My last "reunion" dinner

Tomorrow is chu xi, or the eve of CNY. Besides remembering how janice was frantically looking for new clothes last year at this same time, the good thing for me this year is, it's a half day!!! That's always something to look forward too. I have decided what I am going to do tomorrow at work and hopefully I can finish that off quickly before noon and I'll have 1 thing off my to-do list too!! Next thing I need to do is to draw money from ATM to prepare an ang bao for my parents. Then next I've got cell group (really weird timing but somehow it ended up being the most convenient for all of us as a "after work-before dinner" timing since everyone has 1/2 day). We're starting a new book entitled "How do you walk the walk you talk". Sounds interesting! And next would be reunion dinner. This year is the last time I'll be having reunion dinner with my parents and extended family (dad's side) on CNY eve.. which is quite sad if you think about it negatively. But well, we all grow up and things change. For starters.. next year will be canton food for me I guess. Haha.

Meantime I received a wedding gift from ken's mum!! This is how we did it. Ken & I settled on 1 that we really liked first (his mum was not around).. then in order not to sound too forceful, we chose another 3 designs that were also nice and then asked her to pick 1 amongst 4. Thankfully she chose the same one that we chose!! Phew. So yeah we settled on that pretty quickly and bought it the same day. Happy happy! Anyway, that'll be the necklace that I'll be wearing on my wedding day. Earrings from my mum and necklace from her so it's all fair. One more thing to tick off the list.

end of jan

hey hey.. it's the end of jan already! it's been a great month though a very busy one. yujun came back for a week and it did seem like she was real efficient at her marriage prep!!! and we discussed about the bridesmaid dress, i showed it to her, we all decided it wasnt too ideal.. and she managed to get all her gals incl me a new, more subtle pink bridesmaid dress! yeh (jan, you'll see it soon)!! wow, i thought it was quite difficult to find such OTR dresses in singapore but indeed jun is very efficient! i think i shall go there to have a look too for my own wedding. the shop where i thought of making my dress is charging me $400 per dress. do u think it's too much? hmm.. 2 pieces = $800. ouch.

anyhow, finished work at 9pm last night.. dead tired and headed off to csc for dinner. my mum and i were the last to go off and it did feel quite strange and quiet. but the mee goreng was good nonetheless. meantime, am planning to finish work early tonight. meeting liling and tp for dinner (just a handful of closer jc friends).. and cross my fingers.. might see kenneth too. the difficult part of his reservice is finally over and i finally spoke to him for 15min last night. we spoke for 2 min the day before :( re service is certainly no joke i reckon. tough hours (no sleep), tough job, tough people to handle (and 60 of them), and hardly any monetary incentive.

shall continue to keep this as updated as i can. enjoy the last few hrs of jan!

2008!

It's a bit late to say HAPPY NEW YEAR! But I guess better late than never. It's still January now afterall. Had a busy first 2 weeks already, with new yr celebrations, a wedding dinner at Marriott, busy at work, and had brunch + shopping with kenneth's mum today to celebrate her birthday, and going off to Hanoi & Ho Chi Minh for a short trip tomorrow. Will be a busy one... no longer the fun/ training ones I had in HK. :( Oh well, but it will be good and hopefully fruitful too. Will be back with more pictures! Meantime, also looking forward to meeting Yujun next week and going for my gown fitting sometime this month (by the way, I tried putting on the bridesmaid dress I wore to my sis's wedding 2 yrs ago and I cant fully zip!! oh no!!!) And very importantly, I'm also busy thinking of what wedding present I should ask from my sis. She gave me 2 choices 1) Tiffany necklace 2) sponsor my honeymoon. The 2nd option will greatly help improve my cashflow but the first is tempting too.. how.. I dont think she'll give me both right? Haha.

Wynn's wedding

My journey to Covenant Evangelical Free Church..

Attended Wynn's wedding last sat.. he's like my sister's friend's friend. Long story how we became friends but anyhow, the wedding was on 15 Dec.. and it was VERY FAR! Took the LRT for the first time in my life to reach there. It was quite an experience.. quite interesting. Would never have taken the LRT (from choa chu kang) if not for this. And I didn't even know there was a station in Singapore called Jelapang (see above) .. Anyway it took me about 1.5 hrs to get there from home. 2 exciting things besides the wedding itself - firstly, I finally know what it means for the windows in the train to be automatically "frosted" (again, see above) when the train goes too close the HDB blocks - basically it was a feature added in after residents complained of a lack of privacy I guess.

Secondly, I met my sister's friend at the wedding obviously.. and she is 7 months pregnant!!! How exciting! I have known her since I was 10, she was my sis's lower secondary classmate/ good friend. We even went to NZ together before. She got married 5 years ago.. I attended her wedding at Shangrila Rasa Sentosa.. and now she is pregnant! Oh, and her baby is due on the 29th Feb. Haha!!

DnD - and my prize!

Instructions before the game.. By the way, theme of the night was "Wonderland" hence there's a guy dressed in a SWAT outfit and another in Sherlock Holmes. Obviously I went as Cheryl.

But this didn't hinder me from getting my prize!! A videocam!

Wet weather

It's been raining every day here!!! Keeps coming and going. Clothes are not drying (pout)!! Anyway, so as you can guess, go carting was cancelled cos it was too wet. Oh well, happy that it's mid dec now.. counting down the number of working days to the end of the year!!! It's SEA games period now too and Singapore won a lot of medals, esp at swimming!!! Was watching the guys 4x100m IM relay on the bus on the way home just now.. Philippines won the gold medal but just simply watching it brought back so many memories. Happy days, happy days.

Meantime work has been getting stressful recently, enlarging my appetite for Lindt chocolates. Found 2 main ways to de-stress besides eating more chocolates (1) baking -- baked brownies recently and found that they were real easy and yummy!!! also serves as a good present for friends/ colleagues/ kenneth's family (2) shopping -- but i need to control to avoid major shocks at the end of the month when the credit card bill comes into my letter box!!! whahahaha.

Happy holidays everyone!

Updates

Updates here... maybe I should start with the bad news.

1) Wedding Dinner in HK has been brought forward - will now be held on 31 July 08.
Jun, not sure if you have received my email.. but I guess you'll be affected by this. Really sorry about it. Not sure if you will be able to make it still.... was like a last min decision that basically worked out for my parents and his parents. Am also going straight off for honeymoon after that so I don't have to come back from hol, work for 1 week, and go off to HK again for a "show face" wedding dinner. Anyway, really sorry...

2) Bought the wedding bands! Happy happy.

3) Undecided on destination for honeymoon. Really wanna go to Europe but I heard that Aug is a hot (literally) and hot (as in, popular) place. Hmm hmm... where can I go that's cooling, not too crowded, not too boring, not too city-like and that I've not been before?

4) It's december! A really busy month full of caroling practices (weekly), weddings (3 of them), office dinners (3 of them), Bible trail conference, Christmas, and my sis is coming back for hols!

5) Oh by the way, I won second prize at my company's d&d last week! A videocam! Just what I needed for my wedding! It's a JVC one, rather small, and costs about $900. Not too bad huh! The 2nd-5th prize winners actually had to compete in a silly game and I came out tops hence I got the 2nd prize! Haha. But it was the most suitable for me. 3rd prize was a digi cam. 4th was a karoake set. 5th was a dvd player.

6) Trying go-cart for the first time tomorrow with colleagues - stay tuned.