Starting my collection

It's weird.. I'm not even close to buying a new house, yet somehow I realised that I'm beginning to stock up stuff that can and will be potentially move to my new abbot in July next yr.

1) WMF Pots - my dad bought 3 of them for me last week at a Tangs sale. Small soup pots.. good for any use

2) Coffee Machine - this one is actually the old one (about 6 mths) in my house that has just been replaced with a more efficient one because of high usage (haha)

3) Carpet!! - bought this one from china on my recent trip. bought 2 actually, different size and of a different themes.. here's 1 of them. I think capets are a great way to brighten up the place and make a normal coffee table on normal parquet floor look more elegant.

4) Pillows - this sounds weird but yeah, we both bought pillows at a recent metro closing down sale where almost everything was going for half price!!

Well, I think I should stop for now. Need to find a roof over my head first. Latest news for flats is that owners are asking for $100k top-up over the valuation price. The usual is around $30k top up. Now it's $100k?! So for a flat that's valued $350k, total cost is $450k. That's just crazy to me. Seems like the tide is not moving in my direction. Sobs.

Fireworks!!!

Got free tix to watch fireworks at the floating stadium next to the Esplanade last night!!!! FYI.. the floating stadium was built this yr for the NDP because the old national stadium is now closed (and will be moved somewhere else).

Anyway, the fireworks display took only about 15min in total, but let me see how much time I spent getting there.

I spent 15min getting to city hall, 25min walking to the stadium and squeezing my way through the human traffic jam, 5min finding my seat, 30min of "pre fireworks entertainment" with 2 DJs, 10min of automated kites display (a bit boring), 10min of lights display (even more boring), and finally..... 15min of beautiful fireworks!!!! After the end of the display, another 25min squeezing through the human traffic jam again to get out, and 20min for some ice blended coffee at Pacific Coffee cos I was just too hot by now, and another 20min to get home.

Don't know how to load the video clip onto this website so I can't share the joy (or, pains I took to film it). Anyone any idea?

National Day

Happy Birthday Singapore!!

It's that time of the year again.. 9th August and this year Singapore is 42 yrs old!

The greatest part of it is the public holiday of course. :-)

Lots of people are taking tomorrow off though.. for a long weekend but I didn't choose that.

Had a great day today beginning with massage and shopping this morning with my mum. Bought 1 pair of pants and 1 pair of formal kinda berms.. haha. Impulse shopping I figured.

Went on to the Isetan supermart at Lido and decided to make sushi!! So we bought all the necessary ingredients.. like rice, seaweed, vinegar, cucumber, crabstick, inari (raw tuna) and some other stuff.

Met kenneth in the afternoon and we started house hunting again. Met an agent who brought us to see a flat at kembangan. Not too bad.. very big area, quiet yet pretty near the train station. But then again.. we were just basically viewing for fun.. not really having any intention to buy now. Just checking out the market prices.

Sushi making was the event of the night and of course watching NDP on tv.

A very fulfilling day! :-)

XinJiang

I'm back!! Sorry for the absence.. was away in China (XinJiang). It was a real eye opener for me.. and a very good trip indeed. Thank God for the safe journey and the chance to meet the teenagers there. It was quite drama cos we started out on a bad note with the driver and we ended up reaching our destination at 1am and it was literally pitch black on the way to the place. I almost teared when I reached. Seriously, I thought I was going to die that night in the wilderness and no one will ever find me. China is just so big.. it's scary. Or maybe Singapore is too small so it feels safe. Anyway, it was good to spend 5 full days with the students, listen to their life stories and also share my testimony with them. It's interesting to meet them because they are young teenagers but they are a lot more street smart than Singaporeans. They have a huge interest to learn English and get out of their country but money is usually the problem. Really makes me appreciate a lot of the things that I have here. They also taught us Wygur language (that's their tribal language) though we spoke in Mandarin most of the time. The kids are really fun loving people and they gave us all a Wygur name each.. and I'm called Gezel. Nice name! :-)

The country is generally very beautiful but the place is just HUGE. We travelled 900km from one part of xinjiang to another (that's like traveling from singapore to penang and more I think) just to get up to the mountains and stay in mongolian yurts. It was worth it I must say. Something that I probably will not experience in a long time, if ever, again. Lots of pictures.. lots of mountains and natural scenary. Have a look at the link below! Those are not the full set of pictures actually, these were from my 2nd sd card, but there are just too many to upload!!!

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=503k87z.31rx6x2n&x=0&y=icpg5c

Anyway, came back at 2am on Monday night. The flight was delayed for 2 hrs plus due to bad weather. Was quite sad at the guangzhou airport too cos we ended up having to transit for almost 6 hrs!! So nice to be home now. Went back straight to work on Tuesday and finally managed to finish the week today. Yeh!! The weekend is here!!!

Sore Throat

Darts.. just when I'm preparing to go to China next week for my very first mission trip.. sore throat is creeping up. Can't remember when was the last time I had a sore throat.. probably a year back or so.. and it has to come now?!?! What bad timing. Not that I ate terribly heaty food over the weekend as far as I remember... oh gosh, I hate sore throats. Praying real hard that I'll get well before the weekend. Don't wanna fall ill when I go to China!!! Sulk.

It helps that my company is kinda flexible and I told my boss that I wanna work from home tomorrow. Brought lots of stuff back.. got to clear all the workload before I go on leave... sigh.. shall not think about work now. Time to rest and drink my next cup of water..

Batam

Just dug up some pictures from church camp.. actually I have a lot more in kenneth's camera which i have yet to retrieve from him. We usually take lots of pictures when we're out relaxing. Seems like a crazy thing to do but it's quite fun! The little gal along the beach is the super cute gal in my church, picking out mini seashells.

I really enjoyed the resort by the sea kinda feeling (bottom right picture). It can be a bit scary during high tide though (because the waves are literally under your feet - you can see and hear them, just can't feel them). Beach resorts look really nice in postcards and pictures though (refering to Jun's blog on her top choice for honeymoon - :-)). But it's so hot in Singapore that I doubt I'm really a beach resort kinda person. Prefer to see more snow-capped mountains in Switzerland, enjoy the beautiful scenery and music in Salzburg, or go for a hot spring bath during winter in Japan!!! Maybe visit Jan in Dubai too? Ooo... can't wait to go for my next holiday!

No more Germany

This is saddening.. my 1 month business trip to Frankfurt in October has been cancelled/ postponed.

Due to the stupid re-org, there have been changes to the team, changes to plans etc etc. And as a result, the team is short handed. And wel... I could still go because my ex global boss had promised me. But then.. it seems kinda bad not to help out in Asia when I can. Well, they said that the trip has only been POSTPONED, and not cancelled.. and it will still happen in future, even perhaps to london or NY, like 1Q or 2Q next yr. But changes happen all the time and I don't know if it will really come to pass. Of course, you have to discount that slightly cos they know I'm upset now. It's also quite sad cos I was intending to spend my birthday there, go for a holiday with my mum and dad to some parts of europe before the trip, and a holiday with kenneth after the trip. All of that is gone now! Sniifff.... but then, even if I did go to Frankfurt in the end, I guess I won't dare to still take leave before and after the trip. Sigh sigh.. so anyway, let's just keep my fingers crossed now. To think I saved up so much leave for my holidays in sept/ nov!!!!!!

Anyway.. that's a quick update. Shall enjoy the rest of my weekend for now... :-)