Apologies for the lack of regular posts! But guess what? As of today, SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER! And one of my first acts of the holidays was accidentally discovering a wonderful Japanese bakery where I finally got my claws on some real-life melon bread! ^^

Shana would be proud.

Got one for onee-chan too, because I live to give.

Puni puni?

And as for how it tasted, totally different to what I was expecting! It’s a lot more bread-ey than anticipated, but sweeter with a sort of crispy outside. Very nice and perfect for breakfast I imagine.

Anyone else tried meronpan? You like? I’ve been trying to come up with a list of all the best Japanese sweet foods to try, other than the obvious e.g. Pocky so if anyone can think of any good ideas, do share! ^^

Also, anyone notice how the above photos look somewhat different to the ones I usually take? Well kudos if you did because I took them with the Canon EOS 400D I borrowed from my school library for the whole holidays. (My Lumi-chan is crying in the corner from being neglected.) Still experimenting with it so please excuse any random flimsy photos ^^;

Random bonus photo:

Yum. I wanna get me some of that skinfood!

FAM 2009. Farewell Alma Mater 2009. RGS’s version of prom, which is, in short, just a formal dinner event. Nothing remotely prom-like happened except the pageant. On the other hand, it was quite interesting seeing people arrive in dresses, fake eyelashes, hairspray overload, and 4 inch heels.

In case you’re wondering, no I did not wear a dress, I did not wear heels, and I only spent $2.90 for FAM.

In the Hilton ballroom, which was tiny.

The food was quite good, though they totally overfed us. We barely ate the last 2 courses, and spent majority of the time hunting down familiar faces and taking photos.

Look at all the attention the first course’s getting.

Table peekchur.

Mr Evans.

Mr Yeoh.

All the FAM nominees and the winner.

Glam Dot and Xinyi! Xinyi had a sneezing fit because of her hairspray.

Dorothy’s Steve Maddens!!! I tried it, and could hardly balance. Gahh but I still want a pair (:

The class.

I like this.

And the night won’t be complete without at least one unglam shot

She looks like the matchmaker in Mulan, at the scene when she realised a cricket jumped into her shirt.

I spent way too much time on those nails to not post a photo of them. And if you wanna know, the $2.90 I spent for FAM was for that bottle of sparkly nail polish.

Finally got around to upload them today because FAM photos’ll be coming up later and I don’t want to be left with too many photos unposted.

Walk-In of the Sec4s.

I like their hats.

Jessica’s very interesting dream (and “speech”).

Mrs Hoo’s very interesting “Principal’s Address”. It turned into a story performed by the class chairs.

Graduation song.

Sec4 teachers.

Mr Chua’s biggest fans.

Aliens on the rooftop.

Singing the school song one last time. Look who was looking at the camera while everyone else’s singing

This is a long overdue post about my lunch at Enso Kitchen.

Their famous Goma Tofu. Instead of using soybeans the chef made it using seasame and a Japanese arrowroot.

Tofu, shitake mushroom + mango + yam in plum sauce, tempura (the persimmon tempura was great), mushroom soup, spinach, and rice.

Finished off with a wonderful dessert. The mochi was nothing like what I’ve ever seen or tasted before. It was amazingly light, something only achievable with freshly made mochi (the chef made it the night before).

Honestly I was quite disappointed given the price I had to pay ($50 a person). Granted, the ingredients are very fresh but the food isn’t that exceptional except for a few items.

Graduation photos next.

Söndag kväll och man är tillbaka på bloggen igen.

Den där lilla stumpen som sammankopplar två trådar i kroppen saknas, vilket betyder att jag fortfarande är nere.

Kalla det deprimerad om du vill, I don’t give a f*** längre!

Känner väldigt starkt att detta kommer hålla i sig ett bra tag, låt säga sex till åtta månader kanske? Allt beror på vad som händer i livet under denna tiden förstås.

Igår och idag (Lördag-Söndag) bjöd på skratt jag redan glömt anledningen till, allt känns mörkt, kallt och cyniskt.

Nej jag ska sluta klaga för idag och överlåta det till morgondagen.

Istället skall jag bjuda på lite bilder från gårdagens fotorunda med Fredrik.

Tack!

©AbsolutSanning

I went to the Starbucks Learning & Development Facility today – for Geog Options fieldtrip. It was one of the best post-exam activity EVER in my entire RGS life.

They served us cups of vanilla latte (which I expected), and snacks – miniature ones of those from Starbucks (which I didn’t), including my favourite blueberry muffin! Quote Dorothy, “We were just joking that today we consumed about 50 bucks’ worth of Starbucks stuff without having to pay a cent.”

