A prayer every day and night;

Been sleeping at 1am and waking up at 5ish to 6am for the past two weeks; all in the name for mugging and finishing off the video assignment. Not to mention, preparing for the Malaysia trip (passport renewal), the half-marathon (Sundown) on 26th May, and some MYnt stuff too. Need to clear work deadlines as well, ‘cos of my leave taken for the exams next week. Two more weeks to freedom, but I am still in a jittery mode ‘cos two of the three modules are my weakest subjects by far. LET ME PASS PLEASE!

xx These motivational Tumblr posts are really timely for now.

Credits: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4

xoxo, Noi

Nine months;

Time flew by just like that, it’s been nine months since I stepped into a new environment.

xx

Met up with dear peeps after work today, and one of them mentioned a very familar scenario – ‘All pumped up upon entering this new foreign place, and energy boosted up to the maximum level and looking forward to a new day everyday. Then, all that fizzed out after time.’ It’s taking place now, all these zest were long gone and it sucks to see friends leaving one by one. No doubt the remaining ‘survivors’ are happy for them, but a tinge of sadness and paranoia is hovering over our minds now. Having said so much, I guess it all boils down to our own perserverance and beliefs. We may be stuck in a hopeless rut, but these experiences may lead us to stronger individuals and better persons. As we all know, so long that our conscience is clear and upright, bring them on nothing can defeat us. For now, I’m just gonna remain ‘zen’ (as what one of the peeps mentioned), and do my stuff. Come what may, I know I can count on the peeps. Other may doubt us or cast suspicions on us, but we’re just going to focus and channel our energy to healthier stuff. Not to mention, the support from family and friends to tide through for at least this period of time. Indeed, we’ve found love in a hopeless place.

xx

Our motto;

xx

So much for verbal diarrheoa, perhaps the heavy downpour triggered off thoughts. Nights peeps

xoxo, Noi

A week in a blink;

Another week has gone by, and it’s scarier knowing that another seven days are taken off my countdown chart to the first paper for this term. Three papers to take, and one ECA to complete; I just can’t wait for June to arrive! Not to mention how stupid the topic is for the ECA – a three to five minute video on end-of-life care in Singapore. And the lecturer had actually suggested us to interview her mom, who’s struck with a terminal illness. Gees, seriously?!

SATURDAY
That aside, I am glad that I managed to squeeze in some leisure time amidst the crazy weekend of mugging, doing up the outline for the ECA, and planning the study schedule. My aunt from Malaysia is in town to visit us and will be heading back to KL tomorrow, so Mommy and I brought her out on Saturday to have dinner together simple food-fare at Jurong Point’s Kopitiam.

SUNDAY
I headed out to capture some shots for my assignment. First stop was Bras Basah, and we jumped onto the opportunity to tour around National Museum of Singapore since full-time students and regulars get to enjoy free entry/S$5 (special rate) for admission fees.

BOOMZ clouds taken outside the museum;

A couple of exhibitions and galleries were opened when we visited, and I found the photography gallery particularly interesting. Perhaps ‘cos it showcased the history of Singapore from various perspectives of the key people, such as Sir Stamford Raffles and the performers from Great World Amusement Park. A pity I left my SD card at home so, I could only make do with my iPhone to snap some photos from the museum tour. That, I shall leave it to next entry.

Another place that we went to, Tiong Bahru Market; this place serves really delish hawker fare. Ordered Hainanese Chicken Rice, Chwee Kueh, Beef Soup, Oyster Omelette, and Sugar Cane drink to top it off. My fave dish has got to be the Chwee Kueh  from Jian Bo Tiong Bahru Chwee Kueh (#02-05)!

Tiong Bahru Food Market & Hawker Centre
(Check out ladyironchef’s post for more food recommendations!)
Address: 30 Seng Poh road
All these for less than S$15, daebak!

MONDAY
After a somewhat long Monday, the whole family brought my aunt out for dinner with some hawker foodfare lovin’. Our initial stop was Redhill Market & Food Centre, but too bad the tzi char store wasn’t opened for business so we decided on heading to Taman Jurong Market & Food Centre instead.

We ordered BBQ Sambal Stingray, Sotong, Kang Kang from BBQ Seafood, and Winter Melon with Spare Ribs soup from Yi Ping Tung. The latter serves really good soup, and the unique way of cooking it charcoal-style allows all the ingredients to be well-broiled. Best of all, the price is reasonable at S$4 per claypot. Yay!

BBQ Seafood
(Check out InSing’s post for more information)
Address: Yung Sheng Road, #03-178, Taman Jurong Market & Food Centre

Yi Ping Tung Charcoal Claypot Soup
(Check out InSing’s post for more information)
Address: Yung Sheng Road, #03-157, Taman Jurong Market & Food Centre

After the dinner, we brought her to Marina Bay Sands to take in the night-view of Singapore.

