Panda Trails...

Day 2: How do I survive a month?

2011-02-16T15:57:00.002+08:00

Day two of my working trip in CA, and I'm already ready to pack up and go home. Yes, I am that sian.

Last night (or rather this morning) I managed to fall asleep near 5am and almost overslept and would be late for work if not for ah mi giving me a morning call all the way from Singapore. Hah! I got to office in time and needless to say, I was exhausted again from the lack of sleep. By my count, I think I only slept for 7 hours in 48 hours. :S

Work is hectic and stressful, but at least it offers me a quick passage of time. 12 hours sure pass rather quickly at work today. I only hope that it will be the case for the rest of my stay here.

Enough of my ranting, let's hope that I will be able to sleep tonight (if not, you will see a Day 2: Part 2 entry later)

Sleepless in California

2011-02-15T18:54:00.002+08:00

It's 3 in the morning and I am wide awake on my bed watching infomercials on the TV. It's not that I am not tired, especially since I have just completed a 19 hour flight and gone in for work on the same day after landing. I think my system still thinks that its 7pm in the morning bah.

It's been a very long time since my last working trip, and yes, it is as sucky as I had expected it (so far in the past 12 hours). I had never liked business trips, especially when it is alone. I really don't know how my other friends are able to do it frequently, but then again, it's work. Most of the time, we don't have a choice. I guess I can count myself lucky to be able to "siam" travelling for the past 3 years + since mid of 2007.

Just gave ah mi and my parents a call on Google voice just now. Thank God for IP telephony, and instant messaging. I really don't know I can survive without it now.

Sigh, I am so going to suffer tomorrow at work. I think it is time for my caffeine infused days again for the next month. Am just going to stop here, as really don't have anything to write about. Like what Ted's mom said, nothing good happens after 2am. :P

Good morning and good night to you all.

It's Been More Than 6 Months!

2010-11-14T00:36:00.000+08:00

Whoa! It's been more than 6 months since we updated this blog. I don't think Pete will update this blog ever again, the blog that he started himself. Hmmm...

I guess I have not met some friends for more than 6 months too, and one of them has reminded me a few times to update this blog. I guess it's how people stay up to date with each other's life when we are too busy to meet as often (if you are not already doing it on Facebook).

So much has happened in these 6 months, nothing very eventful, but still there were a few items that I am glad I can strike off my to-do list:

1. Health Matters

I have always been suffering from chronic constipation, bloatedness, sensitive stomach for as long as I can remember. In the past year, I have been advised to just go for a scope of my intestines and stomach just to make sure it is nothing serious, but maybe just a case of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). I proscrastinated and really dreaded it as the thought of having a tube stuck up and down my body really freaked me out. To summarise, dread as I did, I went for both a colonscopy and an endoscopy of the stomach at the same time in August, and I am so glad that it's over! The results were normal (phew!), and I just need to visit the doctor at TTSH periodically for follow up once in a few months. He has put me on probiotics (healthy bacteria) to help me with my IBS.

I also got the removal of my remaining 2 wisdom teeth out of the way last month. There was the usual whining and moping around the house due to the discomfort after the surgery (the side effects of the general anaesthesia lasted for 2 weeks as I suffered from nausea for that long), but I am really glad that I have gotten it out of the way...like forever! Check out the teeth:

Huge eh...?

2. Haircut

Was deciding between cutting or perming my long hair, and decided to just snip some of it off last month. Was a bit tired of my long hair, it seemed to drag me down sometimes.

Before

After... with my new phone. hehe

3. Pete's Birthday

We celebrated Pete's 30th birthday last week. It was a surprise celebration. Pete thought our friends were coming over to our place for a board games evening later in the day. I managed to get him out of the house and come back in time for our friends to get the cake ready, and when he unlocked the door and stepped in, he got a surprise :-)

Birthday cake with Pete's favourite Android

Happy Birthday, Pete!

On Pete's actual birthday, we made use of our 1-for-1 coupon, and celebrated his birthday at Lawry's The Prime Rib. The service was good, food was not bad (not really a beef lover), and we received door gifts, and also had a picture taken by the staff specially for his birthday. 2 of the waitresses brought us a small cake, and sang Pete a birthday song as well ;-)

Our meaty dinner

Blowing out the candle on the cake courtesy of the restaurant

Photo taken by the staff, and later put into a souvenir frame for us

With Pete's birthday in November, we are already approaching the end of the year. I foresee busier working days, and new challenges for Pete on his job at a new company for the new year ahead. However, before that, we will start preparing for the coming holiday season. We will be putting up our X'mas tree tomorrow, and hopefully I get started on my X'mas shopping list soon. I love shopping for X'mas presents!

And with that...good night, and hopefully, we won't surface only half a year later ;-)

Tea Time

2010-04-25T15:51:00.009+08:00

I love my tea, and to sip it in a pretty cafe would be even more ideal. I am half a closet tai tai, because the other half of me just love pretty things :-P

Pete and I have been cooping up in the house quite a bit. Therefore, for the past 2 Saturdays, we have decided to drag our couch potato selves out of the house. We visited 2 places for tea, and managed to take the new Circle Line as well. Kudos to the couch potatoes!

Last Saturday, we made our way to Ann Siang Hill to Kki, whose cakes have received much praise from others. Kki is a small, cosy place to have your cake. Half of the shop is occupied by The Little Drom Store, which sells interesting knick knacks, some of which are items that you last saw when you were in primary school:

We tried the Mont Blanc - A chestnut flavoured cake. Quite a light cake, worth a try

With the knick knacks in the background

Yesterday, we tried out the new Circle Line, and took a train to Esplanade. We had a late tea at The Cookie Museum. I ordered the Pomegranate Ruby tea, which was fragrant and soothing at the same time. Pete and I shared a cookie platter. Although the cookies were nice and soft, we figured we will not be making our way there soon, or rather not eat-in anyway. The prices were rather exorbitant. I would not mind getting the cookies by the tin though.

Till the next update, ciao! Hope it will not be long. Please excuse our lazy selves ;-)

Happy Birthday!

2010-04-25T14:58:00.012+08:00

Another birthday has come and gone by in a flash! This year, Pete and I took a day off on my birthday to have a simple celebration:

A surprise cake from Pete at midnight

My regretful choice during the birthday lunch at Oomphatico's

I would much preferred to have Pete's chicken

At Oomphatico's

To die for cheesecake for tea at Hilton Hotel

The day ended with a dessert platter for 2 at Prive Restaurant

At Keppel Bay after dessert

Thanks, Pete for the day :-)

I would like to thank my lovely friends too, and Pete of course, for planning a birthday surprise the weekend after my birthday. It was unexpected ;-)

Surfaced At Last

2010-04-25T14:20:00.002+08:00

Yes, we are surfacing again, or at least I have surfaced, as Pete refuses to do his part in updating, being his lazy self as usual :-P

Hello to a few of you who have been asking about our lack of updates. I will try to see if we can catch up from our last entry, which was in January :-O Then again, our lives are kinda mundane, being the boring people that we are. So, read on if you are interested in our mundane updates!

I guess the biggest event since January was our trip to the States. As most of the pictures have been uploaded onto Facebook, I will just post some here :-)

We spent 2 weeks in the States with our friends. Much as we enjoyed taking a break, and travelling, the trip was also more enjoyable because of the great travelling companions :-)

San Francisco

Our first stop was San Francisco. I think SF is a charming place with its pretty Victorian houses on challenging slopes.

A group picture with the Golden Gate Bridge

Los Angeles

The City of Angels was a little on the forgettable side for Pete and me. The home of Hollywood was not as vibrant as we thought it would be. I guess it is not fair to write it off completely as well, as we did not have the opportunity to visit every corner of the city. On the whole, it felt too commercialised. However, we enjoyed the stay in our apartment in LA. With our own kitchen, the guys whipped up a few meals, which we had with lots of laughter.

With Mickey at Disneyland

Las Vegas

Truly, the city that never sleeps. Though we are not fans of casinos, we rather enjoyed the bright lights of the city, and the interesting themes of the hotels. It was a pity that we did not have enough time, as we would have loved to visit each of the hotels. We travelled a long way to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, but that was a disappointment as the clouds hung low on the day we visited, and we were not able to see the vast expanse of the Canyon.

Outlet shopping in the States, an unforgettable part of the trip ;-)

Happy Honeymoon!

Catching Up

2010-01-21T18:41:00.024+08:00

Woah...It's been some time since we came in here. December was a busy month, and it looks like January will be too, as we prepare for our U.S. trip next month. What have we been up to from December.....hmmm...

Baking
Yup, we tried our hands at baking shortbread cookies for our friends and family for X'mas. Although they did not taste as rich as Walkers shortbread, at least they tasted like Danish butter cookies ;-)

Pete's Annual JC Class Gathering
In December, we hosted Pete's JC class gathering at our place. It was a night of Wii games accompanied with attractive prizes. Everyone also got to take home a gift each through the lucky dip method. I admire the class for taking the effort to organise, plan and meet once a year!

Concentrate...concentrate...Pete's team concentrating on the Raving Rabids game

I got the biggest prize, and I'm not even a class member :-P

We were given a Golden Village gift card for being the host...free movies! :-)

Smile, one for the album

The night ended with a karaoke session for a few of us, where we sang till 4am!

Dad's Birthday
We celebrated my dad's birthday on 20 December with dinner at Jurong Point, followed by cake-cutting at our place. It was the first time my dad has seen our place fully furnished.

Tea with the Gals
Instead of our usual tea session with Cindy and Gen at a cafe outside, I invited the gals over last month to our place for tea. Served some pretty cupcakes and sweet tea, and watched half a movie. Looking forward to our next tea session :-)

As usual, our shy Gen was the photographer

X'mas Lunch
Johnny, Sally, Toon and David came over for X'mas lunch on X'mas itself. As usual, we ate till we burst. The spread consisted of turkey and ham, roasted pumpkin, pies and cupcakes. After the pigging out, we attempted to start planning for our U.S trip in February, and exchanged gifts as well.

Pretty X'mas cupcakes that looked too pretty to be eaten

The spread

U.S Trip Planning Session
We started out first proper U.S. trip planning session last Sunday. For now, the accommodations, car and flights have been booked. More planning sessions to take place, before we set off next month.

Our planning board for the trip

Swissotel Stay
Pete and I utilised our complimentary bridal suite stay at Swissotel The Stamford yesterday. The room was great, but somehow we did not get a good sleep. The pillows were either too high, too low, or too slippery. Other than that, I guess we still enjoyed our stay in a suite that would otherwise be too expensive for us to pamper ourselves with ;-)

Enjoying a quiet cocktail session at a private dining area

It has been quite an eventful month or so, and with our trip coming up, I guess it would be some time before we get in here again. Till then...take care!

'Tis The Season To Be Jolly

2009-12-01T22:20:00.005+08:00

I love Christmas, and generally December. I love the festivities of X'mas, and the festive cheer during the last month of the year as we approach a new year. Pete and I seem to have a packed month ahead. More so for Pete, who has several deadlines near X'mas. I don't think it will be that jolly for him after all :-(

However, we managed to set up our X'mas tree, something that we had envisioned and talked about even before we had gotten our home :-)

A little early...but just in case we do not surface till after X'mas...Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas!

Retro Halloween

2009-11-07T22:21:00.002+08:00

We had a retro Halloween gathering last Saturday at our place. Good food and company. Let the pictures speak a thousand words :-)

Creating "cobweb" feel with thread

Trick or Treat in retro PJs

Old school games and snacks

Truth or Dare: Smell the foot of the person to your right (Dare) Ewww...

Memories of being...caned...Ha!

Not forgetting Five Stones ;-)

Yes, it was "PJs and bring your soft toy" night

Remember this old school game?

It was a night of reminiscence and laughter!

Weekend Brought To You By The Letter "P"

2009-10-27T17:20:00.008+08:00

Last weekend was a "P" weekend:

On Saturday, Pete tried out the Pancake mix from the supermarket, and we had pancakes for breakfast. Some turned out looking like roti prata, while others looked decent enough. Spread them with some syrup and butter, and they were good to go:

For dinner, we attempted Pumpkin soup. Pete's parents dropped by for a while, and managed to try the soup, and we were given the thumbs up (or rather I feel it was a thumbs up when they said it was not bad haha!). Dinner was pumpkin soup with bread, and some carrot cake that Pete's parents bought over:

On Sunday, we had a Photo-taking session at a studio in Jurong, where we had a family portrait taken with Pete's family. I must say, it felt like more hard work as compared to our wedding photoshoot. It was definitely no easy task to get 7 people smiling and sitting/standing right. I am sure we will all look prim and proper when the photo is ready, but underneath Pete's graduation regalia, ermmm....were his signature berms:

Weekends are so much better now that we do not have to fret over guest lists, seating arrangements, and other wedding blah blahs ;-)

Going bananas!

2009-10-18T15:58:00.004+08:00

Last night I mentioned that today is going to be banana cake day, and so here it is, our very baked cake!

Some of the equipments that we used, and a cake fresh out of oven. Notice the flowery mitten? :)

The cakes looked rather "chao-ta", even though we stuck to the advised time and temperature. :-(

Good thing that the insides look not too bad. :D Haven't gotten to taste it yet, but we are going to have our afternoon tea with the freshly baked cakes soon~

Pete out!

Our own kitchen at last

2009-10-17T20:40:00.004+08:00

One of the things that I'm more excited about having our own place to stay, is that we finally have our own kitchen le~ So you know what it means to have your very own kitchen, right? To be able to cook~~, wearing nothing but an apron.~~ anything we like, whenever we like.

Like.... some breakfast for ah mi last Sunday morning~

Our very first proper cooked meal in the kitchen. (Instant noodles don't count la). This is a simple breakfast that consists of only bread, egg and ham. Easy to make, and not too bad to eat. :P

Our first major project, the Country Beef Stew. Somehow, I always thought that beef stew will be darker brown instead of orange in color. Anyway, I thought that the stew tasted quite good, and the beef was surprisingly tender, when I thought that it will turn out like chewing gum. :D

Our dinner for tonight, Country Beef Stew with rice, nice, simple, healthy, but not exactly cheap. :P

Last but not least on this post on food, is our wedding cake! Looks nice, doesn't it? Do not be deceived by the nice white surface, it's nothing but SUGAR! Can feel your teeth is rotting once you take a bite type sugar. I suppose that's how the cake can last up to 1 year bah. Any brave souls who visit are welcome to try out our wedding cake. Dentists not included. :P

Well, that's the end of my post of food. Hope to have more posts on food in the future~ Tomorrow is banana cake day~ :D

Still alive after the wedding~

2009-10-17T20:08:00.006+08:00

Hello everybody!

Miss me? Wahahaha! I must say that it has been a really long time since I last blogged. So just wana tell you all that: Yup, we are still alive and kicking! Was kinda busy with all the wedding preps and all, so did not really feel like blogging at all. Now that the wedding is over, and we kinda settled in to our new place, I can start blogging again~ :D

Since I just got the photos from my brother who was kind enough to play the camera man role on the morning of our wedding, let me just post these up here.

P.S. If you want to see photos of the bride here, then no need to continue already.. Cos its all about me! :P Only the photos of the groom party as we are leaving our place to go to ah mi's to get tekan-ed.

Feeling a little jittery already..

Mum and I

A family portrait before leaving the house.

Getting my last sip of good old kopi-o.. Only managed to get 3 sips in the morning

Looking quite lost right? Kan cheong la..

My band of brothers.

Fighting!

Overall, it was quite a smooth wedding without much hiccups, all thanks to my hardworking "brothers" and my 2 elder brothers. Thanks again! :D

Well, that's all for now. Catch you later~

We Are Back!

2009-10-15T22:29:00.006+08:00

Whoa! Believe it or not, Pete and I are finally customarily married! No more days of organising guest lists, worrying about the parking situation, checking and re-checking that everything has been taken care of, and the endless preparations leading up to the big day.

It's been almost 3 weeks since our wedding, and these few weeks were spent adjusting to the routine of commuting to and from work from our own home, unpacking, cleaning up the house, and trying to squeeze in some time to chill out in front of the tv with some of the tv series that we have been planning to catch up on. Despite the wedding being over, I still feel exhausted most of the time. Guess we are still adjusting to having our own place haha ;-)

Everything went pretty smoothly on our wedding day. Traffic was smooth, and the turnout for our guests was surprisingly good. We were on schedule for the most part of it, and our lunch banquet did not start too late. Although things got a little stressful and tensed halfway into the banquet, Pete and I are still relieved that we managed to survive the day mostly unscathed.

