life is good. I'm not dead. Yet.

It's been exactly one and a half month since my last post.

I am officially a lousy and lazy blogger.

Life has been good those days my presence was missed. (yeah right!)

The weather in Glasgow has turned to be a gigantic natural freezer, in which putting anything in the COLD air will turn meat (ie. our fingers and toes and anything else exposed) into frozen meat, which is what you would expect when you put meat into YOUR freezer at home.

We're just starting our first winter, and so far the coldest we had was -3 degrees. On average the temperature here ranges from 3-8 degrees, for now. It was said that there would be snow on thursday (tomorrow!) so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But Siobhan (my workshop buddy) said it had to get colder than this for snow to happen, so that may not be now. But snow in Glasgow is a relatively mild event for those who have pictures in their mind of fluffy white thick snow on the ground, so typical of movies. Apparently the average winter in Glasgow sees only a light dusting of snow on the ground, and the stuff doesn't stay around for long.

These are actually pictures of my campus taken in the autumn. I don't have any winter ones yet because there isn't any snow that will give the winter-ish look and the trees are not quite botak yet. But the weather is winter all right!

So, moving on to what I've been up to.

November was a busy month. We had our research introduction, pharm care presentation, as well as a Drug delivery test to fill our time. But those are boring stuff, I shall not tell you more.

Then we chipped in for Jane's birthday (a grand event, as you would expect) by making cupcakes!

100% handmade, mind you! We spent a whole afternoon labouring away at the intricate designs and copying (and failing, somewhat) the cupcake designs we found online. Alas there is only so much a bunch of cupcake beginners can do, huh.

The three in the middle are MY handiwork! Unfortunately one was proclaimed 'jiang chou de??' and another was said to be pimples on a mountain or something like that. Le sigh.

The colourful toppings were moulded from an icing mixed with food colourings. It was like playing with Playdoh, like the olden days of yonder. Though I never really was a fan of playdoh. But it was a great afternoon of moulding and shaping, and girly chit-chatting. It was a lot of fun, to say the least. In the end everyone was so proud and protective of THEIR cupcakes that it became sort of a competition to see which cupcake would become the birthday girl's favourite. (and this is where mine was said to be 'jiang chou de', sigh....=PPPP )

Just kidding, little J. You know I love you. =)

And then, the parents came!!!

They dropped by Glasgow for 3 days. Unfortunately their visit coincided with the worst weather ever, with angry torrents of pelting rain and gales of wind that will blow you off your feet if your body weight is under 40kg. (another reason to eat more, eh?)

the 2 ladies on the front left are headmistresses. the couple on the front right are my parents. hahaha.

Brought them to Lauders for a taste of the local food and beer, and they loved it! But they're not so crazy about the weather though.

Oh, and once they left Glasgow for Paris, the weather here turned all sunny and happy again. Talk about bad timing!

Then.....

Before sending the besties off for their trip, we celebrated winter solstice early this year!

Yes, that's right! Tang yuan in angmoh-land!!

We made the paste from mixing rice flour with hot water, kneaded and adding more flour until it turned the correct consistency. And then we quarreled on MAJOR stuff like whether or not to get red food colouring for the rice balls and whether to make them big (normal sized, actually) or small (like the 'pearls' in 珍珠奶茶.)

(We compromised in the end: first batch to boil = large balls, second batch = small ones. Both were equally delicious.)

And we lived happily ever after. The end.