Syrix's Sightings: November 2006

Texas : Coldest Ever

Whao! It's 35 farenheit today. That's around 2 deg I think. Cool beans! There was rain just now when we went to Walmart. Lucky it stopped when we finished shopping. Didn't buy much today, but still spent 22 bucks. Think cos i bought more meatballs...haha now i got a total of 120 meatballs in my fridge (how do i noe? coz the packaging counts for u). Think some storm messed up the phone line and now my phone is dead. Imagine getting a call now....spooky.

The maintainance came in today to help us turn up the heater. So thoughtful? But i realised they only do it for us and not Liling and Minh. I supposed coz we're like only 20m away from the admin office and we live in the biggest apartment they could offer. So better services? Anyway I din't like that coz they turned up the heat to 27 degree. That's nice in SG but hell hot here. Was wondering how I'd survive back in SG. Sure melt in the sun.

They say it might snow tmlo and I am not going to miss it!! What's more, there's a chance the company will be closed due to icy roads..wah that's another day for me to nua at home!

Here's a shot of me slacking in my cubicle. Taken with my handphone.

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This is the lotion that ah gong wants me to get. Can anyone help me verify this is indeed the one he's refering to? Coz its an after-tan lotion!

Texas : Online Shopping Spree

Shoe galore! Haha, was doing some calculations on my expenditure so far. Had expected to spend around $1k USD for my 12 weeks here, but so far I have only spent $450USD. And I had enough food to last for the next 2 weeks! A rough estimation would bring my expenditure to $700 USD by the end of the trip. Which left me with $300 extra to spend!

So I did some online shopping for branded goods. It's not those impulse buying, but rather buying with purpose worth every bit of the money.

So here's my Dr Martens Doc Classic for casual wear @ US$64 after discount

And my Clarks leather shoe for work @ US$35 after discount.

I am going to wear them for the rest of my life. Think they can last you a good 5 years at least. Good value, great brand!

Texas : Thanks Giving

Yeah it's Thanks Giving day! And 4 straight days of holidays! But without Liling the driver, there's no where we can go! So it's a day of slacking...correction...days of slacking for me. I don't think I would wanna drive the car, thou i could. And no car = no where to go! So i guess I will cook up some nice meals or just slack at home till Monday.

So, here's a pix of the meal I had yesterday. I name it as

8 Imperial Treasures Of the West!

Clockwise from top: Chicken Nugget, Meat Ball, Harshbrown, Egg, Broccoli, Corn, Fried Dace and Rice. Sides include orange juice and mushroom soup.

Journey to the Western Food.

You start with boiling potatoes.

Then I shred some halfcooked potatoes to prepare for rosti making.

Now I peel the rest and mashed them for a big tub of mashed potatoes.

Get the ingredients ready, then you cook them!

Halfway there

Chao Tar steak...the 1st one

The 2nd steak looked better!

The failed rosti

Racial Harmony

The finished product! Note it didn't include the rosti..haha

Texas : Hello Chef!

Minh cooks again! This time it's some kinda viet noodles. Dunno what it's really called but it's got lotsa veg in it. Of all the veg..i only know there's mint leaves and lettuce. The rest are just jargons to me. Really thankful to have Minh here in USA, haha at least I get to eat new type of food and home cooked food instead of TV dinners.

Anyway, been starting to cook my own food since a week ago. Today there's been further improvement! I cooked rice, egg and some broccoli to go with my Yeo's canned curry sauce and some canned fried dace. Nice...but the curry has this coconut smell thats smells like it's abit overdue. Not sure thou coz there wasn't any expiry date on the can. Hopefully it's still edible. Coz I found that the Asian shop we went to does sell some expired canned food.

Today our boss came back and as usual there's more things to do! It's a change for me today as I became the teacher instead of the student! Early morning Liling was attached to me to learn about the web basher. Haha yeah! Then the ironic thing came when some guy came from Belgium and was told to work with me, in the end I became like teaching him what he's going to teach back to the Belgium team! Then towards the end of the day, Peter came in and gave me the web basher's developer's email and told me to email him and work on getting the web basher going and fill Peter in on the details. Wah, what a change today.

Texas : White Rock Park

If you would like to dive straight into the nice pictures of this place, click here!

Went to White Rock Park today for our weekend outing. Its sorta a change cos it's more of nature stuff and nice scenery. And FREE! Haha, anyway, the place is nice and it's really good weather today to take a walk in the park. The first thing we saw was this huge lake, White Rock Lake which would be big enough to be Singapore's reservoir. Compare to our lake in Singapore...

Enjoying the nice scenery and the cool breeze.

Added this shot coz i tot it was real nice!

Dropped my camera and cracked the lens. Haha, u believe?

Creating the Maple Story

Feed the ducks! The sun was too strong...so it messed up the video.

Out in the lake..

Nice view of the park.

Finally, my dinner!

I skipped alot of stuff here coz I don't want my whole entry to be 10 pages long. But most of the nice pictures can be found here.

Texas : My dinners

Haha, this is quite a wu liao post, nothing much happened lately. So the only big thing that happened is that i felt that I am starting to eat abit more healthier! So here's a show of what I had for dinner on Tues,Wed and Thurs night!

Tues got banana and a chao tar harshbrown.

Wed is brocolli and pizza..haha okie this is not as healthy

Thurs got TV dinner with egg and broco...and i finished my bag of brocolli le! Nxt week must buy 2 more packs.

Texas : Nothing in the microwave today!