The coffee and the food kept us very awake during the presentation, though I think I kind of crashed at the end. They told us about different coffee beans, the treatment/roasting process, and taught us how to cup coffee and how to use an espresso machine.

The disgusting oily looking over-roasted Kopitiam coffee. It tastes just as bad as it looks.

We cupped different coffees from around the world (Costa Rica, Kenya, Sumatra, Guatamala, etc) at the end of the session.

Step 1: remove the floating coffee bits from the cup and smell the coffee. I tried the Vienna Roast Arabica, the Vietnam Robusta, and the Kopitiam coffee. Preference is in decreasing order. Everyone (of the adults) there seem to have something against Robusta coffee. While I personally dislike Robusta too, I still think it’s a matter of preference.

Step 2: Take a spoonful from the sampling cup and slurp it really really loudly. Everyone was so embarrassed to do it that the entire room was just totally silent during the cupping. I tried slurping for my first spoonful and ended up swallowing it when I was supposed to spit it out because I was concentrating really hard on not laughing out loud.

The line up. I can’t really remember how each of the coffee tastes like but I think I liked the Kenyan one best.

Then we moved to the next room to learn how to make Lattes and Cappuccinos!

Now I finally know why all my Cappuccino attempts at home fails miserably. I need that tube thing to steam and froth up the milk (see the steam coming out from the end?). Now I want an espresso machine too. Actually just the milk-frother thing would do (:

My first two cups of Latte!

Listening to the milk froth bubbles popping in the cups (:

This competition can only be entered by our friends

across the pond.

The theme is home.

Deadline 13 November 2009.

Full details at the following addy:

#mce_temp_url#

Enter and you could win a Canon EOS 400D DSLR .

Went to Chek Jawa today for another Bio Options fieldtrip. This was our last fieldtrip for the module, and I guess I can say that it’s the best one so far (:

Duxuan/Claire spotted this when we were having lunch at a restaurant in Pulau Ubin. It was in a tiny garden full of potted plants. Saw a few more changeable lizards and also a small moniter lizard.

Golden orb-web spider. The male counterpart was on the web as well, but it’s not in the photo.

Paradise tree snake! Saw it curled around a stump (which I was about to hold) when we were climbing back up onto the trail from the algae-covered beach. It’s a really beautiful snake, though it might not seem so in the photo (it’s actually green with black and white stripes). It can fly too. Or glide, more like.

A piece of rain (or rather, a storm cloud which was pouring) appeared in front of us as we were doing the boardwalk. We continued walking, and 10 minutes later the cloud moved directly above us and we were instantly drenched. Maybe not instantly, I might have exaggerated. But most of us were certainly wet when we reached shelter a few minutes later.

The first 10 minutes into the storm we stood huddled together under the tiny precious piece of roof concrete like emperor penguins, umbrellas opened towards the windward side to block out some of the wind. It was exhilarating watching the storm right over the open sea where the wind blew unobstructed. The sea looked beautiful in the storm.

An oriental whip snake, in its striking position after being poked with a twig by Mr Lim.

The cats giving fishing a go. Looking for mudskippers? Wonder what they caught in the end.

Photographed by Fabio Ricco

Colonel William Prescott at Bunker Hill Monument, Boston

– License

On second thought, it might be even better than Japanese food. Anyhow, I’ll be going to Enzo Kitchen soon, so I’ll still get my Japanese lunch, which will be my first in the second half of the year.

Lunch at Cedele. Wanted to go there just for the chocolate banana espresso cake at first, but decided to stay for lunch.

Cedele’s now one of my favourite restaurants, because of their vegetarian friendly menu and delicious organic food. And they certainly weren’t kidding when they said organic food taste so much better! They also claim that their food are handmade from scratch, I’m not sure whether that applies to everything but it certainly seem to enhance the taste. And the food at Cedele is really, really good, much better than other restaurants around the same price (like Coffee Club and Pasta Mania).

And this time, I finally brought my camera.

Spicy mushroom aglio olio.

It was so good that I was tempted to scoop up the sauce/oil and eat them too. Wonder how they made it but I doubt they’ll share the recipe.

My second favourite dessert (: The first being the green tea parfait at Sun With Moon Japanese restaurant (you might have heard this in the morning on 987fm about a week ago).

Last mouthful. Mmmm. The food made me quite happy, which was worth it despite the fact that it lasted only a short while.

Sungei Buloh (wetland reserve). Went there on Wednesday for Bio fieldtrip. The place was swarming with mosquitoes and (to a smaller extent) moniter lizards.

Snails (which looks like figs from a distance) and tree climbing crabs.

Claws.

Kingfisher.

Moniter lizard.

Giant mudskippers.

Ant carrying a cotton stainer bug.

Grasshopper.

Nephila pilipes (I think).

Another mudskipper.

