Star Wars Santa?

Saw these two at the entrance of Raffles City on Friday.. They were posing for the Salvation Army for donations..

Thought this was a good idea.. rather than have two people standing beside the donation box and ringing their little bells..

Stand Chart Marathon & Fullerton Wedding

5:06 PM by Adeline Woo 0 comments
Yesterday was the annual Standard chartered marathon.. K and I were on our way to a wedding lunch and we drove past the runners.. actually i should call them walkers.. cause ALL of them were walking!! Not sure if these are the 21km or 42km people.. but they sure looked exhausted!

We participated in the 10km run 2 years ago.. how time flies. K says he want to go for the 21km next year.. we shall see ! = )



Our wedding lunch was at Fullerton Hotel. Seems like wedding lunches are becoming the "in" thing nowadays. This wedding we attended was for one of our friends in the MX-5 car club, and his Thai wife. Prior to their wedding, we had been playing a few sessions of badminton with this couple, so i guess that was the reason that got us invited. Cause we were the only ones from the car club in his guest list. So it was one of those weddings where we knew nobody at our table, and had to keep each other company throughout, hoping that neither of us had to go to the washroom or make a phone call during the meal. = P

Nonetheless, i thought it was a good wedding. The groom was so emotional that he cried during the solemnization while he was saying his vows, and then again during his wedding speech.. Such a sweet guy. Made ME tear too during the solemnization!
There were a few unique things which i thought made the wedding one of the more memorable ones:


* The wedding was held on the same day as the Stand Chart run, when all roads leading to the hotel were closed until 12pm. the solemnization was at 1130am. We were late but fortunately, did not miss much.


* Location of the solemnization was at the roof top garden of Fullerton Hotel: First that i've been to..


* The groom cried - TWICE!

* There were 3 emcees during the wedding lunch speaking in 3 different langugages: English, Mandarin and Thai


* The couple hired a pretty good Irish guy to play some love songs on his guitar and harmonica throughout the lunch


* The Maid-of-honor and Best man gave speeches (usually it's just the married couple)


* The couple did a slow dance in the ballroom (very Westernized..)


* One of the flower stands along the aisle nearly caught fire (one leaf was lighted up but the fire was put out almost immediately) !!


This couple nearly had to cancel their wedding because of the closure of the Bangkok airport. They didn't know if their relatives were able to attend, and they almost couldn't collect the bride's wedding gown in time cause the gown was in Bangkok! Talk about a memorable wedding !

Christmas in City Hall..

K and I drove past this stretch of road along Chijmes and Beach road on Tuesday..

This is one of the worst Christmas decorations i've seen for the past years..

It's like the people who designed it cannot make up their minds on what they want for the theme!


Christmas Decorations

12:31 PM by Adeline Woo 1 comments
I bought this grass reindeer for $2 at Daiso 3 days ago to decorate my work station.. So adorable! Everytime i walk past, it makes me smile.. In fact, i think it makes everyone who walks past it smile. Certainly a good way to start a conversation with people who walk past my work station!

I bought one for S as well.. hope she'll like it! = )



2 days ago, i went Christmas decor shopping at Tekka mall with my colleagues. We busted $300 just on the decorations and goodie bag stuff for our department's Christmas party! The retailers must be laughing all the way to the bank. Everything is so expensive! One simple 9 feet long "Merry Christmas" banner costs us $45 already!

Usually, with my friends, i will be the one bargaining on the prices... But this time, i left the haggling to my colleague. She was citing the recession as the reason for her bargaining, but the shop owner's retort was in my opinion, a very good one. He said: "It is precisely because of the recession that we need to spend MORE and in the process boost the economy!" * Faintz..* = )

Anyway, this morning, when i came to work.. the whole office was decorated with Christmas items.. now my grass reindeer isn't as outstanding in the midst of all the other decorations. Kinda camouflaged already. Then again.. i am the only one with this cute little reindeer. My colleagues wanted to buy more for the office, but Daiso run out of stock.. = )

BOLT

K and I went to watch the movie "BOLT" last Tuesday.

Very good movie.. one of those animation films that has a good plot and the right balance of humour.

No wonder it was rated 7.5 out of 10 on the IMDB website..

I love how the people in the movie industry make the animated characters look just like the people who do their voice overs.. I thought the lead character in this show really looks a bit like Travolta.. = )



The 5 Languages of Love...

I met up with my gang of 3 girls from JC for dinner on Monday.

It was supposed to be a very belated birthday celebration for 3 of us: Myself (Oct), WM (Aug) and HX (Nov)..

Dinner was at this Marche-style Japanese restaurant at Raffles City.

