After much contemplation, I decided to purchase the iPhone 3GS and oh my god…is it amazing! Sexy, chic and does everything I want it to and more. Being an SLR user, the camera on the iPhone doesn’t do it for me. But other than that, the iPod function, 3G access, checking my e-mails on the go and not to mention the various Apps there is on offer with the iPhone…far outweighs the horrid camera capabilities available on the iPhone 3GS.

The more I explore it, the more I’m falling in love with it.

Personally, the best thing about the iPhone for me is the ability to Skype with my mum hundreds of miles away at my convenience. With a Skype phone over that her end and my Skype application permanently switched on in my iPhone, calling and speaking to my family at no cost is a huge plus point for me. I reckon I’ve already saved a few quid on calling cards this week…

There comes a point in your life when you wonder to yourself: “Is there more to my life than this?” Who’s to say that this is what I’m destined to be…living rather ordinarily with a job to help pay the bills, a roof over my head and a lovely man to come home to.

We’re entitled to 24 days of annual leave. Is that it? Surely, there’s more to life than working your ass off and looking forward to your 24 days of holiday which you’re apparently entitled to. Every couple of months, you book a 2 week holiday to somewhere exotic and totally different from your usual life and you escape! You escape with this belief that for those 2 weeks, you’re escaping from everything that is you and everything that makes your life the way that it is. Why create something you need to escape from?

“There has to be more…” - I say to my fellow colleagues and the instantaneous response I get from them is: “She’s young..” As if they used to think that but have sinced succumbed to the fact that this what their life is and ever will be.

There is a saying I heard many years ago: “Reach for the moon…for even if you fail, you’ll be amongst the stars”

But what if doing so means risking everything you ever hold dear to your heart? Would you still risk it? Or would you simply sit back and be grateful for what you have thus far. Even if you know, deep down, that you’re destined for something much much greater…

My usual routine when I get back from work:

1. Lock the door behind me…take my heels off…throw my handbag and keys on the stairs.

2. Look for J’s shoes which would give me a pretty good indication if he’s back home yet. If they are, yell something like “I’m home!” to figure out if he’s in the house or in his garage. 80% of the time I won’t get a response as he’ll be in his beloved garage (I swear he loves his tools more than me…)

3. Enter the kitchen and pop the kettle on for my mandatory 6pm cup of tea.

4. While kettle’s boiling, go up to the office and switch my laptop on.

Everything’s pretty routine from then on except this time….

I was pleasantly surprised to find a bouquet of roses and lillies on my desk!

My face instantly lit up! I don’t what it is about flowers…is it the smell? Or just the fact that J bought something which he knew would wither away and die after 2 weeks which doesn’t quite justify paying £9.99 for but is all worth it just for the good mood it puts me in all that evening. Or maybe it just boils down to the fact that I love little surprises…

Anyway, I’m getting a little side-tracked here. This post wasn’t meant to be all about the flowers but about something completely different so bear with me.

So anyway, I was sitting in the living room today surfing on my laptop and admiring my beautiful flowers when I realized just how bare my living room wall was!

J has very kindly released his reins over what we should about the interior design on the living room. So it all boils down to me to figure something out.

All I’ve done so far was paint it a different colour to the rest of the walls so kinda give it a “feature wall” look. I contemplated having it wallpapered but knowing my DIY skills, I decided painting was more manageable.

I want something totally different yet I don’t wanna just buy anything which would look pretty yet not be very personal.

One idea I had was to have a row of simple black picture frames containing some of my photography across the top of the TV and continuing all the way down to the floor on either ends. I’m thinking black & white vintage like photos.

Eventhough he did relinquish his rights over the matter, J feels very strongly about the idea. “Nobody hangs picture frames below eye-level. What are you meant to do? Go down on your knees to view them? ” he remarked.

Sigh…It’s a tough one…

P.S: Aren’t the flowers oh so pretty??

When I first heard the news, I didn’t know what to think. I haven’t been wanting to blog about it but when I saw the rehearsal video for his last ever tour filmed just a couple of days before his death, I was just overwhelmed with emotion that I just had to let it out. I had goosebumps just watching the video. I watched it over and over again, thinking of what could have been and the bizarre turn of events.

