the story of a girl II

WOAH!

2009-06-08T16:03:00.006+08:00

Universal Music recently released a 5-disc, 100-song box set of the 100 greatest songs of the 60's from Singapore and my aunt and uncle's old band, Katherine (I'm ashamed to admit that I always thought her name was spelled with a C. oops. bad niece!) and the Firebyrds has 2 songs in it!(: Here's one of their songs, He's Sure to Remember Me (LISTEN!!) :

COOL TTM RIGHT! So James Bond. GO AUNTY AND UNCLE! KATHERINE AND THE FIREBYRDS FTW!! Yeah the "someone and the *insert cool group name*" sorta names were super hip back in the day. the "byrds" thing was super in too. i think all bands should have simple names like that! bands nowadays have uber cofusing names and i usually spend the first verse of the song trying to figure out which is the song name and which is the band name.

Anyway, so my aunt is Katherine and my uncle, Andrew (who was her boyfriend then), was one of the guitarists in the band. They only ever recorded one EP (not quite sure what that is. i think it's a record or sth like that?) because although EMI was interested in signing on my aunt, they didn't want her band, so my aunt refused. So that was the end of her music career. But she later married my now-uncle and they are pretty darn happy!

Pretty much all of my maternal grandmother's kids (ie. my mom and her siblings) can sing well, so karaoke's really huge in the family and people like me, my eldest sis and my dad who aren't Anugerah-winning material were always banned from/too embarrassed to pick up the mike. So, to all the friends whom I've dragged to karaoke and tortured with my banshee-esque voice, I am truly sorry, but I've only done what I've done because I had a repressed childhood when it came to singing ):

Shhh....

2009-06-08T15:56:00.004+08:00

And look who's found the perfect disguise.

Swine Flu Discrimination

2009-05-31T11:51:00.004+08:00

Sent to me by my second sis:

poor piglet):

It's a Beautiful Day

2009-03-12T16:50:00.004+08:00

Diane had a great day! She...

-woke up at 6am.
-went on a day trip to nozawa with daph, nath and b.
-had uber yummy almond-coated chocs. Who doesn't love those!
-slept on the way there.
-sailed through+tumbled and somersaulted in+played with+got stuck in beautiful, dry, powdery snow.
-got attacked by 3 trees (one at a time) who somehow managed to skilfully attack the little skin not covered by any material, dodging her helmet, neck/cheek-warmer and goggles.
-almost crashed into a rather large tree but luckily she managed to stop in time.
-got laughed at by some japanese dudes on a chairlift.
-got laughed at by her brother-in-law.
-walked a lot.
-resisted the urge to buy one of the cho kawaii apple soft toys she saw.
-tried to pay again for an already-bought coffee at 7-eleven that daph had paid for.
-got challenged by nath and b to a battle with Black Black (some caffeine-loaded chewing gum).
-won the battle and slept on the way home.

Photo of the day!!!

Daphne Wong in action. Woot! To quote B, she 'actually looks like she knows what she was doing'. In reality, she was probably on her way to a fall. HAHA. But it's okay. At least she got an awesome as shot!

Lonely, I'm Mr Lonely

2009-03-06T07:33:00.022+08:00

Yes, yes. I'm a man in disguise. That should come as no shock to any of you.
Anyway, the boys returned to Melbourne yesterday and the lodge is a whole lot quieter now. Ino and I miss them lots. It was Tom's birthday on wednesday and we had a party at the Powderhouse on tuesday for him. Daph and I baked him a cake:

Hm. Yes well, daph and I both have zero artistic flair.

Birthday boy! Happy 23rd(:

The BZU 4: me, Sam, Tom, Ino

And my favourite photo of the night:

Hugh, me, Nath. Never thought I could be described as small till I came to Hakuba O.O

Hugh very sweetly drove all the way from Tokyo to Hakuba (about a 6-hour drive) in the snow, in his tiny Z4 Beemer (totally not built for driving in snow) just to attend the party and say goodbye to the boys before they left. Can just imagine him all squashed up in his tiny vehicle.

