6/6

Time has flown by so quickly, and without realising it I have neglected this blog almost unwittingly. It is now the middle of June and I have just enough time to sit down and think about where my last six months has gone – and how I am determined to spend my next six.

I ushered in the January new year with a karaoke session and a Bamboo buffet birthday dinner at home. There was also a trip to Batu Gantong to ascertain my mum’s side of the family. I came back to Singapore and celebrated my birthday at Morton’s with a friend, then jetted off to Myanmar for a mid-month holiday to celebrate a childhood friend’s birthday. The first movie of the year that I watched was Joy, which was ironically, not so joyful a watch.

In February I went home to Penang to celebrate Chinese New Year for six days. I had Hameediyah twice, checked out the brunch at Ferringhi Gardens (not good), visited a boy called Bo Wern, had Reunion dinner and celebrated three birthdays at home. I also baked three cakes – a triple layer orange cake, an Oreo cheesecake and a matcha cheesecake. When I came back to Singapore, there was a windsurfing session and a Woolf Works writing session at Joo Chiat.

March was spent entirely in Singapore and it was extremely eventful. I ate at Muthu’s Curry twice and read four books (Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, Relationships from Attraction to the Altar by Acts Church, Spirit Wars by Kris Vallotton and The Weight of Glory by CS Lewis). There was a final Woolf Works session, a house visit to Punggol, pancakes at Clinton Street Bakery, pizza and wine at a friend’s in East Coast, a BBQ at Windy Heights and discovering Zootopia!

March was also the Easter month, where I celebrated Good Friday at church and attended a baptism at Bukit Merah. In the writing world, I did a podcast recording with the Hong Kong Writers’ Circle (HKWC) to promote our anthology and also attended a talk by one of my favourite authors, Tash Aw! I managed to take a photo with him and had two of his books autographed. Fangirldome unlocked.

On the first day of April my parents arrived in Singapore, and there was plenty of sightseeing around Chinatown, Marina Bay and Pulau Ubin. My mum and I left for Taipei for a week, and came back to a weekend in IKEA Tampines. I watched Hamlet Live at the Esplanade, an Italian film called Il Nome del Figlio (così così) and wrote two short stories; “Sampat” for Esquire x Montblanc’s Fiction Project and “Cousins” for Writing the City’s Savour This competition.

May began with the Labour Day long weekend and was a month of many firsts. It was my first time dining at Artisteaque Cafe, cooking a delicious chicken breast with asparagus for dinner, visiting the Singapore Philatelic Museum, eating at Nangfa in Bedok North, exploring Timbre+ and dining at a hidden gem called Baker&Cook in Siglap. It was also the first time I did a photoshoot in the back alleys of Geylang, which ended up being an adventure any of us could ask for.

I also had a wonderful evening watching Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare in the Park, spending time with my sister from Melbourne, attending a wedding dinner at Goodwood Park then jetting back home to Penang for a jam-packed char koay teow trip. May ended with an impromptu trip to Melaka (mainly because I was craving for nyonya kuih, which I did not get to eat in Penang). The weekend was filled with good food, a charming homestay and mission accomplished in buying a full kebaya costume.

My June has so far been peppered with work, though last week I managed to write a 3,500-word short story entirely in Bahasa Melayu. Together with the Singapore Writer’s Group, there was a book launch at Kinokuniya held for our anthology ‘Tales of Two Cities’. I was so privileged to be on the panel, talking about my story ‘The Red Kemboja Tree’. Elsewhere in my social life, I also had a really delicious crab dinner at Mellben in Ang Mo Kio with a few Manchester peeps, so things aren’t looking so bad at all.

Let’s see what the rest of 2016 has in store!