Boy, I’m having so much fun hanging out with my family. For the first time, me and my brother AND our spouses are staying under one roof with my parents. I have to say…I really LIKE my family…as in, you have to love the family you are born into because they are blood, but I really really enjoy hanging out with my family…they are really awesome people.

Ironies of ironies, I have been having a really poor appetite in my trip so far, leading to people back in the office commenting “wah! You lost weight hor?”. People in Singapore love to comment on whether you gain or lose weight after returning from some time away. I think the lost of appetite comes from jet lag. I have been sleeping through the night, no problem (I’ve never had a problem adjusting my time clock when I fly from US to Singapore, but will always take a week to do so the other way round. Pat’s vice versa. Which leads me to think that Singapore time must be my “natural” time and his, US time) but definitely feeling tired, especially since I went back to work on Mon and Tues.

Food of note, however, is the Indonesian food I had with colleagues in the street behind the Singapore River next to UOB Plaza. And the mee rebus from a hawker center near my father’s office (I’ll get the name from him later). Definitely damn shiok!

Is this not the SWEETEST thing in the world?? Yew Seng and Sam made this Chansidine banner:

I mean, the kitty (for crazy cat lady) statue of liberty with beer (for ang moh) holding a Singapore flag!!! That’s the cutest thing ever!

What a nice flight. SIA really rules with their service. I stayed up for most of the NYC-Frankfurt flight, but slept in the last hour and sat next to the NICEST people…a German college boy and his dad. They were SO nice, so friendly and even after I spilled tomato juice all over his leg, he laughed it off. I mean, c’mon! That’s nice.

Then I took a sleeping pill from Frankfurt-Singapore and slept for ALL 11hrs 30min of the flight…except for a few toilet breaks here and there (skipped all meals). Sleeping pills RULE!!! Well, more specifically, I’m prescribed Xanax (an anti-anxiety drug) for flights because of my very irrational fear of flying, but all it does is to make me sleep without the hangover feeling I get on sleeping pills. I don’t take them ever in my daily life because they turn you into a walking zombie honestly, and it DOES do something odd to my serotonin levels a day or 2 after…not a drug you wanna fuck around with, really. But on flights..WOW…it’s like being in a happy land, none of those nervousness I get on take-off or during turbulence. I hate to say it, but it’s a pretty magic drug. And because I just sleep the whole time, it’s like time travel. 11hr flights are pretty brutal without them. I woke up in time for landing and was fresh as daylight. I still felt a little zonked out from the pills, and felt almost like walking on air, but that ain’t a bad feeling. ;p

As I was landing, I felt sooo happy to be home and I had a moment of feeling absolutely blessed to have so many homes. And to see my father, mother and husband greeting me at the airport…WOW! You can’t beat that.

Tomorrow, my brother and his new wife will be arriving in Singapore and our old house (now pimped out after my parents did a crazy renovation…really nicely done..they avoided the horrible looking McMansions that are sprouting up in the neighborhood…really tacky looking 3-story buildings that look completely out of place…and turned our old house into a cosy zen getaway). It will be pretty crazy to think about…me and my brother and OUR SPOUSES in our old house all together. A Chan Fest! I love my family! I sure am happy!

OMG OMG OMG…I just got really really excited packing up stuff at work now and getting ready for my holiday.

HOLIDAY! I haven’t had a proper holiday in SO LONG! The last one I consider a “real” holiday was Tulum (”real” = getting out of this country) back in Nov 07. I need one badly…after the CFA, I’ve been swamped with work. Haven’t really had much time to take a chill pill because whatever free time I had was just doing NYC-in-summer stuff.

I can’t wait to be home!!! Friends in SG…let’s catch up! You have my email. I’ll be in Singapore till the end of July.

It was definitely the BEST possible dinner I could have right before leaving for Singapore where I intend to overindulge in southeast asian food. Met up with Ken aka BGK, Erik/Olive and Yi-ling at Little Giant yesterday. It is a “Seasonal New American” joint - believe me, it is a cuisine in itself and NYC is just stuffed to the brim with these. It was just perfect because it was something very American, very New York and very awesome.

Don’t you just love meals where every dish makes you go WOW THIS IS SOOO AWESOME!? Cos I really do! And I like to say it.

