damn you stupid splinter!!

Remember the time when you had a splinter in your finger and it hurts so bad. it hurts so bad you wouldn't dare take it out cause your finger hurts when you touch it. eventually you forget about it. the skin heals over the splinter and becomes embedded inside you. life goes on and you would think that it will never hurt again but there will be those few moments when you touch the part where the splinter is and it still hurts as much as the first time it went into your finger. the pain is as intense and as vivid as it was during the very first time and you regret for not have pulled out the splinter earlier and now that the skin has healed over it, you might never be able to pull it out again. you have to live with the occasional flood of pain at the tip of your finger. the only way to get it out now is to cut away the skin that healed and delve deep into the wound, pluck out that nasty bugger.

i'm experiencing my occasional metaphorical flood of pain.

somebody reminded me that the one who inflict the pain will not bother to pluck out the splinter, so i either let it continue to stay there and continue to experience the periodical hypes of intensity or pluck up the courage to remove it once and for all.

it sucks when matters are not resolved. it sucks even more when you know that it's bugging you so much and the one who inflicts the pain probably doesn't even give a hoot about it. well, afterall the splinter is in me so it'll probably hurt me more than it hurts the one who caused it upon me.

YONG TAU FOO!!~

Kudos to my mum who is of hakka heritage.
She makes awesome yongtaufoo. =D
Hakka yongtaufoo = mix of pork and fish for filling
made yongtaufoo a week ago but haven't found the time to post up my pictures!
extremely proud of myself for this is my very first attempt.


here i share with you my mama's recipe. =)

soup base:
ingredients:
- dried anchovies (i used the ikan bilis stock cube for convenience sake. XD 1 and a half cubes of that)
- 1 cup soyabeans
- a couple of shallots (minced)
- 2 slices of ginger
- 2 tbsp of oil
- a pot of water? (hmm...i would say about 5 medium size bowls)

1. heat up oil in pot and put in ginger and shallots. fry till golden and fragrant.
2. pour in soyabeans and anchovies and give it a quick fry.
3. pour in the water (fire on high) and let it boil before turning fire to low and allow it to simmer for at least an hour.

*meanwhile prepare your yongtaufoo while allowing flavours to infuse into soup*

yongtaufoo:
ingredients:
- eggplant (aubergines)
- dried mushrooms (soaked and cleaned)
- tofu
- taupok (fried beadcurd)
- dried beancurd skin
- mackerel fish paste (available in asian gorceries or wet markets)
- minced pork
- 1 tsp corn starch
- salt and pepper (you can use bittergourd and chilli if you are looking for extreme flavours)

1. blend fish paste and mince pork, add salt, pepper and corn starch into mixture. mix well.
2. put mixture on/into your tofu/eggplant/dried mushrooms etc.
3. heat up pan with a little oil and lightly fry the yongtaufoo. gives the yongtaufoo its shape before you put into the soup.
4. throw everything into soup!! =D allow it to boil for 15min or so.
5. serve and enjoy!!

***

this is such an easy, foolproof recipe but pretty time-consuming. you may wanna rope your housemates or family in to help you stuff the filling. =D definitely worth the effort though. ENJOY~~

God bless.

(taken from a tumblr post)

Translated message from a Chinese Sendai tsunami survivor

(I’m translating a Chinese message from this link: http://ww1.sinaimg.cn/large/6c8010d1jw6df5rjhq5v1j.jpg
Please excuse my translation skills. I know I’m not 100% accurate so feel free to correct me if necessary. But the point gets across pretty clearly.)

This is a mail from my friend
She asked me to post for her
She is in Sendai, Japan
Rescued early morning today
After being trapped for 8 hours
I hope you can finish reading
Hope you are a good person
Respect others
Even if you want to insult
Please don’t leave traces here

——————————

Aren’t we all comrades?
Just because you are in China
Just because you don’t have family or friends in Japan
You can say words like let Japan sink?
The Chinese people in Japan aren’t people?

What is hate
Who can tell me what hate is
When you’re standing on a roof surrounded by sea water
When in that water, is your home
When in that water, are your friends and family
Do you still know what hate is?

He kills you, so you must kill him
Then I think patriots with this kind of ideals
Can go to Japan for school or work
Then choose a rush hour
Take a knife, and kill whoever you seeI promise you can kill 100 people
I promise you can kill all types of people
I promise you can become the headline news
I promise you can fulfill your heroic dream

But you have to know
That in those 100 people

Maybe 10 were innocent children
Maybe 10 were house wives on their way home with groceries
Maybe 10 were workers working hard to provide for their families
Maybe 10 were elders
Maybe 10 were youngsters hanging out
Maybe 10 were part-timers delivering take-out
Maybe 10 were people waiting for a bus
Maybe 10 were passerbys
Maybe 10 were those who don’t know why you killed them
Maybe 10 were Chinese

Even if there really is someone you want to kill
I advice you
Choose carefully before you act

