Deep reflection

I cannot seem to run away from this. This endless amount of uncertainty in life. Ponder. Questions. They start to swarm into my mind once more. Should I bother searching for the answers? Should I bother finding out what the truth is?

'Am I happy?' Would be the question that summarizes it all.

To be more specific - 'Is this the career I want?' a stable job with money coming in, enough to get by, enough to be comfortable, enough to explore, but not enough to be happy. It isn't a passion. It is just something I trained myself to be good at. It is something that anyone can pick up. Perhaps the next question is 'Is this something I can live for the rest of my life or will I get bored stiff at the end?'

I find it extremely ironic when work jeopardizes health if one wants to leap forward and ahead. I am surrounded by obesity. 'Should I work as a fitness instructor instead?'. There is something about this cake fanatic phase that I am going through and the constant right eye twitching telling me. Some sort of a sign? Why do I feel like I want to be known? To be acknowledge? To be popular? To be good at something? To feel recognised? I guess I do feel like a burden at work at the moment...

Baking Craz_E

Yes, some weird phase that I'm going through...I have succumbed to the wonderful world of baking...and to a potluck event was the excuse. I wonder how long this will go for, and I cannot believe how much time I have spent in the kitchen these days! Takes a whole lotta effort if you don't have enough utensils too (did I just see something pop out of my biceps?)


Seriously, I wished I stopped here. THis was what it looked like beForE I added a coat of jelly layer to the top. Mixed Ambrosia custard and Mascarpone cheesse as the base as well as I place a coat of chocolate layer right at the bottome (yum). My next attempt will be to make the base, rather to buy one...

SOB~ PINK ewwww...I didn't realise jelly cools down super fast! Note to oneself - Buy plain colour jelly sachet...

Looks decent, me banana cake? :)

Manage to finish all the cherries. What a coincidence, it was the EXACT amount too!

I kinda read a lot of recipe's online and mix and match the ingredients plus the way of stirring to suit. After going through the pain of the bowl being not big enough and the cake mixer beating and splattering all over the place, I hope this will taste better than the previous one I did (although that was all eaten at the office within the span of 3 hours!). Cross fingers the icing is not too sweet, nor my fruit flan either *fingers, knees and toes crossed)

In other news, I did fulfill one resolution so far, to cook / make 3 dishes and I have! woopeee. And in other other news, Amsterdam; Here we come! Woohoo...

Milan, Italy

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, this is now a great story to tell...(more pics on my album)

Friday, 1st May 09
The day started off at work, where I left at 12noon to go back and pack, in which I didn't really need to but was avoiding work in a way. Came home, clear up the place so that there is room to drop our stuff when we come back and manage to fit in one episode of Naruto ;)

Off to grab the tube at the airport after. Checked in at Lufthansa's terminal whereby they use machines instead to print off your boarding pass and one pretty much just head to the counter to drop off any bags. We then head off to purchase D's new toy. Heh. The thing is that when he went to the shop, the price was £30 more than what he saw online! So what he did was to ring them up instead and made an order. Smart eh? We then head to meet up with our friends at the gate and boarded the plane. Seats on this Airbus are quite spacious that made our traveling comfortable. We receive a snack too which made the trip such a great value since we only paid about £50 each return. The trip took about 2 hours

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View from the plane in the evening, amazing

Was quite efficient at the airport. We grabbed the city map, and took the Malpensa bus into the train station in the city that took about an hour. As soon as we got off, we grab our luggage and headed off to one corner of the footpath to look for our hotel. I was so glad that we were quick because as soon as we decided on something, I was looking for my roller bag. No where to be found. Panic attack. Dave quickly found out that there was something fishy going on when one Italian dude interrupted us by asking us for the airport while we were looking at the map. He quickly ran in that direction, only to realise there were 2 people who were working together so he had to run the other direction. He saw the bag (since it was florescent green) and the dude that carried. As soon as he was found out, he dropped the bag and ran, in which me and Ket saw from afar...

What a great start after 2 mins of touch down time o.O

Anyway, we scooted off quickly from that dodgy place and found our hotel. Everything was fine until we saw our room. We only had a single king size bed with one pillow! Our poor friends had to go down and enquire since this was not what we pictured from the internet. But in general, it was much better to our previous hotel we stayed.

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Hotel Mennini - our accomodation

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View up the stairs

Saturday, 2nd May 09
After our Buffet breakfast, we headed off to the Church in Duomo. We went to central station to check out the tickets for the train to Lake Como the next day.

