pancakes and dumplings

Friday night: Maccas close to midnight with stephen, henny, rick, julian, angela & tian yi. laughed a lot. julian kept disturbing angela. stephen was freezing in his garbage bag and shorts. we sat on wet grass outside the state library. Rick fed fries to the seagulls and tried to pull stephen's shorts off because he wasn't wearing anything under.

Julian angela and CK spent the entire night awake playing poker and silly dare games that definitely created memories for the three of them. angela having to go out to the tramstop barefooted and sing hallelujah. julian and ck getting their bodies covered in random words written with a red whiteboard marker...

while henny, me, su-ann, rick and david slept through all their laughter on the couches at toastbar from 4am - 7am, afterwhich we woke up and shared pancakes made by henny, su-ann, ck, angela and myself. (i woke up to angela's roaring laughter asking me to wake up and check out julian and ck's drawn-on abs and soliciting messages on their backs. that night i taught stephen the difference between panties and underwear - that only girls wear panties and they are not interchangeable words. hahaha..

we made pancakes because henny had been wanting to make them for the longest time. so angela henny and i went to get ingredients from aldi.

later on that morning (saturday)  i crashed an accounting lecture with henny and julian. went for lunch with them and chan chai (birthday boy) and i realised how cool it was that all 4 of us were from different countries. indonesia, malaysia, singapore and thailand.

one of the highlights of my full-on weekend was being able to spend that afternoon sharing an umbrella with isabella and yifang as we walked to wing cheong in the rain weather to get ingredients for dumplings. this arose out of a conversation where i asked the both of them what they liked to cook and what they knew how to make. isabella said quite happily that she could make dumplings and i quite excitedly asked if we could make dumplings together some time because i've never made dumplings before. i think it's a huge step for them to both say "game on!" to dumpling-making. their willingness to engage. it wasn't very enthusiastic, but it was still an attempt that i do recognise. and it wasn't as though i was someone they knew beyond a few superficial meetings. the walk to wing cheong was really good when yifang asked me how many boyfriends i've ever had. personal question which i'm really thankful for because that opened up so much more room for us to talk about things that matter more to us. importance of looking good, importance of having boyfriends who look good, importance of confidence and character, difficulty of having long distance relationships..

the next big step was for isabella to open up her place for us to cook. i myself find it hard to open up my own apartment because it's so messy. but after considering the (limited) options we had, she suggested going to her place. so we did (YAY!). and both she and i had a chance to talk about our families when yifang left to dress up for a friend's party. talked about her media lecturer, talked bout china and sg.. when yifang came back, we also talked a bout china and sg. though i can't quite remember a lot of what we talked about. maybe my memory for conversations in mandarin is lower. haha. i also had a chance to spend some time with meng qian and her shiyou gloria. isabella was trying to push meng qian forward, and encourage her to press on with media even though she finds it to be a difficult subject. the girls were all very candid with me which gave me a very warm feeling of being included, no longer marked out as a singaporean girl who is difficult to engage because i speak differently.

the toastbarcampers wanted to go play pool at 11pm. and i simply couldn't decide whether or not i should go because i was really qite drained from the lack of sleep and non-stop action. plus i had a skype date. i went anyway, but left after 3 minutes. because as much as i wanted to share more experiences with them, i knew i was too tired to properly engage anyone, and dong's important too. end of saturddayyy

silei  also managed to wake up for church today (after 11 missed calls from me - i just kept praying that God would wake him up) :D felt like God was telling me that stephen would wake up by the time i was ready to leave home. so when i put on my shoes, i gave him my final call AND HE PICKED UPPP!! he also somehow remembered that it was a sunday and he was coming to church with me! so i told him that i'll pick him up from his apartment. i was truly shocked when he opened the door and his hair was wet. no idea how he found time to shower from the time i stepped out of the house and took the lift down. but he was in a blur rush to get ready and out of the house because he came out of the apartment holding his towel and closed the door behind him. hahaha maybe i shouldn't have asked him why he was holding on to his towel and just let him bring it to church. LOLLLL

julian asked me along for lunch and coffee after church as well - so jul, rick, henny and i shared two umbrellas in the romantically rainy weather. i do treasure these moment and am highly aware not to take times like these for granted. that's why i wanna write all these down eventhough i know it's not the most interesting material to read.

bible study was eye-opening as well. makes me wana read the first 5 book+joshua again cause i feel like i missed out a lot.

having all these relationships forming and growing around me has been the most delightful. and these are the tangible fruits of toastbar. i'm wondering what next semester would be like.... what i want next semester to be like..