. Of course I acted cool, but it was damn embarassing. After that I swore I wouldn't do any more games.

2. During my 9-month stay in Singapore, I have purchased more or less 25 pairs of shoes (most probably more, I lost count) Is this normal?

3. And 15 bags....

4. When I was very small, until around 12 years old, I always cried whenever my dad took me to a lunch out or a dinner out at a non-aircon place. I seriously cried and refused to eat.

5. I have a serious phobia on lizard. I literally squeal only at the look of it. Something's really wrong with their smooth naked skin, and those tiny round fingers, and the buldging eyes.

6. I'm such a coward when it comes to horror movies. I had trouble sleeping for a week after watching "The Ring" the Japanese version.

7. Last Christmas I got a new Sony digi cam mailed over to me as a Christmas gift, and it was from one French guy I used to date. He said I once said that I wanted a camera of my own to take picture of things around me that I found interesting. I didn't even remember I said that, but he did. So it's true, French people ARE romantic.

8. Me and my boyfriend has a serious problem concerning music we listen.
I like Justin Timberlake. He thinks instead of singing, Justin only makes screeching and weird voices.
He likes Michael Jackson, but he likes the earlier songs like Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Beat It. No offense to Jacko fans, I do like his recent works, but his old songs like Beat It annoys me a lot.

9. I cry a lot during my stay in Singapore, until now. I keep on missing home and my family. But everytime they call me I always act strong. Once, my mom called me while I was crying. I pretended that I had a cough to cover my voice.

10. I slack a lot at work today, and mostly other Fridays. The TGIF feeling always overwhelms me.

Fiuh..Finally it's weekend!! Hope you have a wonderful weekend !

Don't skip breakfast!

That's what my mom always says. I should agree with that. Breakfast is my favorite meal, especially weekend's breakfast, when I can relax and enjoy my meal while scanning through newspaper.

My breakfast menu can be various. I love my mom's chicken porridge and fried rice. Or sometimes my dad will buy "mixed rice" nearby after his jogging session. Or in Singapore I usually eat Singaporeans breakfast which can be 'kaya toast and half-boiled egg' or a portion of mee or kway tiao, or a smaller portion of nasi lemak.

Btw, recently I found a very nice breakfast place, it's called Jones, the grocer. This place is a mixture of a cafe and a deli. So besides serving breakfast and brunch, this place also sells a range of food, from meat, cheese, pasta, home-made sauces, breads, biscuits, tea, coffee, fresh fruit juice, and many others.



Here's what I always have.

New Zealand egg, scrambled (you can have it poached or fried too), and two slices of fresh baked bread with butter on top, sauteed mushrooms, pork sausages, fried bacon, and roasted tomatoes. Yummy. I never count how many calories in those things, got me stressed.

Another favorite of mine are these lovely golden pancakes with mangoes, honey syrup, and vanilla ice cream on top. They're really really nice, and wonderfully mixed.

Oh another favorite, Jones' latte. simply irresistible.

Today's Working Outfit

I work in a research environment, in which people don't really care about fashion. (It might sound unfair to make this generalization, but wait until you see my office with your own eyes)And most of the staffs are guys. These guys are geniuses in information and communication technology thingy. So, their minds are occupied with finding out how to make our world a better place by making communication easier. Yeah, what they do here is seriously pretty cool. You can see a lot of high-tech stuff and robots here and there.

As for me, I don't like abandoning my fashion mind. I will end up having a bad day, really, no kidding. So, although my office is not a high-fashion place, I still 'need' to be in fashion. Of course, I prefer to keep it simple. My collegues mostly wear jeans and polo shirts, so I don't want to look too-much. And recently I'm loving androgynous style, which helps a lot in this androgynous environment.

So here's what I'm wearing today:

Light blue shirt

Comfy pair of jeans

My lovely new oxfords (I love them!)

Black tote

Black bracelet

A pair of tiny rose earrings

Itadakimasu

I love weekend dinner session. A chance to eat fancy :) This time we pampered ourselves with good Japanese food after a long week eating hawker food. So, spending a bit more money feels worthy.

We went to this nice Jap resto in Riverview Hotel, called Irodori.



So here's some of the yummies we had (I didn't managed to take picture of all, cos I forgot to do it until we finished the food)

Enoki wrapped in slices of beef. The beef is tender and juicy. The sauce is a lil bit of sweet and salty. Savoury.

Soft-shell crab handroll. The crab is tenderly crispy, yumm..I love it..

Tempura. The prawns are huge, and juicy. And the dipping sauce is a very light sweet soysauce. One of the best tempura I ever had.



Beef Teriyaki. Nice, juicy beef, and the teriyaki sauce is just right.

I love this one. King prawn baked with cheesy cream on top. Heaven.

