Last weekend was Family Day for me.
On Friday, K and I went over to my parent's place for dinner. My sis and brother in law were there too with my 2 nieces. My mom and her helper had prepared a feast for us. I guessed it was rare that both her daughters are over at her place and so my mom decided to stuff us crazy = ) We had 2 types of soup, egg omelette, roast duck, pan fried liver, brocolli with mushrooms and carrots. And 2 types of dessert.
On Saturday, i forgone my beauty weekend sleep (for like the 3rd time in a row!) and woke up at 8am to attend a performance / mini concert at the Soka Center beside Tampines SAFRA. My sis and niece was part of the performance and my sis had invited me to go watch her.
The concert was not too bad, given that it was presented by a bunch of amateurs = ) When my sister and niece walked onto the stage for the first time, i couldn't help laughing to myself. They looked so cute! Their item was a mother and daughter song and dance item. My sis had this hairdo that made her look like a peacock, and my niece looked so adorable with this furry white hairband and make up. There she is with her pom-pom, and throwing her hands in the air, exposing her belly.. = )
There were a few other items that were pretty interesting as well. Like this lamba dance performed by this old couple. Quite cool!
And a guitar ensemble of some rather cute guys.. = )
Plus a super dynamic dance item by a group of teenagers, dancing to the song: "Please don't stop the music".
I loved the decorations in the hall. They had all these colourful fans hanging on the walls, and my favourite was the rows of hand-made paper sunflowers that were adorning the stage.
I loved it so much i had my sister "steal" one for me. And now it's sitting on my office table.. So nice!! = )
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Family,
Food
K and I went to Suntec to check out my sunglasses yesterday night. Somehow, this time round when i tried on the Armani pair, i didn't like it as much. But i spotted another Gucci pair which i totally adored.. We didn't buy it in the end, decided to look around see if the neighbourhood optical shops will have the same model at cheaper prices.
We had parked our car at K's office building, since it was free, and the roads in Suntec area were all closed due to the F1 finals. When we reached the car park, we had to park right on the rooftop level cause there were absolutely no lots at all at the lower levels. K said it's the first time he had to go so high up. During the drive up, we saw this parking idiot who totally pissed me off i had to take a picture of it and post it on my blog:
The driver of this car is a total IDIOT. Really. He / She should be shot.
When i alighted from our car, i could hear the sound of the F1 cars zooming around the race track. The zooming sounds were so loud and fast that it created such an exciting vibe i wanted to gate crash into the grand stand to watch the race! = )After shopping for the sunglasses, K and I went over to Outback steakhouse for dinner, and to watch the F1 race on TV. We had the most unhealthy dinner ever: Onion Rings, Deep fried mushrooms, bread, cheese fries and crab cakes. I also took a picture of this Kangaroo soft toy that's inside the Outback restaurant. Thought it looked very cute. = )
The race was actually more exciting than i had thought. There were a few crashes here and there. There was this fellow who sped off at the pit stop before the mechanics could finish refuelling his tank. So the fuel pipe was hanging out halfway from his fuel tank. Then there was another guy who ramped into a corner and his right front whell came off totally. I think the people watching the race are partly saddistic, cause they are just waiting for something to happen (accidents, crashes). I mean, that's what makes the race interesting right?! Who would like to just watch the cars go round 61 laps without anything happening?!
We left around 1030pm after the race ended with this Spanish guy as the champion. It's quite hilarious watching the top 3 racers standing on top of the platform and wearing their caps. They're so used to doing the whole wearing caps thing after the day races, that they do it even though yesterday's race was at night and there was no sun. = )
Rather than head straight home, K and I decided to go to Marina Square to do some shopping since the mall was opened till midnight. To our disappointment, 90% of the shops were already closed. So we ended up standing on the 2nd floor watching all the crazy F1 fans make their way home through the mall.. i thought it was rather therapeutic to watch these crowds just walking by from a bird's eye view.
Our way home was in stark contrast to the therapuetic people watching. In fact, it was traumatic. There was such a bad jam we couldn't even get out of the carpark. K and I ended up watching half an episode of Gilmore Girls on my handphone while waiting for the stupid cars in front to move. We ended up reaching home only at 12 midnight.. by then i was dead beat.. but i enjoyed myself very much = )
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Thoughts
I've decided to name the cat that sleeps on top of cars at the carpark near my house. I call it "The Resident Cat".
K and I were home late one evening, and when we were walking out of the carpark, we saw the resident cat. This time, it was lying on the seat of a motorcycle!
