Sunday, November 26, 2006

anita cutting my hair!!



yayyyyyy i finally got a haircut

hahahah anita cut my hair last night! she was pro! hahaha now i finally have a fringe and my hair is layered :):) wheepie. now i owe her eggs hahahaa! it was so funny cos i was hugging the bin while she cut my hair..but it turned out quite well done lala..so im very happy now

.:Xiufang:.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

this is my fav shot! :) it looks like the end of the world...sorta.hahaha


London Eye!!!

it would be such a pretty view from up there...but it costs like 12 pounds just for one ride!

with big ben in the background :)



London Aquarium!
it boasts of a huge variety of fishies...and sharks. lurve the gigantic shark tanks and colourful aquariums they have there! :)

jellyfish!
hahahah.terence claims they look..yummy

check out the giant stingray! its HUGE. and the sharks are fat and big as well. HAHA



say...fishieeeee!
pretty =)

even prettier :):)

terence was teaching me how to use the functions on my camera bcos im such a lousypok at using my camera..tts why the photos turned out quite nice.lol :)



my favourite colourful aquarium

i think my daddy will lurve it if he was here..he's such a fish enthusiast haha =D
right right?



lalalala...it was a lotta fun, ive nvr seen so many fishies in my life.heehee.my fav was the gigantic shark tank with like 5 different types of sharks in it.we were super enthusiastic when they announced that there was going to be a feeding session....we thought they were going to feed big fat chunks of meat..but to our disappointment it was just tiny eeny meeny bits of meat and fishes. yes, and i saw dory today! lalala

just keep swimming, just keep swimming,
swimming swimming swimming

oh no, now the finding nemo song is stuck in my head haha

.:Xiufang:.

Serene! :)
went to rosebery hall yesterday to meet serene and we cooked!! we ate SO MUCH we were ultra bloated...hahahaha.now all my running yesterday morning in the gym went down into the drain :( hehe.time for serious cardiovascular activities soonsoon.


greens

smoked barbeque chicken!!
sweet yumnmy strawberries.i likeeeee :)
before...
after... :):):)
oh yummy! our chocolate fudge cake was an ultimate indulgence! <3<3<3
we brought the cake down to share with some of the girls...butbutbut the two of us greedypigs ate the entire cake almost all by ourselves.hahaha


serene *hugs*


oink oinkz
today i am up and early! will be going to Hamleys and London Aquarium later in the day! wheeee i love my weekends.apparently Hamleys is one of London's largest toy store..5 big storeys filled top to bottom with toys!! (or so they said) hahahah i can't wait i can't wait! :D
.:Xiufang:.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

TADAAAAA!!

presenting to you...
xiufang and anita's specially home-cooked own-styled Sambal Oeleck Fish!
:)


warning: this is so good =)

ready for grilling!


Mmmmm..yum yum.

yes this is the secret weapon behind our yummy cuisine!



fried onions rawk =)

this makes the sambal fish oh-so-finger-lickin' GOOD..


cooked!

and all ready for our toppings...


Oooh la la...



the way to a man's heart is through his stomach...so all you ladies out there, you must must must learn how to cook this sambal chilli fish! hahahaha..

thumbs up!

more food awaits!

.:Xiufang:.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Some pics I've taken recently at Lim's Art and Living...with their gorgeous christmas deco. :)



-XL :)

Check out this column in 8 days...something for ME to think about esp...:P

I can't :) without U
by Tommy Wee

It's not even funny anymore. Someone whined in the papers recently about the questionable habit of putting too many smileys :) and LOLs (Laughing Out Loud) in e-mails. I'm like, why stop there? Smileys :) and LOLs creep into SMSes and chat messages, too, don't they? But the most amazing thing about the story was - get this - some people felt that smileys :) are insincere.

Honestly, it's 2006. The full-bodied Scarlett Johansson is the Sexiest Woman Alive. Britney is single again. You can get a new nose/boob/jaw during lunch. Global warming might kill us all. If you expect sincerity from a text or a chat message, you may be asking for too much. The whole idea of communicating through computers and gadgets is so that people don't have to face each other. Manage expectations. I can think of many reasons why civilised folks want to put distance between themselves, but doing so to be more sincere is not one of them.

