Simple pleasures.

Tell me I'm not the only one who gravitates towards food during this exam period (and promptly lost my appetite today after the paper). Comfort food (read: high carb) ranks high on my list.

Cranberry-apple muffins fresh from the oven. Yum! Added some choc buttons as embellishments much to my mom's chagrin.


Childhood snack - Bee Bee is now 15 cents.


An attempt to be healthy - my fav South African apples. Sweet with a mild sourish tang.


Got these psychedelic M&M's from NYC's M&M's world.

With the explosion of colours that greeted me when I entered the shop, it's probably the cheeriest place in NYC (rivaling Toys R' Us. but then, M&M's definitely look cuter and happier than many toys).


I felt happy just LOOKING at the eye-popping columns of rainbow-hued M&Ms. That's colour therapy for you. Of course it helps that I was surrounded by tons of nature's anti-depressants.

Marooned

I really detest going on holiday in big groups or rather, I hate waiting for everybody to coordinate their timetables. So this dec, I'm stuck in home-sweet-home because every friggin flight out of S'pore is booked at this time. And I had such nice plans to chill in Adelaide and meet Mag in Melbourne. Dammit.

After trudging through a few agencies and surfing websites, I'm (irrationally) pissed with the tour agents, the crowds, the airlines, the countries' restrictive aviation policies (hello, please open up more routes!) and my family whose indecisiveness is partly to be blamed for this hopeless last minute search.

Xmas starts early in S'pore

This is the time of the year when the onslaught of Christmas catalogues and advertisements begins. Each time I receive one, I'll thumb through the glossy pages fervidly. Any thing's a distraction from monotonous patent cases.

My inner Martha Steward is awakened by the dazzling Christmas decor and goodies for sale. My inner clothes whore is unleashed when I see clothes and accessories shimmering enticingly on the pages. I NEED to $PEND!!

Just sneaked out impromptu today and did a whole load of $$ damage. Spotlight was having a members' sale so I stocked up on scrapbooking and craft stuff. Buoyant effect of retail therapy has not worn off!

Whether the weather is haywire

Staring at my laptop 24/7 with nothing in front to distract me except the sky; I think they can employ my services at the Meteorological Centre.

The weather these days is weird/unpredictable. Here are some observations:

• Extreme-anything seems to be the fad now, even the weather has subscribed to it

• At times, the sun is unusually strong in the skin-singeing way

• At other times, the sky is an impenetrable gray and my blanket is pulled to my chin

• No more mellow sunshiny days

• No more fluffy white clouds in azure skies

• Usually there's rain. But again, it's not the expected monsoon showers but summer thunderstorms complete with lightning and thunder

• And these weather phenomenons can succeed one another in the short span of a day, in any permutations, as if orchestrated by higher powers

The capricious weather is killing my nose and producing too many mosquitoes.

Stardust

Since I can't have a star, I'll settle for stardust. I am fortunate that Bing shared her love for Neil Gaiman's works and gave me the books - really one of the best presents anyone can get. While Neverwhere is very good, it's Stardust which irrevocably made me a Gaiman fan.

I haven't grown out of fairy tales and Stardust is an excellent old-fashioned fairy tale for adults (marked "for mature readers"). It's rare for modern authors to write in lyrical and old-fashioned prose and I love the slow, dreamy feel of the story. Gaiman's stories are never straightforward. There's just something dark about them even in this seemingly simplistic love story.

This is the cover of my illustrated version filled with beautiful, whimsical water colourings. How can I ever read the non-illustrated version again??

So I watched the movie with alot of apprehension. I was disappointed and disgruntled during the first half cos they changed so many parts and the movie couldn't portray the dreamy quality of the novel. Actually the whole movie felt overly dramatic, obvious and loud. The story's suppose to be quiet and subtle. Ironically, I began to enjoy the movie more as the plot completely diverted away from the actual book version. (Captain Shakespeare's a whoosy??? Yvaine killed the witch with a bust of starlight? Dad and mom reunited?) I gave up trying to compare and concentrated on the action.

