The Amateur Writer

The day is finally here when I decided to pay a visit to Anna's place. The whole point of the visit is to watch a Bollywood film together.

Ever since I came here, I watched a LOT of Bollywood films and believe it or not, it is one of the ways I used to overcome homesickness. So far, I've watched Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham and Kar Ho Naa Ho. Anna never watched an actual classic bollywood film before so I decided to let her watch the all time classic:

We were both all snuggled up on the couch, with blankets, with my laptop on and we sang, cried, laughed,etc while watching the movie. It was great fun really. :)

One of the reasons why we hung out was to introduce our own local food to each other and I made Nasi Pattaya for her and Ben. And I felt really motherly by packing these food into Tupperwares and wrapped it nicely. Sort of.


After cooking and saving the movie onto my laptop, I got ready and tried on my new leopard print scarf I got from Supre. Anna and her bf, Ben were really nice to offer to pick up from my house and brought me over to their place. (Okay, the syntax of that sentence is crazy but I'm tired and I dont care =_=) I was a bit nervous of meeting Ben because I was afraid that he would judge me or something (paranoia, sorry) but Anna revealed that he was a bit nervous to meet me too. But it turned to be awesome so it's all good now. I managed to be my bubbly self so that's a good sign. He was nice enough to leave us girls to watch bollywood while he went out right after dinner to work on his research paper. Besides, I doubt a guy would want to watch a Bollywood film anyway.

One of the reasons why I hit it off with Anna (and Ben too) so well is because we are both culture and language buffs. Like I'm so happy that I get to meet people who are crazy about the worlds' languages just like me. We talked about accents and culture and I learned a few things about NZ English.

I call it cotton candy but people here call it candy floss.

You can really see the difference between my pronunciation with ben's name. For example, I'll say /ben/ while Anna will say /bin/. Or I'll say /pen/ while she'll say /pin/.

You know how we always say, "Hey you've got a quite a flashy car." but to people here, there's no such thing as "flashy" but it's "flash" here. i.e: "You've got quite a flash car." Personally I find it really weird but that's the best bit I guess.

Being linguistics buffs that we are, Anna's been analyzing my English accent and she said I've started to change some of my pronunciations to NZ English now. (THE HORROR! LOL) You guys prolly won't hear me say it if we skype or talk to each other but I guess it comes out if I talk to the locals. For example, the word /here/ and sometimes, I do actually pronounce /pen/ as /pin/. (o_O)

Anyways, back to the main story; after finishing the nasi pattaya, Anna whipped out the pavlova she "made". It is a NZ dessert that is basically made of meringue and whipped cream. And in a traditional NZ manner, they'll put kiwi fruits as the toppings. Basically la right, you're eating frosted sugar. It tasted like sugar. In an addictive kind of way but seriously, it's like eating sugar.

Anna said that pavlovas sometime substitute your average birthday cake in New Zealand. But it's a major pain to make though.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>V PAVLOVA



Enjoying desserts. :)


*Seriously that's all sugar, honey! I needed like two glasses of water to drain out the sweetness in my mouth. So good though.

I was very touched that Anna sent me a message of FB saying that she's been frantically cleaning her flat just because I'm coming over. (Awww!) I do admit, it's clean and I can totally see the reason why she fell in love with it. AMAZING FLAT! I was a bit surprised when she said, feel free to snoop around and open any cupboards. But my Mama told me to always mind my manners so I didn't lah. Anna was having none of it though because she basically dragged me off to tour the whole flat. An awesome flat really.

Next stop, Asian Night with my other favorite couple, Jie Ning and Tim! This time, to cook nasi minyak and watch Sepet. There's a plan in the works where Anna is going to come over to my place pulak and we're going to do a Bollywood Night pt. 2 so we'll see how it goes!

PS: I know what you're thinking.

Reader: Gee Yang, why do you always hang out with couples?

Me: No answer. It's sad, I know. :( And no, I'm not a third wheeler! Dorang ajak I hang out ok!