Spay Day 2007

I reached the Bedok pick-up point slightly before 7.30am yesterday and this friendly community cat was sitting near the chair of the porch. When I sat down, it came rubbing my legs and shoes.



When the caregivers arrived with their cats, the 3 volunteers and I tagged the carriers of cats with caregivers' names and brief description of the cats and later we and the driver loaded the van with 24 cats around 10am.

We and the caregivers gathered at the same point around 8pm to wait for the arrival of their cats. However, as we sent in the cats later than 9/9.30am, the cats could only be released around 7/7.30pm and arrived an hour later. All were happy to see the 24 sterilised cats.

It was nice to meet the caregivers who care for the cats. The community cats in the area are friendly and mingled with us when we were at the porch area.

Angel and Spay Day kit

Angel is quite curious about plastic bags, so it was no surprise when she checked out my plastic bag of stuff for the Spay Day kit. Busybody! :)

Spay Day tomorrow

Cat Welfare Society is organising Spay Day 2007 tomorrow. The event is to promote the awareness about sterilisation as an important step in the Trap-Neuter-Return-Management programme in caring for the community cats in an area.

I will be at the Bedok point with a few other volunteers from 7.30am onwards where about 11 people/caregivers have registered to send in about 23 cats to be sterilised at 2 vet clinics. In the evening, the caregivers will return to collect their sterilised cats.

The other volunteers will be stationed at Tampines, Boon Lay and Ang Mo Kio and more than 100 cats will be ear-tipped/sterilised tomorrow!

Baking cupcakes

On Sat, I visited Agatha and her family to bake cupcakes from the recipe she found. Easy peasy cupcakes and it was so easy that we made 2 batches.

The cupcakes tasted quite nice. A bit too oily though. We made some with almond flakes and others with mini chocolate chips inside.

Little Tin Hang was eating the cupcake happily.

A nice start to the weekend

Last Fri after work, my friend and I visited the Singapore Arts Museum since we were only meeting our girlfriends at 10.30pm for the movie "Lust, Caution". I like some of the paintings by Widayat, an Indonesian modern artist. The details, the way he reflects the beauty of the trees, flowers and birds.

We also went for the curator's tour at 7.30pm for the Big Picture Show where he shared with the group of about 15 of us the story and interpretations of big paintings by Asian and local artists. It was my first time going for such a tour and I find it very refreshing and interesting to listen to an expert talking about the paintings. It was also quite fun to come up with my own thoughts about the paintings and see how close and far they are from the curator's.

An hour later, we dropped by Food for Thought to collect the earnings from my first batch of nice ginger cookies sold. $30. I felt happy that all 90 cookies were sold.

We went to Purvis Street for dinner at Chin Chin Eating House. My friend said we had been here a few years ago for the famous pork chop. I can remember that Chin Chin has this famous pork chop but I can't recall having a meal here with my friends. Oh dear, ageing. We had seaweed soup, Hainanese chicken, prawn omelette and baby kailan. That was a lot of food for us 2 greedy girls :)

We watched the movie with 4 other girls. I think the show is ok. I don't agree with the reviews that it's a great show.

A few of us headed to our friend's new place. It is lovely. I smelled the Ikea furniture when I stepped in. Her 2 dogs are beautiful too. They barked initially and calmed down after a short while. We chilled out till 4am - chatting, drinking water, looking at her wedding photos, stroking her dogs, eating chips before going home to sleep.

Pip getting old

Old age comes to hamsters quite quickly as they have a short lifespan of 2 to 3 years. Pip shows signs of ageing with his teary right eye, loss of weight and balding and less appetite. It will be a matter of time before we will lose her.

Angel's feet

I love touching his feet and massaging them. He was up on the shelf near Dad's big speaker, sleeping with his feet dangling.

Sun with Moon lunch with my family

On Sunday I treated my family to lunch @ Sun with Moon @ Wheelock Place since Mom likest that place.

Sis and Dad had the mackerel and fried chicken set.

Mum had salmon set
and me miso cod set that comes with sashimi salad.

About an hour later, I had a craving for ice cream and sis joined me to get Haato icecream at Wheelock Place. She had milk tea while I ate sweet potato with chestnut. I like the many bits of sweet potato and chestnut in the ice cream.


I also bought myself a SPCA pocket diary from the SPCA booth near the entrance of Borders. The design is nicer than last year's which I'm currently using. I like the drawings. They look cheerful :)

Angel and the scratching post

Angel is getting a bit too big for the scratching post. Sometimes when he is sharpening his nails on the post, the post seems to be almost toppling over if not for Angel's weight on it. Recently he also likes to lie on his side or back and play with the pendulum/pink ball.

Picnic at Singapore Botanic Gardens

We visited the gardens on Saturday morning and it was raining quite heavily. We sought shelter near the NParks HQ under the sheltered walkway and had our picnic. Bam made yummy pepper tuna with parsley and basil to go with crackers. FR made salad of beans and lettuce and also Ikea's swedish meatballs. Jerl brought the ingredients (picnic ham, beef pastrami, lettuce, cheese, bread, thousand island sauce) for sandwiches and I just came with strawberries, grapes, kiwis and bought some tartlets from the bakery near my place.