Anyway, so the boys are gone. And the Hedleys left for Taiwan this morning and will be back Sunday night. Their 90-day tourist visa expires on Sunday so they have to leave Japan and re-enter in order to extend their stay. They have very kindly invited me to stay at their house while they're gone. So I have the house all to myself for 3 days! Woohoo. Eeyore, Lambchop and Roger are keeping me company(: (Daph took Pigsy to Taiwan. Lucky pig. He's been to more countries than I have! He toured freaking Europe for heaven's sake.) But I am so lonely): So lonely. Ah well, at least I can watch TV all day and maybe go for a walk if it would stop freaking raining. Oh god. Spring is here.

The icing on the cake: A level results are out in a few hours. Fuck. I seriously have little desire to know my results and have been having nightmares about them, but we can't avoid the inevitable. Please gods and goddesses in the heavens above, please let me have at least a couple of A's. I need to get into USyd! Neeeed to. And, I don't wanna embarrass my mum ): But Diane, what will come, will come. If you do badly, you have nobody to blame but yourself. It was you who chose to watch tv and movies while your fellow schoolmates were mugging their asses off day in day out. Grah.

An Impulse Buy

2009-03-04T14:31:00.008+08:00

A few days ago, I was walking past the fruit section of the supermarket(which, btw, is just about the most happening shop in Hakuba), when they called out to me. Big, round, purple and looking like they were bursting with juicy goodness, the grapes entranced me. After standing there and staring at them for a minute (and looking like an idiot), I finally picked them up and put them in the basket. And that was how I ended up spending 400 yen (about $6.40) on a tiny punnet of grapes -.-

I just had to take a photo of them when I got to the car. My photos don't do them justice ):

Okay, they look like shit in the photos. They weren't particularly sweet and there were seeds in them, but they were juuiiiiicy. Like *bite* *juice squirts all over the place*-kinda juicy. woot. But me thinks they were a tad expensive. Note: Thou shall not be seduced by Japanese fruits no more.

Moisturiser Please!

2009-03-01T21:33:00.002+08:00

Last night, I washed more dishes than I had washed my entire life before coming to Hakuba O.O

Fatty Fatty Bom Bom

2009-02-19T15:00:00.001+08:00

Need to lay off the giant bowls of ramen and humongous katsu meals O.O

Sunny

2009-02-13T20:03:00.002+08:00

I fried a really pretty sunny side up egg to go with my (instant) yakisoba for dinner. Me so happy!!!(: For once, the egg wasn't oblong and didn't stick to the pan. It's all in the oil, my friend.

Yummilicious

2009-02-01T20:37:00.004+08:00

Had the most awesome breakfast ever this morning. One of my boss's (and nath's and daph's; everybody knows everybody, it seems) good friends, Tony, is staying at the lodge and he is/was a chef. He walked into the kitchen this morning while I was washing glasses from the previous night and before I knew it, he was cooking up a storm, pans on every stove and oven fired up. So genki early in the morning!

Had poached eggs, roasted tomatoes, buttered toast and sauteed mushrooms (and a glass of real shithouse apple juice. That's what I get for being a cheapskate and buying the cheapest one). YUM. Sadly, I didn't get to luxuriously savour my breakfast cos daph was hurrying me to be done and hit the slopes. Grrrr. Turned out that the snow was so shit anyway; only spent like an hour on the slopes. Poached eggs rock my socks(:

Me Stash

2009-01-30T16:20:00.006+08:00

In my tiny little room, there's a tiny little pantry where i keep my munchies (and some food that i'm too lazy to bring up to the kitchen) and it looks like this:
Let's take a look at some of my favourites:
Nagaraya nuts: Aunty Sen brought a few packets back for the philippines for me and i packed 4 in my luggage, one each of flavour: original, adobo, hot and spicy, garlic. Used the hot and spicy one as 'chips' for a game of poker though, and i suck at poker so i only got to enjoy about a fifth of the packet:( Anyway, it's one of my favourite snacks of all time and I've introduced it to some of me friends like P. They're available at Lucky Plaza for me thinks $1.50 per packet but Aunty Sen insisted on buying some back for me cos she thinks it's too expensive at Lucky Plaza O.O Thank you Aunty Sen!The garlic one's the only one left cos I'm saving the best for last(:
Mairoko-chan is my nutty nuts container.