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Market outside the station

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Things they sell

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Train station from the outside

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Inside the station

Being so eager on the first day, we walked. Took us about 45 mins to get to the Cathedral. Took pictures on the way (check out my album). We passed by the statue of Leonardo da Vinci before arriving to the Galleria

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Us in reflection wandering

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Statue of Leonardo Da Vinci

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D making full use of his new toy

There were alot of high end retail shops (even McDees was in Gold!) but the Gallery itself was impressive.

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Us in the gallery

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II from Gjin Ow on Vimeo.



Pretending to be lost


View of the Gallery outside

As we got out of the gallery, we stumbled across a 'piazza' which is a courtyard, whereby the Duomo Cathedral was on the left. Was quite crowded that day.

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The Duomo

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Queue getting in that didn't take too long luckily

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At the centre of the Cathedral

It was quite dark inside and wasn't as impressive as St. Stephen's bascillica in Budapest. But I was keen to go up. Then again, we gave up since the queue to even walk up looked like it'll take an hour before we actually climb up the stairs. Bleh.

Anyway, went back to the piazza and took more pics

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Milan Policemen

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Balloons

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View opposite the Duomo

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Vending van with a mini coconut fountain on the left (can you see it?)

Headed off to have lunch in a recommended restaurant. Mozarella was the specialty and there was story about 2 of the 3 brothers that established this restaurant and the youngest became and artist and had his works done in this restaurant.

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Starter HUGE mozarella and yummy sweet cherry tomatoes- filled us up straight away

Pizzas in the restaurant here are done in such an original way. Special oven and not forgetting proper crust and yummy cheese. YUM

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Traditional way of cooking pizza

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Fratteli la bufala restaurant

When we came out, we saw some of the remains of a building dated back in the 2nd - 3rd Century!

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Temperature today - 31 deg!!

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The remains of a building

We headed off to a castle that had a park for us to hang out and relax

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Castle in view

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Went off to the Puma factory shop to check out the deals...in which I found this to be funny

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Beautiful House hehe

we had gelato on the way back and OMG the stores are amazing! It's not just the 20 or more flavours they have but as well as mini cups of dessert and cakes. HeaVen~

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Cups of dessert, gelato flavours and the signboard showing the sizes

As we head back to get changed, we passed by a supermarket and bought mushrooms, pasta and some snacks for our office.

Dinner was at a steakhouse. Service was superbly fast and steak was excellent. Had a tad too much of Italian red wine. We walked to a Canal after and had more Gelato :P

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Seven Restaurant

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Our yummy steak meals

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Canal at night

Sunday, 3rd May 09
Woke up slightly later and went straight to the train station. Lake Como was half an hour away.

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Da boys

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Coming out from the train station, heading to lake como

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Found kiera's shop ;)

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Arriving at the pier

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Clocks are everywhere, so much so you don't need to wear a watch!

We were deciding on whether or not to grab the boat one way to Bellagio (one of the cities by lake Como) or city hop 4 smaller cities instead for a more reasonable price. We went with the former since we heard nicer things about it. So we took a ferry that went for an hour to the place. Also, apparently george clooney stays in one of these cities. They were selling postcard of his holiday house LOL. Poor guy.

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Ticket counter

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Cities we passed

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My dream home....sigh

This was something we have never seen for a long time, check out this man's camera!

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Bellagio city is unique on it's own, and Lake Como is very beautiful especially when we could see the alps from afar. We explored the city (even walking to the other side) had more Gelato and tried one of the Italian's popular starters: Melon and ham.

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Map of Bellagio

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Us and the alps behind

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Melon and ham dish

There are more pictures of the city on my album. Do check it out :)

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On the way back to the train

We went back to the hotel, changed and quickly head out for dinner. We wanted to go to this restaurant called 'Anna and Leo' where they are famous for their pasta but was closed when we arrived (took us 2 hours to look for the place and it was 11pm when we found it). So we went into the next one that was open. And I have never seen the largest pizza in my life. One slice was only 1/8 of the entire piece and it filled up the entire plate!

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La Cappelleta - D's pizza

As well as the menu was written in italian, the waiter was italian, I went with the safest dish: Ham and cheese pizza LOL. Ham was called 'Cotto'. As expected, food arrived quick.

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My dish - check out the size!

Had more Gelato on the way back...mwahaha. We manage to get better rooms on the last day but our air-conditioning wasn't working. Ah well, at least the beds were bigger.

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View from our balcony on the last day before we head off to the airport

Overall, trip was GreaT, got a sun tan, trip taught me not to trust people and to have my luggage in FRONT of my eyes, but wishing I had more energy to withstand less sleep and I learnt that 'preggo' was a common word used when people serve us and when we say thank you, and I still have no idea what the word means. Milan is a small taste to what we are going to get in July :D. Am looking forward to more sun and Italian desserts.....

And please check my album out! More pictures loaded up :)