Ade's Anatomy

2011-01-23T23:26:00.003+08:00

Random post

I need a new job. End of story. So much so that i've been faithfully glueing myself to jobsites hoping for some wonder link that can bring me to a new beginning. So much so that i went to pray for this miracle. So much so for my life...

I've recently gotten updates of a few friends who have ended their long-term relationship. And i mean LT>5yrs. Quite a shock to hear but relationship can be so simple and complicated at the same time. Seriously my single friends seem to be getting more with time.

I've got 3 mini trips planned this year already!!! Whoohoo! A trip to KL in March to watch the Jay Chou concert! A trip to Phuket in March with my HSBC babies for Gracie's pre-wedding celebration! A trip to Bali in Aug with the JC gang! And now to plan my trip together with Mr Hou...hopefully Australia beckons!

May year 2011 be awesome for everyone!

2010-09-28T16:08:00.002+08:00

Its nearing the end of the year again and everytime during this period, i especially feel the need to travel somewhere out of Singapore. Most companies financial year ends around Sept or October and usually after this closing period, its the time where we hectic sales people get a breather from management. At least that what my boss tells us...

This year i haven't had a chance to go anywhere too far away but rather its mostly short weekend trips. Krabi was the first airplane destination this yr and Bangkok in dec seems like it'll be the last one to wrap up 2010 with. I'm still crossing my fingers for 1 more this yr but we'll just see how it goes then.

I sometimes wonder how its like if i were to travel alone. A simple no frills journey with a limited budget and possibly coupled with a good camera to capture all the experiences. It might feel kinda lonely but it'll definitely be different. No one to check directions with, no one to shop with, no one to share the food with, no one to take pictures with and no one to remember the same experience with. But nowadays, making travelling plans with companions has so many factors that its really not a given if everyone manages to make it in the same schedule. How many trips have i spoken with my many friends that till date its still just talk? And how many places have i stated that i will wanna go visit together are still just plans of someday... so maybe someday i might just go travel alone. Someday this plan may really come true...

2010-08-09T17:10:00.002+08:00

Its the long NDP weekend and i have just been spending my time slacking at home. Had many plans made but none that realised because of sudden disruptions. But well at least Starhub did one good thing to brighten my weekend by offering all the free cable tv channels.

Was greatly entertained by shows like "Notting Hill" and "Hannah Montana-The Movie"...haha ya Notting Hill is such a sappy romantic show that really just makes me smile helplessly with the cliche plot and sweet songs. Every girl is a closet romantic at heart. And Hannah Montanna is just a simple child-like movie that always has a happy ending. Simple stuffs to make me happy and contended. I can really imagine that i'll still be enjoying such disney's show when i'm older...wuahaha...

Sigh...had a horrendous July so let's just hope that August will be a better month. At least i have Krabi to look forward to.

Can't wait to leave for much sun, sea and sand!!!

2010-07-18T17:21:00.007+08:00

Away from work, I'm definitely happy with my private life so here are some of my happy moments recently...

BBQ

Had a mini bbq at my house. Sort of a pre-bdae celebration and gathering for us. Look at all of us happily toasting our beloved marshmellows by the pit.Which brings me to my source of pride and joy! Tada! My invention of perfectly toasted marshmellow smeared with butter on the sides...

I tell u this marshmellow is totally out of the world! With butter smeared on the sides before toasting, it gives it a brown caramelised surface that is crispy on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside. Even for a non-sweet fan like me, i just cant stop eating this! This just shows how much iphone has infiltrated into our lives. Everyone was happily comparing apps except for pei and cla who are still loyal Nokia fans. Doesn't pei look like a very proud Nokia fan lover in the midst of all the iphone users...haha...My Genting short trip with my family...precious family time spent...A wet rainy day spent at the theme park. The intermitent rain kept coming down at different intervals and we were tired from queueing up for all the long rides. And my 2 cousins were such scardey-cats that they don't dare to take any of the more adventurous looking rides and so we spent our time playing all the low flying kiddish rides...haha but it was fun nonetheless...And i also recently went for a short weekend trip to Malacca with the jc-gang. we got upgraded to a suite at Bayview hotel and look how spacious it is. And i finally revisted my love at the Ayam Laksa store! Look at the fantastic spread! I'm so hungry looking at it now...drools...Outside the very packed store.And how can we not go visit the famous red building of Malacca...the sun is super super hot can!Haha...the monument that we are all too familar with from our history textbooks....

My next exciting agenda is the upcoming Jay Chou concert! Loves Loves...

2010-07-18T16:53:00.002+08:00

I'm falling into the same abyss of restlessness from work again. And once again it seems awfully deep and dark...

I've taken the plunge to try my hand at the same role but different environment and platform. Sadly, it doesn't seem to work to make me feel happy and contended with my work life. Month on month is the call and push for numbers. Only this time round, the products are worse than previous calls. I really think i'm giving up at this game already. With my personality and character, i can never achieve great heights at this role because i can never bring myself to push my clients for what the company wants. And because there is not enough monetary benefits for me to convince myself...the dark side beckons...again...

I dread myself sounding like a broken record. Its the same old shit and i still can't accept it. And so the dreadful music keeps playing on. On and on until the people around me gets tired and irritated by it...on and on until it affects my mood excessively...on and on until i start to unplug it...on and on it goes... ... ...

Find me the plug will ya?... ... ...

2010-05-22T19:51:00.002+08:00

I seem to have a penchant for people touching my head. It always evokes with it a rush of warm and fuzzy feeling...

A simple act yet with unexplainable results.

2010-05-08T17:35:00.003+08:00

Gosh! Is it May already?! We're almost half-way through for 2010 already. I guess time really waits for no man and we're just getting older by the min...haha...

Have been hearing many stories of people going to the casinos and winning money. I've heard of friends who went down to the Marina Sands Casino and won 900bucks in a mere 45mins and also friends who played at Genting and won. Makes me itch to try my luck myself too which is what i plan to do when i go Genting with my family in June. I'm never a gambler and i've never lingered and played much at the casinos whenever i've gone to Genting previously. But i guess now that you feel like since gg to the casino is free versus the 100bucks you have to pay to get into in Spore, it seems like such a waste if we dun gamble in Genting...haha...let's hope i'll be one of the success stories then.

I keep talking about planning short trips with different gps of friends but nothing ever works out in the end. And the sad deal is that Bangkok which is such a perfect place to go to is so rioty now. Damn! I really wanna go somewhere with lots of shopping, food and massages...

Thankfully dad's operation went well and let's hope it'll solve the problem. The 2days where he was warded was quite tiring on all of us as we stayed at the hospital for the whole of the 1st day and went down again after work on e 2nd day. Its never a good experience when you have to go to the hospital because of a family member who's sick but at least that's over for now.

I finally managed to get tics for Jay Chou concert in July!!!!!!!! Tried like many others in his 1st 2 shows to buy from the internet but to no avail. YL's mum even helped us queued for 2hrs at the sistic counter but there were only single seats left when its her turn...luckily cla managed to help us get the tics in advance for his 3rd show. Shit sistic whose website is a total failure! And mostly likely despite what they say, most of the tics are probably already taken up by sponsors and corporate bookings before its launched to the public. And damn those people who bought the tics just to sell them exorbitantly on the internet after that!!! I'm so upset by them coz they're also the ones who caused me not to be able to purchase the tics in the first 2 shows! Well...after venting out all these, i just wanna say

I'M GOING TO SEE YOU JAY!!!

I'm being super random.
And that's all folks...

2010-03-07T18:02:00.004+08:00

Its been a hectic and busy Feb! What with all the Chinese New Yr celebrations and my official 1st mth of sales target running...time seem to zoom by 3x faster!

Feb is always a very eventful mth because CNY usually falls during this mth and there's vday, bdae and Our-Day all rolled within this short mth. Haha...but i'm always very dreadful of the mths after that as it seems that the dredgery of the long yr ahead is staring blankly in my face. But new yr with a new start so let's make the most out of our lives bah ppl!

Its been abt 2 mths since i've finished training and started real work in the office. Although there are still much things that i seemed like an idiot abt but the work is starting to feel like routine once again. The 1 thing that i really like abt my work now is that my weekends are finally free! I'm sure everyone knows abt the horrendous work-life "balance" i had in my previous job where almost every wkend is filled with endless mind-numbing roadshows. And wkends dun seem very likeable coz there's nothing much to look forward to....sigh ya those were the sad days. And because of that i treasure very much the sat and sun that i have now. The feeling of being able to go out late on a fri nite and sleeping in on sat and sun morning is such a glorious feeling that i so appreciate now...haha...some of u might think i'm pretty moronic to feel like this over such a simple matter. The recent sat that i spend was gg to work til 1pm(my 1st sat duty for 2mths) and then gg over to darl's hs to chill and out later in the day. I think the last time we spent a Sat like this was pretty much during our schooling days and it was really nice :)

Anyway i'm really dying for a retreat away from Spore! I would love to slack away on a nice sunny beach or some place where i can have massages for my aching body 3 times a day!
I missed the slow paced days at Pulau Besar where there was absolutely nothing to do there other than stare at the sea and playing pool...haha...
I missed Phuket with the Vivo gang where we went island hopping and drank our guts away in the nite.
I missed the Japan days with darl where the weather was cold and we had great food everywhere we went(by far Japan is my fav hols yet).
I missed Korea with my parents coz it was precious family time spent.
I missed Shanghai with darl&yt&pw where we had lots of fun with all our new travel friends. Sigh...i missed travelling...
And hopefully i'll be able to plan something short soon bah.

2010-01-31T21:26:00.005+08:00

How i wished i can go back to being the girl who used to believe that the world is a simple and fair place where good people get good returns and the bad begets their ill-karma. Or that relationships were really that easy to upkeep and straight-forward. I feel like that i've seen and experienced so much in the past 1 year til date that has made me a different person in some perspective of life.

A close friend of mine recently underwent a break-up and it was due to betrayal of the bf. Seeing the hurt and sadness that it caused, i cant help but attempt to arm myself subconsciously with enough mental strength to withstand the same amt of pain should the unfortunate also happen to me. This is especially so because i feel that i can particularly relate to how she is feeling from certain similarities in our way of thinking. And seeing the pain and hurt from my friend scares me because i feel that it can also happen to me. And usually the first cut is the deepest. Its not because i dun trust my partner, but rather it seems that "what can go wrong can go wrong" as opposed to the "things will turn out fine" thinking that i used to hold. Does it seem like a joke now to know that i used to be so simple and naive? But it also means that i have less worry and concern than because certain things nv occur to me. Perhaps I've finally grown up enough now to realise what some of my friends realised long ago. Nothing is certain in this world. And i know for a fact that he already holds this same view many yrs ago when i was still holding a simple and naive view. At that pt in time, i didn't understand the skeptism but now i do.

Its extremely sad to hold regrets in life. Regret that you didn't do enough to make it work. Regret that you could have done better. Regret that you ignore all the signs and warnings. Regret that you cant be with the one that you love. Above all, the feeling that you can never turn back time and change anything. And all of us should make sure that we avoid such regrets in life because the feeling sucks big time after that! But sometimes life hands out such ordeals to us so as to allow ourselves to learn from our mistakes. We are who we are based on how we handle difficult situations. And hopefully we become a better person after experiencing the hardship. At the same time we also learn to treasure what we have right now before its too late...

So for all my friends out there, i hope dearly that you guys will never need to face such pain and sadness in your life but if it really happens, then know that you can also count on your friends and family to be there for you because i know i can.

2010-01-10T21:11:00.003+08:00

I had another one of those dreams again...its e 4th or 5th time in the past 6mths.

Dreams are supposed to be a reflection of one's subconscious mind so what does it all mean? And importantly when will it finally stop?

My mind is apparently more fragile than it seems...

2010-01-01T15:57:00.004+08:00

Happy New Year to all! The shitty 2009 is finally put to rest behind us and 2010 is staring right at us in the eye! I don't know about u guys but 2009 is currently tops on my worst year to date. Its been a crap year of gloomy recession, non-existence sales results, crazy bosses(its not just 1 but a few), grouses in the private life and an utter year of feeling like shit and lost in life!!! I also do know of friends who had many an unhappy moments in 2009 and May all these be put right behind us now!

2010 will be the year where i step out of my comfort zone. The year when i undertake a new challenge in my career as a Relationship Manager. A change in bank, change in colleagues, change in bosses and change in the way i have to conduct my business. While it is extremely scary to make such changes because i may well fluke spectacularly, but at the same time i can sense this tingling feeling in me as i am about to embrace this new role. Its been a while since i've felt like this at work because it has been pretty much a gloomy affair for this entire year. Hell, i've been a totally grumpy and gloomy person for the whole of 2009! And i'm going to reclaim back my old self! The 1 month plus hiatus before i started my new job has been a very good period of quiet calmness to find back myself. When we are pulled out of the hectic rat race, u begin to see more clearly what are the values and things that u treasure in life. And this is especially so in my line of work because its so easy to lose yourself while you're in pursuit of all the monetary desires and numbers. Identifying my core values are what is needed to keep me grounded going forward. I definitely do not want it to be another 3 years later when i change my job again before i find back myself.

And now do i dare to do this...setting New Year Resolutions! Haha...ok maybe i won't name them as such. It'll be just a list of mindful reminders for the new yr :p

1. Stay happy and contended, pure and simple.
2. Travel more. Pls make Australia happen in 2010! And maybe i can add in a couple of other small trips to fulfil point 1 :)
3. Learn to manage myself better at work. Sigh i really have to stop being so easily affected by stupid ppl.
4. Have a healthy lifestyle. Maybe taking up tennis and some other sports more actively this yr. Plus the fact that e hsbc babies have also resolved to start doing some outdoor sports together rather than keep gg out to eat and drink...haha...
5. Meet up often with the people who keep me grounded. Yes, that means u! E uh-oh gang, e glitter gals, e jc gang and the babies!
6. To be more patient, understanding and independant for us. In other words, find my own inner peace...

So with that-

LET THE NEW YEAR BEGIN!!!

2009-12-13T16:30:00.004+08:00

T.R.U.S.T

What is this 5 letter word really? Its definition based on Dictionary.Com means
- reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence
- a person on whom or thing on which one relies
- to permit to remain or go somewhere or to do something without fear of consequences
- to believe
and many more in different aspects but i feel that these are the ones that i can relate to. How difficult or amazing is it that oneself can put such faith and belief in another person? Other than our families, we all started out as absolute strangers whom we had no contact or experience with for the previous part of our lives. But how is it that for some of us, we find it easy to place our trust in certain selected people of our lives while there are others who find it difficult to trust another at all?

To be honest, i categorize myself as the former group where i usually find it easy to put my trust in the selected people around me. It could be due to the environment that i was brought up and surrounded with, i met good and kind people who had no reason for me to take back the trust that i placed in them. And for this i am grateful and blessed. But as i open up my world to more pple, i realized that this is not a given thing nor is it something that holds infallible. It is sooo difficult for someone else to place their trust in you without any doubt just because U are U. And why should we do that because we are putting ourselves in a situation of vulnerability should our trust gets betrayed. And i've finally seen for myself how hurt and pained it is for one to be betrayed of that trust in the people you cared lots about.

And like a mirror once broken, its cracked. How long will it take for the trust to be regained back? If ever?... I didn't use to think much about this issue because to me it was easy to trust and be trusted. But i now realised that trust should never be taken for granted because it is such a hazy and non-concrete thing which is ultimately based on just feelings without any hard evidence or logic! Its either you trust the person or not. And the person being given the trust should also appreciate that its one of the most invaluable gift that another human can give upon to you. And thus should also work upon preserving that without just taking it for granted that it will always be yours.

It hurts badly when someone betrays your trust in them which is why I'm more concerned than ever that i DO NOT EVER want to do that to anyone in my life who trusts me. Because i do not ever wish to inflict that kind of pain and hurt on them as i do not wish for that to happen to me too. Do not do upon others what you do not wish to be done on you. Life seriously sucks at certain period of time and most likely we cant do anything about it but to just ride it out. Like what Forrest Gump said "Shit happens!"... ... ...but we all wish we can just flush it away that easily... ... ...

2009-11-16T15:46:00.011+08:00

Day 4: Beitou

After leaving Jiufen, we headed off to Beitou where people visits for hot springs! I love hot spring! Ever since my 1st encounter in Japan last yr, i totally fell in love with the feeling of soaking your tired aching body into the hot steaming water while ur tiredness oozes away. We'll also emerge after soaking the hot spring with a warm fuzzy feeling that makes u just wanna cuddle into bed. Ooohhh....my love....

And that's why i particularly booked a night's stay at one of the most expensive hot spring resort in Beitou sensing that we'll likely wanna stay the night there after the hot spring instead of rushing back to taipei city. We stayed at Spring City Resort which darl and i had high expectations hoping that it'll be able to match the Hakone Prince Resort which we stayed in Japan last yr. But in e end, although the resort was quite comfortable, Hakone Prince was still the one that came out top. A look at our simple hotel room...And the crux lies in the bathroom where each hotel room comes equipped with an individual private hot spring spa so that guest can enjoy the hot spring 24/7 in the comfort of their rooms. Me and darl maximised the usage of the hot spring by soaking in it 3 times.

1)When we first checked in

2)In the night when we came back from visiting Danshui

3)Before we checked out the next day....Us goofing ard with the SLR as u can see...somehow i really love this pic of us posing in front of the mirror...Posing in front of the resort, we're waiting for the shuttle bus to bring guests down to the Mrt station.

And a sneak peek at their outdoor hot spring area. Its open to the public who do not have to stay at the resort and its uni-sex. Guests are required to wear bathing suits in similar to that of swimming pools and there are mini hot spring pools for you to try out. Darl looked like a papparazi sneaking shots of the pool.

We went on down to Danshui to visit the famous Fisherman's Wharf.We managed to reach Danshui in time to catch a glimpse of the gorgeous sunset. We took lots of pics with the sunset...After which we took a 10mins boat ride to Fisherman's Wharf...Isn't it nice with all the lights...Fisherman's Wharf is also known as the 情人桥. So romantic...We took a walk along the Danshui Old Street for snacks.They were selling this tall ice-cream of melon and vanilla flavor if i'm not wrong but i might have forgotten already because i only took 2 mouthful of this ice-cream! 2! darl just kept holding the cone and slurping it happily. He only offered it to me the 1st time and then e 2nd time i saw it, it was like this already!!! And after my 2nd mouth, there was no more! Bleah~just give the man an ice-cream and u can literally measure his length of love for me le...2 mouthfuls...

Day5-7: Taipei City

We tried this great curry shop that YL recommended called "Magic Curry" which was just a walking distance from our hotel. Not too bad but darl thinks that Japan's curry rice are still the best. We concluded that every country has their best food and we should just travel to whichever country whenever we have food cravings in the future...haha...sounds so good yeah. Japan-Ramen/Curry Rice/Suishi,

Taiwan-鲁肉饭/all e taiwanese snacks,

HK-Old style HK cafe food/Curry Fishballs...

We hang out around Ximenting area but didn't really bought any stuffs there.

Outside a bubble tea shop which is everywhere in taiwan. And its nice...And guess what, we saw a stall selling curry Fishballs and we couldn't resist buying them to try so as to see if its comparable to the ones in HK. But of course its not as gd so it fits our theory that we can only go to HK to eat authentic curry fishballs...haha...

We caught a glimpse of taiwan's famous walkabout parade while we were at Ximenting. They were protesting about Gay Rights in Taiwan and its amazing the number of people who participated in the walkabout where it routes by prominent stops in Taipei. E entire atmosphere was like that of a carnival as there were loud music being played and signages done by the different groups of ppl...super interesting...see...these are the gay men who happily paraded around with just a towel wrapped around them...and they were shouting loudly that they are gays!Check out the man with the revealing butt! hurhurhur...

We found this stall selling garlic crabs at Shiliin mkt...looks gd but e taste wasn't very nice coz there wasn't much meat in e crabs...

A last list of our favourite food in Taiwan:

I love my MeeSua!!! Spore version cannot fight can...We also found this in ShiLin Nite mkt!!! Its strawberries with sugar coating! We first discovered this when we were in Shanghai 4 yrs ago and since then we have not seen it anywhere else before! haha darl and i were so excited when we found this *loves*The man with his all time fav 鲁肉饭...We also love this drink of Lime Juice with jello...青蛙下蛋...we had this drink almost every day...Finally its the end of our taiwan trip...ah...i cant bear to think that we'll have to wait for another yr before we head on for another trip. Hopefully our plan of visiting Australia next yr can be materialised :) Roadtrip roadtrip!!!

