clean linen

The last few days of 2008 haven't been the most exciting and memorable ones. There are perks here and there, but it's difficult to say that, in general, the end of the year has been a good one. Now with New Year's Eve just less than a day away, I wish I could go to bed tonight, sleep through the whole of tomorrow and tomorrow night, and just wake up on the 1st of January and think to myself, "Oh, yay, 2009 is here." You could wish me "Happy new year", but I'd feel nothing special about the new year, I may not even feel happy about it. So if you do wish me "happy new year" and you get a lacklustre response in return, know that I wish that, this year, I wish the year 2008 would end on the 30th of December, and that the year 2009 would start with 2nd January.

On Saturday, my cell group mate, Hannah, invited me to her house for dinner with two other friends, King and Debbie. It was a proper British meal consisting of roast pork, potatoes, carrots and parsnips. The last time I had a British meal like this was many months ago when I was still living in Florence Boot Hall! After dinner, there was quite a bit of sitting and mucking around, which eventually ended up with us watching a very weird movie version of Cinderella starring Brandy, Whoopi Goldberg and Whitney Houston, amongst other characters. Cinderella is actually black. The Prince is asian, but his mother is black, while his father is white... Personally, I found it too strange and the songs weren't that catchy. It was quite a painful 88 minutes. Oh well, it was a good night! Oh and for dessert, Debbie brought profiteroles while I brought over chin chow with longans! I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of it before it was served. An...

Number 1 At 8:35 this morning, there was a few loud knocks on my door that woke me up. I knew it was the postman leaving a package at my door, but I assumed it was something I had bought online (for someone else, mind you, I haven't been crazy-shopping for myself, but rather for others). So, imagine my surprise when I opened the door to find a small box outside my door that had Korean words on it: What a nice start to my day! This package from Jennifer was filled with instant noodles, cookies and potato chips - all with a Korean brand. On the back of one of the packets of instant noodles, she even wrote instructions as to how to cook it properly! Her handwriting really is so neat: Thank you Jennifer! I thank God for you! Will pass the stuff to Tzen as well:) Number 2 I bought this dog when I went to Manchester with my family. It's really cute, really big and really nice to hug. Its name is Dylan, Dylan the Dog. He even has his own Playful Pals Passport, part of the UK and part ...

Continuing from the previous entry : After breakfast, we headed to the Brussels-Midi train station to take a train to Luxembourg. It was really cold at the platform, so much so that I used my hands to cover my face and ears so as to protect it from the wind: Arriving at Luxembourg, we followed the walking route suggested in the Lonely Planet book we bought for Belgium and Luxembourg. Our first stop was the Place de la Constitution: Then we took a few steps further to reach Valle de la Petrusse (A valley): In the background of this photo with my brother in it, you see our next stop: Cathédrale Notre-Dame. We couldn't enter the church but we got to see what it was famous for at the main entrance - the figure of Mary carrying baby Jesus: Next up, the Chamber of Deputies - where the Luxembourg Parliament meets: When the phototaking was done with, we walked on to the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art (National Museum of History and Art). The things inside were interesting, but ...

I stayed up last night until 12midnight to open my presents. Although now I regret opening it then because, now, I'm skyping with my family as they open their presents in the living room. Ok, here are all my presents: From my sister, mother, brother, Carolin, Aida, Wei Chuen, Jolene, Aunty Oi Leng and my British friend, Hannah. THANK YOU! What took me by surprise was the gift from my sister. It was a shoe box with a ribbon tied around it and on it there was a post-it saying, "Open only after Dad, Mum & Gege leave to return to S'pore!" When I first read it, I thought there was some contraband items contained inside. When I opened it, I saw a card and.. COMFORT FOOD!:) This morning, I wanted to attend the church christmas service, which began at 10am. The thing was that... On Christmas and Boxing Day, there are no buses. In the end, the Year 1 friend I went to church with called a cab to get to church. To top it all off, we had to pay double the cab fare because it ...

I was invited by the Year 1s to join them in their dinner party at a Year 3's house tonight (Note: I'm a "Year 2"). Initially, I was very reluctant to attend as I just didn't feel like I was up for some Christmas Cheer with people who are more like acquaintances, as compared to having a Christmas parties with friends I'm closer to. I went, eventually. I was somehow cornered into going. Firstly, they got me involved in some Gift Exchange thingy they called "Secret Santa". To seal the deal, I was arrowed to make a salad. So I made a fruit salad (On the left of this photo): It looks all black because I covered the fruits with grass jelly (a.k.a. 'Chin Chow'). They liked the combination! And I'm quite proud of this new combination: fruits, mayo, chin chow:) Oh, it also didn't help that one of the Year 1s that I'm closer to kept persuading me to just join in, and if I really did not enjoy myself, I could just leave early. So, I went. T...

So today was a day of running errands, doing laundry, vacuuming the room, packing away and reorganising stuff, and ended with a steamboat dinner in Janice's room. As we ate, we watched Hairspray, then went on to watch many many other videos. Before we knew it, it was 12:40am and I returned to my room. Of the many videos Janice showed us, this one video was SUPER interesting and I asked her for the link so that I could share it with all of you. The two people are playing "A Little Alphabet Game" where, if you notice while watching the video, the first word of every sentence starts with a letter that changes with the order of the letters in the English Alphabet. Ok, I may not have explained this "game" very clearly but I believe that once you've watched the video clip, you'll get an idea of what I'm trying to say. If you still don't get it after the first time, watch it a second time. If you STILL don't get it after your second time of watching...

I joined them for breakfast at their hotel today. Then we caught the live telecast of the Fifa Club World Championship Finals between Manchester United and a South American team (something De Quita i think?) in the hotel room, which was showing on TV. Afterwards, it was dimsum lunch (mostly for my benefit because it's not often that I'll eat dimsum by myself), packing the last few items into the luggage, and off we were to Birmingham International Airport (My parents and brother now know the mission I undertake to get to the Airport and get back from the Airport each time I fly out of, or into, the UK). Leaving them in Birmingham, I soon found myself back in Nottingham. At the bus station, I found myself staring at this really dumb pigeon pecking furiously at a piece of bread on the ground. In between thoughts of "how stupid can this pigeon get" and "the pigeon better not come anywhere near me", I wished I was on the plane back to Singapore with my parents a...

I'm now blogging from the hotel room in Madrid!:) We had an exciting night last night, taking an overnight train from Paris to Madrid. However, my mum and brother didn't sleep very well so I think the rest of my family is catching up on sleep while I'm here blogging. We took many many many photos so I'll just try to post as many as I can. We arrived in Brussels in the evening, after taking the Eurostar from London St Pancras. It was a REALLY interesting experience for me, taking the Eurostar for the first time. Especially when the train came to a stop and there was an announcement that we were now waiting for clearance to enter the channel that would take us into France. On the train, we also had a yummy cheeseburger and a pizza: We arrived at Brussels-Midi station, and took a cab to our hotel, Le Meridien. This is what you see when you first enter the lobby of the hotel: After checking in, we asked the hotel for a dinner recommendation nearby. The friendly man at the c...