Loopie - Joop

Current obsession with science topics on bbc. Have a read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6701515.stm Ensures variable genes that makes them more adaptable and less likely to go extinct. You go girls!

Cute right? This entry continues the string of my favourite foods. Above, you see the animal that produces several of my favouritest foods - milk, cheese and yogurt. Apparently, some nz cows have the gene to produce low-fat milk !! Wow! Used to be able to take full cream milk (in fact my favouritest brand in sgp was Meiji ) when me was younger and had higher metabolism. now that i've breeched the half-way mark in my 20s, i'd to switched to the less easy on the taste buds low-fat or combined (half and half) milk. anyway, the milk sold here has a strong cow smell, like australian milk, so i'm not too keen on the "full-blown" full-cream version. oh, did i tell you that all the milk sold here is produced on the island? amazing hor. but get this, I'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN ANY COWS. NEVER. So where does all the milk come from? Don't know. Signed, Another blissfully unaware consumer.

It's official. I LOOK LIKE A MAID . (sorry for the stereotyping.) i know there are several meanings to this, but i literally look like the live-in nanny/ housekeeper/ foreign labour we import in bulk at low wages. The priest at church speaks to me in spanish/portuguese or wadeva the language the filipinos speak. (sorry for the ignorance) EVERY SUNDAY . The culprit that did this - the sun! it has damaged my beautiful face and skin. Coupled with my curly hair, and normal asian height. i'm labeled. i'm done for. and i don't even do housework very well, nor sing much too!

Came across this article on the bbc . I wouldn't eat whale or dog meat, or horse meat for that matter. yet, i love kung pao frog legs, shark's fin and turtle soup!!! i recently thought about turning vegan, not eating animal products at all.. cos i can't bear the poor conditions the animals must live with on the farms, how they suffer and are slaughtered/ killed/ butchered without dignity. i was eventually dissuaded by hao-e, cos well for one, i love dairy products, milk, cheese and yogurt. think i'll have massive withdrawal symptoms if dairy products are banned from my fridge. and hao-e vehemently pointed out "who says vegetables have no feelings, and are not suffering when they are harvested?" maybe they do. i profess perhaps i have less sympathy for the vegetables cos they don't tear or bleed or whine. anyway, i suppose we are all part of the food cycle and can't help killing other animals/plants for food and survival. all i can do is not...

Ppl who know me, know that i LURVE vegemite . Dun look at me strangely. yes it has a strong taste and looks like an industrial lubricant, BUT it is full of wonderful vitamins and minerals and it is very tasty, to me at least! can't really recall when i started lurving this australian "national food". prob started in my teens on one my only 2 trips to australia the first being the school trip to perth in sec 2 (12 years ago, gulp!) and the next being the trip to brisbane in sec 3 (11 years ago, yikes!). i absolutely fell in love with the savoury taste despite its less than palatable appearance. and i just found out exactly why i CRAVE for it- it is made from yeast extract, a by-product of beer brewing! haha! so other than the barley hops, i probably dig every single product and by-product of beer brewing. I have searched high and low for vegemite. to no avail . So i may have to settle for marmite , the UK version which recipe vegemite copied. Here's Nigella...

On this island, people come and go pretty quickly. As summer nears, many families are packing up to leave the island for good. It turns out that this is the best time to pick up some great bargains as they try to sell of their wares before leaving. We have gone for a few yard sales. We bought 30" TV from the guy currently staying in our house trash can clock ($20) iron (for $3 only) beach tent and towels dish drying rack knive (damn sharp), whisk and spatula loads of can food baking tray (yes, i'm seriously trying to bake now, cos there is just less oil and fumes) storage boxes toilet mat and brush quite a lot ha! all for $500 only. imagine if we had to buy these all from masters downtown? we'd have spent more than 2x than that. what's left to buy: vacuum cleaner mixing/prep bowl(s) computer desk any other interesting things...

We have been scouting around on e-moo for a car, and surprisingly, all it took was 2 test drives, and we've gotten ourselves a daihatsu charade from next week. Just in time to move our stuff to our new home, and just in time for summer. It is a dark green hatchback 1.3litre automatic transmission car. very practical, and hopefully it wun give us many problems. this is hao-e's present to mua for my 26th birthday next month... heh... happy to be mobile

This is Crow Lane Park. Not much of a park, more like a patch of grass surrounding the tiny boats. Our bus-stop is right beside this little patch. took this on monday morning when the weather was perfect. today's temperature is pretty uncomfortable cos of the winds, and lack of sun. wun be going out till harbour nights later this evening. hopefully the temp will be higher then.

