In the air

There's something about the blue skies and white clouds, that never fails to impress me. The gentle ombre of blue scattered with fluffly clumps - not too much, not too little, exuding this sense of serenity and tranquil that sets the mind at ease.

xxx

As I arrived at the airport, there's this tingle in my heart, which begins to bubble slowly as my departure time came closer. Checking in my luggage was a breeze thanks to the great service by the airport staff and Dad and I sat down for a small talk before I entered the departure hall. It was a nice conversation, of us throwing back to the younger days, where I was just a small girl - innocent and helpless, all the way to the playful times. happy moments and all and time just flew by. Excitedly bidding my Dad farewell, I went on to my first ever plane ride. Alone. 

After the security checks and all, which I failed by the way - due to my filled bottle. I was nicely asked to empty the contents in the bin, but being blur as usual I totally did not catch what the staff said and attempted to finish the water on the spot. Which, I obviously failed (fun fact: I hate drinking water) and I went to ask her if I could throw the water away and I think I caught her rolling her eyes. In between giggles, the airport stuff was like 'yea you're supposed to'. I would say that was pretty embarrassing to kick start my trip but oh wells, at least she didn't bar me from getting on board my plane. 

I was blessed with a window seat!! (fun fact: I love window seats) I sat down on the cushioned seats, and this time mixed feelings engulfed it. It felt like excitement, with a little fear and a pinch of homesickness. 

All these were quickly left aside when lunch was served!! I couldn't recall what the other choice of food was, but here's my sweet and sour pork with rice.

From the start, I had this impression that airplane foods will never taste good. I mean, they are mass cooked, prepacked, and then served in the air.. which explains my questioning of the food tastes. Perhaps it's because I haven't really had an airplane meal for a while, the food tasted surprisingly good. Food quality has really changed through the years! Kudos to airports! I finished every last piece of pork and started on my salad (?) I have really no idea what the food on the bottom left hand corner is but I tried it anyways. It tasted kind of awkward to me, and being Little Miss Fussy, I stopped after one spoon. I wouldn't say it tasted bad, but I supposed it's a food preference and culture thing - I am on Vietnam Airlines.

Quickly finished up my food and went on to my plane hibernation.

I was transiting and Vietnam and upon alighting the plane, chartered buses were ready at the stairs to pick passengers and send them to the airport. Their planes are not directly connected to the airport counters. My first impression of the airport, was that it was underattacked. Heavily underattack. Tourists from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes were squeezing at the customs area and I was just thankful that I am only transiting here.

There was a really long queue for transits but since I had so much time (3hours and 45 minutes wait for my next flight) I just queued patiently.

The waiting time was not a very good experience for me because although there is free Wifi in the airport boarding areas, but I just could not connect in. The connection keeps rejecting me and I was like walking around the airport for connection. I found my way to the food areas hoping that they will have free wifi or something and to my disappointment, all the connections were password secured and they wouldn't give the password to you unless you bought something from them. Being a cheapo, I decided to guess passwords instead.. (The meal on board didn't leave me hungry or anything so I decided I didn't need any food.) 

AND I GOT WIFI.

The remaining one hour sped pass with connection to civilization (so exaggerative but that was totally how I felt).

On board my next flight, with window seat again! YAY!! 

Food is served as well!! This is chicken noodles if I didn't remember wrongly.. It tasted really good, I almost finished the noodles yumyum. Went back to hibernation as usual, (I love to sleep) and finally reached Kaohsiung airport at 10.50pm. My flight was early!! Yay!! On the way out of the plane I was frantically trying to find wireless internet connection and they were all really unstable.. It's like connecting, connected, send out 2 messages, disconnected... and the process repeats... And then there are also those that require login using Taiwan phone numbers and I was just like ._. Picked up my luggage and headed out to meet Jeremy(:

xxx

"There's a big blue sky waiting just behind the clouds."

Confetti Eclairs

Delicious decadent choux dough filled with smooth custard and topped with white chocolate glaze..

CONFETTI ECLAIRS!!

xxx

Since finals are over, master chef dings decided to make some food for herself. Haha just kidding, I decided to revisit the "un-fail-able" recipe of eclairs to satisfy my own cream puff cravings. They are so easy to make, really. Even I can do it! Although it's true that I can just get it at some bakery but I was being a bum and didn't want to leave the house.. 

The white chocolate glaze and coloured drizzle is just a random idea because I really love colourful stuffs. And since it's a festive season...
Thank god it worked out just fine:

Here's the recipe if you want to make some eclairs for Christmas!
(This recipe is adopted from several websites: www.joyofbaking.com for the choux pastry and www.laurainthekitchen.com for the custard filling)

Choux Pastry (shell of the eclair)
65g All Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon Sugar (I used powdered sugar but I guess all sugars are fine)
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 cup or 57g Unsalted Butter
120ml of water
3 large eggs

Custard Filling
2-1/4 cups of Milk (I used full cream milk)
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup sugar (I used powdered sugar too)
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon Vanilla  (I used vanilla extract)

