This is how you do it (I’m the one doing it in this picture :p)
Step 2- Add the sugar to the yolks and then mix them together with a mixer… till light and fluffy or till creamy (whichever you prefer). Then add mascarpone cheese, mix till the mixture is smooth.
As I’m at work, here’s what the other 2 are up to… o.O
Step 3- Beat the egg whites in a dry bowl until foamy or till soft peaks form (whichever you prefer)
Step 4- Mix the beaten egg white and yolk mixture together and you’ll get something like…
Step 5- Meanwhile prepare a cup of coffee, let it cool and add 5 tbsp of rum to it. Then, briefly soak the sponge fingers in the solution and line the base of a container
Step 6- Spread one layer of the cheese+yolk+sugar+egg white mixture on the soaked sponge fingers.
Step 7- Add another layer of soaked sponge fingers onto the layer of cheese mixture and spread a second layer of cheese mixture onto the second layer of sponge fingers.
Step 8- Place the containers or boxes in the fridge for at least 2 hours or overnight. Sprinkle grated chocolate or cocoa powder over the dessert before serving.
(sorry this is a little melted, I was trying some after I got home and this was out of the fridge for a good hour… the rest was promptly placed in the fridge after this picture was taken).
I am a Genius! They should seriously let me run the bidding system!
This morning, I woke up, placed my bid for Medical Sociology and then logged onto the school's intranet to see what the module was going to be like. I know, it wasn't the smartest thing but I'm glad I checked it out anyway (a smart person would have probably checked it out BEFORE placing the bid). It was then I realised that the course prefers people who have taken another course which I haven't taken nor have the intention to take.
In a last ditch attempt to change to something more. elementary, I spent close to an hour looking through ALL the course offerings before finally finding ONE that I could substitute for. Public Administration in Asia. It doesn't sound like the most interesting course; in fact, I'd even go as far to say that IF medical sociology were a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most interesting and 1 being a total bore, this would either be a 3, maybe even a 2.5. But I decided to change the bid and replaced medical sociology with this course (which I really, really hope I don't regret taking).
So, as I was making my new bid, this random thought (I'd like to think of it as an epiphany) sprung to my head. I don't know why, but it did. I thought: Hey! What if in paying for the course we've successfully bidded for, we make the person who made the highest bid pay the FULL amount of his (highest) bid while everyone else pays the minimum bid (the cut-off that allows you to take the course)?
For people not in the institution I study at, we obtain our courses through a stressful process known as bidding. Everyone adds the course they want and places a certain number of points in the hopes of getting the course. If the class is undersubscribed, everyone gets away with 1 point. If it's oversubscribed, the system ranks the bid according to the number of points and the top -insert number of vacancies- bids wins and everyone pays the number of points the lowest successful bidder places.
Back to my idea, if we were to penalise the highest bidder for placing the highest bid (which usually has this really effective influence in driving the bid points UP), no one would want to be the person with the highest bid! People would adjust their bids to be as low as possible to avoid being the highest bidder, or if you really ended up being the highest bidder, you wouldn't be too far off from the cut off anyway! With people placing bids that they think are low enough to get them the module without being the highest bidder, we can expect that most modules would see a drop in the cut off and the people who would really benefit are the students still in their first 2 years. Think about it, if you had another 2-3 years to go, would you really want to throw all your points down for a course (when bidding among your peers), end up the highest bidder and become what could possibly be the poorest person in your cohort for being silly enough to become the highest bidder?
It seems that some people are actually making a Grey's Anatomy GAME on the Wii, DS Lite and PC. To add on to that, a search on the net yielded 3 screenshots.
For some reason, Meredith and Derek are looking weird. But Mark looks pretty good (whatever happened to his grey hair?!?!?! They were charming!).
I'm hoping that these aren't ACTUAL (by that I mean real) scenes of what we can expect from the game. Tell me this is a spoof and that the REAL one will be better or I think I'll be better off watching the show.
