Oh man, I should up my time management skills. It’s been the second consecutive time since I’ve been late for the weekly update. I was debating myself into making this a bi-weekly thing, to balance with my school schedule and such. Would there be a mini riot if I did that? 

Anyway, let’s move on.Last was a relatively quiet one with episodes in between. Mainly it was school and readings. I have so many readings piled up but I still find time to catch up on old episodes of Criminal Minds. I really need to get my priorities straight. 

I think I’ve said this more than once on the blog, but I can’t cook. Well, more like I don’t cook. I’m pretty confident that I can follow a recipe and whip up something that’ll be good, but I just can’t be bothered to defrost a chicken and smear sauce all over it before letting it marinate 3 hours and, well, I have no patience for that. But this Monday, I did just that. Well, there wasn’t a three-hour wait, but I did manage to cook chicken for the first time. Again, well, I say cook, it was more like me stirring and flipping and wondering why the chicken wasn’t already fully cooked after being bored 10 minutes while Annie threw in the ingredient and spices and barked at me to keep flipping. It turned out to be really good, but more importantly,  I looked professional. 

One of the highlights was meeting up with Lorilee midweek. It was a bumpy route as the normal bus route I take was just not cooperating. To sum it up, there was an early termination on the first bus I got on, a couple reroutes, and a whole lotta traffic. A trip that would normally take me 30 minutes took me a good hour. We went to the Yumchaa at Soho and had a lovely chat. Lorilee took some lovely photos you can see on her blog here. 

If you didn’t know, I’m Taiwanese and I celebrate the Lunar New Year. Even if I’m half way across the world and a day late. It was a DIY dinner last Friday in the flat when everyone participated in trying to make dumplings. I haven’t done this since I moved back to Taiwan, but a couple of failed times later, it was like riding a bike and I made the fattest, cutest dumplings, if I can say so myself. It was the first time for the European flatmates and it took them several failed tries, loads of cries for help, and a heck load of concentration, but in the end, the results were pretty good. Annie and I also did the complete experience by giving the flatmates red envelopes with real Taiwanese money in it. The flatmates were convinced that it was fake money at first and then went into shock when we told them it was real. Bless them. 

Of course, we followed up with Spoons. This time, we brought the game to a whole new level and of course, the level of aggressiveness was pumped. In short, people were flinging themselves half way across the kitchen, doing whole body locks, pushing people, and the standard tug of war, all just to get a spoon. One of my flatmates entered the flat halfway through a game and he said that judging by the amount of screams, he thought someone was being murdered. Well, close enough. 

(This might be the most lovely fortune I've ever gotten...??)

The past week was pretty quiet as the weather was terrible, and with the tube strike, I was simply refusing to make any unnecessary trips outside. But as one of the flatmates was in desperate need of finding a Valentine’s gift for his girlfriend who was coming to visit, Annie and I braved the storm and trekked our way to Covent Garden midweek to give him some advice. We popped into the Jo Malone and Penhaligon’s for a sniff around (he also bought his gift). I never thought I was a perfume person, but after sniffing at the perfume samples for the past couple days, I can hear the eau de toilettes calling my name….