I feel like the Grinch this Christmas. I don't celebrate Christmas; it's just another holiday to me. This year, I spent it traveling around Singapore for a bit. Firstly, I clocked 8 hours of sleep to make up for my sleep debt the past week. Then I went for my driving lesson, which was hilarious because it was the first time I went into the circuit (S-bend, parallel parking, crank course, change direction, all that) and I was SO BAD at everything. I was highly amused. My instructor was not. I met my folks for lunch at my uncle's place and had a good lighthearted conversation with the three adults.
Hey. Maybe my feelings are unwarranted. I think I've had a pretty good day. I just feel a bit
displaced. I think I'm just horribly tired. Not exactly physically tired. But I recently received a scolding from a dear friend, and I think that has gotten my mood down slightly.
To be honest thou, these past few days have gone pretty well! Here, have some visuals.
Convinced my family to head out for dinner at Sushi Tei on Christmas Eve. I use the word "convinced" because it is sometimes a difficult task getting my elder brother out of the bed and also my mom hates crowds. The dinner crowd at Thomson Plaza was fine thou. I was famished so photos were the last thing on my mind, but my elder brother asked me to snap a photo of this dish and so I did. This concoction is made up of mango slices on the outside, with lobster salad and cucumbers on the inside with seaweed, topped with tobiko. I don't even know if
lobster salad is an authentic Japanese dish (then again, when are food and food cooking styles considered authentic? It's all politics. If a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, then the fights involving food and the labeling of food involve foot soldiers, pilots in planes and even more violence), but I. LOVE. IT.
Came home to a postcard in the mailbox!
Thank you Zhiwei for the lovely words and thoughtful gesture. I read your entire postcard to my mom. It was, as usual, difficult to read at some parts, because of your unique scrawl, but I love you all the same! (I say this endearingly, and I say this because Ms Neo and I have had a solid 10 years of loving friendship.)
I also need to rewatch
Spirited Away soon.
I also received a Gold card from Starbucks, which was pretty coincidental, because I hadn't drunk anything from Starbucks in the longest time, but decided to get two of the Christmas drinks that night.
The Toffee Nut frappuccino is still my favourite! The Cranberry White chocolate Mocha frap is alright. As I said, I don't celebrate Christmas, but I do look forward to this time of the year because Starbucks releases this range of drinks. A bit of indulgence for the festive period!
Speaking of indulgence, I had these today:
Ferrero Rocher. I dislike the normal ones. I just don't like nuts. I do however, LOVE the white version - it is coconut flavoured! Yum yum. I also like the dark version. Sadly thou, they aren't sold on their own. I wish the ratios could be switched. Do you think if I write in to Ferrero Rocher, they would take my opinion into account and make changes? I guess it would depend on whether there are others like me, and whether this number of persons justifies such a move, right? Market research, you are so important.
Grocery shopping often leads to impulse buys, and this was definitely one of it. NEVER have I bought matcha kitkat by myself; for those I've eaten so far, they've been gifted by friends who'd been to Japan, or I'd just kop from others' fridges.
I think the satisfaction received from eating matcha kitkat bought by myself lowers significantly. I now know that it is readily available. Sigh.
The amount of chocolate intake today is a little atrocious. I just really craved chocolate today! I hope I don't get a sore throat tomorrow.
This is the lamb chop from my uncle's western food stall.... that you will not receive when you order "lamb chop". Yours will arrive with fries, a slice of toasted bread and baked beans. I always customise my orders when I eat at my uncle's place, because firstly, my consumption preferences are highly fickle, and secondly, I don't like fries nor potatoes much (I make exceptions for Swensen's fries and truffle fries thou!). I despise baked beans. They're too mushy and taste as if they contain so much energy (they do).
My uncle's place is at
805 Hougang Central #01-116. Holler if you want to head down for a bite, I'll gladly accompany you. It's called the
5 Star Corner Western Food stall.
Pops and I. Our smizing abilities are cray, yo.
My elder brother resembles my Papa so much, it's unfathomable. Why do genes work this way? I don't get it. How do sets of features get passed on, from one human being to another? I should have taken biology in secondary school. Inquisitiveness comes at the oddest hours.