...Boy and girl sets home on their jet plane awaiting their next joint exploration experience again...*Muacks Muacks*

2009-11-13T16:25:00.010+08:00

Day 3: Jiufen

We planned a visit to Jiufen and booked a room with a 民宿 for a night's stay. Darl and i had always like visiting places out of the city area whenever we travel coz that's when we can get to see some nice scenaries and enjoy a break from the bustling of the city. We stayed at a place called 温莎保 which was recommended by YL who stayed there twice before. Its really a very nice place with rooms that faces the sea view of Jiufen.

Room reservations can be made via emails and e owner was super trusting and nice to allow us to make payment upon reaching the place without any need for deposits. U can check out their wide variety of rooms at www.windsor.idv.tw we stayed in 1 of the smaller rooms 溫莎堡涵館 1. But it'll be quite fun to stay in their bigger rooms with friends the next time we go over there again.

we had to take a railway train to a station before changing a bus to reach Jiufen. Taiwan's mrt and railway stations are pretty similar in nature to that of Japan.

A look at the view of Jiufen once we reached there.

Our cosy room...The best part is this enclosed balcony platform that has a view of the mountain and the sea. Total relaxation to just sit there with a cup of coffee admiring the view *loves* and don't u think this pic that i took for darl looked like something out of a fashion magazine...hurhurhur...Outside our 民宿. Walking down the streets of Jiufen Old Street. Its full of foodies and souvenirs shops. Yes darl, 爱拼才会赢!!! 加油!!!Super huge mushroom stalks grilled to a crisp! Street style escargos...we weren't adventurous enuff to try it...hee...And their 黑猪香肠! Gosh! Its e best 香肠 that we have ever eaten! We tried one and bought another to eat again later. Yums!And their famous fishballs soup couple with what else but darl's fav 鲁肉饭! I told u we can eat this every single day of our trip le. But its thumbs up and very yummy!Yu Yuan for desserts!!! Loves loves this! The yu yuan are all so chewy and nice. Wish spore had this done so finely here.

And this is the very yummilicous Mochi that YL recommended before our trip. Its filled with different ice-cream fillings insides which darl insist on buying 1 whole box for our own consumption there upon trying their samples at the shop earlier. I had serious doubts that we can finish e whole box but it really doesn't seem to be a concern for him so we brought them back to our room for savouring.

After eating so much so much, darl and i decided to go trek up the 基隆山 there coz the view is supposed to be very spectacular and darl is all anxious to take a lot of awe inspiring pics using the DSLR which he had borrowed from his cousin for our trip.

E mountain in e background is what we were supposed to trek up to. But alas...When we reached the treking trail at the mountain foot, it seems that the trail was closed and we cant proceed further. A chat with our hostel owner revealed that the trail had become too dangerous and they were doing some repairs for it. We walked out onto Jiufen at night for dinner and the streets were a quiet and peaceful lot. This is where all the restuarants are located...Our mushroom pot dinner...Breakfast the next morning was at this little cafe just on top of our room. It has an amazing view of Jiufen at their outdoor balcony where guests can sit outside enjoying coffee and snacks.The view from the cafe balcony...And when we were about to leave Jiufen, we wandered into the adjacent room and took a peek insides as the auntie was clearing the room. Apparently its a joint room for a group of 4 that has a gathering area with a view like this. Looks cool doesn't it...We played ard with darl's cam at the railway station trying to capture shots like that of a postcard haha...very fun to play with a SLR. And most of the pics were that of me since darl just like taking the shots while i dun mind being e model...haha...ya i noe i'm a bit of a narcissistic but its fun trying to take different kinds of shots! Ah...can u sense that i'm a little itching to get a SLR for the fun of it now already...sigh...

2009-11-10T15:10:00.016+08:00

U know before facebook, i used to document all my holiday trips here with lots of pics and details of what i did. Now it seems that as pics are posted on fb where every has already seen it, i've became lazy to detail my trips here. But fb is nv gg to be e same as here coz more memories can be documented and kept here with more efforts so here's a look at my 1wk long taiwan trip!

Day 1 and 2: Taipei CityThe start of our 1 wk long deserved break :) we took ChinaAir and i must say darl and i was very happy with their in-flight entertainment haha...thank god they had individual screens for each seats and their movie selections was very new and exciting! I watched hmm..."Time Traveller's Wife" and another movie which i've forgotten on e 4.5hrs flight there. Darl was very excited by the movie selection when we were browsing through the cataloge too! So e 2 of us entertained ourselves by watching our individual movies through e ride. E only sad thing is we couldn't get a window seat on both our journey to and fro taiwan so i had no chance to take a look of taiwan via aerial view.
Upon reaching the very destituted TaoYuan Airport Terminal 1, we went in search of the express bus that can take us to where our hotel is. U have to buy the bus tics (Fei Gou Express Bus) from booths like this found at the corner of the airport. Its really very convenient as they bring u almost to your hotel doorstep and u can also call for pickup from your hotel on ur day of departure to the airport which saves u from lugging your heavy luggage on e train. But my friend did advise that taking e bus might run the risk of heavy traffic jams if ur flight timing runs in e evening peak hr times but luckily for us, e ride was pretty smooth and it was just abt 45mins before we reach our hotel door.

We stayed in a hotel near the Taipei Main Station called See You Hotel. Its quite a distance via their underground shopping area from the hotel to the mrt station but the hotel is very clean and within walking distance from Ximenting so it was still a very comfortable stay.
Check out our humongous king size bed! haha...totally rocks can! Ah and plus the fact that every hotel we stayed in taiwan has over 100 tv channels! Woohoo! My kind of entertainment heaven!

And we had beef noodles for our 1st lunch there which taste fantastic!

After which, we took off to Shilin Nite Mkt for a walk and of course for their famous taiwanese snacks!!!We had to order their famous "Fried Oyster" and "Chou(smelly) Toufu". The fried oyster was slimy and sweet packed with green veges so its really very different from e spore version but it was still ok. The smelly toufu on e other hand looked harmless on e plate but when me and darl tried it...Ya, i basically felt like i was eating something sour from the "long gou" or food that has gone bad~! Gosh! how do pple eat this like a treat??? Me and darl had a few mouthful so as to be able to declare proudly that we had tried "chou toufu" before but we stopped at finishing up the entire plate...bleah...We also queued up for the famous ShiLin Chicken Cutlet! That on the other hand lives up to its name and it was a huge juicy piece of meat that we happily munched on!

The 2nd day brought us to the famous Wu Fen Pu whole sale area for shopping! As u can see its a intercrossed sections of shops filled to the brim with lots of clothes! Me and darl has high anticipation of finding lots of nice bargain clothes here but sadly we only had a couple of finds there at the end. There were so many shops with so much clothes and variety that it makes me giddy! And the fact that clothes there are for their fall seasons which amts to lots of woollen materials with lots of layerings. But ultimately i know its just due to my own lousy skills coz if some of my friends were there, they'll probably walked off with hands full of items.

But we did have a very good find there which is lunch at a place called "Hu Xu Zhang Lu Rou Fan" aka Moustache Zhang's Lu Rou Fan...highly recommended. Mention this to darl and u can almost hear him salivating as he recounts about this meal...Me and darl totally love the "Lu Rou Fan" there! The best in our entire taiwan trip and let me tell u that we had "Lu Rou Fan" every day without fail! Why? Coz darl loves it very very much! And since their servings were often just a small mini bowl, we really can have this even as a snack EVERY single day on our trip without fail :)

We wandered off to have dinner at Jay Chou's italian restuarant call Mr J and chanced upon the Taipei 101 building within sights on our way.A look at the interior of the restaurant. It wasn't very crowded coz we went there on a weekday. I heard that reservations are needed on wkends.The food wasn't fantastic although their pricing was surprisingly quite cheap going by spore standard. My plate of Al Fungi pasta only cost abt S$12-14 and our escargo appetizer only cost S$9. Pretty cheap considering the fact that its a celebrity restaurant with decent decor and very large servings. Worth a trip for fans of Jay Chou but other than that the food is only so so :)

The restaurant beside it is call "Mr Qute" which is also owned by Jay. It basically sells desserts and the 2 restaurants are linked. The story goes that Jay originally wanted to open a series of restaurants naming them after poker cards thus Mr J was the 1st one. But coz Jolin released her song Mr Q first so Jay had to call his 2nd shop Mr Qute instead of the Mr Q he wanted...haha...i'm such a trivia buff for news like this :p

So this ends of our 2nd day of taipei with me and darl relaxing in our hotel rooms with our 115 tv channels and face masks to replenish our moisture and glow or whatever the face masks package says...haha...

Such a CUTE couple we make...hoho...

2009-11-04T13:30:00.010+08:00

Its been about 3 weeks since i last left work and basically just slack around now. How time flies when u feel happy and stress-less... Its a good feeling to be able to just slow down one's pace and not having to feel tense up according to which day of the month it is today. It used to be that the beginning of the month starts of with feeling stressed and panic-ness coz u have to start e targets all over again. As days goes by, mid month is syncromous with e feeling of more panic and anxiety especially if u are nowhere here nor there in hitting your tiers. Afterwhich as we neat the month end, there are 2 possibilities, either we're feeling ultra ultra stressed coz we're still a liiiittle short of hitting our tiers or we have just basically given up on trying with a defeated feeling that we're wasted another month of our life. Crapz! Its giving me cold shudders to remember the vicous cycle that i've gone through for the past 2 years old. But well, i've only got maybe about another 2-3 weeks before i start my training on my new job so i'll just enjoy it while it lasts then.

A look at what i've been doing for e past 3 weeks of slacking...Had my farewell at where else but Kbox! E crazy ppl who came along :)

My ex-VCY team who are e best ppl anyone can wish to work with!And the other lovelies whom i've had the chance to know in my stay at HS...A very drunken lot we are seriously! One thing i've learnt to do is to drink Martel! Haha...such a sweet innocent gal destroyed by all these influences...

And we also finally had our BBQ which we have talked about for ages. It was held at dear smelly's aunt condo. The yummilicious food that we got! Ah makes me hungary for bbq now again...drools...And the little cutie baby ashton was hogged by everyone that nite...lucky him to be surrounded by all the pretty little babes...just like how his daddy henry is too...haha...

I also did some exercise by playing badminton with pei and my cousins. Super tiring can! So long nv play badminton le...
We're also starting to take tennis lessons from a coach that YL has learnt from before. Tennis has always been something that i've wanted to learn for a long time so this is pretty exciting. Haha...i din manage to get any pics of us playing e tennis coz we were all seriously learning under the hot sun on a sat afternoon. And of course after that, a good meal is in order for e day... Scrumptious jap buffet at Hanabi for dinner followed by drinks at RedDot!E 1 wk taiwan trip came and pass by in a flash. Sigh...after waiting so long for my yr-long trip and now its over already. But it was great fun with lots of gd food. Pics are with darl so waiting to get my hands on them so that i can start developing them and finish our holiday album thus far...so long for now then. Ah i so dun want work to start at all...but this is totally just pointless dreaming. And looking at the up and coming Xmas decor in Orchard now is making me feel tingling with the warm fuzzy feeling that only xmas can give me...haha...oohhh...cant wait for xmas!

2009-09-16T20:58:00.010+08:00

Weekend trip to Pulau Besar (7-9th Aug)

Went for a short weekend trip to one of the Malaysia island called Pulau Besar over the Aug long National Day wkend. Just wanted to take a short break from all the hecticness in Spore and it was quite a nice relaxing 3 days.

We stayed at a place called Mirage Resort. It was a very chill-out and quiet place. Not very tourisy and also quite cheap. We spent a total of S$400 on the entire 3D2N trip including food, transport and snorkelling. As usual, i'll let the pictures do e talking...
The very beautiful jetty which we arrived at the island.The chill-out area where u can sit and face the sea...Our 2 story resort which can house 7 pple.e 2nd storey rm where me and yiling slept...e guys slept at the 1st storey.We went out to explore the island and took a dip in e sea...bleah...super salty...haha...my eyes sting from the salt water loh. But its still damn fun!We found some swings! Yippee!Wuahaha! e big star jump! I tried 3 times and each time my facial expression is like this...sigh...i thought i could look more pretty when i was jumping but apparently not...hee...We went island hopping the 2nd day! Snorkelling time! But the equipment they gave us was machiam like plastic toys loh. And my mouth tube keeps letting water in! So i cant stay underwater for more than 10sec each time! Bleah...We went island hopping the 2nd day! Snorkelling time!Me playing a fool on e speedboat :pWe found this other very nice and abandoned like jetty on the other side of the island...I love black&white and Sepia pictures. It always make the scene very nostalgic...The very beautiful sunset...

There was really nothing to do on e island so we started scribbling on the beach...haha...This says "Ade & Co was here. NDP'09. AJC 18/01" I wanted to write everyone's name but it was too long...so they ended up being my Co....hahaha!And we did ting dong things like this! haha...the wind was freaking strong can! So much that it can lift our very wet towel...so we role-played a very romantic couple running on the beach with their towels flying behind scene. We actually took a video of it but its with gunz so i cant share...haha...damn funny!

And then drinks for the night to round it up!Me being ting dong once i drink as usual...haha...i taught them how to play the drinking game "Minimizer"! But unfortunately they only had beer on e island so we had to kp drinking Carlsberg and Heinken! I would have prefered my fav Martell...hee...Told u i was ting dong le...hee...Gunz became quite ting dong also...haha...Another main entertainment on e island is to play their free pool. Fun fun! Reminds me of my JC days where we'll go Carpage to play but its like a total waste of my money coz every hr i'll only play abt 2 games max...haha...our young days...All in all it was a very fun and short getaway. I wouldn't mind heading back there again in future someday...

2009-09-16T20:26:00.002+08:00

Updates...

I finally did it!!! I officially tendered from HSBC on 10th Sept 2009!!! Woohoo!!! Haha...cant explain the exhilarating and light-hearted feeling i get from finally doing this thing that i've dreamt of for so long! To all my friends, i'll be moving over to DBS Treasures as a Relationship Manager in Nov where i'll start my training over there. Hmm...I'm not sure if this banking path that i'm chosing to go forward is the right one for me but i do feel that its one of the better options that i can chose from right now. Hopelessly staying on in HS will just get me nowhere as i'm starting to get stagnant here from all the crap that has happened and unhappiness. At least the move seems to be for a better one so let's hope that things will work out well for me then bah. But for now! Its total slacking time for me!!! Muahahaha! I'm just gg to shake my leg in branch now while serving my 1mth notice and then after that i'll have another 1 full month of total break before i start my training over at the new side. It has always been my dream to quit with a job and then rest for a month at least and finally i can have a chance to do this :)

I'll be planning a trip with darl in end Oct to go Taiwan! Usually our holidays always occur in Dec coz that's when i can take my core leave but this time rd we'll bring it forward to Oct since I'll be training in Dec and that's when darl is not so busy too! Other than that, i'm definitely open to gg for trips with my dear friends too! Let's fulfil all those short wkend trips that we're always spoke about but have not taken any actions on. This time rd, i can be the organiser since i'll be the most free person...haha...so exciting! So my dear friends, pls call me out as i'll be v free for the next 2 mths before i start my next new journey :)

List of things that i plan to do:
1. Taiwan trip with darl
2. Batam spa trip with pei/cla/yl
3. Msia trip with my jc friends
4. Something with my glitter gals
5. Develop my past holiday photos (i think e last pics i develop was from Shanghai which was 3 yrs ago! Gasp! missing HK and Japan...)
6. ...to be continued...

whew! It feels good to finally have an action plan for my work-life. I really hope things will turn for the better...that everything will turn for e better...

2009-08-25T21:53:00.000+08:00

Is this how it feels like to walk around with your heart so heavy and your head so light?...

I'm thinking, i really am...so pls believe and trust together with me that it will be a test that will make us stronger.

I was looking through all my old entries since i last started this blog and the memories and feelings just flooded back to me strongly. There are so many memories of u and me together here. Even if we may have had many unhappiness recently and thus forgot abt the happiness. It hasn't disappear totally coz its still all here and deep in my heart...and its really very sweet and only u can make me want this sweet taste over and over again for my life...

2009-08-18T23:38:00.000+08:00

Crying put me to slp tonight. But i don't believe i'll have a dreamless night...Maybe i can find my answers in there and maybe so can u...

2009-08-02T22:30:00.002+08:00

Went down to Butterfactory with mb and my HSBC babies. I went there previously when it just opened and found that i prefered Phuture. But since the others haven been there before, we decided to head there. There was a huge crowd queuing outside when we reached but surprisely the inside was not as crowded and the dance floor was still empty despite it being midnite already. We headed to order some drinks 1st.

Total count of e nite was: 1 jug of cranberry vodka, 2 rds of tequila shots, 1 rd of tequila pop, 1 jaggarbomb each for me and mb, some other drinks that jazmine and maggie ordered which i dunnoe wat they are and a couple of mouthful of vodka from some guys at a table.

We danced til abt 3plus that nite and we walked out to wait for our rides. Sitting outside on the steps, i found to my surprise that i wasn't as drunk as i wanted to be. If u had seen me that nite, u would probably think that i was dying for drinks, as i keep gg off to order at the bar counter with mb. Haha...usually i would be trying hard to escape from drinking too much because i know how my alcohol tolerance level is but it was the opposite that nite. I was looking like i needed to get drunk quick and i probably was. But in the end, i realised as i sat on the steps that when your mind is cluttered, it doesn't seem to loosen up easily. I was hoping for the alcohol to numb the hurt and anger but it cant. If not for the babes that was sitting there with me that nite, i think i might have just sat there myself the whole nite so thanks very much to them.

And i paid the price by having a super big headache the next day when i usually do not suffer from any hangovers from previous drinking session. So probably it seems that when the mind is bothered, alcohol works in e worst ways possible...

2009-07-19T18:40:00.002+08:00

Was browsing a magazine when i came across this article-"无恙分手". Basically what it says is that couples break up even though they looked fine on the surface and there are no 3rd party intrusions. What happens is that feelings went into a low slump and many reasons other than love interferes in the outcome.

What i really found interesting is the likening of this situation to that of boiling a pot of good soup. People come together because there's a lot of mixtures and flavors. Sometimes you might like the final taste of the soup where you experiment with different flavors but sometimes you might not. In this case, either one attempts to re-flavor the soup or adjust one's own taste buds, else pouring away the entire pot of soup will be such a waste. At times, you might not be able to find any residues of love in the soup but if the flavor of love has already seeped deeply into the taste of the soup then that is also fine. This is when love has already infused deeply into one's routine and its part of one's life.

Isn't it interesting and true about this analogy of love akin to boiling a pot of good soup? I think i'm confused now as to what my soup is turning out to be and what other flavors do i wish to add in. It might be time to just close the lid and let it simmer for a while now without bothering about it or it could also be time to take up the spoon and try how the flavor has turned out so that i can know what other ingredients to add in. Afterall i have been cooking this soup for a very long time and who knows whether my taste buds have changed or maybe the soup has dried up after simmering for too long. But for now the soup is still simmering and let's hope the taste turns out to be my liking....

2009-07-05T16:51:00.003+08:00

My Loves...

-Love the feeling of walking home while its still daylight
-Love chilling out and chatting with my friends
-Love relieving my aching body by going for massages
-Love going to the library
-Love the blue sea and blue skies
-Love travelling and experiencing life
-Love being alone sometimes
-Love rainy weather
-Love watching drama shows
-Love jap food
-Love to fool around cooking receipes with my own dash of concoctions
-Love my Harry Potter series
-Love going to hot spring resorts after my 1st try in Japan and then Korea
-Love comics and anime
-Love hearing my favourite songs consecutively on my ipod
-Love eating steamboat with friends and family

My Loves... ... ...

2009-07-01T18:49:00.004+08:00

Shoot, i dun even have time to post what happened on my Korea trip last mth in end May. Will look into updating it when i'm more free.

Anw quick updates now in my life is that I'm finally doing some action plans to get out of my miserable work-life. Have been actively sending resumes and going for a couple of interviews. Sad to say is that I still haven gotten any positive replies which really makes me feel that the job mkt is really at a very sad state rite now. Seriously i need to throw the letter in my stupid boss's face to make him realise that he is a total failure in managing people! But anyhow life in my branch now is pretty bleak because the newcomers that came in doesn't look like people whom i can click with and also coz i dun really feel like making the effort to be going in my way to be nice. Dun get me wrong, i'm definitely not ill-treating them but just that i'm not making efforts to make them feel like i'm a damn nice senior...hahaha!

