CLAUD

Monday, May 23, 2011

SAM, Outing and Cupcake icing….

So Cathleen and I, upon Shangyi's request, went to the Singapore Biennale to snap some pictures. We were debating whether it's free entry for NUS students for the Biennale event and the lady overheard us and said it was. LOL! Embarassing much. In any case, we caught the guided tour just in time and she gave us a very efficient tour around the Biennale events.

I'm just going to highlight some of my favourites =)

This is modern art, so although the art may seen trivial, like "My kid can do it", but rest assured, your kid cannot have thought about the ideas and process that goes into a body of work. So it's not a question of "I can do it too!" but rather, "If you can do it, why didn't you?"

This work is called My We. It's a play on the Phillippino tradition in villages, where they would rent Karaoke machines to sing and the most popular song that is sung is called "My Way", hence the title of the work. However, as men get drunk or high, they each have their own opinions about whose rendition is the best and others would get violently angry if another accused him of not singing the song properly. This would escalate to the point that someone often gets killed. Therefore, this artist makes a point in poking fun at the machismo of Phillippino men and this seemingly irrational phenomenon of fighting over a song.

This is by an Indonesian artist (i didn't take down his name!) and he has three of these busts. The bust is shaped from his son's head and the tour guide explained that gesture from the hands can either meet rejection, or surrender. This work is tied to the increasing Islamic fundamentalist military movement in Indonesia where young children are recruited as soldiers. Therefore, the artist is making a statement that will the future of Indonesia actually reject, or surrender towards this movement due to its pervasiveness? Most political, and I daresay, having the Koran on the bust gives one pause.

This one is called Secret Affair. The artist is Roslisham Ismail aka ISE.

He gave 6 (not sure leh, shud be this number) families the same amount of money and asked them to buy food that they would normally buy for the week. They were to then pack them into these fridges at the Biennale and he filmed the entire process and the videos are on the doors of the fridge. It's pretty interesting because we often hesitate to open fridges at our friend's houses because it somewhat is revealing about your family (WALAO! YOU HAVE SO MUCH BEN AND JERRY'S FOR WHAT?!). However in this space, a public space, it seems somewhat more permissible to gaze. Pretty social geog. HAHA…the Gaze, public/private dichotomy etc.

Like i said, this fridge reminds me of my fridge after my mum fell ill. Convenience food that are easy to cook. Oh well….still trying to break the habit.

The next art work I didn't manage to get the artist's name. But he's definitely local and he collected all news articles regarding about art in all languages since the 1980s. His flat is difficult to enter and so for this exhibition, he arranged them in a huge room. This chalkboard just caught my attention - like what does it mean for an artist to be featured in newspapers, and what are the implications that the artist is not.

Interesting question.

This artwork is my personal favourite and it's called Wings by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan from the Phillippines. They collected all the prison-issued flipflops of incarcerated Singaporeans and arranged them into these giant sets of wings. Their message (like most SEA art) is political. The flipflops are of differing gradations of yellow, with the white being the prisoner being in there for a short period of time, to those that are almost brown, when the prisoner is in there for years and years. It's a pretty touching message, that prisoners are also like us, having hopes and dreams etc. Gonna send Dr. Gana this picture =D

So after two hours of walking and being very hungry, decided to just take a break at food for thought =) the light was nice so why not do some camwhoring. LOL Cat was eager to go shopping that day and so we went bras brasah to get something for Bowen since she's meeting him. Cat Socrates is a place I'll definitely visit to get presents =)

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So a couple of days later, met with Xinyi and Kris to have dinner at Loy Ah Thai. It's awesome thai food and I couldn't wait till 28th May when I'm heading there again with my primary school friends. We ordered so much that we were all bloated. In any case, the lemongrass drink is awesome nice. Must try!

After that, we walked around Shaw Towers to find that there are a lot more shops inside. Mostly facials and audio equipment shops, there was a lot of interesting shops that kept us going. Kris was quite distracted by the old film equipment that were encased behind glass in Shaw towers and the bust of Run Me Shaw, one of the Shaw Brothers.

