The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

considering that i only headed to bed at 4am yesterday, today passed relatively mishap-less. icu rounds in the morning, following up on my cases & working on my project in the afternoon. still i miss the carefree days where i could just mooch around on weekdays doing absolutely nothing. right now i'm harbouring a secret mission of just absconding work sometime in the afternoon, find myself some quiet serene place, stare into the wilderness and just do zilch. unfortch i doubt it's that feasible.

and thank you dear joy, for hearing me out til the wee hours of the morning, putting into words what i kinda already know at the back of my head. today i walked around, a little less load on my shoulders. still did my forbidden search when msn starts up. but slowly i guess...

really physically fatigued right now, it's barely past 11. gonna head to bed and get myself some rest. preferbly dream-less.

i slept the whole of today. woke up late. had breakfast. went back to sleep. had lunch. fell asleep at my grandma's. came back home slpt til dinner.

it's like i only woke up for meals today. on the other hand, i had dinner at chomp chomp today. my first time! and the food's pretty good.

now it's close to midnight and i'm WIDE awake. just messed my whole just fine-tuned circadian rhythm. perfect.

watched my second 3D movie with the jc bunch on friday. final destination. groanssss. was soo bad. poor sher. she was stuck between titus who as usual kept asking tons of qns and me who just kept squealing. haha dhan's right, with the 3D glasses on, you feel as if you're in your own world. and you become unaware of what you're doing.

we went for a short supper after at the usual tamp prata place. but we were too stuffed by chips and popcorn to eat anything else.

and today i decided to extend my peanut butter craving by making a batch of peanut butter cookies and they turned out yummers! wheee!


i'm no longer the sleep monster of my family! woke up half an hour before my alarm clock was due to ring. what in the world is wrong with me...

but the weak early morning rays are really beautiful to have breakfast with.

and the weekend's here! i know i said last week was a drag. but someone out there heard me and made this week play out on double-speed. anddd i think i'm gonna get the iphone! what saving up did you say?



today's one of those days that the moment i step foot out of the door, all i really want to do is quickly go back in, throw myself back into bed and hide under the covers all day.

five minutes later, my rotation's in-charge drop me a msg to say that he'll be on mc and leave all the way til nxt week.

after lunch, the kk girls on exchange proposed going for the blood donation. but i just had blood taken for the health screening just yesterday and there were clots around the vein and nary a sign of a vein on my other arm, so i couldn't donate blood. i secretly gave a silent whoop of relief because i was chickening out inside real badly. so all i came home with was a 'be nice to me. this is my first donation' sticker and maybe more time to prepare myself for my next blood donation.

woke up at 7.30am today. on a sunday. i'm a changed person! was chomping my way through brekkie on garlic croutons and peanut butter which woke my mum up. asked whether i wanted to head to the park with her for her morning walk. so by 11am, i got my run and shower down pat for the day.

the past week passed as quickly as ever. met sab, sher, mike, dhan & hl for dinner at the 85 market on tuesday after work. after that we got ourselves this hair-removing sponge each and sat at tamp macs for ice cream as well as to try the new contraption out! haha dhan took a vid of us using the sponge. watching the vid on sab's blog and youtube puts a silly grin on my face each time.

saturday saw all of us trooping down to AH for the smoking cessation talk. spent a good amount of time with joy. ((: it's another new week, may things pass smoothly fer ya! poor farv had his first day of ramadhan while we were pigging out on the two teabreaks and lunch catered. )):

met andrea and cuis for present shopping and dinner at roma's deli after that. the ice cream place at shaw towers is just so good. it's easy on the pocket as well. speaking of which, i really want this bag but somehow managed to hold myself off getting it. but payday's coming soon, and i'm not sure the determination to save for my own set of wheels will hold.

said bye to cui and rushed to get her present before the shops closed. andrea then drove us to meet car at downtown east for our supper fix. hot choc for me. whenever did mac cafe get this good!