And I started rooting for Thristran Thorn (isn't it a delightful name *sigh*) when he decided to keep his hair long. He looks AMAZINGLY cute in the innocent, blur way and you just can't help forgiving his flaws! I like that they played up the humour in the movie especially the parts where Yvaine kept rolling her eyes and making sarcastic comments, Cap. Shakespeare and his totally irrelevant antics and the ghostly bros with their totally droll remarks. Hilarious!

Claire Danes will always be Juliet to me. She even sounded Juliet-ish when she did a monologue on love, how it is "unexpected, uncontrollable, unconditional, unpredictable, unbearable" and how we often mistake it for loathing... It's so cute how she glows each time she's happy. Charlie Cox (he's only 3 years older than me!) is the perfect Thristran and I'll be looking out for him in future.



Looking forward to see how upcoming print-to-screen adaptations perform especially Ian McEwan's Atonement and Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials).

Lust, Caution - 4 stars

This is such a wrong time to watch movies but I wanted to catch the uncensored Lust, Caution before it runs its end to see what the hooha is about. The story –a spy thriller (not very thrilling cos it was painfully slow moving at some parts) – is pretty good. I love the gorgeous old-Shanghai settings, the outfits, the mannerisms and the culture (mahjong rules).

There were even bits of funny parts you usually don’t find in a serious romance/thriller. I guess when the plot revolves round how a bunch of students decide to turn spies during their hols, there’s bound to be some hilarious screw-ups along the way. And when you cast an American-accented Wang Lee Hom as an earnest young revolutionist, you can't expect anyone to take him seriously. I snickered/giggled each time he gave his doe-eyed, pained expression followed by his I’m-trying-my-best Chinese/Cantonese. Definitely there for eye-candy only (he’s cute).

As expected, the sex scenes were pretty explicit even for an R21 rating. Thank goodness nobody in the audience laughed or made stupid comments. Or maybe everyone was too shocked. Were the scenes crucial to the plot? In a way, yes. They revealed an astonishing different side to his character and gave us a glimpse as to what she was experiencing and feeling (and suffering). In that stuffy era where everyone was extremely courteous and differential, where people spoke succinctly with underlying meanings and gave each other significantly looks to convey what they actually meant, you’ll learn more about the characters in the bedroom when they throw off their masks. Especially the part when she broke down and described how oppressed she felt when they were having sex – I sort of understood where she meant because I saw what she had gone through.

The generally impressive acting, especially by the Chinese newcomer, has to be the saving grace for the movie. Of course Tony Leung doesn’t disappoint. He’s as cool as George Clooney if you know what I mean.

Birthdays

It's a rather belated post but I just hafta blog about how extra sweet Yixian looks in the dress Nic and Jiawen chose for her. I foresee that she'll be wearing dresses a teeny bit more often now...

We headed out to the East and celebrated Joseph's and Yixian's bdays. I'll say it again: East is the BEST! For food especially. So it was at Siglap's Werner's that we spent our night relishing good old German bangers and mash.

Believe it or not, it was the first time I ate pork knuckles (what a late discovery!) Getting past the crispy skin and centimeters deep of solid lard (looks ickly like candle wax), the meat lurking underneath was tender and totally addictive. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw ZQ savouring skin, FAT, meat and all. But I have to admit that the crispy skin is sinfully yummy.

Of course there's always space for desserts so we popped into Gelare across the road (that's the beauty of Siglap. everything is just round the corner) and had half-price waffles and ice-cream. I love Tuesdays! Though I remember hating them once for making me sad hur hur.

Trooped to Yixian's house for a few rounds of Nintendo Wii (her house reminds me of the CC where everyone gathers for fun and work). A pity I missed the boxing part!


Speaking of birthdays, I found a perfect prezzie for Des or at least I'm sure he will love it. Just that it'll blow a hole in my pocket to ship it over.