We then headed to a shop that was kinda ineresting. They sold all sorts of stuff and kris found this box of rings that were 1 for $1. CHEAP NOT?! If i had a penchant for rings (which i don't), I would have bought the box!

Aren't they pretty?!

We later headed to Bugis street to find me a belt and some fake eyelashes for the concert. It turned out I didn't get either, and the girls got 3 bags between them. LOL…I totally suck at spending money.

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So another holiday craving satisfied! I baked cupcakes! Been itching to try this recipe for a long time. The buttercream was fantastic and if not for my lousy oven, the cupcake would also be awesome…=D

I wanna open my own cupcake shop!

The YJC 25th Anniversary concert deserves it's own post…=) Will be updating soon!

18:54

Saturday, May 21, 2011

25th Anniversary Concert

I know I haven't been updating this space for a while. Been to the Biennale and I know Shangyi is waiting for the updates etc. The photos are loaded, but not the description. In any case, I'm just going to blog a quick one before YJC 25th Anniversary Concert.

Firstly, I want to start on a negative note (no pun intended). The planning that went into this concert could have been better and I feel that the effort on my part is not 100%. There are some things I wished I could do, but could not and there are some things that I felt could be done better. For the parts lacking, I really want to apologise to the students for not putting in 100% for this.

Secondly, I am really proud of the Alumni band for being able to pull together a piece so fast. For the sacrifices made - like Chun Siang taking leave off his work to come to play for us. For Winson for growing white hairs over studying the score, for his instructions were so detailed that I could easily take over on Friday's rehearsal. For Guanyu for helping coordinate most of the efforts…for the rest who contributed helped me decorate the audi and making the vision come true.

Thirdly, I am immensely impressed by the students. Despite endless whining and complaining, I am honoured that they accepted me to be part of them and I hope I treated them well - despite losing my temper a couple (only a couple!) of times during tech runs.

Fourthly, I hope today's show will send a strong message to the school that things like these make students proud. It is such events, that students learn the more important things in life such as responsibility, courage and sacrifice. Academia can only teach you so much - but what education is, is perhaps a more worthy cause to strive for.

I'm all in all just glad to be part of this production and despite certain screw ups *cough lack of rehearsals cough*, we have done the best we could in 2 rehearsals and 1 dry run.

12:10

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Red Velvet Cupcakes!

Yesterday morning I headed down for my piano make up lesson. Realised that I got my dates mixed up and didn't inform my teacher that I was coming - but strangely convinced myself that I did. In any case, I turned up at her door with her greeting me in pyjamas with a earphone headset on because she was talking to her sister in America.

Makes things kinda awkward if not for the fact that she said, "Eh? Today got lesson? You said you were going to call right?"

*twiddle thumbs*

So yes, lucky she was kind enough to let me have lesson since she's free at the moment.

Afterwards, I headed down to Toa Payoh to get cocoa powder because she can't find it at the NTUC near her house. I thought maybe Toa Payoh central might stand a better chance.

No. I was dead wrong. That whole stupid place's "Baking Section" didn't have many important things. Like you know unsweetened cocoa power (Herseys Brand), chocolate chips. They seemed to be "anti-chocolate" and 'instant baking powder mix' people.

It offends my "baking from scratch" soul.

So ended walking the whole of Toa Payoh central to find alternative groceries stall like shop and save or something, can't find. Did manage to find that I have a high tolerance to hot weather thought. I gave up and decided to head back to NTUC and searched high and low for the cocoa powder only to find it in the "Milo, Tea, Horlicks" section. Seriously, they should re-look into their classification system.

It was almost 1pm when I reached Cat's house and we started on the baking immediately. =D While cat sifted the flour, prepared the dry mixes, I was preparing the 'wet' mixes and was finally glad to be using an electric mixer. The sound and the repetitive motion of creaming and mixing just destresses me….suddenly had a vision of having my own cupcake shop.

