my blog speaks louder than me...

it's quite scary to receive news every other day that what u always have been consuming has been 'blacklisted' as poisonous food.

even food as seemingly innocent looking as the white rabbit sweet and this...

*gulp*


and it's just natural response when i hear yet another toxic food in the market to say,"must be made in china again!!"
i dont mean to be prejudiced against china products, but then....... i dont think any elaboration is needed here.


darric was very nice to send us an email to warn us how to steer clear of china-products (to play safe).
Just by checking the first 3 digits of their bar-codes, we would be able to know which country the product is manufactured in.



as u can see,

471 stands for 'Made in Taiwan'
690 - 692 stands for 'Made in China'
888 (Huat ar!) stands for 'Made in Singapore' and so on....


a few days ago, i spotted a small biscuit tin on the dining table. It was opened and the biscuits half-eaten by my folks. It doesnt look like the usual Danish cookies i've seen..
obviously is chiong one...


and when i checked the barcode,

damnit!
692 is made in china!
watever ISO9001 or HACCP will not change anything!

my folks saw no more of the biscuits cos all landed into the garbage.
it's better to be safe than sorry, u wont know when and what gets checked and labelled 'TOXIC' again.

decided to find products made in singapore and see if the barcode thingy is really true,

NTUC sure is singapore one. Yeah, 888


49 is made in japan (some countries' are 2 digits only)


panadol is 955, made in malaysia

started digging out foodstuff from different countries... (or what i thought so)
i was quite sure my fave instant noodles are from korea


but to my utmost horror, the barcode reads 692

i couldnt believe my eyes and quickly scanned through the pack of noodles,

No china lehh..

it was when i started to doubt the authenticity of the email when 3 big printed words caught my eye.

WAH LAO!!!!!!!

anyway, yupp the noodles were past the expiry date too. even if it hasn't, it still belongs to its rightful place---> the garbage bin

time check.

9.05p.m.

hours before exam: 13

mugging progress: 60%

status:


paper is tomorrow morning at 10am.
it definitely doesnt help to know that law is one killer module.

wish us lots of luck!!

p.s: baby sorry that i cant provide the reassuring hugs right now. i promise i would give u one big one before our paper tomorrow morning. Ganbatae!

pudding pudding!!


baby wanted to surprise me with a pudding a couple of days ago but he couldnt wait till we met in the evening to tell me about it. he called me right after he bought the hamster.....

him: "baby guess what i've bought for you! a hamster!!!"

me: "issst??? YAY!!! is it a boy or a girl?"

him: "??? i dont know leh"

me: "hah...u didnt ask the pet shop uncle meh?"

him: "didnt... never mind lor, later i see if he got ku ku-bird or not"

LOL

till now, we still didn't manage to find out if it's a male or a female -_-
anyway, the sex didnt matter! it's still super cute!!!! muahahhahaha!!


we tried getting pudding a playmate,

but it only knew how to nibble at his nose so we dropped the idea

pudding is really naughty and drives us crazy when it nibbles non-stop at its cage and keeps on overturning its water bowl. OK, we bought a drinking bottle for him but the holes of the cage are too small for it to go through.
we'll see what we can do about it.

meantime, it's here to say 'HELLO' to u, haha!

8)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR DEAR GAL, Huaiyue!!!!



we really miss you back here in singapore!!
May you have a beautiful and blissful marriage with kelly!
Take care in US!!
muackssss!!!

the lovely little cake we bought for u, too bad we can't mail it over! haha

love,
xin and min :)

As i hung there in the corner amidst the rest, i felt ugly and unattractive. i looked down at my yellow colour, it seemed to look paler than i thought it used to be. i've not been touched for a long time and my dream of being slipped on and strutting under the brightly lit streets was slowly replaced by the hard, cold reality that nothing of this sort is going to happen. At least, to me.

The owner of the shop took a dirty look at me and shaking his head, tore off my price tag of $49.90 and stuck a $10.00 instead onto me. To think my self-worth has dropped to such extent, i dropped a tear of self-sympathy.
Never would i knew, this cheap price tag, the one i actually despised, changed my fate for the better.

i was happily bought by a girl who made me feel i was the best buy of all her clothes. She showed me proudly to her friends and said i only cost 10 bucks. To be honest, i did not know whether to laugh or cry. To laugh that i can finally realise my dream, or to cry that my dream came with a price. A dirt cheap price.