We (meaning my boyfriend and I) had dinner at Vivocity's No Signboard Seafood Restaurant. The woman at the left hand corner happens to the the rather grumpy service personnel in charge of our table. Notice that all the paintings on the wall are of crustaceans and shellfish? The view from Vivocity, overlooking the ferry terminal where 2 ferries were docked. Nice view.
The huge Christmas tree at Vivocity which actually looks rather ugly in the day. It's weird how shops there are starting to cater to the Lunar New Year crowd while the mall still has some Christmas decorations up and about.
The dinner group. We didn't plan to wear red on the same day. Rather I didn't plan it. I had mentioned to him that I was gonna wear that top the night before and the next thing I knew, he was in red too! The next day, I had worn the blue polo tee (that my squad mates had gotten me for my birthday) and when he went home to change that afternoon, he ended up wearing a BLUE shirt. Now who's the copycat? :p
After dinner, we walked around for a bit and then made our way to Mono (first time. Before that, I've never been in a club/ktv before)
Back-dated Post: TKGRCY Christmas 2008 Gathering (28 Dec 2008)
Some of the food we had at the gathering (sans June's sandwiches, SH and CH's chips, the drinks, the pizzas). Sorry Ching Huey, Shu Hui and Lisa. Couldn't resist adding the hats =P The gift exchange. Couldn't resist using the unglam shot of June =P Still the gift exchange My ultra sadistic birthday celebration using a LOG cake (of all things) that I bought! Lol.
I know I said I'd blog about this and a new year has come and I haven't. So here goes =P
It's pretty strange that I've been to quite a number of places but I've never even stepped into Indonesia, one of Singapore's closest neighbours. Until Christmas of '08 that is. My boyfriend and I went there for 2 days as part of a Christmas getaway and a short trip to celebrate my 21st birthday.
We left at 7.20am on the 25th (because he woke up late!) and headed for Harbourfront Centre. Got our tickets settled after realising that his year of birth had been altered to 2008 (I was apparently travelling with an infant *lol*) and that my name was wrong and so was my passport number. Since we still had time to spare, we went for breakfast at this Ya Kun-like place at Harbourfront Centre with really bad service *cough* Wang Cafe*cough*. In the last hour or so before we left for Batam, we were yelled at by the staff for not collecting our drinks. Anyway, we finally left for the ferry terminal and waited to board the ferry, sitting beside a Sikh family who later turned out to be our travelling companions. The 2 of us on the ferry while on the way to Batam!
After close to an hour, we finally docked at Batam Centre, got off and located the tour guide. First stop? The Polo Ralph Lauren store... which is actually pointless to the 2 of us; people who do not have the purchasing power to spend S$50 on a polo t-shirt, even if it were an original and even if it were S$20 cheaper than back in Singapore. We were then brought to one of the largest Buddhist temples in SE Asia. The Maha Vihara Buta Mantreya (there's a possible typo somewhere.. =s) temple.
Except it doesn't look anything like a temple, architecturally. If it weren't for the numerous statues, the smell of incense sticks burning and the presence of devotees, there was no way I'd peg it for a temple. In fact, the toilet looked more temple-like (with those traditional Chinese roofs) than the actual temple itself!
After the temple visit, it was time for LUNCH. The itininery said that we were going to a seafood restaurant for fresh seafood (which got me pretty excited) until I saw the REAL venue. A coffee-shop. A fly-infested coffeeshop. And it was definitely not by the sea-side. It was also most definitely not a seafood restaurant. After the initial disappointment gave way, the food was pretty enjoyable. In fact, the chicken was well-seasoned and cooked (it was VERY popular with the kids) and the prawns was pretty good (though not too fresh). Otherwise, the food was actually simple fare and wouldn't cost the tour agency much (what were we expecting from a FREE city tour? *rolls eyes*).