"Mai tou ku du" - hao-e desperately cramming at the bus terminal on last sunday after 6pm mass while waiting for the 7.45pm bus. "dear book, please let me spot the right questions, i beg of you" (eh, wrong audience right?) "chen si" - trying to memorise the whole darn book in the half hour wait. "damn it, no bus, cannot stop studying. chi gek. this agonising wait. where's the driver??" (driver is in the "off duty" bus behind...)

Got hold of this TV series from a fren here. Knew it wouldn't be anything very interesting. The series is acted by this taiwanese boy band "183 club" and the only member missing yan xing shu is the cutest of the bunch. so there you have it, one of the worst shows i've ever watched, just because of the lack of palatable men. as for estrogens, well, again taiwanese shows play up the guys-drop dead gorgeous gals-plain janes story, so the lead actress looks worse than ella of s.h.e., she's qiao qiao of the girl group "sweety". need i say more? i'm just letting it play on the laptop while i go about doing other stuff. not captivating at all. somehow, taiwanese shows are always a little less enjoyable than the chinese/hong kong/korean/jap shows. BUT they are still much better than mediacorp shows.

I passed my driving test darlings!! Yippee!! Now time to look for a good little car... treated myself to a 'gypsy' taxi (sometimes known as 'ba wang che' in sgp) ride home. tony the driver carried my groceries all the way to my doorstep! Haha, yeah!

Hao-e and i just came back from a night of poker at kieran's place, southhampton. his house backed out into riddles bay, and they own a little boat for fishing, or so he says. before getting to the house, you've got to drive through a windy narrow lane. the ride was made all the more thrilling with kieran basically driving without a care of the world, or our safety and hearts. haha. suppose he's just so used to it already. unlike what you guys think, there wasn't $ involved. the half of the table that dropped out first get to do 50 push ups. that's all. i was the 3rd dropout. out of 8 . so i did 25 crunches and hao-e did 25 push ups for me. heh.. teamwork mah.. the rest of the group was pretty nice. nicole (bermudian) made brownies, joel and hanna (canadian) brought after-eights, micah and danielle (american) made choc chip cookies and we brought ice-cream (which we bought on the way to kieran's house...). most of us were amateurs, i suppose only j...

Above: Waterloo House facing the ocean opp Primavera Restaurant. Waterloo House is a quaint hotel with unique room decor and serving some of the best food around town at matching prices of course. Below: yachts near the ferry terminal. many ppl own boats here. you can go scuba diving, catching lobsters, fishing, or just plain enjoying the sun and sea. bermuda becomes even prettier viewed from the water. Below: huge cruise ship docked at hamilton. every week, at least 2 cruise ships are docked for a period of 2-3 days at hamilton city itself (sometimes cruises dock at st georges or dockyard as well). this picture shows just how up close and personal the cruise ships get to front street. in the middle is the "bird cage" where the police directs traffic in the morning. Below: picture of St Theresa's cathedral. we have a bishop in bermuda! this is where we go on sundays to get a weekly dosage of saintliness and to listen to how we are supposed to be living our lives....

i'm sorry for flooding this blog. i feel like i've been away for so long that now i'm having a bout of bad verbal diarrhea. i'm bad. i talk only on my blog now. i'm turning into a hermit. a fren sent over 2 links the other day bout a lady passing away sadly due to overwork (and she's only one year older than hao-e). not wanting to belittle anything, (cos she's apparently very different from me, cos work to me is just a means to get $$ to support my lifestyle. no one will catch me overworking myself, cos i'll be entirely bored to tears if i'm made to do something for more than 8-9 hours a day!) i just think her dedication to her job is really remarkable and something i cannot comprehend at all. i salute her for her commitment to hp and i think her boss must be a real slave-driver and aresehole for making her work such horrible hours (have you read her last blog entry ?). again, not trying to belittle her job, i just think if only she had died c...

i'm socially inept. i dun wanna venture out to meet ppl cos its just so tiring making conversation. feel more comfortable yakking to ppl i know. dun need to state the obvious of where i come from, where i studied, what i did (?) for a living, what have i been doing, what do i plan to do, how do i spend my waking hours, yada yada. its just so draining having to explain the same things to so many ppl. i gave up. this week, the only person i conversed with was my driving instructor. and its not just because she is indeed a very nice lady (have i praised the locals for their impeccable behaviour so far? other than the youths and school going kids, who zip crazily on their bikes and make hell of a noise anywhere including enclosed spaces like the public bus! PARENTS! CONTROL YOUR DARN KIDS!) but seeing as we were stuck with each other for a full 2hours this week in an even smaller enclosed space (her car!), it would be pretty awkward if the entire time she's belting out inst...

