Monday, January 23, 2012

hello cny

for cny eve, i wanted something special for dinner so we went to a fancy asian restaurant. it had trondheim's best sushi apparently and laksa. i was there for the laksa. it was a starter dish that costs 121nkr. its description reads 'malaysian coconut soup with coriander, nuts, noodles, chicken and prawns.
when it came to ordering though, i was told they stopped serving it because of its low demand. plus the menu i originally had was the 'old version' and was given another when i was ready to order.......at least we were served starter snacks which were tasty.

i was VERY disappointed when they said they didnt have laksa btw. it showed extremely obviously in my face. the waiter recommended 'ram yum' soup. it was a noodle soup with chicken, egg, lemon grass and teriyaki. he said its a better version of laksa soup.
my ASS it was. if it was some comedy show i'd be slapping him with a shoe saying there's hardly much similarity except them being noodles in liquid. it was maggi noodles in very tasty soup, slightly spicey.


and it was served with a funky spoon.the bathroom was also quite funky, just that i got confused because its a shared bathroom with the gender stuck on the individual stalls. music playing overhead, and large mirrors making it look very spacious. oh oh and i wore red XD.

the soya sauce bowl was quite big, in my opinion..
and although i ordered TEMPURA maki, i got plain old prawn maki instead...... i wanted to complain but alex asked if i really wanted to wait half an hour for them to change my order. so instead he just switched his tempura maki with my regular prawn ones.
when the waiter came over and asked how the food was, i held in my complaints and gave an odd head shake, tilting side to side with an expression alex later had to ask about which i had no idea i was giving. but it caused the waiter to walk away chuckling hard to himself.......... i was stabbing him in my mind cuz he took the wrong order you see.

it was a very filling meal and rather nice, minus the disappointments XD. as for it being trondheim's best... there's a sushi bar near our place with SLIGHTLY bigger bits, equally fancy restaurant and similar tasting maki.

day 1 of cny, i also wanted to make a nice dinner, so i thought of chicken curry. and i had that jar of Singapore Curry in the fridge. it LOOKED alot like the curry we normally find in sg... but when i opened it ... it turned out to be tomato based?! i call it spicy pasta sauce.
anyway, i chucked in onions, garlic, more curry powder, salt, and water in order to make it taste less like pasta sauce. in the end ... ok la, it worked out pretty good. alex likes just about anything i cook anyway, so no pressure..

shall blog about my laksa tomorrow!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

cny eve

today is cny eve... no steamboats, but we're about to go out to a fancy asian restaurant. tried to do a cny theme for my nails yesterday but i was so damn moody three attempts at different designs just didnt work out. (plus i dont fancy red or gold on my nails XD)

so eventually i got lazy and just used water decals and rhinestones with a nian nian you yu theme. cant believe i forgot i had cute little goldfishies.


for my spring 'cleaning', i packed up my xmas tree (finally) and vacuumed and mopped up the place fairly quickly. four new additions for my ornament collection arrived a couple of days ago from mary. They're the Wernick's family Old World ornaments thats traditionally made.. but made in china?i really like the houses, so pretty XD and the other two are simply cute.

random pic of joco's avocado tree in the growing.. he's used string to make them grow in a twisty way, which is cool. wonder how it'll look like as a tree? he's also talked about growing his own bonsai with mini apples or something like that hehe
then today aunty siu hong sent a message saying she found old videos of us celebrating birthdays at the chalets! oh no! hahaha. at least in photos, i wont hear whatever possibly embarrassing nonsense i said as a kid!
when i look at my eyes here... its just funny cuz i have double eyelids and there my eyes are slits.
to this day i still do this face......
finally a pic of my crazy cousins facetiming with me. one of them very kindly slowly crunched new year goodies in front of the cam. yeah.
then weng meng kor sent a picture of their steamboat reunion dinner. I REALLY WANT STEAMBOAT!? so envious.
so for those people who complain about how troublesome cny is..... just appreciate being able to be with your family and enjoy the good food.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Nidaros cathedral

yesterday i finally went to tour around the Nidaros cathedral of trondheim together with jenelyn, as they had put Idar back under a cocktail of drugs to make him sleep again as he needs the rest. Quick facts of the cathedral include it being built from 1070 onwards , is the most important Gothic monument in Norway and was Northern Europe's most important Christian pilgrimage site during the Middle Ages. Its the northenmost medieval cathedral in the world and Saint Olav is buried somewhere in it. oh and miracles happened where his body was first buried apparently.

