Chio bus

Wipe that leer off your faces, all you chee hong kias. :D

This, is what I'm talking about:


Initial D tickets booked. Due to other even crazier buggers, I wasn't able to get tickets for the sneaks on the 22nd, so I had to settle for the 23rd, which was supposed to be the initial opening date anyway.

Happy! Weeee.

Adventurers of the East

Today we fall prey to one of our biggest weaknesses: colossal amount of seafood. In the eastern most part of the East Coast Park lie many a seafood serving houses that vie for the business of hungry omnivores who have travelled from afar (Bukit Batok and Telok Blangah alike) to taste the flesh of those who have survived the battles in the sea only to end up on our plates.

A platoon of prawns were served up first, in a state of utmost insobriety. This was followed by much shelling and then various noises that hint of gastronomic satiation.



Chilli crab, with less chilli because there were kids at the table, extremely ooohing-and-ahhingly good, with fried man tous on side for the crab dip.



Hm. It was good. But after having so much food over the past few days, it's hard to juggle ingestion and indigestion. What follows after good food, is a good brush, to make sure none of that icky black pepper or chilli bits get left overnight. But I was appalled to find that supermarkets apparently stopped retailing normal-looking toothbrushes.

This was the toothbrush that came home with me. If toothbrushes could mutate, this would probably be it.

The coming of legal age

An sms sometime in the middle of the day read:

Happy birthday Jia! Hope you're having a blast today since everything's legal now. Enjoy yourself okay?

I can finally legally do everything legal now, except performing oral sex so states Section 377 (but they are intending to repeal that law sometime in the near future. Imagine all the poor bastards who have already served sentences for indulging in what was perceived to be "criminal" sexual acts. We know why they don't let boys do boys, "because they don't fit quite well", but going by the same argument, what's there not to fit in fellatio?).

Anyhow, as I write, the birthday has come and gone. Vansh was good, further elaborations at William's blog along with a bunch of visual information. Here's some shots of the food for those curious to see what North Indian food's like:

Tandoori prawns

The rest of the line-up

The people who couldn't get enough (The sweetheart of a boyfriend, author-in-question, Mich, William, Thong who sports a retro-NS haircut and Jared who is not fussy.)

Since a picture says a thousand words and I am not in the best of state to write about said occasion in a way it deserves, I shall let the pictures do the talking.

more or less spur-of-the-moment decision to visit the escape theme park to convince self once and for all that i am no longer a kid (irony works in many ways). Introducing the pretend-UOB-mini funkey card which functions as the entrance ticket.

can eat?

There, I found the lamer (possibly lamest) version of the Rainbow ride i had in Korea. It went as fast as the ferris wheel when nothing goes wrong.

The mid-day sun threatened to give skin cancer and so we left for Harbourfront and Great World in search of a cake to bring home to my gramps so that I can celebrate my 21st with them. After seeing many paltry-looking cakes, we finally settled on a small Tiramisu cake from Sweet Secrets:

yum! (candles melting fast while i egotistically try to get a good shot of my own 21st birthday cake. p.s. this is the first birthday cake i've had in a long time, heh. i guess after a while you just don't bother. and cake makes you fat anyway.)

gramps!

the candle-blowing expert

And then it was home to shower and get rid of the grime before we went to clarke quay with the intention of taking my long-desired cheesy trishaw-ride around town only to find that the area's under construction and I decided to just binge on my favourite foods at ABC market to dispel my disappointment. (Call it newfound wisdom or otherwise, but I decided that spending 200 bucks on a dinner at a restaurant wasn't the most economical way to spend my 21st birthday if I truly wanted to eat my heart out. That, and I'd rather the Boyfriend save the money since he already spent so much on the gift (he wouldn't say how much :\). It just makes more sense to eat good hawker fare since I'd have a good time either way.)

ABC market, located behind IKEA, home to best foods agglomeration, especially my favourite orh lua (Oyster omelette)

how to make food look better in photoshop 101. food magazines editors, i work freelance. :D hee. just fooling around a bit with photoshop.

No self-respecting binger considers a sinful session complete without barbecued seafood. we had sting ray and white clams (la la)

And of course, how can we leave out beer

it's all about rediscovering your limits and all for a total of 30 bucks and less

Excerpt from dinner conversation:

Me: "Should we have chilli crab tomorrow?" (scheduled for dinner with my aunt)
Him: "Shiok. Wah, the prawns. Have you tried drunken prawns before? Those prawns died for a good cause"
Me: "All prawns die for a good cause"

I could probably safely say, best birthday ever so far.

marry me?

yes, my love.

Should we vansh now baby, or vansh later?

Venue

Vansh _{[more info here] [map]}
2 Stadium Walk #01-04
Singapore Indoor Stadium

Description: Singapore's sexiest Indian restaurant, plush red walls, sunken seats, Austin Powerish.

Time
Saturday, 4th June. 7.30pm (we should be done in time for you to catch the last ride home)

Bus services
11, 16

Dress code
Smart casual (this is more or less self-imposed :p Jeans is fine :D)

Guest list so far
Jeth, Mich, Jared, William, Thong, Bev, Huihui,Marina, Jin Ming, Cheryl

Addendum
My heartfelt thanks to all who are coming, and to those early birthday wishes from those who couldn't make it due to my last-minuteness. heh. I've never had a happier birthday.

Wished you could have been there
Val, Steph, Chinxiang, in addition to those who couldn't make it

If I die before I wake

I laid awake thinking of what the future holds-- and more terrifyingly, what the future doesn't hold. I marvelled at how my academic smarts slumped from its initial state and at how I cannot seem, no matter how hard I try, to find any evidence which stands witness to any form of intelligence I once thought I possessed.

I thought long and hard, about whether everything would change. Ambition and aspiration slipping from me as I lay there, numbed by my own mediocrity. All I want, is to be able to close my eyes tonight and go to sleep not feeling terrified or scared out of my wits about what kind of future awaits. And strangely, but not surprisingly, my thoughts turn to the bottle of codeine which I have been relying on to help calm my nerves at night these days. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just drink it all and resolve everything? Wouldn't it be tragic (a fresh burst of energy and hope at my sadism overwhelm me at that instant) if I died before I turn 21? Hahahaha.

But thoughts are just thoughts. And I am back at square one. Scared, depressed, and not really wanting to see tomorrow.