yeah, it s totally been that long. :P

greetings, to those of you still reading this! apologies for being MIA since forever. mea culpa mea culpa! due to a combination of streamyx screwupperance, trials and BBS (bloggers' block syndrome), nylus has not been in the house for a Very Long Time.

but now she is :D get the champagne out yo!

had what was quite possibly the most relaxing weekend EVAH since the start of the month! took the opportunity to catch up on sleep, of which i have been recently deprived. muahahah! nothing is quite as glorious as reclining in bed with a good book (atonement, by ian mcewan. excellent read! note to self: review in other post) and wilbur to cuddle.

wilbur, in case you re getting any funny ideas, is my pet pig plushie. totally.

went for bgc s iron chef yesterday with sheng. hahah omg it was so fun! :D it s this competition run by the youth fellowship @ bangsar gospel centre, see. as per the title, we were split into groups and had to come up with a set meal i.e. appetisers, main course and dessert. eastern was the theme, so our group (cephas) decided on prawn-mash-on-sugarcane (im pretty sure this isn t what it s called, but do your own research lah. apparently it s from thailand!), cheese-baked rice (again, this isn t really an eastern dish, but like cw said, 'rice is from the east right?' :P totally.) and milky honeydew sago for dessert.

as my culinary skills leave much to be desired, i didn t have much of a role to play. im more of a baking dudette lah! but i did help slice bell peppers for the toppings! all eight of them okay. with a knife that was so huge it resembled a parang. it s an achievement. even if i did take about 2 hours to finish chopping.

preparations were all at cw s apartment, so after we d finished 'helping out', we bummed in the living room playing ps2 and flipping through 'female'. unearthed skills i never knew i possessed while playing some chinese netherworld version of 'street fighter'. i totally pawned sheng! and for a first-timer, that s saying something :P

due to complications (the sink pipe swallowed one too many chicken bones and got plugged. the plunger, naturally, was nowhere to be found), we ran a wee bit late. piled into cw s van breathlessly at ten to six, armed with our dishes and things. waved goodbye to sheng (her brother was picking her up) and we were on our way!

or so we thought. halfway out of the apartment block, mun foong went, 'where s the ice cream?'

so we turned back and one of the guys ran up to retrieve the tub of vanilla ice sitting in cw s refridgerator sitting in cw s kitchen in cw s apartment. on the fourth floor.

when he got back, flushed, panting and clutching the yellow tub, mun foong went, 'where s the ice cream spoons?'

after screaming at her, we decided we could do without the blasted things and cw proceeded to put the pedal to the metal. careened past the ramadan crowd in bangsar, narrowing missing lamp posts and sign boards. we made it to church just as they were beginning to set up :P

couldn t stay for the judging session due to family matters (annual popiah rolling night with the aunties. don t ask) but according to pq, pillar won :( nooo! sniff. after all that hard work!

well. after all their hard work lah. :P ah well. twas fun nevertheless. quite a way to spend my saturday, all in all!

meh. it s lunchtime, and im really too ravenous to write anything more, so i ll just leave you guys with a few photos while i go grab something to munch:

a yellow bell pepper, pre-chop. doesn t it look so adorable?! it s like a miniature pumpkin!  felt so guilty for having to hack into it, i decided to take a picture of it first.

the camwhore in sheng surfaces. that s her posing with my bell pepper, taking a break from  tumbuking prawns for the prawn-mash-on-sugarcane. trick i learnt from cw s mum: if the prawns smell, just dump a whole lot of pepper on them. apparently it lessens the pong. tip for all you future taitais out there! 

whaat? the other peppers needed some shutter love too.:P my legs look weirdly out of proportion, cos sheng was hanging on to her mortar and pestle while snapping. the silhouette behind me is emily, who s really nice and, like chiif, is a bit squeamish when it comes to all things dairy (she refused to help spread cheese slabs over the rice, retreating to the kitchen instead to help wash dishes. honestly!)

our pièce de résistance, sitting gently in sheng s portable oven. okay, so at this point it resembled something like baked brains. :P i swear, after the seven minutes were up, it looked delicious! and the smell that wafted out when we pinged open the oven door.. mmmm. 

official judging session @ church, around 7 ish p.m. i wanted to snap the first team, but pq barged into the picture at the last second. cheh. haha i nearly died laughing at him all decked out in waiter gear. :p