I have been terribly busy lately. between work, uni, assignments, getting shit done…  and oh damn, there’s a house inspection soon! *rushes off to clean the house* I must say though, busy as I am, I am learning to enjoy this busy life. Some days, it is tiring. I had walk into the house, bend down for a tad to feel the softness of my bed… and i was off, lights out.

I have had the opportunity to travel quite a bit lately. Prior to going back to Singapore,  I managed to go down to the coast with some friends from back in ANU. It’s sort of a sad meeting each time we meet up, as Wade is now getting ready to fly to America with his wife. This stay might be permanent, we don’t know yet, and I have always considered Wade and everyone in our little group as very important people in my life. So, while I am happy for him and Yvette, geez it feels kind of sad

After coming back from Singapore, we headed up to Soundwave 2013. I have noticed that, progressively, there seems to be more and more smokers at these events. The highlight of my time there was dragonforce. I bought some tickets to see them back in 2008 I think – but we never made it there and the tickets were SO WASTED.

This time, it was some thing like a 35 minutes performance – short, but I did enjoy whatever they played. It was great to be hearing them live and to be caught up in the moment.

I did some thing silly though. Prior to their performance, despite my height phobia and the ease i drop into motion sickness, I decided to get on one of the rides. Thereafter, I was a pack of nerves who was about to throw up. Add all the cigarette smoke in, I was well on truly on my way to hell.

The interesting story to this was, the organisers were not prepared to let me OUT of the venue. To various parties, I have already said I know and am keen to not come back into the festival. I just wanted to hang my head in a clean toilet bowl then sleep. However, I was turned around a couple of times before they finally let me go – into the pouring rain -_-;

Finally, this past weekend, we went up to watch Russell Peters LIVE!

I have no photos for this, duh, but all I can say was that it was a fantastic performance! I have never watch a comedian live, and the crowd atmosphere also help make the jokes doubly funny. It was ok to laugh out loud, and it was ok to laugh for extended periods of time – and I actually laughed so hard I cried.

To be honest, that was such a weird experience, I actually sat back and tried to figure out if I was actually sad or not. These days, I break into tears quite easily, so I wasn’t too sure what the hell those tears were doing hanging out.

I have also been cooking up a storm at home. I don’t document most of these because they were simple home cooked food, versus my previous attempts in trying new stuff or following particular recipes – all my recent food were made simple and to fulfil my daily needs.

There were a couple of weeks where I really didn’t want to cook and really didn’t want to do anything. groceries were bought, and then I just lost interest. I ate out nearly every day and night, and burnt through my pay. Yeah, one should always enjoy your pay, but I would hardly think spending it all burning through food was hardly the only thing I should spend it on.

What I really enjoyed doing though was playing with my new wok, from Wok Star. I bought it around christmas period and have been cooking with it, on and off, ever since. You might think, wtf, dude, you spent how much on a new wok and some “accessories”?

Yes, yes, I did. You see, I have bought a few woks here every year or couple of years. I cook enough fried rice and other sort of stir fry things over the years – mostly fried rice though – that warrants me needing a wok. The problem I faced, though, was that despite how non-stick these woks were, shit always get stuck to the bottom. Eventually, they also got burnt through. Woks sold here have a flat bottom to accomodate the common electric stove tops. While this is great, this meant that burnt/caked up bottoms were unavoidable. Even if they were avoidable, the food often turn out not quite what I was expecting.

I could have bought it locally, but they were mostly stainless steel. So, away I went and ordered this. Also bought a camping gas stove so it could sit over real fire – and the rest was history. I probably have never cooked so much stir fry in my life, but I kept throwing it on. It was easy, it was quick and, generally speaking, quite healthy since I keep trying to maintain “5 colours” on my plate. I don’t use as much oil as hawkers normally do, and I still get a good flavour out of everything.

The other times that I use the wok is for steaming. My non-asian friends probably don’t realise this, but the bamboo baskets aren’t the only way to steam food. Of course, some uses the rice cooker for such situations – but my family has always used the wok. There’s a simple tray insert you can use with the wok, filled with holes, and you can chuck the whole plate in. Most woks sold here have no domed lids for their woks, so this was difficult to do (thus, only fried rice). I rarely ate steamed stuff because of that. However, since this wok arrived… yeah, it’s been good.

I have been very busy lately, yes, but I have also been very contented. Thank you everyone for all your care love and support so far.

Current Mood:  accomplished