The lantern i bought from IKEA with tealight in it. So pretty at night :)

Over the weekend, I had the apartment all to myself since my housemates were both out of the country (“pants”? what’s that??). So for Sunday dinner, I invited my friend Gavin over for some home-made pasta. I got the recipe from my friend Kat, who has her own food blog here. yes she made up the recipe from scratch. I know the picture above isn’t all that appetizing looking, but it was tasty – I promise! Just head over to Kat’s blog for MUCH better pics :P and step by step pictorial instruction!

my only gripe is that a lot of the ingredients were hard to find in Singapore. The hearts of artichoke and sundried tomato were bought at Cold Storage and I suspect it wasn’t even really the right ones (they came already seasoned / salted, which kinda messes up with the taste). I was also unsuccessful in finding rosemary and fennels, so I went without those, and the pasta selection here is frankly quite… bland. We only had the usual suspect – fusilli, penne (which i got), spaghetti and macaroni. Ah well..

I got together with 11 of my old coworkers from Publicis – the original lions gang! we head over to Lavender for some tasty seafood at Lai Huat Seafood Restaurant at Horne road. The picture above does NOT do justice of how much food we ordered (and we even had seconds of some dishes) but I was too busy stuffing my face when everything came that I didn’t even bother taking out my phone again :P. Everything came to be $18 per person, which is very reasonable since we ordered a bunch of seafood dish (I didn’t touch any of the prawns of course).

Johnnie Walker JetBlack @ The White Rabbit

Cool event with free flow of JW all night and entertaining Brazillian dancers + flamethrowers.

Heineken Green Room 8 Bit Blitz @ Old Kallang Theater

A bit dead at the start, but as the night progresses it started going. Then again Green Room events are meant to be for underground music lovers with specific taste.

Kinda went crazy with the pudding app… It’s my favorite :)

The outing was at Wavehouse on Sentosa Island. A lot of fun and 1-to-1 drink AND food makes me very happy. Then at the end of the day, was thrown into the pool by a few of my coworkers… I was being good about keeping myself dry too! rAwrr..

Then today, celebrated halloween with some festive foods in the office.

It’s a korean photo app that lets you play aroubd with different cameras and films, so the resukt comes out all artsy and pretty! I combine this with phototreat to give them an extra oomph :)

Been trying to upload more samples but wordpress app is being a bitch. So head on over to my tumblrinstead if you want ro see more!

It always surprises people that despite being a creative-inclined person, I have never owned a single Apple product. Not the iPods, not the macbooks or iMacs. In fact as I’ve never even touched Mac OS until I got my current job, which was only 4 months ago.

I’m not so much against Apple per se (though I really question their company personality sometimes), but you can definitely see that I’m not a huge fan either. I’ve always admired their minimalistic design, but the love stops there. the barrage of restrictions imposed upon usage of their products drove me away from ever taking the plunge and giving them a chunk of my hard-earned money.

That is, until the iPhone 4 came out. The two-side camera and retina display sold me over. I’ve always loved taking pictures on the go and being able to upload them straight to wherever I want (twitter, dailybooth, facebook) without having to wait until I get home in front of my laptop. iPhone 4 does just that, and at the quality of a point and shoot digital camera instead of the grainy mobile phone pictures we usually see.

Besides making iPhone apps is somewhat relevant to my job :P so I better be familiar with the user interface / experience of an iPhone app!

Sample of pics I took using the awesome camera on iPhone 4, processed by this awesome app called “Phototreat”

I went there for four short days. it was very hard to leave the island back to Singapore (and back to reality). I’ll let the pictures do all the talking.

I met up with my sorority sister Christina. She got us a room at Sheraton Laguna. Christina traveled a lot for work, so she has a special privilege with all Starwood hotels. It was awesome!!

We got a kick ass room with straight access to the pool. We’re talking about dipping your feet into the pool right off the balcony here.

