.: asylum for the sane :.

As some of you might have already known, FP and I have very recently gotten ourselves a Black Nintendo Wii. I am really pleased with this decision because I’ve been wanting a Wii for the longest time, and he always laughs at me in the past every time I brought it up. It probably had to do with my logic that getting a Wii means exercising and therefore getting fit.

Oh well, my logic is half screwed half the time anyway. Also, another reason why I wanted a Nintendo Wii was because I suck at PS3 games, and he wouldn’t want to play anything with me on PS3 because of that. Plus I’ve always been good with Nintendo DS games, so i figured - why not?

Back to topic.

The set we got included Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, as well as a set of 3-in-1 Sports kit at a really good price. So we’ve been playing the Wii and experimented with different games. Some we loved, others not really. So here are some of my pics and my comments on them.

Wii Sports Resort

My favourite game within Wii Sports Resort has got to be Archery. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I did! Now just to sharpen my skills so i can throw darts accurately in real life. I kid, I kid.

The levels get increasingly difficult. As competitive as both FP and I are, we could only handle up till the Intermediate stages. The Advance stages can wait till we get better. Nice graphics and scenery though for Archery.

It felt really good when your aim lands on a great spot on the target tho.

Another favourite of mine from Sports Resort would be table tennis - mainly because I am just so damn good at it (totally kicked his ass ) Doesn’t help that I’ve never played table tennis before, but have always wanted to take up tennis. Make sense?

This is really a nice game to play. The last time I played a golf-related game was Pangya! which was ages ago. So playing Golf in Wii Sports Resort brings back the excitement. I’m a little rusty tho, but all in good time!

Love the graphics in this game

Just a small comment tho: the Golf game in Sports Resorts is much, much better than in Wii Sports. Well obviously, since they did an upgrade of the console prior to Sports Resort. But it was just to alert those of you who has both games like we do.

Moving on to Wii Sports.

The first thing we did when started meddling with Wii Sports was find out our Wii Fitness Age by taking a fitness test which comprises a bit of bowling, a bit of baseball and a bit of tennis. FP’s fitness age is 67 while mine is 62. Oh it will get better!

There is only one game that I really, really enjoyed on Wii Sports and that is Boxing. Yes Boxing! who knew it would be incredibly therapeutic to punch the daylights out of people? After many rounds of playing Boxing on the Wii, I felt as if I had done one hell of a workout - something that I haven’t done in a long time and boy did it feel good.

*****
Afterthought

To be honest, the Wii really makes you move and use muscles that you haven’t used for ages. Seriously, the motions needed to punch someone in the face, or to swing a golf club - it really requires you to do them exactly the way you would do it in real life.

Add a sprinkle of the “feeling of excitement and novelty of a new console” plus hours of game play because of that and you’ll get 2 very unfit individuals who are aching all over as if they’ve just finished a major marathon.

I’m still aching from playing the Wii but on the other hand, it feels great as I haven’t been active in a long time. It’s a fantastic game to play with a bunch of people, and footage of actual gameplay (of the players) can practically be blackmail material because it looks really funny from a spectator point of view.

Okay now let’s rest these poor muscles of mine.

I’ve always loved food photography. I believe an appealing photo of a dish is not easily attained, but I do try anyway every time I dine out - with my humble point-and-shoot camera. Nothing professional of course, but I try to capture the very essence of the colour and presentation of the dishes.

Now bring FP into the picture (pun seriously not intended), with his dedication, photography skills, creativity and all his truckload of photography gadgets and you’ll get food photos so wonderfully captured, you’d become hungry just by looking at the photos.

As some of you might have known, FP got into a terrible traffic accident almost 2 months back (saving this story for another post) and he’s still in recovery right now. Because he’s in a much, much better state than he had been when it first happened, we’ve been doing photoshoots - just to spur our creativity and also, just for the fun of it.