Chanced upon the window display of Louis Vuitton, and snapped a photo of it – amazed by the vibrant colours. But I thought the colours used for window display were a big contrast to the pastel colours used in their SS12 campaign.

LABOUR DAY
The journey went like this – Jurong Point, Jurong East, JCube, Redhill, IKEA, Changi, and Old Airport Road Food Centre. And I finally got to try the Lao Ban Soya Beancurd!! Bought a few back for mommy and sister, and they love it too. Mommy said that there’s a tinge of black sugar taste in it. The queue wasn’t that bad when I went at 8+pm, less than 30 minutes I’d say. At S$1.50 per bowl, it’s much pricier than the usual soya beancurd in the market but I think it’s worth the price. HAHA!

Lao Ban Soya Beancurd (Old Airport Road)
Address: 51 Old Airport Road, #01-127 Old Airport Road Food Centre

Wednesday
Alas! Mid-week was finally here, and it’s another day with bad headache etc. Went to the temple to pray that evening, and had a good talk with my god-uncle. Let’s just see how things go!

Simple foodfare // home-cooked food is love! Mommy never fails to let us come home in comfort and bask in love from her. LOL, so much for cheesy lines, but I really learnt not to take such details for granted after working. It’s not like I get to eat home-cooked food everyday

OTD // Crochet top with TheTinselRack Floral Blossoms Paperbag Skirt in Violet Peonies, and my trusty Longchamp bag

xx

Sooooo many movies that I wanna catch, but I think gotta wait till my assignment and exams are over – the highly raved Avengers and Battleship. Boos*

xx
Review on “The Lucky One” movie

Details:
Movie title: “The Lucky One“
1hr 41min – Romance, Drama
Director: Scott Hicks
Writers: Will Fetters (screenplay), Nicholas Sparks (novel)
Stars: Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling and Blythe Danner

Synopsis (credits here):
A Marine travels to Louisiana after serving three tours in Iraq and searches for the unknown woman he believes was his good luck charm during the war.

Perhaps I held too high hopes for this movie, so I was tad disappointed after watching it. Other than the scenes with the hot bod of Zac Efron, the rest of the story plot lacklustre and predictable. I felt the emotions shown during the scene where Taylor reminisced about her brother was more real than the chemistry between her and Zac. Nonetheless, it’s a nice movie to catch if you don’t want to fight with the crowd this weekend over tickets to the Avengers movie.

Rating:

.5 out of 5 popcorns

xx

QOTD// daily mantra; thanks for the love received.

xx

This is like, one of my longest posts ever; blogged this over the week and finally managed to publish it today. Gotta find time this weekend to do a good run and finish the rest of my mugging and video assignment \m/ FIGHTING!

xx

TGIF peeps! Looking forward to tonight

xoxo, Noi

Bucket List – Cave Diving;

*Typed a whole paragraph here and it just went MIA, grrrr*

Last Friday, we had our department retreat and the whole afternoon was packed with activities. After a 20-minute laser quest session at HomeTeamNS, which left us all lethargic and sweaty, we proceeded to Science Centre Omni Theatre for the IMAX movie, Journey Into Amazing Caves.

Synopsis of the movie
(Credits: Omni Theatre)
All over our planet are landscapes that hold caves beneath them. Challenged by the underground frontier and inspired by the secrets it may yield, cavers share a passion for exploration. Journey into Amazing Caves follows Dr. Hazel Barton and Nancy Aulenbach on an adventure as they explore unusual caves, like ice caves in Greenland and underwater caves in the jungles of Mexico, looking for important clues about the Earth’s past and microorganisms that inhabit its most extreme environments.

Come join us on an adventure from the natural world…into the unexplored depths of the underground landscapes that are as beautiful and vital as any other place on Earth.

–

The movie was really an eye-opener, especially since I’ve never heard of cave diving before. I only know of the open water diving and night diving, which I haven’t even conquered yet. The caves and waters shown in the movie were breathtaking, and I’m still in awe of the descent that the team had done in Antarctica. The glaciers proved to be great danger to the team, and they were risking their lives just so that they could collect samples of micro-organisms that may be the next drugs or antibiotics to fight human illness. Cave diving is one of the most dangerous activities, with many fatalities reported. One of the fatalities involved a cave diver’s operation to retrieve a dead cave diver’s body, but he himself died during the process.

–

Before I list cave diving into my bucket list, I think it’s more practical to conquer my fear of water, and complete my basic diving course first. Hopefully the June’12 trip with besties can go as planned! Redang, Dayang, Tioman, or Bali, bring them on!