Our breakfast the first morning! stuffed myself silly :)

Later on that day, we enjoyed appetizers and free flow of drinks thanks to Christina again! it was awesome. I drank four glasses of wine in under 30 mins (needless to say, I was pretty happy)

Then we ran off to catch the sunset by the beach:

Missed it by a couple minutes, but not too worry. Plenty of time :)

We decided to continue drinking by the beach. We each got a bottle of Chang beer, which is a popular local choice. Then we took a nap for a few hours by the beach. Now that’s what I call vacation!

The next morning, woke up early since we booked a tour to the famous Phi Phi island.

Empty lobby at 8 in the morning…

We’re off to Phi Phi island! I had heard so many people talk about this place, but I was certainly NOT prepared to see how beautiful it really is in real life!

The water was the perfect shade of aqua blue. I almost couldn’t believe myself. It was insane!!

Phi Phi island is the location where the movie “The Beach” (Leonardo Dicaprio) was filmed. It wasn’t in this exact location though. We WERE going to visit the set at Maya Beach, but the tides were high that day so we had to skip.

A pirate cave?

The water was so clear that we could see all the colourful tropical fish swimming underneath!

Then we arrived at Monkey Beach. I took the time to capture the white powdery sand on the beach.

Fatty monkey! I try not to get too close to them since I know wild monkeys can get pretty agressive. I remember what happened at Uluwatu.

We also went snorkeling. The weather was a bit overcast that day so the snorkeling wasn’t as awesome as it could be, but it was still an experience. I saw so many colored fishes and swam alongside of them. Some people spotted anemone and a few nemos too!

One of the tour guides took out a sea urchin to show to other passengers who didn’t go under the water.

After lunch, we made a stop over at a very tiny island.

Spotted a dead jelly fish that washed ashore. I touched it! it felt like jello.

Took a nap by the beach again for a couple hours. Then woke up and snapped this pic. That’s why I look distraught… but I like it :D

My favorite!

After the tour, we came back to the hotel for more hors d’oeuvres, and ran to the beach again to catch the sunset.

The next morning, had another breakfast at the hotel. I overdosed on the smoked salmon

We rented a car that day and finally got out of the resort. Down to Patong!

Christina and James played at the beach while I spent nearly three hours getting mani pedi and thai massage. I was in heaven!!

We had a seafood dinner. Very cheap and oh so yummy!

Walked around bangla streeeeeet… which is a popular tourist area for night life.

was offered countless ping pong shows (which we declined).

Ended the night at a hookah bar

turkish coffee! first time having it. It’s very thick…

Next day we traveled further south, and discovered this little hidden gem right by Karon view point:

It was a jouney just getting to the restaurant! We had lunch by the beach, with a lovely company of these two dogs:

Our lunch. Very delicious!!

Unfortunately, it pretty much rained all day long. I had a plane to catch so I split away from the group and spent the day at Patong, getting as many massages as I could before I had to fly back to Singapore.

So long Phuket, I will see you again soon!

I got “I ♥ NYC” (Softly scrambled eggs with caramelized onions and imported smoked sturgeon. Served with a toasted sesame bagel and our own cream cheese for a classic New York experience) and a glass of grapefruit juice. The cream cheese + Bagel is just DIVINE! Hands down the best brunch I’ve had in Singapore thus far. I’m definitely taking my sister here when she visits next month.

The down side is, it comes at a price - $35 for the whole thing after taxes and service charge. The place also seems to be very popular. Keep in mind that we did go on a busy Saturday afternoon, but i’m pretty sure an hour-long wait isn’t normal anywhere! I was pretty FUNGRY since i hadn’t eaten all day and the migraine was acting up again, but no matter since the tasty food made up for it.

On an unrelated note, here are some pics I took recently:

Love this nail polish! China Glaze “For Audrey”

One of my favorite breakfast: Butter and Sugar on a thick toast. From toastbox. Pardon my messy desk.

Lunch at Ootoya @ Orchard Central. This is their new menu, grilled chicken and egg bento. I also noticed they stopped putting the amount of calories for each item on the menu, which is great because previously I just couldn’t bring myself to order whatever I want after seeing those info… :P

One sunny afternoon at my apartment.

