It's my party and I'd cry if I want to

Twenty four.

is the amount of hours in a day.

is that famous TV series about that dude, Jack Bauer.

is the number of months in my mobile phone contract.

is 2 x 12, or 3 x 8, or even 4 x 6

Twenty four.

is how old I am now.

Today is indeed, my birthday. One year older, but none the wiser. It feels so weird because I actually didn't feel the 'hype' and excitement of having a birthday. I slept early last night at 11 pm, and couldn't even wake up to answer calls or sms-es. I woke up with one missed call and five birthday sms-es in my mobile.

Today was just an ordinary day. Actually, I could say that I had a bad day at work. Everything was just wrong, orders were late, suppliers were pushing the due date further, salespeoples were panicking out and pushing my patience to the limit. To add to that, my colleagues at work didn't even know that today's my birthday.

I did tell one of my colleague that it's my birthday, in the end. And I told her that I don't want to make a big deal out of it... She kept it hush-hush, but soon enough the whole department was wishing me birthday wishes. And to my surprise, as I went back from lunch (alone, that is!), they prepared me a birthday present! A beautiful rose with beads bracelet and matching earrings! 

Today was simply just an ordinary day... the only difference is I am one year older. What made the day special were the birthday wishes from all my friends around the world.. even those ones that I have not been in contact in years left a message on my facebook wall (thank goodness for facebook! hahaha). Earlier this week I got an early birthday present from my sis in Malaysia, and my mom and dad just bought me a digital camera for my birthday! I'm gonna have it real soon :) yaaaayy..

Everyday is full of decisions. Of course, those negative situation above could affect my birthday mood. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to. But hey, nobody is gonna rain in my parade! so I chose to be happy in my birthday and relax :)

Thanks so much for the birthday wishes guys.. through sms-es, phone calls, facebook wall comments, friendster comments, even from your nick on messenger :) It is true, your family and friends are the ones who made your world, no matter where you are. I am officially twenty four years old and trully blessed  :) 

One hour and seven minutes to go, and I'm no longer the birthday girl.

It's my party and I'd cry if I want to

Hopelessly devoted to...

Ola people,

If you guys didn't have my facebook or my messenger... you probably won't know this. But I want to shout it out from top of the mountain *okay, i'm exaggerating* that I'm officially a Mac-devotee.

My baby :)

Yeapp! that's right people.. I just recently switched to Macintosh. Since last week Wednesday, to be precise. I'm known as a 'switcher' now, and I don't want to go back to PC *sorry!* hehe.  

I've always loved Mac. Secretly desired Mac. But never have the guts to actually buy it. I talked about planning to buy it a lot, but no action. You see, one of my good friend - Rey - is crazy about Mac. My pastors (both of them!) are crazy about Mac. My church uses Mac in everything. Liza's boyfriend, Chris, converted to Mac. My housemate bought a Mac. Everybody uses Mac!

Since I've oftenly uses the church's MacBook Pro, I have gotten familiar with the OS and how they operate. I liked it wayyyy better than PC. Mac is so easy to use, with great interface and graphics, and they do not crash like PC *unless if some guy accidentally squeezed the hard drive part of your MacBook, that is. Note to Jibo!*

All I can say is.. I LOVE IT. This beautiful white thing is my baby! I have much love for it *sad, i know...*

Hey PC users, why don't you change to Mac and join the 'switchers'? :)

Hopelessly devoted to...

What's in a name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet..."

(Juliet - from "Romeo & Juliet" by William Shakespeare) 

That was an excerpt from the famous love story "Romeo & Juliet" by William Shakespeare. Here, Juliet expressed her love for Romeo, despite the feud that their families threw at each other. She wished that Romeo's last name was not a Montague, but then she declared that she would love him anyway despite what his name is. Rather sweet isn't it?

Many people have asked what's the story behind my nickname... What is "Cintapopia" and how did I come up with it... The answer is pretty simple, not as complicated as you might think... hehe. 

The term "Cintapopia" actually consists of two words: Cinta and Popia. Cinta is an Indonesian language for 'love' while Popia means... vietnamese rolls :D hahahaha. Yeap, altogether combined, it means 'love vietnamese rolls'. Pretty neat, huh? :P

Popia is one of my favorite food. It's easy to make, it's healthy and it has that fresh-summery vibe to it. It's a good entree/finger food snack when entertaining guests. As you might know, our Food Lovers Link began last Saturday. We decided to do potluck night, where everyone bring one dish each to the meeting for all of us to enjoy. Since I didn't have much time to prepare a complicated dish, I made Popia!

Making Popia is veryyyyyy easy. You don't need to boil the vegetables that goes with it because you can eat them straight away - The only 'painful' thing is boiling the rice vermicelli and trying to wrap the Popia in a perfect shape (this is only painful if you're as perfectionist as I am hehe) but if you enjoy cooking, you wouldn't mind at all :)

Anyhoo... here is the play-by-play steps of making Cintapopia...

Ingredients:

- Cucumber

- Carrots

- Snowpea Sprouts

- Coriander

- Rice Vermicelli

- Rice Paper

- Shredded Chicken 

Dipping Sauce:

- Hoisin Sauce

- Chilli Powder

- Coriander 

- Sweet Soya Sauce

- Hot water 

Method:

1. Wash all the vegetables that you're going to use! Hygiene purposes
2. Thinly cut the cucumber and carrots
3. Prepare the snowpea sprouts (or you can use alfalfas here as well) and coriander (you can skip it if you don't like it... but I personally think that it adds a certain aroma and taste to the Popia) 
4. Shred the chicken thinly. For this time I 'cheated' on this one. I don't actually cook the chicken on my own (I was too lazy!) and bought a roasted chicken from Coles instead.. hehe. You can actually replaced the chicken for prawns or pork or even beef... depends on what you love :)
5. Soak the rice vermicelli in warm water for two minutes until it soften. Drained and pour with cold water to toughen it up.
6. Soak the rice paper in warm water until it soften 
7. Place the rice paper on a clean surface (and preferable moist) 
8. Put the rice vermicelli first, then your vegetables and chicken on top of the vermicelli
9. Fold it gently *careful not to tear the rice paper!* as you do with spring rolls.
10. Put the folded ones aside and start with your next one.
11. Prepare the sauce: mix hoisin sauce, a little bit of hot water, sweet soya sauce and chilli powder together. Stir it until it mixes well.
12. Serve your Cintapopia and Bon Appetit!

Making this dish will only take you 20 minutes tops - well depends on how many you are making, that is. My Cintapopia had some leftovers the other night (I think I made too much of it) but was gone anyway since lots of them took away leftovers in containers (I took some too!). 

Food - Glorious Food!!!

Food Lovers Link Members - Tien, Adeline, Carol, Me, Felice and Liza

Food Lovers Link was fun! We're going to do another one in two weeks time (it will be on Saturday, every fortnight) and we're going to make Sticky Date Pudding in the next one! Yaaay :) A warm dessert for winter!

I've already asked Raymond as well who's a good friend of mine to contribute a class to our Food Lovers link. He's the head chef of Terrazza Restaurant and he's a great cook! He's the human version of Ratatouille :P He's going to show us how to do his delicious grilled salmon and I can't wait!

So girlss (and guys), if you are in Perth and love food... please don't hesitate to join us! We're not only going to bake, but we also going to cook dishes and eat out to review the food. Our Food Lovers website will be up and running soon - so stay tune!

 

What's in a name?