Third week into spring break! It's the second last week and still little progress on homework! Woot. Everyone's leaving! Caro and Pablo and Jas and Nathalie have flown home today while I spent my afternoon and evening with Dione. Oh Sobs. My anime game pals Pab and Caro, you guys will be dearly missed especially everytime I discover a new super cool anime or game or when I get excited over Gashapon or the stuff in the UFO Catcher :( And Caro I will so super miss you I bet when school starts again my animation senpai :( Oh Jas, you have been one super duper Singaporean senpai who's just so fun to hang out with yet reserved enough to have a relaxing one-to-one conversation with. I'll really miss having you as a senpai I can talk to. And Nathalieeeee... I know I don't get to see you that often but somehow, I'm just glad for you that your parents came and you could really enjoy spending time with them in Japan and China, and all those nonsensical crazy moments and those over-the-top jokes where you made us rofl, yea, I'll not forget those. And oh Dione.. I can't believe it was our last day today, somehow it was really hard for me to realise that I'll never be able to spend time just talking bad about stupid Watanabe and all the stupid things in school, or seeing you around school and talking in English/ Singlish where nobody else understands. Haha, being with you really helped me to take a break from my surroundings and you have been very kind as a senior to me, thanks so much for all the help you've given me.

Well, sighs. Seniors have left and now we are the seniors. Somehow I don't really see the need to be emotionally involved in it all. It's really not the end of anything, just the start. I really wonder how this school year is going to start. I do have my hopes, but more importantly, I hope for the good of myself that I'd be able to keep my head in one piece to progress and grow in enthusiasm the path that the Lord has set out for me. To set my priorities in life right and knowing that some things (actually everything else) just aren't worth putting God in second place.

Okay okay, so what's been happening the past week and all? Let's put some numbers to them:

1. Started reading Manga again! :DD I'm glad my interest to read has seen a revival especially how hectic schoolwork had ironically destroyed my enthusiasm for it. Started on a new (old) series called Dragon Voice and am so swooning like a fangirl over the guys in there.

2. Discovery of *DRUMROLL* *DRUMROLL* *DRUMROLL*................... even more new recipes! In light of the new school year starting soon and a forecast of hectic school days to come, I have been on a search for easy no-fuss cheap yummy recipes and recipes good for cooking up in bulk and freezing. Also, not to mention recipes that will go EASY on the stomach as I foresee many a late night to come and resulting stomach troubles. And the search has been quite a fruitful (and yummy) one :D

• Fruit smoothie recipes for hectic mornings when we have no time to prepare breakfast!! Throw in strawberries, yogurt and other fruit into the blender, whir, and instant stomach filling breakfast that's good for your health. I intend to buy lots of fruits and freeze them in drinkable portions in separate ziplock bags and pull one up every morning. All I need to do is get a blender from Amazon...

• Tzatziki Sauce! This is one very clever recipe! It tastes almost identical to sourcream but so much cheaper because its made of yogurt! So economically friendly and stomach friendly too, esp if you use low-fat yogurt. Strain yogurt through coffee filters to get a firmer yogurt, mix with salt, black pepper, lemon juice, garlic and leave to mellow in the fridge and hey presto! Wonderful sourcream like dip that goes great with veggie sticks, chips, breadsticks, or as a sauce in sandwiches!! :D So yummy

• And the newest that sounds promising but have yet to try (will try soon though am so excited.. haha) Tofu burgers!!! Veggie burgers def sound cool to me because I don't have to deal with stinky meat that expires fast, rots in your digestive tract (haha) and a pain to clean up after. Not to mention all that grease that seeps out from the ground meat patties, gross. Anyway, the genius behind veggie burgers? Contains proteins from the main ingredient: either beans or tofu so I don't have to worry about my protein intake if I don't take meat. A lot healthier to make, and since you can make patties out of them, you can go ahead and make a bulk at one go and freeze them to pull 'em out on school days for a quick sandwich to make for sch or a quick dinner item.

• Lastly, I hope to be able on the weekends to make lots of Roomali Roti dough and fry the rotis up and freeze them so I can defroze them on a school day to use as wraps for sandwiches. I can see this perfect plan all coming together now... bwahaha.. Sandwich wrap, check. Burger, check. Sauce, check. Hahahaahaaaa... now I just need some of the sandwich veggies and I've got it all set.

• Also, am trying out a new way of doing things in the kitchen in hope of speeding things up and reducing the weekday hassle over meal prep. I have been washing all my vegetables and fruits immediately after I buy them and storing them in ziplock bags so I can pull them out straight and cook immediately. Despite that, certain veggies still need to be cut upon usage, like onions and tomatos (can't imagine precutting them) but I think this might help when it comes to the leafy veggies.

