reflections and resolutions.

the new year represents a journey.

a journey into a better year or worse, well, nobody knows. if some say that life is governed by fate, then we have nothing else left but hope. so i hope 2009 will be even better than 2008. where today is better than yesterday, where tomorrow isn't a day of lamenting regrets of yesterday, and, where we learn to appreciate everyday.

To All Readers of www.ALI-JOE.blogspot.com,

Wishing You Health & Happiness for 2009!

xoxo - Ali Joe

this is a stick up, stick up.

in my free time i imagine i am beyonce and dance along to this song.

Merry Christmas!

since its christmas, i felt like doing something special. well, baking isnt exactly special because i do it every other day at home but i dont usually blog about my cooking or baking much anymore because of the sheer lazyness to take photos of what i do in the kitchen. but since i'm feeling extra festive, i shall let you in on what i baked on christmas eve.

i made Gingerbreadmen.


Ingredients

2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of ginger powder
1 tsp of cinnamon powder
1 egg
1/2 cup of sugar
3 tbsp of butter
1 tsp of vanilla essence
*chocolate chips, silver sugar pellets and white icing for decoration.


Directions

mix everything in bowl until it becomes a cookie dough and roll it out until around 5mm thickness. use a gingerbreadman cookie cutter(u can get it at cake shops) and cut out gingerbreadman shapes. arrange them nicely on baking tray that you have brushed with butter beforehand. make sure to space out the gingerbreadmen on the baking tray as they will expand when baked. i had some excess dough so i decided to make small circles (you'll find out why later).




it will look something like this.


next, time to decorate your gingerbreadmen with eyes and buttons.




before you begin on the decoration, set your oven to 180 degrees celcius.
now, i used chocolate chips as the eyes and silver sugar pellets as the buttons. if you cant find any silver sugar pellets, you can substiture them with mini m&ms.


as soon as you're done with decorating the gingerbreadmen, insert it into your preheat oven and bake it for 10mins.



after 10mins, open up the oven and use a satay stick to poke a gingerbreadman. if the stick comes out easily with no residue of dough sticking to it, its done. if not, leave it in for another 2-3mins.


remove it from the oven and let it cool for like 5 mins.



after 5 mins make sure you remove it from the baking tray and place it somewhere ventilated to further cool. if you continue to leave it on the baking tray, condensation will occur and make your cookie soggy. you could place it on a cooling rack. it looks something like those wire gauze you use for barbeques.


next use some white icing to further decorate the gingerbreadman. you can buy these icing from supermarket or if you wanna make it yourselves its damn easy. put 2 tablespoon of icing sugar in a bowl and gradually add water by the teasepoons and mix it until it looks like toothpaste texture. and thats how you make icing!




decorate the gingerbreadman with the icing. make sure the gingerbreadman is already cooled when u do this. then leave it for a while for the icing to harden.


oh remembered i made the small circles with my extra dough. well i decided to make a gingerbread family.




the Gingerbreads got married and had 3 kids!!

LOL!!





To all readers of www.ali-joe.blogspot.com,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!


xoxo - ALI JOE

Posted Polaroids

The Tea Party.

photos and narration are in the works. post coming to you soon so look out for it!!

something old, something new.

while most Singaporeans makes a shopping pilgrimage to orchard road every weekend, i prefer to do mine on weekdays. i'm not exactly the type who enjoys the hustle and bustle of elbowing crowds just to check out the sale at Topman. to me, shopping is a leisure not a necessity. i enjoy threading from store to store looking for quirky items to add to my collection. style should never be deprived of individualism.

a place that i feel exudes a quirky charm is kampong glam. its is filled with eclectic trinkets that never seems to bore me. with arab street and haji lane being part of kampong glam, it is definitely a great chillout spot to leisure your afternoon away.

this time around i brought maddie along as i was looking for some fabrics. along the way, we settled at this quaint cafe alocated along haji lane for some root beer float.





i cant remember what this cafe was called but the setting was really nice and the owner was such a sweet lady.


like i said, kampong glam has a diverse mix of the old and new. so the theme for my photos in this post is 'something old, something new'. as you can see the pictures above has been edited to look like an old photograph. and the next set is suppose to exude a futuristic look.





this was taken at the cafe. we were seated at the table which was along the road and maddie happened to have these 3D glasses with her. how random.






ciao.

santa baby

in tandem with christmas being around the corner, i have decided to make this blog FESTIVE!!


ho ho ho!

a white christmas?