Another snack from the philippines. Not sure what it's called, but it's made by this company called Goldilocks and is some sort of melt-in-your-mouth confectionery.

A wafer-biscuit-ish snack that the Ortons bought for me for my birthday (they also gave me a snowboarding lesson; they're both snowboarding instructors O.O they don't even board. they fly.). They didn't have a clue what it was like when they bought it but it's yum! Sweet-ish with a bit of a smoky flavour cos it's some sorta yaki snack.

This snack is literally called 'yummy stick' in Japanese and it lives up to its name! I bought this takoyaki flavour cos it was the only japanese-ish flavour available and cos the packaging is red! Haha. It cost 270 yen for a pack of 30 sticks. What a steal!

Munching on these munchies is making my snowboarding go down the drain when it comes to the size of me tummy:(

But Things Will Never Be the Same

2009-01-24T18:40:00.010+08:00

Pops was really big on Chinese New Year and every year, the whole family would hang up decorations around the house to make the place all red and gold and gaudy and warm (if that combination is possible) and joyous. When we were still living in Pasir Ris Way, our neighbours were a young, modern couple that were far too westernised to engage in CNY ching-gang. One CNY, the wife brought their 5 year-old son to our house for a visit and his reaction when he saw all the decorations that we had painstakingly hung up made me realise for the first time, how much I took for granted the joy that I got to experience every CNY.

Every year, we'd hang up a large red paper fan that was the centerpiece of our decorations. I've lived in 4 different houses and I remember clearly its position in every one of them. Then there would be the dui lian scrolls that were the next standard pieces and every CNY, we would spend half an hour trying to figure out which went on the left and which on the right and I don't think we ever remembered the order we put it in the previous year. Scrolls (all of them red) were also standard decoration items, but save for 1 or 2 that Pops had had forever, most of them came and went. He enjoyed searching for new ones every CNY and he was quite fussy about them! As he was with most things. Pussy willow decorations were always topped up each year too, except for the 18 hongbaos that we hung every year. These small hanging ornaments were kept very unglamourously in a clear drawstring plastic bag and there were the 12 animals of the zodiac, fish, paper pineapples, etc. We generally favoured gold-coloured ornaments, as opposed to 'realistically'-coloured ones. I had a tendency to over-decorate the pussy willow O.O At the door, a large red cloth (no golden tassels, which was good, cos i think the yellow tassels make it look a bit temple-ish) would be flanked by firecrackers. I remember that we also had an electric one with lights but that went somewhere else, somewhere outside the house where passers-by could enjoy it too(: Red pillow cases, a lacquered goodies container, table runners, standing firecrackers, mini-lanterns, giant red pineapples (my parents and the neighbours who lived in the bungalow across the road had this really childish competition one year where they kept trying to upstage each other by buying larger pineapples -.-), plus a mini pineapple, and a pair of 'welcome doll stickers' (no idea what they are actually called. they're the cardboard things that come in pairs, one female and one male usually carrying scrolls with auspicious sayings on them, that we'd buy every year according to the animal of the zodiac, rounded off the decorations.

Dawn and I have been trying to continue this tradition of embellishing the house with stuff that most might call gawdy, but which to us bring warmth to our house and to our hearts, but as she said, things just aren't the same anymore. Besides the obvious fact that our house is bloody tiny and can't fit many decorations, Mom isn't really enthusiastic about decorating the house. Just an hour ago, I learnt that she has thrown all the decorations away, save for the pussy willow decorations and firecrackers and I couldn't control my floodgates. Dawn yelled at her when she found out and I think I would have too if I was there. I am comforted to know that she and daph are both upset about this too, and that maybe I'm not foolish in wanting to cling to these memories.