After a sumptious meal, the rain stopped and we could take a leisurely walk. At the Palm Valley. we were surprised to see a cat resting near a Malay family at the field. When I went near her, she was friendly and let me stroke her.

We wonder whether she was abandoned. Bam's sweetie was also interested in the cat and probably the cat reminds her of their pet cat at home.


We made our way towards the Bukit Timah core of the garden as we would like to check out the new Jacob Ballas Children's Garden. On the way, there were lovely flowers

squirrels (my friends were admiring the squirrel they spotted)


When we reached the Bukit Timah Core, we all felt very hot under the great heat of the sun. The lake with the black swans looked very peaceful.

The garden is really a good place to teach children about nature and they will be curious and ask questions about the interesting things they see.


The reception area leading to the entrance of the Children’s garden is nice.

The butterfly glass window next to the drive-in.

The tree structure.

The small chairs for the kids at the café.

I followed Bam and her sweetie into the garden while the others rested outside. I’m glad to have done so. The child in me was and still is awed by the different beautiful parts of the garden

– the maze,
flowers, the lamp posts, interesting activities for the kids,
shelters (perfect for future picnics), mini house.
The slides looked nice in the tree house setting but you won’t find me going down a slide. Bam’s sweetie did try the slide twice and she looked a bit scared but seemed to also like the experience.

I don’t mind going to the Children’s Garden with my friends again or ask my parents to bring me there :)

Magic and laughter

I tried Lawry's The Prime Ribs @ Paragon for the first time just now. A friend had some promotional 1-for-1 sms and asked me to join her, her hubby and another friend for dinner.

After 2 slices of bread and some salad, I only had enough stomach space for a medium done beef of the smallest cut and also ate some creamy spinach, mashed potato and pudding. The best part of the meal is the tender beef.

What's even better is the company of my friends. Our friend called the fatty parts of the beef "magic", excitedly described to us the mating of her 2 syrian hamsters and looked forward to their babies. The couple friends were sharing their retirement plans and I laughed at them poking fun at each other.

This is a good start to the weekend :)

Angel and a pink ball

A friend was commenting earlier that she hasn't seen photos of Angel on my blog recently.

I took a few of Angel about a week ago and this is my favorite :)

Cartoon community cat

Something I drew the other night while waiting for my turn to shower. Mom said the eyes look strange. Well, it's a cartoon community cat :)

Baking - ups and downs

I was on leave yesterday to spend time with Mom and also bake ginger cookies. I hope to be able to give some to my friends to enjoy over the weekend. I got a shock when the first tray of baked cookies tasted dry, powdery and salty. I followed the ingredient amounts and the recipe
instructions. The only slight change is instead of adding the warm mixture of melted butter and golden syrup to the dry mixture of other ingredients, I only put the wet mixture in a few hours later after I went out for lunch and grocery shopping with Mom. I think that may cause the dough not to be binded properly and hence the texture of the cookies. I also reduce the sugar content as the cookies tasted quite sweet the last time. I feel so disappointed with yesterday’s cookies I tried to save them by adding some chocolate chips but they are not the same as the yummy soft ginger cookies that my family, friends and I ate and raved about a few weeks ago.

My family said they are edible and told me they will help me to eat. After spending yesterday afternoon baking them, I can’t really bear to throw them away. I shall freeze them and slowly eat them over a month. I will try to bake my nice cookies again after that.

Luckily, the shepherd pie I baked turned out nice.

Mum helped to prepare the ingredients (mushroom, pumpkin, potato, carrot, etc) while I was mourning over and making the cookies. The pie was for dinner yesterday and the leftovers can be kept in the fridge for other days when we feel like having it as a meal.

I stir-fried the mushrooms, carrots and minced beef with the can of vegetable soup. After pouring the cooked stuff into the pyrex dish, I layered the mashed potato and pumpkin on top before sprinkling the cheese.

Mom also stir-fried some udon and bee hoon. The seafood chilli added a zest to the dish and reminded me of curry crab but Dad didn’t like the smell of lemon grass.

World Animal Day @ Marina Square

I spent the weekend with the volunteers to help Cat Welfare Society to raise funds and awareness about community cats.


Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD) organised this World Animal Day Exhibition at Marina Square and invited CWS and Noah's Ark CARES (NANAS) to participate too. Our booths were located at the foot of the escalators leading to the food court so there was good human traffic. A wedding show was also going on at the same time.

Although I had a bit of sore throat and cough which affected my energy level, I enjoyed the company of the volunteers and those from ASD and NANAS. I'm also touched that 3 CWS committee members, my sis and dad came down to help too :)

2 of my volunteers got 2 free cupcakes from the wedding show for me and sis after they ended their shift. So sweet of them.

It's nice to see 3 different animal welfare groups coming together and I hope the presence of us at the malls help to remind the shopping crowd at Marina Square that animals need our love and help too.