Not many good photos to share at the moment, as our photos are still being processed by our photographer. However, we managed to get some good shots from our hotel room of the F1 race track, as well as the view from our 61st floor room:

Day view of race track - We could see 80% of the race track from our room balcony

The cars looking like toy cars from high above

Sis & Bro dropped by later in the evening to watch the final race from our room

The tired bride and groom :-P Pete did not catch any sleep the night before, while I managed to catch less than 2 hours of it :-O

We will post more pics up of the big day when the photos are ready ;-)

Why Are They Called Wisdom Teeth?

2009-09-01T19:09:00.002+08:00

I am really wondering why are wisdom teeth called wisdom teeth, when they are silly enough to grow in any direction, giving you discomfort anytime. That does not sound very wise to me.

Am currently on 8 days mc recovering from the removal of 2 of my wisdom teeth last Friday. I know...why remove them now just 1 month away from the wedding?! Well, I think one of them chose this time to start giving me headaches and giddy spells. I attributed it to my tooth, and visited the dentist, who said the gum around it was a little inflamed, and I will be taking a chance if I did not remove it soon. It would be too late if it flares up right before the wedding!

So, I had to go ahead with it, as the last thing I need would be to faint from the headaches and giddy spells, which happened to one of my students before, as she refused to remove her wisdom tooth.

Took the cowardly and definitely more expensive way out, and opted for GA for the surgery. Before I hopped onto the surgery table, the dentist said that I have to eventually remove the rest of my wisdom teeth as they are all impacted. Made a last minute decision, and told him to remove 2 instead of 1. Well, since I will be on GA...However, I was not brave enough to get him to remove all 4!

Am now swelling a little, hurting a little, and eating very little :-( I really can't wait to sink my teeth into solid meat. I am craving MEAT....give me MEAT!!! Am so tired of the porridge, soup, and milo combination. I think I am having giddy spells from lack of food now. So much for removing the tooth to get rid of the headaches and giddy spells!

Really hope my wounds will heal soon. I'm sure Pete hopes so too, as I can be a rather whiny "patient". I freak out when I gurgle and see blood, freak out when I taste blood, and just move around like a sloth most of the time. I really hope everything will be back to normal soon, and I can at least smile normally on the wedding day haha!

Meanwhile, am not looking forward to the next visit to the dentist on Friday for the removal of stitches...

Fruitful Long Weekend

2009-08-11T00:22:00.004+08:00

It was the long awaited National Day long weekend. I felt much was accomplished over this weekend:

1) Packed and cleared some of my stuff sitting in the study room

2) Went with mom and aunt to finalise mom's dress for the wedding banquet

3) Went with Pete's parents to purchase cloth (for making his mom's pants), as well as shoes which she will be wearing for the wedding banquet

4) Caught the animation movie "UP" on Saturday night at Jurong Point

5) Attended a family lunch gathering organised by my aunt on Sunday

6) Worked on the wedding programme, check lists, task lists, a little on the guest lists, as well as photo selection for developing

7) Watched the movie "The Hangover" late Sunday night

8) Last but not least, Pete worked really hard on the wedding montage, and managed to complete half of it over the weekend as well :-)

We collected our wedding album and photos this week:

Pete's favourite shot of all

Will upload a few others on Facebook, till then.....ciao ;-)

过大礼

2009-08-03T22:17:00.007+08:00

We had our 过大礼 on Sunday, and we think .....everything went pretty smoothly....or rather, for the most part of it haha. My relatives came by for the session, and a few of my more experienced aunts communicated with the match-maker over the exchange of the gifts.

It was a pretty long day after everyone left, as my parents and I had to travel around to some of our older relatives' homes to distribute the 喜喜饼 (wedding cakes and candies). Managed to take only a few pictures of that day:

Pete and his eldest brother, together with the match-maker and the gifts

Part of the items that my family prepared for the match-maker to bring over to our new place

We are glad that this part of the wedding preparations are over, as it was quite a headache with all the rushing around to prepare the items, and making sure we have met the "standards" and expectations of both families, as well as relatives.

As for now, we can get back to our other wedding preparations...

Yes, We Are Still Alive!

2009-07-20T17:43:00.005+08:00

It has been some time since our blog was updated. We find ourselves with more things to do, plan, organise, and worry over as the wedding day draws nearer. Another 2 months or so...time sure flies! Here is a list of what we have been up to, and what is to come:

Added: Pete's comments in red

What we have been up to

- Celebrated my brother's 21st birthday last month

- Met up with our photographer to select the photos for our wedding album, which is work-in-progress

- I woke up one morning to find that I have developed an allergic reaction to...I'm still not sure what, but it caused my eyes to swell, and then tear for a week could be allergic to me leh.. how?

- I suffered from a side effect from the medication (steroids) that were prescribed by the doc for the swollen eyes, and felt all puffy and tender for almost a week (water retention)

- Pete started on root canal for his tooth Ouch! feeling the pinch in both the mouth and wallet. :(

- Jewellery shopping with my mum for the wedding

- Started collating our guest lists for the wedding lunch (painful process which will last till September)

- Pete's parents and a matchmaker visited us for the 提亲 session over the weekend, where the items and gifts to be exchanged between the groom and bride's side of the family were discussed lots of awkward silence, am very glad its over. one tradition chinese customs down, alot more traditional chinese customs to go..

- Pete gave our new place and furniture a good vacuum and steam over the weekend as we think my allergic reaction should be caused by the dust at our place (and boy did our new machine suck up lots!) and its a very good exercise for me, can feel my abs ( 1 big pack) aching this morning. oh, and i only vacuumed the carpet, the sofas and the guest room bed, and the amount of dust (and hairball) was incredible~ :S

What's to come for the next few weeks

- Visiting the florists this week to select our theme for the flower decor for the ballroom i'm sure my expert opinion in flowers will come in handy. :P

- Doing non-wedding related activities. A birthday and a housewarming party is on the schedule, and making plans to catch a play/musical this week I really appreciate the non-wedding related activities now..

- Food tasting at the end of the month

- Shopping with mum and aunt for the 过大礼 and wedding items (all those red red stuff)

- 过大礼 (exchange of gifts/items between the groom and bride's side of the family) at the start of next month

- Start (at least for me) of the serious planning of the wedding. time to kill some braincells (and hoping not to kill myself in the process)

Actually the list goes on, but maybe hopefully by then one of us would have updated :-)

Till then...for some of you who were asking about the lack of updates, we hope the list above can keep you informed for a while haha ;-)

Home Sweet Home

2009-06-12T14:02:00.014+08:00

Pete and I hosted a housewarming lunch for my relatives over the last weekend. Pete's parents prepared the food for the lunch. We were glad that everything went ok, as we were a little nervous at first about hosting lunch for almost 40 people.

That same week, Loyd had a photo shoot for our home. The photos turned out great, and Pete and I were impressed with the way our home turned out in them. We are glad too that the preparations for our home are almost done, and we can start to concentrate on the wedding.

Thanks Loyd for a great job!

Introducing Mr & Mrs Yap

2009-06-01T21:46:00.012+08:00

It has been some time since we updated our blog. It has been a busy month or so for us, and I think it will only get busier as we near our customary wedding.

Amidst getting our new home furnished, Pete and I got married on 10 May (coincidentally, it was Mother's Day too) with a simple ceremony, followed by a buffet lunch at a cosy lounge attended by our close friends and a few relatives at Hotel Rendezvous:

One for the album with Karen and Jonah

With the guys who have seen Pete and I starting out as a couple

We are family~

Love the natural lighting of the lounge

Presenting...Mr & Mrs Yap :)

Many thanks to Howard for our lovely photos :D

With our solemnisation over, we started to prepare for our wedding photo shoot which took place last Thursday. We scrambled at almost the last minute for our beachwear attire, but managed to find something suitable. Last Thursday came and went in a flash. By the time we finished our studio shots and stepped foot in our first outdoor location (Hort Park), we almost wanted to give up because of the heat (despite it being a cloudy day, with no clear blue skies). However, we pressed on and proceeded to Henderson Wave after, before setting off for our final location: Sentosa (not too exciting, we know).

Pete and I booked a room at the Siloso Beach Resort and we managed to take some photos within the resort as well, before hitting the beach. We wrapped up the shoot at about 7.30 in the evening, and boy were we bushed!

We did not take many photos with our own camera, hence, just some from the photo shoot to share, as well as some that we took at the resort :)

All itching and sticky there, with ants, spiders and leaves between the layers of my gown

Beside the pool at the resort...A pro at posing after the photo shoot :P

Till the next update...ciao~

April

2009-05-04T23:20:00.003+08:00

It has been quite an eventful April. It was a pretty stressful month for Pete and myself, and hopefully things will be back to normal soon. Things meaning...state of mind? I think I have put Pete, and I believe my colleagues at work as well through some stress. A big hug to Pete for being the person that he is, and a thank you to my colleagues (if they are reading this) for being so patient with my many "what ifs" :D

April was a distracting month for us, hence the lack of updates. However, amidst it all, we managed to furnish up our nest, and we can finally see it all coming together. A picture of part of our living room to share :)

A few more pictures and curtains to hang, some knick knacks to look out for, as well as some appliances and kitchenware to purchase, and I think we are almost there with our modern country home ;)

Happy birthday ah mi!

2009-04-09T09:48:00.004+08:00

Happy birthday ah mi!!

Was a bit distracted for the past 2 days, so only managed to get this post up today.

So how did we celebrate ah mi's birthday?

In the morning, i woke up earlier to go over her place hoping to surprise her at her bus stop when she is going for work. as my bus was approaching her stop, she smsed me to tell me that she got on her 1st bus le... so i was like "oh... okay..." pfffttt... :P

so the day went by like any other work day, and soon it was dinner time.. i made a reservation at secret garden but somehow mislead her to think i made a reservation at ma maisons. :D

so after meeting Karen, we slowly walked from city hall to bugis area. and when we turned into middle rd instead of going straight to bugis junction, ah mi was like "go secret garden huh?" wah! so smart leh!

when we got to the restaurant, it was almost empty except for a table of 3, who were finishing with their meal le.. we had to order from the counter (maybe thats y no service charge bah) and proceeded on to our seats, which we chose a window seat. we felt that the ambience could be better if the lights were a wee bit dimmer though..

anyway, I had the grilled cod while ah mi ordered the grilled chicken. and while waiting for the food to be served, its time for birthday present!

actually, the birthday present was just a teddy bear (called mimi) that we bought, and i'm supposed to dress mimi up.. so i had no choice but to show her my needlesmanship (is there even such a word?)

Here's mimi and ah mi!

notice the little "handbag" mimi is carrying? turns out there is a bonus pressie! its a pair of lulu (more or less lookalike) earring (pls ask ah mi for more details on what or who is lulu) that i have spent months looking for it..

pls look at the earring, not the ugly mouth i drew on mimi :P

we waited for a little while more and the food finally arrived, we kinda exchanged looks when we saw the size of my cod fish.. for 28 bucks, it was quite pathetic.. hahahaha..

ah mi's bigger serving of grilled chicken

my serving of pathetically small cod fish

the food was quite good actually, just that its a little pricey for this portion..

but all in all, we had a great time there and i hope that ah mi had a happy birthday with me.. *hugs*

First Fitting

2009-03-25T22:37:00.010+08:00

We went for the first fitting at the bridal boutique yesterday. Time sure flies...cliche as it sounds. When we first visited it, it was about a year before our wedding day, and now the gowns are almost done. Some pictures to share :)

...and finally, decided to rent the following dress for the ROM...

Ehh...where's the groom in all this...? :P

This is what I do when I'm waiting for ah mi in office...

2009-03-17T18:32:00.003+08:00

Trust me, I only dare to do this when nobody else is in the office... :D

Yes, I know. Very very bo liao. :P

Time for A Change

2009-03-09T23:19:00.006+08:00

Made an appointment with my hairdresser for a rebonding session on Saturday...but came out with a perm instead. Am still getting used to it after having my rigid straight hair since forever, but I do feel liberated!

Another before/after photo for our kitchen

2009-03-04T16:59:00.003+08:00

Hi all,

Here is another before and after (not fully completed) photo of our kitchen~ :D

Before:

After:

Nice? :D

Somewhere Over The Rainbow...Is There A Pot Of Gold?

2009-02-25T23:34:00.004+08:00

Took the train from work to visit our new place today in the midst of reno to take a look at our kitchen and bedroom cabinets . The train was horribly crowded, and I was feeling slightly down from thinking that I will have to travel in a sardine can to and from work daily in the future. Oh, how I will miss taking the good old bus.

Just when I had the chance to look out of the windows after most of the crowd alighted at the Jurong East station, I saw the most beautiful rainbow. It looked like the kind that CareBears slide down from.

I cheered up a little. Maybe Sunshine Bear slid down the rainbow.

Bat cave no more!

2009-02-24T20:06:00.004+08:00

Renovation started lo~ And when the lights are installed, our little mummified bat finally dropped from the wiring onto the floor.

Gross huh? Imagine we had to deal with a live one a few months back~

Anyway, renovation of our place is going very well~

From:

To this:

And now this:

After seeing this transformation, I can't wait to see the entire completed house~

All thanks to Loyd~ Thanks bro, for designing such a great home for us~ :D

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-15T00:38:00.003+08:00

Happy Valentine's Day to one and all! Although Pete and I do not really celebrate V Day, I made him a bear this year, as I joined 2 of my colleagues for a teddy bear making workshop last Saturday. It was a little stressful, I must say, as I am not very good with handicraft. After a night of "hard work" this week, I was able to present him with a fully clothed bear today, a far cry from when I left the workshop last Saturday. It is a bear with many imperfections, but am glad Pete likes it :)

Teddy Bear Pete - Made with him in mind

Nope, not MIA yet

2009-02-12T17:29:00.006+08:00

Hi all,

Just realized that it has been a long long time since our last update. I was going to blog on Yinghao's wedding that took place on the 4th of Jan. However, due to the lack of photos, I decided to procrastinate, then dragged and dragged til now. (by the way, I still don't have the photos yet, so that entry will have to wait)

From my last published entry til now, there was quite a lot of things happening. Chinese New Year came and went, started and more or less completed our flat design, started renovation, and started buying stuff for our new home.

As you can see, the focus of new year til now is our home, which is coming along very well since the renovation started this Monday. Without failing our expectation, Loyd came up with a fantastic design for our country themed home and we are very much excited about it. Can't wait for it to be completed~

However, we do also expect a lot of comments like "Aiyoh, how come so white?", "Aiyoh, nice meh?" and "Wah, think they will clean until siao ah". Well, we have thought of that already, and we still want to go with it so that's that, okay? With this, you should have a good idea on what is the main color of our home already. Am still working with Loyd on how to break in some other color while still maintaining the nice feel of the place.

Now we realize why people say that owning a home ain't cheap.. Cos it really ain't cheap! After renovation, there is still the furnitures and the appliances. All I can say is that right now, our money is flowing like water, but luckily, it's for something very worthwhile~

So if anyone of you guys wana sponsor us some stuff for our new home, please don't be shy hor! We gladly accept Cash, Nets, and all major creditcards! Wahahaha!

Anyway, here is a preview of our new place for you~

Like I said, can't wait to see the renovation works completed~ :D

Happy New Year everybody~

2009-01-01T11:15:00.005+08:00

Good bye 2008 and helloooo 2009~

For New Year's Eve dinner, I took it upon myself to prepare a nice home made dinner for ah mi and my parents. The dish consisted of swiss rosti and rosemary chicken. From my point of view, I think it turned out rather disastrous (at least visually, taste was not too bad), but thankfully ah mi and parents were rather supportive about it. :D

Rosti that turned out looking like potato patties

The complete meal

A weird looking Sara Lee strawberry cheese cake for dessert, accompanied with a bottle of sweet strawberry alcoholic drink

Anyway, preparing for this meal totally wiped me out, and I was dozing off before 2009 even came. And I just woke up at 11am just now. Wahahaha!

It's nice to spend New Year's Eve with your loved ones than squeezing with millions of others. ;P

Wishing you all the very best for 2009~ Cheers!

Reviewing 08

2008-12-30T11:00:00.001+08:00

A belated Merry Christmas to everyone~ :-)

Time really flies, and we are at the end of the year yet again. A good time to look back and reflect on what have we done in the past one year.