Our post-lunch initial plan of buying keropok and other local snacks fell through when we realised the mall the store was located within wasn't open till later in the day as it was Christmas, so we ended up spending 2 hours at Nongsa Hill Shopping Mall. After walking close to 2 rounds around the mall, I concluded that there was no shopping to be done clothes-wise for me in Batam whereas my boyfriend and I had an interesting encounter at the local departmental store while buying dress pants for him(2 for almost $40 I think). We were waiting in line at the cashier's (the only one that was operating while the other 3-5 were all CLOSED), holding onto 2 pairs of pants until he realised that everyone else wasn't holding onto anything but a white slip of paper. Curious, he asked an Indonesian Chinese woman in front if we needed it too and it turns out that we did! So she nicely informed the staff at the cashier about it, the staff took the pants from us and ran off to write out the invoice, only for them to spend the next 10 minutes trying to calculate the final sum *faints*, which they eventually figured out but didn't get to write down because we figured it'd be the next day by the time they actually wrote it down. While we got to hold onto that white slip of paper, a pink one was attached to our articles and placed in one of MANY cubbies at the cashier's. When we finally got to the front of the line, the cashier took our white slip of paper and proceed to hunt our article down, going from cubby to cubby in an attempt to match the 2 pieces of invoices. Only upon successfully matching the white and pink invoices would we then proceed to make payment. That experience took us 1 hour! Just to pay for 2 pairs of pants.
With the remaining 40 minutes, we went for A&W! A&W!!!!! Why did you leave Singapore!?!?! Ahh.. the fantastic waffle with a generous serving of ice cream. We spent 32700IDR on food!
After leaving Nongsa Hill Shopping Mall, we went to Batam City Square, which was frighteningly crowded because (I think) the local celebrities were holding some sort of event there. I felt that mall was rather messy and rowdy, feeling like a complicated jumble of Sim Lim Square and Far East Plaza. The 2nd mall solidified my earlier conclusion that I wasn't going to do any shopping in Batam while my boyfriend spent some S$5-6 getting his hair cut, washed and blowed.
The next destination was Win's Spa, supposedly one of the better spas around in Batam. The lady's corner (with the single rose and MUCH nicer box to place our trinkets within).
For S$50 per person, you'd be treated to a 2.5hr Indonesian massage, sauna, body scrub, body mask and milk bath. And if you're female, at the end of it all, you get this really interesting treatment where they literally sit u down on a stool with a hole in the middle, where they'd then place a small container of burning *whatever it is* under your butt. I AM NOT KIDDING. The whole time, I was too afraid to adjust my butt for fear of giving my butt 2nd to 3rd degree burns. It wasn't steam, it was PURE HEAT. And then ladies would also be given a tummy firming pill (lol).
By the time the spa session ended, it was almost 6.30pm Batam time and naturally we ended up going for dinner. Nasi Padang!
You'd walk into the eatery and the staff there would serve you a plate of EVERY available dish. From there, you would just eat whatever you felt like eating and they'd charge whatever you ate. So out of the 15 plates you see there, we finished 6 plates of dishes. It was GOOD. While there, we also had FRESHLY squeezed starfruit juice and mango juice. There was no lying as to the authenticity of the fruit juice, especially when the pulp and fibre of the fruit was still in the juice. So for 6 dishes, as much rice as you could possibly want, 2 bottles of mineral water and 2 glasses of juice, we paid for a little under S$10. Worth every cent if you asked me.
Since we still wanted (rather badly) to buy keropok and other snacks, we made the tour guide drive us to the mall which we missed earlier on in the day and ended up getting a HUGE bag full of chips and keropok. I love belinjau crackers. From then on, it was another 20-40 min car ride to the resort before we finally checked in, got our keys and entered the room close to 9pm (Batam time!)Comfy (inviting) bed!
