It’s my dad that made our birthdays really important. He created a family tradition to celebrate each of our birthdays (even though Mum’s and my brother’s birthday is only 3 days apart) with birthday cakes, cards, presents, family dinner outing & most importantly a family photo at the same spot in the house with each family member standing in almost the same position; the only difference is that we are a year older. He made me love birthdays! Who wouldn’t if you get to feel so special with your family and loved ones that day every year. As a result, everyone in my family remembers each other’s birthdays by heart and we still carry on this tradition even when my Dad isn’t around anymore.

This is possibility the reason why I feel sad when I don’t get a birthday cake on my birthday. It’s not because I love eating cake or I’m spoilt, it is because I always had one specially ordered by my parents every year. Not having one just breaks my Dad’s tradition.

Well, I know my Dad won’t be reading this post wherever he is now. But I still want to say Happy Birthday Dad and we miss you!

XOXO
Jessica

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mother’s out there. It’s sure not easy being a mother…

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/a-tribute-to-the-most-important-woman-in-their-lives.html

XOXO
Jessica

Hey everyone!

Please join in my effort together with plenty of divers out there to support this cause. Please try to stop/reduce consumption of Sharks Fins as we need these Apex predators in the sea to maintain an equilibrium in the Eco-system.

Official campaign launch by Ocean Geographic will be at ADEX 2012 at Marina Bay Sands Singapore. Seeya there!

XOXO
Jessica

L’Oreal Paris, Singapore engaged make-up guru Rick Yang to create beauty looks for Asian women using their wide range of products available in-store. Hence, “L’Oreal Paris Beauty Backstage” is born! I’m the face model for their edition featuring lip colours that Asian women can play around with! I experiment with make-up a lot but I never expected myself to fall in love with neon lip colour – Colour Riche #373 in Magnetic Coral! Gotta grab myself one of those lippies from L’Oreal.

Check out the video to get some insider tips on applying different lip shades using various methods:

Flashback to February 29, woke up equally early at 7:30am, went to iHop for a hearty  breakfast of fluffy double blueberry pancakes and off to squeeze in “some” afternoon shopping at City Place in West Palm (our last grasp of civilization) before boarding our liveaboard, MV Dolphin Dream, for the next 10 days. All of us went on board with hearts filled excitement and certain amount of apprehension as the idea of interacting with wild dolphins and being surrounded by large sharks (and maybe a Tiger Shark or two) was a total new territory for us. After sailing throughout the night for 8-10 hours, we are finally in the Bahamian waters. Time to start the adventure!

The first 2 days of the trip began with snorkelling with wild Atlantic Spotted Bottle-nose dolphins – something that I was really looking forward to as I simply love dolphins! Decked up only in a bikini covered by a rash-guard with snorkelling gear, I jumped into the frigid 23 degree-celsius Atlantic Ocean (I’m a tropical water girl mind you!). When you first get into the water, your mind curses you for doing so, but once you start finning really fast and hard towards the dolphins and begin playing with them, the chill is soon forgotten. The thing I found out about these dolphins is that they are highly intelligent mammals and get bored easily. If your focus is to take a photo if them and not play with them, they will just ignore you and swim off. Luckily I was out there with the motive to play with them! My first encounter with them was really exhilarating – one of my lifelong dreams is to play with dolphins in the wild – and now I’m  doing exactly that! A small pod of 6-8 of them came up to our group of 4 snorkellers (we were the first 4 to manage to swim up to them) and the free divers dove underwater and started interacting with them. At that point I only knew how interact with them from the surface by waving my bandanna at them and had no clue how to free dive. The numerous times that I tried to free-dive I just ended up chugging sea water . That first encounter was fantastic but I wanted more… Went in for another encounter with a different pod of dolphins and tried my best to free dive with them again hoping to get a close encounter with one and yet again I ended up with drinking more sea water! After the first day of dolphin encounter ended, I went up to the free divers and asked them what’s the trick to free diving to hopefully gain some tips and do it!

Day 2 with the dolphins, fresh from a good night’s sleep and determined to enhance my encounter with them. We found ourselves a pod of 3 dolphins, though numbers were small they were very interested in playing with us amidst hunting for fish hiding under the sand on the sea bed. They came really close to everyone this time and there’s this one young one (the older they get the more spots they have on their bodies like age-spots) that kept playing with me! I tried to free dive again, this time round I was successful! I twisted and turned with this young one underwater and it came up close right beside me signalling that it wanted a pet from me (apparently if they don’t want to be touched, no matter how close you are to them, you will never be able to touch them). I reached out and stroked it! As I was stroking it on its back, it gradually rolled over for a belly rub from me! I was so happy I could feel tears forming in my eyes (or maybe it was the sea water in my mask)… that few second encounter felt like time just paused and everything was in slow-motion. After it got what it wanted for me, it darted off to play with other people (short attention span I must say). Shortly, it came back to look for me again! Tossing and turning with it underwater and I reached out to touch it again and it let me – I have made a friend! How do dolphins feel like? One word – rubbery. That encounter made my day and I can tick off another item in my bucket list.

