Happy meals @ home

I enjoy having meals with family @ home. By the time I get home around 7.30pm after work, parents have to keep the food aside for me. They will have finished dinner by 6pm to get ready to feed the community cats.

Yesterday, I could have piping hot dinner with parents. Mom steamed fish with salted egg, tomato and ginger and stir-fried broccoli with fish cake and fungus. I like the brown rice too :)

Catching up with the news and family

After being woken up by a phone call from a delivery boy, I had a leisurely breakfast while packing my new stash of organic toiletries. I was also yakking non stop to my family :) Now I'm going through the old news I've missed.

Super hot afternoon

After the rainstorm and floods, we have to face the merciless sun again. We don't feel the heat in the air-con office, but today I took the afternoon off for my driving lesson. It was hot when I walked from the bus stop to the driving school and when I drove around the circuit and on the road. It was less hot around 4.15pm after my lesson and I could admire the clouds and sky when crossing the overhead bridge on the way home.

美味しい晩ご飯

両親が作った晩ご飯を食べた。After all the good food in Hong Kong, I miss parents' home-cooked food :)

Angel and my healthy cereal

It's nice to wake up from my comfortable bed breathing fresh air instead of dry air con air. Breakfast this morning was fun too :)

エンゼルと朝ごはんの写真をとりた。おもしろい！

Happy to be home シンガポール にうれしい

When we arrived in Changi Airport yesterday evening, we headed to Wang Cafe for our Teh C and kaya butter toast. Dad somehow found us there and we left together shortly for home.

Resting @ home, the best medicine

After all the feasting over the long weekend coupled with insufficient sleep and water, I am down with sore throat and runny nose. Yesterday evening, I went to see the TCM doc, hoping that his medicine will cure me soon. This morning, I woke up with a heavy head and no appetite, so I decided to take urgent leave and rest at home. I just had mom's yummy porridge with century egg after helping her with the bean sprouts. I shall take it easy today.

うちで休むことがいい薬です。

Lovely sky outside my doorstep

National Day Celebration in Hanoi

While I was in Hanoi for a meeting, my colleagues and I were invited to join the National Day celebrations at Melia Hotel. There were other Singaporeans as well as people from the diplomatic and business community. I was more interested in admiring the familar stuff.


All these reminded me of home. The cakes, laksa and hainanese chicken, etc. didn't taste as yummy as those back home but it was still a good effort to bring a bit of Singapore flavour to the overseas Singaporeans.

The end of a 3-day weekend

We had a nice dinner just now. This morning, I suggested brown rice porridge to go with some dishes. Mom prepared the ingredients while Dad did the cooking under Mom's guidance. Sis and I just helped to eat :)

Spending time @ home

I haven't been staying home for a whole day to bake, do some tidying up of my room, etc. Today is the day. Dad and Mom have just gone out to Chinatown for lunch and do some toiletry shopping @ Chinatown Complex. Dad has asked me to join them but I have decided I should bake a beer bread and if there's time, almond yogurt cake. It's also good to have time to myself sometimes at home - not that I will do any deep thinking but it's nice to have the house to myself with Angel and Bob and do things I like.

Tidying up my room and ironing clothes are not my favorite activities but I feel good seeing nice crisp office clothes ready to be worn the next few weeks and my room (which just needs a bit of cleaning since Mom does help me) has less Bob fur lying around, cat litter and dust. Luckily Mom and I are quite clean freaks so my room actually smells clean and Bob smells of the clean laundry or my hair/skin care products.

I like to think that Angel and Bob like someone at home too. Mom always claims that Angel looks sad whenever we are going out. Bob will be crying in my room when we are home. I shall see if there is opportunity to let Bob out for a few hours if Angel settles down in parents' or sis' room. If not, I just pop in and out of my room to check on him and play with him or hug him. He has been meowing quite loudly at night if no one is with him in my room. Sometimes I need to do some work or do some surfing at the PC before sleeping, and shushing him does help to quiet him down at times. There are some things that I can do in my room and keep Bob company. For example, for my Jap homework, I will put all my Jap notes in a bag and bring into my room. Bob doesn't like me to be focused on other things beside him sometimes if he is still very alert and not sleepy. So I will try to play with him a little. Recently, when I bring my office laptop home, I will watch some anime in my room late at night while Bob rests/sleeps on my pillow. He's totally not interested in the moving scenes on laptop screen.

During the recent working trip to Thailand, I put Bob up at my friend's place. She was also taking care somebody's 6 pet cats and she has a pet cat. Bob seems to remember my friend's place, having stayed there almost a week in May and he wasn't afraid. When I arrived to pick him up a week later when I returned from Thailand, he actually went hiding into a carrier with 2 other cats in the kitchen but when he realised it was me, he came out of hiding. When Dad came a while later, he hid behind my friend's legs instead of mine. Mom and I think that perhaps Bob can get along well with other cats who are comfortable with other cats. For the case of Angel, he is so used to us that he sees other cats and humans as threats.