Jan:
Started the year with ah mi's cousin's solemnization. Spent lots of time stressing over the flat issue. :S Backache galore for me too as I spent quite some time at the specialist. (heng can claim ah)

Feb:
Ah mi survived the much dreaded CNY, and I got diagnosed with slipped disc. :( We got another bad number in our balloting attempts and felt quite miserable again. :(

Mar:
Got officially downgraded to PES C9L2, so more or less no ICT lo~ (downside: have to live with backaches for rest of my life :S) Enjoyed some nice quiet weekends too, while we still KPKB about the flat issue.

Apr:
April balloting began and we tried our luck once again. It was going to be our last ballot before we go for a resale flat. Ballot results came out and we got queue number 1190 for 490 flats. We also went for our first Marriage convention which was a series of marriage prep talks. :)

And of course, April was the month for dear ah mi's birthday, and she looks prettier with each passing day (must be the effect of being loved *blushes*)

May:
Planning and budgeting for our wedding had officially started, even when I was doing some ad-hoc planning previously. With our disappointing April ballot results, we began to look out for nice, affordable resale flats. :-( Oh and Sunghwa came to visit with his newly wedded wife and we had a nice gather with my long lost pal, Made. ;-)

Jun:
After the planning session, we thought that we had better get the process going by checking out bridal studios and stuff. After running around in the hot sun and getting ambushed by sales assistants from bridal studios (trapped for hours), we finally decided on the bridal studio and the pre-wedding photography. We even got our wedding bands as a bonus~ ;) Another noteworthy event this week was the first ever parents meeting session for us. It's kinda scary at first, but we managed to survive it.

As for the flat issue, who would have thought that after getting a queue number of 1190 for 490 flats, we could actually get a flat. We got a 2nd storey flat, but it was really better than nothing and we are really really pleased with it. :D

Oh we also confirmed our big day as 27th Sept 09 @ Swissotel Stamford, which supposedly is good for the both of us.

Jul:
We finally got the keys to our new flat and it's a huge bunch of keys. :D

This month was pretty much spent on the checking and cleaning of our flat. Also, there was quite some unhappiness in the wedding planning due to expectations of parents, but it was quite expected.

Aug:
We welcomed baby Jonah to this world with his proud parents, Howard and Karen. Here's hoping that Jonah will be a healthy and happy baby~

Had a nice trip to the Zoo with the guys this month too. Quite a lot of ranting, this month too, so I guess it was not a very good month for me. :-P

Sept:
Celebrated my little cousin's 21st birthday and accidentally disfigured his cake (told you not purposely le :-P)

Did some more confirmation with our wedding vendors and attended ah mi's cousin, Sharon's, wedding too.

Oct:
Found out that there is going to be another Formula 1 race in Singapore in 2009 and the final race day is going to be on our wedding day itself! @#$%&!!! Was quite busy doing some damage control and contingency planning.

Also, our wedding bands were finally ready after a second resize due to my fat finger. The next problem was that we do not know what we want to engrave on the ring.

For our flat, we found that we are not going to be the first occupants of our flat as it already had occupants living there, and they are BATS! Our new home suddenly became a real bat cave (eat your heart out, Bruce Wayne :-P)

Nov:
My birthday! :-D

Officially started our hunt for furniture and made our very first purchase of furniture, which is a nice dining table set.

We also had our very first fish spa at Harbourfront, which was very interesting and very ticklish~

Dec:
Went for our first cruise on SuperStar Libra, and probably gained 5kg together after eating non-stop on the ship. We visited Phuket for a very brief tour and went back to the ship to carry on our non-stop eating. :-P

We also got our wedding shoes, and ah mi took the chance to stock up on her dwindling supply of shoes.. :-P

I got the chance to organize my annual class chalet for my JC classmates, who are more or less still in contact with one another, which is fantastic. :D

As for Christmas, we had a nice Christmas lunch at Loyd's place, where we had a great time in the company of our dear friends.

=========================================================

And that, is about all for the year of 2008. It's a year of ups and downs, and in summary, it has not been a very kind year for me and I'm quite glad that it is finally coming to an end.

Next year will be an even more hectic year, but there will be more things to look forward to, with our new home ready, and our wedding happening in September. I can't wait to go into the next year with ah mi by my side.

An early Happy New Year to you all, and have a blessed year ahead!

Pete signing off for 2008.

Christmas Potluck

2008-12-26T15:19:00.020+08:00

Just like last year, we celebrated Christmas this year with the guys at Loyd's studio, and had a potluck lunch and did a simple gift exchange (although it was decided that we shall not have one this year, but we all brought something along ha ha). It was an enjoyable day, and we had a great time with the food that everyone prepared or bought, and a fun time with Wii that Pete brought along. Pictures to share:

Preparing the strawberries & marshmellows for the potluck

Packing the (ugly) strawberries & marshmellows to Loyd's place

Pete's successful attempt at teriyaki chicken

A feast:

Toon's stuffed chicken, Loyd's bee hoon, Johnny's potato salad, not forgetting Pete's teriyaki chicken...

...not forgetting pizzas from Sally

Sally & me

A tearful Sally from Johnny's X'mas surprise of a hamster for her

Having a good workout competing with Sally at Wii Boxing

Dessert time! David's delicious cheese cake, with my not-so-presentable chocolate-coated strawberries & marshmellows

Say Cheeeeeze...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ONE & ALL!

Packed Weekends To Come

2008-12-26T12:10:00.016+08:00

As 2008 draws to a close, I finally sat down and worked on the timeline and checklist for our wedding and new home. Looks like 2009 will be a busy year ahead, with most of our weekends dedicated to our new home, and later on, the wedding. I hope we will not forget to spend time with each other away from the hustle and bustle of it all once in a while :) After all, us is what this is all about in the first place ya :D

Year end is also the time to meet up with friends, catching up and exchanging gifts, so Pete and I headed off to Howard and Karen's place last Friday. We had a nice home-cooked dinner of pumpkin soup, salad, baby carrots and cottage pie. Dessert was cheesecake and some strawberries and cherries that we bought over. Karen and I exchanged gifts: she received a Biotherm cellulite cream from me for her birthday, a box of chocolates for Christmas, and a little toy for Baby Jonah. We were presented with a Robinsons gift card for Christmas. Time to shop for more country tableware! We had a good time playing with Baby Jonah too, who is almost 5 months old. Here are some photos to share:

Us with Jonah

Can't wait to walk...but I suppose I have to learn to crawl first...

Finally...managed to flip over...phew!

With our timeline and checklist up, we set off bright and early (ok, maybe not that early) last Saturday to visit the Textile Centre in search of upholstery for our extra set of sofa covers. After a wild goose chase, we ended up at Joo Chiat and hit gold when we found an upholstery shop selling prints that are suited to country-themed homes. We went further down Joo Chiat Road, and managed to find another fabric shop with possible striped designs as well. We have not made a decision, and we hope to settle that soon, and place an order for our sofa!

We proceeded to town after, and managed to get my bridal shoes from Far East Plaza. Although they are not really the ideal pair that I would like to have, I figured that it is not really worth it to custom make and pay a bomb for them for something I will not be wearing too often. We headed to Great World City after, and it turned out to be a shoe shopping trip! Bought myself another 2 pairs on sale. Pete managed to get his shoes for the wedding too, and while he was trying them on at Hush Puppies, I tried on a casual pair that was on promotion, and we got that too! I think year end is a great time for shoe shopping due to the sales and promotions :D

Today's catch: Groom shoes, bridal shoes, a pair of slippers, a pair of slip-on heels, and a pair of comfy shoes from Hush Puppies :O

With the purchases, we ticked off wedding shoes on our checklist :)

Sunday came, and there were more purchases on the way. We managed to place an order for our hood, hob, oven and a storage heater with a shop in IMM, which gave us quite a good price for the items. We may go back to them for our other applicances in future. We went to IMM with the intention of placing an order for a bed we saw there, but on closer inspection, the workmanship was of a rather poor standard, and we decided to hold back on the purchase.

We went for dinner at the new Jurong Point extension on Sunday night, and had a sinful dinner at Swensen's. The new extension is really huge, but I think I will have lots of opportunities to explore it further in future :)

"I will take the mega burger...

...and you shall just have this little bowl of coleslaw ya"

With that, we ended the start of our busy weekends to come.

Cruise to Phuket - Part 2

2008-12-10T11:42:00.009+08:00

Sarwardee Kar~ Pete here reporting the 2nd part of the cruise. (as my camera was used for the 2nd part. ;-P)

So after 2 days of cruising on the Straits of Melaka, we were finally here at Phuket~ The ocean liner was anchored offshore and we were to take another boat to the shores of Phuket from our ship. We took the shopping tour as the other tours did not seem to fit our style very much, and we did not do enough research on Phuket to be going free and easy. So here we go~

View of Phuket from the top deck

Look at my belly from all that food~

Down shot~

Up shot! Nothing to do while waiting for the boat

On the rickety old boat

On the beach, the downside of being in a tour with aunties was already apparent as we had to wait for the late comers. The sun was scorching hot, and ah mi was looking for anything that can provide some shade for her delicate skin. Interesting thing is that when we were disembarking from the smaller boat to the beach of Phuket (Patong Beach), we realised that there were several locals taking pictures of us. Initially we did not know what their intention was, but later you will see. ;P

View of the ship from the jetty

Sunny Phuket~

Squinting from the sun

Oh my delicate skin~

First stop - Cashew nut factory. Basically, it's a tourist trap lah. The factory already has arrangements with Starcruise to bring the passengers there as part of the tour. The cashew nuts there were not exactly cheap also loh. However, there was unlimited sampling there, so ah mi and I had our fill of cashew nuts and other local delights. :-) When we were back on the bus, several of the aunties were late as usual. :S

The cashew nut factory~

Giant cashew nut

Me trying to bite everything as usual~

Say NUTS~

What real cashew nuts look like (they are fake, by the way :P)

Next stop was a jewellery factory. Lots of shinies but nothing really interesting. :P

Third stop was to the biggest shopping mall in Phuket (Central Festival). We were supposed to stop here for lunch and the guide said that fast food places like KFC and McDonald's were here, so I was looking forward to having my McPork there. However, it turned out that our guide was wrong loh.. No McPork for me, so we had Phad Thai (what else do you eat in Thailand?) at the foodcourt above. It was okay loh (shrugs), but I think Thai Express's Phad Thai tastes better. :P

Phad Thai for lunch...

and Baskin Robbins for dessert (lose to Ben & Jerry's :P)

After lunch, we had some time to shop around the mall and ah mi's top place to be is VNC, a shoe shop (diaoooo~) We got a magnet (yah yah.. typical tourists) and a nice miniature tea set as decor for our new home.

After this stop, our last stop was a ~~tourist trap~~ place famous for their dried seafood products. Due to lack of time (all thanks to the aunties) we had 15 mins here to make our purchases. We got some "bahu" stuff for our families and we were all out of Thai Baht liao.

With this, we were on our way to the beach to re-embark on our ship. On the way to the jetty, we saw tables set up with many framed photos of us as we were disembarking. What a way to earn quick bucks.

So after the shore trip, we were back on the ship, starting our journey back to Singapore. It was kinda sian, as there was 1 full day in the ship, with nothing to look forward to except arriving in Singapore which signifies the end of our little holiday.

So what did we do on the ship? We ate, checked menu for the next meal, and ate, and checked menu again and ate. Occasionally, we played some games. Just wanna say that playing Jenga on the ship is not a very good idea. :-S

Our usual buffet meals~

Look out for a R(A) word :P

Timber!!!

This is an intentional pose by the way~ :P

And that, my friends, is our first cruising experience (and we won't be back for a long long time :-P)

Cruise to Phuket - Part 1

2008-12-10T11:31:00.012+08:00

One of the most spontaneous things that Pete and I did was to decide to go on a holiday (which was not in our plans for this year) one fine Sunday when we were discussing clearing of our annual leave, and then made a booking for it within the next two days, and then boarded a cruise ship, all within about a week! Well, I guess this was not too bad. Initially, Perth was part of the spontaneous plans, but we decided that it would be too rushed to plan a good trip, and so we abandoned Perth for the moment.

We signed up for the 5D 4N trip on board Star Cruises' Superstar Libra to Phuket. It was the first time we were on a cruise. We decided being on a cruise is a definite way to relax. You practically eat and sleep, and then eat and sleep, and then eat, and eat most of the time. I feel that I have eaten enough for the month, and felt like a slug that I would not mind vacuuming the whole ship if you asked me to. That aside, I suppose it allows you time to really take things slow and just plain relax, which I feel sometimes you may not even get to do that on other tours and trips where you are always either rushing somewhere, with the aim of covering all the sights, or rushing to catch the last train or bus back to your accommodation.

We read, played board games, sat in the lounge and listened to live music, enjoyed the wind and sea on the upper deck... and then eat... and sleep... it was indeed a good break for the end of the year. Some pictures to share:

On the upper deck before setting off from HarbourFront

One for the album

Pete seems happy with his American breakfast

Where is the capi-toan?

Upper decks of the ship

Our little cabin

Medusa me

Happy Pete again with his Dim Sum breakfast

Our souvenirs from the trip...

...not forgetting a little something from Phuket for our future country home

Who is the better poser?

2008-11-26T21:30:00.002+08:00

So who do you think is the better poser here?

I think ah mi wins by the sheer number of boys surrounding her and looking mesmerized. Sad lonely me.. *cues Akon's lonely song*

Cups & Saucers

2008-11-24T00:10:00.002+08:00

I guess Pete finds this too girlish to blog...but I will add it in anyway :)

This weekend, we purchased our first cups and saucers for our future country-themed home. Cuppa tea, anyone?

What a fishy weekend~

2008-11-23T23:02:00.009+08:00

Hello all, weekend has came and gone again, and what have you done during this short short weekend? Well, ah mi and I did a fair bit of stuff this weekend, and let me show it off~ :-P

On Saturday, we started slow by going to our new house and doing a bit of cleaning up since ~~we gave up on~~ the rectification is completed and scanning of the photos for the montage.

Ah mi did the easy job while I have the tough job of taking photos :P

Then we went to explore the brand new West Coast Plaza (formerly known as Ginza Plaza). While it's big, clean and new, lots of shops were still not opened so nothing much to see also. We can't even find a place there to have dinner. :-S And that's about it for Saturday.

On Sunday, we kinda decided to hang out at our favourite mall, Vivo City, for the whole day. So first on the list was to go collect our wedding bands which have been sitting there for a long long time already, waiting for us to think of what to engrave. And no, we still have not thought of what to engrave yet, but decided to get them first and think later. :D

Nice rings huh?

Hope my ring will still fit my fat finger next year

Next up, we camped out at Gloria Jean's to complete ah mi's assignment at work. I helped out quite a lot, so her certification should be split 50-50 with me. ;P

Along the way, we noticed that there is a shop at Harbourfront Shopping Centre for fishie spa, (pay fishies to eat you thingy) and ~~ah mi~~we were tempted to give it a shot, since it's a $10 for 10 minutes promotion. So in we went, off came the shoes, and we had to wash our feet first (for me it's a must, to reduce the number of floating fishies by the time we are done :D).

The fishies in the tank looked really really intimidating and we were both scared. Ah mi was squirming away and I was very hesitant to put my feet into the tank full of ~~piranhas wannabes~~ fishies, but being the ~~tough guy~~ gentleman, I had to go first and let ah mi see that it's safe, so I just lowered my feet. IT WAS TICKLISH! For the first few seconds the sensation was ticklishly unbearable and I was laughing away, but it was quite alright after that. :D

Like swarms of piranhas

Arrgghh!! My feet!

Noooooo!

Next up was the task to ~~force~~ convince ah mi to put her feet into the tank. She was like "No! No! No! I dun wan! I dun wan!!!" and I think the people in the shop were quite amused. So when the verbal approach did not work, I had to use the manual approach, and forced her right foot into the water and held it there. She was like screaming/laughing away and kept on scratching my back (Dun ask me why.. :P) Then I had to force her other foot in cos she still did not dare to put it in.

Ah mi's both feet finally in~

Getting our feet chewed off..

After the session, she complained of sore legs cos of the exercise she got when she struggled with me. Ah mi really needs more exercise. :P

After the long day, what better way to end the day than with a scoop of Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream.

Yummy~

It's Monday tomorrow... Sian... :(

Fruitful but tiring weekend

2008-11-17T09:45:00.003+08:00

We had a very fruitful weekend, but my poor back suffered cos of the amount of walking involved. :'( As the theme of this weekend is "HOME", there was lots of shopping involved. And here we go~

Had a design session with Loyd yesterday and he had already did a basic layout planning based on the floor plan that I gave him. However, as I had not conveyed the requirements (my home was feng shui-ed already) to him, there was a lot of changes to be made.