I haven't worn headgear out in the longest time. Mainly because I haven't felt like
Pamela-pamela in awhile, but today I felt like it. Whilst exiting the car, my mom told me "Please remove your headband, you look crazy. Like a hippie." I was affronted and refused to take it off. "My hair will be flat," I insisted. But honestly, I just really wanted to wear this pink headband. My mom said people kept looking at me because I looked crazy. Do I care if I looked crazy/people thought I was crazy? No, definitely not. Did I want attention from people whom thought I was crazy? No, definitely not. In that moment, I just really needed my pink headband to
be me, in a bid of self-expression, to display my happiness and quirky mood, and I just could not care less about anyone else's opinions.
(In the picture above, I wear a frown because I had just ended my circuit driving lesson and I found it difficult. Not because I was unhappy that my mom did not like my pink headband.)
Speaking of headbands, I wore this in Den Gamle By in Aarhus in 2012:
I posted it on Instagram with this long-ass caption that I think not many people bothered to read: "
Throwback to days in Aarhus.
I know everyone, especially those in my generation, has the tendency to romanticise about the past, indulge in nostalgia and sound all wistful and dreamy when recalling past events and memories. Nostalgia's a dangerous thing. It makes you forget the ups and downs of those days. Good times aren't even what you remember; what you possess are blurry memories of good times amplified and distorted by filters that smoothen out conflicts and problems, making everything fuzzily disjointed - and we tend to pick the nicer bits out of these muted far away memories.
But that's not to say that we shouldn't cherish memories, both good and bad. We just have to keep in mind the tendency to kid ourselves to only remembering the brilliant and fun times, and allow the bad times to rein in our ever-dreamy minds like a Granny's flick to the cheek when one accidentally lets slip a "Fuck!" at the dining table.
Take for instance this photo. My wide grin spreads infectious happiness to my memory bank; I recall how I couldn't stand on those walking sticks and Nana was trying her hardest to take this shot of me at Den Gamle By. I think of her succeeding at walking around a few steps. Those memories make me happy. Like the slightly uncomfortable burning sensation of a swig of vodka down one's throat, I also remember worrying that our other friends were bored by that quaint little attraction. See - there are the good and there are the bad. But most of all this photo is just good. Look at my sunny grin! 2012 me was a happy and fiercely passionate me. Now, 2014 me, I'm not too sure about."
I remember being on the second floor of some government official's house. Nana was commenting that it was a huge house; they must have had a lot of money. I remember being scolded by the old lady (whom was part of the attraction as a living crew to depict the olden-times lifestyles of people in Aarhus) because I had sat on the bed and picked up two creepy dolls to pose with them.
That afternoon, after completing our walks in Den Gamle By, we went to have traditional Danish cuisine at a restaurant in the city centre. It was getting chilly but the sunlight was still warming me up sufficiently. I remember that Samantha had brought cigarettes from Indonesia and I took a puff of a cherry-flavoured one, which was amazingly strong (she and Chiaw Sang said it was about 20x as strong as the usual ones people smoke), and I felt like my head was floating right up into the air then. Samantha and Nana said that in Indonesia, the people whom you see smoke these sorts of cigarettes are old uncles. With vocal cords destroyed by years and years of smoking, raspy voices, yellowed teeth and stained fingers. At least that was what I was imagining when they told me about the old uncles. I was highly tickled that I was trying them, these cigarettes that these old uncles usually smoke.
Those are good memories. I think the best memories I have of anything are of walks with people. Walks peppered with bouts of intensely animated and enthusiastic conversation and bits of comfortable silence. We had walked down into the city centre from Den Gamle By. There was a light screen of sunlight just filtering through the air. Everything was kind of muted, we were all wrapped up in our coats. The rest were really cold and couldn't understand how I still survive with bare skin peeking through my apparels.
As I said thou, nostalgia's a dangerous thing. Let me not try to sink into the depths of it. Being in this funk isn't good. I'm going to try to be okay.
Have a listen to one of the tracks I've been liking recently. It's by Dusky! Dusky makes really awesome music. This particular one is a bit more downtempo, more lounge-y. Perfect for this rainy weather.
Work tomorrow! I have got to get to bed.
Goodnight.
Labels: 5 Star Corner Western Food, a break, aarhus, christmas 2014, disjointed, family, Food Entries, holidays, musing, nostalgia, some rest, thoughts
