I wonder why we always overeat when we are overseas. Perhaps it is really the only time when we have a legit excuse ( or is there such a thing as a legit excuse? ) to binge out and be happy and absolutely guilt-free…. while at least until we come back home. That’s what I always say… ” Eat first… later go back then we exercise!”

When you touch down to home, the guilt slowly sets in… at first you get excited about the gifts you got for everyone. Then you get almost deliriously happy over the great bargains you snagged at the local markets ( scheming & plotting ways to gain the upper hand in the bargain battle )… and then wham!

You look in the mirror. Bam!

Yup, looks like some “extra” gifts followed me back on my body…. time for weight loss action!

Now that I am back, I have reverted back to my more vegetables & less meat diet a.k.a. healthy diet ( does not help when you have to attend gatherings with friends at restaurants/BBQ though… ) Plus I will try to avoid any sweet stuff, even not taking sugar with coffee. And of course, try to do more yoga!

My #1 way is to eat my healthy Vegetable soup for most of my meals. Not only is it nutritional but it is oil free!

Yummy Vegetable Soup
=================
Soup base like chicken cube or fish cube ( personally I use Red Miso Paste & japanese fish soup base )
Carrots
White carrots
Celery
Onion
Potato
Corn
In fact, any vegetables! Bean sprouts, spinach, any leafy greens…

Boil water. Cube the root vegetables. Add soup base into boiling water. Add in all the hardy root vegetables like carrots, potato, corn, onion etc. I’ll add the celery in at this point probably at the point when the carrot just about become tender cos I like them soft. Leave the leafy green vegetables later. Boil & simmer until the vegetables is tender. Then add in the leafy vegetables to cook and then serve.

Add the following for a more hearty soup :
Tofu
Mushrooms
Dumplings
Udon

You can add a bit of healthy olive oil or seasame seed oil just before serving. ( oils are important in our diet too! )

Love.

I don’t know much about love. Since young, I only read about love from those teenage love books, Mills & Boons… and then to watching feel good romance movies from Dirty Dancing ( watched a grand total of 4-5 times I think ), Reality Bites, Titanic etc then to the current popular HK/Japanese/Korean romance serials. My absolute favorites are Long Vacation ( Japanese ) & Secret Garden ( Korean ).

Come to think of it, I gave up on watching too mushy romantic serials or listening to love songs a few years ago – I guessed simply, to me they are all distractions and will only make you have unrealistic expectations of love in real life.

Plus I am not getting younger and I often wondered if my time has passed? Being alone is not really bad, I supposed. You have absolute freedom to do whatever you like, go wherever you wanna go. I was not sure but I know I am not one to get hitched for the sake of getting hitched. EEEK! Imagine getting married to someone who you have no feelings for, not attracted to and you have to face him for the rest of your life? I have also have heard of stories about marriages gone wrong! With the husband becoming abusive or has strayed. My worst nightmare! Then I am very sure I rather be single and happy.

And yet there are times, when I do feel envious of couples – they have each other to run to when they face problems, when they want a hug, when they want to someone to snuggle with, they can build their own home. But then again there are occasions when your married friends or couple friends have problems with their married life that you are thankful that you do not have and relish the fact that you are still single.

He found me in this case (in a song he dedicated to me, his heart found me… mushy but hey I love it…;P ). Life is so unpredictable!

As he blushfully admitted, he had a crush on me for quite some time. ME? Hmmm… I am flattered…

( Btw, he’s my no. 1 blog fan… so I am writing this with that in mind… hee hee )

To cut the long long long story, the short gist is that he took massive action ( with major help from me of course ).

And now we are a couple… sweet!

Namaste!

And it is high time I gotten back into my yoga groove… missing yoga… I love the joyful feeling and peaceful warmth within after every session of yoga…. a serene sense of content and satisfaction. Plus it really gives me a lot of confidence then… now that I have stopped for more than 1 year, I lost the self confidence some what and the strength mentally and physically.