A Digital Experience – very cool interactive city. The boxes you see below lights up when someone steps next to them.

But sometimes they all light up regardless and does this cool light show thing that I obviously can’t capture with my camera unless I took a video (which I didn’t).

The next installation is also pretty damn awesome:

At first glance, it was this boring white shapes in a dimly lit black box.

Then ta-da! patterns seamlessly appears as if it was really printed on the shapes! It was pretty amazing and high quality up close, I almost couldn’t tell that the patterns were a projection. They also alternate to a different pattern but my picture didn’t come out too well on that one since the patterns were very light (so it was just a white blob on my camera).

Ultra-nature – another cool one. The projection of the plants interacts with you as you stand/walk in front of the wall. We spent some time running around back and forth like an idiot and I’m impressed because it was done at such low light condition, but picks up our movements quite well.

Framework f5x5x5 – this installation looks very cool in person, but i’m not sure I got what it’s all about.

Anyway, if you happen to be around Singapore and have some time to kill, I recommend checking out this exhibition!

Now February 2006 doesn’t seem all that long ago, yet i realized.. it is! it has been over FOUR years since then. I was still in college back in 2006, and only a little over 21. I didn’t know many things I know now. I worried about things that no longer mattered after a few years. I cared about people who are now no longer part of my life. It’s a bit mind boggling to realize this, but I suppose it’s an indication that life is always, constantly moving forward.

Anyway… I wanted to save these pics just in case the old host deletes it, because even to this date they’re one of the best photo sets i’ve ever taken. The best part is, I used Nikon Coolpix 4200 - a lowly 4 mega pixels point and shoot camera! impressive, right? although of course the colors were edited in Photoshop, and these pictures were the selected six out of the bajillion I took that day.

The photos are of a band I “discovered” back in my college days, Aviatic. I fell in love with them when they performed at a local concert in my college, so when they performed at The Roxy I just had to see them again! I went with my friends Kendra and Sharon.

Not sure how I managed to get this relatively crisp shot because I must have used the zoom, given that we weren’t all that close to the stage!

So mysterious looking. I think this was taken in between songs.

This last picture is probably my favorite out of the bunch. So artsy fartsy :D

Also took a video of one of the performances… though the quality isn’t very good (it was pre-HD days!) The song is called “Goodbye Beautiful Days”. I don’t know what became of them now, but last I heard they had disbanded.

I have no clue what these are, but they look good in pictures!

A shy octopus. I had to heavily edit this picture because the tank was almost pitch dark!

Tell me these pics don’t look like a scene from a sci-fi movie titled “When the angry giant spiders attack”. Why are people still eating crabs????

Caught one in a totally menacing pose:

They are Japanese giant spider crabs and damn, they were HUGE. Those fishes you see above are probably about 4-5 inches long, so you can guess how big this guy is in real life! it’s no wonder the Japanese were able to come up with things like Godzilla when they have these sort of MONSTER swimming in their ocean…

We went down to the tunnel. Many of the fish were swimming in schools.. very pretty!

ooooo dream world like! This is what I get when I take pictures with low shutter speed while getting on the travelator.

This one is probably my favorite shot of the day. I caught the shark silhouette just in time and at the right place!

Bye bye sharky…

A huge and very ancient looking fish. I wonder if it’s tasty?

Jellyfish is always fun to take pictures of… something about the way they bob up and down is very soothing.

Why is nemo black? This is my first time seeing clown fish of this color.

Ok, that’s how big those crabs are. SO SCARY AND DISGUSTING!

We walked over to the Dolphin Lagoon for a seal show. I love seals! they are so adorable…

Playing dead for the audience.. awww!

Afterwards, headed off to Vivo to cool off. we walked around for a bit before settling at this cafe called White Dog Cafe. Food was so-so but they do have a great view of Sentosa island from inside the cafe:

Shared potato wedges (yummmmy) and caesar salad. first time i’ve ever had caesar salad with poached egg on top, but i suppose it was alright.

Playing around with my camera.. did you know some places put rice in the salt shaker to prevent the salt from clumping up? I didn’t know!