On This Day - (21st July) #Reminders from FB#

21st July 2025

I'm not qualified. I'll send my two girls application in. 😂

21st July 2024

One of the reason why I always loved sitting by the window.

And I love to film every takeoffs and landings #cloudspotting#

Footnote written in 2025 : 

I feel stuck now, I can only look up to my laundry.I want to go holiday 🤣🤣

21st July 2024

 😥 Hands numb for 3 days liao, not much strength. Been drinking too much cold drinks to cool myself down in the heat. Sigh….... the thing about drinking warm water is good for you; constant nagging from mom and then advice from TCM sinseh n tuinal is true lor. Need to go back to tuina again. #cannotfalldownwhenold# #daijiliaoliao#

21st July 2023

She saw this in the Japanese mart and wanted to try and cook.

Presenting.....

Che-che's okonomiyaki with no cabbage. Suddenly wanted to eat so couldn't thaw pork belly in time, she replaced it with luncheon meat 😂. Can lah! Luncheon meat is also meat 🤣

Note to her : please clean the showroom kitchen well after use 👍

21st July 2023

 @ NTUC. Suddenly the people around me have their recycling bags with them.

Depending on the bag I carry out, I didn't have my recycling bag with me today. anyway I need the plastic bags for trash so l'm not environmentally friendly and 5c won't stop me 🤭 from rejecting a bag

21st July 2023

Spent backbreaking 3hrs just cleaning n packing these 5 packs of peanuts roots.

Lil' one Aricia Ting miss drinking this, requested to brew this for her. Haiyah! Backache also must do it lor....

Can only last her for 5 weeks before I do the next round of bulk cleaning.

#ineedkoyoknow#

Footnote written in 2026 : 

Haven't been able to find fresh peanut roots online now. And I'm lazy to go to market in the morning.

Lil' one refuses to drink without peanut roots, says just the herbs alone taste different. Sigh...

21st July 2022

Oh my! I didn't know that i have to go down to Service Ctr to replace Casio G-shock battery.

Needed to change her broken strap (dunno how this girl use her watch), and then the moment the guy opened the watch (assumingly to take out the strap)

1. my battery died when I only changed it a month or so ago before her SA1
2. rubber thing is a little crooked. Apparently the guy at the watch shop didn't do a good job in capping back the backing

So it's an important lesson learnt.

Next time just make her bring an alarm clock with her, only need AAA battery . Anyway, she'll be happy if her watch spoil lah, she wants to buy another colour BUT coz mummy says why need so many watches just use until spoil then change #stingymom#

21st July 2016

The joke is on the lil' one.

She wet her bed at 3-4am this morning. And so I asked her in the afternoon why did she wet her bed.

Her reply was "I heard the thunder and I ...

"And it rained on your bed before it rained outside?'

🌧️ 💧 💧 💧 

Must remind her not to rain on her bed again tonight.

21st July 2014

Only the ill' one wore costume to school. The older one wore a blue n white costume. Hee!

21st July 2012

Yay! Another unsupervised class with mei-mei. First was Shichida on Thursday then it's Yamaha today.

But it means bad news for che-che. Eyes on her doing her work; cannot slack.

21st July 2011

Goodies - kueh lapis, kueh salat, mini rice dumpling

Packed up for kids instead of eating it there coz I reckon they'll hv 24 other food. In a little bucket style container.

Little nonya with nonya goodies for her friends

Racial Harmony Day - My little nonya

CNY 2026

I’m getting more and more lazy each passing year. I think come 2027 I will only have one Happy New Year deco and order Grab food delivery or maybe should just fly out for a short vacation. 

Decorations

I didn’t want to stick anything on the wall incase I peel off the wall paint. This year's deco is minimal. The glass sticker set I bought for my balcony is too small.😂

Used to put table runner on the coffee table, now don’t coz hubby always flips the thing aside when he sits there for his meals.

Flowers

Last time I used to make an effort to buy ang ang flowers to put in balcony. This year I couldn’t be bothered. My plants always end up dying on me. However for the sake of having something auspicious, I bought the lucky bamboo at last minute. 

NY snacks

越买越少。本来都不要买 but since I was at Kim Choo once I just picked three items. Bought my every year must buy Julie’s love letters. That’s it! 4 snacks only. 

Mandarin oranges

We haven’t been buying the huge box of mandarin oranges for many years. Always a lot of wastage. So just these few we have at home, anyway after we exchange we get back our oranges🍊🍊 

In my mind from last year or was it previous previous year I’ve been telling myself to make carrot yam cake for CNY, to make agar agar using the fish mold, to make orh nee (I love orh nee!) maybe I should cook dish for reunion dinner or first day lunch. But as usual, I always like to daydream only 🤣

As for baking - I did want to bake peanut cookies, coffee cookies BUT ….. I always like to daydream only. 

Too much of daydreaming, too much of thinking that my brain makes me tired lazy tired 

Reunion dinner 

Didn't join bro and family for reunion dinner, hubby wants to have it by ourselves. We barely bought any ingredients. Just cabbage, mushrooms, crabsticks and fishballs. We have pork and chicken at home, scallops too. Another day hubby went to Sheng Siong and bought 7 prawns. Haha! We had to clear our fridge. 

