Two nights back, our church was blessed to have missionary singers all the way from Korea come visit us. Say, it’s not everyday this chuch in this little town gets overseas visitors. The people who came were the IBIG (I Believe In God) Band and Pastor Daniel Kim. They were pretty good… especially since they didn’t really speak English that well. They are professional musicians who are under CBS in Korea.

Mr Paul introducing the band

Ki Myeong playing the sax... doesn't he look abit like Bruce Lee? :P

IBIG Band... the lady second from the left has a beautiful vocal!

After some praise and worship, Pastor Daniel shared a message with us. He also shared his story with us… he comes from a pretty interesting background. He’s lived in Korea, Japan, US and now he’s in China, in the fields ‘harvesting’. First thing Emily told me was, “This guy works out”. Hahaha… yeah, you should see his muscles… whoa… scary. BIG.

Pastor Daniel sharing the Word

Later on towards the end, I kena tarik up on the stage to sing together by some aunty. Since I kena tarik…. I tarik Emily along as well… Wakakakaka! What a difference it was from the usual Sunday worship… For the first time, I saw the church packed… and it was so much more lively! Probably coz it was a combined church event and there were alot more youth around to jump about. I enjoyed it.

Anyway, before the whole thing even began, Dad and I were at the back of the church checking out their cds. Dad got 3 of their English compilations. Aunty Mei Ling was so cute… keep telling me which one to buy and which one of them was the most handsome! Buy his cd and then later I get to talk to him while asking him to autograph it. Wahahahahahahaha! So, in the end, I got Sang Kyu’s cd. I got some pics with him and some of the other IBIG Band members but Daniel (Emily’s bf) is still ‘developing’ them. Daniel refers to him as ‘your Korean guy’… Strangely, I don’t remember going all goo ga over him oso… Lol. So, those photos, update later lah.

L to R: Maxwell, Annabel, Sir Nathaniel, Woody, Lady Hillary. (Photo credit: wwarby, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/)

I was feeling a little nostalgic last night and started thinking about my family of piggy banks from yesteryear. I remember I got them when I was in England many many years back. I think I was about 3 to 5 years old then. Strangely etched in my memory was this name “Nathan Natwest”. My pigs, as I recall actually have given names. I was curious to find out their names. So,I started googling the term “Natwest piggy banks” and that led me to a pleasant surprise. (… the wonders of Google! :P) My childhood piggy banks have become collectors items!

From 1983 to 1988, this family of 5 pigs were given out by the National Westminster Bank (Natwest), a commercial bank in the United Kingdom to encourage young savers. The idea was to give the kids a different piggy bank reflective of the amount of money saved. The collection began with Baby Woody Westminster for children who opened the account with a minimum of £3 - with £1 going towards the cost of Woody. All the rest of the collection were given away free. After six months, if the account contained at least £25 they received Annabel Westminster, and then after one year, the account needed to have grown to at least £50 to qualify for Maxwell Westminster. At eighteen months if the account contained £75 the children were rewarded with Lady Hillary Westminster. Finally after two years, if the account had an investment of at least £100, Sir Nathaniel Westminster was given to those who had managed to stay the course. 10 years later in 1998, Cousin Wesley, the sixth member of the family was introduced to promote a NatWest 5-year personal savings bond for children which required an investment of £1000.

The first batch of piggy banks made for NatWest were produced by a company called Sunshine Ceramics. They were soon overwhelmed by the demand for the banks, and production was shortly thereafter taken over by another company, Wade Ceramics Ltd. The family of 5 are worth up to £200 in good condition.

• Woody in his white nappy and either a silver or grey safety pin is worth about £20.
• Annabel in her green gym slip and white school blouse carrying behind her a blue duffle bag has a price of around £30.
• Maxwell is wearing a red and white tie and blue dungaree trousers. For him the value is £45.
• Lady Hilary in her elegant light blue blouse complete with dark blue bow, navy skirt and grey handbag is £35.
• Then lastly Sir Nat in his jet black suit, with red bow tie and rose is worth a staggering £75.
• Only 5000 Cousin Wesleys, wearing a green jacket, blue trousers, and a blue cap with one ear sticking through, were produced and therefore can fetch a price of £150 to £200 on its own.

Here’s the TV advertisement promoting the piggy banks.

