Chinese New Year Eve

Today is Chinese New Year Eve and unfortunately I'm working. Come to think of it, even if I wasn't working, what would I be doing at home? Bumming on the couch in my PJ's watching/ flicking through some boring daytime telly. This is the time when I miss home and family the most. Listening to Chinese New Year songs on Youtube; reading blogposts from others about CNY preparations; talking on the phone to mum and listening to her tell me about her preparations -- always makes me feel a bit sad and nostalgic. This year(as with two or three previous years), due to poor planning, I wasn't able to make it home to celebrate CNY with the family. I am determined that next year, I will book my tickets early so that I can be home for Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is not complete without all your family  members around you. And I do feel guilty come this time of year, knowing that my family will be missing me, yet again, during their reunion dinner. So having to work today really sucks, and not only that, I am working till 10pm tonight, so tripple S.U.C.K.S !!! But luckily, one of my colleagues from my evening shift is kind enough to cover for me tomorrow night so at least I can do something special then in the evening just as a small mark of celebration to usher in this year of the cute bunny rabbit.

Anyhoooo, let's move on and I shall show you in a picture sequence of what has been happening lately. I know, I know, didn't I mention at the beginning that I will put in a bit more effort in updating my blog and so far that hasn't yet materialised. You  must forgive me as ever since we've moved to the new place, we have not had the internet so that has made things a bit tricky, especially in terms of blogging after work. But, today being Chinese New Year Eve, I am in the mood to update my blog, for some strange reason.

Last year, Travelodge was doing some great deals on their room rate and one can get a room for as low as £9 per night so we booked three weekends away to three different places that we've always wanted to visit but never got round to because ordinarily it's too expensive. So the weekend before last, it was a weekend away to Brighton and we only paid 12.50 per night, for a room in the heart of the Brighton City Centre and it was brilliant. We explored the famous and cultural North Laines, went for drinks at the pub, and of course had an excellent Indian lunch at the famous Chilli Pickle restaurant and it was absolutely mind-blowing. Some pictures to show you.

Steve ordered the chicken curry dosa and it came looking like two gigantic horns on a plate and it was delicious and authentic.

I ordered fish curry thali which came with rice, dal, pickle and bread. It was a bit too hot and spicy for me but the mixture of spices in the dishes were amazing. Not too over-powerful; just the right touch. 

We spent a considerable amount of time at the Amusement park at the pier mainly because Steve was determined to win me a teddy bear from the teddy bear clawing machines. And also I was addicted to the 'coin machine' and the phrase for the day was '10p more', '10p more'... ie, if I slot in another 10p, the machine will push the coins further to the edge so that more coins will drop out. Steve had to practically drag me out of the amusement centre so that I don't lose another 20 lot of '10p more'... here's a picture of Steve working hard at those teddy bear 'clawing' machines.

We didn't get the big teddy from this machine but Steve eventually managed to get me a smaller and cuter dog from another machine. And we both left the amusement park feeling smug and contented with me hugging the doggy to my chest and looking proud (great weekend huh? lol)

In my last post, I was excited about my latest sewing project and I can now reveal that it's a beanbag for the lounge and I can tell you I am very satisfied with it. 

This picture shows the inner and the outer bag before the big operation of white fluffy bean filling into the bag.

And here's the beanbag and it's really comfortable too. ps, note to self, must start making other things too. I haven't seen my sewing machine in ages.

On a seperate subject, I have been buying honey pomelos from Lidls and they only cost a pound and it's always juicy and lovely, although the last one was a bit too sharp for me so it's still sitting in the fridge.

Not many people know about this fruit in this country and people always shy away from things they are not familiar with. People love grapefruits and this is almost like a grapefruit, but three times bigger !! So if you see a honey pomelo when you're next in Lidls, get one, and follow my example to cut it open. It's juicy, tangy and sweet.

I am very lucky to have DSC working in the office. She often surprises me with lots of goodies.

