shark meat for sale

saw this during lunch time shopping. it was on display for sale at the supermarket opposite my office.
isn't china an awesome country!

earthquake fundraising at le petit gourmand

ianne and i had an interesting dinner when we unawaringly walked into Le Petit Gourmand on Friday night. at the door, we were told it was a fundraising night and all we had to do was to put in a donation for the Sichuan Earthquake and enjoy a French buffet and drinks on the house.

Good thing we were early too because we got a nice seat in the terrace by the window.

appetiser

never knew spring rolls stuffed with red bean cd taste this good.

can't stand his friend

friends who know joa know that he's an exceedingly kind person. he's the most considerate, most patient and self-subservient person around all his friends with the exception of me.

so we're having a Pictionary Mania night and he's too kind to allow me to exclude inviting a particular friend of his who annoys me.

i don't know what else to do. we've argued about him. we've yelled at each other about him. i've made it clear that i can't stand him, i don't want to see him. but joa insists on being nice and considerate towards his feelings. not that that friend and him have a fabulous friendship. they don't. but joa just wants to be kind.

it's just him wanting to be kind. and me, just being evil (in his words).

cold weekend

i caught joa's cold when i (he had insisted that i) "raped" him on sat morning so the trip to the zoo and the jog in chaoyang park was called off. but we made it to the olympic stadium to watch some national heats since joa was given two free admission tix.

as an incentive to make me move my ass all the way to the haidian district at 9am on a sat morning, he promised to take me to ginza mall for mac breakfast even tho we were running late. thankfully we did because we've nv tasted hashbrowns this good.

the bird nest looked rather imposing from a distance. not big, huge and stately, but rather like an uncompleted structure still on construction. the night before, i'd asked joa what was the dresscode for the visit and he said, "bird nest clothes".

we took our seats which had a fantastic view of the entire stadium and surprisingly, i was having a great time. i think that was becos being at a sports stadium where you're allowed to talk at the top of your voice about the poor people running about while u sit in the shade slurping a cool drink is really quite a thrilling feeling. and joa was happily talking about the events and the atheletes and we got chatting and the lady in front kept looking back with a snarl. well, i didn't say anything about that pungent fish snack she brought in that smelled like a rotting fish. at first i'd ask joa if he'd brushed his teeth in the morning.

the spring weather is getting terribly warm. and it's starting to make me realise that beijing is really a desert town. we walked for almost 40mins under the sun to sanlitun to our favourite yunnan restaurant for lunch. i'll put up pix of the food next. but we had a sumptuous meal of black pepper mushroom, veggies in seafood sauce and a chicken potato stew with 2 bowls of rice each and 4 cups of ice tea. i love going to this restaurant with joa. it's inexpensive and the quality is fantastic. best of all, they serve some of the most amazing ice teas (with ice!) in all of beijing. so we usually leave the restaurant with a contented stomach and a very happy mood.

we went home and with the rest of our energy did a major wipedown of the house. he swept and wiped while i moped with our new mop, pail and floor detergent. and after a warm bath, we both collapsed on the sofa and put on a dvd. that night i took him to bookworm for chips and cola but we didnt really enjoy it as much because there was some function going on and we had to sit on the roof terrace where it was cooler and quieter but too dark to read.

on sunday, we dragged our feet to church. endured a most uneventful sermon and later had lunch at a manchurian restaurant with 10 other students from BLCU. young, fresh and so innocent. i've lost all of that. by then joa and i were feeling really sick so back home for more DVDs. we had a dixie asian-american gal come to view our flat. she's really cute and my type of chum so we're really hoping she'd become our flatmate.

last night joa tried singapore-styled fried oyster omelette only we replaced oysters with fishballs. and it tasted wonderful. we also invented another dish that we copied from bellagio restaurant - a taiwanese fine dining restaurant we went to two weeks back - fried long beans with salted egg. cheap and very tasty. we had porridge with it. i shall put up the pix soon since i'm finally resigned and getting back into the course of using my 2.0megapixels ixus.

olympic stadium

that's us trying to mimic birds.

good luck beijing

water cube.

love and marriage just not the same.

mum has always warned me about being naive. thought i never admit it, but on my solo walks i'd always feel underachieved - and that perhaps i'd romanticized the whole notion of love in a way that was just unrealistic.

after 2 failed relationships, i realised that perhaps each time, i'd been swept away by the fantasy of a strong arm, and an affectionate smile. love, give and sacrifice. but at the end of it all, it's how my mum would put it - well, what can they give in return?

i cd never accredit someone for their giving. in fact, it's something i cd nv get used to. if joa made me breakfast, i'd offer to cook dinner. if joa cooked dinner, i'd offer to clean up. if i cooked dinner, i'd still offer to clean up. if he bought me pancakes for breakfast, i'd buy him something else for dinner. the thing is, i cd never imagine putting him out. maybe becos in my world, i cd nv imagine anyone wanting to do anything for me.

i'm not sure what i'm talking about. but i truly believe that men are innately self-centred. they crave materials, status and respect. what they do not realise is that their ambitions make the women around them insecure. sometimes i doubt they understand what women really want.

every girl i know is talking about getting married. i remember on the first day of polytechnic, in the midst of our first business class, the mentor asked everyone to announce their ambition. out of every ten girls, 8 said their ambition was to be a housewife. typically, i rolled my eyes up and snarled. but suddenly, as i'm approaching my 27th birthday in 2 months time, it occured to me how natural that desire was.

i don't think i'd ever want to be a full time homemaker like my mum. i think it takes too much of a person to wait on an entire unappreciative family. but of cos like every girl out there, i dream of having my little own home, a sapphire wedding band and some sort of wedding portrait hanging above my bed. and although my last marriage left a stigma in me, still, i crave to belong and to have someone that belongs.

you know what i mean?

i'm not sure if where i am now has been a wise choice. but i try to be hopeful about it. there' s love and affection. i can feel it. but there just isn't a great sense of responsibility as yet. maybe it's what they always say about men and premarital sex: why buy milk when you get the whole cow for free?

so it's really not entirely the men to blame. it's really the folly of women and their stupid dreams of love. if love is all you want from a man, that's easy. but if marriage is the ultimate plan, maybe you should step back and think twice. it's almost taboo.

love fries, love you.

ever since we arrived in beijing, i discovered joa and i shared a common favourite junk food - yes, fries. i noticed it whenever we were at macdonald's and he'd be racing to finish the fries. and becos i always had a craving for it whenever we went to a restaurant, i'd beg him to order that as a side.

so it was his idea to set up a couple blog that reviewed all the fries in beijing. not sure if it'll ever manifest given that i havent raised enough money to buy a new camera yet, but it's a cute idea, ain't it? so he was thinking of a blog banner of a mountain of fries in the foreground, us in the background with fries sticking out of our mouths. ha-ha.

we had anor lovely weekend. saturday just idling around carrefour (and we bought our toaster oven!) and spending the windy sunday out at a park with lots of people. we didn't bring any food to share and that was embarrassing. but it was a picnic that i had dreaded to go which surprisingly turned out rather fun.

anyway, new week. i shd start writing again. like fictional stories and the like. u see, that's the thing with me. when i stop writing fiction, it means i'm complacent with life again. bad.