For a chronic dose of cuteness

We live in Singapura

I may not be Singaporean, but we are pretty much the two only nationalities who can appreciate the awkward beauty of bahasa rojak.

Our first Christmas together and other stories

What the beach looks like when you manage to convince a beach-hater to go on a long walk with you. Next up: rainbows and unicorns!

Cheese and cumin sticks from RD's mum. Tastes strangely like murruku.

I took C out for dinner in very Hefner-esque, cheap boudoir restaurant. Mediocre food, but a nice night out anyway.

What a defeated cat looks, post-shower.

Nibblies at Aunty Lil and Uncle Kev's. The shortbread in the foreground was made by us.

Rosey (L) and Moo Moo (R).

KG was clearing out 3 tonnes of bricks and dead plant matter in the process of his renovations. It's amazing what a long and arduous process it was getting rid of the stuff.

Galileo's thermometer. Very fascinating. As the temperature rises, the baubles, filled with different fluids, fall. Each bauble is numerically tagged.

Our Christmas cards carefully balanced, where the cat would not get them. A flea-bitten cat is an angry Grinch.

Photo taken by C's dad, at his family home, where we spent Christmas.

This is Cat (aka Cool Cat, or Cattenborough). If he likes you, you get head nuzzles, kitty kisses and throaty miaows.

Christmas lunch - ham, turkey and roasted vegetables. Yums.

One of our favourite gifts, from C's folks - almost too cute to use.

The best Valentino quote ever

(best appreciated when said out loud in a bad Italian accent with lots of hand gestures)

When asked what advice he would pass on to young designers in Harpers Bazaar,

"... they take a piece of cloth, pin, pin, pin and they make a big pouf and to try to get rid of everything, they put a huge belt. No, no, no."

The immigrant's Christmas

For whenever a Malaysian politician spouts another embarrassing quotable, I become Chinese. And whenever we come across another FOB (fresh off boat) mainlander doing something mortifying in public (like sucking meat off KFC bones noisily), I am Malaysian. And for the purposes of avoiding yet another drunk come-on, I develop an Australian accent (Aussie women are fierce).

I've never felt like I fit in anywhere. I wasn't Christian enough in church. I wasn't Chinese enough to hang out with the Ah Bengs and Ah Lians. I wasn't good-looking or well to do enough to be part of the cool kids. I wasn't focussed enough to be a nerd. I wasn't conformist enough to blend in with my ex-colleagues. For much of my life, I flitted between social groups, tailoring my mannerisms to suit my companions du jour.

Similarly here, I remain not ________ enough to be with the ___________. Yet now I understand why the Gold Coast feels like home. We're a motley crue of everyone from everywhere, all in search of a more coastal lifestyle. Almost everyone I know here was born somewhere else. C's dad moved from the UK as a six and a half year. C was born 2,300 km away, in Tasmania. RD is Slovakian. SK is from Slovenia. SE grew up in South Africa and Sydney. KG spent the first half his life in Adelaide. X spent his childhood in the States and Sydney. TF and I grew up a suburb apart.

We are not united by culture, nor common language. Not religion, sometimes not even interests. Perhaps all we share, is the very act of upping and moving somewhere else. Of building a life for ourselves, unencumbered (or at least less encumbered) by our pasts. Of the freedom anonymity affords. And in this rootlessness, we are blessed to find love in our chosen families.

This Christmas, I am not attending any obligatory functions, nor buying presents because it is expected of me. Instead, I am carving out my own traditions and choosing to spend time with the few people I care about here.

And this Christmas finally feels like my own.

Dogs and cats

This caused C to tear. The video below is just off the cute spectrum.

We also showered the cat today. Fleas. He reacted surprisingly well and does not hate us, though we were taken aback by the decibels of the initial alarmed miaows.

Heat and humidity

Last week flew by with errands and visits and visitors. This week was nicely lethargic, aptly reflected by the cat's perma-belly up position.

Apple and rhubarb pie, made with love. C's folks came over for dinner and were served korma curry and the first roti canai I'd had in a long, long time. Unfortunately, the process went something like this:

Jan: Let's ask your parents over for dinner!

C: Okay.

(2 days before dinner)

Jan: We don't have enough plates! Let's buy some!

C: ...

(2 hours before dinner)

Jan: We don't have a dining table or enough chairs!

C: This was your idea!

Luckily, they were extremely gracious guests and acted as if balancing hot Indian curry on their knees was a normal dinner ritual.

C and I had health check ups. I was given the option of a pap smear, which I duly took. A little weird but really not that bad at all. It detects HPV, y'all. My grandma died of cervical cancer, so it was nice to have this on the government.

Banana cake with cream cheese frosting. Divine.

Some hors d'oeuvres served by my French teacher for our last class. I finally tried foie gras. Much better than pate, but I can't get over the fact a poor goose was tortured to produce the stuff. Also discovered that good marzipan and bad marzipan are a thousand miles apart.

Purr-ito!

C and I escaped the hot weather with a fairly impromptu trip to the Currumbin Rock Pools. Many scrapes and bruises whilst being checked out by teenagers.

WTF EPF

I was looking up some information on the EPF site today. I'm torn between appreciating the whole semangat rojak going on and feeling embarrassed that my government can't even standardize their language on a public website.

Slow cooker tattoos

Emperor Moe does kitty porn. You have no idea how many times visitors exclaim over his girth, which is apparently dog-like.

C and I did Chocolate Mousse Cake with Coffee Mascarpone. Ugliest cake ever, but with 0.5kg of dark chocolate, sooooo rich and calorific we can only nibble a few teaspoons of the stuff each day.

The blue bottles are back!

Lunch at RD's. Baguette with chived omelette, pickles, radish and coriander and bow-ties with pancetta and onion. SO GOOD.

Powered paraglider on Main Beach.

To explain the strange moniker, it's located in a suburb named Runaway Bay.

The children's meals come with tiny colouring pencils!

The boyfriend and the cat and the other book from the guy who wrote the very excellent Everything Is Illuminated (found movie atrociously boring though). A good read so far.

The cat decided that the best way to gain our attention would be to sit in the centre of the 1000 piece puzzle we'd just started.

Osso bucco and mash on part of our new dinner set.

Jan: Your fifth tattoo should be of this pattern on the dinner plate.

C: So we can commemorate how domestic we are?

Jan: Yes.

C: How about I get the slow cooker done instead?