Chocolate mice, that is.

How cute are they?!?!

Okay, this concludes my non-Chinese Chinese New Year Eve post and Gong Xi Fa Chai to all and wishing you a full year of health, wealth and happiness, just like the bunny.

New Year, New Post

7 days into the new year and my last post from last year is staring back at me, almost with a fed-up expression, demanding to know when I will finally get into gear to write a brand spanking new entry for the new year.

This working week started on Tuesday, so really it was only a 4-day-week, but it felt like it's been dragging on for dayssss and I am glad that it is finally Friday today and all my muscles are beginning to loosen themselves and my 'relax' mode is about to kick in, in a few hours' time. 

Sometimes it is a challenge thinking of interesting and engaging topics to write about on the blog and at the moment, the 'fountain of ideas' in my head is as dry as the Sahara Desert.

I guess the highlight of the new year is us appreciating the new living space that we have right now. In the next post, I will put up some pictures of the house but at the moment because the weather is always so dark and gloomy I reckon any pictures taken will not look very nice at all. In the meantime, we are still collecting bits and pieces for the house to make it as nice as possible. Having said that, for reasons that I will not get into details right now, this shift is only temporary so we are trying not to go crazy with buying new things so that when we eventually have to move out, we won't have to face a new clutter, on top of the old one we already have. But I am determined not to worry about something that has yet to come and I will enjoy this moment to the maximum. It is really lovely to have my own sewing room although I haven't been in there for quite a while. However, that is all going to change soon because as I am composing this, my whole body and mind is trembling with excitement over a project that I can't wait to get started on as soon as the weekend begins!! And obviously more will be revealed about the project as the pictures of the finished project are unveiled in the next post, hopefully !!!

Oh and just a few pictures to share with you of our quiet but absolutely delicious New Year celebration at home. I love steamboat because it always reminds me of Chinese New Year with my family and also it's an excuse to prepare lots and lots of calorific fantastic array of seafood!!

 We made some siew mai for lunch on New Year's Eve.

 Firing up the gas stove to make sure that our steamboat experience will take place without a hitch.

And the selection of food that we had. We surprised ourselves by finishing quite a huge amount of it but still have enough leftovers for a quick noodle soup meal the next night. D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S !!

Okay my dears, I think this will do for a new year post from me and hopefully in the next post I will be able to upload some pictures of the house to share with you. Until then, a belated Happy New Year to you and take care.

PS: This entire post was composed with me holding the phone to my ear with my left hand while being put onhold with the Maybank2u telephone customer service and my right hand tick tack typing away. And I keep hearing this over and over again - "Sorry, all our EXECUTIVES (they certainly think very highly of themselves) are still busy. Please hold, we will attend to you shortly." They can't even be bothered with putting on some nice music to sooth the 'seething anger' that I am slowly building up within me. I don't mean to put the Malaysian service down but it really wouldn't come as a surprise to find that the EXECUTIVES are probably sitting there yakking away about what to have for dinner and decide to let the phone ring and ring and ring.... I need to make the EXECUTIVE decision about when is the best time to give up and hang up...

And Christmas is almost here...

So much has happened lately I haven't even the time nor the energy to blog about it. But looking back at my blog posts for last year, I had some Christmassy blog entries and this year, I thought I should at least make some effort to record what's been happening.

Right, first of all, we have moved into a new place temporarily and it's been hectic moving all our things over. Despite the fact that it was just moving to the back of the house, the number of trips we had to make moving things out of a room over to the new place was endless. We also took this opportunity to get rid of some of the rubbish that's been sitting around for years. And it felt good !! Although we have everything we need in the bedroom and the living room (with all the Christmas decorations up) our kitchen actually looks empty and at the moment, there are two sets of cutlery, two mugs, a bowl and some dinner plates, haha. And of course, most importantly, we bought some pots and pans but that's about it...here are some pictures taken of the new place after the snow.