The service left much to be desired, but the food made up for it. We had an amazing beet salad, chicken liver mousse (sooo good), some shrimp with watermelon/radish salad, a mushroom/lobster ravioli as an appetizer. And for entrees, we had the pork butt with beans (it sounded really gross to me but it was amazing), steak, and another pasta dish that came with poached egg on top that was just awesome too. And for dessert, a black rice pudding and freshly made cookies with ice-cream. A feast! Family style. Gotta love sharing food!

B for service, A+ for food, A++ for the company, and A+++++++ for BGK who treated us all (wow!).

I think this is genius.
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I’m gonna get that drawn on my toilet door by the artist himself if I can convince him to do it.

I like this one too but it took me a long time to get it because I kept seeing them as the letters M and N, but that’s just the non-artist in me.

…like I do, you’d HATE to have to do this.

via design extraordinaire, 54.

This video made me cry:

I think it made me realize how little I have traveled in the last year due to work/study constraints and that is really a shame.

So the group of us Park Slope yoga in the park in summer/meditation in winter girls decided to have a joint Stoop Sale in our neighborhood. Stoop sales are a typically Brooklyn thing, due to the amazing Brownstones and lack of garages in NYC (hence, we don’t have garage sales). Only, none of us lived in a brownstone, hence our lack of a stoop, which led to us laying out sheets on the ground at a very heavy traffic area, right outside an ATM (Liz’s ingenious idea).

my “stall”…right outside the ATM

Suzanne…who BTW actually owns a vintage shop in East Village, so that’s a pro

Liz, already with customer

Colleen, at the entrance of the ATM…very smart!
Now, if you remember my last attempt at selling stuff, it was a major failure. So I was really really apprehensive for this one. Because yes, I’m the kind of girl that likes to be GREAT at whatever I do, and if I can’t be GREAT at it (or think I am), I just don’t do it, which is a VERY bad habit that I need to break. In any case, I laid my sheet out, really prepared to sell nothing but lo-and-behold! Even before I put everything out nicely, people were already stopping buy and buying my stuff! MY stuff! They want MY STUFF!!! Oh! I FEEL LOVED!

But I think my (relative) success was that I didn’t try to sell much clothes (they can’t fit most Americans). I sold stuff that I actually liked…mainly books that I have read and loved. So I could actually SELL them, because I was able to say truthfully that YOU should buy them. I used to never want to let go of books I love, but then, I realized that I’m unlikely to read them again, and they are just clutter and they really should be passed on so that other people could love them. I sold them for between $1-5, depending on how much I liked them. I sold a few pairs of shoes/slippers that really look cute but were just too uncomfortable for me to ever wanna wear them (NYC is all about comfy shoes, baby!). I also sold a bunch of earrings ($2 a pair!) because I have so many, and people keep giving them to me as gifts (sorry! so faux pas!), but I’ve started getting allergic reactions to most earrings and I really needed to get rid of them! So note to all, please do not buy me any more earrings…yes I love them, but I can’t wear them anymore. I also sold a bunch of other stuff that, in my eagerness to decorate the house, I bought in other stoop sales..just cluttery stuff like candle holders and the like. I actually think I made a profit off some of them.

In all, I made $103.25 in 3 hours…pennies to a regular salesperson, but a GREAT ACHIEVEMENT for kellykelly, She Who Could Not Sell. It was actually quite a lot of stuff that I didn’t want and got rid of, IMO, given that the average price per item was probably $2. And I didn’t even have to pay for a spot in a flea market! And I got to meet and speak to a bunch of people in my neighborhood. I LOVE Park Slope!

You know what’s the weird thing? I would get these middle aged Polish/Latino men coming up to me and asking “you have gold? you have silver?”. I’m guessing that these people just go around stoop sales and getting precious metals to melt down and sell. But seriously…you think I’d sell gold for $2? You crazy.

The only thing…I got badly burnt for sitting in the direct sun for 3 hours.

at moments, I felt like a poor Chinese immigrant selling stuff on the streets of New York. I kept wondering if I should run away if a cop shows up.

You know those days. They couldn’t be any better even if you’d planned it. I’ve been having a ton of these Perfect Days days post-CFA in NYC lately. They unravel as you go along. You kinda just walk into it with nothing planned. With friends. I feel very very lucky to be living in Park Slope, Brooklyn right now. It feels so right.