Seriously i was talking to buddy Hen the other day while he was smoking and it just struck me that half a year of 2009 had passed and i have absolutely no achievements done this yr til date. This is probably the most meaningless and lost year I have ever gone through in my entire lifetime. All the reshuffling of branches, loss of directions and motivation for my work, constant thoughts about leaving the job and the constant tirade with my different bosses. Tiring, depressing and a utter waste of my time this year! Its time to wake up and smell the roses!

Waiting waiting waiting... ... ... where's my next goal going to be?

Btw, the H1N1 is freaking scary can! So many new cases everyday! Thank god its not that fatal. And almost everyone i noe is going down with flu these days, even myself 2 weeks ago. So drink lots of water and take lots of rest. Take care my friends!

2009-04-19T18:18:00.002+08:00

Guess what! I'm moving back to vivo branch again. And to think that its just been a couple of weeks ago that i was lamenting that i had just moved to a new branch. Who would have expect this unexpected twist in events, definitely not me for sure. In anycase, these past few months have allowed me to see clearly how politics and mind-games are played on the management level. There's so much plotting, strategizing and story-telling to be done and sadly my movement to and fro between branches happen to be part of the plot. All these plus other events just contributed to making me more disillusioned with the company and my job. Looking on the bright side, at least i'll be going back to a familar environment even though all my buddies have pretty much left the branch. Haha...it'll just be me and Mr Hen as support buddies from now on. With work, there's really only so much i can say coz its pretty much a dismal picture.

On another note, with so many things happening to me with my work, is it any wonder that I would like to pour all my greviances and anger to the bf who can then comfort and reassure me. But his reaction for my situation was totally uncalled for. Here i was angrily recounting to him that my boss was treating me like a pawn in his politics game and the 1st statement he actually said was "He didn't do anything wrong". WTF! Seriously WTF! U can be as rational as you like AFTER you console me, you can be as analytical as you like AFTER you feel angry for me on my behalf, you can be as objective as you like AFTER you hear me rant out my anger and frustrations!
BUT YOU FREAKING HELL CANNOT SAY THAT 'HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!" IN YOUR 1ST SENTENCE TO ME!
I noe you want to help me look at the situation rationally so that i do not rashly make any stupid moves and technically my boss was playing a very smart game for his own benefit which there is nothing wrong from his perspective. But the point here is that I'm the victim, your own gf the victim and do you think the victim would want to hear that the culprit who did this to her did nothing wrong coming from his perspective!

You cannot imagine how angry and hurt i was to hear that coming from you. You who i wanted to meet that day coz i was feeling so down from all this, you who i wanted the comfort from a love one coz i was suffocated from all this and then you who told me "He didn't do anything wrong..." I really dun need that at that pt in time. And it really hurt...badly coz it made you seem like you're on his side. Did you even think of how i felt at that pt in time? I have half a mind never to go to you again if such things happen coz i dun want the rational you to come out right at the beginning and make me feel shit again. I want a loving you who can make me feel that even if others treat me badly, you can still make me feel loved. But can you do this???

Sigh...all in all my life seems pretty miserable now so fellow friends are welcome to make me happier and any small effort is deeply appreciated...

2009-03-14T20:42:00.003+08:00

I'm feeling so tired and demoralised these days. Its the whole economy gloom, the entire recession dread, the throat-choking management stress, the depressing daily news , the ever looming sales target, the lack of a social life and the "ive tried but nothing seems to working" helplessness. SIGH! How can my life at 24, going 25 be so sad! I thought people at my age now shd be brimmed with liveliness and full of energy! But apparently that's not the case for me and perhaps some of my friends who share similar fate like me.

Work is just getting more and more disgusting! Seriously! I'm beginning to question myself more and more each day if this is what i want to be doing in future. The organisation sucks big time to the core! Nothing more needs to be said except SUCK IT! Many things have changed since the start of this yr, I've changed branch moving to a totally unfamilar environment and leaving my friends all behind. The first few days were a torture, cant get used to not seeing my lovely faces who have kept me company for the past 1 yr plus daily. I'm a very nostalgic person so u can imagine how "branch-sick" i was...But now thankfully, i'm getting along with my new colleagues so its q alrite now. Its sad hearing that so many unhappy things have happened at vivo and the team falling apart as people leave. People should always leave for a better prospect but in this case, many are leaving coz they cant stand the current situation. And that is why the departures are made all the more sorrowful as we cant even feel happy for our friends who are leaving. Maybe one day it'll be my turn...

On a private note, I haven had much time for any social life. Started playing tennis with my jc friends every friday as its a sport that i've always wanted to play. And of course also because i need the exercise haha! Its something that i looked forward to every week as i can just sweat and workout the whole week's frustration. Hopefully after some time i can at least "look" like a force to be reckoned with on e courts...muahaha! Wishful thinking at work here.

Me and him finally had our big showdown on a day that was supposed to be special for us. But i guess we have another reason to think of it as a special day then. Thoughts were thrashed and words were spoken. Its a relief to have it all out as I've been frustrated by it for the longest time. Its probably just bubbling like a volcano just waiting for eruption. Friends have said that i'm too rational, the thought-process that i go through before a fight is quite thorough. But some have also told me to be more tolerant of the special circumstances. I noe its tough on him too but sometimes a line needs to be drawn. I may not be right all the time but right or wrong is a difficult thing to judge in a relationship. Its how valuable different qualities appeal to different people. Sigh...I cant say i noe what will happen in the future as nothing is certain. i used to think that i was certain and it pisses me when he said to be 99.9% instead of 100%. But now i think i've become 99.9% too... ...its kinda sad that i'm feeling this way but its the truth. I have many thoughts running through but cant pen it down easily. *Grin* I think i've become more complicated in my thinking coz there are more variables in my life now.

Anyway, hopefully the next entry i write won't be about my departure from work then. But u really never know...

We held a massive farewell party at LUNA for the people who left the organisation. It was like a townhall without all the bosses.The leavers...

Left: Joanne, WeeTeik, Kelvin and NellyMy favourite babies...we were all every emotional that nite as our darling nelly is leaving us. U can see it from all our teary eyes.

Left: Jess, Sharon, Nelly and MeMy beloved vivos...

2008-12-10T12:57:00.005+08:00

VCY Trip to Phuket Oct 2008

Well, the branch made a 3D2N trip to Phuket following our incentive for achieving the top branch for Quarter2. Sigh...wat a fun filled weekend it was and now all that's left are the memories left behind. We managed to rent a villa for 11 pple and it comes with a private swimming pool, totally cool. If any of you guys are keen to go Phuket with a gp of friends, i really recommend that you check out renting a villa instead of staying at a hotel coz its so much more fun!

U can check out villa rentals from this website

www.phuketvillarentals.com

The villa that we stayed in was The Coolwater Villa 4.Look at how deep the pool is in the middle, we took this pic from the top balcony where you can actually jump right into the pool. And a couple of the guys did take a jump into it!

There's also a long corridor of the pool which leads to 2 of the rooms. Me and jess got 1 of the rooms where our windows is directly beside the pool. Jess insist that she wanted this room where we can jump right into the pool just like The OC...haha...But bad news for the villa is that it is not near the main central area where most of the shopping and food are so transport was a drag. And the villa was also located on top of a very steep slope, gah...the climb up is seriously no joke!We also rented 2 motorbikes for the fun of it since everyone rides a bike in Phuket! Even small little kids that we see on the road. Coz the bike is an automatic one so its really very easy and i had my 1st go at riding a bike myself...even if it was just a very short distance...haha...so fun!

We also signed up for a whole day of island hopping the next day and spent the day being sunburnt...haha...The gals on the boat: Left: Sharon, me, jess and nelly

The guys with their white big tummies.

Left: Darren, Henry, Derek, YL and DavidWe made a stop at Maya beach, the famous location where Leonardo Dicarprio shot the movie "The Beach". But there were too many tourists there already so i felt that the beach was just ultra crowded and not really very beautiful but the water is fantastically clear.And we also did some snorkling. My first attempt at snorkling haha...pretty fun...and extremely salty...bleah...Look at all the fishes!!!

And coz darren and derek's bdae just passed, we got them both a cake. Our last nite was spent at the villa where we hired their in-house chef to cook dinner for us. Its a little expensive but considering the fact that its right within the villa and we dun have to pay transport to go down town to eat, it was actually quite worth it. Plus its an experience to have a chef cooking dinner at the villa for us...haha...Look at all the yummilicious food!And we bought 2 bottles of Martel and Hennesey when we were at the Phuket airport so it was a night of Indian Poker and Minimizer...haha...lots of hilarious stuff came out when everyone was high and drunk. Fortunately i was spared from all these as i was recovering from flu and had taken medicine. VCY Old School. How nice it would be if we could all go for another trip together!

2008-09-29T13:21:00.003+08:00

Whew! I finally managed to grab 2 days of leave today and tml for a gd rest at the end of the month. The yr seems to be coming to an end soon and its just how amazing and scary how little entries I've made this yr here. I really do wish to pick up the habit of blogging regularly again as there are so many things that has happened this yr but things dun seem to turn out the way i wanted.

We're entering into the last quarter of 2008 and the world seems to be in a big mess! I cant imagine that we can ever encountered a big investment bank gg bankrupt in our lifetime. I cant even bear to see how US will try and clean up this mess now.

On a second note, I've finally confirmed my Tokyo trip in Dec! Lalalala...so happy! The trip was planned using travel vouchers that I've gotten as an incentive for work last yr. Because of that, the vouchers were specifically tied up with a travel agency called Muhhibad Travel Agency. This is truly the WORST travel agency i've ever encountered in my life!!! Honestly i dun understand why HSBC ties up with them for our travel vouchers because their prices are so highly inflated, efficiency is at the lowest pt, choices of destinations limited and they are so god damn slow!!! Urgh! U cant even imagine how tiring it is to liase with them for my trip. Thank god its all settled now. Just cant wait for Dec to come so that i can get out of Singapore.

And I've also signed up for a massage package so that i can ease away my pain and ache. Haha...honestly speaking, its been ages since i last exercise and the body is making its protests v known. I know that i shd really go exercise more but i also love massages where you can just relax and enjoy. My package is with Javanese Massage Hut and its quite cheap. $500 for 13 sessions(1hr) so its just abt $38/hr. And e best thing i like is that u can bring ur friends or family to share the session so i'm planning to brg my mum for some nice massaging. I already went with Mr Hou for our 1st session already and its pretty alrite. Check out e website if u like : http://www.javanesemassage.com.sg/

That's all for now. Gg back to slacking my day away with some nice dramas to watch on crunchyroll...haha...i love days like this...

2008-09-06T12:58:00.005+08:00

So many things have happened in the past few months that there's no where for me to recount them all.

Just a brief recap of the KL trip that my branch went at the end of June. Its the end of a hard work quarter and we decided to go for a short roadtrip together. Another reason is also because our boss Mr David has been promoted to the centre manager of a Premier Centre and thus will be leaving us in the month of Aug. Sigh...can u imagine it, in my short stint of a yr and a half with HSBC, i'm gg to experience my 3rd boss in my 1st ever job. Seriously, i shd really include this in my resume in future because its such a tough task adjusting and trying to work with a new boss whose style may be totally different from the previous.

Anw the trip was filled with memories of us during the 4hrs car journey to KL in my boss's car and the yummilious gd food we ate there. There wasn't much shopping done but its was still an enjoyable trip.This is my team Transformer. Henry (Optimus Prime), Jess (Bumble Bee) and Me( Wu Ming aka nameless coz I dunnoe which transformer to be :( )The Vivocity team! From left: Jovian, me, jess, sharon, our boss david, Darren and Henry! Missing another colleague Nelly here coz she went on her Taiwan trip that week.

We also went for a mass foot massage near our hotel coz we basically walked from destinations to destinations in KL. The traffic jam there is super horrendous so we walked from our hotel in Sungei Wang to KL CC and back! But due to my low tolerance level for pain, i was cringing throughout the whole session. Argh! So pain!...Look at us! We're the traffic light colours! haha...anw sharon, henry and me enter HSBC in the same training batch so its pretty lucky that we are all still working hard together and went through all the shit in this 1 yr plus because many others have already left. I guess when they leave the bank, it'll probably be abt time that i move on too le bah. And good news! Our branch won the top performance branch in the whole network for Quarter 2! So with the prize money that we got, we're planning for another short trip somewhere next month. Actually looking back, its been such a tough and long journey for us to finally make it to the top. When e 3 of us enter Vivocity branch, it was always at the last or 2nd last position. The team at that time was demoralised and the branch was at such a ulu pandang location. But as time passes and new pple came in, we manage to survive using our methods and so its really an achievement to have been part of a team that made this possible. With a new boss right now, let's hope that the same success can be achieved again.

And I also attended Darl's convocation in Aug. Yeah! Congrats to my boy for making it through to the end and welcome to the real world! Haha...

Looking at you in the gown and the "fang mao", i feel so proud...*tear tear*...haha...gd job my dear! Quick quick...time to throw away the As, Bs, or Cs...its the cash cows mooing now....hoho, juz kidding :p working life sucks! Bleah...

Darl is also now doing some entrepreneur business with his friends that deals with gaming. U guys can check out www.gaminghow.com to show some support. But he's also been awfully busy between juggling the new biz, his NS committment and me these past few months. Haha...so far so gd, no major complaints from me but lots of minor ones. But to quote my boss who used to say this to us "Manage it!". Pretty decent advice dun u think hee...

2008-05-19T14:04:00.002+08:00

Going ons...

I've watched 3 fantastic movies for the past 3 weekends. Thank god for the summer blockbuster season where there are lots of movies to be watched. Otherwise Singapore is just plain boring coz there's only so much to see and eat every week.

1st up was Iron Man which i love for the great action and plot. I love those heros vs bad guys comic shows...haha...And the main lead Robert Downey Jr was pretty charming and witty to hold on to the role of Iron Man.

2nd was What happens in Vegas. A romantic comedy with lots of funny scenes but also some sweet moments when they realize they're in love...aww....haha...i can sense the guys puking liao. Anw Aston looks great on the show but Cameron seems to look pretty haggard and old. I thought all hollywood starts uses botox to look good on screen but it doesn't seem to be working with Cameron. But in anycase, I totally love the soundtrack of this movie coz there are lots of feel good songs that matches the plot very well.

Song: Grace Kelly by Mika

3rd was Made of Honor starring my fav Patrick Demphsey aka McDreamy...haha...this movie is more of a romantic story where the main attraction was just the chemistry and love story between the 2 leads. Totally love this type of boy realize he loves girl and tries to chase her back stories...haha...yar so what if i'm a sucker for cliche love story. Don't everyone just love a happily ever after ending...but of course Patrick Demphsey is 1 of the top reason why i wanted to watch this as well...hee...and i also do love the songs in this movie too.

And this is one of the songs i love in the show. Love Song by Sara Bareilles

Song: You Give Me Something by James Morrison

2008-05-19T13:22:00.004+08:00

Bangkok Trip (27th - 30th Apr)

My family and i went for a short holiday trip to Bangkok during the long MayDay weekend. I was excited to go somewhere to splurge and live like kings and queens. Haha...and of course there's all the shopping and eating to be done. But most importantly it has been a long time since my family has taken a plane to somewhere.

Anwyway, everyone in my family has already been to bangkok before. The last time i went there was about 3 years ago with darl and clarics. Those were the days where we were all carefree and energetic students who could walk the whole day long and bargain for everything we wanted to buy. But now i was really too lazy to try bargaining for the few bahts off my purchase because if u translate back to Sing dollars, its really not much. This is me and my sis standing outside our hotel. We were staying at Baiyoke Suite located in Petrunam area. Directly outside our hotel is the Petruman wholesale market which is super bustling during the weekends and very convenient for us to do our shopping there too. Baiyoke Suite was also fantastic because the rooms come with a living room and an extended bedroom unlike usual hotel rooms which is just 1 big room by itself.Me, my sis and my bro taking a shot after shopping at Platinum Mall which is a super big wholesale shopping mall! My parents were resting at the hotel cause they cant stand our shopping liao. And our hotel is also just directly across the street so its super convenient for us.Here we are at Chatuchak on our 1st day. As usual it was crowded and hot.we also had a buffet dinner at Baiyoke Sky hotel which is the highest hotel in Bangkok. There we can see the night view of Bangkok and the food was also quite yummilious, not to mention relatvely cheap. Per head was only about $20 Sing because we get a discount for staying in Baiyoke Suite which is under the same company.

Look at the night view...The 3 of us sitting in a Tut Tuk at night. The driver was simply fantastic with his skills...quite an exhilarating ride...And of course how can we miss out on the shark's fin and bird nest at Chinatown...yummilious...

And one of the key highlights at Bangkok this time was that we went for their Thai massage every night coz there are lots of cheap and good massage parlors just below our hotel area. Totally soothing to pamper yourself after a hard day of shopping. Sigh, i'm already thinking of when i shd go back there again next time because its really so shiok to spend money without having to worry much there. And seriously there's no better holiday place if you dun wanna have to worry much about budget and wants to have a good time there. I'm really gg to make it a pt to go Bangkok at least once a yr just to pamper myself a bit.

So where's my next holiday gg to be?... ...

2008-04-06T20:22:00.003+08:00

So after that terrible declaration at the end of Feb, its finally time where the dust has all been settled down.

March was the crucial month where i was about to make my first progression in my career since I embarked on my working life. Sigh...i seriously thought i couldn't make it with the type of results that i was producing and it was really a very depressing and stressed month. However as luck and miracles were to have it, i managed to do the impossible in the end.

So now I've finally reached the position of a Senior Personal Wealth manager after a long 1 year journey. But i really must thank all my colleagues who have helped me along the way to this position. I would really wished for all of us to progress together but maybe this time round i managed to do it earlier with a little bit more luck. I'm sure all of my best buddies at work will achieve it soon too.

In anycase, it was really a HUGE sigh of relief when the month of March finally ended and everything is now settled. I really can't stand such stressed atmosphere where you will think every minute of the day whether you can make it or not. I thought i didn't really care THAT much whether i can get the promotion or not but as the days ticked and as the points grew, the anxiety creeped into me subtly. The last week of March was the worst where many a nights i fell asleep with thoughts of my next day sales and points in mind and waking up in the morning with vivid memories of how many points i still lack to reach my goal. GAH! Super scary! Even i'm amazed by myself at how this can creep into my life like this.

But all in all, I think i've grew from this job in certain ways but I'm also pretty sure that I've managed to preserve the part of myself that is what i believe in.

So now the new challenge is running for another 6 months where the journey may bring me to somewhere that i have never dreamed of.

PS: Congrats also to my girl Ryl for taking another huge step forward in her role as a TM.

And now I'm just looking forward to the last wk of April where i will be gg Bangkok with my family for a short shopping and splurging trip. Feeling so tired from all the running and stressing...

2008-02-29T22:39:00.002+08:00

Motto of the Month-March:

SUCK IT UP AND JUST DO IT!!!

Today is the 29 of Feb, a unique day that we only see once every 4 years however my mind is preoccupied with endless other thoughts rather than e uniqueness of the day. Tml will be the 1st of March where i shall enter into war-zone crisis mode.

Yupz, see ya all in the month of April where u shall noe what e shit i'm gg to go through now...

To be continued...

2008-02-17T15:37:00.003+08:00

Happy Birthday and Anniversary!

Took a 2 days leave on 11 and 12th for a long CNY weekend and also to celebrate darl's bdae plus our 3rd yr anniversary.

This year round, i was the one who made the dinner plans coz darl was busy with his FYP report. So after checking out with some friends and surfing the net for food reviews, i decided to book a french restaurant call "Au Petit Salut" situated in Demphsey since i noe darl loves escargots. We had a tough time looking for the restaurant coz u noe how messy the roads at demphsey are. For a while i was really worried that we couldn't find e place in time for our reservation but we finally found it and the place looks quite posh from the outside.

The menu looks v impressive with their food selection scripted in both english and french. The service was also very authentic fine dining style and looking across the whole restaurant, it seems like we were a few of the more younger customers there. But the food was really v nice so i was quite happy with my selection.

Darl finally wore another shirt other than his Ralph Lauren one coz he wore that for our previous 2 years of anniversary which made me remark that the photos we took doesn't seem to make any difference coz he looks the same! Haha...

The very yummilicious escargots we ordered. Really super nice!