She did not pick me to wear as often as i hoped she would. As i got squeezed in her wardrobe with what seemed to me like a few hundred of her other clothes, i sometimes wondered if she had forgotten me. Compared to some lucky hot-favourites in the wardrobe, i start to doubt if i would ever see daylight again.

What seemed to be the most unlucky one proved itself and others wrong when i was brought on a trip to Batam! Not to mention the rest who were totally green with envy when i was stuffed into her luggage.
It was my first time to a beach. I loved the waves crashing to shore, the warmth of the sand seeping through me and i say it was the happiest day of my life! My owner, with her hands secured in her partner's, made a wish that their love would be as strong and as beautiful as a gigantic rock that was before them.
I too made a wish. I secretly wished everything would come to a stand still there and then. i did not want to go back home.

Of course my wish did not come true, for the next day, i found myself spinning in soapy laundry. i was zapped back to reality when i returned back to the wardrobe. The stuffy wardrobe.

After what seemed like a thousand years had passed. I was finally worn a second time!
I was too busy scrutinizing for creases on my body did i not realise something was very different that morning. She was not smiling like she used to be anymore. Well, actually she did, but the smile was very different. I knew something was amiss.
And I actually felt bad, for i never bothered to care about what happened to her and her life. All the time i spent comparing myself with others, debating on who had more wardrobe space and other useless stuff. It was the first time I felt i needed to do my part as a dress for my owner, I tried eavesdropping on her conversations with others hoping to know what was wrong, but i was still clueless in the end. Something that cheered me up was when the pastor in her church came up to her and commented that my colour looked really good on her. It was the first time i felt really proud of myself.

And the hour finally came.
She received a call in the late afternoon and off she went out of the house again. She met her partner at the void deck a few blocks from hers. An air of uneasiness filled the atmosphere. Both of them were very quiet. The silence was deafening.
I knew the hour of truth has come. I was feeling so uncomfortable that i felt i would rather be in the place i dreaded most- the wardrobe. At least, it's safe there. Sometimes, i rather be ignorant about certain things.

The next thing i knew were the exchange of words. Nothing loud or offensive. Instead, words that were calmly put across. words that looked as if they had been contemplated for a decent period of time. But they were words that seemed to result from burnt out, stress and hopelessness.
Whatever happened to the wish they both made together at Batam was the burning question in me.

Everything after that went well, thankfully. They have reached a stage in their relationship where it was time to move on to another level of understanding, compromising, loving and building their future together.
Whatever happened after that is a mystery to me, becos here, i'm chucked back into the wardrobe once again. Damn.



`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Baby, thanks for holding on together.
i love you

love is smiling to myself when i think of you
love is experiencing everything again just by looking thru our photos
love is telling myself i want to stick with you through thick and thin
love is sticking to this promise even when everything else falls apart
love is believing in the hope that i can believe in you
love is consoling myself midst going through a rough patch
love is when i know it's still love that keeps me going

just a short update during my lunch break now =)

had 2 birthday celebrations at the same time on the same day, how could it be possible.
Yes, when we're all staying in close proximity, hehe

daddy's 60th bday cake-cutting at home.

He's really aged over the years. damn all the horrible students he has to face in school, especially when his character is very mild. For once, i've never seen him angry before in my life. Even though he just keeps quiet about work and never complain about his unruly students to us, we know it's hard on him.
sometimes i wonder if some kids nowadays even have minimal respect for others at all.

But it's great he's retiring at the end of the year :)
Daddy, u are the best.

dad's fave coffee cake, together with me and mommy (brother is out par~tor i think, haha)

aunt, cousin bailin and grand-aunt came over tooo! =)

btw, the watercolor painting behind is painted by dad. He's a SUPERB Art-teacher! i dont care, im going to shower him with all the deserved praise in this entry!! HAHA..


took some of the cake before going downstairs for my tuition kid's bday party at the BBQ pits :)

it's in our estate cos she's my neighbour, haha!


The unique cake her mother has specially designed!!
it is very tasty too!

another of my kid, her brother. damn cheeky but very cute, haha

i love children's parties. Lots of cute cuties around, hehe

yes u are right.
i got to believe in him.

maybe we cant communicate any more

Journey to the West


Travelling to the very west of our even thou teeny weeny island has always been something we had to do in reluctance.
cos it's so farrrrrrr away.... haha

with our own transport, it is so much easier and thus, we decided to check out that part of the island yesterday. We realised many of the attractions are found there. One of them is Haw Par Villa.

yes, all of us have gone there once.... very very very very very long time ago if u remember vaguely, and if u search hard enough, you might still find some old photos taken there, chucked somewhere in your house (unless u are only 1-10 yr old la..)

we decided to reminisce the almost-forgotten place after 20+ years, haha

BUT, we had a very hard time finding our way there and we ended up at Kent Ridge Park instead -__-

hmmm, not bad a place after all!