 The area outside the patio door.

 The pavement outside the house.

So we managed to move almost everything eventually and we were beginning to organise everything into their proper place and starting to settle down a bit but we were also busy preparing for something else. Last Saturday, Steve and I had the opportunity to host a Christmas party at the shop for 17 of our close friends and it was bloody fantastic!! Of course Steve, being absolutely ecstatic with having that opportunity started planning his menu months beforehand and decided on a full-blown 5-course dinner with various canapes of dragon roll sushi, rare roast beef on mini yorkshire puddings, and etc. on arrival. Before the starter, guests were served an Amuse-bouche of sweet corn veloute accompanied by streaky bacon or vegetarian cornbreads (a bit like the corn muffins you get from Kenny Roger's Roasters but smaller). And then comes the starter, which was thin slices of home-cured salmon gravlax, served with asparagus tips and dressed with chives creme fraiche and leaf salad, or for those who do not like seafood, they were served home-made ravioli with roasted pine nuts and spinach. It was an absolute shame that because I was busy helping him serve up the courses, I didn't get the opportunity to take a single picture of the food. But I did manage to take a picture before the party started which I shall reveal later. And after the starters, the main course of fillet steak was served with roasted potatoes, provencal peas, red cabbage and caramelised onions in beef jus. As for the vegetarian, pan fried scallops were served instead of the fillet steak. For desserts, everyone was served an assiete of pudding which consisted of a slice of lemon tart, a slice of bread and butter pudding and a chocolate mousse (not sure if it was mousse because it was quite thick and creamy) with raspberry coulis. And the dinner didn't finish at that. Afterwards, guests were served coffee as well as home-made chocolates!! It was a really fantastic experience but of course what came at the end was loads of washing up and everybody helped to clear up as well so there wasn't much to do apart from the washing up. And I didn't really fancy the thought of having to go back there again the next day to continue with the washing up, so I whipped through all the washing up of pots and pans and glasses and plates and cutlery that night and we only had to go up to the shop the next day to do a bit of tidying up and putting the shop back to its original form. It was a great and fantastic experience and we were happy that everyone came and had a great time but quite a lot of preparations went into it. Ahh, here's the picture I took before the party started...

 As you can see, we were not short of things to drink.

This is a really nice picture taken by one of our friends. Unfortunately, she's missing from the picture.

So after that had taken place, we then started to worry about getting the last minute bits and pieces done in preparation of Christmas. For the first time in 5 years, Steve and I decided to do a Christmas stocking for each other and I happily volunteered to make ourselves two personalised Christmas stockings and I went and got all the materials from the fabric shop but I kept being delayed because my sewing room was not properly set up at the new place and all my fabric boxes and books and other paraphenelia were still lying around. So on Monday, the University was shut due to the snow and I immediately cracked on with the stocking and managed to produce something. I started doing Steve's stocking first and paid a lot of attention to details and did lots of satin stitch edging around the applique but when it came to mine, I had lost half the will and did a rather sloppy job of stitching the applique on but I am quite happy with the end results nevertheless.

Fely mentioned that Steve's stocking is larger than mine. Can you tell the difference?

Well, that's about it for now. I am quite ready for Christmas and getting more and more excited now. Not long to wait now.... 2 days before Christmas!! Yiippeeee !!

Have a really Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

And it's December...

A couple of posts ago, I was whining and whinging about the challenges and difficulties  that I was facing trying to complete a set of Roman blinds. I knew I could do it, but I just felt like whinging and whining about it... part and parcel of completing a project...

Anyway, the pair of Roman blinds were duly completed at 11pm the night before we had to go up to London to 'deliver the goods' and I was overcome with a sense of relief, mixed with pride and a tinge of smugness. Here are some pictures to show you their complete state,  before they were hung in their proper place.

