Pearl White

the cappuccino i had 3 hours ago, how cute. love the smooth car ride.

The Genes

this is my youngest cousin in my family, qiying. went with my mum to visit her last friday just before i leave singapore for another 4 months. when she was a toddler, she looked exactly like my youngest sister when my sister was around that age too. now that she's older, i can slowly see that she's starting to look like me. it's really quite scary, especially those eyes. yes, those single eyelids. :( i didn't know that cousins could actually look that alike. aren't the genes quite far?

anyways, mummy allowed me to drive to their house at alexandra road. frankly speaking, it was quite a distance and i was a little scared due to the heavy traffic on farrer road, but i did fine. just the reversing and parking, i'm not very good at it yet. actually, i took quite some time to reverse out of my house! haha, it was super funny, aunty jean was laughing so badly. what we learnt in school was just meant for the test, not for outside application. :(

its funny how my brothers and sisters kept sending me sms-es to pick them up from tuition and school. did help my mum to reduce her workload (by not stepping on the accelerator), but she still had to sit beside me as she felt that i needed an observation period. being a nice sister, i went to pick my sister up from rjc. i drove to the airport that night too, it was a full 30 minute drive on the highway man. just got off the phone with papa, and he told me that mummy said that my driving is very good. he sounded very excited, i think he can't wait to sit my car! he's so cute lah. wait another 4 months...

Legal Driving

got my driving license last thursday morning, and i passed with 12 demerit points driving a manual car. very proud of myself, as i suddenly had a damn strong fear that i would fail and the 12 points accumulated are due to minor mistakes such as insufficient acceleration, and checking wrong mirror? prolly a 4 points for abrupt changing of lanes, i blame the red car for dashing out so suddenly.

anyways, i will deifnitely miss my driving instructors in bbdc, especially mr tan, mr chua, mr bay. they were my most frequent driving instructors, and they are exceptionally nice to me. mr tan was so nice to pay for my PDL when i didn't have enough cash or nets, mr chua offered to buy me some kind of can food for me to bring to melbourne, sends me home after every lesson, and wants to me my personal taxi driver when he starts to drive his own taxi, and last but not least, mr bay bought me his favourite won tan noodles for lunch, asked me to add him on facebook, and sends me home. so nice right? besides that, they make me look forward to driving lessons everyday due to the very entertaining conversations we have. yeah, so much so that i always fail to check blind spots! thank god the tester was very quiet, so i remembered to check all blind spots. :)

went out for lunch with mummy to meet rachel and her mum. we went to wild honey at mandarin gallery, it's a small restaurant opened by people from melbourne. i love that place, very cosy and homely. the food was really good, especially the bread, awesome awesome stuff. no kidding, probably one of the best bread i've ever eaten. i had eggs benedict (last picture), decided to try it since i saw the contestants in masterchef having problems making hollandaise sauce. i don't know what makes a perfect hollandaise sauce but i was happy with mine. the bacon was really soft, juicy and sweet too. wanted to try their tarts and scones, but was too full due to their huge portions.

thereafter, we spent our time walking around mandarin gallery. first time walking IN the building and not just outside. quite a number of interesting japanese shops, and good restaurants. must definitely try the la mian restaurant on the 4th level when i'm back. rachel's mum couldn't stop raving about how good it is! went to paragon and got macarons from canele before sending rachel home while her mum went back to work.

i swapped seats with my mum at rachel's house. we were right at the doorstep to the lift, but rachel just didn't want to get off the car. reason being, she wanted to experience my driving!!! so funny, so i drove 50 meters from the lift to the security post to make her satisfied. that was my second time driving my mum's car, the first was a really short distance outside my house when i didn't had a license then. auto car is really much much more easier to drive, you don't have to worry about changing gears and clutch! i felt that i did pretty well, given that i'm driving an auto MPV, so different from the cars i practice on. i drove from orchard back to home, first time on the highway and it was real long...

