My kind of Sunday

Dear Diary,

Yesterday is a sunny day. I woke up relunctantly at 7.30am and accompanied my mom to the round market at Tampines.

Upon stepping into the hustle and bustle of the market, my half-opened eyes immediately dilated to the sights, smell and sounds of the cultural melting pot. The sound of the chopper against the chopping board, chittering and chattering, the damp floor, the bright orange filament lights hanging over the fishes/prawns, the greens, reds and browns of the vegetable stall, the red plastic bags, the acquired scent of preserved vegetables and salted fish...

Mom has been frequenting the round market since I was 5 and I bet she can navigate her way inside blindfolded (yes, challenge accepted). She led me to the butcher, took a quick look and walked away to buy pork from another stall. Puzzled, I asked mom why and she replied of the first stall, "The uncle has a bad temper when he has a line of customers."

=O

So my mom ordered 2 pig trotters, 1 muscle, and 1 slab of lean meat. Pig trotters for braised pork, muscle no need chop, lean meat for frying with vegetables, my mom requested and the butcher packed them exactly the way his customers want them. We paid $23.

I've also been to this round market many times enough for me to recognise the Indian woman selling spices and curry powder, here's warning not to speak bad of her because she can understand and speaks decent Mandarin, ha!

Taking careful steps along the damp floor of the market, I followed my mom to another section to buy some dried foodstuff. We paid about $7 for a pack of assam pieces,  a ginger and a piece of 霉香 salted fish.

Also than the unique shape of the building, the round market is also famous for its cooked food - Sarawak Kolo mee, Xing Ji wanton mee, prawn noodles, kway chap, just to name a few. We headed to tabao vegetarian economic beehoon. I remember a decade ago, mom tabao-ed the same dish for our breakfast and not only did we not thank her, we sulked because it was not drizzled with curry gravy. Today, mom repeated 3 times to the stall helper, “ 咖哩chap ”.


Moving on to another corner of the market, mom stopped by a stall and pondered what to cook for lunch later. She bought bee tai mak (mice flour?), fishballs and 50c beansprouts. The stall helper tried to up-sell a pack of instant curry, "it's better than A1!" but mom declined nicely.

Finally, we bought 2 packets of 奶白白菜 and a packet of petai for $4 and trotted back to the car. Shopping all done! =D

As we were walking back, mom told me that the lady stall helper at the bee tai mak stall is married to the man who was just now packing beside. Mom even knows that she originated from Vietnam and could not speak any Mandarin back then! From the conversation prior, I wouldn't have second guessed she wasn't local.

When we got home, I washed up, made myself a cuppa G7 coffee and prepared to dig in into the vegetarian beehoon (with curry chap), and boy, it was only 9.15pm!

Read newspapers.
Cleaned my room.
Changed bedsheets.
Napped.

____________________________________________


After lunch, I made myself comfortable at the dining table and started on my first book (ref: Resolutions for 2013), "The BFG".

Hahaha, yes I've done this book before when I was in pri school, but I've plain forgotten! I thought I would enjoy the story, but the book was so easy and simple I completed half of it in 40 mins. Hmm.

Off I cycled to Tampines East CC to donate blood (ref: Resolutions for 2013)!

The last time I did so was 10th July 2012 and I think the short period of missing in action actually made me feel nervous about this, lol. Fortunately it went smoothly haha, no repeat of faint spells.


At about 4pm, Celeste and Jiale came over and I suggested playing with jumping clay!

It was gonna be our first attempt and armed only with minimal artistic talent and google images, we found it really tough to mould the dough into the shapes and sizes we desired! So funny recalling how infuriated we were when the clay wouldn't stick or when the colours wouldn't mix, haha! One thing we learnt - the smaller the detail, the more difficult it was!

We spent like an hour and a half rolling, moulding, crafting and cursing at ourselves before we presented our 'master pieces':

 

Hahaha. Not too bad a first attempt ya?? =)



And then it was dinner!!!!!

Heartwarming, filling and happy dinner :):)


And the above, sums up my kind of Sunday. :)