For the Eclair shells:
Mix the flour, sugar and salt together, and cut the butter into cubes (for easy melting)
Melt all the butter in the water over medium high heat and bring to a small boil.
Remove from heat and add in the flour mixture, all at once, stirring until everything combines (it may look a little lumpy here, but no worries).
Place the saucepan back to the heat and stir constantly until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan and forms a thick smooth ball.
Transfer dough to a hand mixer and beat on low speed to cool the dough - about a minute (or a bowl and use a fork to stir if you do not have a hand mixer).
Beat 2 eggs lightly in a small bowl.
When the dough is lukewarm, add the 2 eggs and continue to mix until you have a smooth thick paste (IMPORTANT: the dough will fall apart to look like separate clumps in the process. This is correct. Just keep mixing and the dough will combine again.) The dough will fall from the spoon in a thick ribbon.
Pipe the mixture into the shapes and sizes you prefer - circular if you want to make cream puffs or longitudinal if you want to make eclairs. Be sure to give them some space apart because they will expand.
With a pastry brush, gently brush the top of the dough with the last egg, lightly beaten as well.
Bake for 15 minutes at 200 degree celcius (timing depends on the size of your dough) and then reduce the temperature to 180 degree celcius and continue baking for arounf 15- 20 minutes to dry out the centre of the dough.
Remove from oven when your puffs are a nice amber colour.
Leave it on a cooling rack to cool.

For the custard:
Add all the ingredients in a large saucepan and whisk them all together with the heat turned off.
Place the the saucepan over medium heat and cook it, stirring the whole time until the custard thickens (not too thin or thick - preferbly the consistency of kaya)
Remove from heat and transfer it into a bowl.
Cover the custard with plastic wrap, make sure the plastic wrap is touching the custard (else a shell will form) and pop it into the fridge to chill completely.

Assembly of the eclairs will be to cup open the shells and pipe the custard in. Then melt chocolate with whipping cream for the glaze.

For me, I piped in whipped cream together with the custard - I whipped the whipping cream myself (Just pour whipping cream into a bowl and place the bowl over ice water before you start whipping away. Remember to add your desired amount of powdered sugar when the whipping cream thickens and then just keep whipping till it forms stiff peaks.)

The confetti drizzles are food coloured white chocolate glaze just in case you're wondering~

Feeling the Christmas already~~

xxx

"The Magic of Christmas"

Sixian's 21st

Because no matter how we tease you, you know we love you.

xxx

We were all invited to Sixian's 21st at Aranda Country Club (somewhere beside Downtown East). Being really troubled as to what to buy for her present, we asked her for a wishlist and sadly, she said "No more hello kitty, no soft toys, just something you think will be useful for me for my future as a student or a teacher." OHMYGAWDD that's like a total non-answer and something that made everything more complex... so Felicia and I met at Tampines to find something for her one hour before we headed down.

It was a really tough search as we combed through many shops.. Until we decided, just buy. Haha so we got her a bag from ArtBox. It's a pretty cute bag really, I guess it's useful (?) But whatever we just bought it and asked the cashier to help us wrap. Yay to gift wrap service! Zhihong picked us up and we were on our way to her party!

Her birthday cake is so cute!! It's shaped like a giant cupcake and all the rainbow goodies on the table just looked really appetising and yummy. There was buffet dinner available and it was a pretty nice catchup with everyone since I disappeared for approximately one semester~~

Happy 21st Birthday!~

xxx

"The intimacy of large parties."

Hello December

Guess who just ended finals? **waves frantically**
And HELLO DECEMBERRRRR~ I know I'm a week late.. but better late than never right?

xxx

YAYYY finals finally ended!~

The thought of no more late night studying and stuffing myself with food to stay awake just makes me sooooo happy! Does that mean I'm going to lose a few pounds or something? Hahaha just kidding I'm not aneroxic no no.

Finally packed up my stuffies in hall and went home~~ After approximately one month away from home, voluntarily jailed in hall so that I can get some accounting in my head for finals, IM FINALLY GOING HOMEEEEE!! Super excited! Bidding farewell to the hall's hard bed and going home to embrace my comfy bed~~

xxx

"When life gives you a rainy day, Play with puddles."

#domesticidiots

Something is brewing in the pot~

xxx

All this cooking started, because Xianda has too many eggs left in hall and he cannot finish, so he brought like 14 eggs for me and PeiYun to finish.. We started to think of how we can spam eggs for a meal.. which led us to this <s>disaster</s> amazing cooking experience with PeiYun.

After much brainstorming on the way back to hall the night before, we settled on the idea of making the herbal tea leaves eggs, which we obviously have no herbs and no tea leaves in hall.. And so. We used tea bags. hahaha.

Dilmah teabags! The tea by itself is quite fragrant so we were like, let's do it.

We totally cannot cook herbal eggs really, we were like just fooling around in the pantry, thinking of how to get the tea flavour into the egg and stuff -- which you will eventually realise that the eggs are no longer shelled (we thought that it would be easier for the flavour to seep in -- I mean... pretty legit right...). The egg ended up sticking to the bottom of the pot, which explains the awkward white circle on the surface..

After all the cooking, we were super excited to try out eggs and there: no tea taste. At all. #domesticidiots Hahah PeiYun's friends were like all saying that we should cook longer and all but obviously we didn't have the luxury of time to continue our cooking..

That pretty sums out the most interesting that happened today because I was just biting books at the benches outside TCT...

On a side note.. Last paper left!(:

xxx

"If you don't know where you are going, any road can take you there."