quarter of a century old

so my birthday is over and done with, and i am officially 25. a quarter of a century. that's scary. it was a quiet affair, with class in the 'morn-noon' and buffet dinner afterwards. and the best present i received this year, is this.

love letter and photo frame from zhu, amongst a couple more stuff. haha ok seriously 感動-ed when i saw them. i'm so thankful to have her in my life! i mean, 12 years of friendship - npcc days, drama club days, poly days, work life, and our recent activity spam. she's probably seen the very worst of me and still willing to be my friend! lols.

even though she's younger (by a month), she acts more old mature and i wanna shout, THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT AND ADVICE AND HELP AND WHATNOT ALL THESE YEARS! if you were a guy i'll marry you. really. =)

in fact yesterday morning she asked me to make a wish and i thought, it doesn't really matter if i pass the assessment or not, since i'm not planning to continue. but zhu needs to pass cos she wants to learn cantering and i don't want her to waste time/money in beginner again. SEE I SO GOOD RIGHT?! in the end she pass but still want to take beginner plus. chey!

lols. anyway, buffet dinner was at kuishinbo suntec. initially wanted to try shooting the buffet tables to show you all, but i was almost hyperventilating when i saw the greens, potato salad, pasta, sashimi, and so many other things, that i decided i'll just snap whatever i took. after these few shots, i totally forgot. LOL.

must must take the snow crab legs. to make your money worth. and i think they're having the salmon fest or whatever, so they had quite a lot of salmon dishes. i especially liked the potato salad and cream salmon pasta. i took 2 servings each! lol.  

then nearing the end of our dinner, we heard the supposedly-famous kuishinbo jingle being played. none at my table knew about it, so thankfully i had read about it on their website. the jingle actually signals the limited serving of a special food item. i think we managed to get 3 or 4 bowls of the peach (i think) pudding or something. but not very nice though lolol.

alas, this meal made my riding lessons seem cheap. $475 for 9 of us, with 2 senior citizens having 10% discount. overall i think, while i enjoyed the dinner, i won't be returning anytime soon. (actually i will, cos they gave me free buffet for 1 pax.) but for authentic japanese buffets, i would still recommend riverview hotel's, and for international, i can't seem to forget buffet town. =D

after-buffet times like this, i miss the muay thai workouts. boo.

running out of space. =)

over but not done with. or not?

today was my last beginner riding lesson. well, i didn't really plan on continuing, so my goal was purely to have as much fun as possible, and to put into practice everything that i have learnt so far. it was more of a personal test for me, since my performance has been really inconsistent throughout. 

i didn't mention the last lesson cos it was with mike and it was absolutely horrendous. it all went so well the previous 2 lessons but went totally down the drain in that lesson. 

so anyway, they gave me rocket today. T_T super thankful that i have him cos he's easy to start trotting. actually, wayyy too easy. when we were walking our rounds, he would steer, start, and stop himself without me doing much. trotting together as a group was okay too; he did everything himself and i could practise the rising (which also didn't go too well cos i kept having double beats).

the individual runs were the killer. he started trotting easily as usual, which eventually turned into a CANTER. if you don't know, you sit when the horse walks or canters, and rise when it trots. so in majority of the runs, i was kinda stuck inbetween the trot and the canter. and when that happens, i can't steer. if there were individual points for steering, i would get a big fat zero. T_T

and the lesson was over. kinda too fast for me to get into the momentum actually. the surprising thing is, he let us all into novice 1, which is the next level of riding. but as you can see, i totally owe it to rocket and even with such a star horse i can't steer to save my ass. so yeah, i totally didn't deserve that. lol.

if i were to continue, i'll probably join zhu and alice in the beginner plus course again instead of novice 1. (though i must admit cantering feels quite fun!)

ah wells. please let it rain cash. =|

男人如衣服

it is so so difficult to decide on where to go on a date. we've been to the zoo, bird park, USS, night safari, barrage, flyer, and goodness knows where. nowadays it's mainly movies, walking around and eating. sigh. so today we ended up watching a movie at cineleisure before having dinner at vivocity. so boring! =(

this was what we watched.

i think it's only showing at cathay cinemas. not very popular i guess. not surprising though, because although it had 'veteran' actors like teresa mo, ronald cheng, raymond wong and raymond lam (and quite a few more), the storyline and acting weren't impressive. to make things worse, the original cantonese was dubbed into mandarin so horribly! what saved it was probably the funny and touching scenes. (raymond lam's bathing scene was by far the funniest!) 

but it felt like such a long time since i last watched a movie that i suppose i can say i enjoyed it. lol 2 more to watch next month - ah boys to men and breaking dawn!! excited~

then dropped by h&m and got super unimpressed by the crowd and long fitting room queue. sheesh. so we made our way to vivocity. which had practically double the amount of crowd. seriously, whoever said we could support 6 million people comfortably did not really use their brain squeeze amongst the weekend town crowd at all. tsk!

we went straight for desserts! maddening hot weather. and thanks to the crowd we had to wait around 15 mins for a table. the other time we came, it was almost empty! =( we had the same thing as before since i was craving for the chocolate ice. super yummy! happy girl already lol.

then walked around before heading upstairs for dinner. imperial herbal again! lol. a bit pissed cos we specifically requested for a bigger table with normal chairs when we made the reservation but they still gave us the small table with these weird chairs. cute but not very convenient for a maxi. =\

i brought wall-e out! mad heavy but i am giving up on handphone cameras already. -_- quite like how the foodies turned out today so i think they deserve an individual introduction. just to haolian the photos. hahahahhahahahahaha! wall-e is so going to have a permanent place in my bag.

1. fried fuyong egg. hastily split this into 2 cos our table confirm not big enough to put all the dishes. it has shrimps and mushrooms in it. i think it would taste better hot cos by the time i came round to eating it, it had turned cold already.

2. fried cuttlefish. came with a dish of salt and pepper. i super like this!  the cuttlefish isn't hard and chewy and goes so well with the s&p. not enough lor lol.

3. sambal kangkong. quite nice/normal, but i have tasted others which were horrible, so being nice/normal is very good liao. i kinda preferred the sambal kailan though. =|

4. thai tofu. we had this the other time too, but i wanted it again. cos very nice!

5. fried tilapia. i saw this on another table the previous time and wanted to try. regretted it cos the sauce is nice but the fish was more bones than meat. had a pretty difficult time eating it.

but anyway, total damage was about $45 after all the taxes. um, pretty reasonable no?