Expect more changes to the blog…. experimenting with this cool theme called Weaver!

Meanwhile, time for some headstand action… ciao!

Hence this year starting with my birthday, we tried to start as early as possible. Meaning to start the outing as early as possible. And we did by starting the day early at one of the few places that offer buffet in the morning – Red Star Restaurant. We figured we’ll have a nice dim sum buffet breakfast and the continue to another location for coffee/tea. So we planned perhaps to eat from 9.30am to perhaps 12pm. But guess what? We ended up hanging around there until 2pm!!! We were pretty impressed with ourselves indeed… *smug*

Then we went for this nice little cafe, Flor at Duxton Hill. It is a japanese confectionery bakery that serve yummy light and yet delicious cakes. We were spoilt for choices and it was really hard to settle for just 4!

Strawberry Soufflé

Mont Blanc

This is my absolute favorite, Waguri Millefeuille, nice flaky puff pastry with a not-so-sweet French chestnut cream – creamy and deli-ccccious:

Waguri Millefeuille

Earl Grey Chocolat

Definitely heading back there for more yummy treats! Now I am aiming for their Tofu Chiffon!

And I am shocked by the number of comments in my blog! Oops… I really did not check back here for the longest time… and even one from someone from the Strait Times… hmmm how did she find me?

I am not in the habit of making new resolutions or such but I do wish to make some public goals so that I am held accountable for them as I work my way towards them. Life really is too short and precious waste!

After some experiences that I encountered and sharing with alot of folks, I really really realised that I am truly blessed – Without A Doubt!

But first I need to clear some backdated comments & much much plugins to update!

Later…;)

And today I had a craving for the curd but alas! No passion fruits in sight! Thus as the saying goes, when life throws you lemons, you make lemon curd! How about that?

photo credit: thepinkpeppercorn

Yay! And so I did. But instead of following the recipe taken online on how to make lemon curd, I foolishly followed back the passion fruit recipe by replacing the lemon juice. And I ended up with cooked egg bits in my curd. Rule 1 : Never mix the eggs into the juice while waiting for the water in the double boiler to boil. Lemon juice + egg = cooked egg…. Even if its with eggy bits, the curd still tasted very good… So just strain the mixture to get rid of the eggy bits and the curd is good to go!

The method I used was meant for the passion fruit curd. Thus be smart… follow lemon curd recipe method… After the incident, I read up more on the lemon curd recipe and found that the recommended method was to cream the mixture of sugar and butter first ( much like baking a cake ) and then to add in the eggs. Next, then add in the lemon juice (mixture will cuddle but don’t panic, the heat later will dissolve all the bits) and then cook the mixture in a double boiler.

Ingredients for Lemon Curd
===================
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 lemon juice
3 eggs
Some lemon zest
About 115g butter

PS. if you do not like too sour curd, you can reduce the lemon juice.

Yummy!

photo credit: toholio

But as usual, with much excuses like the rainy season and hot sun, I managed to go for only 3 running sessions before the run. Yikes!

photo credit: Patrick Hoesly
Well, despite my laziness and lame attempts to jump start my own fitness regime, I managed to finish the 5km run without stopping or walking! I am so proud of myself! It was a great feeling as it truly shows that at the end of the day, it is really mind over body. And the best part? I came out of the running without any pain or aches that normally will come when you don’t really exercise for a very long time… I expected a downtime of at least 2-3 days of intense pain coming up and down the stairs but surprisingly, I had no down time!

So without any hestitation, I am going for my next run in October for the Great Eastern Life Run! Heeee…. Maybe should be trying for 10km…. hmmmm…. or maybe not… yikes!

Now I am looking forward to the Oct one and hopefully try to beat my timing at the Shape Run!

~Namaste!

PS. Hamstrings are definitely getting tighter and tighter… sigh… need to go back to normal yoga classes soon!!!!

It’s no point going against what you dream of owning one day. Back 1.5 yrs ago, I wanted an iphone. But I did not get it as I heard from friends that iphone is not as fantastic as it is made out to be. SMS cannot forward, contact cannot forward, etc … My friends kept complaining about it and recommend me to get an Nokia instead. And so I did.

