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

this has officially gone on long enough. beauty is health. now repeat this.

it's a tease how there's the chinese word for peace in my name.

these couple of years, things have been anything but.

and even more recently, someone close to me have been plagued by anything but peace. her troubles permeate even her dreams, where i can constantly hear her mumbling words of unrest.

and i may appear nonchalant about it, but it's been affecting my sleep as well. i'm a pig. i can fall asleep anywhere. but recently, sleep has been evading me. i wish i had a solution to her problems. but the predicament is too rooted.

tonight before i sleep, i'm gonna pray a little prayer, the road is long, but it's easy to find comfort in the littlest things. so pick these bits of comfort and use them as padded stepping stones on your life path....

Another sept baby is dear carmeny...we planned to meet a day after her special day for some green beer.

Went cycling with greg in the morning, we covered 43km! but I was so tired, I couldn't wake up on time to meet andrea and car after an afternoon nap! so sorry to make you girls wait!

summer ale, GREEN MONSTER LAGER, weizen


more pictures of the distillary and of the venue at night once the hanging lanterns were lit.



second round of drinks, i ordered a lime wheat which supposedly tasted like kickapoo.



and so the birthday celebrations roll on....This time I met up with the perc girls to celebrate shijia and cui's birthdays..

first stop was this vegetarian japanese restaurant around downtown bugis. yuppers it was vegetarian! they even had vegetarian salmon sashimi, i don't know how but it looked rather authentic on the menu pictures.

after a rather leisurely lunch while waiting for the rain to stop, we decided to take a stroll for some red velvet cake at food for thought but it was closed. Decided to head to caramel which was further down the street. but that again was closed. So andrea thought of haji lane where the both of us previously had some rather awesome ice cream.

but that too was closed, however in a very quaint furniture shop, we found a rather pretty cafe with a pretty name nestled on the second floor - CafeFables.


And it's my weak spot when it comes to design, but the toilet was awesome. It was an outdoor toilet (score one!) in an old shophouse (score two!!) with a rain shower and a cute metal bucket sink to boot!


We all sipped our respective drinks (hot choc for me) and shared some cheesecake while catching up with each other. Perfect thing to do on a pouring saturday afternoon!





the daddy's birthday! love sept coz it's the start of all the friends/family's birthday, great time to meet up, feast, and grow fat, mehsss....


we had dinner at The Cathay restaurant which was located at...no prizes for this one if you get it right.

And as usual with the family, it's always a buffet event. It's crazy, but i have to say the food was awesome. I'm feeling full just looking at this. but if you have 75 bucks to splurge on two persons, go for this. coz the food is so good.



After the scorching sun died down a little, we came out of our air-conditioned room into this dilapidated van for an afternoon of sea activities! ((((((((:

after going through our options with the hot owner of the sea activities place, we changed into our scuba outfits and basically took loads of photos in it! wheees



we could choose 5 activities for around 50bucks or thereabouts. so we chose snorkeling, banana boat, huge jetboat, jetski and some donut float thingy! awesome stuff ((: i love the banana boat thingy so much i requested to sit right at the front!!


after the sun set, and when we all had to peel off my suits coz we really needed to pee, we finally left the sea. washed up and somehow made some plans to head to this seafood place by the harbour for dinner with this couple from hongkong.


when andrea and car as well as the girlfriend of the hk couple left to pick the fish for our dinner, i was left alone with the boyfriend. and omg, like major conversation breakdown! i could only speak english well and he could only speak canto well. and we were both horrible mandarin speakers. but that being the language we both knew in common, we were forced to use it. and i think for the 15mins the girls were away, we had a very confusing and giggly-awkward small talk sesh. yeeech...

dinner was awesome though, tons of sashimi at the cost of a song~, deep fried flying fish, steamed grouper yums, and beer!


and then we bidded farewell to the owner, hot right!!!


but we were left stranded at our hostel because we left our keys with the owner and he went out! so we camwhored in the lobby (((:


after half an hour, we decided to head out to the night market instead of waiting for the owner to return. love the street where our hostel was located, whimsical hostels lining the street to the town centre.


