Hiromi And Uta's Joint Birthday Party!
Went to Hiromi and Uta's joint birthday party last Friday, which was held at Ran's place at the Endcliffe Vale Flats. The party was another party-cum-potluck dinner affair, but since I can probably cook with as much success as a pig which is trying to fly, I decided on contributing drinks instead (which, of course, cannot go wrong and hence eliminates the possibility of consigning everyone's fate to a night of hugging the toilet bowls). As usual, the food was excellent - Ran cooked some miso-soup thingy, Sunny made
pajeon (a seafood omelette) and
gimbap (a Korean version of sushi), Kana made
mochi (Japanese rice cakes), Hiromi whipped up some Japanese curry and the others contributed cakes, chocolates and drinks. Everyone just spent the night eating, talking and eating some more - a much more subdued affair than our previous parties!
I'll just post some pictures taken that night instead of blogging incessantly about everything that happened during the party - I'm still feeling a bit too lazy to type.
The two birthday girls! From left - Hiromi and Uta. Their birthday cakes were chocolate ice-cream cakes. I personally don't care too much for cakes, but mention
chocolate and
ice-cream before the word
cake, I'd happily devour the entire cake!
From left - Uta, Sunny, Tina and Hiromi.
When Hiromi suddenly wanted to take a photo of me and Wei Jin, I was like "Uh, no... I think I'll pa-" and before I knew it, the picture was taken. I'm impressed. I've never seen a photo that shows me as THE Blur Sotong before - I guess this is a first! Hahaha! Check out the bottom left of the picture - Kana is in her famous "Kana pose"! Now that's
kawaii, Yi Yong!
Clockwise, from left - Sunny, Yuki, Ran and Hiromi. The pose adopted by Yuki kinda reminds me of the time when I was in choral speaking during secondary school. There was one part where we were supposed to be scared/petrified/pants-wetted-cowering-in-fear by the supposedly "evil monsters" (who were in the aforementioned pose) or something like that. Ah, those were the days...
Uta and Sunny posing for the camera. Oh, and half of Tina as well. Hahaha!
Hiromi and some of her friends.
Ah, so that explains the purple smoke hanging over the kitchen! Hahaha! Ran and Sunny are "smoking" biscuits shaped into a roll - but it seems that they're really enjoying it! I wonder what was used to make those biscuits...
Finally, a group photo of everyone who was at Hiromi and Uta's joint birthday party (bar Kana, since she was the one who took this photograph).
P.S. - Why the hell am I attached to the Doncaster Royal Infirmary?! It's half an hour by train from Sheffield, and I'm supposed to go there for my ICE attachments every day for four days next week? Dammit!!
Chap Goh Mei Dinner!
I know this post is rather late, but better late than never, as the popular phrase goes. I won't be blogging much because the Intensive Clinical Experience is taking up most of my time for this three weeks - although I'll do my best to upload an entry whenever possible. Anyway, this entry is all pictures and a lot less words than my typical entry - I don't really have enough energy to type right now. Enjoy the pictures!
Us at Halifax Hall's reception just before going to Noodle King (a fusion-style noodle restaurant as per what its name suggests) on Ecclesall Road for our
Chap Goh Mei dinner. We thought we had booked the entire restaurant since our party was 14-strong, but it turned out that we weren't quite spot-on - we only took
half the restaurant!
Something Rex ordered - I have absolutely no idea what it is. Looks like a bird's nest on a bed of gravy (with the resident bird chopped up and stir-fried).
Fried noodles, ordered by Su Ann. They look quite delicious, but I'm not really a fan of "dry" noodles - I prefer mine in soup!
Hsin Yu's dish was chicken in noodle soup. It looks really delicious, I might try that the next time we go there! However, the food's there a tad bit pricey so we might not go there for quite some time - 5 pounds for a bowl of noodles seem like an exorbitant price to me!
Good ol'
laksa! This might sound like a stupid question, but is there supposed to be
char siew (roasted pork) in
laksa? Yi Yong said that the
laksa served there was quite good, but apparently it tasted more like the curry noodles we get back home than
laksa. I tried it, and it did taste like
laksa, albeit in a vague sort of way, but definitely not as good as what Waterworks dishes out back in JB!
What I ordered - duck with noodle soup! The serving was rather large and it was quite delicious - they gave rather generous portions of duck together with the noodles (I wasn't expecting anything less for the price I was paying). Of course, this dish can't compare with the other noodle soups I get back home, but when you're deprived of Chinese food in a foreign country, anything remotely resembling Chinese cuisine tastes good!
Yi Yong and I ordered a side-dish as well. I'm not too sure about what it was called, but I definitely know what it was. It's fried tofu, served with chopped carrots and lettuce and bucketloads of sweet chilli sauce. It was quite delicious!