I see the resident cat is changing its choice of vehicle now.. = ) Not that I'M complaining.. as long as he leaves MY car alone! haha..
K's sister just came back from Bangkok not long, and bought this tee-shirt for him as a gift. Although we thought it was a sweet gesture, K didn't relly fancy the design.. i thought it's quite cute though.. = P
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Animals
Yesterday, i had 2 farewell celebration meals. For lunch, it was tim sum at Bosses Restaurant for Chua Kin's farewell. It was a treat from a small group of us (mainly his direct reports). The damage was $50 per person, but the food was good.
Then for dinner, we went to Jumbo Seafood for Andy's farewell. This was a treat from Andy's boss. We had my favourite chilli crab with fried buns, and also fried mee goreng, black pepper crab, yam scallop among others.. Once again, there was plenty of booze, toasting, laughing and all the usual farewell talk.
After dinner, a few of us went for Part 2- Karaoke at Smith Street. Apparently, they don't have these folders for people to select songs anymore. I was laughed at when i mentioned this. Now the selection screen is so high-tec it's touch screen some more! haha.. it was embarrassing.. I sang a few songs, most of them off-key, but enjoyed myself thoroughly. We left around 1am. K had agreed to pick me up from the carpark near the karaoke place, but he lost track of time and arrived late. Despite my relunctance, the rest stayed behind and wait together with me. They were concerned to leave me standing in the dark with potential drunkards loitering around the area. So when K arrived late, i was totally pissed off and we ended up quarrelling on the way back..
I guess i was tired and didn't like the fact that i had to let everyone else wait for him. On hindsight, i shouldn't have taken it out on him cause he was after all sweet enough to come and pick me up. Apparently, he was enjoying his car club meeting so much he didn't want to leave that early. Oh well, anyway, now we're fine.. =)
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Last Thursday, i had a conference call at 10pm. I was setting up my laptop for the call when i heard a cat meowing outside my house. Then i heard a woman's voice shouting: "Did anyone here lose a cat?" Curious, i opened my door and saw one of my neighbours with a cat following behind her. Apparently, the cat was lost. It was obvious that the cat belonged to somebody because it had a collar with a bell around its neck.
I kinda regretted opening the door after that, cause i became all woozie and melted when i saw the cat. It was so cute but pitiful! It just kept meowing so sadly, and then lie on its back as if it wants someone to scratch it and play with it. I was very tempted to adopt it, but knew it would be a bad idea. I can't even keep hamsters alive for crying out loud!
After a while, i asked K to come take a look, i think he too was tempted to keep it. By then, my neighbour had left, and the cat was just sitting just outside our house. I was taking pictures of it with my camera when it started to walk towards our gate and tried to come in through the gaps in our gate. So then we freaked out and closed the door slightly so the cat retreated. As it was getting close to 10pm, we decided to close the door and i went for my conference call. An hour later, i checked through my door viewer and saw the cat still sitting outside my house. Shortly after, my neighbour came back with his 2 dogs and i think the cat run away after that.
The next morning, i opened the door and expected to see the kitty there, but it was gone. Felt a bit sad.. oh well, i hope it finds its owner soon..
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Animals
There's this black car parked in the multi-storey carpark near our house.. everytime i walked past it, i wondered: How the HELL does the driver drive with all these distracting animals swinging in front of him / her?!!
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Thoughts
Last Tuesday, i received via email this voucher for a Swensen's promotion. With the voucher, one can enjoy a 1-for-1 ice-cream sundae. My first reaction was to wonder if this has anything to do with the whole China milk episode. Probably Swensen's was seeing a decline in their ice-cream sales and so the promotion. Then i slapped myself (not literally) and realized i should stop being so paranoid like the rest of the world and do the whole freaking out thing.
So i forwarded the voucher to my colleagues and asked to out for the ice-cream promotion in the late afternoon. In the end, only 4 of us went. Win, Kel, me and Andy. We walked over to the Swensen's at Vivocity, then realized the do not honor the voucher because the outlet at Vivocity was "Earle Swensen's", which is apparently not the same as Swensen's. Anyway, i thought the whole thing was silly, because to me they all belong to the same management so why can't they just honor the voucher?!
We ended up having Ben & Jerry's ice-cream next door instead. But it was only Kel and me sharing 3 scoops. Win and Andy decided (rather abruptly) that they preferred to have doughnuts instead when we walked past a doughnut store on the way to Ben & Jerry's. Kel and I ordered Chocolate Fudge Brownie and New York Super Fudge, and got a scoop of Jamaican Madness Sorbert on the house.
