Weekend Bits

So judging from the pictures, I think Darren and I definietly overate and outdid ourselves this weekend. SO much home cooking. We usually just eat out during the weekends since I cook every weeknight. But this week I have no idea what went into us. Maybe it was me trying to save ourselves some money. Anyway, we ended up cooking and cooking and experimenting so much.

For starters, we did make 鱼生. If you're wondering, it was indeed 100% made from scratch. Nothing from those cheater box sets! It turned out quite good actually. But something's still missing. Got to go figure it out. We also made lots of spaghetti. We've been watching too much of this and pasta is all we think about after that. We also made beer battered fish and chips. Darren had the most chips since I'm not a chips eater. I had more peas instead. Apart from the carbo overload, we made Bak Kwa/肉干 too. Again, 100% homemade. I'm not usually a fan. I do eat it but only once in a while. Darren on the other hand LOVES it. He had such a craving for it this Chinese New Year, so we decided to make it since the one place here in Melbourne that sells it, makes really lousy ones. I thought we were going to fail this recipe horribly, but it turned out to be way too good to be true! I actually love it and am addicted to it now. Oops!

Well cooking aside, we went to the markets at Springvale and South Melbourne. Laughed a lot over silly things and hung out with our friend, Grace. We also popped into Safari living, Loom rugs and Fenton and fenton. All of which sold so many beautiful things I wanted to bring home. But their price tags just didn't agree with whatever's left in my wallet. I saw this beautiful rug at Loom. My goodness. SO perfect, but $10,000. Yes, that's 4 zeros there.

Oh and did I mention, we finally got a Wooden Ecology fruit/salad bowl from a homewares shop in Elsternwick. They had a massive sale off a lot of their cookingware. We left with the fruit bowl ( Been on the hunt for one for the longest of time ), a table mat and a wonderful new bamboo chopping board. We've been using our tiny A4 sized one for far too long. The new one's 3 times the size! I can finally cut my roasts without meat landing everywhere. Food, pretty shops and chopping boards aside, I also bought the latest issue of Vogue and InsideOut.I don't usually buy Vogue. But this issue's way too colourful to pass. So far it's been pages and pages of inspiration after inspiration. If you ask me, $8 for inspiration isn't a bad thing after all.

So it seems I've had a wonderful weekend and I did. Until I found out from a friend about a shop in Singapore's Haji Lane, stealing my artwork. Argh! From a picture she sent, they stole this drawing of mine in full and reprinted it onto tops. My first thought was 'Seriously?! Who wears that? Can't they do it justice by printing on tote bags or something.. Argh! And what the heck! Stealing'! Not the first time this has happened. Another shop in Thailand's Chatuchak stole a whole bunch of my drawings recently. And printed them onto tops too. I cannot for the life of me understand why people do that. Seriously, make your own artwork and stop stealing! Stealing from small home-based artists is just wrong. We as artists struggle and work 24/7 to make our practice sustainable. And here you go just ripping off our works and reselling them to earn yourselves undeserved big bucks. Argh.

I don't know the shop's name yet, But Haji lane is a small lane and the shops there are quite well-known. Most of them at least. Their clothing prices are usually quite expensive so to think some owner out there's earning so much from stealing is just so horrible. I've asked my sister to look into it and go hunt the shop down. If I was in Singapore, I'd go straight there and demand an apology and ask them to remove it all. Anyway, if you see it or any of my works being sold elsewhere without credit, please let me know. Thank you very much! I will keep you all posted with regards to this matter.

PS: Sorry to end off on such a sour note. But well, I had a good weekend nevertheless! 

I will not let those stupid stealers ruin my day.