Afternoon tea

There's no afternoon lunch. Usually it's just a light snack to tide through till dinner in the evening. Typically, this includes some bread, with the toppings of cheese and jam. With tea or coffee on the side. (and as usual, the bread in the pic below has been baked by Unni... nothing beats homemade bread... even if it's white bread!)


Unless it's Friday, you can make waffles if you have extra time during other days of the week. Coz friday is Waffle day!!!



Waffles Norwegian style is eaten with brown cheese and strawberry jam. Whether the brown cheese is ontop of the jam or the jam on top of the brown cheese, that's open to debate. Or whatever rocks your boat man... anyhow, brown cheese and jam is a darn great combi. *Yummylicious* Sourcream with strawberry jam is another favourite combi. That one's good too.

Or some delicious strawberries and cream


Or if in town, drop by the local cafe for a slice of cake and hot chocolate.


Or if feeling more peckish, go for a sandwich. Prawns and mayo is a classic... It's fresh prawns topped off with tonnes of mayo. Served with some lettuce and lemon, slapped in between bread. *heavenly*


Ok that one above is the more high class cafe style prawn/mayo sandwich. Prepare it yourself at home and you get this.

Equally yummy, or even better, coz you can add as much prawns or mayo as you like. But the downside... peel your own prawns!


Note: fresh prawns bought off a fishing boat is best!

Shortly after, dinner would be served probably around 5pm. So whatever you do, don't have a full meal. Just keep it light.

On an unrelated note

a car is sitting idly at home this week
.
.

if only i had my licence
.
.
.

damn

Fishing racks and random sheep

One of my very last bike trips was out to the harbour of Gimsoy. It was great weather that afternoon. Bonus bonus!


Tucked away in the corner of the island is the famous Lofoten fish-drying racks. These are the flat styled drying racks, as opposed to the A-shaped frames.

Fossilised flies. Goodness knows how long they've been there.

Talk about random things... there amongst the fishing racks was a herd of sheep. Just lounging around. Check out those fluffy, potato-on-sticks darlings, just makes you wanna go over and give em a big cuddle.


But as usual, sheep take flight the moment they see humans approaching...


And they always walk off in a line.

Just what i like... disciplined animals... ;p

x more to go...

After all those tiresome looooooonnnnnggggg runs. (Killing 2 birds with 1 stone coz good thing can also train for 3rd dec)... At the last weigh in, i'm down 2kg! So whoppie! let's just hope this holds up... but it's x kg more to go...*yawn*

I told YC that i gave away all the chocs i had brought back coz i was embarking on losing the extra weight i picked up. YC says i should just f*ck the body politic coz we only live once. Fact is the larger problem is coz my clothes don't really fit me anymore. Changing the whole entire wardrobe is not exactly the most advisible project for an unemployed youth to embark on right now. So it's pretty much a functional problem. If not i confirm also say to screw the body politic loh.

Breakfast at Unni's

Rules. Alot of rules govern how the Norwegian meals should go. From what side dishes go with the main course to what dishes should be eaten on which day. Unni once told me when her foster kids were staying over about how the kids had rules that friday was waffle day. So of course we had to have waffles that friday.

Breakfast of course is important to kick starting the rest of the day.


That's the typical spread for breakfast at Unni's house. Things are stacked ontop of one another... there's moree stuff under... Made up of stuff you put on bread (home-baked of course). Cooked breakfasts and cereal breakfasts are not the norm here. It's just cheeses (white cheese, goat's cheese, and of course the famous Norwegian brown cheese), vegetables, meats (salami, ham, mackerel in tomato sauce etc) and of course the various kinds of HOMEMADE jams (tyttebaer, strawberry, blueberry, cloudberry). Lay it out on the table and you get this....

From the top of the table, there's the tray of biscuits, in case you wanna have your spreads on em instead of the bread. Then the juices. The bread followed by the whole array of stuff from the tray just now. And finally of course in the blue jug. Fresh milk. Coz it's straight from the cows, it has a higher fat percentage, creamier too. Other hot drinks to go with breakfast include the must have, Norwegian style black coffee, tea and my must have... Kakao aka hot chocolate.

The usual way to have your breakfast is to slap your favourite toppings onto a nice slice of homemade bread and just eat.

Tyttebaer Jam

Ham topped off with Italian Salad. I had to have this every morning. I was the only one at Unni's household who ate Italian Salad. And like crazy. I was charging through a box of it each week.

Meals on Sundays are supposed to be more special. So Sunday breakfast means having a cooked breakfast of bacon and eggs. The usual way is to take your bread and pile all the cooked stuff on top of it and eat it like how you'd eat the bread-ham-Italian concoction. But i prefer to eat them seperate. So whatever rocks your boat.

On good days in the summer, breakfast can be taken outdoors too. In fact any meal is taken outdoors as long as the skies are blue and the sun is shining.