Cat was checking the recipe when we were at the stage of adding the food dye when she said we needed 2 bottles of the food dye when we only had one. Firstly, I had issues putting so much food dye because it's very unhealthy and the darker the food dye, the more bitter it's going to get. Ended up with 1 tablespoon into the entire mixture. Initially the cupcakes were getting their colour, but as it caramelises, it lost its redness on the top. So we decided to make red icing instead.

We realised that the food dye wasn't really red, it was more like a cranberry pink, as you can see in the picture below. Explains our lack of red-ness. Our Red Velvet cupcakes = brown velvet cupcakes.

The icing recipe was horrible! It required so much sugar that it began to make her domestic help and her mum worried. 6 cups of icing sugar. It's a recipe for people who want to get diabetes is it?!

Geez….It turned out pretty bad because the icing was just too watery to make any significant 'peaks' that you normally see. However, the cupcakes taste good, not too sweet and if not for the lack of good cocoa powder, we should have gotten a very nice cocoa taste as well *mumbles stupid NTUC mumbles*.

So….here are the pictures!

Below, you can see why the red velvet cupcake is called 'red'. It's supposed to be even redder than this, but sadly, adding too much food dye was really not a comfortable thought. In any case, the cupcake was velvety enough to satisfy our palette.

Hopefully next time it'll be better! Will be using beetroot juice to get the redness. Was flirting with the idea of getting strawberry icing too!

More cupcakes next time!

14:45

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Unhealthy

Lately, I've been watching my diet.

No, not in the I-wanna-lose-weight way, but rather, in a I feel very unhealthy way.

In a sense, I'll make a promise to myself to at least have 1 fresh food meal a day. Been eating too much processed food lately and I am feeling the effects of it - drying out of my skin, brittle hair etc.

So yes, I'm gonna try to make all my favourite food/soup: Bosch soup, going to return to the good old porridge and start making homecooked meals since I have more time.

Yes, this is a pledge to myself.

22:22

Monday, May 09, 2011

Holidays: Start!

Exams are a distant past, and it took be quite a few days to 'wind down' and decided to crash on Friday doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well, except buy L4D2 to play of course. Gotta satisfy some cravings.

In any case, I totally suck at slacking. On Friday, well before noon, I was already cruising channels on TV with nothing to watch (since all the dramas are 'back-dated' thanks to the power of internet) and the newest episodes of the dramas I'm watching are not out yet. Furthermore, I'm feeling so lazy about going to library that I'm content taking cat naps all afternoon. HAHA!

So this is the start of the holdiays!

Went for my first facial since Phuket last year! You know that feeling of absolute rest? Like you're not entirely sleeping but also not entirely awake? I swear I pay for facials to get that sensation =D now my skin feels pampered and I'm hoping my stress-pimples can disappear for good.

Looking forward to more things to come!

Tomorrow gonna head down for piano make up lesson and later to Cat's house to make red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing….our first bake out session! Hopefully will have more to come…maybe we might just be able to open a shop =D

Wednesday gotta head down to NUS to return prof her books…kinda embarrassed for holding on to them for so long =X

Gonna go Biennale with Cat again. Afterwards L4D2 and dinner with the Socio folks this Thursday!

Friday is meeting Xinyi for lunch/dinner at Loy Ah Thai (sorry Chongfu peeps, I go satisfy my craving first ok!)

Saturday Xinglin and I are heading down to Guanyu's house to pick up this monster...

…and for band practice at YJ.

It's for the concert and it's gonna be our 'centerpiece' because it's so huge. The garden theme seems to fall in place nicely. So I think I'm gonna spend the next 2 weeks making paper chandeliers and whatever decorations I can for the concert.

So Sunday is tuition-cum-visiting mum day….I swear Sunday are the days I work the hardest! But it's ok! $ more important. HAHA!

So yes, that sums up my week. Pretty eventful and it's only just the second week. After concert, June will be a flurry of birthdays and outings…Hope that I'll have time to get to writing and practising my piano for good. Been procrastinating the practice and my teacher's got so tired of nagging that she kinda already abandoned the effort. LOL….

Have a great holiday (for those NUS/SMU/NTU folks)!

22:32