Looking forward to Nov 29

Yippee! We are finally going on our honeymoon after 2 years and 8 months into marriage!! It is really long overdue. If JQ sees this, he will probably say... excuse me, ehmmm... we have been to Bali, Bangkok, Genting etc, not considered honeymoon ah? My standard reply will be this is classfied as short trip. Anything less than 10 days is not honeymoon! haha, I very 野蛮 right? keke

Even though we are setting off in slightly more than a month's time, other than buying round trip air tix, and tix to O at Bellagio, nothing else is done. And ours is going to be a driving trip. Wish us luck man! =)

Energy Saving Facts

Read this in a magazine and decided to share this info...Let's put in some effort to save the planet and cut down on our ever increasing electricity bills...

Discovery 1
The energy saved from switching off the airpot for 1 day is sufficient to light up a 4-room flat for 2 days!

Discovery 2
It is 6 times cheaper to watch a DVD on your laptop than on your LCD TV!

Discovery 3
The energy saved from reducing the use of a storage water heater from 8 hours to 1 hour can power a frige for more than 24 hours!

Discovery 4
It requires more than double the energy to cook rice in a microwave oven than in a rice cooker!

Discovery 5
Running your clothers dryer for 1 hour uses enough energy to heat up an iron 140 times! Or make 160 cups of coffee with a coffee maker!

Sprained toe

This is how a sprained toe looks like!!



This is not my toe, it's my sister's. She sprained her toe during yoga today.

Auntie Evelyn finally went to St James!!

28 Aug, Thu was our fiscal year end. As there were guests in town, and we have not had a company gathering for the longest time, Danny initiated a gathering at Dragonfly and in his words, to celebrate a pathetic quarter. Hoon, Jess and I decided to jio Tricia along as well. The exchange of sms between Hoon and Tricia was hilarious!

Hoon: Join us to go Dragonfly tonite leh...
Tricia: What time you all going?
Hoon: 6pm to 8pm...
Tricia: Huh?!! So early? You all go there and set table ah!

HAHA. In the end, T did not go. And the gathering turned out more fun than we thought it will be. :p

3 needle holes and a big blue black!

Went for my first MSA-Parkway health check on 12 Aug 08 and this is what they did to my vein. There was swelling and the blue black just became bigger. The bruise only disappeared 2 weeks after the health check. This is the first and last time I'm participating in health checks organised by company. I will rather go outside and pay more than to let nurses practice their injection skills on me! :((

My adorable sister

A cute exchange of sms between my sis and Wei.

Wei: My frd moving to Buangkok...

Sis: Really? She married a Thai lah...

Wei: ??

Sis: She must have married a Thai, that's why moving to Bangkok mah...

Wei: You dunno there is this station called Buangkok in Sengkang ah?

Sis: Oops! HAHAHA!!

Faintz!!!

Inspiration

Was at ECP for dinner on Mon nite. On our way back, we saw a rare sight. There was this very old uncle learning roller-blading! And I mean really old! He is probably in his 70s already, wearing those kind of white singlet and uncle bermudas and all armoured. He looks quite frail and you can see that he is struggling with balancing on his blades. Kudos to him for having the courage to try all sorts of things at his age and kudos to his children who was by his side holding on to him. This is what I call quality family time. :p

National Day Rally

For the first time in many years, I paid more attention to the National Day Rally speech by our PM. For the first time, I was in front of the TV throughout the whole speech without yawning even once. I'm the kind that hardly pays any attention to the government policies with mentality that it probably will not help me much anyway. This year was different probably because the issues are of my utmost concerns, inflation and baby policies. Government announced a teaser earlier saying that they are looking at the Swedish model for baby policies. With that, there were a lot of speculation among common folks like longer maternity leave (maybe 6 months), paternity leave, increased childcare subsidies and flexi working arrangement etc. Some of it came true. Maternity leave has been extended to 4 months, but darn, there is no extended paternity leave...

Singapore flag arising...