This is the "Oven Roasted French Quail" that i ordered. And this is the "Pan-seared Onglet Beef" that darl ordered. Both were quite tasty.

After that we headed to Ben and Jerry ice-cream for desserts.

Sad to say i wasn't feeling well that night so the dinner was a bit wasted coz my appetite wasn't that good. There seems to be a curse around our anniversary coz for e past 2 years, i have always fallen sick on that day! Seriously its really damn weird and this is already the 3rd time strike liao! Gah! Luckily it was just the starting of my bad health that day so it wasn't that bad coz i had to take 2 days of mc after my 2 days of leave with full blown cough, flu and fever...

okie, pressies time!

This is what i got for darl. A Hugo Boss watch. I was tempted by my colleague who bowls with darl to get him a bowling ball (if u dun noe, darl is a bowling fanatic, he already has 2 of his own bowling ball and he goes bowling about twice or thrice a week). But after getting my colleague to test water with darl about whether he has any bowling balls he likes, i decided to get him a watch as i originally planned. Reason being that there is not really a ball that he really wants at the moment and i much prefer getting him a watch than a ball! So i enlisted the help of my faithful clarics to go shopping with me behind his back! hahaha...Nice nice rite! Darl loves it too...And darl also made me a small noticeboard where i can pin stuffs on it to hang in my office. Sweet sweet seeing that its something which he hand made himself :)So happy 25th birthday to my dear and a great 3rd year to us too! Muacks! :)

2008-02-11T13:18:00.000+08:00

Yeah this is really a late entry but as usual I've been too lazy to blog when I'm working so here's the chance during this long CNY hols to do some updates.

Went for the Jay Chou's concert on 19th Jan!!! Something which I've been looking forward to ever since we bought the tics early in Nov 2007. And mind u, the tics didn't came v easily coz u noe how hot Jay is...haha...thanks to yl we managed to grab 9 tics for everyone before it got sold out.

Its been almost 3 years since we last saw Jay and til now he IS still my most favourite singer! Sigh...how can someone be so talented and cute at the same time...haha...u can sense my fanatism here. But the concert was really a fantastic kicker and a huge blast! I totally went crazy during that 3 hours of being in the same indoor space with HIM. Can u imagine it?! He was like THIS NEAR (pretend to measure e distance by stretching my hands) to us...well ok so he was most probably like about 400m away from us since we were sitting at the other end of the indoor stadium but...I'm really not complaining much *grin*...

Here's a look at how shuai my favourite idol is...

His slow songs had all of us singing along with him while his fast songs had all of us on our feet and rocking high with him...The big green hand says it all "I Love U Jay!" At the end of the super high concert we left feeling satisfied and hoarse with all the screaming. And just like his 2004 concert, we left saying that the next time he comes we will buy tics that allow us to see him nearer...haha...

And Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! Especially to all my fellow Rat friends! We've been through 2 rounds of the Chinese Zodiac liao...May this year be a great one for everyone!

With that I leave u to enjoy his new MV from the movie "Kungfu Slam Dunk" which by the way I've went to see it liao hee...

2008-01-04T14:58:00.000+08:00

Day 3: Shenzhen

Me and darl sign up for the half day Shenzhen tour with the travel agency because we thought that it will be better for someone more familar there to bring us around. But little did we know it was a terrible mistake.

We took the train over to Shenzhen borders and it was just a simple matter simliar to Sporeans crossing over to Malaysia JB. After that, the local tour guide brought us to some stupid jade and silk factory where they were just promoting their products. Its totally like our China tour last year all over again. The tour guide was introducing our group to go visit the tourist attraction "Windows of the World" where they have lots of small scale buildings of all the famous landmarks ard the world eg. Leaning Tower of Pisa, Effiel Tower and Great Wall etc...but they actually charged us S$60 each for the entrance! Luckily i had already known beforehand that the entrance tic is just S$22 if we buy it directly ourselves so me and darl declined to go for that since our main objective to Shenzhen was to have a shopping spree. I have heard from friends that shopping in Shenzhen is cheaper so we can finally have a blast there since things in HK are quite expensive. And when the rest of the tour gp which consisit of mostly families who went to the "Windows of the World", our tour guide dropped us at the pathetic place for 2 hrs because we requested that we go to somewhere to shop. Its really very exsperating because the place they took us to was machiam like a neighbourhood little shopping area. There was only 1 Walmart there and a very deserted shopping mall. Me and darl took a pic outside the entrance of the "Windows of the World" haha but we didn't get con to go in.

So me and darl could only wait for the shopping agenda later when we re-joined the gp but to our disappointment, the shopping mall they took us to was a very pathetic place without much things to shop other than lots of fake imitation goods! Argh! Pek chek! And its just located right beside the train station where we will take back to HK later in the evening. The tour guide left us to shop and return to HK on our own so i guess that's why they only dropped us at that particular shopping mall because it was so convenient. So joining the tour was just a total waste of our precious time. We had our dinner at a restaurant there ourselves and tried the famous roasted pigeon and left back to our bustling HK.See! Me and darl found the long-lost yellow Carlbee potato chips in HK, its BBQ flavour. You know they always show this chips in old HK drama but now we cant find it in Spore already. This pic is for the benefit of pei who always claims that no one else ever remembers about the yellow packaging Carlbee chips :) It seems like only her and darl ever remem that Spore used to have this too. I cant remember at all...can any of u?We had the famous roast pigeon and other dishes in a chinese restuarant there. Roast pigeon just tasted like crispy roast chicken but it was not bad and once again its the food that saves the day for us.

Day 4: Ocean Park + Victoria Peak + Lan Kuai Fong

Me and darl decided to go for Ocean Park instead of Disneyland because we felt that S$100 for Disneyland wasn't worth it and we also heard that the rides there weren't fantastic. Plus our friends also said that Ocean Park is a must see when we go HK so we decided to go ahead with it.

Early in the morning at 9.30am we took the MTR to Admiralty Station where there are tickets booths to buy the entrance tics there (adult is about S$40 each) and shuttle buses to go straight to Ocean Park. There was a looonnnngggg queue when we reach the bus terminal but luckily the buses came very frequently so it wasn't a long wait. And we also chatted with a family of Singaporeans there. This is the bus 629 that we took to go to Ocean Park.Yeah! We've finally reached Ocean Park! It looks exciting! And the weather was also fantastic that day with clear blue skies and sun.

We first paid a visit to the famous panda closure there where JiaJia, AnAn, WeiWei and another panda which i cant remember the name stayed.The pandas are damn cute! They keep rolling around and amused everyone who was crowding around to take pics.

Ocean Park is divided into 2 sections called the Lowland and the Highland which spans across the mountain. There wasn't much to look ard at the Lowland so me and darl took the cable ride up to the Highland where most of the amusement rides and aquariums are at. When we were walking over to the cable car, we stumbled along the most wonderful smell coming from one of the snack stores. And look at what it sells!Fried Squids!!! I tell u the smell is damn nice and tempting! We couldn't resists buying one to try.And it tastes as good as it smells! Slurp! The best squid we have ever eaten...

A look at the view from the cable car ride.Left: we're gg up to the highland. Right: looking down at the lowland that we just left.A look at the sea view from the cable car where we could see all those residential houses on the mid-mountains.A look at the amusement ride area where me and darl proceeded to next. We tried the rollar-coaster, pirates ship and some rotating flying ride. Fun fun! And those 2 long poles there are the free fall ride similar to that in Genting. Haha...but i was too chicken to sit for that because i've already tried it before in Genting and frankly that experience will stay with me for life so there's no need to relive it again! But i can sense very STRONGLY that darl was itching to sit the free fall ride but i didn't want to. Haha...i told him to go ahead himself but he didn't want to. That's the thing with going to amusement rides with ur gf who don't dare to try the more adventurous rides like this.This is a pretty cool ride called the Mine Train. Its just right beside the sea and we were going through all the rush and speed with an experience that we might fall into the great sea! There were also many aquariums in the Ocean Park which were pretty cool also. Eg. Jellyfish, sharks, coral reefs, the sea lions and we also went to the famous dolphin show later!A look at the dolphin theatre where we were waiting for the show to start.

The dolphins are out! They're jumping across the water stream...

After the show, its was nearing 5+pm where we left to go for our next destination Victoria Peak. We took the bus back to Admiralty and took another bus that goes towards the Peak. But it was a mistake because the bus took super long to come and the journey was also quite long. We should have just taken the tram ride there. But along the way up to the peak we managed to look at the houses that were around en-route on the road up to the peak. U noe they always says that ppl who stays on the Peak are v rich, we reckon so too coz we saw a lot of maids waiting at the bus stops for their missus who alighted the bus.

And finally we reached the Peak...

The gorgeous view from the top. And its not free to look at this view u noe. They actually charged an entrance fee(abt S$4 each) for us to go to its viewing balcony where we could see all this. So of course we had to take lots of pics there to make our money worthwhile haha...but sadly my cam wasn't that powerful to take in all the nice view as we can see it. But nvm, out of all the pics that we trial and error with, a couple was quite nice...There are many more but no need to post everything up :) And it was freezing up at the peak! The cold wind was chilling to the bones man. Better dress more warmly if u're thinking of gg up there.

After that we had our dinner at one of the restaurants there called "Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant" its a casual theme restaurant inspired by the movie Forest Gump. Anyone who watched the movie before will remember Forest's friend that he made in the army - the black guy whose dream is to go back home and open a shrimp restaurant whereby there will be all sorts of shrimps cusines served in the restaurant.

You can check out the website that it has. Apparently they have lots of outlets in different countries but not in Singapore...so sad coz the place and food was terrific!
http://www.bubbagump.com/

They even got the drinks menu on a ping-pong bat! See this plate called "Run Forrest Run" - when you flip to this, the waitress not come over to disturb your meal. But when you want to get some service and attention, then you can just flip to the "Stop Forrest Stop" plate. Interesting rite...Darl bought the "Run Forrest Run" plate at their souvenir shop.Darl had the fried shrimp platter with fries.I ordered the Shrimp Cajun with salmon and mashed potatoes...damn nice...

So after that, we left The Peak and took the tram down the mountain whereby the whole ride only took abt 10mins. We walked our way to Lan Kwai Fong where all the pubs and clubs are. But we didn't went into any pubs to drink because we were damn tired from the whole day and we also weren't dressed very much for the occassion. Haha...all the ppl there are dressed in clubbing wear loh and there was a lot of Xmas spirit in the air.
Day 5: Last day in HK...

Sigh...so fast last day liao. Since we have to be ready for the coach fetching us to the airport by 5pm. Me and darl just walked around randomly for some last day shopping at HK. We went to a traditional HK cafe at the street across our hotel and had a very unique and authentic HK style breakfast. I had the pork bone porridge and fried noodles set while darl had his favourite Nissin Noodle with egg and ham set breakfast complete with a cup of "Yuan Yang" each...yum yum...I LOVE THE FOOD IN HK!!!...

The breakfast menu there. They have chinese or western style breakfast. And each set is just about S$3-4 each...damn cheap!

Then we went over to the 7-11 stores there and did something that we have been dying to do since the 1st day we arrived in HK. We went in to "ding" their famous "siew mai" and "curry yu dan" haha...they always show it in HK drama that characters will go to the 7-11 to eat the microwave food there and it always looked so delicious. And true enuff its really very yummilious! We regretted not doing this since the 1st day of our trip and since 7-11 is SOOOO populated in HK (its true, every street has a 7-11!...damn "kua zhang" one...) we "ding" 3 times during our last day in 3 different stores...haha...coz darl loves it so much...

Look at how happy darl is to be finally able to "ding" something in the 7-11...but it was a cheap and fun experience. If only the 7-11 in spore has curry yu dan and siew mai for us to "ding" also...

A last pic at Jordan MTR station where our hotel is located.

And then it was straight to the airport where we had to say goodbye to HongKong.A look at the HK airport which looks very grand and nice...The last bit of things that we bought in HK is the famous "Krispy Kremes" doughnuts in the airport. But to our disappointment, its wasn't all that fantastic also. We felt that the doughnuts we bought in Batam earlier was nicer and cheaper than Krispy Kremes.On the way back home...the airplane meal was super nice. Stewed beef with mashed potatoes and darl even ordered a small bottle of red wine to go with it...So that's it for our long awaited HK trip. Like i say HK has always been 1 of the countries that i've wanted to visit since young because of the great level of influence we get here from their drama show (and u guys noe how much a tv addict i am). And this trip has been fantastic! Even though we didn't managed to buy a lot of stuffs back but the overall experience was a fun and memorable one. Its also the 1st time me and darl have been on a holiday with just the 2 of us. Usually we like to go for trips together with friends because its more fun but this has been a unique experience for the 2 of us. Travelling with just a partner is a bit troublesome when u need to engage the help of passerbys to help us take pics (this is when we will miss our travelling khakis the most...haha...) but the good side is that there's more freedom and flexibility to manage our time instead of sticking to a pre-agreed schedule. And of course the most striking difference is that all the memories we have of this trip just belongs to the 2 of us :)

Taking a well-deserved and desired holiday really do much wonders to our tired selves in our routine days. And there are still so many more places that we wish to explore and experience together. Argh! 1 holiday per yr even seems to be too little liao but then at least its better than nothing. Hmm...so where shall we plan for our next trip?...and the question is also WHEN do we have the time to go for our next trip...

So then its a great way to end my year of 2007 and may all my loved ones have a great 2008 ahead!

2007-12-30T16:51:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong 2007

Hong Kong has always been 1 of the countries that I've wanted to visit. Maybe because of all the HK drama that we've been exposed to. It seems like there are a lot of places there that we can associate to a particular show or scene. And not to mention all the great shopping and food that Hong Kong successful tourism tag line emphasised "Mai dong xi, chi dong xi"...

Day 1:

We had to reach Changi airport by 3AM because we're taking the flight United Airlines(an american airline) which requires us to check in 3 hrs earlier. So me and darl just linger around the airport while tiredness seep into us...and to think we haven even started our holiday yet!

While walking around the duty free shops, we discovered this new Vodka disco bottle that looks damn cool. Bling bling sia! Darl bought a bottle when we came back to spore.UA's food was quite alrite. I had the chinese hor fun while darl had the egg and bacon omelette.

A look outside our window. Sigh...the good thing about taking a plane is the day is that u get to see clouds like this. Our flight back to spore was at night so there was nothing much to look at outside.
"We're leaving on a jet plane..."

Darl and I had booked the hotel "Largos" situated in Jordon, Kowloon because our friends who have been to HK numerous times recommended it for its great location and affordability. We know that HK is a place of scarce land like spore but little did we not expect that a hotel can be as small as this!!! 3 shots of my camera is all it took to take a full view of our room...

Shot 1: Starting from our bed...Shot 2: Turning clock-wise, here's our dressing table with a small tv tucked in the corner.Shot 3: Lastly not forget our toilet.My gawd! Its the smallest hotel room i have ever seen. Its even smaller than my room at home! After getting over our initial shock and surprise at the size of the room, me and darl took a short rest before going for our exploration.

Causeway Bay:

We headed off to Causeway Bay for some shopping and i also contacted my friend Angeline who's working at HK now for a dinner meet up that night. Causeway Bay looks like a very bustling shopping area. But the things there weren't very cheap. Granted there were a lot of fashionable clothes and stuffs there but because it was mostly winter wear and the prices also were not that cheap, me and darl didn't even bought a single item there. Mostly we were just walking around the streets enjoying the Xmas lightings and the atmosphere.

Me and darl was also determined to have a taste of authentic HK style food for our first meal there and so spent a lot of time looking around for some nice foodies. We found a shop called "Milk Company" which mostly serves milk desserts and some usual HK style food like noodles and toast bread. Darl could finally have his taste of his favourite HK noodles "Gong Zai Mian" aka Nissin Noodles with luncheon meat and chicken wings...haha...everytime when we go to those HK style cafe in spore and he ordered this, i would just think its a waste of money because its just Nissin Noodles! But here in HK its just a cheap street food which we're happy to have a taste of. A bowl of this only cost S$3.And when we saw most of the customers in the shop eating their desserts, we tried its "Double boiled steamed egg" and its FANTASTIC! Seriously the best steam egg i've ever tasted. No wonder HK has so many great desserts.

Some Christmas lightings around Causeway Bay shopping malls. This girl beside me is Angeline my uni bizad friend. She went over to HK to work alone after graduation and now is happily leading a "expat" life there with her bf. Too bad i couldn't get a chance to meet her bf Matt coz he's holidaying at vietnam when i went over. Nice catching up with her...

And this concludes the end of Day 1 because me and darl were too tired and decided to have a good night rest so as to preserve energy for the remaining 4 days...sigh...are we getting older or wat? So easily tired now and not as chiong as in the past...haha...

Day2:

Early next morning, we took the train over to Mongkok for some shopping because the stuffs there a re supposedly cheaper. In HK is damn expensive to take the cab so we travelled everywhere by their train (MTR).

But first i must have my all time favourite breakfast - YUM CHA aka dim sum for breakfast!!! We found a chinese dim sum resturant that looks ok and ventured in to it. Hoho so exciting...its really like HK drama shows where there are a lot of old pple eating dim sum and reading their newspapers there. The challenge was ordering our food in Cantonese. Since darl's cantonese is cannot make it one, we had to depend on my half bucket cantonese. Luckily it wasn't that bad and difficult to understand...heehee...

See how happy i am :)

Look at our scrumptious meal. We made the mistake of ordering too much food because i thought the dim sum serving in HK was like Spore where everything is very small. But it turns out their food serving is very large and we had to tabao some food away coz we couldn't finish it. But i'm still happy coz the food was great and its also damn cheap. We ordered 6 dishes and it only cost S$18! Fantastic!

After that we visited the shopping mall "Langham Mall" where the longest indoor escalator was. And its also the shopping mall shown in the HK drama serial "Tian Mu Xia De Lian Ren"The Christmas decor inside was damn nice! Very magical and white...Darl and his unicorn...

Me with my white papa bear...

If only we can stay in Snowy Wonderland forever...

And then guess what me and darl found on the streets after that - Our favourite "Curry Yu Dan" aka curry fishballs...Haha,,,we're damn excited to but and eat them lah!Yum Yum our favourite...why can't spore have these also...somehow the "yu dan" in spore don't taste the same as that in HK.

After that we visited the famous night market Temple Street which is just a few streets across our hotel. There wasn't much to buy there because its mostly tourisy stuffs that we were not interested in. We had our dinner at one of their street "Zi Char" hawker stall that sells claypot rice. Recommended by my friends yl+jh, they said to just look for the dirtiest claypot stall and so we did! We only ordered a claypot and a dish of "la la" because we were wary of their large food serving and luckily we did because the food was just nice for the both of us. And its tasted great as usual. Don't u realize all the food in HK taste great regardless of where or what we ate...hee...

2007-12-24T13:28:00.000+08:00

Genting Trip with my Family

Its been ages since i last went on a holiday trip with my whole family. The last family trip we went was to New Zealand when i was in Primary 5 and that was more than 10 years ago! So since the dec hols is here and my sis and i have some leave to clear, we just went for a short trip to Genting together with my young cousins and family.

There wasn't much to do there because the weather was behaving like its typical december style with lots of wind, rain and fog. So to my cousins and brother disappointment, we couldn't have a chance to play in its outdoor theme park because of the weather. My cousins could still indulge themselves with all the arcade games there while those of us above 21 years old could still go into the casino for a bit of a fling. All except my poor brother who is not yet 21 and thus could not enter the casino but also too old to be excited by arcade games. So most of our time spent there was just shopping around its indoor shopping area and visiting the casino at night for some small thrill.

Overall it was just a lazy relaxing getaway that seems to be a great way for me to kick start my december break. And its was also rather nice to enjoy the cooling weather there and all the Christmas decorations. Next stop for me is to Hong Kong with my darl...My family and I back there after more than 10 years. I think the last time we were there was when i was 12 or 13 years old. My uncle and family. That's my 2 naughty cousins Ivan(the bigger size one) and Nicholas. Its the 1st time we went for a holiday together and they are damn happy loh. Kept saying when we left that they wanna return there again next year in June coz the weather will be better and then they can play in the outdoor theme park...haha...Me and Nicholas...he's such a cute little thingy...Us having a scrumptious buffet lunch...