We started with our normal photoshoots, but we somehow ventured into taking photos of food. When I say “we”, I meant: he takes the photo, while I assist in other ways to get the shot, hehe. It certainly doesn’t hurt that we both love food; exotic beautiful food. With both our quirky minds at work, it didn’t take much to create masterpieces such as these:

Click to see his write up for this photo

This was the first food-related photo he took. We’ve both been craving for hot chocolate for quite awhile, so I bought some hot chocolate and pastries for us to munch on (also to take photos of) and we ended up with this. That is a yummy cinnamon scone, and it’s even yummier when dipped in the hot chocolate. Gosh, you have no idea

Click to see his write up for this photo

This was a plate of delicious Pad Thai from Magic Wok. We also had Belacan Fried Rice and Mango Salad that day, but the Pad Thai became the star of the day. I was the one holding the fork up, just so you know haha

Click to see his write up for this photo

This is truly one of my favourites. Okay, so I’m biased because salmon sashimi is one of my favourite foods. Just look at this one. So fresh, you can see the “pores” of the meat. Yum, looking at it makes me want to have it all over again. Anything with sushi and sashimi (sushimi for short), you can always count on me to enjoy it. We so gotta go to Japan one day!

Click to see his write up for this photo

Another of my favourites because 1) I love macaroons and 2) I love that we used fairy lights for this shoot to achieve the Bokeh effect. This was actually a test shot that turned out nice and lively. I like how the Bokeh colours turned out so nice and makes it look like a real party scene. Macaroons were from De Paolo Gastronomia. This quaint little shop provides the best picnic all-Italian food!

This little food project we’re doing has opened my eyes to the world of actual food photography beyond my little pink point-and-shoot camera. It’s not that easy, with all the lighting stuff and post production but it is so rewarding when he has attained such nice photos.

I may be getting my very own DSLR soon. No idea how to use it, but I’ll learn from the best

I am very particular when it comes to doing anything to my hair, so I am forever on the lookout for good hair dressers. It does not help that every time I found a good and versatile hairdresser, the shop will relocate in the next few months and become impossible to trace.

So, in recent times, I’ve been pretty sick of my hair. It’s gotten too long, too thick and too messy. But I didn’t have a hairdresser to go to because my previous one disappeared into thin air. But I couldn’t take the mess anymore. So I googled, and read forums and found out about this salon called Artica.

I still had my doubts about if of course despite reading good stuff about it but I went ahead with it anyway. And I have no regrets whatsoever.

When I first went into the salon, they told me they are full and to leave my number and they’ll call me as soon as they can slot me in. So I went shopping

Close to an hour and a half later, still no phone call but I went back to the salon and indeed they are just about done and more than welcome to do up my hair.

Here are the reasons why I was giving so much praise for Artica on twitter:

1) they keep restocking magazines in front of me, even the newspaper. and when a guy came in, they provided him male magazines even though he told them it’s okay. This is called catering to the needs of different clients.

2) they had a menu for complimentary drinks. i was shocked when a guy showed me a piece of laminated paper, and got even more surprised when it was a menu for drinks, on the house. They offered things like coffee and others (didn’t really look at it, was just in awe of the menu). I didn’t want a drink because as it was, I already brought a cup of bubble tea to the salon.

3) Still on the topic of drinks, it was getting cold because it was raining. They asked me again if I wanted coffee. Loves, right?

4) They didn’t “recommend” me any shampoo (like other salons do). This is a very welcomed change.

5) Their price was really reasonable, doesn’t matter if it’s because they were having some promotions (later on, I found out that they always have discounts and promotions). This is the cheapest I’ve paid for a professionally done hair cut

6) They gave me my fringe, without telling me they “can’t because [my] hair has a natural curl”. They gave me my fringe, by overcoming the problem, without even mentioning the problem. This is the second time in 7 years a hair stylist is able to do that. So that explains how awesome this salon is

I’ve learned to measure the skill of a hairstylist by the answer I get when I say I want a fringe. For the past 3 visits to other salons, I’ve gotten a flat no. And how they suck.

7) They called me soon after I left their salon, to let me know I’ve left behind my shopping bags (shoes!!) Bliss!

For those of you who want to check out this place, here is the name card.

The address and contact number reads:

Far East Plaza
#04-82 Singapore 228213

Phone: 6836 2891

I have quite a few threadless tees. I was looking through the pics in my phone and realized that I am forever taking pics of the tees I wear. So, here are some of the tees that I have. If photos are not in the best resolution, it’s only because it’s taken with a phone camera.