Initially, we were kinda embarrassed about it as it looked as though we were totally changing the layout that he had in mind, and I was worried that he might take offense at it. Surprisingly, he was very receptive and understanding of the changes we had in mind, and had some very interesting ideas based on the requirements that we have~

We had also passed him the book on country theme that we bought and went through. The book had loads of post-its inside on what we like and don't like. Hope that he can "breathe" the book in and come out with a good design! Anyway, we are very excited about the 2nd draft of the layout planning~

We also went to the Thomson Plaza that the folks in renotalk forum had recommended and found 2 country theme shops. They were good, but we were kinda overwhelmed at the amount of country stuff that they had. It was like "whoa~~!" We did not get anything this trip, but we were very certain that we will be back!

Next stop was the IFC on Sunday, where we spotted a "Country Style Furnishing" in the website listing!

But prior to that, I went to help my dad clean the ceiling fans in his canteen and it was tough work~ (well, my bro did all the climbing, but I also got help out hor!) Then it was visiting my grandparents and great-grandparents at the church and cemetery for All-Saints Day. It's been more than 8 years since grand dad passed away, and I do still miss him. :-(

After that, I met up with ah mi at Yew Tee station for the shuttle service to IFC, and it was very empty. Waited for quite some time before the shuttle bus moved off, and even so, there was only 4 passengers on the bus nia. The journey was less than 5 mins, before we reached this semi-modern looking building with quite some furnishing shops inside.

Having no idea where to start, we just stumbled into the shop nearest to the entrance, not expecting to find anything. The items in the shop looked modern, so we were kinda losing our interest already. Just as we were about to walk out, we saw this gorgeous white dining table set that will totally fit our country theme. In fact, this is THE very design we had in mind. So I called Loyd up, described the table and sent him a MMS to show him the table and told the person that we will be back.

After that, we walked off in search of the Country Style Furnishing shop that was listed on the website. We went in quite a number of shops before realizing that country style furniture are quite rare in Singapore. There was nothing that interested us, until we finally reached the Country Style shop on the 2nd floor. It was .... nice... not really WOW like the dining table, but... nice.. I think we should be getting something from here, but we will need to bring Loyd there with us for his opinion, as we might be able to get a few more pieces of furniture from here also.

And so we walked off, just wanting to finish looking through the remaining shops as we kinda doubt that we can find anything else there already. I commented to ah mi as we were walking on the 3rd floor that, we don't really see any nice suitable sofas in all these shops hor? And at that moment, there it was, a nice floral sofa sitting at the corner of the shop with spotlight shining on it. (dramatic hor?) So we went in, tried and chatted with the lady boss a bit. Conclusion: Should be getting it but maybe with Loyd when we go together the next time.

And so we are done with the IFC, going out to take the shuttle bus.. but not before we made the first furnishing purchase of our new home.

Presenting....

Future guest take note, please please please don't spill food on the table hor. We will feel heartache one~ :D

And that's all for this entry~ Cya!

Happy Birthday, Pete!

2008-11-10T22:39:00.004+08:00

10 November...Happy Birthday to my favourite guy in the world:

Happy Birthday, Pete!

What Now...

2008-10-28T23:22:00.004+08:00

Pete discovered some droppings at our new place when he brought his friends over to view the flat a few weeks back. We suspected they were rat droppings, and got ourself a pretty rat trap from Daiso. Trust me when I say it is pretty...

The rat trap - like a pretty little cardboard house, with printed windows

We placed some dried cuttlefish inside the house, hoping to lure the rat/rats in. It/they will get stuck on the sticky pad inside the "house", and Pete will then carry the little house by its handle and dispose of it. That was our grand plan: catch the rat/rats, take some pictures, and post them up here.

Alas, week after week we went back, but there was no rat in sight. But...there were more droppings, directly below the holes where the lights are supposed to be installed on the living room ceiling. Since we could catch no rat, we bought ourselves a can of Baygon on Saturday. Well, if we can't trap the rat/rats, or whatever it/they may be, we will have to settle for the next best alternative of spraying insecticide up the holes on the ceiling.

And so...that was what we did. The "culprit" actually reacted to the spray, and struggled to escape through the hole, amidst the wires. At first, Pete announced it was just a beetle. Seconds later, it struggled a little more, exposing more of itself, and to my horror, Pete said, "It's a bat." A bat?! So now the holes in our ceiling are bat caves?? I was terrified of bats, and went to hide in the room. Pete saw it struggle a little more, before it flew out of the windows.

We went back yesterday and stuffed all the holes in the ceiling with paper. No more bat caves, no no.

I'm just thinking...is it just me? Cockroaches, pigeons, and now...bats?

Weddings, and More...Wedding Stuff

2008-10-28T22:42:00.005+08:00

The period after the 7th Lunar month is popular with many when it comes to holding their traditional wedding or wedding reception. For the past month or so, I have attended 3 weddings. Some photos to share:

With my cousin, Sharon, who looked like a princess on her big day last month

Wedding of Siew Chi, who is my ex-primary, secondary, junior college schoolmate, and now...colleague

Managed to sneak in a shot with the busy bride, Fay, who is my ex-secondary schoolmate at her church wedding

2 more weddings to go for the rest of this year...

As for our wedding, in view of F1 and the inconvenience it may bring, Pete and I have decided to have a lunch reception instead, and we have met up with the hotel last week to sign for the necessary changes. Hopefully, everything will turn out ok *fingers crossed*

Lord (and Lady) of the Rings

2008-10-16T20:59:00.005+08:00

It has been a long time since our previous entry, all thanks to the F1 schedule for Singapore next year. It had caused plenty of headaches and extra work for the both of us. So much for preparing early. So moral of the story is that preparing for a wedding at the last minute is bad, preparing for a wedding 1 year in advance don't seem to have that many benefits either. :P

Anyway, our wedding bands were finally ready last Saturday. Originally, they were supposed to be ready in early July. However, due to ~~my finger swelling up like a sausage~~ incorrect ring size, they needed to re-do the ring for us, which took another 3 months. My ring size went from 17 to 19 in 2 months time. I didn't know ring size can increase so fast (although I can totally vouch for waistline increasing exponentially :P)

So 3 months later, here we are again to collect our wedding bands. The sales assistant then asked us,"So what do you want to engrave on your bands?" Ah mi and I were like "Hey, didn't we agree on something already?" We think, we thought, and we thunk. You can hear rusty gears in our head straining away, but we just cannot remember what we agreed on 3 months back.

Anyway, there is no rush as our wedding is still a long way to go, so we told the person that we will come back when we think of something. If it is something that we will forget, probably its not that good in the first place. :P

So here's the deal, we were like "What to engrave on our rings huh?"

My suggestions were as follows:

Ah pong *heart* Ah mi & vice versa (too cheesy)
From this moment [ROM date] (don't know if date will change again or not)
I swear, by the moon and the stars in the sky... (infringe copyright law)
If found, please return to [our mailing address] (~~got boxed by ah mi~~ not appropriate)

So none of my suggestions worked. However, I happened to chance onto some potential ones online :D

OMG! Can't believe you wanna marry me!

Haven't reach that stage leh...*blush* so cannot lah.. *blush blush*

Promoting harmony for couples

Too late to regret le hor!

Feels just like a branding on a cow

Yeah, why did you take it off huh? Huh? Huh?

I think I like this.. :D

And so, the quest for our inscription carries on, ~~although I really like the one above~~ and we will not rest til we think of THE inscription for our rings! *Cue Lord of the Rings music*

Horror of All Horrors!

2008-10-03T22:59:00.004+08:00

Just when we thought we had it all under control, finalising our vendors for our big day a year or so in advance, so that we could spend the 1 year leading up to our wedding planning the little details without feeling too much of the heat. We had just come up with a time-line of the tasks we will need to carry out and complete from now till the month of our wedding, and were just going to pat ourselves on our backs for starting the planning well ahead of time when...

...horror of all horrors...we stumbled upon the provisional schedule of the F1 Singapore Grand Prix 2009. Yes, it states that the final race day for next year may be taking place on our big day itself, making it an even bigger day? *bitter laugh*

With our wedding reception being held at the hotel that will just be a stone's throw from the race track, we panicked. Several alternatives sprung into our minds over the past few days:

- Have a lunch reception instead
- Start the dinner early
- Arrange for shuttle buses for our guests
- Postpone the wedding

Pete emailed the Banquet Manager with questions on the hotel's contingency plans, and we will be arranging to meet next week to discuss further on this matter before we decide what should be done.

One of the reasons we chose the hotel for our reception was the convenience and location, as it is situated just above City Hall station. Looks like this may turn out to be a major inconvenience instead. Ironic, isn't it? *bitter laugh*

We thought we could save ourselves from more stress by planning early. Once again, it's turning out to be an irony. *bitter laugh*

I guess the hard part too is not knowing if we should make any changes at the moment, as it is still a provisional schedule after all. The confirmed schedule should be out by the end of this year, or the start of next year. I suppose we will see what the Banquet Manager has to say when we meet up with her next week.

Meanwhile, ... *fingers crossed* ... that everything will turn out ok.

Yet another weekend

2008-09-25T22:02:00.006+08:00

Last weekend was yet another weekend for us.. feeling a bit lazy to blog ~~(the lesser i write, the lesser ah mi can correct my engrish)~~, so I guess I will just upload some photos.. :P

My cousin's birthday cake which I disfigured (upper left corner)

Yandao Birthday boy and us

My crazy cousins

And that's a wrap!

Actually the weekend was quite eventful with more photos, so lets see if I am able to do a backlog in a few days time and upload more photos. Til then, see ya~

Bit By Bit...

2008-09-19T15:15:00.003+08:00

Having been involved in my cousin Sharon's wedding last Sunday, and seeing her bustle through it, and witnessing some of the tension, it was a wake-up call for myself to start preparing time-lines and be well organised and prepared for our big day next September. This is just to minimise headaches and tension as much as possible, because we know there will be much of it nearer the big day. Oh hack, it's actually already starting, the conflicts with parents and all...

With that, Pete and I made a decision this week with regards to our wedding videographer, the last of our major vendor decisions. We did not plan for one at first, but decided to go ahead with it, and signed up with Forest Productions yesterday.

So now,

Videographer - checked
Church Wedding - Still in negotiations

So, bit by bit, we are trying to get the major decisions made, so that we can inch our way through the details leading up to our big day. Hopefully, we will have a tedious, but fun process :)

Reviewing reviews

2008-09-02T09:01:00.009+08:00

First and foremost, I have to say I have nothing against the iPhone. It is really an excellent phone and I would love to have it if given the chance.

However, you really admit that it is the most over hyped device EVER!! Nowadays, whenever I read about any phone reviews or articles, the iPhone always pops up, one way or the other. It is even worse when the phone being reviewed is a touch screen phone (like mine), the reviewed phone is always scrutinized as the "iPhone killer wannabe", then criticized badly as to why it cannot be the "iPhone killer".

While I admit that iPhone is a great phone, I don't understand why reviewers keep putting down other phones to put the iPhone on the pedestal. And most of time (actually all of the time), the phones are not even running the same OS as the iPhone. So why compare an apple and an orange when they are of two totally different categories.

Anyway, if this trend carries on, we should be seeing reviews like this:

============================================
Bugis Street Chicken Rice

This chicken rice stall have been around for at least 20 years, and the recipe has been passed down from father to son, where young Mr Lee has taken over the stall for 5 years now.

While the chicken is tender and smooth, it is not quite as smooth as the interface of the iPhone. The look and feel of the chicken rice layout is not as comprehensive as the iPhone icons, and in my opinion, this iPhone killer wannabe loses out to the Cupertino jewel by miles.

Trust me, if you really need to get something now, get the iPhone, you definitely won't regret it. It is much better than the Bugis Street Chicken Rice and a lot more value for money!

Rating: Chicken rice - 3 stars out of 5
iPhone - 7 stars out of 5 !!!

============================================

I admit, it is a little exaggerated la, but this is really the trend now. Reviewers comparing everything to the iPhone just to jump on the current hype. ~~*Hey mum, look! My review mentioned iPhone!*~~ I feel very disgusted when I read this kind of articles.

Please don't get me wrong when you read this, I am not bashing the iPhone. I'm just bashing the reviews and articles that, for no apparent reasons, compare it with the iPhone and end up bashing the product that the article or review is highlighting. It then becomes another iPhone worshipping piece of article.

I think we have enough iPhone articles already, so please lay off the iPhone comparisons before we all OD on it. If we want to read about iPhone, we will go read the articles that ARE ABOUT the iPhone ourselves. No need to shove it in our face every time we read a product review.

Offending articles:
HTC Diamond impressions
Omnia not going to kill ianything
HTC Touch hands on
And finally the review from Today which I wrote about

Now to appease my anger, please send me an iPhone so I can write a review on it. ;P

Something to demotivate you

2008-08-29T17:31:00.011+08:00

Hello people, here's something to "motivate" you all. Read on a Monday morning for best effect. ;)

Dedicated to the recent Olympians. There are more losers than winners out there. :)

Why finish work now when you can leave it for tomorrow?

At least be a gracious loser. :P

The top dog may not be the happiest, and the bottom of the food chain may not be unpleasant.

*Reserved for Monday mornings* SIANNNNNNN

Ooops.....

It doesn't mean you are well liked too...

Which is what I'm not doing in office right now...

Happens alot in my line of work...

Perfect description to my job scope :P

I am feeling cranky

2008-08-28T09:34:00.002+08:00

Hmmm.. I think I am feeling quite cranky these days. If I am a girl, I would think that I'm PMSing. ~~(aka stay away! I bite! ROAR!!!)~~ Why do I say I'm cranky? Well, this is the 2nd complaint letter that I have written in a matter of 2 months, and usually, I am quite amicable (I really am! *blink blink*)

This time round, the complaint is to SBS for the ~~sucky~~ bad service. Since we are paying more, I would expect expect at least the level of service to be maintained bah, but noooo, SBS wants to cut costs by making sure that each of the bus are tightly packed. Anyway, here's my rant below:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing in to inform you of a trend that i have noticed lately. For the bus service 97, I have noticed that SBS have been gradually switching the double decker bus service to single deck bus service during morning and evening peak hours.

The change from double decker buses to single deck buses during peak hours have caused many commuters to be unable to board the bus. I have personally experienced numerous encounters where I was unable to board the bus during evening peak hours, and ended up having to wait almost an hour for a bus that is not packed.

I would like to know if this change is due to rising operation costs, or simply due to human error.

Please address this issue as soon as possible. Thank you.

Once again... ROAR!!!

Down with cold

2008-08-24T11:07:00.002+08:00

Hi guys, have been down with flu, so kind of have no mood to blog. Everyday is nothing but blocked nose, sore throat and sneezing fits.

Now you know what I'm going through.. :P

Long Weekend!

2008-08-19T21:30:00.007+08:00

It was a long weekend for me last week.

Friday

I took my off in lieu for National Day on Friday, and went on a shopping spree. Taking a day off on a work day to shop was something that I had been looking forward to for months. So finally, I did it!

I started off the day with Macdonald's breakfast before hitting town, and Pete surprised me by dropping by to join me for the breakfast before going to work. A sausage mcmuffin and tea cost only $2 on a weekday. The first good buy for the day!

After getting my brows trimmed when I reached town, I started my expedition of Orchard with Far East Plaza. Spent more than 2 hours in there, and my lower back was aching by the time I stepped out. Sigh...I guess I am a part of this country's aging population, and as "lao lang" as Pete is :P

Not forgetting I had a mission to buy a white dress for my cousin's upcoming wedding, I pressed on. By 7pm, the total damage was $350, which I think was not too bad for a full day shopping trip! I was not able to go beyond Ngee Ann City, even if I was not meeting Pete for dinner. My back was almost breaking, and my legs were aching too. Just a few years back, I was able to shop in Bangkok from 11am to 11pm. I think age has really caught up...hmmm...or...I just need more exercise!

Met up with Pete after for our favourite ramen at Marina Square *slurp*

Saturday

We spent a good part of the day at our new home. It's been 2 weeks since we were there, and the floor was all dusty and grainy again. We mopped the floors, as well as washed the toilet in the master bedroom. The mattress that we ordered for our spare room was also delivered today.