The bench where David Attenborough sat, according to Mr Lim.

All in all, it was a hell lot more interesting than Lower Peirce and Dairy Farm, minus the million mosquitoes bites I got.

Sam, “Here’s Xinyi’s letter to you from god.”

Because Xinyi’s MC was written by a doctor with the surname ‘Shen’, which is god in Chinese.

The work of Sergin.

Xinyi took this.

Unglam tymez.

Xinyi took this too (:

And Jiaming found Fred’s cousin!

First time holding a toad..

First time for her too.

We released Ted after the photos were taken. Yes, I’m that uncreative with names.

Moaaar random overdue photos.

Was this last week? I think it was Friday the week before, when I first visited Kikki.K. Will be saving this for next year.

I love their stationeries. Bought this as a present though.

My favourite green tea ice-cream from Azabu Sabo Hokkaido Ice Cream. They had a promotion so I took the black seasame flavour as well. Ohh it was so so good.

And Claire finally got her Moleskine for next year after living for a year with a fake one, with much agony.

A dangling caterpillar. Cater pillar. Cat Er Pillar. Cater Pill Ar. Caterpillar.

Outing to Dairy Farm Reserve. It rained. We trekked in the drizzle. We got wet. It was fun.

See, that’s why I say you’re worse than Xinyi, Claire

Take two.

Photographed by khairilfz

An Hdr and a heavily photoshopped image in Infrared and B+W – All faked to look surreal. Postprocess experiment.

– License

Bio Options fieldtrip to Lower Peirce Reservoir last Wednesday. Didn’t see many interesting things so didn’t take much photos. It was a rather boring fieldtrip.

Very glam Claire, very glam.

The common sun skink. It was very common. We saw about 5 in total.

A katydid.

Had dinner at a prata restaurant, the Indian vegetables doesn’t taste as bad as they look, but I think their yogurt was homemade.

Back to the forest for nightwalk, which we barely saw anything (except for a firefly, and a gecko, oh and that annoying arrogant old man, for the second time of the day).

Our last netball carnival in RGS yesterday. Not that I’ll miss it anyway. Wasn’t planning to take photos at first, but changed my mind halfway through the morning.

I like their blue and white jerseys and blue and white hairties.

It started to rain around 10.

Guess who was there. Hahaha.

My 2nd favourite jump shot, after the Tioman one. Thanks Mabel!

Went mountain biking at Pulau Ubin with Claire on Children’s Day (1st Oct). We went on the Blue Square trail in the mountain biking park, which is supposed to be the easiest trail, but was still a little tough. The entire trail was on uneven grass and mud. I lost my balance once, but hopped off the bike so I didn’t crash.

Claire playing with a mimosa.

She found frog/toad eggs in a puddle I zoomed past.

The mountain biking park is really beautiful. Gravel paths, mud tracks in the midst of long grass fields, with hundreds of grasshoppers, dragonflies, and bees flying about.  Plus that yesterday wasn’t a public holiday so there was barely anyone around, it wasn’t that hard to imagine that we weren’t in Singapore.

Didn’t want to weigh my bag down with another lens, so I only brought my 50mm. The best I can do to is a bokeh pano (the Brenizer method! Though didn’t work out quite as well because I don’t have a proper pano stitching software).

It drizzled intermittently. Thank God it only started to pour after we got back to the bicycle rental area. We each accumulated dozens of mosquito bites by the end of the day. But I felt accomplished completing the mountain biking trail (though it was the easiest). The Black Diamond and the Double Black Diamond trails look really intimidating. There’re some 45 degrees drops and 45 degrees climb. Holy crap.

Headed back to town, and watched Timetraveller’s Wife at Cineleisure in the afternoon. The story looked really beautiful in a motion picture, though I still prefer intense thrillers like Angels and Demons.

To say hill is probably more accurate. Today I climbed the highest hill in Singapore, as part of the Environmental Biology Options.

Went to Gusttimo Di Roma at Ion to grab an ice-cream before we left.

This time I got kiwi sorbet, strawberry sorbet, and tiramisu gelato. Mmmm.

And how can I forget – Claire Mok’s quote of the day. We were trying out different flavours before deciding which ones to buy, and Claire tried the cream cheese one. Then she went “This REEALY tastes like cheese!”, complete with the awed/fascinated face. After we sat down, the waiter came over and said, “I’m sorry, the flavour I gave you to try just now was coconut, not cream cheese.”

We got a free scoop of cream cheese ice-cream in the end, and it really tastes like cheese.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see at the reserve, a resemblance to the primary rainforest at Tioman maybe. But this forest felt really open, which is strange since it’s supposed to be a primary rainforest (the only patch Singapore’s got left). The forest floor was rather crowded too.