I fell in love with this chair
After showering and changing, we watched a bit of Discovery Channel and fell asleep. The next morning, we got up, showered, changed and went down for breakfast, and were not disappointed. We were greeted by a sumptuous feast which beat ANY hotel I stayed at while in Yunnan. After seeing that the weather wasn't being kind on our initial plans to try the water sports there, exacerbated by the general aches my muscles were still suffering from, we gave water sports a miss (never expend all your energy running about on the first day before going for water sports!) and opted to explore the compound of the resort. The hiccup of the trip finally occurred on the 2nd day, just as we were to leave the resort and make our way to Batam Centre to collect our ferry tickets/boarding passes. The Batam travel agency was supposed to send a driver down to pick us up and drive us to the terminal at noon(Sg time). With that in mind, after exploring the premises of the resort, we went back to our room and watched the Discovery Channel before checking out at 11.40am(Sg time), afterwhich we utilised our welcome drinks coupons to redeem 2 glasses of orange syrup water while waiting for the driver. Before we knew it, noon(Sg time) came and gone and there was no sight of the driver. My boyfriend went to the front desk and spent the next 15mins trying to get hold of the travel agency, only to be told at 12.15pm(Sg time) that the driver was already on his way and would arrive in 10 minutes. 10 minutes came and went, still no driver, and still we waited. And when it was 12.45pm(Sg time), we agreed that there was no knowing whether the driver would ever arrive, we decided to have the resort's front desk call for a cab to take us to Batam Centre, incurring an additional expense of S$20. With that, we were finally on our way to Batam Centre, reaching there only closer to 2pm(Sg time). Since the stated ferry timing on the itininery (4.30pm Batam time) would mean we'd only reach Singapore close to 7pm, we really wanted to get on an earlier ferry out (why is part of the reason why we decided to hire a cab to take us to the ferry terminal) as the following day was still a working day for my boyfriend. And because we didn't wait for the driver, we were able to get ourselves boarding passes for the 3.30pm (Batam time) ferry back to Singapore, with an additional 2 hours left to eat and walk around Megamall, the largest mall in Batam which is connected to Batam Centre by an overhead bridge. Within those 2 hours, we managed to have a 2nd round at A&W! =D Too bad they didn't have any Coney dogs, would have loved to have one.
It was only till we were in Singapore waters (though my phone kept getting the Indonesian telecom network whereas my boyfriend was able to get on and stay on Singtel!) that we realised the Singapore travel agent we booked our trip with (a friend of my boyfriend's) was frantically looking for us. And so it turns out that the driver did turn up after we left, how late he was I really don't want to know, and so he (boyfriend) related how they left us in limbo, sitting in the hotel's lobby for close to an hour waiting for a driver that wasn't going to be on time.
Despite the hiccup due to the driver fiasco during the trip, it was still a good one; with fantastic food, nice snacks (I love Berlingau crackers, lol), a 2.5h spa session and of course, fantastic company. Too bad we didn't get to try the water sports though.
I'd just like to thank the following people for their birthday wishes :)
Hui Ping Shufen Tina (the insurance agent lol) Zec Elaine Amir Mabel Qi Xiao June Jaime Yeo Joyce Charmaine Loh Anu Chelsia Jia Xin Shu Hui Jasmine Lizhen Andrew Yea Tian Serene Shanta Evelyn Lew Bryan Joe Jean Ching Huey Shannon Charles Wei En Sam
Yes, this means I am back from Batam, will blog about it when I feel like it :P
EDIT: Special thanks to my squad mates (Shu Hui, Ching Huey, Elaine, June, Jia Xin, Yee Chien, Xing Qi, Humairah, Vahidha, Lisa and Ziting) for the belated birthday celebration earlier on =) And thanks for the presents! -28/12/2008-
I'm a 3rd year student in what is probably the largest autonomous university in Singapore majoring in a Science-related subject (well it sorta IS SCIENCE). I'm known to be introverted, sarcastic (at times), funny when I rant (which isn't a good thing lol) and somewhat of a loner. I miss LA and would move there in a heartbeat :(
Comfy (inviting) bed!
