beloved bel

Woke up to sunshine in my backyard! (you know how rare is this for me to snap a picture of it) Had a strong urge to bring my breakfast out to eat but soon realised it's only 10deg.. nvm I shall just enjoy the view from indoors. Signs that spring is here! It's a sunny day today.. feeling really upbeat! Pictures might not speak a lot but after a long cold spell, and you see little colours sprouting out of the ground, it can't help but bring a smile to your face. You know the end is near, and Spring is coming! ~~~~~~~ This weekend I am supposed to be having a gastronomical trip to San Sebastian in Spain, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, I couldn't go... and extremely upset and feeling sore about it as you can imagine. M booked herself a massage at the Dove Spa in the Virgin Active club near us and asked me to join her. Might as well I thought, pamper myself to make myself feel better! So I called last minute, and got myself booked for the last 10am slot,...

You know cupcakes are pretty much the rage here and probably back home. They often look too pretty to be eaten, and you wonder how you can bear to bite into that beautiful design and spoil it. (And at the back of your mind, perhaps you also wonder how bad that piece of fondant is for your body. The amount of sugar in it.. ok maybe this is just a Bel-thought.) M and I met Joyce for dinner last night at Wahaca, and I was pleasantly surprised when she gave me a whole box of too-pretty-to-be-eaten chocolate cupcakes! She's really into baking and cake decorating recently and M and I were super impressed by her box of handmade cupcakes. She started baking 3h before meeting us, bless her heart. I picked the polka dotted dress for myself Look at the bag! And M being an avid shoe lover, I had to reserve that for her. ~~~~~~~ Cupcakes aside, I thought I'd like to mention something else. We met our big boss from NY this week and besides the usual boring work stuff and the what'...

I've just had a post CNY weekend over here in London, lots of food as you can imagine. No prizes for getting it right :) Saturday night was a dinner party at Jolyn's. She kindly arranged it well after CNY actually, so I could attend it. Before that, she actually set a rule saying each of us has to bring a friend just to make it a more social night. The only criteria is that the person has to like Chinese food, and wants to celebrate CNY. And having not many Singaporean friends left here, I had to think long and hard before I decided to invite.. haha a pure Aussie friend L from church. He is Aussie on the outside but Chinese on the inside coz he simply loves Chinese food. (He calls himself an egg- go figure.) It was a potluck dinner party and I volunteered to cook the simple spring onion ginger chicken. So I happily made a trip to Tesco, returned home and started preparing when I realised *gasp* I forgot about the ginger! That was a mini panic moment but thankfully the ...

Last month, my friends Ah Boon and Jingyi came to London again :) She's here for work, and well, he just tagged along and be a tourist. Really nice to meet up with fellow Singaporeans again, and to be able to speak Singlish hehe I booked a table for us at an Italian restaurant, where we had a good meal altho Jingyi was battling jet lag. The theatre menu here is fab. For GBP20 you get 3 courses and the quality is good too. Everyone had a happy tummy that night :) The next day we met again and I brought them to Marylebone Village, off the tourist path, where we took a leisurely walk down the high street. It was a lovely Sunday afternoon. Love days like that.

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." - Nagasawa A friend asked me to help bring some books back to Singapore last month, one of which is Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Since there was some time between me laying my hands on it and the time I got back home, I grabbed the chance to read this book since I saw that it's one of the bestsellers at Waterstones. Norwegian Wood is a song by the Beatles, and the favourite song of one of the characters Naoko. It's a love story set in Tokyo in the 60s, and the main character is Toru Watanabe, a uni student who did not want to conform to the typical society (at least in his uni), and was much a loner but didn't mind so. He falls in love with Naoko, and later Midori. But much more than a love story, it tells a story of life and fragility of it. Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life." - Toru I'm not sure if I could do ...

My fat and cute bunny wishes everyone.. a happy bunny year! p.s. Back from Singapore for a week now, getting back into the daily routine again. This past week has been busy battling jet lag and feeling an even stronger desire to continue.. hibernating. zzzzz

Last Sunday was a major milestone in my family. We had our first ever family BBQ! Strange as it may sound, BBQ is an activity I do with my friends and never with my family. Somehow for me BBQ and family don't go together and I never thought they would be interested in such an activity. And so for my trip home this CNY, my brother managed to book a pit and for the first time ever, *drumroll* we entered this major family milestone. My aunts prepared the raw food, while my brother and his girlfriend ran errands to get the essential BBQ stuff, and more food. Surprisingly it was such a smooth running operation - a very organised one - that it didn't look like it was our first ever family BBQ. Lots of food as usual... well done guys! I really like the colours of the asparagus wrapped in bacon skewers. So here is one more shot :)

Two of my closest friends here Liandi and Joel are moving back to Australia and because I couldn't make it for their farewell drinks as I am back home, I organised a farewell dinner with a few other close friends last Monday at La Tasca. Liandi is the first friend I knew in Hillsong 3 years ago. The day I dropped my "Connect Me" details in the box at church, I knew that was taking a first step. :) She got my details and called me asking me to join them for their summer dinner party at London Bridge. I knew no one else and I had convince myself to put on a brave front to meet their dinner party group of about 20 people. I was first captivated by how beautiful she is, and then I soon found out she is so beautiful on the inside too. She knew I was new to London, and would constantly invite me to join her and her girly friends for dinners, movies, baking sessions, and what have you. From her, I got to know her equally amazing sister-in-law Faith, who has also moved back...