Yes, today my dinner was cooked without the use of microwave. Remarkable feat, since the day I came the microwave had been working non-stop. Made a trip to Walmart today but the shopping list was kinda different. No TV dinner, but I got oil,eggs,bread, ham and orange juice.(and 2 more packs of Famous Amos since its cheapers than Lays...SGD$4 for 425g) Healthier living from this month on!

Due to the amateurish cook at work, the vegetable oil got burnt and left its black mark on the pan. I guess the temp was too high. Any ideas how to wash it off?

Here's the finished product. Looks nice? Rice and fish stick complimentary of Sam.

Texas : Finally I own a Levi!!

It's the weekend again! But since I was kinda sick with cough, didn't feel excited about going out either. Anyway, we went to this factory outlet place called Allan and there were lotsa stuff to shop! But i wasn't really super duper excited thou, just looking around. The Puma wasn't cheap, Adiddas & Nike I believed to be cheaper in Thai or Viet.

I did buy some stuff from Levis. Figured its not so expensive since its like SGD$40 for a pair of Levis. Wanted to get 2 initially but the other pair I liked didn't have the Levi's word on the small little red tag beside the back pocket. So I thought since I am buying partly for the brand, I am not going to buy that pair. So I bought only 1 pair in the end. If we're going back there again I might get another one. Else it's just fine. And I bought 2 branded stuff too for my dear. But I am not saying what it is.

Sunday was spent staying at home, which I actually preferred coz I wanted to get my cough off before going to work tmlo. Anyway, thank God it's been better already. Don't need that cough suppressant anymore! I can let Hubba Bubba have it! haha.

Cooked some Koka mee to eat today and it tasted nicer than usual! Sick of TV dinners and pasta...Singaporeans are blessed to have so many choices. Here I can only choose from cheeseburgers or pizza or pasta. Where's my char kway teow, ou jian, laska,mee rubus, chicken rice, mixed vegetable rice, bak kut teh, po piah, ban mian, duck rice, pi dan chok, yong tau foo, chai tao kuey, mee siam, nasi lemak, la mian, xiao long bao, kuey chap and so so much more!

Maggi mee with beef,corn and spinach. Wished I bought egg...its been like 25 days since I have eaten any egg!

Texas : Minh's Bday

Okie this is a long due post, getting lazy to write everyday I come back. Anyway, think it was Monday that we came back and found our furniture for 1 bedroom was removed. As changing to a 2 room apartment now would incur a penalty charge, they decided to remove the furniture from 1 room to cut the cost..kinda dumb? Then i would rent a 3 bedroom and ask them to remove 2 beds from me. Anyway, here's the empty looking room.

Now, who would have thought Sam and Minh shared such near bday. So I get 2 bday post in a week! For Minh, we figured that she would love to go eat buffet, so we didn't really plan any surprise since bringing her there would ruin everything already. Went back to Best Buffet at night, and there was some new stuff we could take this time!

More pictures here of all the food I took!

Finally, there's some kinda pollen spreading around now. Seems like it's their sorta season for that, and I got myself a cough at this moment. Wondering if it's gotta do with the pollen or it's just coincidental.

Anyway, Hubba Bubba looks sad that I had to drink some cough suppressant.
( That's all they have here ...all off the shelves medication seem to only have suppressant.

Texas : BrianStone Mall

Okie, here's the long lost post...actually there's something more to blog today but I decided to give this post the chance to go 1st. Went to another shopping mall last Sat and it's a very typical mall. Similar to the one we went to at Colin Creek Mall. Even the shops are identical, they also had Ipod vending machines there. So there's really nothing much to describe there. All the stuff can be seen on my Colin Creek mall post.

Anyway here's the link to the photoalbum for the mall. Click here

After a long walk at the mall, we went to have buffet at Pete's! Don't think it really popular, just another small pizza buffet shop. Like those in Singapore where u have alot of different kinda small chicken rice stores.

Oh something interesting...found my own family brand of products.

Texas : Sam's Bday

Okie, actually had another post for what we did during the weekend. But I guess getting the bday post on the day itself is much more impt! So...here's a Happy Birthday to Sam on turning 25! We planned to give him a surprise so we came up with a plan...haha. Here goes...Minh and Liling were supposed to go to buy cake and chicken after work, while I am supposed to lure Sam to the gym. Haha, when we leave the house, I would take out the trash so that when they come over, they know nobody's at home when they see the bag of trash. So we went to the gym and I used the stepper machine today as it was easier and I could last longer on it! haha, to give the girls enuff time to buy and prepare their stuff. Anyway, all went pretty well for the plan! And he got a big SURPRISE!

Texas : Halloween

Okie, this is an outdated post, wasn't really intending to blog about it since we didn't celebrate it. But since I am here at 745pm still waiting for Liling to finish her stuff with the siao on boss...I might as well create an entry on notepad and transfer it later.

Went to Walmart on Halloween to stock up on food (attack of the killer donuts) and TV dinners when I saw this cute looking sweet container ( and with sweets inside too!). So I decided to buy 3 and I'm gonna give a pair of it to my dear. Bought the extra green one coz I thot it could glow in the dark but I was cheated! Haha. Anyway that sums up my Halloween. No trick or treats!

Donuts line up for battle...but they lost to my overpowering teeth.

I am Hubba Bubba Ali Baba!

Texas : Dallas Zoo

Okie, the zoo is supposed to be on Sunday, but i was tired when I got back, and Monday I went to the gym. So here's the Zoo update today.

In case you guys miss the link to the photo, ( I realised ppl can't see link towards end of post), here's the link to the zoo pixs.

The admission was $8.75 and the train ride took around 55 mins. That's like from Khatib to CommonWealth!

There are too many pix to be shown here...so i'd just put 2 and the rest of the video links here.