Happy New Year!

I took a two weeks' vacation back to Spore during CNY and left my blog v much deserted during this time. There was just too many things to do in Spore: shopping, catching up with my family (whom I m really close to) and relatives, visiting friends and tidying up my new flat in Redhill. Of course, I was spoilt for choice when it came to the variety of new year goodies available at my parents' place. Knowing that I loved pineapple tarts, they bought some really yummy ones for me. But the ones that I liked most were those baked by my uncle (my dad's friend) who doted on us since young. He has not baked the tarts for several years because he's looking after his grandchildren so I was really happy when he took up the baking pins again. Of course, the rate of the diminishing tarts was at tangent speed, due to the combined efforts of me and my brother. Yum!

I came back to Hanoi with my husband last Sunday. We were quite surprised by the weather because instead of the chilling cold, it was quite warm at 26 degrees. This was really far from winter. But in the last two days, the weather turned cool again. It's v much like spring now, much to my dismay. Reason being spring in Hanoi is wet and breezy. You get spurts of short rain followed by strong winds and the cycle continues. So it has an overall gloomy feel and makes going out a little inconvenient.

This is the picture that I took from my study room this morning. The tree was swaying about from the strong winds but I guess it is not that clear here. :) But there is not as much sunshine as one would expect in the morning of spring. Amazingly, winter was kind of brighter and cheerier. Will be checking out an art gallery tomorrow with a friend as we are interested in taking lacquer painting classes. It's quite a famous art in Hanoi where you do painting on pieces of bamboo. Maybe I can detect the artistic streak in me when doing the painting. Heh.. well who knows rite?