I'd be the first to admit that i type 'LOL' with a straight face. I have the same expression when I type 'I'm sorry your dog died'. I'm red-eyed, frowning and, more often than not, sleepy. And I use 'ROFL" without remorse. I don't actually collapse on the office carpet and start Rolling On The Floor Laughing (a good thing, too, since my office carpet is a self-sustaining ecosystem of dirt and bacteria). I'd also be exhausted if I did, because I type 'ROFL', on average, 15 times a day. I must say I'm forced to use 'ROFL' especially if I've typed 'LOL' two lines ago. My writer's instincts forbid me to be repetitive.

I have a friend who has a pink, animated smiley (:), but pink and moving) for the word 'ha'. You can imagine how my eyes hurt when she goes 'hahahahaha'. And she laughs a lot. Almost every other damn line. I blocked her eventually. I'm like a brute on MSN, man. I switch my status to "Away' when i'm actually at my desk. I block boring people. Ruthlessly, I put up "Out to Lunch"...at midnight. You get the point. There's no respect whatsoever for the emoticons. Why? Because there are enough rules in life. Asking for sinceriy from someone in front of a computer on the other side of the world/country/cubicle means you have an extremely brittle ego. You're technically begging on someone else's keystrokes.

But I see why people love the smiley :). Think about it, the smiley :) is a cop-out for the inarticulate, a knee-jerk reaction for those who hate confrontations. It's an excellent breather for people who are less argumentative than you. I may be overstating the case here, but I think a lot of us, deep down, can't express ourselves properly. When there's no good comeback or opinion, a smiley :) has to do.

It might be the ball-breaking dealines but when I'm facing a blank screen and a blinking cursor, I do not possess a single iota of emotion. Every ounce of energy in me is wringing out that desirable turn of phrase, that bulletproof sentence. Emotion clouds the thought process. Emotion wrestles with fact, logic, and accuracy. I can't be laughing (LOL) or sobbing :( or sticking out my tongue acting cute :P every 15 minutes. That's why they're called emoticons- Emotion Icons. Because they emote for us. We're just too darn lazy.

I'd like to call this flagrant usage of the smiley :), 'contained hysteria'. It's an extension of our suppressed (and repressed) selves. Emoticons represent the poker faces we wear through the sludge of life, but we yearn continuously to be heard, for our expressions to mean something. We're human, after all. Communication is a basic need. Hence, when we :), we want the whole world to :) with us.

Haha, maybe it's cos i use smilies so often, that i feel compelled to dispel the whole 'insincerity' point. I mean, sure, to a certain extent, using smilies at such a high frequency has become a habit, such that my fingers just type it out without much thought sometimes...That much i'll concede. But that doesn't mean that my usage of it has to ALWAYS be without meaning. I sure hope that when i talk on MSN and stuff, it doesn't come across as being 'insincere', so to speak. Of course when i type out ROFL, i can't literally be rolling on the floor laughing. No sane person will do that, not even in normal everyday conversation. Can you imagine talking to someone one minute, and then noticing that that someone is no longer at eye level with you the next, but is instead tumbling around on the ground? BUT that doesn't mean that I won't sincerely be laughing really hard at a certain comment...not to the extent of rofl, sure...but almost there...:P

And because the format of communication through cyberspace is inherently so detached as compared to face-to-face interactions, smilies actually make these conversations less distant and more personal. After all, expressions and feelings are part and parcel of effective communication. If these are limited through sheer physical distance between two people, then one way in which emotions can be conveyed to the other party will be through smilies. I don't know about other people, but personally, i think writing :) or :D can actually bring a smile to someone's face at a com screen some thousands of kilometres away.

-XL :)

P.s. I can't believe i'm actually debating about this when i should be studying for exams...haha.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

it is quite true that man lives by bread alone --- when there is no bread.
skyped with my parents yesterday and i was so happy to see them! i miss home so muchhhh...i miss how my bro used to wake me up early in the morning to hit the gym/go for morning run in mcritchie/bball after our gym sessions et cetera et cetera.i miss my mommy's home-cooked food and my daddy's talk and how my parents would nag whenever i dont eat properly.yes, i am a spoilt kid back home. and i miss being spoilt like that. haha. i miss my friends...my silly-goon pals, (i am definitely gonna miss xmas with you guys!) i miss sitting in cell-group sessions on saturday afternoons listening to bk preaching God's word :) and even though church here is great and all, nothing ever feels like home as compared to chc.
dear santa,
all i want for christmas this year is....you.
.:Xiufang:.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Hahahaha. we were super boliao last night and started skyping though we live like...next door?! :) it was so fun, i kept making anita pose with her cute bear (pumpkin! technically it's not hers haha). it was so cool i was telling her she looked like some korean actress on youtube.hehs!