Later in the evening, we headed to Wala Wala @ Holland Village for Andy's farewell. It was kinda like his last week of work before he goes to Bangkok for 18 months, so the usual gang decided to do a small farewell dinner for him. There was plenty of booze (for toasting) and finger food.. We had pizzas, chicken wings, fries and lasagna.. oh, not forgetting all the people watching plus girl-oogling! = ) The live band was on, and they played a few pretty good songs. Overall, it was a nice evening. 'cept that i dropped my handphone on the way back to the carpark, and now there are scratches on my otherwise gorgeous looking OMNIA!! = (
Everyone left Wala Wala around 10 plus, and Andy dropped me off at Plaza Singapura where his wife had shopped at. Initially, i had wanted to hitch a ride from him, but thought it would be pretty awkward with me and his wife both in the car. I wasn't really in the mood for idle chit chat either, so in the end, i decided to ask K to come and pick me from Plaza Sing instead..
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K and I were at Marina Square over the weekend, and we walked past this really nice Coffee Club on the way to the car park.
The decor was so nice that i had to take at least one picture. I love the little water feature they had at the entrance, it had a very nice blue and white lighting effect to create the visual of sparkling "crystals" in the streaks of water as it falls from top to bottom.
We had lunch with K's parents and sister at Soup restaurant in Suntec City. It was meet-the-parents session for K's sister's boyfriend of 3 years. Apparently, K's mom found out recently and had been bugging his sister to arrange for a meeting ever since. The poor guy did not utter more than 5 words throughout the whole lunch, and his hands were all sweaty when i shook his hand! Haha.. so cute.
After lunch, K went over to his girlfriend's place to "play" with her newborn baby boy, and at the same time console another girlfriend who was going through a breakup.
Whereas I met up with F and S at S's condominium for a swim. Being a non-swimmer, i went to the Jaccuzi (naturally!) and spent a whole hour soaking in the water till my fingers were all wrinkled like dried chilli! After that, we had a very unhealthy dinner of pork satay, fried hokkien mee, fried oyster omelette and chicken wings in S's place.. yum yum! = )
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I was in the city with K last week, and saw all these metal fences and light fixtures along the roads that have been set up for the F1 Grand Prix..
With all the hype about the F1, i decided to take a few photos of the set up / preparation to commemorate history in the making.. = )
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Events
I took half day leave from the office today to attend a marketing research study.. It was a focus group discussion to find out our preferences on mobile phones.
Since i signed an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement), i am obliged not to reveal too much details on the phones or the study, but i was pretty excited by one of the prototypes that was shown to me. It's got a really cool design (don't look like a phone at all!), and pretty innovative functions.
The whole discussion took 2 1/2 hours, but i enjoyed myself tremendously. It was pretty much like a mini-party to me. There was good food and i was being paid $120 to talk about handphones with a group of 5 other strangers. I mean, where to find such good deals?!
I had the most delicious tim sim (siew mai, prawn roll in beancurd skin and pan fried dumpling), potato chips, walnut cake, some peach-tasting cocktail and Ben & Jerry's ice-cream.. it was so nice i think i ate more than i talked! = P
Oh, and i love love love the design of the marketing research office! They had all these quirky furniture and posters all over.. Simple yet nicely done up. I especially love this door stopper that's holding a door leading to the washroom. So cute!
And i absolutely adore this wall clock that was hanging at their main reception area. It's actually several mini clocks inside a big circle.. and you can write on the white glossy surface of the clocks. So what they did here is write the names of countries in different fonts, and then adjust each clock to show the times in different countries. So cool right!
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I went to watch the movie "Mamma Mia!" with K last week. We had redeemed a pair of free tickets from my M1 points and thought it would be not too bad.
K thought the movie was an insult to ABBA. I thought it was an insult to the original musical. The movie was quite crappy actually, don't know why it's topping the box office. Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep are good actors, but they can't sing for crying out loud! My personal "favourite" is the part where Meryl Streep (who plays the lead character Donna) sings "The Winner Takes It All" on top of a cliff, and Pierce Brosnan just stand there looking handsome throughout the whole song.. It was hilarious looking at Meryl waving her arms wildly , and her super long scarf flapping around in the strong wind while Brosnan tries not to look bored or fall off the cliff.. LOL!