Mixed sashimi!! I'm a big fan of these raw things. I cannot name all the fish here, but we had salmon, tuna, swordfish, octopus, and squids. My personal favorites are (I can't choose only one) salmon and swordfish. They are so fresh, tender, and not too fishy. Dip it to the wasabi soysauce. Perfection.

We still had some cawan musi, udon, karage, tempura handroll, and Japanese fried rice. Sounds like a meal for 10, right? But no, this is what I like about this resto, they serve the food in small portion, so that you can order more varieties.

So yeah, we ordered quite a lot, but yet, we finished them all and had no regret. Fabulous dinner :)

I love you

When I broke up with my long-time boyfriend a year ago, I thought I would never love again. I thought I would never find a better guy, because at that time I thought he's the perfect guy.

But God's plan is always so beyond our human thought. Who could have guessed that I would find another guy who might not be as perfect as my ex, but somehow imperfectly perfect for me.
So now here we are, together for six months, and still going strong.



He is a robotic engineer, but far from being boring, 'scientific', over-logical, (no offense, but engineering, science, robotic, and those sorta things are not really my 'thing') he's very funny, and fun to be with. He's a family man, who enjoys spending time with family, including mine, and who really wants to build a family (with a dog!!! finally).

He stands beside me always, comforts me when I'm down, bears with me during my temper rage, encourages me during my complain sessions, makes me happy all the time, shows me off to his friends and family (nothing worse than a boyfriend who makes you feel invisible in front of friends and family)

The ultimate: He cooks! very well! fullstop. (I think that explains my drastic weight gain, shoot)



This picture was taken when he entertained my mom and sis during their visit here few days ago. He's 6 years older than me, which makes me feel protected and pampered somehow. Of course, he annoyes me also sometimes, but well I think I annoy him more.

He doesn't like to take picture. So there he was, hiding. Oh, one more thing, he is a good singer, seriously. He's also quite confident about it. I did encourage him to join Singapore Idol audition, hah, maybe next year.

Things don't always go smoothly between us. We have our ups and downs. But among them all, we know that we can make it through. We don't know how we can, but we know we can. And it's sufficient for me.

And after a long absence, I decided that it's time to say this world-greatest expression again.

I love you ~

Outspeeding Raikkonen

Okay, not really.

But we literally preceded Raikkonen in racing through the coming Singapore F1 track. So, it was kinda cool.

The spotlights were already set up, and we could see the spectators seats. And I did feel like racing through the F1 track, although we were going not more than 60km/hour.

Actually, I'm not a big fan of F1, although Raikkonen is cute ;) but this awaited event really caught my attention. I can really feel the F1-is-coming atmosphere here in Singapore. I wish I can be there, but I think the ticket will be a bit pricey for the good view.

I also heard that there will be performances by Backstreet Boys (I'm not a fan of them anymore, but it still feels good to watch them live), Chaka Khan, Travis, Rivermaya, some great local voices, and many more. Hmm, I think there will be quite a show here. Interested, anyone?

My Fabulous Weekend

My mom and sis came to Singapore over the weekend to visit me *Yayy* My little sis (the one in red) just graduated from university, so this short trip is her graduation gift from me :)

Above pic was taken when we had dinner in P.S. cafe, which is a favourite for me and my boyfriend. I will post more of this dinner, including photos of the food ;)

These were taken on Friday, when we spent the day (one whole ddday) in Orchard to do some shop-till-you-seriously-drop session. We pampered ourselves and, splurged!! Well, what else can we do in Singapore? It is a pure place for food indulgence and shopping spree, so that's what we did. So at the end of that day, our hands were full of shiny shopping bags. Heaven.

Of course, we also did a lot of catching-ups. Sharing stories, jokes, latest 'local' gossips. Just like what we used to do, when I was still in Indonesia. It was such a blast. My boyfriend also joined us on Saturday. He has been such a sweet boyfriend I should say. He drove us anywhere we wanted, accompanied us patiently from store to store without a single complain (isn't that amazing?) and the best thing was he got along very well with my family. He loves spending time with my family, and my family also likes him a lot. I couldn't ask for more.

I love shopping with my mom and sis, but the problem is we always end up shopping too much. So, to avoid that, I decided to take them to a place where we cannot shop. Yeah, i took them to the Night Safari. This night safari is actually the first and the only night safari in the whole world. They call it Night Safari because, of course, it's opened at night, around 8 o'clock. It was kinda creepy but very exciting. I had my face a few centimetres away from one full-grown leopard's face, of course with a piece of glass between us, but hey, that was my closest encounter with the wild, and it was awesome. We were also spending a few minutes in a huge cage full of flying squirells. They looked cute, but if you have them soaring a few inches above your head, well that's what I call one hell of adventure. Cool ;)

All in all, our short trip was a great fun. We had such a fabulous time. And, the best part is that I am now fully recharged. I'm really looking forward to their next visit, hopefully next time will be my whole family.