i spy with my eye a white christmas at AMK Hub. kids and adults alike seem pretty amused by what appears to be snow in the tropics. now i did remember my busty geography teacher, Mrs Han telling me that hell will freeze the day that we experience winter in the equatorial climate of singapore. so for someone who have never experience snow, it came as a suprise to me that the one here smell abit like washing detergent.

nevertheless, snow, through years of propaganda from the media, is what that completes this immensely commercialised christmas. thus, if the festive lights and 50% off sales at orchard road is not enough, head down to AMK Hub and bask in some bastardised snow for an additional yuletide cheer.


cheerio!

born to be wild

for my 22nd birthday i told all my friends that i didnt want just another dinner gathering at some restaurant. i already do that on a regular basis. the last thing i want, is to do something regular for my birthday. birthdays or anniversaries as Mariah Carey calls them, should be festive.

but then again i do not want to make it another huge event like last year's. truthfully, it was more hard work planning the event than fun. and when you have so many people around, you dont actually get to spend quality time with the guests. being a control freak, i spent most of the night running around making sure everything is going according to plan.

so this time around, one of my groups of friends decided to head to the ZOO for my birthday!!




i went there with sheryl, cecilia and jiafang.




first thing to do is to get tickets.




lets begin the journey...




a nice picture together with the parrots.




and we explored more of the surroundings.




we even managed to make friends with a friendly tiger. not like those evil white cousins of his.




we headed over to the elephant show and while waiting for it to start, it began to rain damn heavily. so the few hundreds of us waiting for the elephant show to start were like stuck in the theatre watching the rain pour since there wasnt a sheltered exit.


and after enduring much whining from sheryl who kept insisting we buy ponchos so that we could continue to see all the other animals, we gave up and just got the ponchos so that she would stop whining incessantly about it. haha!




don't cha wish your gf/bf (opt for whichever floats your boat) was hot like me.




dont cha baby. dont cha!




we decided to walk around for abit more until the rain stopped and the ponchos felt like a walking sauna. also, neon green is not exactly my color.





our legs were getting tired from all that walking so we hopped onto these cute looking trams.




we headed to the kid zone and petting zoo but sadly most of the animals were kept cause of the weather.

since the closing time was drawing near, we decided to head for the exit. but before we left for home, the girls decided to head to ben and jerry's for some dessert.


this was when the girls decided to suprise me with a birthday brownie and ice cream. and they thought that it would be so cool to put those 'magic relightable candles' on top of the brownie.

but here's the clever part, they stuck 22 'magic relightable candles' on that small square of brownie surrounded by ice cream.

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the whole plate was like burtsting out in flames. and the best part is that since they were 'magic relightable candles', no matter how hard or how many time i blow the candles, the whole plate would still be in flames.




after countless attempts of trying to blow the candles. we gave up hope and decided to just scoop up the ice cream cream while waiting for the fire to just die by itself.




they also got me this big present and this handmade card. i love handmade cards.

erm, ignore the look on my face on both of the above fotos. i was still recovering from the trauma of the flamable brownie.





well, all in all the whole 'birthday at zoo' trip was really fun. if you've noticed, i didnt include any animal photos in this entry cause that's just damn boring la. unless of course i had a really good camera with a fantastic zoom and spent my whole day waiting for a good picture of the maneating white tigers, but unfortunately, that wasnt the case. what matters more was not the photos but having fun doing something different from what i usually do with my friends.

so go ahead and head down to the zoo with your friends and have a blast of a time. we had so much fun we gave it 4 thumbs up!


and while you're there, you can check out this latest attraction at the zoo. i heard they flew it in, by first class no less, from australia.





hehe..

pre-post teaser

Guess where i went for my 22nd 16th birthday?

boys night out

birthdays need not always be such a huge affair. it's true that a party at a club with a neverending flow of moet & chandon is definitely festive but a simple gathering of friends over dinner and desserts is also equally fabulous.

ali & andrew
wilson & nicholas



met up with the boys for some pizza at California Pizza Kitchen.




we had the yummy thin crust Peking Duck and BBQ Chicken. the crust was so thin, it felt like we were eating pizza toppings on a biscuit. but that's good because, thin crust means low carb which means a less sinful pizza. somewhat.





we then headed to Island Creamery cause ice cream always taste so good after dinner.




we then made a final pit stop for dempsey for god knows what reason. this post is so terribly overdued i totally forgot what happened after Island Creamery.


but i did remember paying $3 to ride this.




there was more but it was totally obscene for my PG blog.



ciao!

All Aboard!

a new journey begins.