Don't know if you guys have heard about the massacre at virginia tech a few weeks ago. kang xi did an episode talking about taiwanese studying overseas and invited some artistes who stayed/studied abroad. Apparently this guy was bullied and beaten up really often in L.A., and the guy's age is probably between 25-30 years old, so all these must have happened fairly recently. Well, can't say much bout L.A., (cos its not like i've been there for long, in fact, i think i can probably count the number of days i'd been there with 2 hands) but it did feel less secure and safe than san francisco or most of the bay area (alright alright, only stanford and prob the 2-mile circumference) that i frequented in 03/04. guess having loads of asians in the bay area helped (i remember feeling so at home, cos there were so many chinese-run supermarket and restaurants). but i'm sure there are just as many asians in l.a. if not more, seeing that we have the tendency to "sp...

I am connected to the world again! Yippee! Signed up for wireless internet today after getting my visa extended till jul. being connected isn't cheap here, costs like USD75 per month for 128mbps ISP, and wireless modem rental. sigh. but the connection is preetty smooth and i'm able to watch ppstream videos online again! double YIPPEE!! Just finished a marathon of kang xi lai le and nu ren wo zui da. No more boring days for me!!

btw, i'm only able to access my mail, msn, anything to do with the internet today as i'm sitting here with the husband of mine, who refuses to leave his work. good for him, bad for me. leaves me at home all the time... bah

One of hao-e's colleague's wife is a Chinese lady who's crazy about golf. She brought me on the driving range (they live on the golf course btw in a 2-storeyed house that i can easily partition up to house 10 ppl in london!!!) last wed and taught me how to swing the club. aiyoh. came back with aches and pains in places i never knew possible. i think i'm old now. think i did pretty well on the range, managing to hit the ball nearly 3 quarters of the length near the end. but am not sure whether i wanna take it up seriously. cos its expensive to buy the clubs (its not a one-time investment mind you, cos there are always upgrades later...). but i could prob tag along once in a while and pay for the bucket of balls to hit (only USD10 for a full bucket!). lets off some steam, if you have any.

Bermuda doesn't recognise any driving license. Lucky for their driving instructors, cos all expats need to retake lessons (to learn about the UNIQUE driving conditions they have on the island, no less) in order to drive. Even if you had 20 over years of driving experience and could probably drive home on the reverse gear, you had to retake lessons. And lessons are not cheap mind you, USD60 per hour. My instructor is this very nice lady who's patient and kind. had 2 lessons so far, monday and today. one more on saturday and i think i'm ready to take the test next monday. test involves a reverse "S" course, which is new to me, parallel parking (another one which i'm outta touch. who needs to park parallel in sgp?!?) and some 10 mins of driving in the city. i tell you, their roads are as bad as london's. 2-way streets, lead off to 1-way streets without warning whatsoever. i've bee recce-ing the potential routes to memorise them by heart. Dun wan...

Think i blogged a little about the weekly "Harbour Nights" on wednesdays sometime before? the entire front street is closed to traffic on weds from 7pm - 10pm for this street party with food, nice jazz band, gombey dancers, and stalls selling souvenirs, toys, anything really! We just got back from harbour nights and i just had some really good lamb/shish kebabs!! Ohh.... juicy lamb roasted till medium rare, with onions, yogurt and cilantro. so savoury, so heaven. made me think of the kebabs near my old place at bayswater, with the unending salad provided. i miss london. really. Above: Front Street closed to all motorised traffic Below: Gombey Dancers. (wonder wonder where do they get their peacock feathers?)

We just moved to a new place and there is no internet connection there. i'm lost to the world. so no blogging for a while...

