Best of Ally again : Nov-14

Update on the latest portfolio of my model, Ally.

New toy - fisheye lens : Nov-14

Purchased a new photography toy, a fisheye lens, to capture another perspective of things.  It comes after much consideration on the options available, and I finally settled with the authentic Canon 8-15mm Fisheye Lens. 

Tried out a few shots and because of its distortion image, the pictures were not generally well accepted.  However, the real test of the lens will probably during our Tokyo trip where I intended to capture some landscape photos with this lens, let’s wait and see it’s result.

XinYang YongYang Anniversary : Nov-14

Maintaining passion require diligent effort and determination.  After we handled over Nanyang Junior college pugilistic alumni to Adrian and team, they had done a great job in up keeping this Chinese culture of Lion and Dragon dancing.  Although constantly faced with various obstacles, the team had never gave up and pressed on.  They even spin off and formed their own clubs, namely XinYang for the male team and YongYang for the female team.

After several years of hardwork, these teams had shown results and achieved multiple awards in competitions and events.  This year marked the 8th year anniversary for XinYang and 2nd year for YongYang, and the team decided to have an anniversary celebration for the first time.

Adrian was kind to engage to alumni members in the preparation process.  After more than 6 months of preparation, we were finally ready to brace the event proudly and happily.  We were even honored to invite Dr Fatimah as our Guest of Honour.  Personally I had also invited the entire family for the anniversary dinner.  It was a great eventful night and definitely a memorable one.

Ukulele moments with En'en : Nov-14

After buying a Sapprano ukulele for En’en during our Taiwan trip last Dec, I did not really take the effort to teach her how to play.  It was only during the Teacher’s day celebration in September when En’en heard her teacher singing a Chinese song “隐形的翅膀” which I had played before,  that  triggered her little passion.  She started asking me to teach her play that song on her ukulele, and learnt the ukulele cords in a lighting speed.  It started off with a few complaints on the fingering, but soon she was coping really well.  After her first song, she continue to extend her passion to another few popular tunes before asking me how to play some simple melody.  I took a little time to explain to her how to read the melody score and to my pleasant surprise, she completely understood how it worked only with a few questions.  She then proceed to learn her first melody “My grandfather’s clock” all by herself and after a few days, we were able to perform as a team.  Fantastic demonstrate on how passion could drive an individual. 

Enjoy the video on our first duet ukulele performance!

Double milestones birthday celebrations : Nov-14

Shin Yang and Qiqi birthdays were 2 weeks apart, but 'coz Qi was having her 'O' levels during Shin Yang's birthday, we did not have the chance to celebrate together at Papa's place.  During an exam break, we returned and celebrated the two 'key milestone' birthdays of the year, a "sweet 16" and a "welcome 40s"!

En's PSLE Marking Day 3: Oct-14

Many primary one kids do not have exams in their first year, but not En. It was her first very SA2. She had little idea what exam entailed. In fact, I would say, she had no idea at all; she did not know when were her exam dates and each time I urged her to revise her work, she would claim to have studied everything!!? Strange thing was, she said the same during her other SA and CAs, but her results left much to be desired..

Being in primary one, I do not want to come down too hard on En as I want her to enjoy and like school. I thought taking a year or so to adapt to the new school system is reasonable. Moreover her exams would only happen after the three- or four- day PSLE marking day. I could make use of that short break to go through her schoolwork if necessary.

Nevertheless, by day three of the PSLE marking day break, En got so restless that she insisted on going out, going to T3 to sit on the slides! As she had been a pretty good girl the past couple of days , we made our way there by late morning. The slides should be opened by then, I thought. 

Somehow, the slides were not opened. No explanation was given, it was simply closed. Naturally En was very upset!! Fortunately she soon bounced back to her happy self and even played for a long while in the young children's playground, making playmates in the process! The T3 shopping mall was quite good as there was no crowd. We tried to buy a pair of shoes for En but she found nothing she liked. I ended up getting a watch for myself, a brand-less automatic clock face watch which looked like a chrono; paid almost $200. Well, I'll take it as an early birthday gift for myself!! (.(

We also explored more of T3 and I gave En a waffle ice-cream treat!! We had a casual late lunch and En even managed to do some work at the eatery.

A Childhood Favourite 鸡蛋糕 : Sep-14

This is a rather hectic but fun month for me, in my own kitchen. Hahaa.. It began first with the snowskin mooncakes, followed by rice cooker cakes. Then Victor requested for me to make one of his childhood favourite, the 鸡蛋糕 with the raisins. Hey, the 鸡蛋糕 is also one of my favourite breakfast food, but I prefer the plain one with the soft paper cup and the red dot on the cake.

The 鸡蛋糕 is definitely a steamed cake, one that I can make in my kitchen!! With this basic knowledge I went on my hunt for a recipe on the internet!! I was surprised there were so many versions of this simple cake.. some were seemingly arrange ingredients like cream soda or Eno, and still other recipes with ingredients so sophisticated that I have never heard of it!! At the verge of calling it a day, I came across this professional food blogger who actually tried out d various 鸡蛋糕 recipes including the traditional one which requires only the three ingredients of eggs, sugar and flour. Naturally I chose the simplest recipe and began my trial..

My first attempt was a success!! It really had that very eggy fragrance.. I LOVE IT!! And Victor loved it too!! Especially with my pre-soaked raisins.. It was really heavenly with my kopi-o..... 😍😍

With 3 eggs, 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of flour, the 鸡蛋糕 I made did not last very long before they were all eaten up. I could not wait to make and eat another batch!!

