Celebrating a Butt-Day

This happened a while ago, on Friday night, where a number of good friends and I went out to celebrate Missy Tee's birthday with a session of indoor laser team tag. It was a fun night out with everyone in their high spirits: I really hoped everyone had fun. 

As opposed to having the traditional birthday celebration with just a gathering of friends over dinner, my housemates and I conspired with one another to come up with something different. So it seemed that April was to be the month where a LOT of people was born and hosting a birthday dinner would seem understandably seem repetitive and may lose its spark. So instead, we came up with an activity for the birthday girl: Laser Team Tag @ the M9 Laser Skirmish in Crown. 

It was a pity that I didn't bring in my camera so I couldn't take a photo of everyone in their battle gear. Seeing everyone gear up and picking sides was quite exciting. We were a handful lot... 16 people - we had to be divided into 2 teams. I was a bit disappointed to find out that we'd be playing with other people as well: not to be a spoilsport but I was really looking forward for a battle with my mates.

The game took 25 mins. I know, I know, most of you must be thinking: what? 25 mins only?? That's so short! Actually it doesn't feel short, mainly because the area we played in was quite large - big enough to fit 4 teams with 8 persons each. 

In hindsight, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't get her a birthday cake, but I suppose I should thank Ms V for buying her a slice. We all ended the night with a hang out session of guitar hero and bullshit cards till 2 in the morning - spending less than 6 hours in sleep before waking up to a wild session of bssmelb frisbee on the following Saturday morning!

To the birthday girl: I know it's late but happy birthday. The birthday celebration wasn't much but I still hope you and your friends enjoyed it. So, now comes the big question: What's it like feeling old?  Hahahaha... Just Kidding - you know I'm just playing..

My first attempt in doing haiku after how many years?

So... what do you guys think?

Happiness and Joy

Delights of A Birthday Girl

Wakes up feeling Old.

For more photos: check out MsShooter's Photobucket.

.Key to Good Life. - Part II

Despite having such a shitty week, I'm still trying my hardest to remain positive. No matter what life throws at you, always try to look at the bright side. This post is a follow up of a previous post I had published a while back on the Key to Good Life - Part I... more like the continuation of it.

It's good to have a reality check once in a while to keep ourselves from going overboard and maintaining a positive perspective on things.

I received an e-mail from one of the Melbruneians the other day... actually it's a forward junk mail. You know the kind you automatically delete as soon as you see the words: "FW: fw: fw: fw:". Normally I don't open these kinds of mails but, out of pure boredom I decided to go through it and found something I thought would be interesting to show you.

My suggestion: go through the list and see out of all of them, which have you not done?
Then, think about this: Why not? If not, would you try it?

Now that being said, I'm not asking for you to completely drop your habits and abandon all your beliefs. I'm simply merely asking you to consider.

Enjoy!
M.Shooter.

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For the Mind and Health:

• Sit in silence for at least 10mins each day and get to know yourself;
• Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants rather than food made in plants;
• Live life to the fullest with the 3 E's: Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy;
• Be young at heart: play more games;
• Read more books than you did in 2008.

For the Heart:

• Don't compare your life to others: You have no idea what their journey is all about;
• Avoid negative thoughts on things you can't control: Invest your energy on the positive present moment;
• Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does;
• Don't waste yourself on gossip of others;
• Dream more while you're awake;
• Life is too short to be hating anyone;
• Make peace with your past so you won't spoil the present;
• Smile and laugh more;
• Not every argument needs to be won: Agree to disagree.

For You and Others:

• Randomly give/do something good to others each day;
• Try to make at least three people smile;
• What others think of you is none of your business;
• Your job won't take care of you when you're sick. Your friends will: Stay in touch.

For You and Your Life:

• Always try to do the right thing;
• No matter how bad or good it gets, situations always change;
• No matter how you feel: Get Up, Dress Up and Show up;
• The Best is yet to come.
  

But that was just a dream...

There are times where I feel like I'm drowning amidst all the cling, clang and clatter of the world. How I just wish it's all a dream. Had a completely shitty long day today and I'm quite sure that's just the beginning of it all - everything happens for a reason, right? Just hope for the best and stay strong.

I'm sick to the bones at the moment, sniffing my way through sleep, school and back again. Its as though a pressuring weight has been placed onto my forehead and spreading down the bridge of my nose. Been walking about the house, trailed by the box of tissues: yup, it's that bad!

You know, as a little girl once, I had wished that I was born a flower: bright, beautiful, colourful and always happy in the sun. Flowers got their life simple, man. How I envy them sometimes... You become borne, wake up with the biggest brightest smile on your face, wait to be fed and cooled off by fresh water after basking in the balmy sunshine all morning...

I wanna be like these six ladies above (yup i had to count them) like this picture above: vibrant, bright, happy with their mouths wide open as though they're singing their little hearts out in harmony. Me likey this picture very muchey! For some reason this photo reminds me of the old 1994 Disney cartoon Fantasia, do you remember that? There was on part of the musical cartoon where you can actually see the flowers singing and dancing in harmoniously melody.

A Birthday Shout Out

A Birthday Shout Out to two people I know of - you girls know who you are! It's a day late, i know but you know what they say: better late than never! Sincerely wishing you both the best of birthdays and I hope you had a blast celebrating it with your friends and family. Thank you for the invites, as well.