Fusilli with Spinach and Asiago Cheese Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis See this recipe on air Friday Jun. 15 at 4:30 PM ET/PT. Show: Everyday Italian Episode: Weeknight Wonders 1 pound fusilli pasta 1/4 cup olive oil 1 garlic clove, minced 1 (9-ounce) bag fresh spinach, roughly chopped 8 ounces (1/2 pint) cherry tomatoes, halved 1 cup (about 3 1/2-ounces) grated Asiago 1/2 cup grated Parmesan 1 teaspoon salt 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain pasta reserving 1/2 cup of the ...

its been raining the ENTIRE day! and it doesn't seem to be letting up. dark, stormy clouds, gale-like winds, yeps, its gonna be a cold and wet day today. couldn't pick up lunch from miles market today. dun think i will brave a trip to miles later to pick up dinner. maybe i'll just order in room service later. hopefully we'll have better weather by tomorrow. can't go out at all. i can now see that frozen and canned food serve a purpose. AND NOW I UNDERSTAND THEIR IMPORTANCE! who wants to go out for fresh food in this weather? no way! i'm gonna stock up on these babies soon.

silly me, was busy emailing and watching LOTR2 that i forgot about jon rhys meyers!!! I missed Tudors. sucks. Thank goodness it repeats every night at 11pm. but tonight is heroes night. so i'll either watch it on wed night OR download it on ares, whichever is faster i guess. btw, we are moving tomorrow morning to paget and will stay there until june when we can move into our place in devonshire. somehow feel a bit like hobbits. we are going to live in the shire!

This morning, as with all sunday mornings, we had our bacon and eggs and headed off to st theresa's for mass. hao-e was hand-picked by the old-black-lady-at-entrance a.k.a. "the warden" to collect $$ from the congregation. (ps: last week hao-e was also picked by said old black lady to send up the bread and wine to the altar, but he was passed over the last second cos said old black lady picked too many ppl to help. => ) he was so excited! kept asking me when he should leave the pew. (me thinks you should pay more attention to the mass proceedings, then you wouldn't need to ask me?!?! anyways, i have never done such "duty" before, so how should i know when?) anyway, so he bumbled along in his polo-berms-berkies combination and did his part for this week's mass quite nicely. Nothing broken and no one hurt. So proud of you! father yim and your godpa would have been proud! Then we made our way to robin hood for lunch and was pleasantly surprised...

forgot to blog about heroes on monday. gosh, its getting so exciting. the episode talks about nyc 5 years after peter petrelli blows up. hiro is a terrorist and nathan petrelli is trying to catch him. hiro has plotted out the timeline of significant events so that he can go back to the right time to try and save the world. he was ecstatic to find that the cheerleader was saved, as he had tried to kill sylar before, but as he could regenerate and heal himself, he wasn't killed. nathan petrelli is now the president, nothing said about his mother nor lindeman. suresh is helping nathan, trying to find a "cure" for the mutants to no avail. nathan proposes genocide, exterminating the ones with dangerous powers. however it is revealed that nathan petrelli is actually sylar in disguise. peter and jessica (who's now permanent, not nikki) are now a couple in las vegas. micah and DL are both dead. claire is still in hiding. some questions left unanswered: why did syl...

was at the immigration office this morning with hao-e and the attorney from orbis to extend my visitor visa which incidentally ended on 28 Apr. So i have technically overstayed for 5 days and have been "illegal" for the last 5 days. Literally panicked when we found out on sunday which was already 29 Apr!! haha. had some nightmares over it cos we weren't sure of the penalties for missing the deadline. worst case scenario - i had to leave the island for a while and re-enter bermuda later. natural choice would be new york but think i would rather go to london to visit my friends. not so bad scenario - some $$ fine lor. but the best thing happened (thank you Lord!) - we weren't fined and i wasn't asked to leave the island. we just had a short discussion with the inspector and my visa was extended(!) till 26 May! so we would have to make another trip to the immigration office 2 weeks from now to extend it till july and hopefully by then, hao-e's permanent ...

very happy to find shiseido's "white lucent" range and crabtree and evelyn's "la source" range of skincare at a.c. cooper's new store on front street. haha!! my silly hao-e. caused me to go on shopping overdrive just before coming over here cos he says there are no department stores here. sigh. no macy's or saks lah but there is marks and spencer, a.c. cooper and gibbons!! found some really cool stuff at teen's department in gibbons today. totally affordable too. all between $20-$40 only. very exciting. at least there will be some retail therapy for me when i need it. yay!