I’m not a huge MJ fan but even I know that he was a musical genius. That word has been thrown around so many times to the likes of Elvis, Nat King Cole etc….but Jackson….Jackson was on a whole different level. I don’t know if the child molestation allegations were true. What I do know is what I believe. I believe he was a man who never grew up. I believe he honestly and innocently believed there was nothing wrong in his actions which would otherwise seem wrong from another adult’s perspective. And I believed he wasn’t prepared for the consequences of being such an incredibly talented and unique individual and the worldwide phenomenon that he was.

I believe we killed him. Yes us…not the media…not the paparazzi…we buy the albums, we go all crazy around him that he can’t even step out to get some eggs. So if you think about it…we are the media…we are the paparazzi. I can’t help feeling that if we had only stepped back and saw what we were doing to him…things would have been different.

We had the incredible privilege of being in the presence (some sort or other ) of such a musical genius during our lifetime. We had the honour of watching him grow from this little naive child to the man that he was. Not many generations get that. Future generations will grow up learning and knowing about Micheal Jackson through literature, pictures and videos but we saw it all from the beginning. We saw this coming yet…it was too late. And we ended up loosing him.

I don’t know about you but I feel incredibly guilty…

We went to watch The Counterfeit Stones last week with D & C. Eventhough J had watched them before, I dragged him along to this one as I really wanted to see just how great these guys were.

Considered to be one of the best tribute bands out there, The Counterfeit Stones have been known to have gone to great lengths to recreate the personalities of the original Rolling Stones as well as their hits.

My personal opinion: I was blown away! They were amazing! I couldn’t sit still! The music was great…especially with classic hits like “You can’t always get what you Want”, “Honky Tonk Women”, “Ruby Tuesday” etc.

The close resemblance between the lead singer to the original Mick Jagger was uncanny. I was pleasantly surprised on how he pulled off the eccentric posture and moves of the original lead man so effortlessly.

People started leaving their seats and moving over to the aisles to dance. It was a brilliant performance and one I was sad to see end.

The Counterfeit Stones are currently touring I believe. So if they are ever in your area, I strongly recommend them. For a mere £16.50, it’s hardly a hefty price to pay for a night of good live music.

Finally signed up to Twitter today. Still getting my head around what it actually is….They call it a “micro-blog”…where you update your “followers” on what you’re actually doing at the moment.

Now if I’m right, these followers aren’t exactly your friends…they simply well…follow you! Call it a “micro-blog” if you see it that way…I see it as a Facebook-status-update-platform-without-the rubbish-Facebook-games, tags and everything that came along with Facebook.

The minute I placed my first ‘tweet’…I started looking at how to actually reduce the size of the fonts because it appeared to me to be rather too large. On looking on other Twitter pages, I noticed that their ‘tweets’ were of normal standard sizes. So here I was, clicking on every option available to figure out how to reduce my font size for a good half an hour. Little did I know that by placing another ‘tweet’, the one before (which I was frantically trying to reduce the size of) automatically got reduced to the standard size. Therefore, for those of your Twitter virgins out there…don’t panic…your latest ‘tweet’ is meant to be that big.

Both J and I were quite excited to catch Angels and Demons when it was released so we went to watch it after work last week.

Now, both of us read the Da Vinci code and loved the book. However, we both found the movie a little dissapointing. We enjoyed reading Angels and Demons and were hoping that the big screen adaptation wouldn’t be such a letdown as Da Vinci. Therefore, we decided to give it a shot and see what it turned out to be.

And I have to say, I’m so glad I did. I’m not sure what the reviews are saying but this was one movie I wanted to see and judge for myself without having someone else’s opinions in my head before I even stepped into the cinema.

My own personal verdict? Brilliant. Well executed and once again, great acting from one of my favourite actors; Tom Hanks. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were a few scenes that were in the book but not depicted in the movie. However, unlike the Da Vinci Code, it wasn’t instantaneously picked up upon until after the movie when we were in the car talking about it. Ron Howard executed the plot really well and I was glued to the screen from the beginning. I would never have envisioned Ewan Mcgregor playing the role of the Camerlengo but he surprised me. I would definitely recommend it. It’s even better if you’ve read the book but if you haven’t…it’s another good Saturday evening pick for the cinema.