We decided to try one of the restaurants along the mini Japan street at the basement of Jurong Point for dinner. It was rather scrumptious *burp*

Japanese Seafood Pizza

Chicken on garlic bread with lotsa beansprouts

A really small but nice Chawamushi cooked in onion

Before tucking in...

Sunday

We visited Funan for another addition to our new home. We went home with a HP printer-scanner-copier, something we will need when we are preparing our wedding montage for next year. We plan to start early. We shall see... :D

Manga Us

2008-08-19T21:11:00.008+08:00

Check out our manga faces!

Pete

Manga Pete

Me

Manga me

Any resemblance? Ha ha! I think Pete's manga looks just like him...

Pete: In case you are interested, you can make your own here~ :D

Duh post

2008-08-08T14:21:00.005+08:00

I know this is very duh... but I'm going to do it anyway. :P

Check the price before you order!!

We Went to the Zoo...Zoo...Zoo...

2008-08-06T20:40:00.022+08:00

David, Toon, Johnny, Sally and us went to the Zoo last Saturday, thanks to Toon's corporate passes. It was a hot day, and I made sure I carried my umbrella along (which became a regular feature in the photos :P) It was my third trip to the zoo for the third consecutive year, thus, there were not many changes in the zoo for me. In fact, algae was still seen on the fur of the polar bears, just like before when I saw them about two years ago!

Some pics to share:

Group pic, and the first sighting of that brolly

With Mr Kangaroo - Eh, so where is the real thing? You were at the zoo right?

Spot the polar bear

Zebra - Beautiful stripes indeed!

K for..... ka chng!

Oh look, look! It's a giraffe.....dustbin.....

Ermm...I think David was aiming for the giraffe's...ka chng?

Tricked into smooching poses

Gotcha!

Rest stop

Who's that lovely lad(y) with the brolly...

Let me shelter you from the sweltering heat

Snapping turtle?

Turn around and strike a pose~

The cutest bear of them all

Ship me to the land Down Under, but the brolly is coming with me

Another one for the album

The day ended with dinner and desserts at Causeway Point. We had dinner at Breeks Cafe, and then headed to Swensen's for ice-cream. I was craving for the sticky chewy chocolate ice-cream for the longest time. It was a good end to a lovely day.

Baby Jonah

2008-08-04T23:10:00.004+08:00

Baby Jonah came into this world last Sunday to Dad Howard and Mom Karen.

Pete and I paid them a visit last week:

Baby Jonah

Boo hoo hoo!

Baby Jonah seems like an active baby when we were there. He has big eyes, and has also inherited his daddy's long limbs. He's a sweetie...Congratulations, Howard and Karen!

A day of cleaning

2008-07-21T20:36:00.004+08:00

Last Saturday, Ah Mi and I set out to give our new home a good wash up. We visited Ikea to grab some lunch and some furnishings, a table and a lamp.

After that, we lugged our purchase to our new home, before going to the nearby Sheng Siong to get some cleaning gear and dinner. And by the time we were back with our cleaning gear, it was too late to do any work, so we called it a night.

Next morning, we woke up ~~bright and early~~ in the afternoon, and went over to our apartment to start work. Our plan was to clean up all 3 bed rooms and the common toilet. We figured that we shouldn't be over ambitious as I was still recovering from the aches and pains from my paintball game last Thursday.

In the end, we ended up cleaning the 3 bedrooms, completely cleaned the whole common toilet, scrubbed the kitchen floor and even mopped up the living room. It was tough, but we managed to get it done. :-)

And now, let the aches come...

So this is journalism huh?

2008-07-18T20:03:00.003+08:00

Last Friday, I came across this product review in the Today's paper on my newly acquired ~~toy~~ phone, the Samsung Omnia, and I was quite angry at what was published on the paper. To those who are free enough to read, here is the review.

Basically, what it is saying is that, the phone sucks, and cannot be compared to the Apple iPhone. Normally, I'm quite fine with criticism to products, but having used this product for 2 weeks, I can't help but feel injustice done to this phone. Sure it has its flaws, but it's not as bad as the reviewer made it out to be. Moreover, the reviewer had a preference to the iPhone (oh trust me, you can tell if you read the review), and her description of the flaws of the phone was way off. Then it occurred to me that the reviewer had not really tried to explore the phone thoroughly, or she was those people who will simply condemn things that she cannot grasp. Anyway, whichever it is, this is no way to write a review (but please don't ask me to write one) , hence I decided to send an email to this technology editor to see what she have to say about what I feel.

The email I sent is as follows (Warning: long boring text ahead):

Dear Ariel,

Regarding the mentioned article, I would like to point out a couple of things.

Giving a product review is supposed to be unbiased and neutral. From your title as a online and technology editor, I would imagine that you should have knowledge that being a journalist, you should not put your personal likings in the article itself and affect the reader. Readers read reviews to find out how good or bad a product is, and sometimes use it to determine whether or not they should purchase the product. I find your review is totally useless in this aspect.

Right at the start of the article, I already came across the line "This 16GB touchscreen phone is a beauty, but alas, it's still no iPhone", giving me the impression that you might already prefer the iphone over the reviewed product.

Secondly, if you wish to compare products, please do so in a correct manner. Compare a Windows Mobile phone with a Windows Mobile phone, not a phone running Mac OS. Even if you want to compare different OS, how come you are not comparing phones running Symbian or Linux, or even the up and coming Android?

Thirdly, I am suspecting whether you have used the phone long enough to publish a review on it? There are certain pieces of information from the article that seems to suggest that you have not really used the phone for long. Information like the motion sensing accelerometer sensitivity, and the battery life is so inaccurate, that it leads me to believe that either you did not properly try out the phone for a few days to know the functionalities and features, or simply you have no idea how to operate a Windows Mobile based phone.

As you may suspect, I am a current user of the SGH i900 Omnia, but I am definitely not biased towards it. It has its faults and flaws, but I certainly don't think that it is as worthless as you make it out to be. In short, I feel that this article to be extremely biased and should not have been published. I am very disappointed by the level of journalism project by the Today paper, as the article sounds like a well written piece from Apple fanboy bashing up a rival product.

Please review this article again and let me know if I have wrongly interpreted your intentions.

Best regards,
Peter

I spent some time reviewing this email that I wrote, making sure that I sound civil while being able to send my point across, before sending it out. I was quite eager to see if I would get a reply from the editor, and sure enough, I got an ~~automated~~ reply from her that made me go "Huh?! What the.."

Reply:

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your feedback.

Would you like to give a line or two on what most impressed you about the Omnia? We're collating some feedback from users to be potentially published on the paper. Please also state your full name, age and designation.

Thank you.

I was thinking if this an actual response? Did she read my email at all? Was she thinking "Aiyah, another si gi na think he knows something about journalism that I don't know again ah."? In any case, since she wanted a line or two, then I give her a line or two loh.

My response:

Hi Ariel, I feel that Omnia is a device with many well integrated functionalities, with an attractive industrial design. While it is definitely not perfect, it is not as bad as you made it out to be in your review last Friday. In comparison, the iPhone is not without its own flaws too. In summary, I just want to say that if you have spent more time using the phone, you would have found out that it is quite a handy phone to have. There is no single "wow" factor for Omnia, hence I am unable to give you a line or two as to what is it about Omnia that impresses me the most. It is the combination and integration of everything in Omnia, hardware and software, that makes it a good phone. I would rather have a device with well rounded functionalities than a device that is very strong in aspect, but weak in others. That's all I have to say. If you are interested in publishing what I have to say about the phone, I'm a software engineer in my late twenties.

If my reply to her sounded pissed, that might be due to the fact the I AM pissed loh. Anyway, I wrote this expecting her not to publish anything from me, but I was wrong. On the way to work, I got a sms from my colleague that I was on the papers. I was thinking, "Ho ho ho.. What will she be writing about me? Geek Thinks He Knows Journalism? or Ignorant Bum Can Write!"

So I made my way to the office, and grabbed a copy of today's Today (pun intended :P) paper and read the article where I'm supposed to be on. Here is the article.

Anyway, this made me have a clearer understanding on how journalism work. When faced with questions to your article, just ignore the questions posed at you and get the reader who questioned you to "give a line or two to be potentially published on the paper", and get your colleague to publish a new article, totally unrelated to the previous one to try to "rectify" the first article, and Wa La! Problem solved.

And that, my friends, is journalism! :) Pete out.

Summer's Birthday Party

2008-07-13T22:30:00.012+08:00

Today, Pete and I made our way to Earth Cafe, a pet cafe along Upper Thomson Road, for Summer's 1st birthday party.

Our birthday gift to Summer - a bottle of S.E.P (Stop Eating Poop) powder & a new duckie toy

Have not seen Jinglin for quite some time, and it was good to see her again :) We had a nice lunch at the cafe, made nicer with the company of Summer, the birthday girl of course, and 2 other dogs, Ah Bee and Cola. Summer has gotten bigger since the last time we saw her. Some pics to share...

Jinglin & me

Summer, the birthday gal with Pete

With Ah Bee, the possessive cocker spaniel, who barks when his owner gets friendly with Summer :)

With Cola, the gentle border collie

Food prepared for the 3 doggies

Summer's birthday cake - Summer devoured it, Ah Bee was fed piece by piece, Cola licked off the cream like a lady

Summer & us

It was an enjoyable lunch with the dogs :) After lunch, Pete and I went to town and had afternoon tea of Hilton's delicious cheesecake.

Another great weekend...

Shucks, Monday is beckoning again..

Thursday Nite Vivo!

2008-07-13T20:58:00.007+08:00

Met up with Cindy over dinner on Thursday night. We tried out this little French place at VivoCity. We ordered a quiche each and shared a tiramisu. Verdict: Quiche was too salty, tiramisu was so-so, although there are reviews about the latter being good.

After dinner, we were about to make our way to the supermarket when we noticed a crowd surrounding the escalators leading to the cinema. Not knowing what was going on, we actually hung around and waited. During the process, we saw a few Mediacorp artistes such as Zoe Tay (and husband), Felicia Chin, Pan Lingling, Qi Yuwu and a few others. We suspected that it was the gala premiere of the new movie, Red Cliff, and thought maybe we should hang around longer just in case the BIG celebrities turn up. And lo and behold, Lin Chiling came walking in first (after some time). But I think I was more excited when John Woo, the director himself turned up. Never expected to see a big-name director in person! Cindy managed to snap a few pictures, but alas, the side profile of John Woo was the best we could get of him.

Not bad for a Thursday night...

Lin Chiling

Tada! The side profile of... John Woo

Finally...Checked

2008-07-13T20:49:00.002+08:00

Finally...

Actual Day Wedding Photography - Checked!

Behind the smiles

2008-07-09T20:03:00.003+08:00

You know, last time when I read about how people lament about how stressful and difficult it is to plan their wedding, I would always think to myself; With proper planning and management skills, this shouldn't be a problem.

So from the day that I proposed to ah mi, I dedicated myself to plan a wedding that will be stress free, smooth and happy to the participants. I threw in all my project management skills into it, spreadsheets, task lists, target tracking documents were drafted, milestones were planned and scheduled and action items were tasked. In my mind, nothing should go wrong, but even the best laid plans will backfire.

In the past few blogs, we announced many items accomplished, even the mother of all difficulties, the flat, was settled. You guys must be thinking, hey, its really going quite smoothly leh. Well, it's not. We are having lots of problems, and they can be summarized using one word: Parents.

People who have gone through this will know what I am talking about.

We want this, parents say cannot.

We say we don't want to do something, parents also say cannot.

When parents say they want something, we cannot say cannot.

Parents say "Up to you two to plan lah", but it's written on the fine print that you cannot do this that this that, and you have to do this that this that.

In short, this is the gist of what we are facing now. On one hand, I would like to satisfy our parents requirements, but I would also want to have a wedding that we enjoy too. As of now, I cannot really say that I'm enjoying the process of planning the biggest day of our lives. There were a couple of times where I'm really tempted to ask my parents that who is the one getting married, but I chose to swallow it instead. *Explodes* It's really not easy to satisfy others. Sigh..

Hence now, I'm in a silent mode at home, where I choose to keep my trap shut, rather than risking to say anything inappropriate. And since I cannot talk at home, I choose to rant here. Wahahaha.. So to those who already went through this, now I understand. To those who will be going to go through this process in the future, read up and prepare yourself. :P

Pete out.

Welcome!

2008-07-07T21:06:00.011+08:00

"Tock tock tock, ding ding ding..." That was the tune being played yesterday as we visited our new home for the first time. The tune was created by knocking screwdrivers against the floor tiles as we checked for hollow tiles and other defects in them. We brought along our very first furniture for our nest (2 Ikea stools) for the job.

Welcome to our home :)

Pete at front door

The 2 pioneers of the living room

The long living room

Living room leading to bedrooms

Kitchen

Kitchen toilet

One of the bedrooms

Our 1st purchases for the nest

Keys to our future

2008-07-02T21:48:00.003+08:00

Hello all!

Been really busy for the past few weeks so we did not have time to update the blog. Not that I'm very free now, but I think I should update on the "milestonic" events that happened.

Last Friday, ah mi and I took a day off to go do something very important for our future. We went down to Toa Payoh, signed a bunch of papers and got..... this!

All 30 of them. :) We finally got our house keys! Although our place won't be renovated for another half a year or so (for superstitious and rational reasons), we are still very excited to get the keys. However, we did not go and see our apartment just yet, and will only be going this Sunday morning (now this is due to superstition :P).

So having got the keys, but cannot open the door, what can we do but to go Ikea and fantasize how our place is going to be like next time. We got 2 stools, one pink and the other baby blue, for our home.

Today, we also just got news that the HDB officer in charge of our block approved the deferment of the submission of marriage cert for the flat. Yay! As we are deferring it for 1 year plus, we were not sure if it can be approved or not. So lucky us, ya? ;)

On other news, I decided pamper myself, and got myself a Omnia! It's a really cool toy.. Heee.. Hopefully, I will take more pics with it in the future and post it here. Well, that's all I have to say for now. More pics to come after Sunday.

No worries and cheers, Pete out.

The Big Day

2008-06-22T16:35:00.003+08:00

After a few weeks of trying to select a suitable wedding date through the services of a geomancer, and trying to find a banquet venue that can cater to our given dates, capacity, and of course, budget (although we may have spilled over on this for our final venue decision :S), we have finally confirmed our wedding date to be 27 September 2009 :)

Wedding Date - Checked
Banquet Venue - Checked

As we progress through our checklist, it should get easier, isn't it? Not the case, what with budgets and renovations for our new home to think about next, Pete is crunching numbers every waking minute, and maybe not just waking...And to add to the list, a new item has appeared in our checklist, which we never thought of including it in before, but the time has arrived for us to seriously ponder over it, and make a decision, so that we can continue with our planning. We still harbour hope of removing it from the list. Remains to be seen...

Church Wedding - Undecided

Happy Birthday, David!

2008-06-15T17:21:00.014+08:00

It was David's birthday on 14th June, and we had a great time executing a well-planned surprise party for him for his 29th birthday.

The plan was as follows:

A room was booked at Fairmont Hotel, and Toon will divert David's attention by getting him to accompany him to the PC Fair, while the rest of us (Johnny, Sally, Lloyd, Pete and myself) will get the room ready for the surprise.

Pete & Sally hanging up the birthday banner

Johnny & Pete hard at work with the balloons

Trying our best to fill the room with balloons

The homemade cake for the birthday boy

Sesame Street tattoos for the party gang

Spot the tattoos - Beware: Humps Ahead

A little fun before the surprise

A group party workers shot

Before the birthday boy arrived, we each took our positions at the balcony, behind the curtains, and inside the closet, and turned off all the lights. David was stunned when he came into the room with Toon, turned on the lights, and saw the cake and balloons. He actually thought they walked into the wrong room haha! After jumping out from our various hiding positions, and shouting "Surprise", we presented both David and Toon a box of specially selected chocolates (as it was Toon's birthday a few days before). We settled down to some drinks and the birthday cake thereafter...

Just had to get these Strawberry Shortcake party cups and plates

We headed to Party World for a KTV session after the surprise party, and had a great time with the singing.

It was an enjoyable night, we should do it again!

We got something to announce...

2008-06-13T21:34:00.009+08:00

I'm sure most of our friends should know the news already, but in case we accidentally missed anyone out, or we forgot anybody.... We got a flat!!!

Looks like luck is on our side after all. :) Actually, at the time of a previous post, we have given up all hope of getting a new flat already. After all, we got 1190/490, who would have expected that we would actually stand a chance of getting a new flat.

