I had an ever-growing list of things-to-do-after-exams. It’s time to strike off some of the stuff.
1. Buy shoes/dive computer/short trek pants
2. Have lunch at Enzo Kitchen.
3. Find a kayak expedition that I can go for.
4. Cycle at East Coast again.
5. Plan my trips
6. Cook moooooooaaaar.
7. Haircut?
By the way, this post is sticky so it’ll be up here for a while. New posts will be continued below (:
I went to the Starbucks Learning & Development Facility today – for Geog Options fieldtrip. It was one of the best post-exam activity EVER in my entire RGS life.
They served us cups of vanilla latte (which I expected), and snacks – miniature ones of those from Starbucks (which I didn’t), including my favourite blueberry muffin! Quote Dorothy, “We were just joking that today we consumed about 50 bucks’ worth of Starbucks stuff without having to pay a cent.”
The coffee and the food kept us very awake during the presentation, though I think I kind of crashed at the end. They told us about different coffee beans, the treatment/roasting process, and taught us how to cup coffee and how to use an espresso machine.
The disgusting oily looking over-roasted Kopitiam coffee. It tastes just as bad as it looks.
We cupped different coffees from around the world (Costa Rica, Kenya, Sumatra, Guatamala, etc) at the end of the session.
Step 1: remove the floating coffee bits from the cup and smell the coffee. I tried the Vienna Roast Arabica, the Vietnam Robusta, and the Kopitiam coffee. Preference is in decreasing order. Everyone (of the adults) there seem to have something against Robusta coffee. While I personally dislike Robusta too, I still think it’s a matter of preference.
Step 2: Take a spoonful from the sampling cup and slurp it really really loudly. Everyone was so embarrassed to do it that the entire room was just totally silent during the cupping. I tried slurping for my first spoonful and ended up swallowing it when I was supposed to spit it out because I was concentrating really hard on not laughing out loud.
The line up. I can’t really remember how each of the coffee tastes like but I think I liked the Kenyan one best.
Then we moved to the next room to learn how to make Lattes and Cappuccinos!
Now I finally know why all my Cappuccino attempts at home fails miserably. I need that tube thing to steam and froth up the milk (see the steam coming out from the end?). Now I want an espresso machine too. Actually just the milk-frother thing would do (:
My first two cups of Latte!
Listening to the milk froth bubbles popping in the cups (:
Winter of 2006/Beijing, Tian’anmen Square.
I’m quite amused by this photo – the guard looks like he’s trying to smile while remaining stony-faced. Hurhur. To think that I was still Sec1 then, gosh that was so long ago. And to think that that’s actually a soldier from the Communist Party. It all seems a little too creepy now that I start to see them (the communist government) from an outsider’s point of view. But what they lack in political freedom is made up for with the sheer size of the country, so it’s still better than Singapore in that sense.
It would be an exciting trip, my upcoming one in December. Not just because of the thrill of travelling, it’ll be interesting to see what I’ll think of the country after a change of perspectives. There’s just one problem – how to get a photo of myself in front of Tian’anmen and everywhere else without looking like an idiotic tourist smiling at a camera on tripod.
Went to Chek Jawa today for another Bio Options fieldtrip. This was our last fieldtrip for the module, and I guess I can say that it’s the best one so far (:
Duxuan/Claire spotted this when we were having lunch at a restaurant in Pulau Ubin. It was in a tiny garden full of potted plants. Saw a few more changeable lizards and also a small moniter lizard.
Golden orb-web spider. The male counterpart was on the web as well, but it’s not in the photo.
Paradise tree snake! Saw it curled around a stump (which I was about to hold) when we were climbing back up onto the trail from the algae-covered beach. It’s a really beautiful snake, though it might not seem so in the photo (it’s actually green with black and white stripes). It can fly too. Or glide, more like.
A piece of rain (or rather, a storm cloud which was pouring) appeared in front of us as we were doing the boardwalk. We continued walking, and 10 minutes later the cloud moved directly above us and we were instantly drenched. Maybe not instantly, I might have exaggerated. But most of us were certainly wet when we reached shelter a few minutes later.
The first 10 minutes into the storm we stood huddled together under the tiny precious piece of roof concrete like emperor penguins, umbrellas opened towards the windward side to block out some of the wind. It was exhilarating watching the storm right over the open sea where the wind blew unobstructed. The sea looked beautiful in the storm.
An oriental whip snake, in its striking position after being poked with a twig by Mr Lim.
The cats giving fishing a go. Looking for mudskippers? Wonder what they caught in the end.
On second thought, it might be even better than Japanese food. Anyhow, I’ll be going to Enzo Kitchen soon, so I’ll still get my Japanese lunch, which will be my first in the second half of the year.
Lunch at Cedele. Wanted to go there just for the chocolate banana espresso cake at first, but decided to stay for lunch.
Cedele’s now one of my favourite restaurants, because of their vegetarian friendly menu and delicious organic food. And they certainly weren’t kidding when they said organic food taste so much better! They also claim that their food are handmade from scratch, I’m not sure whether that applies to everything but it certainly seem to enhance the taste. And the food at Cedele is really, really good, much better than other restaurants around the same price (like Coffee Club and Pasta Mania).
And this time, I finally brought my camera.
Spicy mushroom aglio olio.
It was so good that I was tempted to scoop up the sauce/oil and eat them too. Wonder how they made it but I doubt they’ll share the recipe.
My second favourite dessert (: The first being the green tea parfait at Sun With Moon Japanese restaurant (you might have heard this in the morning on 987fm about a week ago).