went back home, picked my brother up and we drove to railway mall for a haircut. okay, it's my second time at the brilliant cut, i usually visit mazu at cathay. but i needed a haircut badly, and couldn't find the time to head to orchard again. my hair is now straight (no U/V), so from the back view, 4 inches are gone. i'm happy with it, but it costed me a bomb. my purpose for cutting in singapore and not in melbourne was to save money, but my plan was backfired.

for dinner, i met up with bram at holland village. we've been wanting to meet up since last year?! but both of us just seem to be very busy. anyways, last thursday was finally good and i had a lot of fun eating and chating with him. i'm really glad that i did not lose such a friend. :)

JB Day Trip

went into JB on wednesday to visit my relatives, the main reason was to pay my respects to my late grandmother. didn't manage to go into JB earlier, as we went to taiwan and my mother had to surrender her malaysian passport. it took quite some time for her to receive her singapore passport. yes, she's a singaporean now, which makes my whole family singaporeans.

this shawn, we call him shawn shawn. haha! he's my eldest cousin's son in my mother's family. he's so cute lah, he always has that smile on his face. very smiling boy! the little dimples make it better. we bought him this inflatable disney mini pool, a airplane kite and sweets. he was estatic!

ah kim also bought durians for my brother and i, as we are durian lovers. i don't know how many seeds we ate that day, we were so bloated. she then brought out mangosteens, which i also love, and i couldn't resist it despite being so full. she also got us like 2 big bags full of durians (8-10 i think), and one big bag of mangosteens. now, our car and house is filled with durian smell. bram came over last night, and he immediately asked why does he smell durian when he was just outside the gate. overpowering!

thereafter we headed over to my father's elder sister's house. spend some time chit-chatting before going off to another cousin's house. for dinner, we had really good chinese meal, very big variety of food, so good. went back home, and celebrated my cousin's birthday. a very mini celebration, yet fun. the 3 little kids were really very mischievous. too much to handle sometimes, but their cuteness over rules.

my aunt also bought us a big bag of rambutans. so, we went home with plenty of tropical fruits. just the right time, as i will be heading back to melbourne tonight. speaking of which, it's 1pm already, and i haven't even started packing at all!!! this is really serious, and i still have to fetch my little sister from school at 5pm too. oh yeah people, i have my license already. 12 points, manual car. not bad right? :) have been so busy the past 2 days, and masterchef is still glueing me onto my chair when i'm home. oh god, anyways, i'm really glad with the final 3- adam, claire and callum! like all of them, and don't mind either one of them winning. finals on sunday in melbourne! :)

okay, i'm going to have my favourite chicken rice for lunch, and home cooked steak for dinner tonight.

Family's Love

i'm home. mummy and daddy came to pick me up from the airport at 6am in the morning. was so happy to see them and to see the smiles on their faces. the flight back wasn't good. didn't get enough sleep as the seats were really uncomfortable. frankly speaking, i don't see what's so good about singapore airlines. love the new and bigger screen, but the smaller seats really spoil it all. anyways, i bought masterchef magazine for aunty jean, hoping to try re-create some of their delicious desserts. finally got my new uggs too, it was almost 100 bucks off. :)

caught up on sleep when i reached home. booked my driving lesson at 2pm, but i mistook it for 4pm, hence i missed it. was really looking forward to driving, no one else to blame but my careless self. anyways, first and last auto car lesson tomorrow, hope it goes well.

just came back from a movie premier- Gone Shopping, at NUS alumni building. my parents were invited by their friends for the event, and mummy kindly asked for another ticket for me! :) there was a buffet dinner and a cocktail session before the movie screening started. i realise i seem to really enjoy socialising around with people. oh, and i finally wore my tony biancos! really high, yet comfortable. anyways, back to topic. Gone Shopping is a local movie production that will be out in the cinemas on the 26th of july. the director/producer of the movie is my dad's friend's daughter. hence, the invitations. the movie was really meaningful, i found that the message she was trying to provoke was rather strong. the downside of the movie was that it was really slow and quite draggy. but overall, it was a decent local movie. for more information, click here.

