When your only friends are not around…

Here are some pics of what I cooked to keep myself entertained during the two weeks the two couples were back in Singapore.

My partner gave me a bottle of red wine for Xmas present. Not a wine-drinker, here’s what I did with the red wine. Marinated some steaks with it. I know it is a waste. But it would be even wasteful if I were to just let the bottle sit and go bad.

Steak


The steak wasn’t exactly fantastic. There’s definitely room for improvement.

Since the bottle was already opened, I tried to use as much of the red wine as possible in my cooking before it turns bad. So I made this……

“zha pa lang” pasta
I actually wanted to make some red wine linguini but as I only had less than a quarter packet of linguini left, I added macaroni. Looks pretty disgusting huh? Hahah… well, a chef gotta be adventurous and try new stuff. Since I’m not exactly a chef, that’s why my pasta turned out this way. Hehe.

Ok, enough of the weird looking pasta. Let’s move on to the all-time Singaporean favorite - Char Kway Teow!!

We finally found some yellow noodles after hunting high and low for it in the past year. Unlike those sold in our wet market, the ones we found are dry not fresh. I must say the Prima Taste Char Kway Teow is really good although I find the dark sauce was not sweet enough. I had to add a little sugar to make it taste more authentic.

With no one to hang around with except my ah bui, I spent one of the Sundays making wantons.

Fried Wantons

I had enough ingredients to feed four. But with only just the two of us around, I decided to make dumplings soup as well so that we won’t end up eating too much fried stuff.

The difference between the two is not only in the way they are cooked but also in the way they are folded and the sauce that goes into marinating the meat.

Dumpling Soup with macaroni

Two days before Zing and Neo came back from Singapore, Tim left for Connecticut and left me all alone by myself. Here’s what I cooked for dinner.

Red wine marinated Pork chop with mushroom

Lap cheong garlic fried rice paradise

Which is worse?

UPDATE

While Tim is away on yet another business trip, I decided to start on the first season of Nip and Tuck. I got hooked. Then I happily brought the rented dvd with me on my trip to NYC cos I wanted to watch it on the plane.

At the airport, I realised I forgot the all important earphone!

Which is worse: forgetting to bring the dvd or earphone?!! Argh...

On another matter....In the south, many of the menial work are "outsourced" to the Hispanics.

While playing Texas Hold'em with my colleagues, one of them told us what he overheard in a conversation between three of our colleagues - a French, an Indian and a Mexican.

French: I hate mowing my lawn. It's tiring.

Indian: You can always hire a Hispanic to do it. There (pointing his finger to the Mexican colleague), you can ask him to do it.

Mexican: Yes, I'm a Mexican. I can do that.

kua kua.....heng the Mexican colleague took it in his stride...

And yes, my group consists of only less than 20 people yet we have people from all over the world. Other than the above three, we have of course Americans; me - Singaporean; one Bulgarian; one Kuwaiti; and one Kenyan. International indeed!

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Tim passed me his extra earphone so that I could watch Nip and Tuck on my flight back to Houston.

In the plane, I happily switched on my laptop. While waiting patiently for it to boot up, I plugged in the earphone. Then I carefully removed the extra external battery from the DVD ROM slot and inserted the DVD ROM. I proceeded to take out the DVD box from my laptop bag. When I opened the box, the dvd was NOT in there! I had left the DVD in the player at home. Kua kua.. I really got nothing to say…

Ah Ma Part II

My ah ma really amuses me.

Ah ma fell down 2-3 mths ago and never really fully recovered. As ah ma and ah gong live together by themselves, to ensure that there is someone around to take care of them, my relatives hired a maid for ah ma. The maid, an Indonesian, has been working in ah ma's house for almost two weeks. While chatting with ah ma a few minutes ago....

Moi: What is the maid's name?

Ah ma: Her name is really difficult to pronounce, dunno is it Sangrilah or Sanglah....

Moi: Ah ma simple lar... just call her Salah ('wrong" in Melayu). hehehe...

Ah Ma: I am thinking of giving her a new name. An English name. Nowadays, people seldom use names like Mary and Rose hor?

Moi: Ya lor....

Ah Ma: I'm thinking of calling her Celia....

I bursted out laughing immediately! Ah ma, you are really modern lei...And why do u have to choose a name of my friend's?

And no, ah ma doesn't know the names of my friends in Houston which makes it so coincidence and farnie...

Travel, concert and musicals

October
- NYC for vacation. Activities include watching Les Miserables, and having expensive meals at the company's expense.
- Maroon 5 concert
- Avenue Q, the musical

November
- Dallas for training. Activities include studying, and having expensive meals at the company's expense.
- Rent, the musical
- Hawaii for honeymoon (Oahu, Maui and Big Island). Activities include suntanning, shark-cage diving, manta ray diving, sailing, snorkelling, hiking, spa-ing.

December/January
- East Canada (Niagara Falls, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec, Montreal) where the Perth Gang will meet the Colorado Gang. Activities include skiing, dog-sledding, snow-shoeing, snow mobiling, crapping (The Shitazoids will collide once again)

So many things to see and do. Seems that the last quarter of the year will pass by in a flash!

Fast Learner

While chit-chatting with my Ah Ma on the phone one day…

Ah Ma: “Is your “ah lao” back from his trip?”

Moi: “Ah Ma, ah lao seems like a term you would use when you ask my mummy about my dad. It makes Tim sounds so old when you use it on him…”

My mum, overheard what Ah Ma said, replied cheekily, “Mother, nowadays the youngsters do not call their hubby “ah lao”. They call them honey, darling or dear. Try using the terms on Father (my Ah Gong), he will be very happy.”

One week later while chatting with Ah Ma on the phone again…..

Ah Ma: “Is your “honey” at home today?”

OMG! Ah ma, you definitely learn fast!