The two greatest challenges when making them were 1. they were too big for the limited work/ sewing space that I had, seeing the fact that I only own a household sewing machine, and also the fact that my cutting/ measuring table was actually just a 110cm x 80cm dropleaf table, and 2. I didn't have a specific pattern/ instructions that I could follow. I had watched quite a few youtube videos of roman blind making and also read up on a few articles about it but I had to device my own pattern and it was a bit of a 'hit and miss' and I was so nervous the whole time about making mistakes, especially when I was cutting the pieces out because the fabric wasn't cheap.

But I did manage to complete them and thought they looked absolutely beautiful. They were not 100% perfect but I think for a first roman blind, it wasn't too bad. Of course after completing them, I then had another worry that they weren't going to fit the windows properly and as you can imagine I was worrying about it all night and all next morning until Steve's brother finally said, "Okay let's see if we can fit the blinds up then". Here's a picture to show you a comparison of the old curtain, and the new blind.

So overall, a happy me and a satisfied 'client'.

What I like about this whole sewing addiction is that you learn something new after each project and the level of satisfaction you get from completing a project no matter how big or small is so great! And I've been thinking to myself for the past few months -- sewing, where have you been all my life?!

On a separate subject, you would have probably read somewhere by now that the UK was hit by a sudden cold snap which brought along plenty of snow, even Bournemouth, a place which rarely snows, had such a thick layer of snow that we couldn't get to work for almost two days ! I took some pictures and here they are, as a nice way of ending this first post for the December month.

Time for bed now I think. It's been a longggg day.

Am I back in secondary school?

Throughout my primary and secondary school years, because my name is a rather uncommon name, I received more than my fair share of teasing and taunting about it because you know what kids are like, they tease and make fun of other kids. That gradually disappeared, thank god, and I sailed through the University years without any reminder of what else or how else my name could sound like. 

On my name tag which I wear during work at the supermarket, I have requested only my first name to be put on it, which is 'Peng Peng'. These are some of the comments I get from it, as far as I can remember.

"Is that your real name?"

"What a beautiful name !" -- now that, I don't mind at all.

"What an unusual name !" -- define 'unusual' please...

"Is that your first name and your surname?"

 "Your parents like your name so much they named you twice?" -- do they even think when they say things like that?

"Your sister must be called 'Peng Peng Peng' and your other sister 'Peng Peng Peng Peng'....." -- what?!?!

Anyway, these are only some of the comments I can remember.... bear in mind I have been working at the supermarket for nearly three years now and I'm sure there must have been more than that said to me at the check out by people who cannot resist to say 'witty' and 'funny' things to the check out girl.

Can you imagine what it would be like if I had included my surname in it?! 

The Three Most Useful Things I've Ever Bought.

It is normal to go through life making mistakes and learning from them.You often make the wrong decisions which you will later regret; say the things which you would wish you hadn't; and buy the things that you will find out later to be rather useless and serve no purpose. This might not be strictly true for some of you careful shoppers out there, but for me, it is one of those things which I have come to accept in life. I am impulsive, careless and easily swayed.

I was sitting down with a cuppa one day and started reflecting on things (as you would, with a cuppa)... and I started to look at the things around me and realised that actually, not all my 'impulse buys' were deemed useless and a waste of money. In fact some of these 'impulse buys' turned out to be the 'best buys' ever !! And most of all, they were inexpensive items which I have come to rely upon every day, without realising it. 

So without further ado, let's introduce them.

#Item 1

I bought this in a sale after Christmas, not last Christmas, but two Christmasses ago for 50p. And  ever since then, I have used it every day without fail, to bring  my lunch to work. The best 50p I have ever spent.

#Item 2

Last year, I went on a girlie trip to IKEA, and on impulse bought this laptop table for my Mac. I love having this table next to the bed and I wouldn't know where and how else I would have set my laptop up in the room given the limited space that we have around us. And the price, a mere £14.99 ! 

