Happy 27th Birthday to Dear

22nd Dec was Hui 27th Birthday. It was also Dong Zhi which all household will get together and eat Tang Yuan.

Nothing much was done on this day except going out to shop for his present TOGETHER. Yes, this time round no more surprises like last year. I just brought him into the shop, ask him picked the things he liked and I paid for it. When you had been celebrating too many celebrative days together, the mood of surprises will just get lower and lower.

Had dinner at Swensen with his siblings and bro-in-laws and caught a movie together after the dinner. National Treasure: Book of Secrets was a nice show. I had watched Part 1 and would expect Part 2 should be as nice as well. Indeed, it didnt disappoint me.

Happy Birthday Dear.
And a very Merry Xmas & Happy New Year to all!

His birthday cake from Pinegarden
Laptop bag...
..and a new pouch for him

七年的爱情旅程

12th Nov 2007 mark our 7th pator anniversary. Nothing special, it was spent at Amara Sactuary Resort, Sentosa.

Checked-in at 2+pm, walked around the resort to explore and then went to purchase the ticket for Sound of Music show for the 8.40pm slot. Had our dinner at Taste of Singapore. Food is not bad but find it abit overpriced. Anyway, it's understandable for the things to be costly in Sentosa as it's meant for the tourist, not Singaporeans!

Presents for this year? Well, Hui said the N6500 he bought for me will consider as the anniversary gift :(. But I had a surprise gift for him, which I could only give it to him after the 12th Nov because it was not ready yet.

On 16th Nov, the gift finally arrived at my mum's house (I requested to sent it there). It was couriered all the way from US! We went back to Clementi to collect the gift on the 17th and it seems Hui was very satisfied with this non-expensive yet very memorable present from me! :)

Ice wine & chocolate cake..Perrrfect!
A toast to our 7 years journey!
Our dinner: Potato Salad, Chilli Crab and Dory fillet
In lift getting down to checkout of hotel
My gift for him
View complete photos

More presents

After holding this Nokia 6230 for almost 3.5 years, I've finally got rid of it!

And got myself a new phone out of my dearest dear's pocket!


I am now a happy owner of the newly release Nokia 6500 Slide! Came with a 256 Micro SD card and free V-Three BTH-12 bluetooth headset.
In return, I bought him a wallet in replace of his old bulky one which he had been thinking of changing it long ago.

And he is now a proud owner of a Guy Laroche wallet! ^_^

I had a wonderful shopping spree! :D

1st Year Wedding Anniversary

Singaporean seems to be getting richer now adays that everyone can afford to go on holidays! I was still in Germany when the NATAS Fair was held in Sept. After I came back, I realised many airflights were full and my colleague told me it was really hard to get a airticket now especially if I intend to travel just 3weeks away!

Initial plan was to travel to Italy but because the days we were able to travel were too short (only about 5 days), we decided to drop the plan. We then planned for a F&E self-drive Tasmania trip but the airtickets to Melbourne were full. We then decided on Bali and the agencies told me their flights were also full to fly to Bali. I called up Club Med Bali and although there were still seats for SQ, the price cost about 1.7K+ per pax. With this price, I could go Australia by just toping up a few more thousands!

So in the end, we "downgarded" from Italy->Australia->Bali to Club Med Ria Bintan on 14th to 17th Oct 2007 to celebrate our 1st year wedding anniversary.
It was a relaxing trip as our main focus for this holiday is to avoid shopping area like Hong Kong/Bangkok/Taiwan etc.

Although it was only 4D3N, we spent quality time together. Ours was a Deluxe seaview room but as the rooms were full, they upgraded our room to the newly renovated deluxe seaview room FOC. This room would have cost us about S$600 more than the room we had booked. Indeed, the room was really nice but the disappointing part was it came without a bathtub!

We did most of the activities that we could do in Club Med and he (only HE) drank alot too. All alcoholic and beverages are included in the package and is totally FOC (except for some premium and pre-defined brands). I must say they are really generous when come to mixing of cocktail. You will not find a cup of vodka lime in a bar in Singapore which cost about $10 and had 1/2 cup filled with vodka and left the other 1/2 filled with lime and ice. Unless you know the bartender or you opened that bar lah!