2007-10-16T21:57:00.000+08:00

These days i dunnoe what i'm doing to my life and myself. My team leader has asked us right at the beginning which direction are we heading towards in the banking industry so that she can help us work towards that goal. Honestly when it came to me, i was unsure where i wanted to go to. I din even noe if this is the right industry that i want to be much less say where i wanted to head towards in 3 years down the road. So the first time she asked me the question "Adeline, where do u see yourself 5 years down the road?" I paused for about 1min, then i gave a super cock and bull ans that i'm interested to try out marketing in future because truthfully i was new to the banking industry and i don't really know if it suits me and i am a marketing student afterall. Can u imagine how "gong" i sound! I mean i bet all my other colleagues would have said something relevant to the industry that we were all in now, for eg. moving towards a branch manager, premier relationship manager or even private banking. But your friend here happily said MARKETING. Its like WTF! Then what am i wasting my time now if i wanna head to marketing. i bet that was what my team leader was thinking at that point in time and that was 3 months ago back in July.

Coming to Sept, she asked the question once again so as to confirm where all (my branch colleagues) of our goals were so that she can helped us reach there. I told her then that maybe i wanna try to work towards a team leader like her so as to go the management route.

Now its mid Oct, the start of a new quarter and once again i feel doubts about where i wanna be and where i am now. My TM also says that i should find myself a direction soon so that i can start running towards it because seriously...i have no idea what i am doing now.

Who is this Adeline now?
To my friends - i am ade the ever jovial and happy go lucky gal

To my fellow training mates(only a couple of them that i'm close to) - i am addy, the partner to work together towards our common goal of making it and share learning tips and of course surviving our 1 year bond safely.

To my branch colleagues - i am ad, the likeable young fresh grad colleague with the least sense of urgency. And seriously that is FATAL when u're in e sales line.

To my darl - i am his dear that seems to have lots more grumbles about her life now and constantly need him to remind me what i should just do so as to focus on my job.

To my family - i should be still the same daughter except that i eat at hm less often now and taught them how to get better returns by doing some investments.

Oh ya and to yanting - i'm the reliable and consistent ade that just needs time to reach my finishing line.

To myself - ???

I cant deal well with complicated stuffs in my life as many of u may possibly know about me. Everytime there's a gathering, i'm not usually the one that has a lot of exciting developments to update about. I'm usually the one that listens and when it comes to my turn, it'll just be "oh still the same loh..." But then i'm in dilemna too coz although i cant deal with complicated stuffs, i don't like mandane stuffs too. Sigh...humans are so contradicting.

In anycase, please just wake up Adeline and focus! "Xi to xi lah" Its really do or die now liao...oh ya, and breathe, just breathe coz i'm finding it difficult to breathe freely these days now...

2007-09-28T22:36:00.000+08:00

Spa Villa Trip to Batam:

Its been a long time since i've updated my happenings. Basically work is still sucky as usual, one difference is that my branch have gone back to the normal banking hours of 9.30am-5pm so it means that i have to wake up early for work now but still end off the day as late coz my colleagues and I are already used to work til so late liao.

Anyway, i managed to steal 2 days of leave over the weekend to go for a spa package recommended by one of my colleague's customer. Its a 2 day 1 night stay at a Batam resort with a 90mins spa session included in the package. Everything just cost $103 with the boat tickets included so it was really quite a cheap package.

u can go check out their website at:

http://www.spavilla.t35.com/

Me and darl went for this trip with Cla and Eric so the 4 of us managed to book a family cottage with 2 rooms and a small living room. The cottage was quite cosy and it looked like one of those cabin cottages that people usually stayed in forests...haha...take a look at some of the pics.

The inside of the family cottage. Looks very woody rite... There are still balcony passageway around the cottage. This is how the family cottage look like as a whole. Haha...machiam like me and darl own our 1st ever bunglow sia...And this is what we see when we looked outside from our cottage. Damn nice seaview ya...sigh...if only i can stare at it the whole day and slack...*dreamz...*The 90mins spa session was really the highlight of the entire trip. The place where they conduct the spa session was at a room facing the sea and from there you can have a great view of the sea. Furthermore, we had booked the timing from 5.30pm-7pm where the sun is just about to set so we also managed to catch the sunset from the spa room. Haha...frankly the 4 of us was just having a good time taking lots of pictures even before the spa session had begun. See how our spa room faces the sea and we can view the sunset...so shiok...and part of our 90mins spa session is that there's 30mins of hydro bath in this huge hydro tube! Haha...its like a mini jaccuzi with lots of foam in it...damn nice to lie in it and face the sea...
See i told u we were very busy taking pictures...haha...its not often that we can actually view a sunset...actually this is my 1st sunset that i've actually seen so beautifully...
Taken on the balcony of our cottage...
A look at the row of single cottage by the aisle...
Yeah! E 4 of us with the mini sun in the background...

Oh and i've got to tell you the most amazing doughnuts that we discovered at Batam Island. Actually it was my sis who bought some back before when she visited Batam and i tried it and fell in love with it. Seriously the doughnuts in Singapore cannot fight with it one loh!!! Even the supposedly fantastic Doughnut Factory in Raffles City loses its charm compared with the doughnuts in Batam...Take a look at this man...seriously there's a lot of new flavors that Singapore do not carry...for eg. the Tiramisu is my fav! There's Oreo, green tea, almond, banana, cheese and ... ... They cost abt $0.80 each and its located in the shopping centre called "MegaMall" there. Its just opposite the Batam ferry terminal so it should be quite easy to locate. Anyone who's gg to Batam shd really go try the doughnuts. I think there's a lot of Singaporeans who goes there and buys back 4-5 boxes coz we saw them with all this huge boxes...ooohhh...yummylicious....

Given the chance i will definitely go back to Batam again for the spa session and perhaps spend my 1st day gg for my wakeboarding session there that i used to go before. Other than that, there's really nothing much to do at Batam and frankly speaking it doesn't look and feel like a very safe place to walk around much too. The taxi fares there are exorbident! And we don't really dare to bargain too much coz we're scared that later they get a gang of pple to come make trouble for us...haha...maybe we're just paraniod but better safe than sorry.

2007-08-09T15:25:00.000+08:00

After my depressing last entry, it seems like things have gotten for the better. Even though its a fact that my nice boss has left us, apparently the new-boss-from-hell that i hear is supposed to come take over has also tendered! So now my branch is currently still on the lookout for a new boss and no news has been sent by management so far. Well as they say, no news is good news and with the transfer of a new team manager Val, things seem to look more optimistic at the moment. She's a very experienced sales person and the best thing is that she totally dun mind sharing her sales techniques to us. Even though the training might seem a bit late for me since i'm already running for sales, but every effort counts and together with a bit of a lucky break, i can thankfully breathe a little easier now these days. That's it for the seriousness.

Our quarterly sales celebration was once again here. Its amazing how 3 months has since passed. I can still vividly remember the last TownsHall was held at Forbidden City in Clarke Quay and that was the official day my batch of PBAs graduated from training. This time round it was held at Cafe' Del Ma at Sentosa. Haha...totally convenient for my branch coz we're just 1 bridge away from Sentosa but coz our branch ends the latest, we end up arriving at the party the latest too...hoho...anyway, the food was great as usual and the speech by the higher management was the typical encouragement talk.There was shuttle bus services available from Harbourfront to Sentosa and my whole branch happily troop off like we're on some excursion trip...haha...this is me with my colleagues Salmi and Alvin.And here's sharon and jovian acting cute on the bus...*shivers* thank god i dun act like them...haha...And this big round fella on the left is my boss. Here he is trying to get 1 of my colleague Henry to drink.Boss: "lim leh henry! Dun gve me face ah!"...
Henry: "Aiyo, who wants to drink with u, u're leaving our branch liao...haha..."

For your info, we all love to make henry drink coz he's damn funny when he's drunk. Seriously even though he's just an ok drinker but he always still "tah" drinks whenever pple ask him too...haha...Some of the babes in my branch...
From Left: Wendy, Elaine, Jo, me and Sharon.And here's a somewhat complete pic of my branch pple. Well, hopefully the optimistic atmosphere in my branch can continue.

2007-07-22T15:20:00.000+08:00

Its been 3 weeks since i've officially started running for sales and truly its a difficult task. My 1st case came from this uncle that has repeatedly postponed our appt for the past 3 weeks, so much so that i totally didn't expect him to really turn up at my branch that day. But he did and he became my 1st customer. Is this really what sales is about? It turns up when u least expect it and it deserts u when u expects it. And i understand what cla said that "u learn to let go of things more easily because what's meant to be urs is urs and what's not will never be".

I just had my 1 week of refreshment course last week and during this time when i was away from branch, i hear the news that my boss has just tendered! Truly shocking to all of us because the branch has been picking up and we all thought that we can make it together as a team. Being situtated at Vivo branch is really difficult because of the lack of walk-in and the young team of people. But at least we seem to be going on the right track at last but our boss has decided to leave us. Of course we're glad for him that he's moving to a greener pasture but its a bit sad coz my boss treats us pretty well. And the most most depressing news is that the new boss coming to take over him is an a**! [ryl...the HVA guy is coming over to my branch :( ] Life in vivo just looks more bleak by the seconds...and i have to survive there til march 2008 at least...

Will there be a miracle? I wish i knew magic like harry potter...and incidentally the last book of harry potter is finally out! But e news of my boss kinda make me lose the mood to read the book and finally find out the ending. Haiz...see how it goes bah...

2007-07-08T15:48:00.000+08:00

5th of July - The day when i "officially" graduate from NUS.

The big day is finally here. Ever since we stepped into the gates of Singapore's education system, this is the ending that all of us wished to be able to make it. 7 years of primary education---4 years of secondary edu---2 years of JC torture and finally 3.5 years of Uni independance and it all boils down to this big day when we recieved the scroll of paper stating that we have accomplished the whole journey of our share of learning.

Seriously i have mixed feelings about this day. I left NUS in Dec 2006 and embark into the working world in March 2007. However i only attended my "commencement" in July 2007. Before the day came, i wasn't even feeling excited about it because work was keeping me busy and occupied. Even til the day before the commencement, i was just thinking of the next day as being a day of leave. However upon stepping into NUS and seeing the packed and crowded students dressed in their gowns, feelings of excitement came up. Everyone seemed so charged up and happy that it was infectious! It was a good thing that there were still many familar faces among the group of bizaders graduates or else i will just feel like this commencement is so foreign because i actually grad a sem earlier. Even though people always say that the ceremony is the most boring part of the event but i actually didn't think it was too bad. Maybe because bizad is a small faculty so every now and then i can actually recognise some faces of the people who were on stage receiving their scrolls.

Finally after 2 hrs of clapping, the ceremony was over and there was indeed a feeling of pride and accomplishment in me when the balloons and streamers came popping out! I've graduated! And seriously the past 3.5 years in NUS was a valuable experience which i will treasure all my life! I think most of my old friends wouldn't dispute me if i said that my years in NUS was the period in my life where i've undergone the most amount of changes. From a sturdious student who only know how to study, i've gone to become someone who is always looking for some fun activities to do every weekend when there's no projects to do of course...hee...and there's so many more memorable memories that i'll hold close to my heart. Its a place where i've managed to share a life experience with my closest buddies and also a place where i've made many new buddies! Frankly i do believe that the friends we make in schools are the ones that we can really keep close to our heart. Working world is a different story because there is so many conflict of interest present in the relationship. So congrats to all my friends who made it together with me! We've all made it thus far! So now its just the guys who are lagging behind liao...Jiayou bah!
Me and Lijia. Haha...we were primary school mates in Rosyth Pri then we splited to different secondary schools. But we met once again in AJC and came on to Bizad together. Now we end our education years together on the same day...Me + Ryl + Peiling. We were in the same OG group when we entered bizad and i became close to Peiling in our first year of uni. We had all the same modules and timetable. She's really a very smart and funny gal. She graduate from Bizad with 1st class honours! Damn Power! Haha...Really glad to have made this friend. Wishing her all the best in MAS...And of course how can i forget my Marketing Research (MR) gals!
From left: Angeline, Ryl, Me and JT. The bunch of babes that i've managed to find in my last sem of school! U gals rock! We must meet Wendy together one day to take a complete MR gals pic wearing our gowns! And of course there's my dearest Yanting and Sheryl! Strangely i don't have a pic of the 3 of us!!! How come! I think ryl has it in her cam though. The glitter gals legacy will continue and i love u babes!
From left: Ryl, Me, Jac, Correen and YT
Yeah! We did it! Cheers to everyone!And here are my proud parents who came for the ceremony. I recalled that my dad was still grumbling that its a long wait of 1 year for my convo when i went for my uh-oh gals' convo last year. Thanks to mum and dad who never pressured me into studying what i dislike and for providing me support for all my years of education!
Thanks to my loyal group of friends who turned up for my convo even though they are all busy with their work. So fast 1 year liao hor...next year will be all the guys' turn and we shall fulfil our dream to take a pic of the entire gang in our gowns!
And many a thanks to my darl who willingly became my camera man of the day. I love the bear you bought and i appreciate the efforts you put to finding the "Graduation Wu-Gui-Wu-Gui-Tiao". Thanks for sharing this special day with me and I love seeing you in formal wear...hee...
I made it! Cheerios to all my mates who made it too!

2007-07-01T16:59:00.000+08:00

Had my 1st Sat off ever since i started work in branch. Finally we have enough manpower in my branch to allow 2 teams for alternate shifts work on Sat. But since there's almost always a roadshows during the weekends, i dun really forsee myself having a lot of Sats off. That's why it makes yday such a treasured day. I can finally do the simple leisure things that i used to do on Sat with darl. We met for lunch at Hougang Mall after i woke up...haha...it feels great to sleep til i can wake up naturally. Then we ran a few errands at Hougang before we proceeded to darl's hs to watch some movies on his com. Nowadays we only tend to go to the cinema for those big blockbusters movies that is worthy of the expensive wkend movie charges otherwise its just free movies on his computer...hee...A poor banker + a poor student must budget budget...

Then we went to meet the complete uh-oh gang at some ulu pandang place call Hong Leong Shopping Centre coz steven has recommended a very nice Jap restaurant there. Its partly to welcome JH who has since returned to Spore after his 1 yr stay in Australia. The Jap restaurant we went was a place call Minosa or something like that. The food there was really very nice! Its styled like an authentic cosy Jap restaurant and because its location is really super ulu, we reckon most of their customers are actually regulars. Guess this is another nice jap place that me and darl can add to our dinner list coz we both love jap food.

After dinner, we went to a winebar call Wine Network at Dempsey Hill which JH suggested coz he has a friend working there. Dempsey Hill is really a super cool place. From the outskirts of the main road before we turn into the hill, u totally cannot imagine that there are so many pubs, bars and restaurants inside there. Everything is hidden from the main road and you really have to walk right inside to explore and discover all the shops in there. And even then its not an easy task coz the layout of all the shops are very messy and there are lots of small dark roads that seem to lead to nowhere but there are actually shops inside those alleys. It took us about 30mins to locate the shop JH suggested. The Wine Network was a very cosy shop where people can just idly sit there with friends to chit chat whiledrinking a wide selection of wine. And there are some pretty affordable wine if anyone is interested to go there. Not neccessary to order those super expensive wines. The 6 of us order a glass of white South African wine that only cost $38 nett while we sat around there chatting. And there's also a very cool Ben & Jerry shop among all the shops there. Super nice place! I will definitely go back there to explore more of the shops there in future.

Sigh...tml will be the official day that i start running for my sales now. Seriously i feel a mixture of anxiety, panicness, stress and also a tinge of anticipation. Its really the time to chiong now liao. Make or break and we shall see how i can fare in this job of mine.

Adeline Chng-Personal Wealth Manager signing off...

2007-06-21T18:45:00.001+08:00

I'm damn pek chek with blogger! U guys really cant blame me for not updating, the stupid site keeps giving me prob whenever i try n upload my pics so in e end i will just give up.

Went for a couple of gatherings for e past month! It must be coz of the sch hols when everyone starts to miss everyone and so some kind hearted person will automatically try and organise a gathering for the benefit of everyone...haha...

Firstly was our annual uh-oh bbq at darl's hs this time rd. It was a mini celebration of sorts during the long Vesak day weekend and my bdae. As usual, uh-oh bbq always had lots of scrumptious food even though we always only have a max of 8 pple! And this time rd we only had 6 coz yl+jh was in Aus. Darl's mum had also prepared food ready to fit a party of 20 pple!

Take a look at all our food! Shiok!

And of course it was our "Macho" guys that did all the cooking! Haha...we gals just need to sit ard the table and wait for our food! Nice nice... The satay kings! Looks damn zai hor...And basically the only time we gals got near to the bbq pit was when we wanted to toast our marshmellows...heeheehee...The guys with their beer bottles! Cold beer with bbq on a hot night...shiok!...I got a bdae cake from darl! And its mango flavor from Jack's Place....nice...Next up was my secondary school class gathering. Seriously it has been many years since i've last heard of an official class gathering. I think the most that we've gathered was in the year 2005 when everyone of us was celebrating our 21st bdae! It was held at clarence's condo at Yishun and to my surprise, quite a number of people turned up for it. Apparent'y the guys who organised it really took the effort to contact everyone on the class list because when we were discussing who wasn't around, the classlist came up. Kudos to them for taking such a great effort to organise it. Haha...how come it seems that the guys in my class tend to be more of the kind who will take the initiative to organise class gatherings.

As Meibin's bf Jonathon puts it nicely "Tou1 Shen3 Me4 Nian2 Dai4 Le4" meaning "Its already a different era liao..." Guys and gals roles have greatly changed from the past...haha...nowadays, gals can be the one who propose marriage *wink wink* (u noe who i'm talking about...) and guys can be the one who are getting sub credit cards from their gfs or wife! (u also noe who i'm talking about!...)

So anyway...it was quite a great night of reminising about our stupid old days and updating each other about what we are all doing now. Most of the guys are still studying while all the gals have started working le. Isn't it amazing that u look at this bunch of pple that u have once spent your days mugging together, went for classes together, done stupid childish things together and now u look at everyone and we'll all seriously working in the ADULTS world liao. Its really a weird feeling but nice in a way to noe that everyone is still doing well! I was so surprised to learn that 1 of my female classmate had just gotten herself married recently! Jocelyn didn't come for the gathering that night but the news came from those gals who were closer to her. My goodness! Its one of my peers who have gotten married...i guess i will be hearing more of such news soon le bah...but at least its a good news and i'm happy for her :)The few gals who turned up...
From left: Peishi, Alicia, Jac, Yulin, Me, Yinghan, Weiying and Cindy...And the guys who turned up in a greater force than the gals...but i think this is really the most complete 4e2 gathering ever since we've all graduated from ZHSS liao...

And finally i just had my JC gathering at Edwin's hs last sun...sob sob...i was the only one among them that still had to work on a SUNDAY loh. All because of my stupid rdshow...but ed was so nice to come pick me n mb up from the mrt station.

What can i say about my JC class...i really appreciate all the efforts the guys spent to maintain contact and edwin i must say that "u're the best welfare rep we can ever get!!!" Haha...thanks for organising, buying the food, lending us ur hs and being such a gd host! But i must say that u guys really shd brush up on ur fire starting skills lah! E bbq was supposed to start at 6.30 but when i rch there at 8.30...the fire was miserable and the only cooked food was otak which they just managed to "warm" it over the fire...haha...in e end it had to be edwin who managed to set up the fire...how ah how...

Class 18/01 with edwin's niece Wise...she's damn cute...haha...whole night just keep running around us singing, dancing and asking for "Bak Bak" aka meat...our youngest ever member of the class...hee...

So that's it for all my bbq gatherings...

2007-06-05T18:32:00.001+08:00

Guess who walked into my branch today!!! JJ Lin Junjie! Haha...And i opened an account for him! So exciting...the real live JJ right in front of me for the whole 30mins or so and i actually talked to him as a person! Cool shit!

Sorry for the over-excitement...its just something that i wanted to exclaim out. JJ walked into the branch with his father and one of my colleagues served him initially den when she excitedly told us JJ wanted to open account, i went to give her a hand...hee...but we were v professional the whole time and there was also no commotion in our branch at all. Nope! Everybody just acted like we see stars right in our face all the time and minded our own business. But that's because we were initially all very curious and my manager had to tell all of us "Can all of u pls dun crowd around here? Shoo Shoo..." haha...damn funny...

So well this is just a small titbit of my daily work at branch...