Haha okay, so many reforms in the meal department but as for the animation dept I can't say the same. Haha. I think I have been stressing myself out too much the last year worrying about homework and deadlines I think I really need a break from it all so that I can continue working on my course in sanity. I decided I think it's important to sustain your interest in anime and games and what really made you enjoy animation in the first place otherwise there would be no meaning in doing anime. And then, I decided that it's important and only right that I be who I am in my natural state even if it means that I may seem antisocial running home everyday and usually refusing to hang out with people on weekdays because there's school the next day and frankly I really love playing games and reading manga on my own time rather than waste time on shallow conversations or tiring myself out with company. It's really who I am, not that I don't like people. Yea, who's to care about all these distractions of irritatingly bothersome people who can't leave me alone around me and the down right mean over-dishing out of hw all the time? It really isn't worth losing more years of my life over things like these. I'm really just going to be who I am and honor God as I think fit. And I pray that God would guide me and show me the clear path I need to walk, to give me the strength and soundness of mind to deal with temptations and grant me the endurance during the grueling moments, especially when there's nobody around to confide in.

Wow, it sure isn't going to be all flowers and sunshine on the road ahead, but I'm not alone. I hope I never forget how to relax (so important.....).

ONE WEEK has passed since Spring break started and I'm slightly amazed-cum-slightly horrified that I have been willingly and conveniently shoving aside the ton of homework dished out to us even more conveniently by the teachers. Anyway, I think this past one week has seen some progress in destressifying the self. A lot of the friends I hang out with here or appreciate hanging out with are seniors leaving for home at the end of this month so with the holidays here, what better excuse than to spend lots of time just having fun in spending time with them before they go back.

That coupled with the fact that it does get rather lonely at times living in such a spacious apartment gave me a very good excuse to 'throw' a party for my senior friends today. It's my first time really planning for a party even though it was just for 5 people and I couldn't stop worrying myself whether the food would be enough. I kept thinking it wouldn't be and kept rearranging all the different combinations of foods I could make and thinking up a menu I could go with. Which all in the end burned down to over-thinking. I planned a menu with like a starter of snacks in the form of crackers and hard toast and veggie sticks with dips, the main of wraps with toppings like veggies, ham, egg mayo and tuna mayo, an extra snack (since people are always more interested in snacking at parties) of popcorn and chocolate cake as desert. And everyone was full after the wraps we had to bypass the popcorn! I even thought it was missing a hearty dish and was even contemplating a soup or curry. This is so funny. But all in all I think I did learn some things about party planning:

1. Foods that your guests are not accustomed to eating on regular basis will not be popular. Even if you might think they taste pretty good. I guess people are just not very adventurous on average. I made an avocado dip I thought went pretty well with the crackers and basically I felt I was the only one tucking into it. My guests weren't serial consumers of tuna or thousand island (some not even knowing what thousand isle was) so there were a lot of leftovers of those. Foods like the egg mayo and ham, foods common to us everyday were devoured though.

2. When buying drinks, buy a KNOWN brand. Haha. I say this because I bought a bottle of 'Cola' that wasn't Coke and NOBODY opened it. I think they were scared to try it.

3. Everybody has a sweet tooth so there's ALWAYS room for dessert. When full, people will reject snacks and fruit but where there's chocolate cake or brownies, they will find the space to fit 'em in.

Anyway, for the wraps, I used this recipe titled "Roomali Roti" on allrecipes.com and it was exactly like the Roti Prata they sell frozen at the supermarket! I'm sure it was missing the fatty ingredient that makes Roti Prata taste like Roti Prata, which I think is ghee, because they tasted a lot less flavourful, but other than that THEY WERE EXACTLY THE SAME. So yay, I made Roti Prata and I can make it everytime I eat curry from now one :D One more option to rice and bread. And it was so simple to make. The dough only needed 45 minutes of resting before shaping rolling and frying in the pan.

Then for the chocolate cake, I actually tried out this Chocolate Mayo Cake recipe, also from the same site. Mayo was like the highlight of today's menu. I had bought the large size Mayo bottle and was planning to make full use of it. When you can buy a lot of something cheaply it's always more cost effective to include recipes and that make use of it in your menu isn't it? So tuna mayo, egg mayo, thousand isle (which is actually a combination of ketchup and mayo) and of course, we have to have the Mayo cake shouldn't we?

Apparently, this cake has a bit of history dating back to the Depression where mothers baked this for their children when eggs and the like were very expensive (and mayo wasn't? oh well...). In the gist of it, instead of eggs and the oil component in cakes mayo is used in place. And when it baked up and I tasted it, I wouldn't have been able to tell it had mayo in it. It tasted like a chocolate cake! Which was a surprise and a relief because that meant it was edible and my guests would eat it and I didn't have to throw it away.

It was such a fun and I wouldn't have been able to imagine before that it would've been just that holding a party for people to fill up space in my house, eat the food I cooked, play and be completely undisturbed by my washing up and making sure everything was in its place. Even though some might say its as though nobody cared as long as they had free food and someone's house to bum around at, I was just contented to cook all those different recipes, even springing up those new untried recipes that some of them didn't try (maybe because that meant I got to try all sorts of different foods too), and to clean up after everyone(maybe because I'm so used to washing up) and having them completely ignore me while I did the work I had to do. Maybe I just enjoyed being busy doing something and being distracted from the food rather than just sitting at the table and chuck everything down and get really stuff in the middle of it all (maybe thats why they got so full so soon?). Haha.

Anyway, all in all, this was really an experience in itself and this won't be the last time I throw a party. Hopefully more adventurous and cooperative friends will be more gracious to leave me with fewer leftovers in the future.