A group picture before we tucked into our food! After dinner, we proceeded to Yi Yong's room where we played drinking games (using red and white wine) until just after midnight. hahaha! What a way to see off the Chinese New Year!
Chinese New Year In Sheffield!
I've never been so honoured in my life. To have a complete, total stranger, talking about her life to me - even though she knows it will not bring her any improvements in terms of health since I am just merely a first year medical student and therefore I can't prescribe anything to alleviate her symptoms or even just to further elucidate her condition to her. To have a stranger call me a friend, even though I've just met her three times for around two hours each time. To know that someone places so much trust in me that she doesn't even need to remind me that what was said between those four walls should remain between me, my partner and her. To have someone so explicitly define the reason for my ambition so far, and to remind me of what I have to be, hopefully, in 5 years' time. And to make me remember that each and every patient is not merely a series of numbers, nor a statistic, or even just another file in an anonymous cabinet, but an individual...a human being.
On another note, I also just had my SSC Critical Analysis presentation just last Friday. All us Phase 1A-ians were given several drug advertisements to choose from and were tasked with choosing one advertisement each to analyze in terms of the drug pharmacology, truthfulness of the claims and compliance with advertising guidelines just before the Christmas holidays. However, due to me finding a last-minute motherlode of information on my drug, my working paper was completed just a week before the deadline and my presentation was printed on acetates (many thanks to Wei Jin for lending me his printer!) two days before the presentation date. My presentation wasn't too bad - I felt I spoke a bit too fast because I was a little nervous, but I covered every point and managed to answer all the questions the tutor posed to me with confidence. All in all, my presentation was much better than what I was expecting it to be! Hahaha! What a relief!
It seems that up until this point, my entry has no relevance whatsoever with the title I've given it! Haha! Back to the fun part - my Chinese New Year in Sheffield, in pictures!
Me (in my very first
samfu) and Wei Jin, posing for our first Chinese New Year picture in my room! Pardon the very messy room - the winter jacket was left there to air and the formal shirt and tie was left there after my CAS visits were done. The stripey shirt just behind us was left there to dry as I had just washed my laundry - the dryer they provide downstairs is a waste of 40p since it merely makes your laundry moist instead of dry!
Our "reunion dinner" was delayed due to some people having their exams at that time. So, immediately after their examinations, we had our reunion dinner at "No. 1 Chinese Buffet", an all-you-can-eat-for-5.85-pounds buffet restaurant! The food was excellent (for Chinese food in Sheffield, anyway) and it was the first time I actually felt stuffed to the max on Chinese food in Sheffield! On a totally unrelated note, I had my first ice-cream in Sheffield here as well!
Kawaii desu ne? Yi Yong suddenly was infected by the
kawaii disease and was terribly infatuated with the
kawaii poses and took to posing for pictures with them. Unfortunately, Wei Jin was also infected by the disease, evident in this picture of us taken while dining at No. 1 Chinese Buffet. It may seem inoccous in this picture, but I was plagued with Yi Yong's supposedly
kawaii antics for the better part of the dinner. Ugh.
Due to our superb planning skills, we managed to roll our "reunion dinner" and the celebration for Su Ann's birthday party into one night. Here is a group picture of everyone who was present that night.
Chinese New Year spirit to the max! The only three guys who wore
samfu in keeping with the Chinese New Year mood - from left, Kin, myself and Mark. The two of them had brightly coloured
samfu's whereas mine was of a more somber colour (no idea if it's plum red, dark maroon or brownish red...). Anyway, I discovered after that night that I rather liked wearing a
samfu - I even wore it to Gatecrasher for the Chinese New Year party after that! Dancing in
samfu - interesting experience! Hahaha!
From left - Noemi, Yi Yong, Su Ann (the birthday girl), Rex and Li Ching. They hogged a small corner of the kitchen where Su Ann's birthday party and demanded Level Five security clearance to even enter their territory - so I wisely kept a good distance away and used high-powered spy cameras to clandestinely document their activities.
These dudes were much more relaxed about people entering their territory, so I hung around with them much longer. Clockwise, from left - Tommy, Mark, Hariz, Jun Xue, James and Kin. Another reason why I hung around there for much longer was because the window was there and it was the only source of fresh air to the kitchen - those guys were pretty smart to hog that place! Hahaha!
That's all for this entry, I guess. I have many other photographs of what we did during Chinese New Year, but I think it's rather unnecessary to put all of those up when a few will suffice. I'll try to get hold of the Gatecrasher photos (no promises) and see if I can upload them.
P.S. - Intensive Clinical Experience is up next, wish me luck!