Actually I was feeling a little guilty about consuming so much sugar. In a bid to ease my guilt, I attempted a healthier version of the 鸡蛋糕 with buckwheat flour (instead of white flour) and brown sugar (instead of white sugar). The end result was rather dry.. and not so nice. Guess if I really want a healthier 鸡蛋糕 the next time, I will mix buckwheat flour with plain white flour! Also I have to make sure I use caster sugar (which is simply grinding coarse sugar into powder form!!). 

Hahaa.. Before the month ran out, I have steamed my own 鸡蛋糕 at least 4 times!! For the 4th time, I really went back to study the recipe and made sure I followed every instruction to a T. I may not have yield the softest or tastiest cake yet, but the satisfaction was tremendous and I even enjoyed my 鸡蛋糕 even more!!

GSK Crab Feast again : Sep-14

It must be about 6 times that we had held a GSK crab feast sessions, starting from around 2004.  Apart from the 2 occasions which we held at Wai Chuan and Lily place, the remaining sessions were organised at our place.   Through these years, Lily’s pepper crabs had gained undisputed recognition and attracted many fans, even those who had left GSK would miss them badly.   After a gap of 2 years, we decided to arrange another feast this year and I initiated the invitation.  It was an easy task with Lily’s reputation on hand, some even brought along their family members to share the joy.

Set up by Papa

On the day, everyone in the family helped to prepare the gathering.  En’en was already excited a few days before the event, and kept asking if there would be children coming along and if we would like her to perform her ukulele… Papa help to clean and set up the tables and chairs, Mama cooked her famous agar-agar and curry chicken, Shin Yang prepared her best dessert and fruits, Qi helped to buy donuts and Xuan clean up the house…etc etc.  It was amazing how we worked together to serve our guests and I am so proud of our strong family bonds and mutual understanding.

Feasting

 

Personally, I could not further express Lily’s big heart in offering to cook for us.  I had volunteered to help on one occasion to “kill” the crabs, that task alone blew me off and since, learnt to appreciate the massive effort in preparing the feast.  It was a great gathering and coincidentally also Lily’s wedding anniversary date, so I bought a cake for her to celebrate with her love one as well as to thank her kindness.

Greenscreen fun@Papa's place : Sep-14

On a Sunday evening, I decided to bring our portable greenscreen to papa's place and had some fun.  And indeed, the outputs were remarkable and impressive, anyone seems to like it and we even planned for a second session which we would dress up and make up our hair!

Adventure Purple Hair!! : Sep-12

It all began with Dor. Having laid her hands on some purple hairdye, she bleached and colored Hong's then Korean-style longish & permed hair to a beautiful purple! A darkish kind of purple which was subtle and at the same time mesmerizing. I was first captivated by it when Hong attended a RHQ leaders meeting and he was sitting a few rows in front. Hmm.. Nice, I thought. At that time, I did not think it was a DIY job. It was so good, you see..

I subsequently noticed too, the ends of Dor's mane were purplish too. Not quite the same shade as Hong's but still nice. Hong then revealed that Dor was the hair colorist responsible for his and her own hair color change, and that she was about to color Van's hair soon too! Dor then offered to color my hair too if I was keen.. Of course I was!! (^_*)

We--Dor, Van and I--began to hunt for pictures which would be the end-result of how we would want our hair to look like..

It was a girly project. It was pretty fun! As I finally decided that I wanted ombré beginning with black, then blue, then purple, I dyed my own hair for the second time in my entire life, black. It was pretty disastrous, as i discovered only much much later..

The real fun began in Dor's bathroom. On that Monday late afternoon, told Ma I'm not taking dinner and took a train over. Dor did not have to work late and already had the bleach prepared when I reached. We plunged into action straight away. Van would have joined us if she did not have to be at the Project Superstar live studio.. Anyway, Jiun joined us instead! Other than the hair, we had a great time yakking like we had rarely done before.. I felt all young and girlish all over again!! Like some stayover party of some sort..

Actually Jiun juz had her hair done at Carrie's.. cut & colored. But after sitting in Dor's bathroom with Dor and me throughout the evening, she finally succumbed to Dor's temptation and had purple hairdye put onto her hair as well!! Eventually Dor also had her hair 'wet' again; not wanting to waste, she used the remaining purple hairdye on her own hair.

Juz realized I have no picture of Dor's Adventure Hair!! ) :

Results was satisfactory.. but not after we scrutinized my hair.

Dor was really meticulous. She refused to accept that a huge segment of my brown hair had remained, and that somehow the blue turned out to be more green than blue. and we spent another evening in her bathroom again! (: 

Dor was determined. She spared no bleach and thoroughly applied them all over my hair ends. I was thoroughly amazed by this DIY Queen!!

*** ***

Dor only colored the ends of her hair. She reasoned that the bleaching would surely damage hair and if she found the damage unbearable, she could juz snip off her ends and her hair would be as good and healthy as new!! I did not give her wise words much thought. However, I realized I had internalized them as common sense!

*** ***

Caring for this colored hair required some efforts. First of all, I had to get used to the color run each time I wash my hair. Although Dor's advice was to use a light shampoo and only to wash the scalp area, and not washing hair daily.. However, I defiantly did as I would normally do. And Alas!! A mini crisis of some sort, struck. Washing long hair was already an undesirable chore daily; washing long all-clumped-together straw was ten times more tedious and undesirable!! It came to a point where I missed combing my hair so badly that I decided to snip those straw away.. ) :

Once again after many many years, my hair was short again!! As Yvonne did not snip all the colored hair away, my ends were still colored, so was a lil' portion of my bleached fringe; the original purple color had ran, leaving only the bleached hair.

Not long after, Dor sent me the below picture with the message, "See you cut hair, I also cut!!".

Hahaa!! The end of our Adventure Purple Hair.. It was good while it lasted. The internet was really a fantastic invention, together with YouTube!! We could not have done what we did without them.. (^_-)