2007-05-22T22:48:00.000+08:00

Last week has really been a very hectic week for me. Firstly there was the tiring roadshows over the weekend in Vivo and then i recieved news on Sun that my great-grandma had just passed away and i also had an exam to study for in the fri of that week. My "tai-ma" has already lived to a ripe old age of 89 years old and has been blessed with a good many grandchildren and great-grandchildren like us. I rushed down to my one of my aunty's hs after work where the funeral was held and many of my relatives were already there since early in the morning preparing all the stuffs. I originally wanted to apply for compassionate leave for a couple of days since there will be lots of stuffs do at the wake but i learnt that great-grandparents don't count under compassionate. It only goes up to grandparents so in the end i only managed to get 2 days off from work. But my boss was very nice about this because he gave me 1 day leave off the record.

My great-grandma's wake lasted for 5 days and everyday all my relatives and us have to take turns be there 24/7 coz we have to "shou ye". And not to mention because my "tai-ma" is a buddhists, there were lots of rituals in the 3rd night onwards. I never knew that a funeral can have so many things to prepare and do. Its really really super tiring... but strangely those 5 days of the wake feels like a mini-gathering of all my relatives. Usually those relatives that we only see once a year during CNY, we can all happily chit chat and gossip during the wake because we see so much of each other during those 5 days. Its really strange to think that a funeral can actually be a bonding and catching up session among all of us. I think its mostly because my "tai-ma" actually died of old age peacefully and the priests actually said that we shouldn't feel sad but happy that our "tai-ma" has led such a fulfilling life. Sigh...isn't it a bit of an irony and retrospective that it takes a death to make us bond more closely than we ever have over all these years of CNY gatherings. My mum also said that looking at all the descendants that my "tai-ma" has to pay respect to her, that's why we should have a bigger family if possible. (i think there are abt 50+ of us bah, not including all those small great-grandkids)

In any case, i'll always remember my "tai-ma" as someone who dotes on us very much. When we were young, my cousins and us used to visit her hs frequently during the school holidays. All those afternoons spent running ard playing hide-and-seek or catching in the playground and then after that return to her hs to rest and watch tv. How time flies, now my cousins and us have already all grown up and we seldom meet up because everyone is busy with their own lives. I miss our childhood days where everything was so simple and carefree. I miss all those afternoons running around aimlessly in the sun. I miss staying over at my grandparents' place together with all my cousins during the holidays and then my grandpa would bring all of us little imps to the kopitiam for breakfast. Sometimes you need events like this to remind yourself to cherish the present. Treasure everyone around you coz either they may not be beside you in future or we might all just drift apart.

On the last day of the wake where we accompanied my "tai-ma" to the crematrium, there were lots of sniffing sounds from the females, even the males had visible red eyes as we all said our last goodbye to our "tai-ma". My eyes too tear as i remember all those days where my "tai-ma" made us snacks and scolded us if we were naughty. And according to all my aunties, my "tai-ma" used to dote on me the most because i was the eldest great-grandchild. And i do remember this vaguely because it was such a long time ago. Death is really something that everyone goes through but sometimes it doesn't have to be too bad a thing. Even though she is gone, we'll all remember her as our beloved and respected "tai-ma"...

Sidenote:
I managed to force myself to mug late into the night on the last 2 days of the wake for my exam and i seriously had a nervious break-down because i have never ever been so unprepared for an exam before! Even though i have the allowance of having a 2nd chance to retake my exams, i just didn't want to fail it the 1st time. Seriously i dunnoe how i managed to scrape throughout the night and i was all prepared to flunk it. But miracles of all is that i managed to passed it...it must be my "tai-ma" that is blessing me...

2007-05-05T18:32:00.000+08:00

Guess who walked into my branch today!!! JJ Lin Junjie! Haha...And i opened an account for him! So exciting...the real live JJ right in front of me for the whole 30mins or so and i actually talked to him as a person! Cool shit!

Sorry for the over-excitement...its just something that i wanted to exclaim out. JJ walked into the branch with his father and one of my colleagues served him initially den when she excitedly told us JJ wanted to open account, i went to give her a hand...hee...but we were v professional the whole time and there was also no commotion in our branch at all. Nope! Everybody just acted like we see stars right in our face all the time and minded our own business. But that's because we were initially all very curious and my manager had to tell all of us "Can all of u pls dun crowd around here? Shoo Shoo..." haha...damn funny...

So well this is just a small titbit of my daily work at branch...

2007-04-28T16:13:00.000+08:00

Its been a whole month of training for our role as a PBA in HSBC. Even though training was a drain on the brain sometimes, it was really a very fun period! I think besides all the product knowledge and bank culture that we were taught in class, the most important lesson for all of us is that in the banking world, particularly when u wanna do sales - U MUST KNOW HOW TO HOLD UR LIQUOR! In the short 1 month of training, i've clubbed 3 times every fri consecutively. And my PBAs don't just drink mild drinks like vodka mix, they drink Martel! My god! Can die loh! And knowing my own alcohol limit, i just kept trying to "siam" whatever drinks they try and push to me but sometimes its really "you can run but u cant hide..."...haha...here's a look at all the wild drinking parties i had in the past 1 month! Stunning loh! My clubbing frequency in the past used to be just abt 2 times a year on average. But now it has increased to weekly!

Our 1st drinking spree at Zouk 2nd week:

Here are my fellow PBA babes!

From left: Andrea, Wendy, Pamela, Rachael and Me! (Damn i looked red! But then again that's just how it is with me and alcohol...haha...)

And another pic of all the babes!

And this guy here is the Michael - The Martel King! Seriously, he goes clubbing every wk and he always open bottles of Martel. But i have to admit Martel with green tea is really quite nice but not on the rocks loh! He machiam drink Martel like tea loh.

From top left: Pam, Rach's friend, Rach, Wendy, Me and Shawn Wong

From bottom left: Leonard (he's a RM), Andrea, WeiZheng, Kelvin and that black head sticking out at the corner is Jeff i think...haha...

And here's the whole gp of PBAs! I dun think everyone is captured in the pic. So this is our 1st "bonding" time during drinks and dance. And oh ya, can i just say that the music at zouk sucks on fri! Totally gross and we tried squezing to Phuture which was so much better but the bad part is that its damn damn crowded!

2nd Session at Indochine and then later we "relocated" to ButterFactory - 3rd Week:

We were all invited to a sales party by our department which is held at IndoChine in Clark Quay. Apparently this is a party held every quarter where there will be announcements about how the different branches did in terms of sales and ranking. Then there will be prize presentations on the top performing sales pple and blah blah blah...basically i think everyone is just there for the food and booze. Do u noe we booked the whole IndoChine that night just for this? And there was free flow of food and alcohol! And they do this every 3 months! My god, welcome to the banking world where everything just looks damn good on the surface. Because of this stupid party, all of us thought that we had better dressed up formally coz all our managers and big shots will be there at the party! That's why all of us are dressed in our formal suits! Then when we arrived there, we see gals in tube tops and jeans! Damn it! That's Michael and Jeff reliving their role as tongue-locking lovers in a movie called "Whose Tongue is it Anyway?" They're both crazy loh! Haha...but actually while posing for this pic, Jeff and Mike actually accidentally kissed briefly when they both turned their head too fast towards each other! haha...damn funny lah...coz they both spat and spew immediately after that.The guys trying to look guai in their formal biz wear. That's the whole lot of us at IndoChine before we leave for ButterFactory...which by that time we had already consumed a lot of alcohol coz its all free!

From top left: Lawrence, WZ, Mel (incidentally he's knows steven and pei from his uni days coz he's from SOC too) and Leo.

From 2nd row left: Rach, Sharon, Pam, Wendy, Me, Andrea and Shawn Tan

The 3 wacko guy at the bottom is Mike, Jeff and Frederick. Can u believe that Fred is married at 26 years old! And he's a very nice guy! The gals were lamenting that its such a waste! Haha...we're kidding lah. But he turns into a crazy fella after drinks and he actually attribute that to behaviours of his evil twin...

And then we relocated to ButterFactory for more drinks and dance. The music there is quite gd coz its R&B instead of trance.Haha...Surprise to see this! Muacks Muacks! Yupz, ryl joined me at ButterFactory coz we're all colleagues now! Yt dun be jealous k. We'll ask u along the next time we go club together! Seriously we do miss our gd old clubbing times. Darl can also rest assured that the only kisses i hand out to is to my darling ryl...hee...Us on the dance floor...Still can pose til so neatly...we're gd man...

Grad Night of training:

Sigh...before we all know it, its the last day of our training and what other way to celebrate then to go for more drinks? Now u see the type of routine we have...there's always a reason for drinks *shake head*...This is where we were at a karaoke pub call BEDS in MS. And we're all playing indian poker. The guys looked damn stupid with the cards on their head lah. And they guys all sabo me during the 1st rd when i had the smallest card of all - 2 of hearts loh! I really shouldn't have trusted Mel when he said i no need to change cards. Wah lao! And the drink punishment that rd was a whole class of Pure Martel on the rocks! Luckily rach rescued me by taking the cup off my hand when i finished half a cup. My heroine...A look at the sinful table we have. Cards, drinks, cigarettes and dices... The 2nd party venue of the night is once again Zouk since all the heavy clubbers frequent that place. So once again i have to endure the torturous music at zouk and i can only amuse myself by taking lots of pics...hee...Martel is not gd for your throat and lungs u noe...so dun drink too much of it. The only 3 PBA babes who came that night - rach, Wendy and me. The other gals happily ditched us on our final night together loh! Disappointing man...A toast to everyone! As Mike put it that night - Cheers to Tier 4! And of course its bottoms up everyone. Its time to go out into our real working world at our respective branches liao. Jiayou bah!

2007-04-22T18:22:00.000+08:00

I admit it, i'm a sappy at heart, a romantist, a love idealist and also sometimes a lover adventurer. I totally love this scene in Grey's Anatomy Season 2 when the female lead Meredith almost dies from a bomb scare and she's telling the male lead Derek that all she was thinking before dying is that she can't remember the last kiss that they had before their break-up. Its really super sweet. I think too much drama makes me unrealistic because i sometimes crave for some drama in my r/s so that i can have such sweet moments. Alrite i was just kidding there, i'm contended with what i have...that's why i'm such a tv addict, such things only happen in shows but never in real life...so watch it while u can...

And i love this song and clip-Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol (clips from Grey's)

If i lay here. If i just lay here. Would you lay with me and just forget the world?

2007-04-15T20:41:00.000+08:00

Without feeling much, 2 weeks of my training has just whooshed by! I met my class of 15 PBAs (Personal Banking Associates) who together with me are all embarking on a whole new different journey of our lives from now on. There are people who are fresh graduates like me without a clue of how the real working life will be like, people who have been in a total different industry like R&D in biotechnology and advertising and have been brave enough to take the plunge together with a huge paycut to come into this job and people who have tried insurance before and now wishes to try it out with a bank. I guess all of us have the common aim of hoping to earn big bucks with this job but i'm not certain how much of an extent i can go along to achieve this aim.

Training has been pretty tiring because we have to endure long hours of lecturing by our super experienced trainers but in between all this i have to say that i still pretty enjoy it. Senior batches of PBAs have all told us to just enjoy the training month together with all our PBAs coz once we get to the real job attachment at our respective branch, everything changes. It sounds damn scary but there's seriously nothing we can do now cause we'll all stuck here for at least 1 year...But in any case, i'll just enjoy my last 2 weeks of training and then see how it goes bah.

Note: I'm posted Vivocity so if any of u are in the area during lunch or dinner time, u can give me a call for drinks or anything...but pls be warned that my branch there is damn ulu and difficult to find, i had to look at the directory the first time i visited there. Haha...now that's waht i call Atas sia!

2007-03-21T15:51:00.000+08:00

i recently had this urge to go learn how to play a piano. Its all because of this korean drama that i'm watching now called "My Name is Kim Sam Soon". Actually i've already watched this show before but am re-watching it now coz its showing on my SCV channel. The male lead in this show is so damn "shuai" when he plays the piano. It makes me wish that i know how to play the piano coz its just so soothing. Incidentally, i think guys are damn "shuai" when they play the piano and it just makes me swoon. Its just so mesmerizing and romantic particularly if they are playing for a gal.

The part where the male lead played the song "Over the Rainbow"...sigh...so sweet...

Seriously, i had always love the sound of the piano and i wish i had the chance to learn how to play it when i was younger. Even though money was an issue but sadly i'm also a retard when it comes to playing any musical instruments. I can carry a tune decently but its just the reading of all those muscial signs that makes me go crazy and helpless. Remember the music lessons we used to take in our primary and lower sec sch days? Well...i bluff through all of them. Yeah, I made it through this far didn't I? Anyway, i always couldn't remember much about all those musical signs that we were supposed to learn on the muscial sheets for our recorder. I think i only remember all the way to "doh, re, mi, fa, soh..." and that's it. I used to just cheat by learning how to memorize playing the song on the recorder beforehand and it wasn't that hard since the songs we learnt then was like damn easy. I remember there was this music exam at the end of my pri 5 year, we were all supposed to play the song "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" individually to our music teacher while reading the musical sheets in front of us. Well, i just "gazed" at that piece of paper and then proceeded to blow the song on my recorder as if i was really reading the notes and blowing them as smoothly as possible. And well i made it through. Even when we were in lower sec sch, sometimes during those music classes when we had to blow a new scoresheet we had just learnt, er...i just pretended to move my fingers dilligently when in actual fact i wasn't playing anything out of my recorder. Hee...dun laugh! I'm sure there are some of u here that did the same as me! And it was just a relief to be able to escape from music lesson when we raised to sec 3 coz i could stop worrying about "what the hell are we playing in music lesson now!" But then again music lessons was still quite fun coz at least its the only class we had in the music room where there was air-con...haha...and air con in those days of ours was a luxury u noe.

But i noe its just another one of those urges of mine that i get once in a while. Previously i had this urge to go play tennis coz i was watching the anime "Prince of Tennis"...haha...but thats me. Piano where got so easy to learn. People can learn for years all the way to grade 8? Or is it grade 9? But u noe if one day a guy comes along and confess his love for me via playing the piano and oh ya, it'll be nice if he can sing also...hee...i might just swoon and say yes to anything he says...haha...Joke lah darl! Dun worry k? If i want guys that noe how to play the piano, i'll go find my Jay Zhou, Wang Lee Hom and Tank *wink*...

And this is the MV by Tank called 专属天使 which is also the song of the Taiwanese show 花样少年少女 . The show is damn nice lah. Sorry if none of u are interested in idol drama but indulge me lah, i so love this song and the MTV...so sweet...

2007-03-14T15:24:00.000+08:00

I was waiting for darl in Suntec convention hall on Saturday when a strange man on the street came up to me and we had a really weird conversation. That day was the day when suntec was completely packed with visitors to the IT fair and it was about 10pm when everyone was waiting in line for the taxi stand right outside the convention hall. Darl was supposed to pick me up after my dinner with cla that night and we planned to go somewhere else to chill. I was waiting outside near the loooonnnggg taxi queue coz i was worried that he might not see me in the huge crowd when this guy came up to me

Brackets (...) means thoughts that i was thinking to myself...
Weirdo: Hi, are u the girl that was eating beside me just now?
Me: Huh?
Weirdo: Ya, u were eating some packed dinner of rice and potatoes right?
Me: HUH? Nope. (this guy notices wat other pple eat beside him! Weird!...)
Weirdo insisting: U were beside my booth just now remember?
Me: (Booth?...he means the IT fair is it? and he's wearing some sort of t-shirt that looked like he's a staff working at the fair) Eh...sorry i dun think so, i didn't go into the IT fair at all.
Weirdo: Oh is it?
Me: (yes! so now can u pls go away)

But the weirdo still continued... ...

Weirdo: So u were just shopping around here is it?
Me: Ya, i met a friend for dinner.
Weirdo: Then u're waiting for your friend to pick u up now?
Me: yar. (wat's up with this guy man? i dun even noe him and he continues to chat with me???...)
Weirdo: Then where are u guys gg after this? Give me a lift lah?
Me: (???!!! this guy is siao is it! why would i give u a lift?) Eh...i dun think so, we're going off to some place later.
Weirdo: Nvm wat, i can tag along with u guys.
Me: (Seriously! This guy is siao one! Oh wait a minute...is he erm...hitting on me?...)
*granted i was dressed very nicely that day coz i had just went to signed my HSBC appointment letter*
Erm...i'm actually waiting for my "BOYFRIEND" to pick me up now.
Weirdo: Oh, its ok...cant u just give me a ride? Help a guy out in distress?

I pointed to the long line of pple behind me queuing behind me for a taxi and coolly said...
Me: There's a lot of pple in distress here.
Weirdo: hmm...good point. OK loh, nvm then.

And he left me alone liao... wah lao! How come Singapore got such weirdos one? Initially i thought he had mistaken me for someone else so not so bad but then he went on to request for a ride to somewhere??? And that guy actually looked like quite an alrite chap, late 20s i think with no sign of any insanity trends. Well this is just something interesting that happened to me over the weekend which i tot i'll share it out for a laugh....

2007-03-14T14:50:00.000+08:00

Its kinda official now, I'll be starting work at HSBC at the end of this March. I'll be starting in the position of a Personal Banker Associate which is basically a sales position. U noe its kinda weird that i've eventually landed myself in this job. For as long as i can remember, I have always shun away from sales position. I just didn't feel confident that I can sell well or that i can have the patience and tolerance towards nasty customers that sales people will encounter. But when i saw the recruitment ad in the papers for this position in January, I decided to just give it a try coz for one thing, i wanted to find a job in a bank and for another, ryl and cla are also doing the same kind of work so at least i won't be so alone in it. Plus, I really didn't think that i would make it pass the 2 interviews given that i've heard how scary it is from ryl.

Round 1 was a numerical test of Maths and English similar to that of the SATS except its the problems are more financial in nature. When you pass the 1st rd, u'll be called back for a 2nd round which consists of 3 sub-rounds of interview. There are 2 rounds of role-playing and 1 round of interview. Role-playing means that we are actually placed in a mock situtation where we have to sell to "clients" posed by HSBC's staffs, some product of the bank. Anyway the whole 3 hrs session is just damn draining but amazingly i actually passed that! The scary part about accepting their offer is that HSBC requires us to sign a 10K 1 year bond with them coz on their part, they'll spent lots of time and effort to train us. But 1 year leh! What happens if i suck at it or that i can't endure the type of stuffs we have to do? That's all the questions that was battling my mind when i heard the offer. But i guess we all have to start somewhere when we start coming into the work force and this is as gd a job as another desk bound job elsewhere. I shall just take this as a chance to see whether i have the potential for a sales job and tough it out 1 year, if not then there are plenty of other jobs out there. So there! I'm officially a HSBC local banker liao...and maybe just maybe...i may not be that bad at this job.

Sometimes i just wonder how fate likes to lay the path for us, isn't it just so damn exsperating that once HSBC called me up for the offer of this job, Merrill Lynch FINALLY called me up too to discuss possibility if an interview with them! I had about almost given up all hope on ML liao and then they start calling me to give me this kind of news! Argh! I sent my resume to them way before CNY loh! Do u noe how "GEK" it is to have ML calling u up for a position that u want and the pay is also higher than that of HSBC?!!! Its MERRILL LYNCH leh for goodness sake! Haiz...i almost went crazy that day thinking of the possibilities between the offer by HSBC and the call from ML. Admittedly, I haven even went to any interview with ML and i might not even make it through in the end but but......sigh...forget it liao. Timing all wrong loh so no choice.

So i'm now busy shopping around for new working clothes and do u have any idea how expensive the nice nice suits that bankers wear everyday?!!! And i'm just happily enjoying my last few days of UTTER FREEDOM before i become a working adult! Wish me luck on my new future!

2007-03-06T13:12:00.000+08:00

There's something wrong with blogger on my desktop which explains why i haven blog for some time. I thought it was a temp problem with the website but i guess its my desktop causing the problem. Anw, i'm using my lappie to type this now and thank gawd its working well.

Met up with my marketing research gals last sun. Haha...they're called my MR gals coz we only knew each other through our MR project in my last sem. Those babes are totally cool lah, its amazing how the 5 of us can click, gossip and crap about all kinds of stuffs. I'm really glad to have the chance to know this gp of babes in my final sem in NUS. It really seems like luck or fate that we manage to form a project gp together. That's because the 3 gals, namely JT, Wendy and Angeline are familar faces that i've seen around bizad for the past 3 years. Bizad being quite a small knitted faculty, u tend to see the same faces ard school and sometimes in your same class if u're doing the same major. But even though i've seen them ard and probably they would have seen me ard too, we've never gotten the chance to know each other better. But well, at least i had the chance now and its nice to say that i have another gp of friends that i can take pics together with in our CONVO this coming July...haha...