–
Bali

Pulau Dayang

Pulau Redang

–

xoxo, Noi

Fashion x Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival

I’ve been following Free People on Instagram, and came to know of Coachella Festival that took place last weekend and will be continued again this weekend; weekend 1 – April 13th to 15th, and weekend 2 – April 20th to 22nd. I thought it’s a rather interesting event, something different from the usual major music and arts festival, so I felt like sharing it with readers here I’m no fashionista, but Coachella really got me hooked on their outfits! Here it goes

Background of Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
It’s an annual three-day music and arts festival held in Indio, California. The event features many genres of music, including rock, indie, hip hop and electronic music as well as large sculptural art. The festival is renowned for its cutting edge lineup, showcasing many of the top and up-and-coming acts in music as well as reunions. Notable performers include Prince, Radiohead, Dr. Dre], Oasis, Daft Punk, Roger Waters, Madonna, The Cure, Kanye West, At the Drive-In, The Black Keys, Rage Against The Machine, Gorillaz, Bjork, Nine Inch Nails, The Strokes, The Chemical Brothers, Pavement, The White Stripes, Jay-Z, and the Beastie Boys.
(Credit: Wikipedia)

What caught my eye wasn’t the music acts or the arts displays, but the people who attended and their outfits! Chanced upoon this article on dailymail.co.uk that the Vampire Diaries couple Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev attended the festival too.

Gorgeous eye-candies

xx
MYnt Shoppe will be launching a similar necklace to the one that Nina is seen wearing here, stay tuned to previews on our Facebook page!

xx
Other celebrities spotted at Coachella included,

Dakota Fanning

xx
Ever gorgeous Emma Watson

Photo: Emma Watson at the Mulberry Coachella pool party. Credit: Donato Sardella

xx

Spotted at A|X Armani Exchange and T-Mobile event,
which kicked off the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Credit: LATimesBlogs

Free People has also done a photo compilation of outfits donned on their staff and Coachella-goers, you can check out their blog here. And, I did a mini ‘Polyvore’ of an outfit for Coachella MYnt Shoppe is gonna launch similar necklaces too! So glad that my assignments are ending soon, so that sister and I can kickstart our re-launch proper.

xx

For more information on Coachella, you can check out their website (http://www.coachella.com), or simply Google for images and news stories by the major news wires. It’s interesting, and I’m pretty sure that you’ll get hooked Google-ing for fashion compilation of the festival

xx
Two more days to the weekend and it’ll be part two of Coachella. To all Coachella-goers, have fun! :B

xoxo,
Noi

Home-cooked food at its best;

They always have this saying, “Nothing beats home-cooked food“. I can totally relate to this statement even home-cooked (Curry) Maggie Mee does wonders at times! And to add on, I think I’m one of the lucky few whose mother is a stay-at-home housewife, forever thankful for that. Mommy often laments that her ‘job’ is one of the toughest in this world, ‘cos 1) she has no off day, 2) she’s not paid (other than the monthly allowances from us, LOL!), 3) she has to take care of three big babies – daddy, sister, and myself. How I wish I could whip up better dishes for her to eat, but she always brushes the idea off -___- for fear of her own safety, or rather her stomach’s safety. LOL!

It may be the simplest food fare, nothing fancy like gastronomy arts. Nonetheless, coming home to warmed-up soup or home-cooked dishes is one of my favourite things in this world :’) Thank you mommy!

xx

Thanks to bratty sister who recently acquired steel teeth mommy’s been cooking // Sweet Potato Porridge //.
It’s yummy yet fuss-free!

xx

Lotus Root Soup // Udon with homemade broth // Kimchi to pair with our udon

xx

Braised pork // Stir fry cauliflower // Assortment of Yong Tau Foo

xx

Stir fry roasted pork with garlic bits // Egg soup // Stir fry beans

xx

Simple stir fry egg // Crispy luncheon meat // stir fry cai xim

xx

Simple photo-log of home-cooked food by mommy dearest, it also serves as a reminder that I should be thankful and more than contented to see mommy’s health recovering. This brings me to an article that I would like to share; I took this off Facebook, it’s an article by Maryam Mokhtar (from Sunday Times, Think Section, Page 45), “Freedom can wait, I’m staying put for Dad”. One liner that struck the chord in my heart-strings is – ‘…with freedom comes a duty I owe my old man who gave up his own freedom decades ago to raise three daughters”, mommy gave up her youth, her passion as a seamstress to stay at home and look after us since we stepped into this world.

(Click on image to view text)

xx

Stan’s words,
“Never ever take it for granted that our loved ones will stay by our side for as long as we want to, it’s ironic that we only notice of their missing presence then we’ll realise how much we’ve neglected them.”