I don’t know how the Nan Jin massacre looked like
I hate those Japanese soldiers
I hate that they killed our people
But today
I felt like I saw a massacre
Standing on the roof
If you want to see
Look carefully
Sendai is you patriots’ heaven
Corpses are right there
There are some torn limbs
There are whole bodies
If you have good eyes
You can see the small hands of young children
If you focus
You can even see some corpses hugging together

Do you have any sympathy
Do you know that before Mother Nature
We humans are one family

My boyfriend works at a company by the coast
Till now we haven’t been able to contact each other
I know, we can’t see each other ever again
Who told you that only the Japanese died in this tragedy
Who told you that this tragedy is karma
Yes
It’s karma
The man kind’s karma is here

Right now I want to live
I want to live well
Right here in Japan
I want to live well
I’m afraid that if I died
Many people will blame Japan
There were over 80 people stuck in the building
In those eight hours
It’s true that they treated me like a Chinese
I have anemia so I felt like I couldn’t go on
A house wife with a baby beside me
Gave me some milk powder
The 20 year old girl sitting beside me helped me find water
Just like this
I’m still here
Perhaps it wasn’t the milk powder that saved
But their spirits saved me

Among the 80 people there were only two cellphones that worked
Everyone let the Chinese call home first
I was the second who got to call
Everyone lined up to call home
Till the end, some Japanese friends didn’t get through to their families
They understood there was no need
They gave up

After around 4 hours
Some girls were hugging and sobbing
Some were crying to themselves
Some were lying on the ground looking up at the sky
Some were still trying to call for help

I sat by the wall
Looked at the Japanese house wife beside me
She kept talking to her baby
Soothing the child to sleep and breast feeding
I miss mom
I want to go home

There were too many things I can’t forgot in those 8 hours
I’ve never been through so much pain in my life
Thanks to God
I was saved

What else do I want to say
I know I have so much more to tell everyone
But I’m so tired
Tired from crying
After the corpses are found
I might have to go identify them

Mom
Can I not go?
I don’t want to go
I’m so scared
I’ll see so many dead bodies
I don’t want to go anywhere

I hope this mail will get sent
Please help me publish
Maybe a lot of people will scold us
But
I hope you will know a bit more

I’m tired
Too scared to sleep
There are still small quakes
I have nowhere to hide
Mom
Are you watching?
I’m alive
Please don’t worry
Sleep for a while

——————————

Before Mother Nature
Do we still have racial differences?

***

She was somebody's daughter, somebody's girlfriend, somebody's best friend.
She was a victim to the 8.9 quake in Japan. Like many others.
I cringed when she said,
"If you have good eyes
You can see the small hands of young children
If you focus
You can even see some corpses hugging together".
It's so disheartening.
But that little good in man still shines during the darkest hours as humanity surfaces in critical times like that.
"I have anemia so I felt like I couldn’t go on
A house wife with a baby beside me
Gave me some milk powder
The 20 year old girl sitting beside me helped me find water"
God bless.

开学咯！

开学咯！
school started a week ago but because first week is usually lax there was no need for me to be so uptight about it. nothing worth blogging about. pace will be picking up. by the way, i think it must have been extremely weird to see somebody with purple eyes. my studio coordinator kept staring at me the whole time when she was talking to me. i know it's polite to have eye contact during conversations but not that much right?!
she stared right into my eyes. *shy* haha! wth.

all the best for studio and school, people! =D

this is so deja vu.
just yesterday, i was hoping these 2weeks would never end, now i only wish that i can fly back earlier.
can anybody get more petty??!
damn you. i am jolly well going to stay there for the WHOLE of this year!

sorry ***, for having to take all his shit.

兔年快乐

gong xi fa da cai to yourstruly. X)

this is my 2nd post about lunar new year already but with cny lasting for 15days, how can i not blog more about it.

i reckon i have no mahjong/poker luck this year after losing at almost every game, whether it's with my family or with my friends.

anyway i picked up $2 on the floor today so i'm betting on it. my luck is already improving!!! bring it on NSW & NSN & YMX & MJG! RWAR!~ i'll see you guys at the mahjong table.

while i'm randomly spewing thoughts to fill up this boring post of mine, i've concluded that i make friends easily at the mahjong table. even though i did come to terms with the fact that i might be a very judgey judgemental person, i blame it on the game.

HAPPY 兔年 EVERYONE!~

HAPPY RABBIT YEAR!~

what an awesome way to end off the new year by putting some money into my pocket. headed down to the flea market with ljx, yh and jq. though sales were pretty slow for us, it was a good experience overall. =D

in short, i think it's better to sell pre-loves/clothes/bags during fleas, anything else and they sell slow.

***

intended to head over to pulau ubin with cousins on sunday but the weather was cranky the whole week so i stayed at home and finished off what i had started. cooked the pineapple jam some few days ago and took it out to give it another good heating to dry up whatever last bit of juice there was in the jam.

so proud of myself for having dug out the "eyes" in such a neat manner. XD


4 pineapples cooking in a pot

all ready for the oven!


this is really ups there. XD


anyway, baked the whole day (literally) and only manage to fill up 5 containers. =.=

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR EVERYONE!~

gong xi fa cai!