So after getting the ballot results, we dedicated all our efforts into looking for a resale flat and totally put the new flats out of our minds. So we searched high and low and talked to 2 housing agents regarding the flat, with no results. Then one day, I had itchy hands and went into the HDB site to see how the sales were going. Very surprisingly, we actually stood a chance, as the take up rate was slowing down due to the fact that only the Jurong West flats were left.

By the way, that was 3 weeks before our appointment with HDB. I did some simple maths and realised that if the rate did not change, we actually stood quite a good chance! So I told ah mi about it and our focus was back on new flats. I monitored the website everyday, refreshing at least 3 times an hour, for 3 weeks! It was torturing to see the number of remaining flats drop after every refresh.

Our expectations were initially 5th floor and above. After a few days, we were like 4th floor also get. On the week before our appointment, it became "Please give us a 3rd floor!!" and on the day before, we were like "So which of the 2nd floor unit do you think we should get". It is surprising how expectations of people can keep dropping like this. And we were not the only one, as I observed similar behaviour on the SingaporeBrides forum. Unfortunately for them, they did not get it.

I do not expect people to understand our plight, and the reason why we even want a 2nd floor unit. To this, I can only say, you will understand when you get there. :) Anyway, it's not really desperate/impulse buy, we did recce the area, and we actually got quite a nice quiet corner for our 2nd floor 5-room premium unit. We love it (actually, ah mi does not really know where the unit is yet :P).

So boys and girls, with this, we announce, we have a new flat! It will be our home and we will welcome you to visit. (provided we know you lah)

A Big "Phew"

2008-06-02T22:22:00.003+08:00

Pete and I can get something really heavy off our minds now. We have been worrying about this day since we decided we wanted to spend our lives with each other.

We had our parents meet for the first time over lunch yesterday at Crystal Jade at Great World City, and it ended with...no casualties!!! Not that we were expecting a cat fight between them, or even anything out of "Meet The Fockers", but there will always be that thought going on in my mind: "What if his parents think that my folks are weird?"

Fortunately for all, the lunch went ok, with our dads doing all the talking, from politics to the recent natural disasters. After a heavy lunch that burnt a hole in Pete's pocket, and a "we leave it to the youngsters to settle, as long as they are happy" with regards to our wedding, we can continue with a peace of mind with the wedding preparations. At this point in time, we are still lost counting and deciding on the number of tables for the banquet. Hopefully in a month or so, we would have booked ourselves a banquet venue.

We "rewarded" ourselves with the Sex and the City movie after the lunch. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly, and I must say it's been a long time since I enjoyed one so much :)

Okay, so far:

Wedding Bands - Checked
Bridal Studio - Checked
Pre-Wedding Photography - Checked
Research on Actual Day Photography - In the midst
Research on Banquet Venue - In the midst
Research on.......Zzzzz....

Gosh, wedding prep.....Zzzzz....

I'm turning in...nitez!

Slipped disc update

2008-05-23T17:16:00.002+08:00

Oh yah, I think I haven't posted this here yet, but my slipped disc just earned me a C9L2 PES status!

Wooo hoooo! No more IPPT! And possibly no more ICT (no combat duties anyway) :-) Time to get fat... :-(

Pete out

Planning episode 1

2008-05-20T21:29:00.004+08:00

Hello all, long time no see.. Lately really quite "bo eng" ah.. plus the bloody hot weather, I did not really feel like updating the blog. Tonight also quite hot, but I just want to keep the blog going so here I am. :)

Let's see, since our last post, Ah Mi and I have done quite some planning for the special (don't know when yet) day next year. We have selected and bought our wedding bands, shopped around and signed up with a bridal studio, talked to and hassled an agent for our flat, and set a date for our parents to meet. It is really not easy to plan and prepare for the wedding. Ah mi is up to her nose in wedding magazines, while I do the financial planning until I blur already.

Oh yeah, we decided that I'll be the financial controller as ah mi feels that she totally cannot handle financial stuff. Actually, I'm not too good at it myself, but I will try bah. So far, the estimate is at 80++K for nearly everything.. sigh.. Why is the number so big? Anyway, I still think that it is achievable (fingers crossed) so no more extravagant spending for the time being bah.

Right now, the most headache things on our mind are 3 things, the parents meeting scheduled at the end of the month, number of tables for the wedding dinner and the church wedding that my dad is constantly asking me about. Of course, money is also an issue that we are having headache with, but that one goes without saying, so no need to say loh. :P

Anyway, planning is still very much in progress and our heads are still very much aching. Will try to update as and when I can, so meanwhile, you can beg ah mi to blog about the fruits of her research and post some pretty pictures here.

Pete over and out.

Meeting up a long lost Korean friend

2008-05-09T09:17:00.006+08:00

Last night, Ah mi and I went to meet SungHwa, a Korean friend of mine, whom I have not seen in almost 3 years. He was last in Singapore in 2005, and I did not get the chance to see him when I was in Korea.

He just got married and went to Bali for his honeymoon, and made a 8 hour transit in Singapore just so that we can meet up. His flight landed in Singapore at around 330, but I did not receive any calls from him. I tried calling his Korean number, but all I got was a KTF operator babbling in Korean. By 6, I was getting a bit anxious as there was no way that I can contact him.

Finally, he called me at 630 from Fullerton, and I was rushing to lion head fish statue (Merlion) to meet SungHwa and his wife. By the time I reached there, I was sweating like nobody's business already. (Ah mi later informed me sweetly that I stinked :P) I could recognize him from far, and he hasn't changed a bit! Still the same old SungHwa that I remembered. His wife, Ji Heun, (or something like that) was very pretty, and had typically Korean nice complexion, and could speak Chinese!

After meeting up, we walked back to Durian building (Esplanade) and made our way to Raffles City where we were meeting Ah Mi. As we walked, we chatted a bit, as we had not met for almost 3 years, I thought that there was a lack of topics, and there were some moments of awkward silences too. After walking a bit around Raffles City, Ah Mi came and we were on our way to East Coast park for the dinner. On the way, Ah Mi and Ji Heun conversed in rather fluent Chinese, which I was rather impressed. (for the both of them :P)

There were quite a number of seafood restaurants there, and we chose Long Beach... for no apparent reason. It was my first time eating there anyway. Before dinner, we had a little gift exchange, I gave them 2 "bowls" of Pu Er tea, and an ang pow as a blessing to their marriage, and he got us Sg Wannabe CDs! We had drunken prawns, fried salad you tiao, sambal kang kong and of course chili crab with fried buns. Food was good and Sunghwa actually sneaked downstairs to settle the bill without us knowing. I feel a bit bad as we were supposed to be the host and they were the guests.

When we were almost finished with dinner, Made (my ex-colleague) joined us after he concluded his business at home. It's been almost 3 years since I saw him too. It was great catching up again, although before long, we were talking about work again. Geeks.. what to do? :D

We proceeded to the airport for some coffee after that and settled down to chat a bit. It was nice having old friends visiting and doing some catching up. We told them that Ah Mi and I will most probably go to Korea for our honeymoon, and they were quite enthusiastic to play host when we go. Looks like we will be well taken of when we go over. :) Finally, it was time to go and after taking a group photo at Ya Kun, we said our goodbyes and they went inside the gate.

It was really great having them here in Singapore, as they are really nice and fun people. Can't wait to see them again.

Denied!

2008-04-21T16:58:00.004+08:00

Today, the result of our final HDB ballot came out, and it was a whopping 4 digit queue number. Not that we expect some 2 digit number or what, but it's still quite discouraging to us.

Before the result was out, I learnt of a trick from some forumers (yes I read singaporebrides forums) that if you check the source of the page containing your flat application, you can see the appointment date allocated to you. So I did that trick, and saw that we were actually allocated a date! 10th June 9:45 AM!! We were never allocated a date, ever!

So, to tell the truth, my hopes were a bit up, thinking that we might get a new flat after all. When the result was officially out at 2 pm, I logged on and checked the result, only to find a big big number staring back at me, 1190. Naturally, I was sian, but like I said, it was kind of expected already. Like rubbing salt to my wound, my Chinese national colleague who already owned a flat in Sengkang, came to me to ask what number did I get. I was a bit puzzled at first, then realised that he applied for this balloting exercise too. I told him my number, and he was like "wah, so big? I got 652 leh" Inside I was like -.-; "wtf" but outside i needed to :-D "really? wow!"

Sigh.. I don't really know how the system works, and I don't really care anymore. I just want to say to our "Gahmen" that don't blame the people for marrying late or low birthrate if we have to lucky draw for our flat.

Application to HDB for permission to get married...... DENIED!

Snippets from the marriage convention

2008-04-17T20:57:00.006+08:00

Hello all!

I think my past few entries have been ranting entries so I have decided to write about something more constructive bah. Ah mi and I attended a marriage convention a couple of weeks ago and I think I'll share what we have learnt there at the seminar for any courting, marrying or married couples bah. Single people can learn some stuff too! Wahahaha! The following are the notes I took down during the seminar. :)

So here it goes:

Tips for maintaining a good married relationship - G.I.F.T

G - Get in the game

I - Invest in a great sex life

F - Figure it out, decision making together

T - Tough on yourself, Tender on each other

So for "G" point, if I remember correctly, it means that you have to drill it in your head that you are in a serious relationship already. So it's time to behave and act in a responsible manner, taking into consideration not only yourself, but also your partner in every action that you take. I guess the "F" point means similar thing.

As for the "I" point, I don't know yet leh.. *blush* any experienced couples out there please let me know, okay? :)

And finally "T". This is a point where I think it's very important. Most of the time, when things go wrong, people have a tendency to blame someone for it. For couples, that someone is usually the partner. This is quite a bad thing to do as it really damages a relationship. So like what the speakers at the marriage convention said, be tough on yourself! However this have to be both ways, of course, if not one side will "kena" bullied until quite bad one leh.

Let me see ah.. next up in my notes is the phrase "Emotion follows decision - money = bad" *scratch head* I can't really remember what exactly the speakers said, but I think it'd got something to do with couples getting very emotional about decisions related to money. The Chinese has a saying 钱不是万能的，但是没钱是万万不能的. Which is quite true to some extent, and money does have a way of hurting relationships most of the time. So I guess it's trying to tell us to cool it when it comes to money. While money is important, it definitely is not more important than the relationship, right?

A graph is next, but please don't expect me to draw a graph here hor.. my art get very high marks one, D7, so I don't want to "wow" you all too much with my drawing here. :P I shall just describe the graph in words bah. This is a graph of marital satifaction against life stages, and it is most definitely not a straight line (more like the lines on a Richter scale when a 7.0 earthquake hits).

At the first stage, wedding, the satisfaction level is still relatively high, due to the excitement of the wedding and all. Then it slowly drops as the excitement of the wedding and a new life settles in, couples having their first fights and all.
Next stage will be the birth of the first child. The freedom of the couple is suddenly lost. The husband suddenly has to fight for the attention of the wife now. So from this stage on, the gradient is going down even steeper.
A major upheaval follows when the child enters school, a lot of divorces, remarriages happen during this period. Couples are advised to have someone whom they can talk to and have advice from, sort of a mentor couple.
If they survive this rough period, things will... continue to go down. :S this is due to mid life crisis of the wife. At this stage, they will be wondering what is their purpose in life. Husbands, please don't reply with :"Cooking, cleaning up and doing laundry loh!" That's like the worst possible answer to give.
Next stage is another big earthquake as it will reach the mid life crisis of the husband, menopause for the wife and the teenage years of the kid. I would say this is the lowest point of the entire marriage so prepare for it bah.
However, if you survive this second earthquake, there will be good times ahead, as the children will start having their own lives, giving the couple more private space for each other. :D The graph will start going up at this point (finally.. phew!).
Finally, after reaching the peak of the graph sometime after the big shakeup, the slope goes down again due to old age, and the sorrow of losing your partner.

And that my friends, is the graph of our lives ahead. Looking at the actual graph and summarising, I would say that from the point that a couple gets married, the marital satisfaction will keep going down until the couple reaches their 50s, even 60s before starting to go up again. Sounds scary, isn't it? Marriage is not a bed of roses, that's for sure.

Anyway there are a lot more materials from the seminar that have not been covered yet, but I don't think i have the ability to sit here and type for so long also. So I guess I shall stop here bah. Let me leave a quote that I have read somewhere regarding marriage bah.

"Do not marry someone whom you can live with, marry someone whom you cannot live without"

Cheers,
Pete

P.S. Sorry for the Lor Sor entry hor :P

Hitting the Big '3'

2008-04-16T21:53:00.007+08:00

Turned 30 last Monday, but celebrations started the Monday before with Cindy and Gen with dinner at Sakae Sushi. The day before my birthday, my family and Pete celebrated with a buffet lunch at Plaza Market Cafe at Swissotel The Stamford. Food was not bad, but could not eat much...as usual.

There were more dinners with friends and Pete the week of my birthday. Had "Dian Xiao Er", Sakae (again), and Cafe Cartel. Am happy with all my presents, which consist of a special pendant, a collection of Oprah Winfrey DVDs, a Korean drama VCD set that I have wanted to watch for the longest time, a novel, vouchers, a home-made strawberry cheese cake, and not forgetting a surprise delivery of tulips. :D

I feel a little "lost" now that I am actually at the threshold of the 30s. Well, to comfort oneself a little, I shall just think like what my ex-colleague has pointed out: I'm just on the wrong side of 29. Wahahaha! :O

Happy Birthday Ah Mi!!!!

2008-04-07T09:32:00.003+08:00

A very very happy birthday to my dear ah mi!!! To those (minority) people who reads this blog, you know what to do hor! :P

May you be happy as you can be, and may all of your dreams come true! :-)

Marriage Convention

2008-04-01T20:49:00.003+08:00

The weekend passed in a flash again.

Caught up with my reading in between drifting off to sleep on Saturday, while Pete got mobilised to go back to camp. We met up again in the evening, and headed to the club for our weekly swim. Managed to cover only 12 laps this week, but well...it's better than nothing! We headed to Parkway Parade for a late dinner at Central after the swim, and walked around a little before heading home.

We rose and shone bright and early on Sunday morning for breakfast at Swensen's with Pete's brother and his girlfriend. We had bought tickets to attend the Marriage Convention at Suntec together. We attended an English and a Mandarin talk by 2 pairs of husband-and-wife counsellors. They gave several real-life examples, and stressed on the importance of communication, as well as the different communication styles to adopt while dealing with different personalities at the same time. Of course, gender differences were also high-lighted. We thought the talks were insightful, and humourous at some points, making them more interesting as well. Pete and I are considering some of the marriage preparation courses out there, and will most probably sign up for one before we sign on the dotted line to bind ourselves for a lifetime. Wahahaha! Not that we are not sure of each other, but we hope to better prepare ourselves for the different phases in a marriage, and how to cope with them effectively.

We ended the day with dinner at Thai Accent at Vivocity, before relaxing at Corduroy Cafe with my favourite earl grey tea with mint.

It's going to be a short entry, as I dun think I have caught up with my sleep since last week. Although it was not a very productive day at the office today, (major power trip from 10am - 5pm) it was still quite a disastrous day due to the repercussions of the power trip.

Nevertheless, I did some shopping today at Little Match Girl in Tiong Bahru Plaza! Got myself a good buy of 2 dresses of good quality and comfort for $100, and a lifetime membership, and not to mention a free bag worth $49. Woo hoo!

Alrighty, I better head for the shower, and start to prepare for bed. Hope tomorrow brings no surprises in the form of more power trips!

Outta here...

End of Long Weekend

2008-03-27T20:30:00.009+08:00

Finally a chance to update the blog. This week seems to pass fast, and this is the first night this week that I am able to relax a little at home after work. I was waiting for the rain to stop on Monday evening, and ended up staying back in the office to do some work. Was out with Pete on Tuesday night, and Sally, last night. I feel like a zombie today ha ha.

The last day of the long weekend last week was spent at a dog cafe, as well as the museum (again! ha ha ha!) We met up with my colleague, Jinglin aka Jingle Bell aka one of the sian-ers, together with her sisters, brother-in-law, and not forgetting.......Summer, their golden retriever for lunch at Pawtobello Cafe. It is the first time at a dog cafe for Pete and myself, and we enjoyed the experience :) It was nice having your meal with dogs running around, sniffing and rubbing against your legs at the same time.