Went to SH house to play cards the day before CNY eve so this year he didn’t return home late, or rather early at 4am

My own ‘decorations’

I’ve never had the practice of going to the hair salon for haircut and colour, nail salon for manicure pedicure. Cheapskate me will always do it on my own at home. But this year I didn’t even bother. I’m lucky at this time my white hair didn’t show much 

 Never colour hair, never paint nails, never buy any new clothes or red underwear (no wonder I’m so poor)

First day (17th)

I woke up late and prepared simple CNY stuffs for the family. 

 

Girls bai nian with us. 

Wanted to start cooking the peach gum dessert to bring over to bro's place. To my horror I realised that I mistook my hawthorn for red dates. Turns out I didn’t have anymore red dates at home. Hubby went out to help me buy, at the same time he said the snacks are quite filling so wasn’t hungry we swooped the idea of cooking simple lunch to just getting snacks. 

Cooked, cooled and then packed 

Went to bro’s place late, just nice for dinner, coz hubby needs to Zzzzz first. As usual, tossing yusheng. I wonder how many times we will toss yusheng this CNY. Once? Twice? Surely not as many times as most people but no love lost as we don't really fancy all these sweet things.    

Catered dinner

Then it's the end of Day 01 🐎

Second day (18th)

Over the years many eateries open on the second day with the changing dynamics of these youngsters and people my age range. We don't cook as much as our parents generations do. 

We headed out for lunch at Sushiro in Jewel. So many parking spaces.  

Che-che wanted to play Switch so we played with her. We were so noisy.

Dinner is us trying to finish that little ingredients we have left. Kept the dual steamboat pot in the bomb shelter and took out the single pot for this. Lots of commotion during this meal "open the door, we need to air the house." "cooked already?" "wait lah". It doesn't matter even if we're eating expensive food, cheap food can bond the family together. 

Sukiyaki 

 

That sums up our boring two days of CNY. Then it's work day the next day. 

Missing Christmas market - 25/12/25

It’s christmas eve, and I’m missing magical weihnachtsmarkt. How many years has that been? 2018, 7 years ago. Now stuck in Singapore with no family vacation in sight, I get even more depressed. 

Just getting into the feel, so prepared currywurst.

It’s 24th and …

Nothing is baked. My advent calendar cookies didn’t need to be baked coz I can’t possibly bake just one cookie. My marshmallow for fondant is ….

Christmas chocolate house is not done. Sigh…. Waste of money. Maybe I’ll do it another day, when I need lots of chocolates to UP my mood. 

My cut cookies, spritz cookies, advent calendar cookies. Wah…… everytime only know how to dream but no action. Nothing is done. 

Advent cookie debosser arrived on 4th Dec, then it was late to do anything and my mind was still engrossed over CLEARING PICTURES. Why my bloody whole life keep talking about iMovies, clearing pictures. Hopefully next Christmas I can do something with the debosser. So f my life, always busy to do other things but nothing that I love. 

Since in town, just a simple decoration in the house

Even the tags - I thought I had some leftovers at home but I think I threw it away just a month ago when I was tidying up the drawer 🤦🏻‍♀️. Made the tags

No Christmas presents, just give Christmaspow

Christmas - GBTB

Funny when it comes to Christmas display in Flower Dome, it’s not the flowers I’m interested but the decorations. This year’s theme with cute train sets will make both little and big boys’ hearts flurry in excitement.

This year, as some years, there’s a small Nordic themed deco as well. I love the simplicity of Nordic decos.  

Pics for your viewing. 

For a summary of the floral display this year, click HERE

汤圆汤圆吃汤圆

Singapore’s latitude at 1.3521 *N makes us in the northern hemisphere 😂, so by right we should be experiencing winter ☃️❄️ Winter solstice is an astronomical event making the shortest day and longest night of the year in the hemisphere. We still get 12 hrs of day and night just coz 1+ *N makes no difference. 😂

Chinese communities globally eat 汤圆. Key Reasons for the Tradition are : 

1) Symbol of Reunion: The roundness of the balls signifies the family coming together, just as the sun begins its return after the longest night.

• 2) Completeness: Eating them signifies a complete and harmonious year ahead.
• 3) "Gaining a Year": Eating tangyuan marks the end of the year and symbolically adds one year to your age, preparing you for the new cycle.
• 4) Homophone for Reunion: The word tangyuan(湯圓) sounds like tuanyuan (團圓), meaning reunion, reinforcing the family theme.

I’m using ginger paste coz I don’t have any ginger in the kitchen 😬

The girls like theirs plain. Bought the riceballs late so there’s no peanut or sesame fillings 🤨

Only 3

Only 3 Christmas cards to be sent out. Too lazy to type a letter to update friends of the whole year event coz basically the 3 recipients constantly see my updates in my FB 😂. Terry didn’t update his latest address with me. He informed me mid year that he had moved out of the place and was searching for a new home. Sad…I feel this is another friend who will be stopping off all contacts with me soon😭. 

Three cards so I took effort to stick sticker on every envelope. 

I think sooner or later I will send greetings on WhatsApp and email. By then no need for postal stamps anymore. Speaking of which, I have a stack of printed stamps 

1st local postage is now 52cents. The printed stamps I have, I’m not even sure if I can use it, bought it when postage was 31cents. 

IKEA photo

Told her I can get more nicer pics when I’m alone. 

Infact for that Korea holiday with her I was able to get some photos of her without two other people rushing me. And she obliged to be a model, tho I tell you none of my family members are natural infront of camera. pfft! 

Since just the two of us and surprisingly Ikea is not crowded at all so spent around 15mins taking pics.

Now these make good Christmas cards, right? So when anyone needs a pic for their holiday cards, please drop by Ikea.