Last mouthful. Mmmm. The food made me quite happy, which was worth it despite the fact that it lasted only a short while.
Sungei Buloh (wetland reserve). Went there on Wednesday for Bio fieldtrip. The place was swarming with mosquitoes and (to a smaller extent) moniter lizards.
Snails (which looks like figs from a distance) and tree climbing crabs.
Claws.
Kingfisher.
Moniter lizard.
Giant mudskippers.
Ant carrying a cotton stainer bug.
Grasshopper.
Nephila pilipes (I think).
Another mudskipper.
The bench where David Attenborough sat, according to Mr Lim.
All in all, it was a hell lot more interesting than Lower Peirce and Dairy Farm, minus the million mosquitoes bites I got.
ACHMED THE DEAD TERRORIST (:
“Silence! I keel you!”
“A terrifying…terrorist.”
“Look at my ass, it says Made in China.”
Sam, “Here’s Xinyi’s letter to you from god.”
Because Xinyi’s MC was written by a doctor with the surname ‘Shen’, which is god in Chinese.
The work of Sergin.
Xinyi took this.
Unglam tymez.
Xinyi took this too (:
And Jiaming found Fred’s cousin!
First time holding a toad..
First time for her too.
We released Ted after the photos were taken. Yes, I’m that uncreative with names.
Moaaar random overdue photos.
Was this last week? I think it was Friday the week before, when I first visited Kikki.K. Will be saving this for next year.
I love their stationeries. Bought this as a present though.
My favourite green tea ice-cream from Azabu Sabo Hokkaido Ice Cream. They had a promotion so I took the black seasame flavour as well. Ohh it was so so good.
And Claire finally got her Moleskine for next year after living for a year with a fake one, with much agony.
A dangling caterpillar. Cater pillar. Cat Er Pillar. Cater Pill Ar. Caterpillar.
Outing to Dairy Farm Reserve. It rained. We trekked in the drizzle. We got wet. It was fun.
See, that’s why I say you’re worse than Xinyi, Claire 
Take two.
My week:
Starting from Thursday. Visited the National Museum for my Literature Options. There was an Antwerp exhibition, of stuffed horses, pick-pocketing skills, and Peruvian moving a sand dune.
Wednesday photos are still in my DSLR. We went to the newly opened Dairy Farm Reserve/Wallace Environmental Learning Lab. It’s my favourite reserve so far, despite it being a secondary forest. Because it’s new most of the trees beside the trail are still intact and the forest felt really alive after the afternoon shower. Sad thing’s that it probably won’t stay that way for long, for visitors are already swarming in.
A series of old photographs taken by Guillaume Bijl.
Today (Saturday): Cycling at East Coast Park/Changi beach. Went further than I normally do because Joash had a punctured tyre and we had to visit a bike repair shop at Changi Village. And so I saw the earlier stretches of Changi Beach for the first time today. On the way to Changi Village we walked past this stretch of concrete path which was right next to the sea, and there was this translucent lump on the ground. I didn’t think much of it at first, till Joash commented that it’s a strange looking glob. I looked, and found it resembling a jellyfish, and pulsating. Now that I think of it, the reason why I ignored it at first was because it looked like a plastic bag. Now I know how easy it is to confuse a plastic bag in the sea with a jellyfish. Anyway, IT WAS PULSATING. AND LOOK AT THE TENTACLES!
Presumably someone (a fisherman probably) saw the jellyfish bloom in the water and pick it up, or hooked it up even, and left it on the pavement. I found a twig and nudged it back into the sea. Then I regretted not touching the tentacles before doing that to see how a mild sting feels like.
The last time I’ve seen so many jellyfish was in Australia, but those weren’t very visible. These were everywhere!
The high tide probably pushed them all the way to the shore.
Punctured tyre. The same thing happened to me two weeks ago.
Cycling from East Coast to Changi was an awesome uninterrupted ride right next to the airport, under the shade of a continuous canopy of trees. It was almost effortless pedaling on the first gear. The ride back from Changi was another story altogether. I was heading directly into the wind and the sun was much higher in the sky. Dropped quite a few gears and stopped quite a few times, so ended up much slower :\
The funniest thing you’ll ever watch.
“Watch your language.”
“Don’t make me tickle you.”
I love that photo booth.
Bio Options fieldtrip to Lower Peirce Reservoir last Wednesday. Didn’t see many interesting things so didn’t take much photos. It was a rather boring fieldtrip.
Very glam Claire, very glam.
The common sun skink. It was very common. We saw about 5 in total.
A katydid.
Had dinner at a prata restaurant, the Indian vegetables doesn’t taste as bad as they look, but I think their yogurt was homemade.
Back to the forest for nightwalk, which we barely saw anything (except for a firefly, and a gecko, oh and that annoying arrogant old man, for the second time of the day).
Me, “Sorry, may I know who the lady was just now? The one with the camera guy.”
Salesgirl, “The ang-moh (Caucasian)? She’s the owner of the company. She’s taking some photos for the press.”
I saw the CEO (Kristina Carlson) of Kikki.K today, in their newly opened shop at the Ion.
Our last netball carnival in RGS yesterday. Not that I’ll miss it anyway. Wasn’t planning to take photos at first, but changed my mind halfway through the morning.
I like their blue and white jerseys and blue and white hairties.
It started to rain around 10.
Guess who was there. Hahaha.
My 2nd favourite jump shot, after the Tioman one. Thanks Mabel!
