Wednesday 24 December 2014

the spirit of christmas

I am not Christian but I tend to get into the spirit of Christmas each year.

As a non believer of religion and perhaps even God, there is nothing in the calendar year that makes me want to spend time with family or actually have any goodwill feeling towards my fellow man.

 Throw a few lights on a gaudily decorated tree, blast some Christmas songs in the decorated malls and I become a totally different person. I embrace the consumerism of Christmas to the point that I am eagerly shopping for interesting gifts for colleagues that I actually feel goodwill towards.

My family tend to get together on Christmas eve to have a couple of drinks (lots of drinks actually) at the Club but this year Mum isnt too well so we wont be going.  We will however be having dinner at Mums on the 25th.  My older sis likes to do the turkey and all the trimmings, she spent 15 years in Hawaii doing Thanksgiving then Christmas and cant seem to stop herself from celebrating the Christian holiday and as her turkey is really good, we don't mind!

But its not just about eating and being merry, it is time to reflect on what we have and being thankful and thinking of others that  don't have as much.

So to Christians and all non Christians I say Merry Christmas and love and peace to all.  Can we please just forget for one day that there is so much hate and anger out there all for the wrong reasons...

Sunday 21 December 2014

the voyeur in me

Online dictionary definition of Voyeur -

1.  A person who obtains sexual gratification by looking at sexual objects or acts, secretively
2.  a person who derives exaggerated or unseemly enjoyment from being an observer.

So I guess I get unseemly enjoyment observing others... secretively.
People watching, taking photos and perhaps watching porn could all be voyeurism.  Introverts like me I guess are labelled weird anyway so voyeur is just another noun (it is a noun right) to describe me.

I recently went to the Botanic gardens again to take pictures as I am learning more about my camera each time I go out, and am enjoying it immensely.
This time my compositions were voyeuristic.  It started with a statue of a mother & child and somehow the pictures through the bushes were so much more interesting....
Then at my favourite pagoda, I was happily taking pictures when a young couple came along and spoilt my enjoyment.




 Lots of young couples come to the gardens to take pictures for their wedding albums.....
The one below is from one of my earlier forays in the Botanic Gardens, a Russian couple with a selfie stick



selfie
I am sure there is some etiquette or rule when taking pictures  of people you dont know.. but in a public place it would be considered fair game if you strolled into the path of my camera....and the voyeur in me just absolutely finds it hard to resist...........






Sunday 14 December 2014

it doesnt help when I bake and eat cupcakes......

So yes indeed,  the exercise that I said I would do 2 weeks ago hasn't quite got off to the start I expected it to......
It actually never got started ...

It didn't help that I saw the French butter that is absolutely delicious, on sale in the supermarket, which in turn led me to a gluten free experiment of a very old cup cake recipe that we have used since we were knee high girls ( well not so quite knee high)

mess/prep
Your mood is reflected in your cooking.  If I am in a bad/foul mood, my cooking suffers.  When I am happy and relaxed, my cooking is pretty darn good, and baking is no different.  I was excited to try the cup cake recipe with that French butter and  make it gluten free.  I was even singing while baking.....

in the oven
I am not sharing the recipe as its not mine to share, its from an old Australian cookbook from the 1960's that a friend gave to Mum and we still use the basic foundation recipes for cakes from that book.  Its absolutely a hoot to read, especially the front pages advising women how to get more from the cuts of meat, cheap cooking and how to set a table etc....If I find the book online anywhere I will link the recipe but....

I even iced them
Anyway
the cupcakes came out divine...I do have an intolerance to dairy and butter is hard for me but sometimes nothing else will do....

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Epic fail.......

I still haven't got around to losing weight

I blame work of course, as I am too busy and stressed to eat right and fix proper decent carb free low fat meals for myself.
I lost 1 kilo then promptly put it back on and the exercise every morning ground to a halt.  I was stressed at work and with the year end Christmas party invitations coming in I was eating fabulous food with no exercise or restraint.....forget gluten free, I was popping everything into my mouth....

I hate the extra weight, I look like a ripe pumpkin ready to burst!

But the lack of discipline is what is getting me into this situation.... And the fact that I have no man to be slim for....yes we do it for a man.  No matter what sort of feminist independent career woman we are, we still go for fad diets and think about our weight and looks all for that man.
So I am doomed to be fat and fifty

I shall try, for next week to skip all carbs and get up early and exercise ........pipe dream or something I can do........I wonder

the walkway code

There should be a test for all pedestrians  to take, like the highway code test for drivers.

Living in a crowded city like Singapore, where you encounter swarms of people everywhere you go, walking is becoming a hazard.  Malls, pedestrian walkways, streets and train stations are places that should have signs put up for easy flow of traffic.

I commute to work via the underground train lines and one of the instances where human traffic is fucking scary is crossing from one part of the station to change lines.  Somehow the powers that be misjudged the sheer numbers that would use the trains as a means of transport.  This is one of the times where the walkway code would come in handy.

I imagine some of the rules of the walkway code would be:

1.  Speed limit in walking zone
2.  Slow walkers have to walk on the left
3.  Overtaking only from the right
4.  2 way lane traffic to be strictly enforced
5.  No Tailgating
6.  No using mobile phone while walking

Other places I see benefiting from the Walkway code would be the shopping malls and the streets.  Its bloody frustrating when you are in a hurry to have to walk behind people that are strolling along happily right across the whole walk way and people that are glued to their mobile phones.
City in China

There is a city in China that has opened a walkway for pedestrians using their phones.
See article HERE
Its a damn good idea........




I live in hope that someday the Walkway code will be created and implemented, saving pedestrians from each other......