We've never had to talk about it, but daph, dawn and I hold CNY and its traditions, or at least our traditions, very dear to our hearts. It may seem silly to most that we're desperately hang on to our past, but no matter how grown-up or modernised we may be, the traditions that our father impressed on us will always be important. However, it seems that we are losing more and more of them every CNY and it pains me when I wonder how long more we'd be able to keep a grasp on whatever we have left before they slip through our fingers and we are left with nothing but mere memories of what had been.

Mystery of the Day

2009-01-20T16:31:00.002+08:00

How do shit stains get on toilet seats?o.O Did the culprit lift his butt up while doing the deed?

Sunday's Food Outings

2009-01-20T15:31:00.004+08:00

For some reason, I felt like eating out for lunch on Sunday. So I piled layers of clothes on, put on my rubber gum boots, grabbed my discount vouchers (which I forgot to use in the end -.-) and wallet and ventured out into Happo village. Happo being the ski area where lots and lots of visitors come to, the food here is generally not very cheap and I'd rather listen to my wallet than my stomach so I ate at a nearby place which had the cheapest menu I saw. After mulling over the Japanese menu and then the English one, I ordered meself a Chashu Don: Whoops. Started eating before I remembered to take a photo. Heh. Had to sweep aside the tremendous amount of spring onion and pickled ginger cos me no like. 600 yen for a small bowl of rice and THREE pieces of chashu is a bit of a rip off me thinks. And as mentioned earlier, I stupidly forgot to use a discount voucher (the season pass came with 10 of them). Lastly, I dropped a coin while paying the bill and couldn't find it. Think it was a 100 yen coin:( I think the store has a really strong money-sucking aura which causes even the floor to have this amazing ability to absorb money. Nonetheless, the Chashu Don was super yummy. I prefer Japanese chashu, which is salty, to Chinese char siew because the latter is a bit sweet-ish which me no really like:(

I was gonna stay home for dinner because it costs many many to eat out too often! BUT Tom came a-knocking at a quarter past 6, saying that they were going to Emu for dinner and asked if I wanted to come. Emu's a Japanese word, by the way, not the bird. The pronunciation causes a fair bit of confusion but like whatever yo.

The three of us squeezed into little Terry the truck because Ino-san was in Tokyo and he's the one with a car. Good thing we went out for dinner too, cos the boss and the guests were having a big dinner thing back at the lodge where they had leg of lamb! *salivates*

Anyway, back to us. With Tom driving, Sam controlling the gear-stick and me sitting happily with ample space for my very ample thighs (me thinks a leg of diane can feed the entire Hakuba), we set off for Emu. The previous time I went to Emu, I had had a Chashu Ramen (I heart chashu!) which was humongous and uber yum. Throughout the journey there, I was deciding between the Miso Ramen and the Chicken Katsu Teishoku (set meal): the former was cheaper, the latter came with a bowl of rice, a bowl of noodles and a large slab of chicken katsu.

Emu was PACKED full of foreigners (mostly aussies). There were literally 30+ whites, 1 chinese (me(:) and ONE japanese customer. Most of the gaijins were at the Okonomiyaki tables where they were happily frying pancakes and drinking sake (and getting a tad drunk). Decided to listen to my stomach once again and ordered the slightly more expensive Chicken Katsu meal. ALAS! They were running low and had only 2 chicken katsus left. Taking this as a supernatural sign that I should heed the advice of my wallet more often instead, I offered to get something else and got the Miso Ramen:

The bowl of ramen is huuuuuuuge. I just realised that I should have placed something in the picture as a gauge -.- stupid Diane. Ah well, just know that it is huuuge. Like it took up half length of the table. ACK nevermind, I'll take a better photo the next time I go. It cost 670 yen and the amount of food was probably 3 times that of the Chashu Don. The bad thing was that it contained very few pieces of thinly slicked fatty pork and toooo much veggie. Me thinks me shall stick with the Chashu Ramen (which is slightly pricier and has shoyu soup instead) the next time (or, of course, get a katsu meal). But the soup was yuuuuummy. Daph taught me a way of eating noodles: dipping them in vinegar (preferable white). So yum!Switched drivers for the ride back. The two of them were ALWAYS camera-ready. They'll put most ah lians to shame. I hope Sam was concentrating on the road O.O