As you can see from the above. Breakfast elsewhere from Unni's household is not such an elaborate display of whatever kind of spreads you can find on this planet. It helps if you already have in mind what you want for breakfast, so you just take out what you need. Which makes preparing and cleaning up so much simplier. Like at Bcc's...

Or if really lazy... do like what bcc and i did while house-sitting for Unni...

Eat straight out of the foils...

Live life on the edge man!

Laksa Laksa! and a VIP visit

Coming back home, the one thing which i had to absolutely have is the Arts Canteen Laksa.

You can see why everybody loves the Laksa Yong Tau Fu stall. Just check out the canteen awards its gotten over the years. They've been in the papers before, even Sunday Times voted it as one of the "Campus Superstars"

I've had it a couple of times since i've gotten back. But everytime they always ran out of fried wantons. Laksa is just not Laksa without the fried wantons. So i went back earlier yesterday during lunch time to have lunch with fellow dgnbters (they too were going ga-ga over Laksa, after abstaining from it for most of the semester).

Next week, the Arts Canteen will begin its massive 8 month renovation. Which explains why everyone was flocking there to have their last meals. We had to queue to pick our pieces and then join another "collection queue" while we waited for the food to be cooked.

Finally, Laksa Yong Tau Fu. With my fried wantons and kang kong... HAPPINESS! My last bowl of Laksa cost me $3.10, almost $1 more than my usual!


On the way back, the road closures at NUS were just starting. Coz of a "VIP visit to NUS"

They've been pretty secretive with who the VIP was and where the VIP was going around Spore, only announcing on the day itself which roads would be affected with road closures. But of course everyone knew who it was...

So no cars were allowed near the UCC. Instead they all had to turn at the roundabout. Which meant that all the bus services were disrupted.


Bleh. I ended up walking to Kent Ridge Terminal to take a bus to City Hall.

Greens and yellows

July 21 2006, 11.13pm

For PW!

Cleaning out 12kg of strawberries will make you dream in red.

The whole lot was cleared in 2 sessions. Half of it's stashed in the deep freeze as yummy home-made jam and the rest was downed as afternoon tea sides and post dinner desserts.

POWERHOUSE

Every sportsperson dreams of winning the coveted gold. After all, it's the very reason why they push themselves training so hard for.

You never ever forget the first gold that you win, who were the pacers, the drummer and the coxswain. Who was sitting in front, beside and behind you. How you felt as you lined up at the start, when you crossed the finish line first. What it was like walking back up to a crowd anxiously awaiting your return. The hugs, the well wishes, the cheers and the tears. The moment you walked up to recieve that precious golden cookie. For that one moment in time, you know that your sacrifices, time and effort have not all gone to waste.

The first gold medal i could call my very own was given to me in December 2002. I was the 4th left pair. I still remember who was sitting where, us waiting at the start line real long, the right pacer getting up after to hit the drum real hard in celebration of the win and the tear shed by Zen. Incidentally, that was one of the very last golds won by the women's team.

This day was 4 years in the making. But it was well worth the wait for it will go down in history as one of the largest and most impressive medal hauls in recent years.

Every sportperson trains to compete. To compete and win, that's a bonus. To compete, make a come back and win after having been down and out. That's a double bonus that makes victory all the more so much sweeter.

You have made me so proud.

Weekend rendezvous

2003 was the last time i'd raced at the Singapore River Regatta. That was back in the era of small teams, cotton jerseys, chunky SDBA lifejackets and heavy yellow top SDBA paddles. It rained on the first day of the races that year. At the end of the second day, it was painful misses and lessons learnt.

This season, under a different team, it's back to the Singapore River after a 2 year break. But keeping in strict nus dragonboat tradition, i dropped by the Guan Ying Temple at Waterloo Street for good luck. I'm not religious, but there's a thing about going to places of worship be it a temple or a church. You feel incredibly alone coz it's just you and whichever Divine concerned... yet it gives you a great sense of calmness.

Still remember the qian that Geok got this June at the temple saying that we were "an unpolished jewel needing to wait for the right benefactor to come by before you can unravel your true potential". They say the lots at the Guan Ying Temple have a history of being very accurate...

Come 12th November, it's your turn to shine.


Good luck!

View from above

We all know by now that the scenery in Norway is to die for.
So what better way to showcase it than from above.

The best pics come from the trip between Bodo and Svolvaer. It's only a ten minute ride by plane, yup the propeller kind you see in the pic above. Coz it's a little plane, it doesn't fly way above the clouds... great opportunity to whip out the camera and start snapping away!

Bodo - Svolvaer (20 July 2006)

that's a little sailboat in the middle of the blue blue sea.
cute!

Svolvaer - Bodo (17 October 2006)
sucky weather in Svolvaer, hence only 1 pic, but sunny skies in Bodo

Bodo - Oslo (17 October 2006)
it's back to sucky weather in Oslo