Today, Peaches went under the knife (or scissors) to get surgery to remove her mouth. The decision was made by Claire, who thought that Potato looked cute because he has no mouth, therefore Peaches would also look cute if she removed her mouth.
Tonight, we're heading off to Japan. For the first week or so there will be no internet. Hopefully the second week will be better.
We had dinner at the Crystal Jade La Mian & Xiao Long Bao restaurant in Takashimaya. The Xiao long bao was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good.
A picture of us, but not really the food...
After dinner we sent the tired people (Maxwell who hates shopping, and my grandmother who walks slow) with my aunty, who was heading home first. The rest of us went for dessert at the food court in Wisma Atria - mum and I had chendol, Sam had ice kachang and my uncle had tau suan. Claire just shared with everyone. :D
Claire and I have a go at Sam's ice kachang
I managed to nab myself a copy of the Togainu no Chi: True Blood manga too. :3
It was both cute and funny to watch all the little kids (and the older kids too) doing ballet and tap dance, as well as a SNSD dance. Claire's costume was really pretty, but we weren't allowed to take photos. :(
Here are some less-than-stunning photos taken before and after the performance:
Potato attended the show too, and even had his own seat (reserved by Claire). Also, my uncle with his trademark scowl.
The five of us after the performance, with Claire looking quite scary in her makeup.
We spent a fair amount of time at Popular bookstore, where Max got a Pokemon manga and I got RustBlaster by Toboso Yana. :3
There wasn't much there, to be honest. However, we spent ages at the pet shop window looking at all the rodents, who were mostly asleep. Anything is cute when it's asleep.
Widdle mice squished up against the glass. They were the sixe of my thumb...so cute!!!!!!! XD
Once again, there was a toy expo thing on the event floor, though obviously not as big as the one at Takashimaya. One particular stand was selling Sangokuden (Three Kingdoms) Gundam model kits for $5 instead of the usual $13.50. Then, after I had a chat with the boy at the counter, I got a further discount and only had to pay $9 for two Gundams. :3
Then we went grocery shopping. Normally I'm not too fond of it, but I'll make an exception if it's in Asia. Found various oddities from Pokemon cup noodles to square watermelons to this thing...
The description said it was a sweet potato, but I think it better resembles poop...
After we were done with our grocery shopping, we had popcorn chicken and cheese fries from KFC. Cheese fries are my food of choice when it comes to KFC. If only NZ would make them...
$3.50 worth of cheesy goodness.
Not long afterwards we headed home. Max caused us no trouble at all - quite a change from the way he is when the rest of his family is around. :3
Christmas lights at ION Orchard
Christmas trees made from Potato-ish teddy bears at Takashimaya :D
On our first shopping trip, as with most of our shopping trips, I spent most of my money on food. By chance, I found Canele, a patisserie/chocolaterie, for which I'd seen some nice reviews. Bought six macarons from there - raspberry, caramel, chocolate, passionfruit milk chocolate, coffee, and pistachio. I'd have to say that I liked the caramel and pistachio ones best. They came packed in the cutest little box with a really pretty bag too.
After that, we went to a bakery and bought various baked goods, including curry bread. :3 the curry was really sweet though so it wasn't that nice... Later on, we had teriyaki chicken skewers from ToriQ and then Sam managed to find a Burger King amongst all the Asian food, so he ate something from there. We also managed to buy some popiah and wheel cakes.
At Takashimaya/Ngee Ann City, there was a massive toy expo on the event floor, where the winning models of a Gundam model-making competition were being displayed. Unfortunately, the photo I have here kinda sucks.
We also went to Kinokuniya. When I went in my hands were trembling - I was that excited. I found myself in the Japanese section, drowning in lots of Kuroshitsuji and Hakuouki and Togainu no Chi. I got myself a copy of the Kuroshitsuji character guide, but it was such a struggle to decide which books to buy (and which ones to save for next time...). There was a lot of Kaminomi as well - though I haven't even read the manga yet so I decided against buying.
Unfortunately, the Jrock magazines were much too expensive ($40 for one magazine compared to $20 for the character guide). They didn't even have the Gothic and Lolita Bible! :(
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur for me - those were pretty much the highlights. When we got to the taxi stand, it started raining buckets. Thank goodness we were already heading home.
The house has twice as much stuff in it as last time lol.
So, over the last week, we've been lazing around at my uncle's place. We went shopping on the odd occasion, but since the kids don't have school (though they still do extracurricular tuition) we've had to stay home and entertain them. Mostly with Potato.
Here in Singapore, Potato was reunited with his family: Claire's Cupcake and Peaches, Max's Cotton, and my aunty's Vanilla.
Potato and Cotton at the front; Peaches behind Cotton; Cupcake is the medium-sized one and Vanilla is the giant. :D
My uncle's place has a pool in the back...or rather, they had wanted it to be a pool, but if they made it as big as they originally wanted to, they would bump into sewage pipes. So they kept the pool but made it narrow as heck. The final product is something like a moat, that only spans across one side of the house. And if you're not careful when the sliding door is open, you will trip and fall in. However, it's very nice to dip your feet in on a hot day.
I also got a hair cut - it's a bit more of a bob now. Claire is finally warming to the idea of me having short hair (after like 5 years haha).
At Wellington airport
My mother and I set off for Singapore on December 6th - only a couple of days after graduation. It was a mess - mum wanted to bring her heavy-ass Gucci handbag because she'd get told off by my uncle if she didn't use it (he bought it for her) but she complained that it was heavy. I told her who cares what he says - if you don't like carrying it because it's heavy, then don't carry it. She carried it, and complained the whole way. I told her so.
Our luggage was overweight by 8kg. We had to remove some frozen meat that mum (of course) wanted to bring. For such a practical person, she is so impractical at times.
Our flight to Auckland left around 9 or 10pm. There was a spare seat in our row, so Potato sat in it. :3
Taken during turbulence heheh...
Auckland airport was meh. Instead of waiting for the inter-terminal bus, mum decided it'd be faster to walk - it was indeed faster, but she had to carry her heavy handbag (which she'd filled with a large box of cherries, no less). When we got to the international terminal we had to wait about 2 hours for the flight. I helped her write a report for one of her student teachers that had to be sent before we flew out.
There wasn't much to do on the flight to Singapore. We sat between two rows of noisy Indians who kept kicking our chairs/reclining their seats. It made it very uncomfortable to do anything. Also, since the flight left at 1am, there wasn't much that I wanted to do beside sleep. Funny though, I went to the bathroom more than usual this time, and every time I went, there would be turbulence as soon as I locked the door.
Turbulence + Airplane flush = Scary.
One good thing was that this flight had the nicest plane food I've ever had (aside from the soba, omuraisu and Loh Hei from the last trip). There was stir-fried duck with ginger plum sauce for dinner, and egg noodles with steamed fish and black bean sauce for breakfast.
Again, there was a spare seat in between my mother and I, which was filled by Potato. He didn't wear a safety belt this time though - the little rebel.
We landed at Changi airport Terminal 3 and got lost for a bit while waiting for my aunty to pick us up. My brain didn't function well at 6.30am Singapore time...