Because of the demand and the value of these piggy banks, fakes and forgeries abound on the open market.

• Firstly and most obvious, check the colours used on the pig itself.
• Now check the pigs base as all genuine Wade pigs have a “Wade England” stamp clearly marked on the base.
• Thirdly, the base of all the pigs are pink except for Woody’s base which is white.
• The bung of the piggy bank should bear the Natwest logo and name and be a good tight fit, as fakes tend to have a larger hole so that the bungs do not stay put.

More info about the piggy banks here.

Mumzie’s Birthday, Father’s Day and their anniversary………

Whoa… that’s alot of things to celebrate in just one day.

Actually, I just came home from a mini reunion with my secondary school classmates and a BBQ at Emily’s place. Tanya came back for the weekend, so Suree, Su-Yen and I met up with her at Noodle Station, Tesco to do a little catching up.  We had a hilarious time… especially talking about ‘Fesbok’ (Facebook). Lol. We’ve known each other for a really really long time. Since primary school days… and yes, we still can talk about all kinds of random things… :p

Next stop was at Emily’s house for a little BBQ gathering. Friends who were back in A/S were mostly there - Lydia, Jui Jien, Su-Jian, Su-Yen, Sze Wei, Sze Yao… and of course not forgetting the hosts Emily, Daniel and Evelyn. We had a simple BBQ… the usual chicken… a whole fish… and bananas. Not just any banana… BBQed bananas with thundering brown sugar-brandy syrup. Whoa… We had a nice time chatting and all… not to mention feeding the mosquitoes as well.

By the time I got home, it was probably about midnight already. Since I had got the ingredients for chocolate cake, I decided to experiment a little on how to make chocolate lava cupcakes… and at the same time surprise Mumzie and Dad the next morning. So there I went baking at 2 am in the morning.

I didn’t really follow a proper recipe… just got a basic chocolate cake recipe and improvised it a little by adding kahlua, more chocolate bits and a huge chunk in the center… and some chocolate ganache for topping. Whoa.. the cupcakes that came out were really rich! Soft soft with gooey chocolate oozing out! Definitely a MUST KEEP recipe. Check it out…

my molten lava chocolate kahlua cupcakes.... :D

Happy birthday, Mumzie! Happy Father’s Day, Daddy! Happy Anniversary! phew… I wanna konk out liao.

In the wee hours of the morning, I am surfing the stupid internet…. Shucks… Deborah… get a life! … but oh well, some good did come out of it… I found a super cool Wordpress plugin! It’s called Picasna, FYI. Check out my cool Picasa Web album! This album has pictures from my latest shutterbugging spree.

So, what’s the catch? I need PHP 5… something I don’t have… sucks… I’m might consider changing my hosting service soon. Anyway, there is a way around that… but it’s a tad more troublesome. I have to generate codes for the albums manually using this widget. So… in actual fact, I’m not really making use of the Wordpress plugin which automatically creates the flash album by just inserting the link to the album. Sigh…. But… this is good news for non-Wordpress bloggers… This means you can use it too! Oh… and did I mention the widget works with Flickr too? Cool yes?

I experimented with the kimchi I bought recently from Isetan by frying some kimchi fried rice.. also known as bokumbap. I’ve have watched so many korena dramas, where they just fry this stuff if they have to whip up a quick meal… What I liked most about it is that they eat it straight from the frying pan! Hahaha… I wanna do that too! Anyway… I just did it my way… just threw in some garlic, onions, egg, beef and prawns.. added some oil and soya sauce… and I had it done in a jiffy. I’ve infused the whole house with the kimchi smell and Dad says it stinks like smelly toufu! Hehehehe…

Two days back, I learnt how to make tiramisu from Aunty Chua, my cooking shifu… I never knew it was so easy!!!!!! Alamak!! Haha…. It tastes nice… though I could tweak the recipe a little the next time to suit my taste better. I think I should have dipped the ladyfingers in the coffee/kahlua longer… it didn’t soak through the biscuit too well… also, I think it needs more cream, less cheese, a wee bit less gelatine (I kinda like my tiramisu mushy and not so solid though it makes really nice clean cuts now…), and more kahlua! Shall definitely try this one again. Soon… soon… once I get over the fact that I might be left with half of the entire tiramisu to finish this round.