Riding on the post-run high.

Riding on the post-run high.
music: jason mraz - rainbow connection

The wonders a good talk with old friends (thanks Jane, Jinli and Faggy!), an unexpected feel-better e-card from B, a good night's sleep and a good morning run can do.

Though I'm still far from tackling 10km, I am pretty sure that my legs wouldn't lead me to breakfast at the halfway mark if i keep up these runs.


I feel good. Now off I go to trace my heritage at the Peranakan Museum.

distance: 4.05km
time: 29 mins 16 secs
pace: 07:13mins/km

Ramen, laksa and rosy noses.

Ramen, laksa and rosy noses.


On Monday, Erwin copped out on our morning tanning session for more sleep and Mcdelivery, so we met for lunch at Bon Gout, this quaint Japanese bookshop/cafe at Robertson Quay that I've wanted to check out since I first saw it years ago. And that night, his long-time friends finally met his uni cum india-survival pal, over more Japanese food. Yakitori this time.

That night, I stayed up late looking over photos of my Europe trip, reading one too many chapters of A Thousand Days in Venice, and chatting with B. He calls the picture of our coats in the previous post "the small universe we were living in" for the six weeks I was there. An utopian universe, I think.



Due to the late night (or early morning if you prefer), I had to drag my arse out of bed to meet Ern for our Johore day trip. Turns out the trip was worth all that dragging, as I got to eat authentic Penang laksa, watch a cheap and yet-to-be-released-in-Singapore movie, and score myself some pretty good buys. And it was my first time in Johore! Ironic 'cos of all my traveling I know, but better late than never!



Playing pass the hat. Erwin and I finally headed to Sentosa for some sunshine early this morning, before meeting Charlene for ice-cream.


Sarong, beach bag, straw hat, bikini. This I've decided, is the essence of my life.

I'm not exactly in the chirpiest of moods right now. A bad cocktail of hormones and a non-confrontational past. Will be good after sleep.

Yearning.

Yearning.


"Boy I hear you in my dreams
I feel your whisper across the sea..."

Lucky, by Colbie Caillat and Jason Mraz

How I wished to be lying on the crickety sofa bed with you, talking like we did so many nights in the darkened room, illuminated only by the fairylights at the door.

Just tonight.

MSN chat's the next best alternative to dreaming with opened eyes.

Yet another escape...

Yet another escape...
feeling: shocked

Ahmedabad got bombed yesterday. 29 dead and over 100 injured. This is nothing like how Hedwig taught me to deliver the news, but hell, I'm in shock.

As Erwin was saying, can you imagine if we had been in one of those "windowless auto-rickshaws" if that happened???

Click on here if you're interested.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jul/26ahd.htm

I returned from Bali four months before the first terrorist bombings, and three months from Ahmedabad before this tragedy. I am really, really hoping it's all purely coincidental.

Santorini dreaming.

Santorini dreaming.
music: jason mraz ft. colbie caillat - lucky

A good part of my Sunday was spent lazing around with my prize find in the library - Marlena de Blasi's A Thousand Days in Venice, and finally getting down to watching The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. The only thing that saves me from being a slob is the 30-minute run I fit in this morning before my 10:30 a.m.piano class.

A good part of the movie was shot in Greece, and oh boy, do I want to go there!

I want to go to Santorini
but I've got no money.

If only rhyming made me rich.
And if you are even wondering why...


picture from http://www.flickr.com/photos/namq/1805552032/

Now you know.

An accidentally artsy night.

An accidentally artsy night.




Ballet under the Stars 2008 was a good way to spend a Saturday evening lazing on picnic mats and munching on finger food. And of course, to watch the ballet. Our supermarket-bought sushi and chips paled in comparison to the many picnic baskets and wine glasses. Next year, we're gonna drive. Haha.

During the second performance, I couldn't help overhearing the conversation the family behind us were having.

Woman: Good ah? The ra#&@#$ are really good.
(Here, I thought she was a dance expert commenting about pirouettes or some other unknown dance term, so I strained to find out what ra#&@# was.)
Man: Yeah, they're good.
Woman: Yeah, really sweet rambutans.