Mom and I have been thinking whether to try putting Bob up for adoption again. He will definitely be happier with someone who can let him move around the house freely and if the person has other friendly cats, I'm sure Bob can get along with them too. I can only offer him my hugs and kisses, my company when I'm home and at night and I don't think it's enough. Perhaps later while baking, I can think about this and decide whether to put up an adoption ad again on Cat Welfare Society online adoption bulletin I did so a few times last year but from the few responses, nothing materialised in the end. I can always try again and see this time, someone can give him a good home.

For the past several months this year, Boss has also asked me to help to prepare some meeting materials for weekly morning meetings on Mon. It requires me to get updates from the other divisions the week before and consolidate them before emailing to all the members of the meetings. Usually, I will check office emails on weekends and email the final version of the document to the members and their secretaries. The amount of work is not heavy but it kind of dampens the weekend mood knowing that I have to do office work. Anyway, I'm just glad that I have time to spend quality time with family, cats, myself and also catch up with friends.

Okie, it's time for baking therapy! :)

Last day (8 May) in Tokyo

A good way to start a day is always with good food. That morning @ 5+am, I had some of the Aunt Stella's cookies - blueberry nut swirl and lemon cookies and some raisin bread. Yummy.


@ around 7.15am, we boarded the airport limousine bus to Narita Airport. @ the airport, we had ample time to browse around the shops as our flight was at 11.30am. I bought 2 tees and socks from Uniqlo and a cat terrycloth hanky from another shop. Sis bought a nice umbrella and some cute cat biscuits for Mom.


Gluttony me felt like eating again and I was glad I bought a nut loaf from thia Maison Kayser bakery recommended by Cousin and Cousin-in-law. I was enjoying every bite of it while Sis ate her choc chip cookie (from Aunt Stella).


Again, our flight had some 30 mins delay due to some computer glitch but it wasn't as long as our earlier flight. The plane wasn't packed too. The meal on the flight was surprisingly good. We chose the Japanese lunch set - cold soba, some seafood salad (of unknown looking slimey stuff), beef curry with rice and chocolate orange cake. There was so much food (and probably I had a big bun earlier) that I didn't finish the rice and the dry plain roll.

With time to kill, I watched 2 movies - Bolt and K20. I cried while watching both shows. Bolt the dog and Mitten the stray cat are adorable characters. I find Rhino the hamster funny and weird. It's a good movie, showing the devotion of the girl to her pet and vice versa. It's a feel good movie.

K20, a Japanese movie has Takeshi Kaneshiro as the lead character, Heikichi Endo being framed by K20, a thief who stealed from the rich. I like the part of how Heikichi trained to gain the skills of a thief in escaping and disguising himself.

Back @ Changi Airport, Sis and I had kaya toast and tea @ Yakun before Dad (so sweet) came to fetch us home. After doing some packing, I couldn't help but try a bit of Mom's banana cake and fungus dessert.

It was good to home :)

Angel on Ikea plank

Dad is creative. He likes to DIY and recently, he put up a plank from Ikea and shower curtain to cover his new TV in their bedroom. I don't know the purpose of the plank though but it seems like a great place for Angel to relax :) Oh and I like the blue tones of the curtain- bright and chirpy.

Mummy's birthday

A good reason for me to be on leave today. A few friends asked where I would be going and I told them I'm staying at home :) Other than feeding our community cats with mum this morning and evening, I was at home with sis and mum -
playing with Angel, bathing her,

watching her play, acting like a vampire, scolding her or distracting her when she tried to bite us, checking emails,

watching my family watching draggy Taiwanese drama series,
watching Angel sleeping (the cute mushroom cushion is from sis) and

preparing Swedish meatballs (from Ikea) for dinner.

I should plan more of such "holidays" to recharge myself and spend quality time with my family and the cats :)

Beautiful Sunday sky

It was really hot the past few days. I took some shots of the blue sky with fluffy clouds. The first one is from the park

and the second one from the carpark.

Good cooks @ home

I'm really lucky to have my parents who cook such yummy dishes. Wafts of food aromas will greet me when I go home for dinner and I will snap a photo of the food before we tuck in.

These were what we had on Tues and today :)

Hidden beauty

Sometimes if you look carefully, you may discover something beautiful in the surroundings that you have been used to or taken for granted. Mum spotted this white flower in the park and I quickly took a photo of it.

Comfort drink

Lukewarm water with milk powder and honey or warm milk with honey is something I would make if I want to have something light when I feel a little hungry but it's already late @ night :)

Beautiful wild flower outside our flat

Don't ask me where my mum gets it from :)