had the uber tall ice cream thing. tasted like crap to be honest!



mehhh i'm a crybaby. but that's when you find out who really cares. horrible monday ugh.....

looking on the bright side though, it's gonna be a four day work week wheeees ((:

the 19 guys met up at greg's again yesterday, anddd i found out alex tried the crazy dish at thai express as well!! haha and surprise surprise so did my momo!

spent a wonderful day with family today love love love

on the other hand, we took out the blood pressure machine and my heartrate is darn fricking slow. 47bpm!

just heard a horrible piece of news from a colleague. roars i bet the heartrate is wayy more than 47 now...ugh...

woke up in kaohsiung for brekkie, the three of us trooped out in search of better food. the milk in taiwan is awesome and we had the dan bing thing again wooots!

the hotel did provide us with breakfast. but the hotel reviews all said to avoid the breakfast like the plague. funny though, i kinda like it. homely styled. moreover the breakfast place was on a roof.


and the cab ride down the peninsula of taiwan to kenting. where we finally saw the sea!! and i found out i've got red aunty dot. yeepeee on the day we were heading to the beach.


decided to have some good ol' mackkies for lunch. where we had to order in chinese! i threw in the white flag and left the ordering to carmey and andrea.


our room had two queen-sized bed. so to determine who was the fortunate one who gets the whole bed to herself. we played guess the number of fries remaining......and i won!!! ((: there's andrea counting the fries with a straw, all casino-like.


adding on to the bubble tea count. yikes it's scary how many of those we consumed.


finally checked in to our place, we slobbed around a little in our room til our next activity...


til the next post......




otherwise you'll end up like me, tired but unable to sleep because i am in the throes of heartburn mania.

earlier in the night, i had dinner at thai express with niron, decided to try its yellow ginger chicken rice coz face it, even with the three chillies beside and the second caution by the waiter who took our orders, its name barely rings any alarm bells.

on the contrary, the first bite blew my socks. this caucasian guy beside me had the same dish, he ended up chewing down all of his girlfriend's ice from her drink. i was fanning myself with my hands (like it helps much?) when they left. he leaned over and said, 'it gets much worse ten mins later...'

why thank you. four hours later i'm still feeling it.

met the rest of the pre-reg from our batch at starbucks after...awww i miss them much. being able to just sit down and be gossip-mongers. i look at the pre-reg now and i get depressed much? they make me feel like a grandma )): i don't wanna grow old ))))):

cycling at cijin island took up most of the morning.


the crazy sun got us looking bubble tea. specialty on cijin island was their red tea. all 960ml of it! yep giant cup fer ya...


ji pa!! or chicken cutlet ((((:


grilled sotong that wasn't tt awesome. tasted like burnt rubber to me..


mango ice


we had like one day in kaohsiung and by mid afternoon, we were still on the small island of cijin, so we decided to leave after viewing the lighthouse.




we didn't have much time left so we left the island and headed to the hugest mall in taiwan or east asia for the record. it had this huge wheel on the roof. would have been real pretty to sit on it at night with the sparkly amusement park's fairy lights.


picked up another bite before heading back to the hotel. some donut looking thing with stuffing on the inside.


swapped hats on the subway ride back!


and also added on to the bubble tea count


finally first glimpse of our hotel room, it may look nice in pictures, but the horrible red tiles in the toilet was scary. there was also the typical chinesey lion statues used for decor on the dresser yeeee


headed out to explore kaohsiung, surprisingly we were hungry yet again so we settled for some grilled meat that took forever to come. the noodles that was in the set came like half an hour before the meat? roars.....


went off in search of this night market...but our moods were dampened by the fact that we were lost and we were being greeted by dimly litted adverts of liposuction clinics. ugh.


when we finally found the market, we were all drained and zzz-ed.


but this was where car found her favourite pepper puff biscuit. which had eeeky spring onions i have to add!


and i finally tried smelly toufu!


wow, it was really smelly...but at the same time, it was quite nice. i couldn't make up my mind whether i liked it or not.


trudged back to the hotel super drained at the end of the day, but we were greeted by this awesome sight at the subway station. nice.