#Item 3

I was browsing in Sainsbury's one day when I came across this blue dotted bowl and thought to myself that I must have it. So I bought it for £2.50 and I have come to rely on it a lot for my meals at my desk -- my morning porridge, my Monday instant noodle lunch, etc.

So there you have it. The three most unassuming items which I have bought that I have come to rely upon so much every day, and it didn't even cost me an arm and a leg.

A Rainy Sunday...

At 10.15am, I was still lazing in bed.

I have a confession to make. Two months ago, I would have jumped out of bed on a Sunday as early as 7.30am, eager to continue with a sewing project that I have got going.

Not this morning. I mean, I do have a project going at the moment, but 'eagerness' is the last word I would use to describe my feelings about it right now. For the first time, I don't feel excited about a project I'm working on. As usual, I have done all the necessary research before embarking on this project and have got all my materials ready and I know exactly what to do. Until I got started. I started measuring and cutting out the material and so far it has taken more than a day, just to cut out one of the front pieces, with wonky edges and corners. And I'm still trying to get it straight.

This project I'm working on is a pair of Roman blinds which Steve and I have promised his brother as a birthday present... it's very simple :- Steve buys the materials, and I put the blinds together. Only, it's not quite as simple as it sounds. For the first time, I dread going into the sewing room.

The fabric is long and stretchy and difficult to handle. Although I now have a good size measuring table, it's not made it any easier. Measuring out the right size to cut is a disaster; trying to cut it out on a straight line, is beyond catastrophic.

The edge of the fabric kept fraying and bits of fluff kept coming off, making it impossible to work with. Fely has kindly suggested a pair of pinking shears and pinking shears were obtained but that didn't help eiter.

Why am I blogging about this?

Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is behind every beautiful and succesful sewing project, there is a certain degree of frustration, depression, anger and exasperation. This one in particular, is at an exceptionally high level. And I haven't even yet started sewing it. But the past few months of sewing has taught me that resilience, determination and patience are the three main ingredients to completing a beautiful and neat project and as much as I dread it at this stage, I will certainly push myself to get past this stage and start to enjoy the project a bit more when I've made some great progress with it.

I remember a month back I started a project making my mum a blouse for her birthday following a pattern from a Japanese pattern book. That was also a challenge to me clearly because a. I can't read Japanese (whatever possessed me to buy a book with Japanese instructions??!?!) and b. the fabric I was working on for it was silky, smooth and stretchy and it kept falling off the table and 'running' away from me hence the cutting was no fun either. But I ploughed through it and was proud to be able to pack the blouse a few days before Mum's birthday and send it off. Hopefully it is now safely on its way to her.

The only thing I worry slightly about is the size. I didn't have her measurement but I used myself as the model throughout the entire process but the trouble is I am slightly bigger than Mum and the blouse itself is quite baggy. But we'll see :)

Anyway, back to my rainy Sunday...

So when Steve suggested that we go for a movie, I saw it as a means of 'escaping' from the task at hand. It was a movie called 'Unstoppable' featuring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine and Rosario Dawson, based on a true story. Due to the negligence and stupidity of a rail worker, an unmanned train carrying highly toxic and explosive chemicals was heading at full throttle towards densely populated cities and somebody has to stop it. It was an excellent movie based on a few factors :: it wasn't dragged on for too long; the introduction and background to build up the characters was relevant and sufficient and not too soppy; and during the entire movie, I was kept on the edge of my seat. The best thing of all about the movie yesterday -- it was free. Steve had managed to find a voucher off the internet which he printed and which gave us two free tickets to watch the movie. So all in all, a great experience!

To finish off this post, a couple of photos to show you who Sasha always favours in the house.

  

Those legs belong to Steve and that's where you'd normally find Sasha when Steve's sat at the computer doing his work. And no, it wasn't a Thursday when I took these photos. The man clearly has issues with his days...

Hopefully when I update my post again, I shall have more pictures to show you of the progress I've made with the blinds.

Take care now and thanks for dropping by.