www.indrani.net: August 2005

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Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Five Half Months

Noe has such beautiful eyes...

Noe opens the door and says "Who's that?"

This week Noe finally managed to sit unaided.

Holding onto his feet:

Noe's wrinkled feet after morning bath:

Allow us to present our family photos!

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Monday, August 29, 2005

Banana Cinnamon Dessert

Indi wanted me to finish the frozen spring roll flour wrapper that has fossilized in our fridge since two months ago. The challenge is that I should not fry the spring roll. Indi dislikes deep frying in his kitchen more than anything. That's because he's the one who cleans up the messy oil spill etc. How to make use of the springroll skins without frying??

(BTW we never really plan what to cook. What I usually do is check out the fridge and see what's there, and see what food can be made out of the available materials)

Let's see, we have banana, heavy cream, sugar, cinnamon, butter. See what we can make out of it.

So I lay down the first layer spring roll skins and butter them. Slice the banana thinly and spread them on the spring roll skin. Then sprinkle them with cinnamon.

Prepare other layers in the same way on different plates, temporarily.

On small fire, heat sugar until it turns into caramel.

Open cream container, and pour (sprinkle) the cream sparingly on top of the first layer. Then pour caramel mix. On top of the first layer, put the second layer, put cream on it, and then caramel. Continue until the last layer. Then put the last sheet of springroll skin as top cover, sprinkle with cinnamon, cream, and caramel (or perhaps, egg yolk and butter?).

Bake in the oven over low heat for half an hour.
(We don't have oven, so we put it in microwave over low heat)

Finished!

It can be eaten hot - straight from the oven, or cold.

It would be great to put a slice of this with vanilla ice cream, whipping cream, chocolate syrup, chocolate rice, chocolate ice cream, whatever.

I personally would take a slice, and pour one or two spoonful of Rum (Bacardi Gold that is) over it. You can also make it into a flambee.

And it was really quick to prepare, like, ten minutes (excluding baking time), because all the ingredients are ready made. It would be faster to prepare if you have caramel syrup ready and don't need to cook the sugar into caramel.

Surely you can also vary the recipe as you like it. Like, replace banana with green apple or avocado. Or add shredded cheddar cheese into it (Warning: this is Indonesian style of eating cheese with sweet things, you westeners would perhaps puke with the concept of eating cheese with chocolate, sugar, etc)

Sorry we didn't take photo, we didn't plan the dessert to turned out to be really delicious!

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Saturday, August 27, 2005

US-Asean Reunion Dinner

To celebrate Dato Ernie Bower's visit to Singapore, Elizabeth organized a US-ASEAN reunion dinner at her residence. This is Noe with Dato Bower:

And the great chef Lorenzo presented his masterpiece of haute-cuisine for the dinner. This is the kitchen situation during the preparation.

As the overture for the cuisine symphony, a fresh crispy salad with garlic bread:

To awaken your appetite, here goes baked prawn with herb butter and baby spinach with dash of tangy lemon:

And the climax of the symphony, roast rib eye with shitake mushroom mustard sauce accompanied by mashed sweet potato. It truly made your tongue dance! The sweet potato melted in your mouth.

Finally, sweet creamy banana split as the Coda. And don't forget to mention Anthony's great presentation of his wine collection!

Noe was a bit irritable and insomniac that night, because he just had his vaccination in the morning. All of us tried to calm him down and put him to sleep. Noe did not sleep until 1am. This is Noe with Christine.

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Unusual Signs

I've been collecting photos of signages around Singapore. However I haven't had a chance to compile it. So let me start by putting these two signs, before I forget. I caught this misspelled signage near our house:

This next sign is found in Scotts Road. It seems that 'Tongtek' can also be found in Singapore and is not only in Jatinegara - Jakarta!.

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Saturday, August 20, 2005

Coffee with the Phipps

We introduced Liza to Elizabeth over coffee because they both shared something in common in the work they're doing. We brought Noe along with us too. This is Noe with Liza:

While we hang out with Elizabeth and Liza, the Phipps family happened to be in Forum Shopping Centre as well. So Elizabeth called John to join us for coffee. It was our first time meeting the rest of the family. This is Jonathan and Christine Phipps:

This is Noe with John Phipps:

This is Noe with Christine Phipps:

Jocelyn was eager to show the dance that she learned from the drama class that day:

Back home, Noe managed to poo in the toilet for the first time!