A few angmohs were having a birthday party there, away from the hustle and bustle of the city..

the angmoh boy is very cute!

the view from the top is rather nice too!


Left the park soon after and proceeded with our initial plan.
We finally reached our destination after many wrong turns! haha

YAY!!!!
i'm sure this place brings back alot of memories!! though i cant remember much at all...


i call this the 'welcome man'. His gesture is said to symbolise a reminder not to stray from the right path in life.
Fyi, everything at the park seems to symbolise something that can be learnt in life, be it a value or a teaching. Very interesting indeed.


we had a simple lunch of curry instant noodles and french fries. The menu is just too limited for us to be choosy.


the memorials of the 2 brothers, Har and Par, which also means tiger and leopard in chinese


the place is so colourful! It seems like a wonderland!
the chinese disney land maybe.... but i dont think kids like it very much here.

we took truckloads of photos cos we can never find somewhere as brightly coloured as it is here!




花果山.. can u spot sun wukong?

everything is just so bizarre! it's just like in a dream, where everything is possible!

animals talking on the phone, getting married and monkeys using a camera etc.




福禄寿!

=)


tsk tsk tsk.....

we finally found the Haw and the Par!

haha! you can simply pose with everything over there with no security guards to stop you! Great for people who like to cam-whore

Next was the colourful tableaux...

that teaches values like, "putting money and time into good use", "work hard in your youth and have no regrets", "be kind to animals"......

MORE scenes taken from familiar tales like the Monkey god

except now there's an extra calafare under their mercy.

TangSeng 唐僧 on his white horse


and some queen who is lusting after him..but kena rejected

seems like he is quite sought after after all

aiyoh!
i think he is freaked out more by their looks than anything...

Moving on,


and taking a rest!


took some silly photos with the gigantic gorilla statues


jayen says i must give a very scared look and so i did!

and it's damn unglam-_-

Next was what we both were waiting to go visit!
the 10 courts of HELL!!

yuks.
the only thing i can remember visiting haw par villa 2 decades ago was this hell-thingy..
Last time, we got to sit in a roller coaster-like flume ride that toured around the different levels of 'hell' and then ended up getting ourselves wet when the 'roller coaster' headed down into a river.

Now, you walk on your own. No more air-condition or eerie sound effects. Used to be damn freaky and scares the shit outta little children :(



the photos below are still freaky. if u wan to skip, go ahead, haha!

these are the 2 bridges that lead to different places - paradise or hell!
those who do more bad stuff have to face the judge and be condemned


if wicked, boiled

theft, frozen

disobedience and disrespect to elders, grilled

not filial, grounded

wasting food(?!!) body sawn into half.. *gulp


okay, i think tat's enough for now...
it's very disgusting.
i'm only thanking God for His salvation

that's why we can still be romancing in 'hell', haha!!


it's nice to be out in the sunlight once again.
hell is certainly never a nice place to be in at all, whether is the real hell or the fake one :(

some crazy fun after that!
there's this place where we can rent period costumes for 6 bucks each!
the person in charge helped us pick our suits

An Emperor's robe,
jayen had his worn first

i was laughing non-stop at him, teeheehee, he looks funny!

Next was mine,



HAHAH!

OK, i look damn strange without a neck.

LOL!

this is unbelievable cos once u wear the costume, u will auto switch to period mode one
haha!!!


machiam wedding photoshoot!

i purposly crop the 喜喜 into half cos we're still single but happy, haha!



dont think he wan such a 'virtuous' wife -_-

kekekeke...


anyway, it's a fun experience! though the person who helped us change into our costumes is a tad too friendly and TOO helpful.... girls, just need to be on guard, dont let him anyhow touch can allady

left haw par villa to catch the last of the sun at West Coast park 8)


♥


we love this place!!!!!

cos it reminds us of our love-nest, 'taiwan-kaohsiung'!!!!!


we've brought 西子湾 back to singapore! ♥

just like the one taken in Kaohsiung! haha ♥♥

=)