This one is called A Birth Day. It is just meant to be a funny cute tshirt about what could happen if a cow and a chicken having a baby. But come to think of it, I am that spotted egg.

Hello, mixed parentage? I swear it just crossed my mind as I was typing out this post. Maybe that’s what my new nick can be: A Spotted Egg.

I love this one. This one is called Rock Out with your Cock Out. See the rooster at the bottom left? What cock were you thinking of? Tsk, tsk. I bought this after we got the PS3 and played several rounds of rockband. Makes you feel like a rockstar, haha.

Oh wait, I just realised that the rooster isnt visible in this photo.

There you go

Another one of my favourites. This one is called Self potrait. It shows a monster drawing a picture of himself. Well my photo doesnt show the full picture but this is how it looks like in full:

Cute isn’t it?

And the last tee that I have a photo of is Playin’ in the Sprinkles:

It’s not very clear but it simply shows an ice cream and a donut playing in rainbow sprinkles, probably explaining how ice creams and donuts get to have sprinkles on them.

Yes I make up cute stories all the time. And because it is unclear and not shown in full, this is how it actually looks like:

It’s been awhile since I shopped at threadless. Looking at these pics now, it’s making me want to.. shop.

Perhaps after my pay is in for the month.

These are actually valid movie tickets.

Went to watch the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie yesterday (nice show by the way) and we bought our tickets online, because lazy people do not queue for their movie tickets.

So when I went to collect the tickets, the printer decided to stop working (it had been working until it was my turn to collect the tickets). So the guy at the counter made me these handwritten tickets! He smiled at me sheepishly while saying, “These are manual tickets, you can still use them to get in. I’m sorry but our printer broke down.”

Well don’t be sorry. It’s really fantastic and unique. How many people have had handwritten movie tickets? Or shall we say manual movie tickets? There is such a nice, retro feeling to this.

Old school, even.

And by mere coincidence (or perhaps the cinema gods wanted to help me prove my point), the printer got up and running again after it was my turn and the people behind me got their regular and boringly printed movie tickets.

That, my friends, is what I call fate.

Or maybe it’s my way of contributing to Earth Hour because I’d be in the movie theater during the dark hour anyway. So forgoing the use of electronics to get my movie ticket is my way of paying tribute to the hour.

Hur hur hur. I just made that up.

Perhaps we should forgo emails and blogs for the entire month and replacing it with handwritten letters and good old diaries. And we can call it Earth Month. What say you? But if we did that then trees will die and we will all be told to use paperless methods, so as to save the trees.

It’s another chicken and egg problem, and there is no pleasing everybody. And that’s how the cookie always crumbles.

Imagine this.

I just got up from a nap (that was induced by drowsy medication) and after fiddling with my blackberry, I thought I’d try out blogging using Wordpress for Blackberry. All from the convenience of the bed, while the TV was showing cartoons on Nickelodeon.

I’ve downloaded this app last week but upon seeing that I couldn’t properly preview photos that I wanted to insert in the post, I closed the app and forgot all about it. But today, because I was sick, I thought I’d just overcome that slight glitch and try this mobile blogging anyway.

So I happily typed and typed on my lovely phone, enjoying the process. I made sure I saved the draft as I went along (oh, this is a habit of mine, even when I blog normally) and even painstakingly opened photo by photo in my blackberry until I found the one i wanted to insert in the post.

And then I proceeded to publish my post, excitement building up.

Then I got this message:

Local Drafts Cannot be Sent

Which was weird, because obviously it would still be a draft by default. But I let the issue go, and changed the status to “published” - which already pissed me off because these things are supposed to be automatic.

So I clicked “Submit” again.

And the data got sent again, a process which took AGES.

And when it FINALLY stopped, it showed me this:

*speechless*

And this made me get out of the comfy, warm bed. My initial intention was to blog about me being sick from the comfort of my bed. But it turned out, the exact same application that was supposed to provide that convenience made me get out of bed, turn on my laptop and blog about the bugs I’ve found in the application.

Ironic, isn’t it?