Haha! Only in Singapore would people watch a ballet and make comments on food.



After, we poked by the National Museum for a look-see at the Night Festival, and ended up staying for awhile watching the museum facade being lit and grooving to the infectious beats of Bloco Singapura at the Beatnik Picnic.




People were snapping away at an interpretation of Michelangelo's David, and we soon realized why - check out the zoomed in picture and interpret your own dirty selves.

I immediately sent Jemo an mms of the picture with the note: "You're not the only one who lost his mojo."

Haha, good night world.

Have Friday afternoons lost their charm?

Have Friday afternoons lost their charm?

Remember how Friday afternoons were so special when we were kids? It meant that we were done with school for the week, and that we had two and half days of (adult-supervised) freedom to savour before bluesy Mondays lolled along.

For me, the last bell on Friday meant that it was time for me to head home with my swimming buddy, rush through our weekend homework, then head down to the pool where we'd spend hours paddling till our lips turned blue.

It's Friday today, and it feels like any other day. The afternoons have lost their charm. I'm getting a tad too nostalgic, so let's move on.




I snoozed the alarm and lazed in bed for a little too long yesterday, and ended up having to do my run in the increasingly-hot 11 a.m. sun. It wasn't the breeziest (in all sense) of workouts, but I was pretty chuffed to find out after mapping my run that I have covered 3.85km. That's about 1/3 of what we'll have to do come 26 October.

With just enough time for a cool-down and shower, I then zipped out to meet the CS babes for our long-awaited meetup. Having each trotted our own little part of the globe for the past six months, we overstayed our welcome at Sun with Moon, exchanging travel tales over our riverside Japanese lunch. Our overseas exchanges all seem like such distant memories, and it's almost surreal knowing that we all made it everywhere and back with no obvious trauma, haha!

(It's kinda cool that quite a few of us CS girls have signed up for 10km runs. Daph and Cheryl are tackling the Nike Human Race in August, while May, Charlene and I have individually signed up for the Great Eastern Women's Run.)

Later that evening, CH and Jemo came down to have dinner with Ceci and I before we caught Dark Knight (I'll skip the raving as i'm sure pretty much everybody has been told by somebody to catch the movie. Rest in peace, Heath Ledger.)

It's an absolutely pleasure to be in the company of friends so old and familiar that my thoughts required no censoring, from gripes about growing old to baseball/bleacher sex. Look at the last shot of Jem and I. Does the guy look like he's lost his "mojo"??? Hahaha. I'm not convinced.

Am waiting for Jinli to hop on the bus, for us to do a quick exchange of money and Ballet under the Stars tickets at my bus-stop. And later, it's to my babe's for chick flicks and tartiflette.

The men don't get it!

The men don't get it!


Over soup and coffee, my CPM babes and i caught up with over seven months' worth of gossip. Even though we've each grown in our different ways, our signature boisterous cackling and screeching laughter was still very much present that Monday night. Some things just don't change with time, like old girlfriends.

Their beauty routines did though! While i already find the cleanse-tone-moisturize steps tedious enough, my two girlfriends have serum, eye cream and sunblock! That's a 6-step cleansing routine. And don't even get me started on the anti-aging cream. "You're never too young to start my dear," i quote Lyn.



Apart from the startling insights to their beauty routines, i also got to meet Marilyn's new squeeze. Zhi Yang has not only scored the demure Lyn, but is also lucky enough to be studying in Hawaii. i've fallen more in love with the idea of the island from his description. Great weather, island life, and my favourite singer-songwriter. The first thing i asked Zi Yang was, "So have you seen Jack Johnson around?" Haha.


And as we felt like we didn't do enough catching up last Friday, Jane came over this morning and we yakked away over breakfast and lunch. i got to show her Erwin's Go to Goa video, and she has given B the thumbs-up after seeing his impersonation of the Very Good Gay Guy. Haha.




Time flew by, especially with her fascination with my Macbook's Photobooth. The last two snaps are of what we would have looked like if Mother Nature had been unkind. Hilarious.