Summer was a little excited at first, pouncing on almost everyone, and getting very friendly with the other dogs. In the end, she had to be hooked to the canine hitch, and had to stay under the table, while watching the other dogs roam around. Poor Summer *pat pat* But she sure gobbled down fast the crepe that was ordered for her, leaving no crumbs or remnants for the other dogs that came by the table.

Summer says hi

Pete and the Schnauzer which enjoyed being stroked by him

Human food :) Pete's Fish & Chips

My order of Rosemary Chicken

Smile, Summer, smile :)

A pair of beautiful collies

After lunch, Pete and I decided to visit the Asian Civilisation Museum. We walked quite a bit before reaching our destination. I thought it was a little too historic for me...

A picture taken at the Chinese culture area in the Museum

We had dinner at Genki Sushi at Marina Square, before heading back to face the new week the following day.

Next long weekend is in May... :D

Long Weekend...Aahhh....

2008-03-22T21:51:00.004+08:00

I love long weekends, don't we all! This long weekend has been made longer by Pete and I taking leave on Thursday, a day before Good Friday. We ran errands, as well as enjoyed ourselves. The day started with breakfast at Macdonald's. I have been craving for sausage macmuffin for the longest time. Finally sunk my teeth into it on Thursday morning *chomp chomp* :D Pete has decided to become a student and go back to school again, so on Thursday, we made a trip down to NTU to get his certificate stamped and certified, as well as to request for his past transcripts. Felt a little weird to be walking amongst the young ones in the campus hahaha!

We headed down to Suntec City after NTU, and I did a little shopping. I won't really call it shopping though. Bought 2 tops (same top, different colours). I prefer to call it "replenishing basic utility tops". These are tops that are useful and easy to match with the stuff in one's wardrobe ;) On the other hand, shopping is when one purchases items that are a little different, like a new bag, new shoes, a new dress...Wahaha!

Bearing in mind my broken stomach, I had sweet potato soup for lunch, while Pete had a nice lunch of omelette fried rice with cabbage and sausages at the food court. Our next destination was K-Box, the reason why we decided to take leave in the first place: To sing to our hearts' content. And we did just that, spending about 4 hours singing and acting silly (Pete acting silly :P) I remembered the last leave we took was also spent singing. I think this will be a tradition we will try to uphold hahaha! Actually, it's quite an effective way of relieving stress. Dinner for me was soup with carrots, sweet corn and pork ribs. This was my third bowl of soup this week after my major explosion at Hard Rock Cafe last week. I must say, with all the light meals since the explosion, my tummy is so much flatter and I do not feel so bloated. I.....like it! :D

What's great about this weekend is that after Thursday, it's only Friday the next day. I can sleep in on Friday, and what's even greater was waking up to think: it feels like a Sunday, but it's not. It's not even Saturday! Being Good Friday, I attended mass with Pete and his parents. It's quite a wonder that I did not fall asleep at all heee... We went for an evening swim after that, and managed to cover 20 laps. Worked up some appetite, but settled on fish soup and sweet and sour fish with rice at the foodcourt in WestMall instead.

Today (Saturday) was a pure chill-out-at-home day, but...not till we had sausage macmuffin again! I was still craving for it, and Pete and I made a rush for it just on the dot of 11am! Pete brought along his old laptop, for he has decided to donate it to me. Yay! We spent the afternoon watching 2 episodes of the recorded Channel 8 9pm show, as well as surfing around on my new donated laptop. Managed to file our income tax returns, as well as book the tickets to watch Broadway Beng 3. Oh ya, we killed 2 cockroaches as well :S

Pete is out with his friends this evening, as I'm typing away on my new lappie :) Managed to catch up on some reading just now as well. To me, this has been quite a good long weekend. It's Sunday tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to meeting Summer, my colleague's dog tomorrow for lunch at Pawtobello Cafe. It will be my first time to a dog cafe, and I hope my stomach will behave herself. Well, am saving that for the next entry. So till then...ciao!

His Broken Back, Now My Broken Stomach

2008-03-19T16:02:00.008+08:00

Last weekend was quite a nice one, if not for my stomach...again. Met up with Cindy and Gen for dinner at Hard Rock Cafe on Friday night. It was my first time there, and I was looking forward to soaking in the atmosphere with the live band. Alas, we did not get to experience the live band, as they did not start till later in the night. Even if they had started earlier, I doubt I would be able to appreciate it with my broken stomach.

As I was warned by my colleague that the food portions were rather large, we decided to order 2 dishes to share amongst ourselves. We ordered a Jumbo Combo made up of various sides like buffalo wings, spring rolls, huge onion rings and some other potato and fried sides, accompanied by 4 different dips. We also ordered a crabcake dish. Needless to say, it tasted crabby, a little too crabby for my liking actually! We each ordered a Cecil iced tea, which tasted good!

We chatted over dinner, and in less than an hour, my stomach started to act up. Went to the toilet twice and exploded big time in there. By the time I was done, I just wanted to go home, and that ended our night out.

Jumbo Combo

Crabcakes - Crabby taste, maybe a tad too crabby for my broken stomach's liking

Stomach was feeling better on Saturday morning (and flatter too!), and I met Pete for a breakfast of toasted bread at a coffeeshop in West Coast. We proceeded to purchase 3 more CD players from Sheng Shiong for my office before heading back to my place. We went for lunch with my mum and brother at the delicious chicken rice stall at Queenstown before dropping off the CD players at my office. The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing in front of the tv, with Pete nodding off while I watched an episode or so of the recorded channel 8 9pm show. I think the show is hilarious ha ha!

As my stomach still feels unstable (from my imagination or what, I don't really know anymore), we decided to hang out in my "safe haven" - Vivocity. Recently, am in the mood for some local Chinese songs ( 新谣 ). Went to the 2 CD shops in Vivo to look for them, but not much results. Had a light dinner of yong tau foo beehoon soup, but despite its lightness (did not finish it even!), I experienced some indigestion after the dinner :(

We caught "Horton" on Sunday, and we thought it was rather good and funny! It's a good movie to catch on a lazy Sunday afternoon :)

Horton - Worth a catch

Lunch on Sunday was teriyaki chicken rice bowl from Yoshinoya (a safe option for my broken stomach), and dinner was at the Club with my mum, brother and Pete. Took the safer option of wanton noodles for dinner. Nevertheless, I continued experiencing the indigestion feeling after both meals. I think my stomach lining must have came out with all the puke on Friday night or something. The indigestion feeling continued after my meals on Monday, but now it's better. Am really cautious with what I eat now, and am eating lesser as well. My phobia of developing stomachaches has also increased, so much so that it's causing more stomachaches. All I can say is SOB! SOB! *wails*

Pete is starting to put me on a stringent diet of abundant fruits and light, soupy stuff. I guess such is my life...even milkshakes, ice-cream, cakes and other sweet treats do not entice me anymore. Oh well...

Letter to HDB

2008-03-14T10:26:00.003+08:00

14 March 2008

Housing and Development Board

To whom this may concern:

RE: Please Do Not Make Us Wait So Long Laaaaa

I am writing in to beg you to allocate us a good queue number for our next ballot for the flats. I know there are many couples out there like us who have waited even longer for a new pigeon hole. Maybe I can give you a reason why you should consider giving us a good chance the next time round. Actually, the reason is very simple, I really do not want to be housemates with the pigeons living in my roof currently, and would very much prefer my own pigeon hole instead.

For some time now, pigeons seem to find my current home an attractive place to hang out, so much so that some have decided to marry, and start a family in my roof, right above my bedroom. It is bad enough that I have to put up with their rough landings, tap dancing, koo-koo-koo-ing, and babies chirping, recently, I suspect one of them has died and decomposed right up there in my roof! The stench of decomposition for the last week was pretty strong that I had to sleep in the living room or brother's room (once again!). And oh, I even resorted to wearing a face mask as I moved around my room last week. Hilarious, huh? Not really, you know, Officer, if you think of the germs that the decomposed bird may have.

I think it would be some time before the roof/bird/pest people came to give our roof a good clearing-up, as I think I am living in a stat board. Several quotations have to be gathered before the pay master will agree to get some action going. Being in a stat board yourself, I am sure, Officer, that you would understand this. I am just hoping that it would take a little faster over on your side, as mine is the mother of all stat boards.

I have a roach problem too, but I do not want to go into that. To sum it all up, I am living in a roach-infested room, with a family of birds in my roof. I am hoping that with this, HDB can consider granting me a good queue number in the next ballot.

Please laaa, Officer...

Thank you, and I hope to hear good news from you soon.

Yours Faithfully,

Ah Mi (Ms)

Weekend, lao lang style

2008-03-10T12:00:00.005+08:00

Another week(end) has passed, and it's back to work once again. Allow me to fulfil my responsibility to show off what we did during this weekend hor. not very good to keep asking ah mi to write abt weekends :P

Let me see... weekends are supposed to start on Friday nights, right? We went to our usual hideout, the bestest, fantasticest and wonderfulest mall in Singapore, Vivocity, for dinner. Before dinner, we went to the newly opened Love & Co to have a look at the wedding band collection there. As it is a specialty shop selling mostly wedding bands, the variety available there was quite wide. we were very sua ku cos it's the first time that we had gone to look at wedding bands. *blush* anyway, the girl serving us was very helpful and patient to us and we managed to shortlist 3 pairs of bands. 1 white + rose gold combination, 1 white gold design and 1 platinum + rose gold design. platinum rings are more expensive than the rest though. ( i think cos platinum weapons are +3 in AD&D bah :P) for me, it was an interesting experience, cos i had never tried on rings before and i was kinda not used to having a ring on my finger.. they are used to being naked le... wahahahaha!

I went for my (very early) morning swim on Saturday, and there was already a crowd there le!!! i din noe that normal human beings wake up so early on sat mornings.. so as i was doing my laps, i had to siam left and right thru the human traffic in the pool, and occasionally tread water in the middle of the pool cos some buggers want to swim across.. it was like a good analogy of the overcrowding situation in Singapore. Mental note: go earlier next time!

Went to ah mi's place after that to smell the weird smell in her room. the stench was quite strong and smells abit like decomposition. sigh.. she very poor thing.. has to live with not only puchis (roaches) and pigeons tap dancing on her ceiling, but rotting dead birds too.. (that's my guess lah) anyway, i dun think it's very healthy for her to sleep in her room while a bird carries on to decompose in her roof, so she will need to sleep elsewhere again.. sigh.. had lunch at west coast market, and picked up 3 sets of cd player to lug to ah mi's office. talk about working on a sat, huh? So anyway, we lugged the players over to her office and went back to her place to get ready to go out. ah mi specially prepared a mini pillow for my back for movies as we are going to catch "The Leap Years" that evening, i felt even more like a lao lang.. but the pillow really helps lah..

We caught the movie at Cathay Cineleisure, and it was really a very 小混混 place with many many many youngsters there. I actually bumped into someone i know there, so i guess that makes me a 小混混 too huh? the movie was actually better than i expected. I thought Wong Liling was quite convincing as a woman who waited to meet a guy every 4 years, and you can see her maturing throughout the years. The guy actor (Orlando Bloom wannabe), was a bit lacking in that aspect. he looks the same throughout the 12 years, with the same hippy long hair. one interesting thing about this movie is that the entire movie is based on only 5 days of her life. and with only 5 days, Catherine Lim manages to map out an entire love story. very impressive...

however, the deepest impression that i had with the movie is the groom who was deserted at the altar (or rather chinese wedding dinner). why is it so that usually it's the guys who get left behind, because the gals had a sudden waking up of her idea on who is her one true love at the end. i admit that it's a very romantic notion, but pls spare a thought for the other guy also loh. y in the first place do u get married when you are unsure?! i kinda sympathise with that poor dumb guy left standing there dumbly saying "Go now.... before i change my mind." it's all good and noble, but do u think he has any say in the matter?

*imagined dialogue*

Raymond: Go now.... before i change my mind.

*Lee-Ann spends 5 seconds crying away*

Raymond: Ok, I changed my mind! You have to marry me!

Lee-Ann: Oh Raymond, my dear....

Raymond: (hopefully)Yes, Lee-Ann?

Lee-Ann: Do you really think I give a damn about what you think?

Raymond:......

*end imagined dialogue*

anyway, it was quite a good movie in my opinion as a guy.. (damn, i'm becoming a softie...)
Dinner after that was at a korean/japanese outlet at the basement of cathay cineleisure. they had quite nice tak kal bee wannabe dishes there, and not too pricey too. however, the thing is, halfway thru our dinner, i suddenly realised that we were the oldest customers there.. I'm sure that the other people there is less than 23 years old loh.. we are 2 lao langs at a 小混混 place... sigh...

Sunday was a very relaxing day, where we went to the National Singapore Museum (what do u expect, we are lao langs) and we saw a huge..... statue of Michelangelo's David (nude!) inside.. i haven't been to the museum for quite some time and it is very different already, with lots of empty spaces (wasted space, can build flats here u noe?) and new galleries.. the thing is, we gone in and were out in less than an hour, and after we came out, we realised that we did not visit the Greek exhibits (weee!!! more nude statues!).. but at that time, it was too late to go in again.. so that was it for our historical trip..

We had dinner at the Marche style japanese restaurant at the basement of Raffles city.. there was no long queue that day, so mai tu liao! there was quite a lot of different japanese food to choose from, but i kinda realised that most of them have eggs or unagi in them.. so i can safely declare that japanese cuisine is based on eggs and unagi! hahahaha.. we had ramen, fried rice and a japanese omelette.. how to put this, we are not very adventurous lah.. hahaha..

and with this, we end our weekend.. it may seem like a boring way to spend the weekend (go to the museum?!? are u kidding?!?) but for lao langs like us, it is more than enough.. between my broken back and her broken stomach, i think we make a perfect pair... ;P
Pete out.

P.S: ah mi will proofread this entry for grammatical and spelling mistakes, so this will not be the final draft.

P.P.S: however, my ang mor is not that bad, so maybe there won't be too much changes.

P.P.P.S: then again she is very very strict one, so.... sigh.... :P

P.P.P.P.S: proof-reading for the glaring mistakes are completed, only 14 changes are made. :D

Things that make me sian now

2008-02-27T11:39:00.002+08:00

Here I come again to rant. Am feeling quite sian and down right now, and I thought I can just list down the things that make me sian here. :P

Got a really sucky bonus. Felt abit unappreciated after the hard work that I had put in.
Current flat situation. Supply <<< Demand. HDB asking us to either live with parents, buy resale or wait. *shakes head*
My slipped disc. Feel aches and pains from time to time while standing up, sitting down or walking. I'm like a "lao lang".
Career options? Partially linked to point 1, I guess. Maybe should join civil service to settle point 1 and 2 in one shot. :D

Other than that, I guess I'm your average happy guy who have a happy family (can't set up new family yet), a stable career (sort of), and is relatively healthy (if you discount the slipped disc).

I guess things are not that bad for me after all huh?

Pete out.

Big numbers and misplaced discs

2008-02-24T11:31:00.002+08:00

Hello all! It has been such a long time since my last entry that actually contained some content. Hahaha.. Honestly, I've been feeling way too sian to update the blog, so I had to rely on ah mi to religiously update every week. And even then, she is getting sian too, so I figure that I better do my part. :)

Some updates from my side. Just before the Chinese New Year, I experienced severe backaches after I ran for the bus (how embarrassing sia :S). So after some massaging, kneading, and plastering of my own, I decided to seek professional help since my condition was gradually getting worse. And after 3 visits to the GP, 2 visits to a orthopaedic specialist, 1 visit to the radiology clinic and lots of cash transaction later, I was officially diagnosed with a Prolapsed Lumbar Invertebral Disc at L5-S1 on the left. In the words of mortals like me who have no knowledge of medical mambo jumbo, 我的盘掉了! I'm suffering from slipped disc. If I guess correctly, this condition is not really new, but a parting gift from SAF after my 2.5 years of service of carrying heavy stuff. Well, at least no more IPPT for me! I hope...

With this condition, I cannot walk long, I cannot sit long, I cannot stand for long either. Basically, I'm reduced to a "lao lang". Stand abit then need to sit. Sit abit then need to walk. Walk abit then need to sit again. Quite pathetic, ya?

So, that's about it for my brokeback story. Still undergoing physio, so let's see how it goes bah. Next up is a topic very close to the hearts of ah mi and me. Flats. We have balloted for 4 times and the latest result was released on Thursday for the queue number. Just before I knew of my results, my brother, who was balloting for the very first time called me and told me that they got 300+. I was thinking, "wah, 1st time get 300+, then we should stand a good chance of getting a relatively small number bah." And when ah mi sms me of the ballot results, (i was in physio at the time) I think i startled the therapist with a "What the fu.." Nope, I didn't complete my exclamation. And it was 8167 by the way. Please give me a share of the prize if you "tio" 4D with this number. *NKF theme playing* Any donation will be appreciated!

