Life in Del Rio

I know it seems like all I ever do here is cooking. That is true to a certain extent - sometimes to cook something more elaborate, I can take up to half an afternoon eg. I made Nasi Lemak (first attempt) for four of us last Saturday and it took me like 5 hours - preparing the marinate, marinating the chicken, preparing the ingredients and making the sambal belacan (which failed so I used the commerical bottle of prepared belacan in the end), making the ikan bilis and peanuts, frying the egg omelette and cooking the coconut rice. But other than cooking, I have been keeping myself pretty occupied with other things I enjoy doing as well.

People here drive everywhere they go, because most of them can drive and have their own car. Well, both doesn't apply to me (since Ah C drives the car to work) so I walk to wherever I need on base, which are mainly the commissary (minimart) and fitness center. They are really not that far, about the distance from my home to the train station back in Singapore.

The walk home from the fitness center. Its a leisurely walk but becomes not so enjoyable when the weather turns cranky to 9 degrees and u have too cold a breeze blowing in your face.

This is my home from outside! To the left is the car pouch (or they call it garage here).


Last week we made a trip to Austin and went shopping at the Ikea. We bought a couple of things to "decorate" (or rather, just to make it less empty) our home a bit.

Ah C had some of his F16s photos pasted on the wall and I decided to beautify them a little with these colourful frames we got. Did you note the colour matching? It was unintentional because we didn't really know what pictures we wanted to put in the frames when we bought them. I am glad the frames served their purpose :)

We also bought this floor lamp for $20 (bulbs another $8) to give our living room a softer feel..although the effect it has on the camera doesn't seem so!

We go bowling about once every 1-2 weeks here. I really like the bowling facilities here cos they are very well-maintained. Sunday is our favourite day to bowl cos its family day and a game costs only a dollar each!

Fri and Sat nights are great for bowling too because there is cosmic bowling - glow-in-the-dark bowling with a dance club atmosphere with some wacky music - very fun too! Just half an hour drive from the air base is the huge and scenic Amistad Lake where we can go fishing, windsurfing and wakeboarding etc. We have been there once for a picnic but I would really want to go fishing or wakeboarding one day. But its just too cold for it now.


Other than myself time n couple time, I have been hanging out with some of the other spouses here too, and more frequently with those whose husbands are in the same class at Ah C. We get together for some fun activities once in a while. Among these, we had crafts night whereby we each were supposed to bring our own project to work on. I didn't bring any craft because the only "craft" I know is cooking and baking, so I brought a tray of cupcakes :| But these girls are so amazing.. I realised that they do alot of DIY furnishings, decorations and ornaments for their homes. That really inspired me and make me want to do up my house when its ready in early 2014! Just last week, as the guys were having a night week, we gathered at one of the girl's houses to make pizza. So one of the girls prepared the pizza dough and each of us just brought our favourite pizza topping. It was fun just talking about lives and learning about each other!

The left one is mine.. not very pretty but delicious!
I would really like to talk more about each of the amazing ladies who I meet here but I guess I will save it for another post. With pictures too i hope :)