Coming from a lifetime of living in flats to actually having a garden now, the thought of planting a seed and watching it grow…is completely alien to me. These past few months, I’ve begun to discover terms like compost…grow bags…stakes…seedlings…plant food (and the list goes on)…terms I would never have been exposed to if I was still living in a HDB flat in Singapore.

Anyway, the truth is…I found it extremely boring. You plant these little seeds and you wait for 2 weeks while nothing happens…yet you wake up every morning and look into this little pot to see if somehow…somehow something’s changed from the night before and you hope…no!…you pray that you see some kind of life spurting out from underneath all that soil.

J has been persuading me to get some gradening done. However, I see no point in growing flowers etc…they look pretty yes…but am I going to go through all that for something that looks pretty and dies again in a few months? So we came to a compromise…I’ll grow herbs.

I wouldn’t mind going through all that waiting and praying and watering…if I can get some fresh herbs for my dishes at the end of the whole ordeal. So I did. I planted coriander, chives, basil and rosemary. Out in the garden, we have tomatoes and courgettes which will hopefully be arriving in June. Look how gorgeous my coriander’s looking!

I might have green fingers after all….

I have had a few e-mails from readers asking about my recent trip to Singapore. I have been meaning to blog about it but just haven’t gotten round to it!

If you’ve ever been to Singapore, you would know that the one thing Singaporean are very passionate about is the local Singaporean food.

Whenever I go back, I kinda have a list of local delicacies which I HAVE to eat or else my trip would be in vain. For the sake of those who haven’t been to Singapore, I thought I’d blog about some of the food we ate recently during this trip.

Ice Kacang

A simple, inexpensive desert comprising of nothing more than favourings, food colouring, some ‘chendol’ and crushed ICE. I love popping down into my local hawker centre at 2 in the morning and having a nice cold bowl of ice kacang.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

This has got to be one of my favourite dishes and is arguably one of Singapore’s most loved meal. You will find them everywhere and it’s oh so hugely satisfying. It’s basically a rice dish accompanied with roasted or steamed chicken pieces. The rice is especially fragrant as it’s cooked in chicken stock and the special chicken rice chilli sauce goes amazingly well with a touch of thick black soya sauce. I’m crazing it already!

Teppanyaki?

Now, I don’t know what this is properly categorized as. Japanese? I’m not sure. The stall is called “Teppanyaki” but the term teppanyaki here in the UK means something quite different…so it’s a little confusing. Anyway, I love the minced pork dish they serve and it comes accompanied with some stir-fried beansprouts, green vegetables and the meat generously stirred in their delicious sauce (not sure what the sauce is but it tastes so good!). Everything is cooked right in front of you and you see exactly what goes into your food. Once prepared, it’s served on aluminium foils placed over burners so your meal stays warm longer. A definite must-try!

Prawn Noodles - Dry

Traditional dish. Yellow noodles tossed with prawns and fish cake slices. You can have it dry or soupy. I prefer it dry as it’s much more spicy. As you can see from the picture, I’ve even asked for extra fresh chopped chillies! Believe it or not- this is a very common breakfast dish for me when I was living back in Singapore.

Roti Prata

One of my all-time favourites. A common breakfast dish but what I love about roti prata is the fact you can have it anytime! It’s light and the curry that goes along it, makes it just perfect. I remember having sober-up meals of roti prata house at 3am in the morning after a night of partying. haha

Well! All that food talk’s made me hungry! Those aren’t all though. I still in the process of sorting through my 600+ pics from the trip. So be warned: there will be more food posts in the near future.

Just a quick note to say that we are back in the UK. The trip was brilliant and I have been on a hiatus over the last couple of weeks. Feeling a little jet-lagged and homesick but as always, it’ll pass.

It was so nice to watch J interact with my family (eventhough most of the time he’s trying to grasp the whole Singlish way of speaking). He did good.

View from my parents flat

The weather was better than I expected. We did catch 2 thunderstorms but nothing too serious to ruin our plans for the day. To be perfectly honest, it got so hot on some days, I was grateful for a few rainy showers to cool the temperature down!

It’s been 24 hours since I’ve landed back in the UK and I miss the food already…