Today is a Monday that I don't feel rested at all. Too many activities happening over the weekend: major makeover of our house and supporting the Singapore team at the Olympics. Rushed home from dinner to watch the game at 7.30pm and my eyes stay glued to the TV. There is a huge disparity in standard between the 2 teams. China's team has world no. 1, 2 and 5 players whereas Singapore team's ranking is world's no 6, 7 and 9. But I seriously think Singapore team put up a very good fight. I used to think that so what if they are good, their origin is still China what. But what JQ said to his kids made me think another way. Yes, they were born in China, but they are more Singaporean than us, cos they gave up their citizenship in China to live in Singapore, train in Singapore so as to represent Singapore. They are doing more things for Singapore. And he asked them what are they doing for Singapore... Of course there will be another school of thought, they are getting paid what, if they are not here, they would not have such opportunities. Whichever the case, they made it possible for us to see our Singapore flag rising at an Olympic event for the first time, so I'm still very proud of them! Go Team Singapore and may we see more stars rising to do us proud!

Latest update on my toe

I've started wearing track shoes recently and went for short jogs/walks. However, I still can't bend my toes that well. Visited a orthepedic and physiotherapist last week and realized that it's not my big toe that is affected. It's my second toe that is more stiff. So I have been exercising the wrong toe all this while! The therapist taught me a few things I can do to exercise and strengthen my toes and I have been doing pretty diligiently. So now I'm seeing some improvement. I've even started wearing my most comfortable pair of heels! Yippee! =) Give me a while more, and I should be able to wear my other heels liao. keke

BBQ on 08/08/08

It's been a while since Crucial had a get-together. This year we had a BBQ at a chalet at Pasir Ris again. That's what we normally do, cos there aren't that many places a big group can go, hang around, chill out and really catch up.


JQ looks very good in this pix hor...:p


Think I enjoyed this year's gathering more than previous years. I probably stayed long enough to really catch up with the rest of the guys. Food this year was super good too. Mag prepared 2 super yummy salad for me. Her potato salad was really nice. Bee hoon prepared by Dollah's wife was yummy too! =)

Meditation helps

Was in a super foul mood yesterday after talking to my boss. Can feel my face, eyes and body flushing red and hot with anger! Lucky Tricia lent a "MSN window and her eyes" to me to vent my frustration (with technology, it's no longer listening ears and a shoulder). She probably can relate to what I'm feeling cos we had the same boss once. Anyway, my EQ was just going haywire and I was feeling shitty and lousy and just looking forward to 4pm.

Planned to go for steamboat dinner at Lotus and since dinner starts only at 6pm, hubby and I decided to visit the Burmese Buddhist temple near Balestier. This place always have that magic aura of calming people down. We went upstairs to the 3rd floor and meditated for a short while in front of Buddha. It's truly amazing. I can feel myself calming down and peace taking over my mind. I feel a lot more lighthearted and refreshed after the short meditation. Just googled this temple and realised they have meditation service for adults every Friday 7-8pm. Think I will give this meditation a try one of these Fridays. =)

http://www.burmesebuddhisttemple.org.sg/index.htm

PS: T, what you said about S was very funny. I only had the mood to laugh about it when I recalled our conversation during dinner...:p So you think I should take the photos out?

No more good facials...

My favourite beautician is leaving! I have never had a regular favourite beautician before until I met C and now she's leaving, all her Boss's fault. Someone should send the Boss to some management courses. The way she's treating her staff now is like they are all her maids! All the horror stories of how she treats them, no wonder everyone is leaving when they have a chance. Such a bully! All her fault!

Big change!

There is going to be a BIG change in my company again. This is going to be the fourth time in 7 years, BUT this time it has more direct impact on the sales team on the whole. I thought the result and consequence of the last acquistion of LM was bad. My team, especially I, had to go through shit, turmoil and politics. I went through a phase of frequent headaches, pulling hair and vomitting and finally settled all the pertinent issues. Thought it's the time to kind of enjoy some harvesting now, but alas, there is an announcement to change the sales structure. How is that happening, no one knows for sure at this juncture. We will just have to wait and see and hope transition will be smooth and easy. SIGH! Is this a sign for a career change? :(