I hope the developers will look into this issue and fix the crap out of it. Because I easily blogged from my iTouch using the Wordpress App and I didn’t even encounter a single problem. Shame on you.

p/s: And no, I am still not switching to iPhone, because I still have my itouch with all my apps.

Let me finally tell you about my blackberry bold 9000, which has been girly-fied beyond repair.

It has become a great conversation starter as well as gotten both dirty and envious looks. And tomorrow marks its 6th month of becoming my personal strawBerry.

I can’t believe I’ve had it for 6 months and only blogging about it now. Well better late than never.

So this was strawBerry, when I just bought it. Fresh out of the box and into my eager hands. Just that these eager hands had absolutely no idea how to work the phone! Smart phones seriously make you look stupid. But being a tech savvy girl (cough cough, i work for a website so that counts as tech savvy!), I quickly got the hang of it and have enjoyed every single moment of Blackberry-dom.

But of course, I couldn’t wait to turn my blackberry into a girl. On the same day itself, I bought a lovely pink housing (matches my laptop, external hard disc and Nintendo DS) off ebay. But of course that took AGES to arrive.

So in the meantime, I found a pink theme to appease myself.

And then one day.. jeng jeng jengggggg! Look who is peeking so shyly from inside the black leather casing?

Aww, hehehe. Full view below:

How pretty is my phone! But I eventually peeled off the sticker that is on the area where the camera is (I don’t know the proper name but it’s at the top of the phone - where the word Blackberry is) because it was slightly scratched off. Fine by me! It looks fine as a pink and black phone anyway.

This is strawBerry with a pink and green Cherry Berry theme (still it’s current theme).

And of course with time, the paint on the sides of the housing began to get scraped off. I haven’t had the time to shop for another set of blackberry housing so I made my blackberry put some clothes on.

It is now wearing a pink silicon cover.

See, this accentuates my point on Who says Techy Can’t be Girly?

I will save you the agony on the things I do on my blackberry in another post, hehe.

I love this photo. It was taken during an impromptu photoshoot that was set up in the back seat of a car.

It was a long drive so while I found myself in a relaxed pose equipped with a book, FP decided to set up his equipment right at the backseat and he just kept snapping photos. I didn’t even pose for a single shot, I just minded my own business reading my book.

Perhaps that is precisely the reason why I love this photo. How natural and relaxing it looks. I was curled up in the corner of the backseat, reading trashy chick lit (seriously). I was at my natural relaxed state.

I was at my natural best

It is indeed a very serene photo, that speaks volume about personal time and space. And about just being relaxed and unguarded.

Or maybe, just like many other things, I’m just reading too much into the picture. But, a picture is worth a thousand words, no?

Okay this is the final installment of the Malaysian trip trilogy. It was a day trip to KL from Batu Pahat. The drive was not very long, but long enough to make Short Attention Span me bored.

Bored enough for me to be wearing my monkey hoodie (with monkey ears) with my first Oakley Frogskin Shades, indoors.

I camwhored, i chewed gum, i read. And then I lost my limited edition Oakley Frogskin. So after my precious shades flew off, I kept a very low profile in the car and mourned for the lost.

FP was very comforting though <3!

But my losing the shades actually kinda ruined my mood which is why most of the pictures you'll see in this post have me looking like a punani. What is a punani? Go figure.

We finally arrived at Damansara where we had lunch at Paddington House of Pancake - a pancake restaurant.

What I remembered from this restaurant was that it was very tiring to read the menu. I don’t know if it was because I was exhausted from just crying but it was really difficult to focus on the menu. Each and every food name was not a food name.

They are named after cities, like Vienna and Brussels. And then a very elaborate description of what it was. A completely different dining experience!

Ok here are some photos of the food that we had. I’m sorry I can’t remember any of the names and what they actually are. But they will do your eyes good.

Kawan E & Kawan C’s food

FP’s Steak

My pasta

Not forgetting this photo. I wanted a Pineapple Freeze, which I expected to be a good mix of sweet-sour goodness. But it was incredibly sour that I thought it was lemon juice. We asked the waiter if they got the order wrong, but nooo.. it was pineapple freeze alright.

Fine.