Time to let the emo thoughts come to a halt, back to essay writing.

xoxo, Noi

[Repost from ThoughtCatalog] 20 Feelings And Situations That Everybody Hates

Came across this post on Facebook, and decided to re-post it here from Thought Catalog.

By Christopher Hudspeth
Source: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/20-feelings-and-situations-that-everybody-hates/

1. Seeing a bug, then losing track of it and becoming a paranoid prisoner in your own home.
2. Hearing loud slams and bumps while you’re in the shower and imagining it being some type of killer who you’ll have to fight off, soaking wet and butt naked.
3. Thinking that you’ve found a parking space, but as you turn in you discover that a motorcycle, a Volkswagen Bug, or some other vehicle the size of a Hot Wheels car has already occupied the spot.
4. When a sneeze refuses to come out, causing you to look like a fool with a scrunched up face.
5. Waiting to hear from somebody specific and being bombarded by texts & calls from everyone who isn’t that person.
6. When the week feels like: Moooooooooooooonday, Tuuuuuuuuuuueeeesday, Weeeeeeeeeeeednesday, Thuuuuuuuuuursday, FriSatSun.
7. You scan your surroundings. Nobody is near you. You fart. Within three seconds, somebody comes right into the stinky perimeter that you’ve created.
8. Checking your bank account after a night of intoxicated drink purchases.
9. When you microwave frozen food and it’s scorching hot everywhere but the ice cold middle.
10. When Michael Bay acquires the rights to make a film about a franchise that you previously enjoyed.
11. When somebody makes up lies about you, and defending yourself makes you seem guilty – but not defending yourself seems suspicious as well.
12. Getting paid but knowing in advance that your check will be consumed by bills.
13. Entering a parked car on a scorching hot summer day.
14. When gas prices are higher than your GPA.
15. When someone 20+ feet away holds the door open for you, forcing you to jog toward them.
16. The humbling moment when you realize you’re wrong during an argument.
17. Waking up and only having a few minutes left until the alarm will sound.
18. When you wear a good outfit but don’t run into anybody noteworthy all day.
19. When you have to be a douche and shuffle through the bag to confirm that Taco Bell (or any other fast food joint) got your order correct.
20. The feeling of heartburn, self-hate and bubble guts that comes about 5-10 minutes after consuming Taco Bell (or any other fast food joint).

xx

Time to hit the sacks, it’s the last working day for this week! Yay!
\m/
xoxo, Noi

Happy Sunday with my WACOM BAMBOO PEN!

xx

An impromptu trip to the IT Show 2012 with my sister after work last Friday, and we came out of the show $180 poorer ‘cos we bought the WACOM BAMBOO Pen and Touch! Super duper happy now ‘cos we’ve been contemplating on getting one for our ‘many random ideas’ moments So far so good, no complaint or rant to make about this lovely drawing stylus.

It’s gonna be a Happy Sunday with my favourite peeps, yay!

Good night, xoxo.
Noi

Dawn to dusk;

Heaven’s Touch;
noi2012 (6th Feb)
Taken with iPhone 4

—————————

Beautiful sight we immerse ourselves into,
the literal natural beauty.

Take a moment out of your busy life,
life’s bigger than it seems to be.

—————————

The above photograph was captured as I was looking out from my room’s window, one of the rare days that I still can witness such sights on a workday. It reminds me of Heaven ‘cos of the layer of seemingly cushioned clouds and the pinkish tone sky. Snap back to reality, and it’s time to hit the essay again. Tedious semester by far and it doesn’t help when gastric had to strike this week, hang in there peeps.

xoxo,
sleep deprived Noi

Ear worms;

Ear worms on a Monday;

• Katy Perry – The One That Got Away
• Super Junior – Mr. Simple
• Christina Perri – A Thousand Years
• Rihanna – We Found Love
• Charice – Pyramid
• Jay Chou – Jie Kou

Itching to shop, any blogstores to recommend?

xoxo, Noi

ETA//
Christina Perri – A Thousand Years (Credits here)

(Verse 1)
Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave
How can I love when I’m afraid
To fall
But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt
Suddenly goes away somehow

One step closer

(Chorus)
I have died everyday
waiting for you
Darlin’ don’t be afraid
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

(Verse 2)
Time stands still
Beauty I know she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything
Take away
What’s standing in front of me
Every breath,
Every hour has come to this

One step closer

(Chorus)
I have died everyday
Waiting for you
Darlin’ don’t be afraid
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

And all along I believed
I would find you
Time has brought
Your heart to me
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

One step closer
One step closer

(Chorus)
I have died everyday
Waiting for you
Darlin’ don’t be afraid,
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more

And all along I believed
I would find you
Time has brought
Your heart to me
I have loved you for a
Thousand years
I’ll love you for a
Thousand more