Sweet birthday surprise

My sister planned a birthday surprise for me this year and it was a success! Cos I did not have the faintest idea until I saw them at my place. Of course this was made possible with a good accomplice: JQ. JQ and I were out till about 9+ on my birthday. When we reached home, I saw him opening the shoe cabinet with the intention of keeping his shoes, BUT he took out his shoes and left it on the floor. I asked him what he's doing, and he said he wanted to air his shoes. DUH! I did not suspect that there was no space to put his own shoes. Next, I was babbling nonense to him in the kitchen. Usually, I will head straight to our wardrobe room to change out first and that's where my sis was hiding. So he had to lure me to our wardrobe room from the kitchen, wondering why I did not follow my usual routine this time. And there was my sister hiding in the wardrobe room with a birthday cake. BOY was I shocked. My next question was eh, only you ah? Mom never come? I turned around to see my Mom sneaking up behind me with a sheepish cute look on her face. You really should see her face, she looked like a small cheeky naughty girl so much so that I wanted to pinch her cheeks! So I was really really surprised, and touched this birthday. If you are wondering what happened to my Dad, well, he is just not into this kind of family gatherings. If it's proper dinner with table setting, he will be there. =) Anyone has any ideas how I can get my Dad to be more involved?

Busy June

June has been a really busy period. 2 overseas trip and my birthday month. Went HKG on 5 - 8th of June on a biz trip, and my Mom and sister went along with me. Free accomodation at 5-star hotel, why not right? The photos shown on hotel website was really nice and my sister was so enticed to go. When we checked in though, we were all scratching our head and wondering why the website looks so different. Anyway, this was not the best time to go HKG. Not only was it not the sale's season, it was raining almost EVERYDAY. First day we touched down, it was drizzling, second day pouring, third day black alert, all schools had to close. Lucky we stay in a hotel with immediate access to a big shopping mall. If not, my sis and Mom will be bored to death. There were news of floods at a lot of places whenever we watch the news. Lucky for us, on the last day where I had F&E with them whole day till about 4pm, it was clear weather, so we managed to do some shopping and I even bought 2 Rabeanco leather bags. All 3 of us bought Rabeanco bags this time round. =)

13 - 17 Jun, I went BKK with Junqi. Have not been on a trip for a LOOONNNNGGGG time, so I was really looking forward to this trip. We stayed at Marriott Resort and Spa and really enjoyed our stay there. Service was good, ambience was really good. The location is at Riverside, so in order to get to town area, we had to take a ferry to and fro everyday. Really nice and exclusive. All the goods hotels have this kind of shuttle ferry service at their respective hotels. Shopping was good, I think I did more shopping during this trip than the last 5 years combined. Every night we will go for massage to soothe our legs so as to continue the shopping battle the next day. Every night after all the shopping and walking, on the ferry back to hotel, I have this sizzling feeling in my legs! Food was not good though, tough to find vegetarian food in BKK. Our life saver was MK steamboat. Confirmed, checked and double confirmed that their soup base is soya. So we had steamboat for dinner for consecutive 2 nights. On our last day, I was simply dragging my feet to shop around. No stamina at all! I was on the look out for cafes constantly so that I can rest my feet! I'm getting OLD!

Swimming fun

Swimming is the only exercise I can do at the moment. Tried putting on track shoes the other day and gave up after walking a few steps. The wound portion still hurts when pressure is applied.

Swimming is going to be a weekly routine with my sister(I hope anyway). Brought my Mom to the pool for the first time in her life. It was hilarious. She has low water confidence and was very scared. Bought a floating board for her, and you should see the way she is hanging to it for dear life in a 1.2m pool. She was so cute, and we were trying to teach her to float and she was like screaming. Nearly died laughing... =) Hope things will improve as she gains her confidence. :)

Overdue Honeymoon

We are finally going on our honeymoon! This trip has been delayed and delayed and delayed. The only period we can go is June and Dec school holidays (what to do, I married a teacher), and somehow things always pop out. When we just got married in Dec 06, we only managed to go on short trip to Bintan/Batam cos most of our funds were used to pay the top up for our flat. Jun 07, we were busy with moving and settling into our house, plus also cash strapped with the renovation and stuff. Dec 07, he kena reservist, so we only managed a family trip up to Genting. Jun 08, he kena reservist again, so we are going on short trip to Bangkok. So now we are planning early for our Dec trip. And it will be a trip worth remembering, cos we going US for 3 weeks!! Yippee! This time, nothing will stop us! Psst...Actually, Nov/Dec 08, he will kena 2 reservist, but that will be taken care of. :p Don't know why all his reservist always fall into school holiday period one... Sigh...

US US here I come!

Home cooked Wanton Mee

Haha, so proud of myself, managed to cook some decent Wanton Mee on Sunday. Looks quite nice right? Taste quite good as well. :p Do pardon the unglam looking newspaper, that is a necessity for lazy pple like me! haha

I love our car!