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Thursday, August 18, 2005

Spaceship

Noe had shown his eagerness to be on his feet, so Indi decided to let him play with his new Spaceship, courtesy of Iwan Handono family and Niken Lukito!

Apparently, Noe thought that he needed to eat the steering wheel in order to make the spaceship work.

Having a baby does not mean that Indi and I are constrained to staying at home all the time. For now we try to bring Noe along to any activity that we do. Rani is doing the day shift in taking care of Noe, while Indi is doing the evening and weekend shift. Rani took Noe to the activities, seminars, and event and so far Noe is behaving really well. This is Noe at LKY School Cafe with Christian after attending ExxonMobil seminar in ISEAS.

We also introduced Noe to Melissa and Flora, in NYDC Holland Village. Flora is an East Timorese student who studies in United World College Singapore. She's really smart, I hope she will secure scholarship to EWC after she graduated from UWC.

BTW Vena and Valdean, our honorable guest from Denver, CO, visited Noe at home. Look at how big Valdean is - compared to when he was still in the US! He's nine months old.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Noe's Independence

Happy 60th Birthday Indonesia !! (We hope you won't be a frail old country...) BTW, it has been quite a while since the last time we updated this blog, because we went back to Indonesia for two weeks last month. As a recap, you can follow the story here:

Back to Singapore Noe started be more independent than before.

Now he always wants to sit down. He would lift his neck as a sign for me to lift him into sitting position. He would then grab my finger to hold his sitting position.

Noe also likes to be held in standing position. Mind you, we DON'T pull him into standing position. Rather, he would stick his feet on the floor (or anywhere to stick his feet on), then he would push his body up to an erect position. Our hands were merely holding his body in balance, but Noe himself dictated us on how he want to be held.

And only today, he started to want more than just sitting. He wanted to stand up just like big boys and big girls do. From sitting position, Noe would pull himself up onto standing position, with his hands bracing on to our fingers. We did not pull him! Click below for video!

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Saturday, August 13, 2005

New Road

Today I woke up wondering why I couldn't check my email. It turned out that I forgot to RENEW MY DOMAIN! SH*#&@*(!)!!! indrani.net was locked, all you can see in the screen was just this:

I panicked, I even started to check out other domain names in case we did not manage to recover this domain. I then scrambled to get my bank electronic key to do internet transfer to Techscape. Luckily I managed to reach a very nice 24hr customer care lady from Techscape through Yahoo Messenger and after only three hours of downtime I managed to recover my domain. At last, life can resume per normal (Are we so addicted to internet that we can be panic-stricken when we lose our domain?)

Anyway, yesterday we received notification from LTA on the completion of the Queensway Extension, a.k.a Portsdown Avenue. At last, no more construction noise 24hr a day.. but we don't know how noisy car traffic would be.

So, to enjoy our last day of serenity without traffic, and to be the first who cross AYE through the bridge, we decided to take a morning walk across to Kent Ridge Park. We passed by the road opening ceremony by Mrs. Lim Hwee Hua.. we should've stopped by .. free food!

According to LTA letter, the road itself was due to open for public at 2pm that day (of course, lah, how can car pass the new road with the ceremonial tent lying right on the road???). We could see workers peeling the black cover off the road signages.

There were a lot of "peeling off" to do: for example, this "thing" that covered the traffic light (sexy ya?).

Yup, the new road is opening soon. We got opening ceremony here!

LTA guys were really kind to take our photo in the middle of the road prior to opening for public. We wouldn't have a chance to take this kind of picture anymore after the road is in operation.

At 2pm, we managed to document the first car that passes through the new road. Most of them came from Normanton Park / AYE direction towards Queensway.

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Saturday, August 06, 2005

Dinner at Hernandez-Blass's

We're invited for a dinner at Hernandez-Blass residence to celebrate Elizabeth's brother return from Dubai to South East Asia.

Mr. Lorenzo, Elizabeth's brother, worked as chef in a fancy restaurant in Dubai. Needless to say, we had haute-cuisine dinner, especially made by Chef Lorenzo. We were greeted by the best champagne and wine from Blass's cellar. The appetizer was sushi with different mix-and-match filling. And then the main course.. salmon with couscous mixed with fresh mint leaves, ribs, salad, and steak. And the dinner was closed with coffee cake dessert and fabulous coffee made by Anthony.

This is Joanna with Noe, and Mrs. Lorenzo played with him.