xi nu ai le
of anita cheah :)

lol

.:Xiufang:.

should i cut my hair should i cut my hair.

urgh.my fringe is irritating me

.:Xiufang:.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

went to hillsong today for service :) praise and worship was so good! i was so happy when they played Take It All at the end of service cos they didn't play it during P&W. haha...sermon was not too bad, the pastor touched on the parable of the good samaritan, one of my favourite parables =D then i headed to sainsbury central at holborn to do my usual sunday grocery shopping. sundays are good and sundays make me happy.because there's church, followed by grocery shopping (stocking up time!) lalala.but as i told keith, there's no such thing as stocking up when it comes to junk cos i usually eat them all up.HAHA.

i walked past the Krispy Kreme shop at holborn and told myself no no no no im not going to buy. hahaha and now i really regret.im suffering from krispy-kreme-withdrawal-syndrome :(



i like the trenchie which i bought from Primark yesterday =)

xinling! yes winter shopping is so so fun right! yeah love those jackets with the furry hoods! hahahah take nice snow shots of Beijing for me okie! :) lalala will you be spending christmas in Beijing as well?ask your daddy to let you come london!

i know this is a random comment but...
i love my baked potatoes =p

.:Xiufang:.

Winter Shopping!!

In anticipation of my trip to beijing immediately after exams...went on a winter shopping spree this weekend! Haha, that's the good thing about growing up..( i got my last set of winter clothes when i was p4) you get to outgrow your clothes and get new ones! :D REALLY happy with my purchases...

Nice black outer jacket with some fur for the hood...check
Nice black inner jumper (the outermost layer when i'm indoors)...check
Nice matching scarf and cap...check
Warm gloves to prevent my hands from freezing and falling off...check

And i'm ready to go! :D Hmmm....now to get through the exams..Yikes...such a pain...

Oh, and checked out vivo city again with lilian on fri! Lim's Art and Living is just SO gorgeous with its christmas deco...really brought the both of us into the christmas spirit! Was quite inspired by the way they had snowflakes and icicles hanging down from their ceiling...Maybe i should attempt something like that for my room after the exams! :P

-XL :)

Saturday, November 18, 2006

my dear molihua is in london todayyyy! :)



ah girl...im drooling over the bayswater duck now! hahaha :p im such a suaku-pok cos can u believe it or not, i still have not tasted the oh-so-famous-and-delicious bayswater duckkK!

quack quack anyone?:(


ohoh aren't they so adorable?



we went big sainsbury to buy pancakes and maple syrup for our self-made "Big Breakfast"
haha


and on our way...we saw a Lamborghini! so so chioooooo.
it's actually the norm to see cars like the Gallardo, Bentley and Ferrari here in london, which is very cool. and it's amusing cos only the singaporeans will go semi-berserk when we see one.HAHAHA.


Harrods!
the super duper high-class and ultra posh shopping mall in London

i truly understood the full meaning of "window shopping" at Harrods, because everything there is so so pricey and steep there's hardly anything you can afford. except maybe the baguettes.haha. the moment you step in, you're flanked by Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and you name it. it's ultra posh and ginormous and...crowded.



caroline :)





since we realised that we couldnt afford anything...we decided to visit the food hall in harrods!


little santas in the queue :)

i just wanna grab one of 'em and give it to you for christmas...


chocolates galore!!

after struggling with myself for super longggg i decided im not going to succumb to any choc temptations anymore! hahaha anita aren't u proud of meeeeee


pretty crafted cakes on display , which looked so tempting




food, glorious food!



serene came down in the afternoon to find us at Primark! everything there is so so cheap! we literally shopped till we dropped haha.


Covent Garden
more shopping!


there was some busking event tonight at Covent Garden

buskers here are really good:) the guy who was singing was so good, i could melt cos his voice was lovely


the pretty carousel

which jasmine said was "spinning so fast!" hahaha


The Disney Shop!

ohhhhhhhhhhhh. i lurve the disney shop. xinling im sure you will love it too! cos they have an awesome collection and display of disney soft-toy characters.

just check it out!


hahahhah. do you want any girl? :):)

ok time for prison break!

.:Xiufang:.