I am melting in Seattle!!

OMG!! The weather is killing me. Killing me from the inside out or from the outside in. JEEZ!! I can feel that my skin is burning. So, it's the freaking Summer season now. Now I know summer in Seattle starts from July. I checked the weather and it said 25 Celsius. It's only 25 Celsius and I feel like dying already, I wonder how I survived last summer. =_+ I still remember there was one day on last summer (when I was in North Carolina), the temperature hit 110 Fahrenheit, which is 43.33 Celsius, crazy or not!! It was so hard to breath that time, and I was feeling headache and nausea for the whole day. Anyway, I gotta apply sunblock everyday before I go to work, and I also have to steal my kids' sunblock to use when I went outing with them. Poor me.

Sigh. I have to take care of myself to make sure I wont turn darker and darker before I go back to Malaysia. Besides, I have to take care of my skin where I got bitten from the sweet little angel at work. The other day I got bitten like 6 or 7 bites on my right arm. =_+ I can tell you it's not fun. My right arm got so sore right away.


Show you the bite, the one not that scary one.

This one doesn't look scary and not that painful.

The next day it actually become pretty painful as the bruises extended!! The color now is even more disgusting. =_+ But this is the better one compared to other bites, I had bleeding bleeding one someone!!

Ok, forget about the bites. Back to Summer. So it's now summer holidays, kids are outta school. So everyday also have to plan some interesting activity or outing for them. Park is always a good place for them to go.

Have been wanting to show you guys Mt. Ranier but can't really get a nice picture of it.

At the park. Many many many people.

Get to play with water (for the kids la), but you wont see any of my kids in here because I have no money to pay for $10000 for each picture of the kiddo. =_+

I get to camwhore. The weather is stupidly hot!!

Get to see car show!

I like this one. cute one.

Brought those little monkey to Strawberry Festival (it's actually an art & music festival).

Hot chick under Hot sun. iPhone did the magic.

That's all about work.

It's all about my...hmm... "social life" now.

Went out to "tour" around downtown Seattle the other day (just sat in the car!!) as Ms. Airene T. forgot to bring her ID and we couldn't go into any......bar. Anyway thanks to Noriko the driver. =p
So we ended up in somewhere near our house again. And we came back like this.

I was allllll happy and Airene was...hmm....

Airene's birthday is tomorrow. But we decided to give her an early birthday surprise before Raymond leaves for HongKong. So we planned this and planned that and she appeared to be surprised a little bit.

She is now old already. Can get married and have baby already, which is the thing that the kids think she should do.

Her birthday cake. Tiramisu Cheese Cake. All the way from ChinaTown man!! Noriko and Ray were really amazing. But it was a little bit messed up (the cake). I wonder it was because of Noriko's driving skill or the hot weather. Hmm..

Airene. Me. Noriko.

Ray. Airene. Me.

So we ended up playing Mahjong. Well we already planned to play mahjong even before we decided to give Airene birthday surprise, because we thought Raymond was supposed to leave on yesterday. But in the end he told us he already postponed his air ticket to the next Saturday!! (!#()@*#)(*!*@#)@)*@&@*$#. We basically suffered ourselves to stay up late for nothing (we worked next day.)

Here is a short clip (not really, it's 4 minutes) of us playing mahjong. You can skip the most part but not the very last 10 seconds. Look at Airene!!





The last part of the clip. I don't know why it was separated. =_+

Now my mom knows what I do in Seattle.

BTW, we went for DimSum the next morning. LOL.

And another thing, Happy Birthday AT!! It's Okinawa btw. =p

We love Spring Rolls!

We made spring rolls today! The vietnamese style and the chinese style! It's so expensive to eat them in vietnamese restaurant. It's about $1.50 for one!! for ONE!! and it's dollar. Not Malaysian ringgit! Expensive kan? So we thought why don't we just we make it on our own. So ta-da...here they are!

First, we gotta make peanut sauce. What's a vietnamese fresh spring roll (it's called Goi Cuon in Vietnamese) without peanut sauce?

The ingredients:
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
1 tbs sugar
2 tbs hoisin sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
1 small garlic close, mashed to a paste
1 tsp chili garlic paste
juice of 1 lime
1.4 cup water

Just mix all of them together. Easy?

My version kinda dark because my soya sauce is kinda dark la.

The vegetables that you need.