Anyway, we travelled all the way to Bukit Batok to "Pai Nian" at Wendy's hs. Haha...initially i tot that the 15 days of CNY was over already but it turns out that sun was the last day so i still got my AngBao! Its my first time to such a Western part of Singapore loh! - alone. And we went West Mall for a Sakae dinner which was another one of my 1st time there...sigh...i gave so many of my 1st time to my babes...Muahaha...Ryl came later to join us and the 5 of us continued our almighty skills of gossipping and crapping. U noe i used to think that i can go pretty wild and crappy sometimes when the mood hits me but it turns out that i wasn't the only one. It feels great to meet up with them and hopefully we can maintain the friendship even though it may feel quite young.

This is a pic taking during our last class in MR last sem.
From left: Angeline, JT, Wendy, Ryl, Me, ManYee and Shuohan. But its only Angel, JT, Wendy and Ryl that i'm close to coz i guess we're of the same batch. Anyway i must say that Angeline's name is super similar to mine. Her full name is Zhuang HuiQing Angeline while mine is Zhuang HuiXian Adeline....haha...super coincidence loh.

I got a Nintendo DS Lite from Darl for my bdae! Hee...even though its still 3 months away but darl had friends who wanted to buy the DS too so they decided to buy it together and see if there's any discounts.

Its pink and i love it! Trust darl to think of giving me a DS for my bdae coz i really do like playing games and of course there's the additional benefit that he can borrow and play it whenever he likes too coz i seriously think he wants to buy it for himself too but by saying that its a gift for me, he kills 2 birds in 1 stone coz he'll save on getting another bdae present for me...haha...that's just my own suspicions without any basis and in anycase i love my DS and my boy for getting it for me!

2007-02-27T16:06:00.000+08:00

Well, CNY is now over and life regains back to normal with nothing much to look forward to. I think 1 of the reason why i like Xmas more than CNY is because Xmas is at the end of the year where u truly feel like being in a holiday mood and having survived yet another year. CNY is great and all but i dread the normalities after this festive period and the outlook of the whole long year ahead of us where we have to get by. And in my case, I dun even noe how my year ahead will turn out to be like.

I noe i used to have some big mood swings but I seriously think i may be in an perpetual cycle of troughs and peaks (remem this physics term for our wave topic...hee...) there may be some days when i'll be feeling happy with myself and surroundings but other days when e depression hits me right in the face and in unexpected times. This must be how menopausal feels like...or maybe its just the typical transition period of a fresh grad student looking for job...I seriously dun wanna talk much about this topic coz i feeli'm boring everyone ard me when drilling on and on about it...Heck! Even i'm bored by this topic and but inevitabilities comes about coz we cant really control what we think all the time.

Menopausal sucks and so does looking for a job which has a not-bad-pay/prospects/willing to hire fresh grads/not-bad company/Perm position...the list goes on...

2007-02-17T15:22:00.000+08:00

Our Special Day...

Before i start i'll just say that thank god the week is finally coming to an end and CNY is here liao. You would not believe the week I just had...5 interviews in 1 week. Super tiring...And all the interviews were for 5 different jobs instead of maybe like different rounds for the same job. That's all because i went into a resume sending frenzy last week and suddenly all the calls started calling up for interviews. Well...at least the 1st round is over for most of the interviews so i guess i just have to wait until after CNY to see how my harvest will be like...

Anyway, this is a late wishing but happy 24th bdae to my boy who has just "matured" 1 year older a few days ago. I dunnoe if its my influence but i find that he tends to develop more "youngish" behaviour when being ard me and in comparision to the guy i noe 2 years ago...haha...i dun really wanna claim all the credit but i reckon its more or less because i often engage in crazy and "not-my-age" behaviour when the mood hits me so he has to adapt according to circumstances...hee...

We went to an American restaurant called "Brewerkz" at Clarke Quay, I've always wanted to try out this place coz yt used to work there before and according to her the beer there was quite nice coz its they brew their own beer. And me n darl was very pleased with the place. The ambience great with the river wind blowing into our faces and the food was also very nice. And they have quite a bit of variety of unique beer there. We only ordered 1 type of beer to try coz darl needs to drive

Look at how cute the beer glass is like...the beer we ordered is of a fruity flavor so i guess that's why the glass is like this. And it was indeed very nice.My dinner of "Grilled Pork T-Bone"...super super delicious. The cranberry sauce on it was fantastic and u guys should know my weird fetish for food with lots of sauces...haha...Darl had "BBQ Pork Rib" with baked potato...equally as nice as mine...Yum Yum...Our dessert of "Apple Crumble with Ice-Cream"...the ice-cream was great but the apple crumble was a bit too sweet and the 2 of us couldn't finish it all. But its still not bad.And i got an extra dessert that came in the form of 24 stalks of roses...*grin grin*...isn't it any wonder why I can't finish my dessert...coz i'm to sweet to finish it up liao :)To my boy: Happy 2nd Year! And though I am going to have to step into a different world from you in the near future, we'll be the same ade&how as we have always been..*promise*..

Ps. And i still remember clearly all the things that u "owe" me...muahaha...better dun let them accumulate up again wor...*wink wink*

And to all my beloved friends - HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!! May everyone get lots of angbao and not grow fat from all the goodies...haha...Muacks!

2007-02-06T14:08:00.000+08:00

2nd Time Prawning

Yup, despite my lousy 1st time attempt at prawning, i went for my another prawning experience this time with my jc friends. Edwin was the one who proposed the trip coz he was interested after reading abt my prawning experience in my last entry. They picked another prawning farm situated right beside Jurong Bird Park coz they went to search for places online and apparently this farm has some good recommendations. And its slightly cheaper than "Farmart" at $25 per rod rental for 3hrs.

Upon reaching there, i was amazed by the size of the prawning farm. It is so much bigger than "Farmart", at least 3 times the area. Farmart had only 1 single pond for us to do our prawning whereas the Jurong Bird Park place has about 4 different ponds for us to start prawning wherever we wanted. And the prawns at Jurong are HUGE! Seriously like mini lobster! U'll see e pics later whereas Farmart only had regular size prawns. But the pond water in Jurong is very black and dark so much so that u cant see any activities going on within the waters which means u cant see any prawns at all! U're just perpetually staring at a pool of black ink-like pond water all the time whereas at Farmart, we could at least still see some activity going on in the pond which makes the experience more exciting.

Anyway remember i said previously that the better bait to use was "earthworm paste" instead of cockles, our darling friend jim tried to buy it from a fishing store before gg over to meet us and look wat he bought...A box of live earthworms...they're still squirming and crawling in the box u noe...he told the shop uncle that he wanted to go prawning and they gave him THIS...seriously dunnoe what happen...hee...but it was quite a funny incident when i arrived and everyone looked expectantly at me wondering if we were really supposed to use live earthworms as baits (eewww) and i burst out laughing when i saw the box...and then we left the box at some spot in the farm without a backward glance at it once i said it wasn't the correct bait. Oh, and the Jurong farm uses chicken heart as bait. Its not as messy as cockles and i guess it does the job fine bah.

As usual we had to wait for a long time before any of us caught any thing. And the 1st 45 mins was a bore while we just waited impatiently. The only remotely amusing thing that happened in between this time was when i felt a nibble in my line and thus excitedly jerk my rod up which resulted in my fishing line getting caught in the fishing net held above the pond. So paiseh...and i had to go find the person-in-charge to help me unhook the line from the nets above.Edwin and Siqin made 1st catch of the day with a regular size prawn...haha...finally some action.Then me and darl had our 1st catch too! And our prawn is super big! Look at the size of it on the floor. And it has pincers ok!The size of a prawn that someone else caught at the farm. We "kaypoh" pple couldn't resist gg over to take a look and we even took a pic of it even though it wasn't our prawn...hee...coz we were damn impressed at that pt and worry that we might not ever get to catch prawns this big so shd hurry take a pic now! I'm not e only one taking the pic, gunz also got do the same thing!...haha...

When the time came for the farm operators to release new prawns into the pond, we all excitedly followed the guy and went to the spot where he released them and started putting our rods into the area. But there was this chinese uncle who is damn li hai! He just quickly put his hand into the pond when the prawns were released and grab them by hand! And he caught a lot of them in a very short span of time. While we were watching him in action with amazement, edwin suddenly pointed to the side of the pond and said "There's one here!" And me n siqin just excitedly pyscho him to quickly put his hand into the pond and grab the sucker! Haha...he hesitated but then surprised us by suddenly putting his hand in and grab the prawn! Haha...power sia...our hero of the the day...and i couldn't stop laughing while he panickly ran to where our prawn nets were with the prawn in his hand...

And finally terrance caught the biggest catch of the day...Look at the size of this king prawn! The same size as th's slipper.The guys all squeezing at the bridge area coz there is where most of the action are...Our total catch of the day...combined affort of the 7 of us. Although the prawns at Jurong are super huge but the frequency of catching the prawns is super the low. U have to wait damn long before u can feel the prawns on ur rod other than that its always just waiting and waiting. At least at Farmart we could feel more nibbling at our rods and thus had more actions even if they weren't always successful. So generally, i still prefer farmart to jurong.But all in all, it was a fun evening trying to play fisherman...haha...

Sidenote:

I went to my kitchen in the middle of this entry trying to find some food to munch...but when i open my fridge door...i saw this...And my freezer was like this...My bottom tier like this...Overall my whole fridge is so stuffed with food that i dunnoe how my mum is gg to extract whatever she needs when she cooks. But at least i noe that we wun go hungary when CNY comes ard...haha...And did i mention that there are also lots of veges lying ard my kitchen dining table...*shake head*...

Mission Impossible 4 to squeeze all of them inside...maybe some of u shd go chk out ur own fridge oso for some surprises...

2007-01-31T14:36:00.000+08:00

1st Time Prawning

I went prawnng with the usual uh-oh! gang last sat. The prawning farm we chose to go was far far away at Choa Chu Kang! The place was called "Farmart" and it was recommended by pei coz she had already visited there with her friends previously. We met there late in the evening since the place is open up to 2am and we have to bk a package time of at least 3hrs to prawn there. Renting a prawning rod for 3hrs is $26 and the 6 of us shared 3 rods.

Initially i thought prawning was a very simple process of just waiting and then hooking up the prawns. I mean how much skills can be involved in just pulling the rod up with a prawn hooked onto it rite?! But little did i noe that there are actually skills involved in it. And WE SUCKED AT IT! Seriously, during the 3-4hrs that we were there, we have only caught about...*counting with fingers*...11 or 12 prawns bah. And that is really pathetic coz all ard us were those expert prawners who keep hooking up big prawns every 5-10 mins while the 6 of us could just stared at their rods with envy and amazement while our rods remain inactive. Why oh why? And then somemore because of our inexperience at prawning, we get super excited whenever any 1 of us actually do catch something!...haha...a bit the "dui lian" coz the rest of the expert pple were all very calm while prawning...but its ookk...at least we were having fun by ourselves.

The prawning farm provided us with baits together with the rental of the rods. The bait was actually just cockles and we also had chopping boards to cut up the cockles into smaller pieces so that we can hook them onto the rods. Super disgusting loh! Hee...i made darl do all the dirty work while i just hold the rod. And we were also very curious about what the expert prawners use as their bait coz we realize (from a lot of sneak peaks) that their bait is different from us. At first look, i thought the baits they use look a lot like the red chinese dry-aired sausage aka "Lak3 Qiong2" which they cut into small tiny pieces to hook to their rods. But during a gathering with my relatives, one of my uncle who used to be a fishing enthusiast told me that that is actually "earthworm paste". Yucks! But apparently it works quite well coz the expert prawners were all using this kind of bait. Maybe i can consider buying this at any fishing stores when we do head there again...

A look at how the prawning farm looked like...Basically its just a very small pond area where prawns are swimming ard in it. They will also release a new batch of prawns at different timing. That day when we went, it was at 7pm and 11pm. The pond and water is quite dark so you cant really see the prawns swimming in it unless they are near the surface. And the place is quite dirty so i would advice anyone who is interested to visit there to dress casual.Look at me! I'm patiently waiting for my prawnies to eat my bait...hee...

After 45mins of waiting, we finally had our 1st catch! And it was me who caught it! Muahaha...I couldn't resist taking the typical "fisherman with catch" picture :)

Lots of waiting and waiting...and the prawns are so tricky! So many times we felt tension in our lines and when we pulled the rod up, the bait was gone and the prawn had escaped.The prawning gang! We looked pretty harmless doncha think...maybe tt's why the prawns also bully us...haha...

The farm also provided a bbq pit for us to cook the prawns that we had caught. And fresh prawns do taste delicious! Yum Yum!Our chief of the night...hee...i miss our annual bbq events! Our annual CNY bbq time is coming up soon liao! Must plan must plan!...

2007-01-26T15:55:00.000+08:00

Men! Hrump!

Seriously man are weird creatures. I never truly knew how their mind works. And i bet they will say the same about woman too! Why this big statement now? Coz i've recently know more about the inner feelings of how some of my guy friends feel.

Friend 1 hates christians. Period! But his current gf is a christian. *roll eyes* Seriously, if u truly love the gal, race/religion/looks/background or watever nots shouldn't be an issue rite? Even if some may say that that isn't really possible in the real life but at least u shd have an idea of wat u are getting into before u start the relationship! Instead friend 1 decided grab the girl 1st and then call hotline 1900-***-**** for aunt ade frequently to lament abt how him n his gf cant see no light! Sigh...seriously i feel for u brudder...but everything i can say is said and for god's sake stop saying that i will go down to hell with u just coz we're not christians! For your info, i have a place reserved in heaven...hee...and i have no enemity feelings towards any religion.

Friend 2 has a gf who has just started work while he is still in school. It used to be equal financial standings but just because of the different role that each is playing now in SOCIETY (note: they're still playing the same role in their r/s), friend 2 feels somewhat upset that the gf is earning more than what he is earning now. Sigh...quite frankly this is just INCOMPREHENDO to me. Why shd guys feel inferior when their gfs are earning more now? Its not like its gg to be forever. The guy will also get the chance to come out and work in future and by then we will be truly happy if our bfs can earn more than us and thus let us...ok ok ME...indulge in my daydream of a "tai tai" lifestyle...muahaha! And somemore our starting pay is not that high what! But here come my beloved boy to the rescue - he pointed out that this is all just male egoism at work. The "ah meng" in all men just doesn't feel gd when their female partners earn more than them. Why? DUN ask me...i dun have an "Ah Meng" personality inside me though i'm sure i can find some interesting characters among all my spilt personalities if u're truly interested...hee...ok digress here. The pt is, guys just cant accept that! Period! Cannot explain one! th tried but failed too. Initially when he went into this long speech of explaination about why guys may occur some sort of PMS behaviour when their gfs work, i was listening intently with a touch of amusement coz i thought if he spills everything out now then i can avoid all this trouble when i finally start work too! Smart rite! HAH! But th happily says the above behaviour are just for the typical guys, he's perfectly happy for me and any side benefits he may get when i do get a gd-paying job...haha...nice one my boy coz i wouldn't understand any of all those PMS behaviour. But then again even he said that in the long run he feel better if he has the higher earning power and to prevent his "ah meng" from creating trouble...i can sacrifice myself and retire to a "tai tai" lifestyle when the need arises...hohoho~!

So seriously once again, men are such weird creatures but we have to pacify them all the same when they do get all trama about this coz we put them through all sorts of behaviour too and we still have the glorified excuse of pushing it to our PMS which thus justify the attacks occuring once every month! Hee...for your info too, i seldom have the PMS attacks...muahahaha!

The above characters are all fictional and any resemblance to the dead or alive is purely coincidental...

2007-01-21T00:30:00.000+08:00

Christmas Dinner 2006

These are really very back-dated but i haven had the time to post them up yet coz i was busy with other stuffs. Anyway, just a look at how i celebrated my Christmas 2006 with the uh-oh gang!

The usual people that i love and spent my past 3 years of Christmas together with... We celebrated the night at yl's place and she had invited her 2 cousins to join us. Incidentally, this 2 gals are also my tuition kids coz it was yl that recommended me to teach her cousins a couple of years ago. Now i only teach the younger sis who is in Sec 4 now. The lady beside pei is yl's mamma...haha...they looked very alike hor... The feast that yl's and her mum cooked for us.
From left: mixed fruits salad, honey ham, chicken stew in red wine and another dish of potatoes+scrimps. Super scrumptious and delicious, esp the chicken stew! All of us was screaming for yl to pass us the recipe when she was serving the food. After that was present exchanging time and i handed the babes souveneirs that i had brought back from Shanghai for them. Since there was feedback in the past that the presents i had gotten them from Bangkok the other time wasn't suitable for the right person that i had choose it for. I wrapped all the presents in similar wrapping this time and allow them to choose it on their own accordance. So difficult to please hor this gp of babes...hee... Tada...4 Sexy mysterious arabian women for u to choose from...Surprisingly non of them wanted to exchange the presents among themselves...haha...coz all of them are equally nice...
And of course, what's Christmas like without the usual gift exchange...as usual the budget was set at $15 and we're all supposed to get a unisex present each. Damn difficult lah! Cla brought along this bingo toy thingy that she had gotten from another Xmas gathering that she had attended the prev night. And we labelled all the presents with numbers so that everyone can have a go at choosing the number that that are gg to get. So fun! Just a couple of pics here that we had taken for the gift exchange ceremony...hee...every receiver had a pic taken with the person who had bought the present...look at pei, she machiam thinks she at some star awards or something loh...muahaha!

After that, we started a game of Monopoly and my gawd it is the most challenging and scheming game of Monopoly i have ever played before. I never even knew that Monopoly can be played in such a far-fetched manner. But according to the experts of the game that night, that's how they used to play Monopoly when they were young. The game went on into the deep hours of the night before we decided to call it a day. Many thanks to yl for preparing the meal and her mum for being such a good hostess by offering us coffee, tea, cakes...

JC Dinner Dinner before School Starts

Met up with my JC friends during the last fri before school starts. We usually celebrate our Countdown together but sadly some of the gang had were not around in Singapore and it was difficult to continue with this tradition. Mb and GSH had left for the States and Kit was in Tokyo. But we managed to meet for a simple dinner at Serangoon Gdn at a restaurant called Pow Sing recommended by the guys. The food was quite nice and i haven seen the rest of them for a long time. We ate our dinner in the midst of asking about each other's vacations. The guys had went for Cambodia and HK in the hols and they were mocking at GS being sick for the whole HK trip, even on the day of his bdae...haha...evil man...and of course i grumbled about my Shanghai trip and made all of them swear that they'll never go to that TravelStar Agency...haha...that's the power of Word of Mouth...but anyway they have never even heard of that agency before which isn't strange considering that its a small unknown agency.

Oh and someone had also encountered the same incident that we had in our Shanghai trip and he wrote in to TODAY to complain. Go check out the article! Its exactly similar to what we had encountered...I seriously have half a mind to write in to TODAY and tell them about our similar experience too...

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/166054.asp

Anway, back to my gathering, we went back to edwin's house to hang around first while waiting for some of the guys to come join us.

Sadly, the girl power is still lacking in our gp with only me and weilin present. But maybe we can recruit this little girl into our gp...haha...this is Wiss (pronounced Wise), she's edwin's niece and super cute loh! Especially when she's playing her "Masak Masak" of pretending to cook food for us to eat...Kawaii!

We decided to go for a KTV session coz there are lots of those small ktv joints in serangoon gdn and i've heard from my sis that the rates there are usually cheaper than that of Kbox and its not bad too. Some of the gang went home including WL coz she has to work on her FYP, gosh...thank god i dun have to do that. And this resulted in me being surrounded by 6 hunks!...haha...

Woohoo! They're all Mine! Mine!...Muahahaha!...

From left: YH, Der, Me, Ed, Jim, GS and Gunz on the floor...
And it was an experience singing with all guys man! Especially since most of them are also KTV enthusiaist who sing pretty well! Wah, the 3hr ktv session was damn shiok! Coz we sang some of those old pop songs in our childhood time (like WangJie, Zhang Xin Ze etc...) which resulted in everyone singing aloud. I can barely hear my own voice in all the macho male voices surrounding me loh!...haha...