After those 2 days of swimming with the dolphins, it was a day of choppy waters and bad weather so we were stuck in the boat with no diving nor snorkelling. Captain Scott of Dolphin Dream decided to play a video he made a few years back on numerous years encounters he filmed on the dolphins. Through that video, we learnt from a first hand encounter (much better than those shown on Animal Planet) how these dolphins recognize people and actively go up to him to play just like puppy dogs! There’s a number of these dolphins that Captain Scott named and knew them as friends, in the hand-held video, you can see them going up to him for long belly rubs, pet on the head and sometimes a naughty nudge or two. Usually camera shy, they actually played and made “funny faces” at his camera! They would pick up the bandanna that Captain Scott passes on to them and they will play “pass the bandanna” from one dolphin to another from dorsal fin to tail fin to the side flipper and back to a human again! They got so comfortable with Captain Scott that they even brought up their babies to play with him and he would know their whole family tree (although the father of the child can never be determined). He even managed to record dolphin foreplay & sex (rated RA)! He related that the dolphins that play with us are usually the full grey young ones (that explains my encounter) and the older ones will just sit back and watch on the rest of the pod to make sure they are safe. Over the years, he watches the dolphins grow up, have their own children and they will bring their children back to him to play. They are just like his children and grandchildren. Captain Scott stopped interacting with his dolphin friends a couple of years back when he became the only captain for the boat and thus couldn’t go into the water anymore. I can see in his eyes how he misses his interaction with them.

2 days of dolphin encounter wasn’t enough for me but we had to move on to the next thing of the itinerary – the Tiger Shark and my photo shoot with the sharks for the upcoming “Sharks are Friends” campaign. I had to say goodbye to my newly made dolphin friend and wonder whether it will remember my encounter with him/her just as I do… (tears well up in my eyes again but this time its sad tears)

Couldn’t celebrate Mika’s birthday on the day itself because of work schedule so we did a belated one with close family & brought her to Kallang Park for a nice stroll. Mika was treated with steamed broccoli mixed with stewed pork for dinner & birthday cake for dessert! She was one happy pooch that night…

I simply love Mika’s face when we have the birthday cake in front of her as if she knows it’s her special day & she can eat it! It’s different when we have her with human birthday celebrations! Well, another year has passed and she’s 4 human years now. No longer a puppy but still a puppy in my eyes!

Love u my little Mika!

XOXO
Jessica

P.S. this is the dog cake recipe which Mika didn’t like:

Banana Peanut Dog Birthday Party Cake
2/3 cup ripe mashed bananas
1/2 cup softened safflower margarine
3 large eggs
3/4 cup Water
2 cups unbleached white flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped peanuts
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C)
In mixing bowl, beat together mashed banana and butter until creamy. Add eggs and water. Beat well. Stir in dry ingredients. Beat until smooth. Add nuts. Spoon batter evenly into oiled and floured bundt pan. Bake for about 35 minutes. Cool on wire rack 5 minutes, remove from pan, replace on rack and cool.

Joanne put up a post on our scenes together in Pillow Talk. You can view it from here!

再见单人床 Pillow Talk

XOXO
Jessica

Every year I try to find some time to bake some goodies for my family. So this year I decided to make Peanut Cookies! One of my all time favorites especially those that just melts in your mouth… Mmmm…

It’s really simple to make it, just pretty tedious especially when I’m mixing, kneading, baking, washing & packing them up all by myself! It’s good to have an extra pair of hands if you wanna DIY like I do.

Here’s what you need:

200g finely (or coarsely if u like more crunch) ground peanuts
200g plain flour
100g icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
Sunflower oil (or any low fragrance oil)

Egg wash – 1 egg yolk with a teaspoon of water to dilute.

Just remember that the proportions in this recipe is 2:2:1 peanuts:flour:icing sugar.

1. On low heat, dry fry the peanuts till its golden brown & nicely roasted.

2. In a big mixing bowl, mix in the peanuts, flour, icing sugar, baking powder & salt till well mixed with a spoon.

3. Make a whole in the centre of the dry mixture, pour in a good potion of oil. Spoon the mixture and mix it well. Add in oil till the mixture can no longer visually see flour and look like wet sand. (refer to photo)

4. Use a baking measuring teaspoon to spoon spheres onto a non stick baking sheet. Brush egg wash over the cookies. Bake at 180 degree Celsius for 20 minutes.

That’s basically it!!! If you like your cookies to be a bit more crunchy and less melt in your mouth, add more oil until its more paste-like.

Enjoy this simple yet delicious recipe this CNY!

In the meantime, here’s me wishing everyone good health, lotsa wealth & happiness in the Year of the Dragon!

XOXO
Jessica

These are some of the behind the scenes photos taken over the 2 long days of filming the TV commercial!

Look at how we shot “riding” the Vespa along Shenton Way! And how we had to “stuff” my “baby” into my clothes!

XOXO
Jessica

A very happy 2012 to you!

My year started off nicely with a brand new TVC kick starting it!

You can check it out from the YouTube video kindly uploaded by Joyce! Thank you dear…

Rainforest TVC

XOXO
Jessica