You gotta cut the carrots and turnips. Erm, shredded to be exact. =p

Cook them with minced pork + soya sauce + white pepper.

Don't forget about shrimp too.

Eggs.

First, we made the chinese style spring roll.

Lumpia skin or we call it as popiah skin.

Put all the ingredients you want to eat and wrap it up.

The fresh one. with some peanut sauce on it.

Or you can fry it. Become fried spring roll.

Next, Vietnamese style fresh spring roll.

The spring roll skin. It's transparent. You gotta dip them in hot water and they will become soft.

Usually we will have shrimps, bean sprout, vermicelli noodles, cilantro leaves in it.

Wrap it up and become like this lo!

So there it goes our off day. *sigh* tomorrow have to work again. =_+

BTW, the fresh vietnamese spring roll is very healthy for you. =)

A date with Ichigo

Last night, I had a rather sweet dream. I dream of Ichigo Kurosaki. If you are familiar with Bleach anime enough, you will know who he is. See, the thing is, I dream of him in a real person (as in someone I can touch physically). The funny thing is, in the dream, I met him in Seattle-Tacoma Airport. LOL. So I was on my way flying home to Malaysia, and he was on his way to Europe (Italy to be exact). I saw him standing by a store with his manager. So I thought he looks rather familiar and I walked toward him and asked "are you Ichigo?". He did not respond, BUTTTTTTTTT (BUT), he grabbed my hand and walked into a corner and told me ya he is Ichigo!! Wahahahahaha!! So I told him I like him bla bla bla and wanted to take a picture with him. So we had someone to help us to take picture but all the cameras didnt seemed to be working! So we were like standing at the corner posing in different ways (holding hand, hugging, that kind of pose. lol) while waiting for people to take picture for us. But after like 20 minutes, none of the camera seemed to be working, so I told not to worry because I have iPhone with me!! LOL. So I took out iPhone and took picture with him. lol. lol. lol. lol. lol. Then after that, we took a transit bus together to go to a different terminal (and we were hand in hand). LOL. When finally it's time to go he gave me a big warm hug and kissed me goodbye. AwwWWwwWWwww. That's when I woke up because someone sent me nudge in MSN. =(

I miss him already!

JEEEEZ. I don't know why I have this kind of dream. BUT I LIKE IT!!! I guess life in Seattle has been pretty lonely for me so I always this kind of weird dreams. =_+

Honestly, ever since Vjian left US for Malaysia, my life has been pretty lonely. =_+ I am that kinda girl will keeps everything to myself, and when the days I have problem I will try to "process" myself and do the problem solving on my own. But with Vjian, sometimes I will accidentally disclose some of my problems or secrets to him. It's rather hard to keep things from him when we talk on phone every freaking day. Do not get misunderstand by this, we are just very very good friends. First, we are on family phone plan. Secondly, I have edwin and he has someone's gf (LOL). So I like to talk to him, because on the sad or stressful days, we will kinda use the sarcastic approach, or talk indirectly into the problem, at the end of the phonecall we will feel better (at least I will, I don't know about him, probably after he sees the girls in the gym he will feel better already. lol). Sigh, but now he is in M'sia, I really hate the time difference!! =(

Jeez. Until this point, I don't know what to type anymore, because I miss Ichigo!

LOL.

the lovely cupcake

Today is the day to make cupcake!

Everywhere in US is about cupcake. You can see cupcakes in every occasion, every birthday party, every bbq, every tea time with your girl friends...my point is, I stay in US for so long already but never made any cupcake lo, so malu kan? Back in Bemidji, my room mate can make cupcake and get everything ready in 30 min. =_+ So today I want to try out la.

Oh wait, I wanted to try to make a video while I am baking, but don't think anyone wants to listen to my kiddy voice. =_+

Recipe of vanilla cupcake (for 12 of them)
1/2 stick butter
3/4 cups sugar
1 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla exract
2 large egg whites

The things that you will neeeeeed.
So, the steps are:

Firstly, soften butter in the mixer on high speed. Then, dizzle the sugar in with the buttter and beat until light and fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder and the salt together. Measure milk and vanilla. Afyer that add the flour mixture to the butter & sugar mixture. Beat well and set aside incoporated mixture.

In a clean mixer bowl (to me I use the rice cooker bowl. haha), beat egg whtes until soft peaks form. It will looks like something like that la.