Sigh...the hols is over liao and i am actively looking for a job now. Went for the Boardroom interview last yr and the good news is they did called me up to make me an offer this yr! But i had already decided to reject the job coz the job scope wasn't really what i was looking for. And i also went for my 1st rd of Bloomberg interview even though i went there unknowingly coz their email only states that they were inviting me to their RECRUITMENT EVENT! i mean how am i supposed to know that that's actually their 1st rd of interview! Got the shock out of my life when i went for the event loh and i left with a sinking feeling that i had screwed it which the company happily informed me via email the next day that i was out! But heck lah! I'm still searching and life is still not bad now...hee...

2007-01-20T14:36:00.000+08:00

Day 8: Shanghai (6 degrees)

Its finally time for us to chiong some serious shopping liao. Remember during our 1st day in Shanghai where we went to Qipu Mkt, we went back to that area coz it was the only place we know of certain that the goods there are within the price range that we were looking for. Because our Indian friends also had their free and easy day similar to us and they did not know where to go, we went down to Qipu Mkt as a gp. But the bad thing for our Indian friends is that since they looked like tourists, once we tried walking towards the entrance of 1 building, several of those touting people gatheried ard us and tried to bring us to their stalls in the building. It became so bad that we didn't dare to go into the building with them all gathering ard us because we know that once we followed them to their stalls, we would nv get out of their place without buying anything from them. Thus, we escaped out into the outside rd again and discussed a plan whereby we will all walk quickly into the shopping building via their side entrance and then dispersed out and meet up later at a designated area. This plan proved quite effective and we were thankfully left to do the rest of our shopping in peace. Although Qipu had lots of bargained stuffs, we didn't really buy a lot of stuffs because they were mostly winter wear. Unless u come Shanghai in the summer or autumn time, Bangkok is a better place for shopping. And remember i said at the earlier post that it is nearly impossible to get a cab at Qipu Mkt after 5pm because its the time when cabbies change shifts and Qipu is not really a very tourists' place. But when we tried getting a cab at ard 4pm, there was also none in sight! Seriously, i hate the cabs situation in Shanghai, we have to be so cautious of the timing to get cabs and cant really shop till the time we liked, BKK's cabs situation is so much better. Even if there are no cabs, we can still at least grab a toot-toot car for fun. And guess wat, we tried an alternative transportative means that is similar to BKK's toot-toot cars but just that its much more dangerous.

This is called a "Disabled Car". Look at the amount of stuffs me and darl was carrying. It was PW and YT who wanted to try out this alternative transport and me and darl was apprehensive at first but we decided to try something adventurous and also because we didn't want to walk back to Nanjing Rd again like our 1st day! Technically, the "Disabled Car" is actually a motorbike, so are u amazed at how the 2 of us can sit in the back seat? Take a closer look...The shifu had put a horizontal seat at the back of his motorbike so that it can seat 2 pple. But the space is still very small and coupled with the large number of shopping bags that we were carrying, there wasn't any space at all for us to hold on to anything to suport ourselves. The only way in which we were prevented from falling off the bike is the arm-rest which i've highlighted above: The arm-rest MUST be squeezed down to hold our bodies on the bike. And i also cautiously told the shifu to drive slower before he started driving...haha...super kiasi he'll drive very fast or wat loh. But overall, it was a very enjoyable ride! Its not that scary after all coz he usually drove at the side of the rd where all the bicycles were so it wasn't that bad. But the climax of the ride is when he attempts to cut across T-Junctions without any heading to the traffic lights! Me and darl can see oncoming vehicles coming towards us from all 4 directions loh and it quite an experience for us but i think its just a typical traffic conditions for the china pple coz their traffic is HORRIGIBLE! We usually walk and cross the roads when a whole bunch of pple start walking coz its sometimes useless to depend on the traffic light.

After putting all our stuffs at the hotel, we went off to have our dinner at Crystal Jade Restaurant. We have heard that Crystal Jade in China is quite cheap compared to Spore so we wanted to go try it out. And the restaurant was just in a street adjacent to the pubbing street "Xin Tian Di". The dinner that night was the best dinner that we had in all our days of travelling loh! Really is consider high class food and restaurant coz we can see that the patrons of Crystal Jade all looked to be like above average income pple and when the food arrive, it was fantastic. Acutally the price of Crystal Jade was somewhat similar to the Crystal Jade Kitchen in Spore but just that the food and service is like the Crystal Jade Palace in Spore so i guess its pretty worth it. This is the "Drunken Chicken" appetiser that we ordered. Super Super Nice! My gawd! The fragrance of the wine they used to soaked the chicken in is great loh. The dishes that we ordered...:)
And then when we saw that there also served abalone in the menu, we decided to give ourselves a treat since me and darl are gg to return hm to Spore the next day liao. We ordered 2 sets of Braised Abalone with Sea Cucumber and it costs Sing $20 each. We were expecting a whole abalone for each set but in the end, it came in the size like this... Its only 1 small SLICE of abalone loh. Feel kinda cheated but i guess we shd have asked the size of the abalone when we were ordering instead of assuming that it'll be a whole.
After dinner, we just walked ard Xin Tian Di coz the ambience and decorations in that street was really very nice.And when we went back to our hotel, we stopped by a fruits stall to buy some fresh strawberries back to eat. Fruits in China are super the nice and sweet! Then somemore coz its winter over there, the strawberries tastes cold and all the more delicious. And they're super cheap oso. Day 9: Shanghai and the Way home

Seeing that our flight was in the night, we still had time to go shop in the day. We went down to a place call "Xu Huai Lu", there is supposedly buildings which sells technical stuffs like the Sim Lim Sq in Spore. We wanted to find if there were any gd bargains for mp3s or thumbdrive.
As usual, we forgo the hotel breakfast and had our breakfast at a HongKong Cafe near the shopping area. Wah, i must tell u about the fantastic "Puo Luo Bao" aka "Pineapple Bun" that we had in that cafe. Totally out of this world! Seriously, we cant ever find this type of Puo Luo Bao in Spore one loh.The best "Puo Luo Bao" that we have ever eaten! I had wanton mee...not bad but a bit too bland... Darl had curry pork chop rice... And this is something that we all seriously miss from China. Its strawberries coated with sugary malt. Similar to the "Haw Candies" or "Ping Dang Hu Lu" that we see in Chinese drama shows but this strawberry candy is so much nicer! Outside is the crisp sweet covering and inside is the soft and juicy strawberry fruit...slurp slurp... We didn't buy anything at "Xu Huai Lu" coz the electronic stuffs wasn't as cheap as we thought it would be. It'll be even cheaper to get them in Spore duing Comex fair loh. And we then me n darl left for our hotel to prepare our stuffs back to Spore while Yt and PW continued shopping there.
Some last look at Shanghai when we left..
And this is the Maglev Train which we took to the airport. Its an air levitated train that can travel up to 400km/hr. If we had taken a taxi to the airport, the journey would be abt 40mins, but the train only takes 8mins to rch the airport. And after 9 days of holidaying in China, we are finally stepping on the way home. It was great having such a long holiday and China has indeed developed much ever since the past old ulu country. And truthfully, the best part of this trip was the cold weather. Even though we may be shivering and frozen at times by the coldness, it is still the 1st time that i have ever experienced such temperatures less than 10degrees and i truly miss it when i'm back at Spore. All the memories of this will stay with me forever:
-shivering fervently after my WARM shower coz even the bathroom feels like its in air-conditioned
-gg to the toilet is one of the most annoying thing for gals coz we have so many layers of clothes to take out and washing our hands is one of the things we dread most coz the water is freezing. -learning not to drink so much before our bus journeys unless u have a very big bladder and incidentally learning how to hold ur bladder for some time.
-Having to speak chinese to the locals there and trying to find chinese words for whatever we think in our english minds.
-Being called "Xiao Gu Niang" at all times in China coz apparently calling the ladies "Xiao Jie" is an insult coz it seems to mean those hostess ladies. But we always forget and call them "Xiao Jie" when attempting to bargain. I wonder if tt's why they dun usually give us gd bargains...hmm...
-and the fantastic food like "curry fishballs, sweet strawberries, chill crabs, nian gaos, pumpkin pies..." strangely all these foods was discovered by us during our free and easy days so u can imagine the food our tour fed us.

Given a chance, i dun mind gg back to China once again but maybe this time during the summer time where tics are cheap and the shopping is gd. Sigh...holiday is so shiok! Dun wanna come back and face reality loh...

2007-01-16T16:01:00.000+08:00

Day 5: Wuxi to Nanjing (4 degrees)

The highlight of the Wuxi tour was the visit to this ancient city call "San1 Guo2 Cheng2" aka 3 Kingdom City. Its totally man-made and is a place built for filming purposes. Accordingly, there have been lots of films shot there on location. Its pretty much like Spore's Old Tang Dynasty except that its 100 times bigger and more grand.
Fictional Story set in 3 Kingdom City:

Once upon a time, there was a kind young girl called "Xiao Xian" born in the era of the 3 kingdom times, all the kings of the world marvel at her beauty and intelligence and wanted to make her their queen. But she was never impressed by any of her suiters and continued to live her simple life happily with her childhood friends. But secretly, Xiao Xian was in love with Xiao Hou but Xiao Hou had big dreams of making it big and thus went to serve 1 of the 3 kings Cao Cao. From left: "Xiao Wei, Xiao Yan, Xiao Hou and Xiao Xian"
Xiao Hou took command of lots of battleship and won many battles while Xiao Xian waited faithfully for him at home. And after a few years, Xiao Hou managed to upsurp the throne from Cao Cao and made himself king. But by then he had become as evil and dictatorous as Cao Cao.Xiao Hou: "MUAHAHA! I'm the king of the world! Everyone will die before me!"

And of course, he will not care about Xiao Xian anymore even though she pleaded with him to turn back! But u noe men, once they gain success le, they won't look back at the girl who stood by them during the hard times coz they'll now have lots of houseflies around them! Xiao Xian: "How could u do this to me Xiao Hou...sob sob...did u knock ur head during war or something, tt's why u cant remember me liao rite. Even if u turn into a dimwit like Ah Wang, i'll still love u... "

Xiao Hou: "U then knock ur own head leh, u trying to curse me is it?! Get away from me u stupid woman! I have 3000 concubines in my "hou gong" waiting for me, why would i want u?!...Muahaha!..."

Xiao Xian thinking to herself: "Stupid king, i hope u die from exhaustion and then i shall find another young hunk to come n finish u off...u just wait! I'll be back!...grr..."

And Xiao Xian plotted her revenge by charming all the other kings to attack Xiao Hou. Finally Xiao Hou's empire collapse and Xiao Xian had her revenge by killing all the concubines in Xiao Hou's "hou gong".
And Xiao Hou got so tramatised by the defeat that he really turned into a dimwit like "Ah Wang" but Xiao Xian did not mind him that way and they went back home to open a Sweet Dessert Stall where Xiao Hou spent all his days making his trademark Mango Dumplings. The End...

Day 6: Nanjing to Suzhou (2 degrees!)

When we reached Nanjing, our tour guide said that it might start snowing if we're lucky enough that night. Super exciting can! But sadly, we didn't managed to catch any snow there and in the morning, we visited the old city walls bordering around Nanjing City. Its really like those old drama shows where we climb up the city walls that seperates the town area and the land outside. Taken on the city walls. The family with us is the Indian family that was part of our tour group. Because they sit behind us in the tour bus, we have become very close to them throughtout the whole tour. And we were their only hope for translation because sadly, almost all our tour guides spoke chinese and they couldn't understand a word of it. But they were really a very jovial and fun family. We even went to their house for some authentic Indian dinner after we came back to Spore.Our tour guide said that if we run fast along the tracks of the city walls around the whole Nanjing City, it'll take us about 2 hrs to run back to our starting pt.
After that, we were brought to yet another souvenir buying place where this time it sells exquisite glass balls painted by skillful masters. Although it really looked by nice, but we were just not interested in buying a couple of glass balls back to Spore. None of us have a habit of crystal-gazing...hee...kidding...the workmanship is brilliant but its also quite expensive. See...nice rite...The weather at Nanjing was so cold that we bought a bottle of Chivas Regal to drink in the bus before we get down to any of our visiting spots. And liquor at China is damn cheap too! This bottle cost us only Sing $40.

After that, we travelled to Suzhou and we reached there in the evening where the skies had already turned dark. We were brought to this famous place in Suchou which i cant remember what its called but just that its the old streets where Tom Cruise was running in Mission Impossible 3. And the night view was simple amazing! People called it the eastern Venice coz there's also a river running through the streets.

And have u guys hear of the "Jiangnan Si4 Da4 Cai2 Zi3" aka the 4 Talents of Jiangnan in the past, dun u think the 4 of us look like them pondering in the gardens of Suzhou?...haha...In the streets of Suzhou...

After that, we were brought to a night market for some shopping. But as usual, we didn't really buy anything there.

And look, they also have Xmas trees decorations in their shopping street!

Day 7: Suzhou to Shanghai

Early in the morning, we were brought to this huge garden in Suzhou. The special thing about this garden is that it is a private garden built by a very rich offical in the past. Supposedly, this is the most luxurious and rich private garden in the entire China or is just Suzhou? Cant remember. It is comparable to those gardens in the palace in the olden days. Me: "Darling, look at those birds flying in the skies, aren't they carefree and happy."
Darl: "yes my dear, the air is refreshingly great too." We took this gp pic on top of those fake mountains situated in the garden. Don't u think it look like the cover page of those chinese essay booklet we used to have in Zhonghua last time?...haha...i think its super like loh! Found this bottles in one of the chinese restaurants we ate at for lunch. Guess wat! its snake soaked in wine. Yucks! The things that China pple dare to eat and drink... And after we left Suzhou to go back to Shanghai, our tour guide said that their company has arranged a free foot masage session for us, totally complimentary of the company. Sounds gd rite, but china pple where got so gd and especially this cheating company of ours. As it turns out, its another session of trying to hard sell us chinese medicine while doing massage on our legs. They tried tackling me and dear, but once we expressed no interest after their repeated attempts, the apprentice that was "massaging" our legs became very slack and truthfully, i think they were just caressing my leg loh! Totally no strength and skills at all.

Back at Shanghai, it was finally our free and easy time. But because it was already quite late when we returned to Shanghai, there wasn't much that we could do except to walk around and look for dinner. This is a super branded street call "Huai Hai Rd", its where all the LVs, Gucci and blah blah blah are all there. And we had a great dinner of Mexican Pizzas! Haha...coz we were all sick of the chinese food that we had to endure for the past 6 days, esp the Indian family. From then on, its finally free and easy days for us where we can go chiong our shopping liao!

2007-01-16T14:58:00.000+08:00

Day3 - Shanghai to Hangzhou (5degrees)

Okie, so the day usually starts by as having breakfast in our hotel and den setting off to see the places of interest in the city we're at. Seriously, one of the bad things abt travelling in China is that breakfast sucks! Really! U would think that we should be quite alrite with having chinese breakfast for a whole straight 9 days but we're not! That's because the breakfast menu is almost the same everyday! See...chinese breakfast usually consist of plain white porridge accompanied by an assortment of small side dishes like 4 or 5 variety of pickled vegetables, some weird chinese ham, ikan bilis&peanuts, fermented beancurd and fried vegetables covered with oil. And there's also the standard food like "baos" of all kinds, "xiao long baos" and if we're lucky - cold fried rice. Isn't it a great way to start our day! And there is absolutely no decent coffee or english tea to be found during breakfast, for caffeine addicts like me its lucky that i prepared packets of 3-in-1 coffee for myself and me n darl just stayed in our hotel rm from day 5 onwards to have our own breakfast of cup noodles (yes, i'm so kiasu tt i brought cup noodles to shanghai but they were a refreshing change from our mundane breakfast) and coffee.

Here's a look at some of the "interesting" hotels that we stayed at during our journey.

1. Front Row View to the Very Important "Toilet Bowl" Haha...at 1st glance i seriously thought the design of the hotel is such that we have to shit in open view of the room! But upon closer inspection, we realized that there's actually a door to close the view of the toilet bowl...woohoo! Can u imagine the smell in the room if there's no door! A view of the room we stayed in. I think this hotel is in Hangzhou and its considered not a bad hotel liao coz at least its spacious. Wait till u see the hotel we stayed on our 1st night at Shanghai.
2. Super cramped and small hotel This is the hotel we stayed at Shanghai. The room is so small and cramped! Look at the distance between the bed and the tv table. Plus the room was painted in green! Gross! The room was so pathetic that i din even wanna take any pics of the room. Basically the main subject of this pic is my darl...haha...Whoo! Shuai Ge!

3. Open "Bathroom" Concept Room Yupz, u didn't read wrongly. Its really Bathroom. Take a look at this hotel room we stayed in erm...Nanjing i think. They have a special see through view for the bathroom! How stupid can the design be! One of the mother of an Indian family who was in our tour gp burst out in disbelief "They are retards is it?!" when we amusely told them to go check out their bathroom! Coz they have the room next to us and we're become rather friendly with the family along the journey. Can u imagine sharing a room with your friends or even ur family members! Seriously dunnoe why our tour agency can arrange such a hotel for us! But this room is a classic man! Nothing beats the open bathroom concept liao...haha...

4. Totally Open Bathroom ConceptHaha...u think the previous room was bad, wait til u see the next room i'm gg to introduce.

YOTEL QQ - The hotel that allows u to see ur partner in a totally different light! Discover another side of your partner that u have never seen before. How does he/she shit and pee? What kinds of weird toilet habits does ur partner have? Visit YOTEL QQ! The hotel that provides u with all these answers and more! Call 1600-***-**** for more enquires and reservations!

Muahaha! Can u imagine the outroar our tour gp pple will have if we kenna this hotel! Dun worry, we didn't get this. I took this photo from a brochure that was placed at our hotel. I think its a partner chain of the hotel we stayed in! Me n darl was so amazed and amused by this pic that it makes us wonder who might actually go to such hotels?...hmm...actually its not so hard to figure it out is it...

Ok, that's all i have on the hotels we stayed in. Back to the places we visited. On the 3rd morning when we were still in Shanghai, we visited the famous Oriental Pearl Tower! Its erm...a few hundred storeys high...at least i only know that its more than 400 storeys high. This is me posing for a photo before going up the tower. As u can see, i'm totally wrapped like an oversized dumpling because the weather forcast the night before predicted a temperature of only 5 degrees! And it was really very cold outside. Taken at the viewing deck of the tower. U cant really see the 4 of us coz the background was too bright. Basically that wasn't a gd day to go up the Pearl Tower coz there was a lot of fog and we cant really see the view nicely.

Next we visited a memorial park in remembrance of Madam Song, she's the mother of the 3 famous Song Sisters. After that, we had our lunch at about 1pm and then travelled by bus to the next destination Hangzhou. We reached Hangzhou at about 4pm where we were all ushered to the famous West Lake of Hangzhou. But because it was already starting to get dark at the time we reached Hangzhou, we coudn't really take any nice pics there coz everything just looks dark and foggy. The evening air of Hangzhou was so cold that everyone couldn't wait to get back onto the bus since it was getting pretty dark outside and u couldn't really see anything besides the lake. Brr...damn cold can! And i'm wearing 4 layers of clothes here liao!

After dinner, we went to watch the famous Acrobat performance which was part of the "OPTIONAL" tour. But that performance was really worth a watch coz the people in it were brilliant!

Day 4: Hangzhou - Wuxi (4 degrees)

The start of day 4 was to visit the famous West Lake of Hangzhou again. Coz this time, we'll get to walk around the gigantic garden there and take a river cruise in the West Lake.

Isn't the garden gorgeous! Luckily for us, the day was bright and cherry so the walk through the garden was truly breathtaking and beautiful. Personally i think Hangzhou is the most beautiful city we've visited in all the 5 cities that we've been. Darl thinks Suzhou was nicer.And here is us on the boat cruising upon the West Lake.

Following the West Lake, we were brought to a small village that specializes in the planting and harvesting of the famous LongJing Tea. Basically, besides introducing the techniques of drinking tea to us, they try and convince us that the tea is a very good buy back to Spore. And its quite expensive leh.

We're the Adidas spokeperson based in China...haha...Taken on the bus journey when we were travelling to our next city Wuxi. "Wang Zai Milk" is super nice when u drink it warm there. But be careful that u dun drink too much of it coz poor darl had to hold his bladder for more than 1 hr before we reach the next city coz he drank half a can on my behalf.

And upon reaching Wuxi, he and PW immediately rushed to the restaurant toilet where we were gg to have our dinner. And it was here that we noticed something interesting on the signage outside the male's toilet. Take a look and see if u can spot it!Hint: Think literal translation...hee...
To be continued...