after the function, parents and i went to sunset way's (my old house) buttercake&cream. my folks had their waffles, while i had my chocolate pudding. food was just alright, tasted better ones elsewhere, and will not go back again. haha! picked my youngest sister up from her school's dance concert, and it was home sweet home. :)

Wide Smiles

boyfriend is arriving in exactly 12 hours! going to pick him up at the airport tomorrow morning and spent time with him for the next 3-4 days. i'm so happy. :) haven't seen him for almost 2 months already. people give me ideas of where to go please, i have none for the third day besides going for dinner with my family.

driving has been extremely good the past 2 days. will finally get to move on to stage 2 practical in my next lesson. preferred my previous week's and today's instructor compared to yester's. anyways, i can proudly say that i drove very far out today. i was just giving a casual comment to my instructor that why do we always take the same route, and he immediately asked me to drive all the way to clementi. at first i thought he was joking, but he wasn't. we drove all the way from bukit batok to jurong to clementi to bukit timah to bukit panjang and then back to the driving school. :)

had a haircut, or shall i say a hair trim with rachel at mazu on monday. silly girl mixed up her theory trials dates which totally caused us a shopping trip in orchard. sigh man. :(

I'm Very Happy

my boyfriend's trip to singapore has been confirmed. though it's only 4 days, but i'm satisfied. it's next week, gonna see him real soon! :)

had my second driving lesson yesterday and my third today. i must say that i've improved a lot, because i managed to get a good instructor (same for both days), mr kk tan. was supposed to get on the main road yesterday, but i didn't know that i've to apply for PDL. so today, i went 30 minutes earlier to apply for it, but they only accept NETS or cash cash, which i don't have! i was panicking, cause i didn't want to be stuck in that circuit again, it would be a wasted lesson. jieying wanted to rush down to help me pay, but it was too late. thank goodness for my nice and helpful instructor. he actually offered to lend and pay the 25 bucks for me to get the PDL! :)

very belated christmas presents that i got for merrie, cindy and rachel. so cute right? :) it's been so long since we last met, and yesterday was a short meet up without cindy. spent the afternoon teaching bryan chew accounting at TCC, luckily i managed to answer all of his questions, if not it would be a wasted trip for him to travel all the way down to plaza singapura. thereafter, went for some mini shopping with the girls, and i bought a very sweet dress!

and i got stalked by this guy yesterday. all the way from outram park mrt station to TCC at plaza singapura. it was quite scary, he stood beside me throughout the train ride, and purposely slowed down his speed to walk behind me until he saw me sitting down in TCC with bryan chew. i wonder how long was he going to follow me, if i wasn't meeting anyone. quite amazed that someone would actually stalk me. by the way, he's cute! i should have totally turn around and smile at him. haha, joking! :)

Feeling Good

had my first driving lesson yesterday, and it was so scary, fun, and tiring! :) after yesterday i realised how difficult driving was, it's not as easy as it seems. i think it's partly because i'm taking manual, as my main problem was having to step on the clutch pedal. accelerating was quite tough too, especially when i have to step on the pedal gradually and slowly.

my instructor was nice and friendly. felt so paiseh when i braked too quickly or when the engine stopped. thought he would be pissed or irritated after going through it for like more than 3 times, but no, he just kept laughing. :) good, i need patient instructors... can't wait for sunday's lesson, i love stirring the wheel!

thereafter, i met up with yongbin, got to town, and cheryl joined us a hour later. yongbin was so nice and helpful to carry our shopping bags and wait for us while we were trying clothes. cheryl and i said that we're training him for his next girlfriend, haha! thank you.

the best buy of yesterday was... my macbook pro red leather cover! i have been wanting it for the longest time (since i got my macbook). after a month's decision, i finally decided to pay 99 bucks for it! i know it's over-priced, but it's really very pretty. anyways, i think that my macbook deserves a good cover too. :)

we had dinner at a new ramen stall at the basement of takashimaya (it replaced pepper lunch). the food was very good, i want to go back again. the menu looks very tempting, we felt like trying everything, but had no stomachs to fill. spent 2 hours talking, or should i say laughing? yongbin never fails to make us laugh, no matter how boring the topic is.