so that ends the weekend. have been having dreams i'm not very fond of. and it only confirms stuff that i place in denial. i rem 6 years ago i placed my life in his hands. i didn't exactly see the results til 4 years on. so me, have faith and let him unveil.


got pictures of the KL trip here. wouldn't exactly recommend anyone who's hungry right now to scroll down.

on the bus early in the morning looking bright and cheery!


my first time on a bus to malaysia and it didn't disappoint at all.


yea an hour later we were knocked out rather unglamly.


lianey came to pick us up at the bus stop when we reached and off we went for food. first stop chinatown!


we had laksa ytf, cheecheongfun, some nice herbey drink, starchey balls and herbal jelly.







in lianey's princessy room. haha parry with a fan on her four-post bed just looks so juxtapositional.


popped out for ice cream and doughnuts.


and then we came home to lian's mum home-cooked food, which i still think about all the time and drool.


especially these chicken wings. it was such a pity my tummy could only hold so much food. coz they were just simply darn fabulous.


we simply had to rest after dinner before lian whisked us to this dimsum place for supper.


awesome charsiew and red bean paus there. and they have really huge meat paus.


which ended up as mel's pseudo birthday cake coz she turned a year older at midnight!


joy "breaking bread" while parry looks on with a hurhur glance.


five very full but so happily satisfied us!



agnes is a piggy who just got knocked out for the last 10 hours and now it's time to wake up for her smoking cessation workshop.

but it feels so damm good save for the annoying twist in her dream.





i ran to ikea today! was thinking what with the seventh month approaching and all, i wouldn't be treading past that route any time in the near future. it's really too eerie. but it's a good running route really. almost zilch human traffic and lots of wind. speeding traffic flanking my left and the never ending forest my right with the occasional mongrel raising its ears when i past.

so now that all the feel-good endorphins are coursing through me, i still can't help but feel that this must be the longest week ever!! it's only wednesday and i feel so drained already. have been having 3-4 hours of sleep nightly. used to be able to survive on those kinda nights but i think i must be aging..less than 6 hours and i'm a grumpy person the nxt day. and it doesn't help that you have to be alert in the icu all the time. still i'm growing to love the place i work at. have been saying hi and making small chat to all the uncles and aunties who run around the hospital delivering meds or casenotes while i'm in the lifts. and i really enjoy lunch out with colleagues as well and walking back to work after with bubble tea in our hands.

now if i can just lay my hands on this baywater....



life isn't exactly smelling like roses recently. maybe it's that time of the month (again?!) or maybe it's the monotonity of my daily routine. whatever it is, i haven't gotten my finger down on it yet.

just yesterday as i sat on my bed trying to upload pictures on blogger, the above picture was exactly what i was feeling. just wanna get away from the world, hide under my blanket and make time stop for a moment.

but after talking to brain at 3am last night, we vowed that the week ahead would be a wonderful one. so when i woke up today, i decided to put on my bright pink skirt. and what a difference clothes make to your day. icu was tough but i got through!

and i found a new running route today. ran from my place til i saw ikea. loved the route coz it was quiet and the path was wide. it's not a very good idea to run there after dark though, super eerie and i must have passed by at least 6 huge mongrels. halfway back, my shins started to hurt a whole deal. like it was really painful, so much so that i had to stop running. i'm not sure whether it was the insufficient warmup, the muscle aches i've accumulated from the icu or the pilates-kickboxing stuff i tried yesterday. but next time, on a good run, i'm gonna try to reach ikea!


pictures from waay back. first aid course with joy. i uploaded soo many photos but i decided to take them down at the last minute. super duper unglam. we had our heads all wrapped up and looked like we were bashed up real bad.



joy took this shot on her cam phone which would have looked super nice if not for the fact that i looked like i'm preggies......


miss spending time with joy..come work with me in the east!



the last week was like absence from the internet for me. spent all my time either catching up on sleep or trying to study for the test on friday. and i'm still bushed.