Stopped by Lawson's on the way back cos I wanted to get popsicles. They only had one type (the rest were ice creams) and they sucked! At least they were cheap (62 yen each). Then it was back to the lodge where we were supposed to play cards and eat our ice creams/popsicle (The best thing about eating ice cream in winter is that it hardly melts!) but I got swamped by dishes that I had to wash instead -.- boo. But I was earning money! so that's good(:

...and that concludes Diane's incredibly boring play-by-play post on her food outings.

Last Christmas

2009-01-18T07:59:00.001+08:00

This being my first Christmas in a wintry, snowy town (and a really beautiful one at that), I was of course looking forward to a white Christmas. As Christmas drew closer though, the lack of snow was starting to worry me. I woke up on Christmas morning and...
It hadn't snowed:( (the snow on the ground was from a few days before) "Please snow!" this not-so-little-girl wished.
First activity of the day: PRESENTS! O.O Where's the christmas joy?o.O
Much better(: A vest and a whistle for nath and boots for daph.

Time for breakfast! Nathan demands something special for a Christmas breakfast. "Let's have pancakes!" and daph proceeds to search for a pancake recipe on the net.
Yum! Even moonica looks hungry. Of course we didn't have just ONE pancake each. Dear daph was making more on the stove. Pancakes with cream cheese/jam/honey. And a banana pancake each! Yummm... And toast for daph, cos she doesn't like pancakes, which means more for us! Yay.

Post-breakfast hug: "Thanks for the yummy breakfast!" So shweet!(: The kids look so proud of their balancing-act feat(: Christmas day chillaxing...
With the fireplace burning...
And snow falling from the sky. (FINALLY! YAY!)
Christmas lunch: +my boss, Brendan

Then it was back to the lodge for some work. :( for the work, :) for the money earned!

Lastly, Christmas dinner! Nath kindly treated me to dinner, which was a Christmas thing held at the Phoenix hotel, which he used to have a stake in. I didn't bring any nice clothes to Hakuba, so daph had to lend me a purple sweater, which was quite retro but still pretty(: And the best thing about it was that it's baggy and hid my mounds of fat O.O

Pre-dinner drinks and photos. I seem frighten of nathan O.O

Our table: (clockwise from left) Hiromi, Tom, Nath, me, Daph, Brendan, Sam, Mick and Kai.

Kai's Hiromi and Mick's 4 year-old son and he is soooooo adorable! Some other dude was wearing the same shirt as him O.O

After some yummy parmesan/rosemary bread, dinner was served! We were given two choices for each course, and these were the dishes I picked:

Entree: Scallops and some sort of fowl confit. Can't remember if it was chicken or duck. This was uber yum.

Main: Slow-cooked turkey with potatoes. I had a hard time choosing the main course. The other dish was steak, which I absolutely adore, but I ended up ordering the turkey cos it's Christmas! I tried a small piece of the steak (nath's) and regretfully, I thought the steak was yummier! The turkey was yummy too, but a bit dry:(

Dessert: Pavlova. Oh this was soooooo yummy! After I finished mine, I had the rest of daph's cos she isn't much of a dessert person. It wasn't as nice though, because the meringue had gotten a bit soggy by then. But of course, still yum!

Though dinner was super super yummy, at 15,000yen a person, it was grossly overpriced. But of course, I was so happy that the hedleys got me a place at dinner, which was awesome! Thanks nath and daph!(:

So, this was the sight that greeted us when we stepped out of the phoenix hotel. It had been snowing really heavily during dinner.A quick photo before we called it a night(: Look at the pretty shhnnoooowww!