When we were kids, blankets looked like magic carpets, tables were fortresses to barricade with sofa cushions & clothes hangers were swords.

Putting aside my brother's ridiculous 'Turkish' hat probably stapled together from a discarded party plate & an A3 drawing block, I'm delighted at my multi-coloured striped pants. I really want to find pants like that again.

I made Pie !!

Helped along by my bro, Agnes & Chef John who lives in America but has lovingly bestowed upon us his awesome cooking video.
Watch how to make apple pie here (click).

Yes, the pie crust is hand-made.

Apple pie outta the oven & nicely browned!

We modestly added our initials onto the pie just in case some other family member eats it & wants to know who created this confection of perfection. Chef John did not get his initials on because we ran out of dough. And we forgot.

Served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream & swoon in apple laced addiction.


I painted an orange robot because I like robots & an orange robot rocks my socks off.

I really needed the mountains. The crisp icy air. That spiritual rejuvenation.
I escaped into the highlands to commune with the divine & now I've returned to my dense, concrete jungle home where I yearn to run away into isolation & solitude yet again.

Well, I can't. I've got my confounded Core Selection to fret over. So I'll just content myself with listening to Angus & Julia Stone and dream of green fields & freedom.


Malaysia's scenery is breathtaking. More on Flickr (click)!

I've still to upload the gakkenflex shots but I'm really tired now. Sleeps... ....

10 years ago, I made a pilgrimage to what I thought was my last church camp. Surprise, 10 years older - I'm going there again. Hello 10 hour bus-ride.

Have you ever explored the Mandarin Gallery?
Its facade of polished marble walls & sky-high glass ceilings screams at all cash-strapped students to give it wide berth.

Not if you're a coupon wielding student, of course. Brandishing a 51% off special meal ticket - my friends & I meekly went exploring this giant cavern of marble opulence - right into a cafe called Arteastiq.

An immaculate lounge room with set designs so sharp you could cut yourself on it. The cafe itself oozes aristocratic charm, it's delightful ambience marred only by the unreasonably low tea table.

Arteastiq is known for its home-brewed tea.
Our tea arrived on a wooden tray with dainty glassware containing honey or sugar cubes to sweeten your tea, if you so wish, & a side of biscuits.

I got a Viva la Fiesta La something something Tortilla. It was about ten words long & sounded more foreign than an ang moh speaking Singlish. You know what? Next time if I ever open a posh restaurant, I'll call the plain fish & chips Aqua Animalia de la Tuberosum Plantae & sell it for $19.

Anyway, it was duck wrapped in tortilla. And it was delicious. But slightly tiny.
The side of salad came in a tiny glass cup. And, get this, no cutlery.
The only thing on the plate that came close to being a fork was the toothpick stuck into my tortilla. Let me tell you, eating a salad with a toothpick will guarantee you loose more weight than you consume.

The food was good & the tea was superb. MMMmmm.
But the normal price for this is $33 and the discout made it $17. In fact, the tea itself on a normal day would cost $12 a pot. Ouch. Arteastiq is THE place for tai tais & guys who want to impress their girlfriends (it sure impressed the heck outta me).
It's really good but very, very over-priced.
Hello $1.20 teh beng!

That's my printed rain drop dress, yes, in acrylic.

I've been assured that fabric paint & acrylic are very much interchangable & the latter is widely used to paint clothes. So there.

I initially wanted to carve out fancy swirls on my rubber stamps & spotted this 'wood-carving' tool set in Daiso that reportedly carves rubber too. LIES! This useless duo carves wood and rubber like a broken toothpick. Don't be cheap & buy yourself a proper rubber carving set from Popular at $7+.

I settled with hacking the lino pad with a blunt scissors & a sharp penknife.

To make the handle of the rubber stamp, cut off sections of a used eraser & primitively stick them on the back of the stamp with UHU glue. I used that iconic blue & white eraser that comes with our secondary school Oxford Mathematical instrument set. Damn! That eraser is hard as heck. How did anyone erase anything with that without ripping holes in their graph paper amazes me.

Mix the desired colours & thin it out with water. Don't apply too thick a coat or the pattern will peel. Stamping gives a 'watery' speckled look that I absolutely love love love to bits!
Leave the paint to dry completely overnight & iron it a bit. Voila!