As usual, we were supposed to meet at 7pm but everyone was late. I reached at 630pm, went shopping at Marina Square and ended up being late as well.. how stupid.. -_-

And as usual, HX was the latest, cause she had gone to the hairdresser to dye her hair. During the course of our 2 hour dinner and after, we updated each other on our lives and i found out the following:
  • HX resigned from her Japanese company and now she can't find a job

  • WM's 7 months pregnant now, and it's a boy. They're gonna name him Justas @ "Disciple of God"

  • AB is earning S$5K a month. I think she's been dying to let everyone know how much she earns for like the longest time.. = )

  • AB was sharing with us this called the "5 Languages of Love". Each of us is supposed to have one dominant language of love. K and I both went to take the quiz and realized that both our dominant love language is "Words of Affirmation". Interesting.. So now K and I are experimenting with our new found love languages...
We left the restaurant around 10pm. Dinner was paid for by only the 3 of us, reason being HX was jobless. Frankly, i found that reasoning extremely lame, especially since she had the dough to go dye her hair..

What irks me more is the fact that HX didn't even hesitate when we offered to pay for her share.. Anyway, i didn't dwell very much on that, just paid my share and left..

Oh well..





Cameron Highlands Trip

K and I drove up to Cameron Highlands with the Miata Club folks over the weekend.. We got stuck in a jam near the Tuas checkpoint and reached home at 1am yesterday. Now i'm totally bummed out in the office..

There were a total of 13 cars in the convoy: 8 Miatas, 1 Marc X, 1 Euro-R, 1 WRX , 1 Murano and of course not forgetting our club president's new ride - the gorgeous white Lotus Elise.. She was the center of attraction every where we went.. = )



The Lotus Elise.. &
The 8-Miata convoy

The trip was sucky right from the beginning. We woke up at 4am, drove to the Shell petrol station in JB to wait for 2 other cars, and ended up waiting there for nearly 2 hours cause one of the drivers over slept... Because of that, we couldn't meet up with the rest of the convoy in KL and had to drive straight to another meeting point instead. By the time we reached Cameron highlands, it was almost 3pm, and both K and I were giddy from hunger. I was so hungry i couldn't really be bothered with social etiquette. The minute i reached the restaurant, i grabbed the menu and ordered without waiting for the rest... Our group was the "hungry" group; cause the rest had just came from buffet breakfast and so were taking their own sweet time..

K wasn't at his 100% yet so the drive up kinda worsen his condition. So on the first night, we skipped steamboat dinner and slept straight out for 14 hours from 6pm to 8am. We had so wanted to join the guys for steamboat, even told ourselves we will just sleep for 2 hours and join them, but when we first woke up it was 2am already so.. we went back to sleep.. when we next woke up, it was breakfast time. On hindsight, the 14 hours sleep was a good thing because K recovered the next morning, and I was totally rested from the day before. The downside was that i had SO wanted to eat steamboat in the nice cool Cameron weather!

Actually, to be fair, the trip wasn't all that bad.. there were some positive sides to it as well. Let's just say it was a good balance of both, and definitely memorable. Here are some of the highlights:

* During the uphill drive to Cameron highlands, our car went out of control and spun off.. We were trying to overtake at a bend, but was taken by surprise when the bend turned out to be too sharp. So K lost control of the car for a while, went into some slippery mud and spun off.. Any further and we would have fallen off the cliff. I was totally stunned.. my very first close shave with death! I thank my lucky stars that we are still alive. After this incident, our spin-off became the talking point of the whole convoy throughout the trip. = )

* We had tea and some really nice cream and strawberry scones at the T Cafe...

* We visited this Lakeview Hotel, which was a very nice and quaint colonial looking hotel..


Loved this little birdhouse in the backyard!





* Didn't manage to pick strawberries though, cause it wasn't the right season, there was not enough time, plus, the place was too jam packed.. Quite sad, cause i missed the 2 must-do things in Cameron Highlands (steamboat and strawberries)!

* We made lots of new friends.. There was a new Eurasian guy in the club, his name is Bond Freeman. His ride was an NA model converted to look like an NB model. One and only in Singapore. So then we had Bond, and another guy in our club called James. So when the two met, it went like this: "Hi, my name is James." And Bond went: "Hello, I'm Bond." Naturally, James thought Bond was pulling a fast one on him, so he said: "Eh, don't joke lah, what's your name?" This went on for a while until James realized the guy standing in front of him is really called Bond. It was totally hilarious! = )

* We visited the BOH Tea plantation and had some really nice hot home grown tea in the cool Cameron weather.. Took some nice pictures up there too.. The ride up was scary though. Can you imagine us in a van on one narrow lane, then stopping halfway down the cliff because we had one school bus in front, and another school bus behind us?! Until now, i still don't know how the hell our driver maneuveured his way out of that !

The BOH Tea Plantation

* We visited this new mall called The Curve at Damansara. Had some lousy "la mian" for dinner. But the Christmas decorations there were so cute.. I especially loved the animal sculptures there.. the bear and the squirrel are my favourites!





* The drive back was fun.. the rain had stopped, everyone had their tops down.. it was really nice seeing the whole convoy driving together, especially on the highway where the whole road was literally ours for the taking!




Can't wait for the next outing!