Then, fold egg whites into cake better until incorporated. After that scoop batter into the prepared cupcake pans. I don't know why I forgot to take the picture. =_+

Then, bake in the 350 degree (F) oven for approximately 20 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Easy?

Ok. Now, the frosting part.

For the frosting, I chose to make Citrus Cream Cheese Frosting. The ingredients are as below:

1/2 stick butter
1 8oz package of cream cheese
1.2 tsp mixed citrus zest (I use lemon extract)
1 tsp citrus juice (I use Orange Juice!)
2 cups icing sugar
a few drops of red food coloring (to make it pink!)

So, the steps:

Firstly, soften butter in the mixer on high speed. Next, add creame cheese and beat until combined. Then sift icing sugar (confectioner sugar). Add about half of the icing sugar and citrus juice and zest to the butter/creame cheese mixture and beat on high speed to combine. Next, add remaining icing sugar in stages until desired consistency and sweetness is achieved (I used about 1 & 1/2 cups of icing sugar). Lastly, add in red coloring and mix until consistent color is achieved.

It should be ended up like this!

The cupcakes fresh from the oven!

The first one. Looks damn ugly!!

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th and so on did not look very good either. =_+

BUT!!! First timer not bad already hor???

It tastes good you know!!

I will make more tomorrow!! I am very sure they will look better! Heee!!

Thank You & Bak Zhang!

Hmm.. I know there has been a lot of unforeseen incidents happening around me, but oh well, I am still trying to make myself feel better so that no one will worry bout me lo. Anyway, I am very very very very thankful to friends and family that have been there for me all these while. Thank you people for trying to cheer me up in any possible ways, thank you for the messages, thank you for taking time from your busy life to visit my dad, thank you for putting smile on my face again and again.

To make ourselves to feel better and also forget about all those stupid things that had happened at the work place, Airene and I decided to make Bak Zhang.

It took us a lot of preparations and times!! It's like you have to soak most of the ingredients over night.

Part of the ingredients.

More ingredients in line.

The glutinous rice. Basically we have to fry them first la.

Mushrooms. Yummy!

Pork.

Chestnuts.

Yellow beans?

The bamboo leafs and strings. They don't have those traditional type of strings available here la.

Ta Daaaaaa. After 2 hours of cooking it.

The first load.

A lot of Bak Zhang.

We made like 40 plus of them. It tastes pretty good you know! Can fight with my mom ar! =p Mummy, I can get married liao, because I know how to make Bak Zhang. =p Damn proud wei. Although it does not look as perfect as it should be, for the first time consider not bad already ok.

ok, so now who wants one?

it's not a drama. it happens.

Something weird happened last night. I woke up from dreams (which I can't remember now) at around 4:30am, and had tears in my eyes. My body was aching all over. I felt that the bed was so uncomfortable, my neck and hands were so sore. Then, my phone was ringing. My body was too painful that I took hundred years to move myself to reach for my phone. Mummy called and I missed the call. Then, someone nudged me like million times through Msn. At the same time, I received sms from mummy. By the time when I was more alert about things that were happening around me, I realized that, oh, they were trying to tell me that grandma passed away like minutes ago.

There's so many things that are happening at home right now, I feel sorry and bad, and yet there's nothing much that I can do about it. I can so imagine the drama that is going to happen in the big family now. I am sincerely praying that grandma will pass away peacefully.

sigh.

just listen

why my life has to be so messed up?

so many things have to happen at one time.

now even dad is in hospital, on Father's day. Sweet.

i seriously will go home now. no matter what.

edit at 0005: before my world collapse, for the first time i am saying this to you that i need you to be here with me. yesterday was my first time letting myself lose control, the first time letting my heart said whatever it had to be said, i am sorry but i have no regret. not even a sec.

How can I don't love my friends?

My conversations with Jamie.


The story here is about him haven't got me any gift in a long time, and he would like to sponsor me 50usd for the new iPhone. =_+ BUT, the condition is I have to go back to Malaysia to redeem the cash!

Jeez! Do you think I will take your money?

Anyway, he offered 75usd in the end of the conversation. lol



Andrew told Jamie that "I will start applying for job after ming leave". This really cracks me up!! Something from Andrew!! You know how hard is it to get this Man-Cinderella outta his house ar?

*heeeeeeeee*

I love them!!