I did have my fair share of laughs though, but seriously, this show would have been much better if they chose the right actors / voices. Tom Hanks happen to be one of the producers / directors. He should be shot.. Meryl should stick to playing mean female characters like "The Devil Wears Prada" and Brosnan should stick to playing "James Bond" and jumping OFF cliffs instead of standing ON TOP of them.. = P
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TV / Movies
I finally had my mooncake party last Friday with the usual gang of 6. K and I went over to one of our fave coffee shops, Mak's Place and packed dinner for everyone. We had fried kang kong, mee and kuay teow goreng, cereal calamari, fried rice, egg omelette and tom yam soup..
When we arrived home, B was already there, so we played a few rounds of mahjong while waiting for the rest. EK and S arrived an hour later. F was gonna work overtime, so we started dinner without her. After dinner we had another few rounds of mahjong. I was the overall winner and took home $36 winnings in total. F arrived halfway through our mahjong, so she watched Sex & THe City Season 6, while EK went online to search for our accomodation in Perth. When she arrived, F had a bouquet of sunflowers with her. Apparently, her colleagues had bought it for her as a birthday gift. The cheeky bunch of us all went "Wah..." when she stepped into the house..
= ) Frankly, i don't quite believe the flowers are from her colleagues, more like her boyfriend maybe?! Sigh.. this girl is so mysterious nobody knows whether she is attached or not!
Mahjong ended around 12 midnight, and we started attacking the mooncakes.. we had champagne and chocolate flavoured snowskin mooncakes, the traditional baked skin double egg yolk mooncakes, hot "Happy" tea from Korea (courtesy of B), and pomelo (courtesy of F). After the mooncakes, everyone helped to clear up the mess, and got ready for lantern carrying.
We all had to choose our favourite color for the lanterns, and i took them all down from my ceiling. Finally! After one whole week.. There was a matching color candle for each lantern, so we lit the candles, attached it to the wooden sticks and went downstairs, all 6 of us with 6 lanterns of different colors. EK was sending the rest home, so we decided to take the lanterns and walk to his car.
I thought the lanterns were so beautiful with the bright colors, but i guess we must have been quite a sight : 6 adults carrying lanterns and walking at 2am in the morning! S thought it was quite errie carrying lanterns in the middle of the night, kinda like one of those chinese horror movies where there is some connection between ghosts and lanterns.. We also walked past a Malay couple snuggling in the pavilion, and they stared at us and giggled to themselves.. I couldn't help smiling to myself along the way. = )
It was a short stroll to EK's car. When we reached the car, we all threw the lanterns into a small canal beside the car and let it all burn out.. I felt like I had just completed a long awaited ritual. It was a lovely way to end the night.. = )
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Food,
Friends,
Parties
Last Sunday's gathering at Uncle Steven's place was a pretty dramatic one.
Firstly, i had such a big feast i nearly exploded. We had potato salad, hotdogs, chicken wings, Ritz biscuits with different kinds of cheese, wine, Kueh Pie Ti, Tau Pok with meat stuffing and 3 different types of pasta: Cold Pasta Salad (my creation), Squid Ink Pasta and Aglio Olio (courtesy of Aunt Cyn). My pasta salad was a disaster as it turned soggy (somehow) and i was totally disappointed. Fortunately, for the majority present, this was not the first time they had tasted my pasta, so at least they will know that it was not supposed to taste so bad! = ) For those who haven't tried the good pasta i made before, well, too bad for them. heehee..
Before dinner, K and I played tennis and basketball with the cousins. During basketball, i hassled K and injured my right index finger, VERY badly. I was trying to hit the ball down at the same time he decided to bounce the ball super hard that it flew very high. So the impact of the two going in opposite directions strained my finger backwards by too much i think. Until now, i still cannot bend my right index finger totally. = (
Then after dinner, when everyone was packed up and ready to leave, K realized he lost his wedding ring. We ended up all searching for his ring in the compound. We even got the security guard involved to provide a torch light so we can search the tennis and basketball court and swimming pool (K had swam after dinner with his cousins). But to no avail.
So there we were, K and I, driving home totally bloated from the food, injured finger and ringless.. pretty dramatic weekend if you ask me!
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Injuries,
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Sports
Next week, Uncle Steven and his wife are going back to Shanghai for a short trip, so it's just gonna be our cousins home alone.. K's grandma and auntie will be staying at their apartment to "keep an eye" on the kids. K says we'll be going over to the apartment next week to use the facilities.. can't wait!!
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