i just fell in love with the cathedral windows because of how beautiful they looked with the sun shining in.
the cathedral is really high inside, and it was used for coronations at one point but stopped in the very early 1900s.
some female saints here ithink? my eyesight is bad so i couldnt read the names. bit if you click the pic to enlarge you can see the details better.
this is where we lit a candle or two for Idar, in hopes that his recovery will be smooth. we could also write prayers on cards that will be read out on sunday during mass.
for 90nkr, we could visit two places. inside the cathedral and the museum at the archbishop's palace right next to it. they had a scale model of the Nidaros, which i took pics of to better show the whole structure XD

of course this model didnt have the statues of the saints, because that would be a LOT of detail!!
impressive isnt it?
then we have their biggest window there, which i bought some postcards of because it was simply beautiful.
the archibishop's palace we couldnt explore all of course, just part of it that was the museum. but i liked how they had models showing the changes in its structure from when it was first built till today.

at this point , it was used as a military building
and what it looks like todayand in real life! the road you see here leads to the Nidaros. Took this picture from inside the museum through a big glass window XD
one of the first exhibits is this... thingy depicting the life of saint olav.

and a statue of saint olav. why he's stepping on a centaur-ish king i dont know.
they also had cool slabs with runic inacriptions!

they have also managed to recover some statues and fragments from the cathedral, which got damaged quite alot over the centuries.
i took a picture of this one because i couldnt help thinking you could probably find similar in china?

and this one seemed mayan to me..

a picture of a face i found interesting...and this one is just creepy because in one game i watched alex play.. he went around hell trying to do stuff and there were souls in the walls of hell exactly like these. and there was a big chopper constantly chopping their heads off, which regrows. so they moan and scream the entire time.
a statue of a warrior, quite viking-like. i'm quite amused that even in norway you have little figurines of vikings that have horns on their helmets.. something they're NOT supposed to have.
this statue, i think, is of saint john.
they also have troll statues! from what i learnt from a norwegian movie, trolls dont like christians. so i thought it was funny to have trolls on a cathedral XD
a headless saint.
beautiful archway i wish i could have in my future house whahaha.
they have also preserved some of the archbishop's letters.
the original letter! if anyone ever thought my smallest handwriting was small.. wait till you see this guy's. its MINUTE.
quite alot of interesting preserved items there :) hundreds of years old!!

then they even have preserved food bits?...

this was once food XD.interesting fact i learnt: they had disposable GLASS cups. they would smash them at the end of a party. XD
while in the cathedral, i fancied myself in the great hall of Hogwarts. so when i saw this face.. i really couldnt help thinking it was a house elf XD

The oldest intact mint in Europe is here! so much interesting things in one small area.

this is part of the original mint, which is tiled with what was back then very expensive flooring.
and this is what the mint looked like back in its former glory.
whats left of the expensive tiles is now this
they even have some very well preserved coins
at one floor, they had this sign that said the heads and stuff are 'true to life', blablabla.. then i saw THIS.

who the beep looked like that?! but i guess perhaps this might be copies of the original figures XD

they also had a small section of pottery and fragments from various parts of the world, even chinese.

didnt strike me as a very old piece, plus they didnt state a date for it. so might as well have gone to a shop, buy something cheap, and break it to display XD.


that was a long post! shall take a rest now. its been so busy i've had no time to prepare at all for any special cny things. ah well..