The BTNR macaques, made famous by decades of RGS Research Studies/CmPS projects that they almost seem like celebrities.

Some of those got stuck in my collar and my sleeve and I suffered a bus-ride of itchiness.
On the other hand, I’m quite glad with some of the shots I got today. Haven’t felt so in a long time C:

I’ve not posted for a week! Been busy striking off items on my post-exam to-do list and reading New Moon and Eclipse. Not the kind of books I would usually read, but the plot is interesting. Anyway, major happenings of the past week:

1. Watched MTV VMAs on Saturday. Lady Gaga arrived with Kermit the Frog as her date. Taylor Swift arrived wearing a gorgeous silvery gown in a (white) horse carriage. Pink and Shakira wore the same dress. MICHEAL JACKSON TRIBUTE PERFORMANCE FEATURING JANET JACKSON. Kanye West, “I’m sorry Taylor, but Beyonce’s got one of the best music videos of all time.” Pink performed while hanging upside down from the ceiling on stage. Taylor Swift’s performance at the Subway Station. Lady Gaga’s performance of Paparazzi with fake blood.

2. Feeding swans/(fail) picnic at Botanic Gardens with Xinyi on Monday. Tried to attract swans with bread. Xinyi bought one big pack of bread and ended up bringing most of them home because the swans were overfed. Swans refuse to take the bread out of my hand. One of the families was peeling off the leaves from a cabbage and feeding them to the swans. Picnic: potato pesto salad was nice. Will make it again soon. Pasta was a big failure. The fusilli somehow disintegrated and it was pretty much tasteless. Saw an unidentifiable skink. Xinyi took her “tourist” shots.

3. Gusttimo Di Roma has become my new favourite ice cream shop, because of their abundance of sorbet flavours. There’s lemon, mango, strawberry, green apple, kiwi, mixed tropical fruits, and mixed berries. And they have some pretty unusual but delicious sounding ice-cream flavours as well, like melon and panna cotta. 3 flavours are served in a big waffle cone (as above) for $6.90. More than enough to satisfy my sorbet cravings. I’ve not tried their green tea ice-cream yet, but I think I’ll still prefer the one at Hokkaido Ice-cream.

4. Official start of Options in school. Mine was Environmental Biology and Geography of Consumption for Advanced, and Art in Poetry/Poetry in Art for Enriched. I really love the courses I got in for, though I can’t say that for my Enriched Options yet because there wasn’t any Enriched this week. There’s going to be lots of fieldtrips for Environmental Bio, and there’s Chek Jawa and WELL to look forward to. Geography of Consumption had been interesting so far, we smelled different varieties of coffee beans. The ones from Starbucks (as I found out later) gave me a headache. A barista will be coming some time later to show us different techniques of preparing coffee, whoohoo!

5. First visit to Far East Plaza of the year. Went there for lunch since there are huge gaps in my options timetable (which are annoying, by the way). The pink wall beneath the staircase matches Sam’s Pink Freak and her pink jacket, so we took photos. There was a pink dustbin too but it was too heavy to be dragged.

Yeah you and me we can light up the sky
If you stay by my side
We can rule the world
Rule the World – Take That

This is the second time I’m posting lyrics from this song, but I just never get sick of listening to it.

But it didn’t turn out that bad, did it (:

Husk at slå HD til + Fuld skærm!

NEW YORK CITY (2006)
Når man ser filmene ovenfor som drengene fra Moos & Kurrat har filmet med, så ligner det jo top-of-the-pops-Pro-Cams fra Red One (100.000+) eller fx et Sony fx1000e (30.000 kr). Jeg turde næsten ikke håbe at det måske var med kameraet jeg tidligere har skrevet om: Canon 5D Mark II (23.000 kr) …men at det faktisk var det nu udgåede Canon EOS 400D der gik for små 4-5.000 kr, var alligevel forbavsende!

Endnu engang er det slående hvor meget billedkvalitet man efterhånden får for pengene (selv med standard objektiv). Time-lapse filmene er selvfølgelig filmet som HD enkeltbilleder med 1-3 sekunders mellemrum…men alligevel, ik!
- Se 3 andre Timelapse film fra Moos & Kurrat: Hongkong, Norway, Istanbul

- Se filmen i fuld HD opløsning på Vimeo

Red One vs. 5D Mark II vs. Lumix GH1 Video
Fandt denne side-by-side test mellem Red One, Canon 5D Mark II, og Panasonic Lumix GH1 med forskellige linser på. Det forbavsende er at GH1 kameraet (ca. 10.000 kr) klarer sig så godt i forhold til Red One og 5D Mark II. Det er klart at hvis det er i højeste opløsning så ville det være en anden historie.
kilde: Vimeo og illusion.scene360.com & Gizmodo