So after lunch we shopped and shopped. I bought a lot of shoes and a lovely denim jacket. We tried on silly things, but no photos coz photography not allowed. What silly rules. I was amazed at the variety and quality of clothes and shoes at Charles & Kieth and Forever 21.

How come in KL the stuff are nicer in these shops than in Singapore. How unfair.

Some random photos in KL:

This was a really lovely restaurant / cafe which had a garden theme. Nice!

This photo just looks sick. I am digging the horsey’s butt.

Here’s a proper photo of me and the horsey.

lol

And finally it’s dinner, at this restaurant called Delicious. Seriously. But the food was indeed delicious, lucky for them. This was our spread!

This was my sambal prawns with rice. It was extremely yummy and has really too many things in a single dish. I was at a lost of what to eat first on my plate.

This was the full view of the contents:

I can’t remember if this was FP’s dish or Kawan E’s but it was creamy pasta anyhows.

Yummy yummy strawberry cheesecake!

And after a day of tears, eating and shopping, we made our way back to Batu Pahat.

Okay that’s it for the Malaysian trip! Till the next trip we take!

With all the mini felt food projects I’ve been doing, I was itching to try something else.

So I attempted to make a bear. This may sound like just another project if I am a seasoned seamstress. But I’m not. Fact is, I have never sewn a bear in my life and it is precisely because of that, that I did it. I love figuring things out when I have absolutely no idea on how to do them.

I got the template from Martha Stewart’s website (I know, how auntie is that? but her craft ideas are hard to resist). It was originally supposed to be a bear with a pocket for children to put their baby teeth (so that the tooth fairy can take the teeth and replace them with money).

image taken from marthastewart.com

And on the pocket was supposed to be a name and an outline of a tooth.

But of course I modified it. I don’t need a tooth bear.

So I started working on it after some crazy shopping for felt and other bits and pieces at Daiso.

First I had to cut out the outline of the bear template. My first time cutting out my own felt pieces (previously it was all pre-cut for me, all in one package, remember?)

It felt and looked like some sick acupuncture session for the paper bear, but nevermind. So I then cut the second piece. I decided to make it’s back polka dotted mainly because I was in love with the polka dotted pink and white felt I found at Daiso.

(the polka dotted felt is white on its reverse side)

The most challenging part for this project, in my opinion is the fake “pocket”. Because I had entirely no idea on how to 1) make the bear’s nose and mouth and 2) to sew letters.

And the fact that I chose to make an embroidered heart with the letters LOVE on it was complicated enough, but somehow I managed to figure it out.

The eyes were basically french knots (which I have by the way perfected, based on an unfinished food project involving strawberries) -> simple enough. The nose was done with satin stitches -> which I had to research through Google and Youtube on how to make it. Mouth was just an extension of the nose.

So. For the fake “pocket”, I decided to do a heart. So I drew a heart on the felt with a pencil, and sewed running stitches for the outline, and applied the newly learned satin stitch to fill up the heart outline. Heh heh, talk about being a fast learner. I guess the heart turned out decent enough.

For the words, it was a scribble and then I just stitched my way thru.

So then it was time to sew the two pieces of felt together. In the intructions, it says to use a whip stitch. I had no idea what that is and so did some research, again on Google and Youtube. Tried to follow but everything got tangled up. Gave up, took a shower and finally realised that it is something similar to overcast stitches.

Did a research on whether overcast stitches is the same as whip stitches. And voila! Whip stitches are actually overcast stitches but it it only called whip stitches when sewing 2 or more layers of cloth together.

Pissing off and time wasting. Not that I knew that it was practically overcast stitches, I was back on the ball and happily stitched up the border of the bear.

Confession: I stuffed my bear with white knitting yarn. Because Daiso ran out of cotton stuffing. So I improvised. Nobody can tell the difference anyway. And I love the rainbow bow that I added as a touch up. Nice touch! (If I may say so myself)

It may not be the tidiest piece of work ever, it may have imperfect stitches but to me, this bear is an accomplishment on its own. After I was done with it, I could hardly believe that I had actually made a stuffed bear from scratch. It was such a rewarding feeling.

Next thing to try out would be knitting! But that would be another story altogether.

bear with cacti