Posting some photos of Friday night's celebration, which I thought was a pretty awesome night, characterised by the flashing colour red! An awesome idea that was conjured by the fellow party organisers!

It was certainly a fun night, where everyone got together in the name of laughter and fun with much activities taking place from the Bruneian traditional game of congkak and suspense-filled jenga to everyone crowding over the computer, playing the haunted, thrilling and suspensful game of hotel626 - which i must say is quite a freaky game!! Honestly, you should give it a go. I had never seen some of my friends run away to the other side of the room so fast. Hahahaha.....

Don't really have much to say for now, except that as of today the Easter Break is over *sob*... so its back to hitting the books for most of us.

In Times of Dire...

First of all, let me start off by saying: Life is not but with a sense of irony - Another year with another rollercoaster ride. Anyhow...

It's 3:15am in the morning, and I'm typing my heart and soul away into the depths of the internet amidst the snorings and mumblings of my sleeping housemates. I can't sleep. Just got back from a birthday party a few hours ago and I thought it would've been enough to make me feel knackered enough to yearn for the comforts of my bed.

As promised, photos from the last jammin' session in Block M with the notorious gang. I must say those were good times... Well, enough said... I've got a 9am running/walking + football session tomorrow. So I suppose I shall hit the sack, as they say. My bed beckons me... until next time, enjoy the photos!

For more photos, check out: MsShooter@Photobucket.com

Swingin' & Jammin'

It was a bowling session for friends of BssMelb with all laughter and smiles flashing across the scene. Seemed like everyone had a good time! - with all the arm swinging, cheering and jeering, you could sense the friendly competitive spirit in the atmosphere. A lot of people showed up! Being Easter break, I figured more students would be out of town... out and about enjoying themselves with their oh-so-short, rare founded freedom of the school semester.

Four lanes were taken up in the Strike bowling joint within the deep low depths of QV. It was awesome to know that we were the noisiet group among everyone there. Despite the riveting competition between each teams (and my team lost... hahaha it's all in good fun), most people were good sports about it.

Good sportmanship is important, not only in sports but in life: ability to learn and know how to support our friends despite their failed attempts to win and for ourselves, to know how to take a loss without anger and disappointment.

So four teams played against one another and the winners were determined through team average. The top three teams won prizes, so the fourth and last team didn't win anything. Nevertheless, everyone still went about and shared their winning prizes: bags filled with easter chocolate goodies!

I think, despite having that much fun, some people wanted to hang out a bit longer… so while others disappeared off into the night to enjoy themselves, a few of us decided to head over to Prahran’s Block M to just hang out with the owner – and this is what we’ve been up to:

Meeting the owner of Block M was such an eye-opening experience. I have never met someone so carefree and so relaxed like that in my life. The bloke was so untroubled and completely trusting of us that he had pretty much let us go about our business in his restaurant and do whatever we liked. Nice...

PS: more pictures to be posted in next blog session. Until then! Toodles noodles!

La Lasagne: il Salmone e l'asparago

Easter break is in town... and it's food blogging time! Hahaha... Dear god, time is flying by so fast and I'm sure pretty soon school will start again before we all know it! Oh no! Weather is getting colder, as we speak, and sunlight shorter by the day, activities to do are also running out quite fast....

Nonetheless its Easter Break and as mentioned before it's foodblog time (besides: everyone is in a jolly good mood due to the holidays).... So for sake of easter celebration I think I shall share a cooking recipe with you. Nothing grand or fancy, actually truth be told it's quite a easy, simple dish! - even its name is simple actually: The Salmon + Asparagus Lasagne.

A little info about the delectable dish: came across this recipe in one of Mr Rockband's Readers' Digest Healthy One-Dish Cooking and for the sake of trying something new, we both decided to give it a go. Besides, i think Mr Rockband was in salmon-craving mode.

So about the dish, basically it's a seafood take on the classic Italian Lasagna where the meat, onions and red tomato sauce are replaced with the wonderful, blissful combination of salmon, asparagus and white bechamel sauce, topped with mozzarella. The savoury flavours of salmon is emphasised by the hint of lemon and dill.

There one thing I liked about the dish: It was so easy to make and quite fast (since the asparagus was already steamed/boiled, you only have to really cook 2 things: the salmon in fish broth with complimenting flavours and the bechamel sauce - the white sauce).

The only problems I encountered during the whole cooking process was having to deal with the lasagna, which we didn't have 'fresh' (mainly because neither of us knew how to make lasagna from scratch... well I know the basic ingredients but I'm not confident enough to do it... hahaha). So we ended up with store-bought instant lasagna that did not require pre-cooking.

Personally I prefer the pre-cooked pasta as that the way I've always had it as a kid... although I'm fully aware that that method means more work for me. As for the instant lasagna sheets, well it sucked because despite having nice, tasty lasagna to begin with, I found that as I worked my way towards the centre of the dish, the pasta sheets weren't cooked and were still solid (not a pleasant way to have your meal).

Ah well, despite that the dish proved to be success: it had a strong asparagus flavour with a hint of lemony salmon and the bechamel sauce was creamy because I added a bit of mozarella cheese to it. One thing of note: if you don't like asparagus (like a number of my housemates...) you can always take comfort in knowing that it can easily be substituted with brocolli, which compliments the maritime flavour of salmon anytime of the day. Enjoy!