This flat situation is getting really very frustrating for us and many of the local couples who wants to get married. So after a long courtship, and the guy proposes, the gal accepts. Next step will be queuing up to get a flat. How romantic is that? To me, it sounds like the "Romancing Singapore" campaign started by the Government wants us to start balloting for flats as soon as we start the courtship process. "XXX, will you be my girlfriend? Ok? Let's go balloting for flats bah. Cos in the case that we really get married, we better start queuing up now. If not, have to wait a long time, you know?" Wow, that is really really romantic. The government wants to increase the population to 6 million, and where do they expect them to sleep? On the streets?

So right now, our options are as follows:

Queue up like common people do and wait for a miracle.
Buy a resale flat and get poorer than we already are.
Go see the MP of my constituency and beg on my knees.... in tears.
Quit my job and go get employed as a civil servant. (got rumour that they got higher priority)
Rent a place and get poorer than point 2.
Apply for BTO where supposedly they got AMPLE supply and wait for another 4 years before getting married.

It's not really a pretty situation, but that's life. And I really have nothing to say about it.

Over and out,
Pete

The Long Wait

2008-02-14T10:59:00.002+08:00

Boy am I glad the days of visiting for CNY is over! This year was pretty much the same as before, just that my sis was not in Singapore to celebrate it. We visited the same relatives and heard almost the same conversation topics *rolls eyes*. Some visits were a little more unbearable than the others, as it was really just mindless sitting around, waiting for my parents to say "Let's go". It did not help that the sun was scorching hot during those few days, leaving us sticky, uncomfortable, and drowsy. Well, I suppose it beats the rain!

However, it was not total boredom during the long festive weekend. Pete and I managed to visit the new Terminal 3 on the first day of CNY, as we sent his parents off to Japan for their hols. The new terminal is huge and spacious, making T2 pale in comparison. All the more reason to visit the airport once in a while. I love going to the airport. I associate it with hols and happy times. I can imagine Pete frowning as he is reading this now ha ha ;) I guess not everyone associates the airport with such positive feelings...

Anyway, it is back to work now for most of us, back to life...back to reality. The sad reality for Pete and me now is us getting lost in this massive "lucky draw box" for HDB flats. Flats in the mature estates were just being released for the balloting exercise 3 days ago. A total of 278 flats, with 6779 applications at the moment. It is depressing.

This is our 4th try with the balloting exercises. 2 are pending queue numbers to be assigned, and for the other 2, we have gotten queue numbers that are in the 3rd and 4th thousand, vs a release of flats that were, on the average, less than 400 units for each of the balloting exercise.

It seems to me that the wait for a new flat is a futile one. At the same time, it is also depressing that we will be paying so much for a really tiny space.

I'm not sure if the balloting exercise is the best way for us all to get a new flat. It seems to me it is just one big lucky draw each time, and whether one gets a good queue number at all, is kind of dependent on luck. Is this fair, or actually, just unfair, I really wonder... If we are always down on our luck, I suppose we will never get one, because there is no saying that everyone will have a maximum waiting time, or anything like that. One can just go on waiting...and waiting...and waiting...futile...wait..

Are there not enough new flats in Singapore? Is that why we have to go through the balloting exercise to ensure a fair (or unfair) system? If there are no sufficient new flats, I know they are tackling this with the various Build-To-Order exercises. But... these have to be balloted as well...so, it is just down to the "lucky draw" method again, isn't it?

Are we also competing with the new citizens and permanent residents granted their new status daily for our short supply of flats, because Singapore is hoping to bring in more foreigners? Is the country no longer able to support her own citizens, because we are bringing in more foreigners?

Bringing this issue up to the government, and they will suggest the options of staying with parents, or purchasing a resale flat. I think these options are easier said than done. The resale flats are rather unaffordable, and I'm sure this is why there is also a surge in the demand for new flats. Staying with parents, is really, really easier said than done. I am not even talking about human conflicts when staying together that most people are trying to avoid, but there is also the basic consideration of whether there is room over at the parents'. I'm not sure if these suggestions are given because the parties themselves do not face such problems, and hence, did not consider these factors.

I'm not sure if it is realised that this is a social problem in Singapore. I think a GP essay can be written on this topic by now. With this problem of having to wait futilely for their home, many couples are delaying their marriage, and this in turn will postpone any childbirth plans, if any. I foresee some may even end up abandoning childbirth plans when age catches up by the time they are well settled in their own home. A social problem for this ageing population of ours, no?

Apologies for the ranting, but I think it has been building up ha ha. We do not know if there will ever be a solution to this, and we feel rather helpless too. I guess there is nothing much we can do at this moment, but...WAIT.

We Miss U, Sis

2008-02-08T21:54:00.000+08:00

It must have been tough, and I'm glad it's almost over and that you are fine. Wish you are back here to celebrate CNY with us. We miss you! :)

A Relaxing Weekend Before CNY

2008-02-03T14:24:00.000+08:00

Am having a pretty relaxing weekend before the much dreaded Chinese New Year descends. With each passing year, I have begun to dislike CNY more and more. It is turning out to be the most meaningless festival ever. I shall not start ranting here, but just to say I am oh-so-glad that it only occurs once a year, although I'm still not glad enough hahaha!

Pete and I attended his ex-colleague's daughter's 1st month celebration yesterday. We spent the time in one of the rooms looking through photo albums containing holiday and wedding pictures. Got to carry his daughter, Mirabelle, who was a little grumpy. I reckon she was tired from all the attention she received, as well as bothered by some unfinished "business" haha :)

We left in the late afternoon and went over to Pete's place. Had dinner with his family outside before heading back to watch "Zoolander". It was a no-brainer show, totally befitting for this relaxing weekend *inserts Ben Stiller's pointed pout face below*.

Later on in the night, we joined Pete's parents in a visit to the flower market at Jalan Bahar. It was flowers galore over there.

Some of the flowers were just so pretty that I bought 3 pots of them home:

Pretty, ain't they?

Fortunately, I was given a ride back by Pete's parents after the purchase :)

It's a cool and sleepy Sunday afternoon now. Am deciding between curling up in bed and reading my book (and dozing off...) after I'm done with this entry, or painting my nails with the new colour I bought hahaha.

Before I end, just want to leave you with one of the student's creation, which was done while our Subject Head was teaching on Friday. They were made using blue-tac. If you look carefully, the student actually paid attention to the little details like creases and laces for the sneaker, and toe-nail for the foot. The sole of the sneaker also made use of the pull tab from the can drink for a more realistic look. I thought it was really talented and creative of him, although this showed how much he was not paying attention in class ha ha! I think our Subject Head should have confiscated these in glee, as she was equally impressed.

The last parting note...hmmm...wishing one and all A Prosperous & Happy Year of the Rat!...from a disgruntled me :P

Scientific proof that I'm born in the year of the Monkey

2008-01-22T21:22:00.000+08:00

Tada!!

That's yours truly when I was just.... actually I don't know how old I was when this was taken.. wahahahaha! Just doing up some old photos and thought I should upload this particular one.

Cheers,
Pete

Happy Anniversary!

2008-01-22T20:46:00.000+08:00

With a simple 'hi'
you entered my life.
And from the very start,
you made me laugh.
When we first met up,
I really did not know how to start,
but you made it easy,
just by being you.
You complete my sentences,
even when my thoughts are still unspoken.
You showed me what love is,
by being with me through everything.
Your goofy smiles during fun times,
and encouraging words during difficult ones,
have made me feel home is where the heart is,
and my heart is....... right here with you.

Happy Anniversary...

Brand New Year

2008-01-16T21:07:00.000+08:00

First post for the new year. Happy New Year! Hope the greeting does not come too late, as we are already nearing the end of January!

Almost 3 weeks into 2008, and life is has slowly settled down after the festive mood of December. Pete has deadlines creeping up on him, the aftermath of arrows and daggers thrown his way. It's back to work, oh yeah. After putting off the pile of mess in our new training management system to "next year", "next year" has arrived, and I find myself burrowed deep in the system. Although cases are still not resolved, the burrowing just has to go on. Like what we always say: Fighting!!!

Pete and I attended my cousin, Sharon, and her husband, Dave's solemnization ceremony at the start of this month. It was held at Amara Sanctuary Resort at Sentosa. The ceremony was held at a glass pavilion, and a buffet awaited the guests after it. Sharon looked radiant, like all brides do :) Can't believe that my little cousin is married!

January also saw the homecoming of my sis, who is back for her hols from Melbourne. It will be a short stay this time, as she will be returning to the land Down Under at the end of this month for her last semester. It's good to have her back :)

Am going to end off here for the first entry of 2008. I wonder what this year may bring. Will Pete and I finally get a decent queue number for our future home? Will wedding plans be rolled out? Am I ever going to clear that pile of mess in the new training management system, and embrace the next batch of mess with less sian-ness? Will I feel less sian this year hahaha?

I guess you have to watch this space to find out. Cheesy line...I know. Goodnight!

A solemn post

2007-12-27T09:50:00.000+08:00

Merry Christmas to all...

This Christmas, however, is not that merry to my cousin and her children as her husband just passed away suddenly in his sleep the day just after Christmas. I really feel sorry for my cousin and her children as my cousin in law went without any signs or warning.

This incident really shows the fragility of human live.. Like what my dad always say, 人生无常. Always cherish your loved ones when you still have the chance, because you never know when your loved ones might just leave you. I don't think that anybody would want to live out their life with regrets that they did not treat their loved ones nicely, or that their last moments together ended in conflict. It will be very sad situation.

My heart goes out to my dear cousin and my 2 nephews and niece, and I sincerely hope and pray that they can be strong enough to carry on life meaningfully.

X'mas!

2007-12-26T10:21:00.000+08:00

Christmas was spent at 2 places this year. We began the day by collecting the party packs of food we ordered from Coffee Bean for both parties. Lugging our bags of gifts, and party packs, and feeling like Santa Claus, Pete and I first headed over to Lloyd's studio.

It has been some time since we have met up with Lloyd, Dave, Toon, Johnny and Sally, so it was good to get together again on this festive occasion. Dave attempted a strawberry cake. It looked a little messy due to the bumpy car ride but it still tasted good, with sweet strawberries. The lunch spread included the box of mini quiche that Pete and I bought, turkey and ham, curry, fried chicken wings and fritters bought by Johnny and Sally, and more home-cooked stuff from Toon.

We exchanged gifts after the meal, and spent the afternoon chatting, laughing and playing with our new gifts from each other.

Pete and I left earlier to head for our next celebration at my Aunt Helen's place. There was a huge gift exchange (forty plus gifts to be exchanged), as we had relatives from both my aunt and uncle's side of the family. We exchanged the gifts several times amongst ourselves as "instructed" by the host of the game, and I ended up with shower gel and body lotion from Body Shop :)

Here are some pictures taken at the get-together at Lloyd's studio. Overall, it was a good X'mas. Till next year... ciao!

Nice X'mas tree with ghoulish theme

Dave with his strawberry cake

Posing with our lunch spread

Lloyd unwrapping his gifts

Pete and me with our gifts from the gang

My geek at work

Relaxing...

Office X'mas Lunch

2007-12-24T11:58:00.000+08:00

We had an office X'mas lunch last Friday attended by colleagues from a few departments. There were lots of food, singing, fun and laughter. My boss cooked curry, and fried puri on the spot. It was great stuff! One of my "sianer" colleagues, Jingle Bell, made a chocolate cake, and I must say it tasted good too. We had a gift exchange before the party ended, and I got a stationery holder. I think one of my colleagues from the Exam Unit got my gift of a packet of raisin chocolates, and a box of biscuits from Marks and Spencer. Yummy.....

Here are some pictures from the party. Merry X'mas, everyone!!! 메리 크리스마스!

With our English Subject Head and colleagues from the Exam Unit

Choc fondue!!

Gifts...

... and cakes...from colleagues and trainers

Everyone with their gifts from the gift exchange

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!

2007-12-24T10:55:00.000+08:00

Hello again,

I'm back again with good tidings~ I've got Wiiiiiiii!

However, its not as cheap as I thought it would be. Anyway, this is the only console out there that I can get my folks and gal to join me in gaming, and it provides great exercise too! (my poor aching arms.. *groans*) Am very excited to get ah mi to play games with me!

Wahahaha, we can be like Queen Amidela and Anakin Skywalker! I am sooooo kiddy, but then again, it's just me~ :-P As you can see, I'm very very excited about exploring features on the Wii, and that is exactly what I shall do! Wahahaha!

Like I said, its great to be home for Christmas.. And to anyone reading this, Have a Merry Merry Christmas!!!

X'mas Cookies

2007-12-22T22:48:00.000+08:00

I took the day off last Wednesday and spent it baking cookies with Karen as X'mas gifts for some of our friends, colleagues, and families.

I reported for "work" at her place at about 10 in the morning, and by lunch time, we had baked our 2 batches of Sticky Chewy Chocolate Cookies. The first batch was a little too crispy, but the second turned out more chewy, just like they should.

We continued with shortbread cookies after lunch, and I must say they turned out more successful than the chocolate ones. The shapes could be seen more clearly, as compared to the chocolate ones, which looked more like odd blob shapes after they were baked, despite using the X'mas tree, teddy bear and other cookie cutters. However, the shortbread cookies took twice the time to be baked. They were not Walkers standard, but they tasted quite good.

After washing up and filling 12 cookie jars between us, we finally stopped work at about 6 in the evening. After helping to direct Karen to Tampines Mall in the car, I met up with Pete later in the evening to get more pressies and sweet bundles wrapped for X'mas.

It was fun spending the day baking, and I hope we can do it again next year!

Sticky Chewy Chocolate mix

Filling our cookie jars with the odd blob shapes Sticky Chewy Chocolate Cookies

Karen rolling the Shortbread dough

Shortbread cookies before heading into the oven

The completed product - Howard 's nice acrylic decor for Karen's jars, while I dressed mine with ribbons

Fond Memories

2007-12-21T10:07:00.000+08:00

Pete's early X'mas present to me came last weekend in the form of a set of fond childhood memories!

I mentioned to him that my colleagues and I were just reminiscing about books by Enid Blyton that we all read throughout our childhood, and how I especially love Malory Towers, and the sweet guy decided to bring back those memories for me this X'mas.

Malory Towers is set in an all-girls boarding school in Cornwall, and revolves around Darrell Rivers and her friends as they progress their way up the school from being young first years to the more developed sixth years. There is the spoilt girl (Gwendoline Mary), the cowardly girl (Mary-Lou), and other girls who join each year, and together with the classroom tricks and midnight feasts, they make this set a great read. Thinking back, it's funny how we used to shape our characters (or rather I did) according to some of the main characters in Enid Blyton's stories. I used to think I am Darrell Rivers, and am attending a boarding school with all these fun friends, and my mom is the headmistress or something hahahaha!

Other stories by Enid Blyton that have left deep impressions on me also include The Magic Faraway Tree series, which has this special tree in The Enchanted Wood inhabited by characters like Moonface, Silky (the fairy), and The Saucepan Man. Every week, at the top of the tree, a new magic land appears, which the 3 children, Jo, Bessie, and Fanny (who live nearby the wood) can visit; but they have to leave before the land "moves on", or they could be stuck in that land when it is replaced by a new land at the top of the tree. I remember one of the lands that appeared was the Nursery Rhyme Land, where the children met characters from the different nursery rhymes. There are many other interesting lands, but I can't remember them now. It's been a really long time.

And who could forget the Secret Seven and their secret meetings, passwords, and their dog, Scamper. The numerous little mysteries they solved, and the cookies and lemonade they always have during their secret meetings. When it comes to solving mysteries and exciting adventures, we will have to hand it to The Famous Five as well, in a world where ginger beer is the staple beverage, and George is actually a girl called Georgina, who wants so much to be treated as a boy.

I am looking forward to starting on my new books, and begin my adventures again with Darrell Rivers and her friends at Malory Towers. Thanks Pete, for this great gift. It's one of the best gifts ever! It will be a great addition to our "library" in the future. A pity the new covers make the characters look like they are from the Rugrats cartoon, and nothing like the classic covers before, but it's the content that matters ya :)

Anyone wants to get me the The Magic Faraway Tree Series next...?