o v e r f l u o

It can be quite scary when winds whip at 90km/h, especially when it's also raining, and more so at night. Living in an old house doesn't help because I used to hear creaks and be afraid the house might be blown apart. I still hear creaks, but I'm just more used to it now, and it's better when Ian's home. It also doesn't help that we've just watched Sherlock's The Hound of Baskerville, featuring dark spaces and scary sounds. Priming, they call it. When you watch something like that and you hear noises outside your home in real life, you are primed to think there might be someone lurking outside your home, even though there really isn't. It's just the howling wind blowing at your creaking home. The houses here are built differently. When I first came in 2008, I remember knocking on the walls of the room I rented and hearing it all hollow. When guests were living in the room next to mine, I woke up to the sound of their rustling plastic bags

I was washing the dishes when this well-known phrase popped into my mind – life is the sum of your choices . The entrance of that thought was completely random, but it got me thinking. Is life the sum of the decisions I make, of the things I chose? Because really, I hope it isn't. Because I make silly decisions sometimes, or maybe, a lot of the time. It's true that in some ways, we "choose our own destiny" by deciding to work hard, eat healthily, be positive, study arts instead of science, believe in a God or not, start a friendship, marry someone, and more. These decisions affect the outcome. But they are not the only things affecting the outcome. More important than my choices, are the people. You may think we choose the people in our life, but actually, we don't always. There are some we choose, but there are many others whom we don't. Like our parents, for one. We didn't choose them, but they chose to have us. Teachers

We woke up early enough last weekend to grab breakfast at McDonalds and it was fun. We pretty much jumped out of bed to make sure we'd reach and order before 10.30am, before the menu at the counter would be flipped. McDonalds used to be a Sunday morning thing for me when I was in primary school – where usually Ee Jie, Wei and I would be early for church service which was held at YMCA, which used to have a McDonalds. Then Janice would arrive with her Dad, and we'd both go to the washroom and place our hands under the dryer to warm ourselves up. Weekly tradition. This year is the year we both get married. Time flies.  Anyway. Made a simple lunch today. Yum. Staying home to complete homework for coursera today.

^ Happy birthday husband! Thank you for being my best. And thank you for being my husband ;) ^ We celebrated at  Movida Aqui . ^ Anchovy and sorbet ^ ^ Calamari sandwich ^ ^ Wagyu beef ^ ^ Lamb ^ Other dishes we had were cured meats, wild boar, and a little potato bomb. It was pretty good, but we were too stuffed to finish the lamb at the end. We actually didn't want to order it, but were told it wouldn't be enough if we only ordered the previous dishes. So we ordered the lamb. But what we've learnt is that we shouldn't listen to the waitress always.  The other time we went to The Black Toro at the Glen, the food was great, but again, we were ill-advised to order the lamb which turned out to be huge and we stuffed ourselves and still couldn't finish it yet again. Not sure if it was just the waitress, or what our asian-sized bellies can fit vs what locals usually eat.  But anyway, good meal.

I'm sort of in this in-between place right now. The last time I had full-time work was 5.5 months back. I quit to move to Australia to marry my Australian citizen boyfriend. The first 1.5 months here was spent on wedding preparations (we had a short engagement). Once we were officially wed and had a marriage certificate, we applied for my spouse visa.  With a temporary residency (yay), I now have full permission to work in Australia. The thing is, what should I do? I've been looking at job descriptions and it's really interesting because reading it, I get to see what resonates with me and what doesn't. At the same time, I try to keep myself open to new things. Part of the dilemma is that I'm planning to be back in Singapore for the whole of December, so starting a job now could pose problems for that. But that's not really the issue because anyway, I'll have to look to start a real full-time job when I get back to Australia in January 2014.  Apt

I'm an average cook. In three years of university life away from home, my cooking philosophy was – as long as its edible. So I lived on three years of stir-fry. Anything is stir-fry-able. Just start with chopped garlic and/or onion, add the harder ingredients then softer ones, season with salt, pepper, maybe some light/dark soya sauce or oyster sauce, and ta-dah! An edible dish. Those were the days I discovered the amazing Korean bulgogi sauce – just mix it in with any meat and it will taste oh-so-good. Also, seaweed seasoning. If your food is a tad tasteless, add some seaweed seasoning which is good on its own. Now that I am a wife, that cooking philosophy has changed. After all, they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, right? Ha ha. Okay but really – I can't feed my husband stir-fry all the time! By the way, I'm cooking most days now more because I'm not working so it's not some male chauvinist thing alright. It

Healthy food and happy utensils for lunch at home today.

This article has been making rounds on Facebook. I also read about a claim to say it isn't true. Well, true or not, such cases do happen, and they are serious, disgusting, and wrong. There are things people do in the name of religion or culture that are baffling. There are things people do when they are angry and raging. Then again, some of these people have been brought up with certain ideologies drilled into their heads and possibly, hearts. They believe that there is nothing wrong with it. Some take sadistic pleasure in their "entitlements" even if their conscience may have once ever told them that it is wrong. This is proved by social psychology studies which show aggression is triggered from things such as imitation as children, and cultures which promote male honour and machismo. To some, this – the marginalisation of women – is just their way of life, because it's the only thing they have ever known. That is, until e