Was I happy with it? Nope. It was a pretty phone but still it was not iPhone… no cool touch screen, no zooming in and zooming out with pinching the screen, no fast scrolling, no keying in on a cool touch screen keypad – I had to struggle with the phone tiny key pad as I painfully typed out the URL of websites I wanted to surf on the phone. I used to think I will not be accessing the web via my phone… it will be so silly! Such small screen? I rather go on my laptop or desktop to surf…

But I was wrong! It has become quite important to be able to access the internet on the go. Especially with knowledge or data required at the top of your fingertips.

Plus the array of applications available on the iPhone is really amazing. And of course games are plenty on iPhone land – many free and provide you with hours of entertainment ( okay, more like a distraction… )

Now that I have finally gotten my iPhone, I am finally at peace. This was the one.

This is especailly true for women as some how, women tend to age faster compared to men in terms of loo. Men for some reason, tend to look better when they age. This is demostrated with those male hollywood stars like Johnny Depp ( I used to like him alot in 21 Jump Street when he was young but I really love him when he got older… so much more! ). Well, stars aside, we ordinary folks also want to look fabulous as we age!

I have been told numerous times that I don’t look my age. I look far younger than I look and always surprised people when I revealed my age. Secret? Well, there are a few "secrets" that I believe in :

1. Use sunblock! That is my number one must do before I step out of the house. This is one scientific fact that has been proven by dermatologist all over the world that we really need to keep the sun out! Above SPF 15 please! Currently I am using SPF50… better to be very safe then sorry…

2. Yoga of course! One of the most importance thing that I do to keep me youthful is of course yoga! I strongly recommend doing inversions as one of the best way to stay young as in our normal day to day  life, we hardly have any chance to allow blood to flow towards our head and face area. Headstands and handstands and even the simple downward dog are terrific way to keep our skin radiant.

3. Then comes what we eat and drink. Do you know that sugar or rather processed food is the number one enemy of premature aging? So think twice before you sink your teeth into sweet things like doughnuts, sweets, cakes etc. But then again who can resist? I for one, will still indulge in some sweets once a while…. but of course, not everyday!

4. Then we need to good facial products to upkeep our fragile skin on our face. Depending on your skin type, always choose those products that are suitable and if possible go for natural products. I tried to use those products from normal shops like Watsons from brandnames like Loreal, Garnier and Olay, but somehow my skin hates them as they are pretty oily they feel heavy on my skin. I am especially adverse to loreal products as using them often causes "oil" sacs on my face! Anyway, I have already given up on using these products.

However, recently I discovered this particular cream from the US which seems to be working well for me. It smells funny ( probably due to the content of Alpha Lipoic and DMAE )  and look like those light brown foundation cream but once you use it, you know that it works! A tiny dab each to the cheecks and forehead is more than enough. The skin feels firmer and softer in an instant. I love it! But remember a little goes a long way! I was greedy once and use alot on my neck and there was some redness as a result of that ( coupled with a few sprays of perfume which chemically spell bad news ).  Plus, its pretty cheap!

This cream is by Derma E : DMAE Alpha-Lipoic-C-Ester Retexturizing Creme

So far I give it a thumbs up as it is working for my skin ( firming and moisturing + anti-aging all in one bottle) and it does not cause any oil sacs. The only thing to note is not to use too much of it at one go. I bought mine here with the discount coupon HEW497 to get $5 off your first order.

5. Finally the most important thing I do every single without fail is to drink lots of water! Water is so important to flush out all the toxins of the water as well as to keep our skin supple. In fact, the less you drink water, the more your body tends to retain the water. Your skin will look clearer and more radiant if you drink water to help the body detox.

2009 has been quite a year, full of ups and downs, lefts and rights. Even though it is eventful, I learnt a lot of things and it has been enlightening and most challenging.

To everyone : Happy New Year!!!