Lucky for us, the rain stopped this morning but boy it was thundering pretty hard and the lightning was a bit scary. It was hard to fall asleep at first but it started to die down around midnight.

So today I had the first day of staff orientation. The HR dept had speakers come in to talk about the hospital’s mission statement, our benefits, the CEO’s message, etc etc. We had two “tea breaks” for snacks and coffee or tea. It was pretty nice to break up the monotony of all the speakers. I found out that NUH is only 22 years old, a pretty young hospital. But they’ve been the FIRST in Singapore in many areas like the FIRST to receive JCI accredidation, the FIRST bone marrow transplant, the FIRST liver transplant, and many more.

In the afternoon we did the “NUH Amazing Race”. In a group of 6 persons, we went from floor to floor, building to building looking for all the answers to the clues. We even had to take pictures. Unfortunately we did not win but I learned more about the layout of the hospital and where certain things are.

When I got home I decided to try making some brownies in our new tabletop convection oven. One of the partners is leaving this week to return to France so there was a going away BBQ planned tonight. So I used that as my excuse to make the brownies so that we wouldn’t be eating the whole batch by ourselves.

It’s not so easy to keep flour and sugar here so for now I’ll probably be using mixes. So today’s brownies used Betty Crocker Fudge Brownie Mix and I added 1 cup of chocolate chips and 1 bag full of cashew nuts. I used 3 eggs instead of 2 to make it more cake-like. The cashew nuts are not a normal nut to add to brownies but that’s what Ron bought me so I thought I’d just try it.

Surprisingly they turned out pretty well and the saltiness of the cashews tasted pretty good with the sweetness of the brownies. I brought 3/4 of the batch down to the BBQ and saved 1/4 for us.

I’m excited to start baking some more things like muffins and other cakes… I’ll keep you posted! =D