and i feel so unmotivated the last week. made a hugee packing boo boo. it's like the mother of all mistakes. sigh! just dragging myself to and back from work daily.

i need to get new earphones soon. can't run without music. it's so punishing. okay i'm being whiney and grumpy again. time to get some rest since it's the weekend.


bbq and chalet with the percussion gals sometime back before work started and the days were still sunnier. (okay i really have to get some shuteye)


huiping our dear girlguide would put any guy to shame with her fire starting skills.


it was also her birthday celebration


went back to cgh to visit my mum who was warded while the other girls spent the next day swimming and andrea had her first day at work. i rem sleeping beside my mum on her bed and waking up to steal food from her food tray. received a call from the other girls that we were gonna have a second bbq!


andrea got masks for us when she was in taiwan so over our girly talk in the middle of the night, we decided to use the masks as well. haha omg unglam me is bending over and trying my darndest not to laugh at how small huiping's face is compared to the mask because moments before, we had the neighbours knocking on our door as we were making too much noise at 3am.


the morning after!



i've moved on to new food cravings. portuguese egg tarts and peanut butter neat.

and i'm making ondeh ondeh tomorrow!

while heading down to the supermarket with my mum to get the ingredients, my mum had a sudden craving for haagen daaz. so while my sis was out at a steamboat party and my dad watching soccer with his friends, my mum and i camped in front of the telly with our ice cream. did i mention how well macadamia nut ice cream goes with peanut butter? ((:


last day of shanghai saw us heading back to collect our tailored clothes. our flight was only at night so we went out for more shopping and eating.

these are Xiao Yang xiao sheng jians. if i had a reason to return to shanghai, these would be it. they are juicy dumplings filled with meat. alot like xiao long baos but they are fried on a huge wok so the bottom of the dumplings are super crispy. and the moment you bite into them, yummy stew spill out, you're bound to burn your tongue, but the gravy taste so good you don't want to waste any of it.


we took the subway to get across the river that splits shanghai into half to the east of shanghai. and i'm looking really grumpy coz my mum somehow managed to lock herself out of the ticket gates. and a train ride down one station became this whole huge drama mama hooha thing. rarrr...


we headed to this mall called the super brand mall which was huge. so before dropping everything and running into the shops, we made sure our dad was settled down at starbucks, had his huge cup of coffee and poof! off we went!!


and i thought the super brand mall was huge, but no after getting to the third floor of the mall, this was what greeted us, another whole huge big alcove of shops. nobody in my opinion would be able to finish the mall in a single day.


and when we finally changed more money and bought more stuff, we found a very hungry and miserable papa. ahahaha he looked super depressed and didn't talk at all. that is, until his food arrived. always makes me laugh.


we had din tai fung at the mall. and they sit us beside full length windowns where we could see the entire view of the bund.


we caught the sunset as well.


and after all the xiao long baos we had, we really didn't feel like having any more of those meat dumplings. the waitress who took our orders express her surprise at us eating at din tai fung but not ordering any xiao long baos. so in the end, we settle for yam xiao long baos which were good. the chefs do make those little dumplings well. looking at the immaculate folds make me not want to eat the dumplings because i didn't want to destroy such nice handiwork.


we were so comfortable there, we didn't want to leave yet so we ordered more dessert.



upon using the toilets at the restaurant, we had a shock because the toilets had a special attendant to look after it. she was stationed outside the toilet. and once she hears the toilets flush which indicated that you were done with your business. she would come into the toilet, wipe the toilet seat and flush the toilet once again. like woww, after being subjected to mediocre toilets for the past few days, this was like toilet heaven or something.


after ending shanghai on a high note, we made our way to the airport for our flight.


and while waiting for our flight, my sis and dad fell aslp. which left me and my mum to chat til it was time to board the flight.


shanghai was so much more than i expected. wouldn't mind heading back there once again but i say that to every single country i've been to. so...think the travelling bug has bitten all of us. oh wonderlust...