Farewell Bartok,

the little mangy kitten that I found about five years ago who turned out to be a pure white cat with one blue eye and one green eye after a bath and de-lousing and was adopted by my aunt. R.I.P.

Farewell Purple,

we had alot of crazy adventures together, night rides along East Coast, going to town,  dodging buses, visiting Changi Prison. Lots of memories with you, but it's time to move on.

Farewell, Myspace blog.

Gonna try out LJ for a while, see u guys here

She's done it again. Some time between midnight and 7 am, Kaput raided the dustbin, shredded up my mom's pin cushion (good thing my mom didn't store any pins on it!), ransacked my maid's room and was found in the morning looking extremely guilty with her head stuck in the handle of a plastic bag.

Things to do list:

1. Finish my oil painting

2. Clear wardrobe of clothing items that have not been worn for more than 2 years

3. Return misc. items that have been borrowed

Exercise list:

1.  MILK run in July or Terry Fox run in September, 8k. A bit peeved that due to some human error, I'd come in within the first 100 on my last 5k run, but my timing and number was lost in the official records.

2. Start using Purple, my 17 year old Peugeot Ventour bicycle. She's been resurrected thrice already and Mike says that her COE has expired long ago, seeing that her lifespan has been longer than the average car in Singapore. So, this will be her final lap until something gives.

I was madly looking at duathlons for 2008 but the distances put me off completely(10k run, 20k bike ride, 5k run).

3. Hopefully master a 2 wake jump by mid year, or the end of the year...

Books to finish reading list:

(this is my current reading list i.e. books in my room, not including the 50 or so un-read books on my main shelf in the other room cos my room has no space)

1. Pilgrim's Progress

2. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

3. The Wheel on the school

4. Next Door Savior

5. Eragon

6. Children of Green Knowe

7. Ballet Shoes

i've got my morning off, and time to waste, obviously :) back to bed now to curl up with a book and a cat.

First, the "salt and pepper" chicken chop at Hong Kong Kitchen along East Coast road is NOT  cooked in salt and pepper. It has chilli, and not just a sprinkling of it. It's cooked in a healthy dousing of RED chillies. ARGHHH!! Mike says that the chinese wording says something about "chilli chicken" but since I can barely read Chinese, I happily went ahead to order "salt and pepper" chicken. That was last Friday.

On Saturday, I took a large spoonful of Auntie Ros', well, what appeared to be some kind of tomato-ey based vegetable soup. It wasn't just tomato-ey. It had some kind of chilli base as well.

And as I type, I am downing about a litre of water after having eaten what looked like sweet and sour chicken, but is also HOT and sweet and sour.

For the uninformed, unlike the average singaporean, I am not a chilli eater. Really kena dua-ed by my food.

And since we're on the topic of food, this is Cappuchino, or Kaput as the family calls her.

In the last month, she has eaten, and I do mean total consumption, not just chewing:

- half a chocolate cake (not half a slice, but half a CAKE).

- two bouts of ant poison

- the straps from two pairs of leather shoes on consecutive days

- raw fish stomach

- an extremely hot piece of squid that fell from the frying pan which she gulped up before anyone could take it away from her

- the used ends of cotton buds

- toilet paper from the toilet bowl

- bright blue and yellow crayons

All stolen when no one was looking, obviously.

The bedok magic man religious clanged his bells around the three idols proclaiming that the central idol, to which a piece of paper was attached , would display the lucky numbers. The magic man then proceeded to light a round piece of incense paper, clanged his bells a few more times around the idol's head, and then placed the bowl of smoking incense below the paper. Everyone quickly rushed forward as the number 6 slowly started to appear on the paper. DUH!!!

and for today's amusement factor: I dropped my car keys in the toilet bowl.

2 more weeks til my maid gets back from her holiday. I REALLY appreciate the amount of stuff she does! My main job while she is away is to feed the dogs (fairly easy) and to minimise the amount of cat hair floating around my room (impossible) so my dad won't have to neurotically clean my room twice a day. I've told him that I'll clean my own room but every time he sees a furball, he is compelled to whip out the magic cloth or mop or vacuum. I live with three cats, how can I NOT have cat hair??? Anyway, the extra chores are kinda tiring and for this period, I won't be online as much.

Books: I'm back to re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in anticipation of the 7th and last installment of the series. Have not been very successful at  getting even to the middle of Pilgrim's Progress so far, nor have I been able to find a version in modern english.

Eye-bag situation: Well, I just hope that this works. Yes. I've sold out! I'm not one to spend alot on this kinda stuff usually.. but... i cant live like a panda!

eyebags and panda circles suck.

i've tried:

cold chamomile tea bags: well, the poofiness has gone but now i have a dark circle around one eye...duh!

cucumber eyepads from chee-nah bedok shop: felt nice but didnt do squat for me.

potato slices: not too bad, slight reduction in dark circle

so yes, basically i've been lying like cleopatra on my sofa with various forms of food on my face.

staying up late to surf the net looking for other remedies doesnt help much either.

i went to work like this yesterday

i only realised it AFTER i got out of the car. I vaguely remember that my thought process before i left the house went something like "wear the crocs *puts foot in* eeuw, it's wet. better to wear the flip flops". Obviously only the left side of the brain got the message. Good thing i had an extra pair of MATCHING flip flops in the ar.

( i've only just realised that there is a MODERN ENGLISH edition of Pilgrim's Progress!!! And all this time I've been ploughing through ye olde english version. It maketh not for good toilet reading, rather constipating actually)

Feels like I'm on speed this week. Too many things to do, too little time. I hate running and the only way to make sure that I don't stop is to sign up for a run which I have to pay for. Being a cheapo, I'd rather run than forfeit it and let my money go to waste. 5k runs are admittedly lame but within the first 200m of yesterday's Women's Outdoor challenge at East Coast, I was already chanting my  internal mantra of " i hate running i hate running" which was interrupted when the two girls behind me were arguing about whether this dude at the beach was parasailing or paragliding. After a short debate, I couldn't take it and said "kite-boarding".  (This was not as bad as the comments heard during Friday's trip to the Night Safari. A lady looked up on the tree at a giant squirrel, "Look boy, it's an owl." Yeah. like owls sit on their haunches and preen their faces with paws. A slight improvement by the next visitor which recognised that it wasn't a bird. "Oh, a flying monkey!" Hello??? Do we live in the land of Oz??????????)

But I digress.

Back to a different mantra of "where's the waterpoint, where's the waterpoint?" cos that was the turnaround juncture. The last stretch was a mixture of "should i walk should i walk" followed by "kiteboarding guy kiteboarding guy", "where's the banner where's the banner" and "sprint u idiot". Finished in 33:17min which is not too embaressing. I still hate running though.

Midweek was a wakeboarding session which left me with an adrenaline high after finally getting a one-wake jump with visible space between board and water fairly consistently , rather than by stroke of luck. More malu-ating was having Denise De Haan, current world number 2 wakeboarding champion, as my boat driver, and doing a noob face plant the first time I attempted to take off.

Off to Yishun to hit the rock walls in half an hour, if the weather holds. I'm torn between wanting it to rain, and knowing that I need to start climbing again.

Round 2 next week.