Cheers to old-time poly girlfriends. They make my heart smile.

Incubus - I Miss You.

Incubus - I Miss You.

To see you when I wake up
Is a gift I didn't think could be real.
To know that you feel the same as I do
Is a three-fold, Utopian dream.

You do something to me that I can't explain.
So would I be out of line if I said "I miss you"?

I see your picture.
I smell your skin on
The empty pillow next to mine.
You have only been gone ten days,
But already I'm wasting away.
I know I'll see you again
Whether far or soon.
But I need you to know that I care,
And I miss you.

By some twist of luck, B and I have been able to work out our schedules to chat every night this weekend. Monday marks the start of our food diary blogging (we're keeping it private so you don't see how much junk we put into our mouths), and our supposed healthy lifestyle plan. He's already gone running twice this weekend, for an hour and a half each time (that basically overrides the total of all my runs since my return, haha). I'm motivated to keep up. Oosh.

Here ends the hunt for the elusive lemongrass moisturizer.

Here ends the hunt for the elusive lemongrass moisturizer.

You have to give us credit for it. We donned the red tops (and me the white bottoms) and jostled through the endless throngs of people to make it to Marina Square, only to have our patriotic anticipations dampened by the rain. We weren't sure if the show would go on, and admit that our half-hearted flames of patriotism were quite easily put out by the thought of walking through the rain for nothing.


What were we to do but to seek solace from the maddening crowd in a quiet Belgian bar?


And we had our dinner while we were there.




Though it was painful to sleep at 3 and wake before 9, Lanxi and I pulled ourselves out of bed on time to hit the beach for our first trial run. To think that it was a year ago that we last ran the beach roads while practising for the Shape run! Time flies, indeed. And the run sure gave a jolt to our travel-flabbied bodies.

No matter how time passes or how things change, certain things never fail give me a mood lift - stretching tired muscles, the shower in Siloso West that makes me feel like I'm in a tropical forest, and the familiar routine of changing out of our running gear and into our bikinis.


Pity we didn't get to stay in our bikinis for long, as the dark clouds soon arrived and sent the sea of volley-ballers and sun-baskers running for shelter.



Our usual post-run lunch at Sakae Sushi. The restaurant seems to have gone upmarket! Gone are the usual $1.99 sushi offerings. instead, there were teppanyaki sets, premium sushi sets, proper desserts and cocktails. We both had the chicken teppanyaki set, which was really pretty good. And it was during our post-lunch stroll around Vivocity that I finally found my lemongrass moisturizer. If you are as crazy about the spa-like scent as I am, go pick up a bottle of the Oriental Essence body milk from Harnn and Thann at Tangs Vivocity. A single whiff transports me to a Thai spa retreat!



And as I was in the mood for something home-made and healthy, I bought some pasta and veggies and tossed up a quick dinner with my sister. We make quite an efficient kitchen team, I realised - I buy the ingredients, she chops them up, I cook, and she does the dishes. And as we cooked really measley portions of fettuccine, we rounded the meal off by opening the bottle of white zinfandel in the fridge and nibbling on pink peppercorn dark chocolate. Here's my idiot-proof recipe for an easy dinner.

Mushroom and tomato fettucine with truffle oil

You'll need:

• truffle oil
• shitake mushrooms (as many as you wish), halved or quartered
• tomatoes (as many as you wish), cubed
  
• whole-wheat fettuccine (or any pasta)
• garlic, finely chopped
• black pepper to taste
• salt to taste
• italian herbs/seasoning
• grated or powdered cheese

Method:

1. Cook pasta according to packet instructions.
2. Heat truffle oil in a pan, and fry garlic till golden-brown.
3. Add in mushrooms, and simmer for 3 minutes. Don't worry about adding water or any other liquid, the mushrooms would produce their own.
4. Add tomatoes, and stir well to blend flavors. Take care not to overcook or the tomatoes would turn mushy.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Add generous dashings of dried herbs.
7. Spoon on top of cooked pasta, and drizzle with a few drops of truffle oil.
8. Serve with grated or powdered cheese.

Easy peasy!