Every night there will be a show with different theme organise by the Club Med staffs. On monday, they had a comedy show which was really funny and entertaining! All the staffs there, which they called them as the G.O, were friendly and helpful. We, the guests which they called as the G.M, felt like King & Queen there. When we arrived, many G.O were waiting at the lobby for us and passed us warm towel and drinks. When we were going to leave the place, many G.O were there at the lobby again standing in parallel straight line bidding us goodbye and wave to us until our coach was out of sight.

Overall, it was a good trip throwing behind all the stress and workload in Singapore!

Our gifts chosen and bought together the day before we depart for Bintan.
Timex Triathalon Metal Strip for Him & Sovil Titus Metal Strip for Her
On the way to Bintan
Our cosy hideout during the 4 days
The activities we did
The complete profile

Show Mi 郑秀文2007演唱会

Went to the pop diva Sammi Cheng's concert held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on 13th Oct 2007. Her singing, stage beauty, dancing is still as good as before. Her humourous and cheeky character brought laughter to the audience and it was definitely entertaining to see how she made fun of the 2 fans who went up to the stage and sang with her.(Only if you understand cantonese as she speaks majority in cantonese).

Fan #1 from KL

Fan #2 from Singapore
The speech by her during the concert mainly focus around her family members and what she had been doing during the break she had for the past 2 years. She also mention that she was having a bad throat inflammation in the early morning when she woke up on the concert day itself due to the dry weather in Singapore. A singaporean doctor (A handsome guy as told by her) went for patient visiting at her hotel room. After some medicine and a good rest, she managed to carry out the concert as planned.

Special guest was Singapore-made singer Stefanie Sun. She sang 2 duets (遇见 and 绿光) with Sammi and finally a solo "Sometimes love just ain’t enough" which gave Sammi some time to get changed for the dance medley songs.

The whole concert was not as great compared to her past concerts I've seen. The first disappointment was the stage. It was rather small compared to the previous ones she had. Second disappointment was that the concert was a 3 sided instead of 4 sided stage. Third disappointment was her costume/styling/stage props were not as grand compared to the past. But the most disappointing was the last part, where about 70% of the audience expected an ENCORE and remained seated at their seats despite she mention the singing of last song "终生美丽". The audience (including me) left the stadium only after the workers started tearing down the stage, then do we realise the concert had really ended without an encore!

*According to Cruz Teng's blog, it seems there was an ENCORE in planned after the last song. But it may have got cancelled at the very last minute due to the health condition of this diva*

Photos from the concert

Photos speak a thousand words

16th Sept 2007: Saturday Day out at Tublingen

Human Mountain Human Sea
Wine festival held at Tublingen. Many wines and food!
A hand painted artistic house
Beautiful houses by the river
17th Sept 2007: Sunday Day Out at Freiburg

A Magnificent Cathedral in Freiburg
The architecture was amazing. Just like the Cathedrale of Notre Dame in Paris
Spot the Jesus ^_^
At Freiburg Street
Germany's version of Treetop Walk
Germany's version of Eiffel Tower
I had to climb up the steep stairs and slippery hills to get to the tower and it took me 30mins! Reminds me of the HSBC Treetop Walk!
Bird eye view of Germany!Reminds me of the view from Eiffel Tower!
And so this is Germany's version of Singapore Treetop Walk Cum Paris Eiffel Tower!:)

Home soon...

Another week had passed and I'm glad that I still managed to survived in Germany.

8th Sept 2007
On Saturday at around 12pm, I went in search for a jacket at the shopping mall (BreuningerLand) near my hotel. I first went to the supermarket to get some mineral waters before shopping around for my jacket. I saw a nice one which I quite like but the shop did not have a new piece for the color I wanted and the one on the shelf had defacts. My colleague told me that the hotel we are staying had this BreuningerLand shopping voucher of 5Eur which we are able to redeem. As we are staying under the comfort room category, we are entitled to one of the items in the comfort treatment list for each night stay with the hotel. One of the item is "Breuninger payment chip". During my last trip here, I had already seen this item but I thought it was some chips used in casino. So this item was actually referring to shopping voucher which can be used in any shops located in the BreuningerLand shopping mall.

This voucher came in handy as I can use it to buy my jacket and anything from the shopping mall. I have 18 nights with the hotel, each day 5Eur, and this amount is enough to get me a jacket FOC! I will visit the shopping mall again for more shopping items with the vouchers :)

After we left BreuningerLand, we went back to our hotel and deposit our shopping items before going to Stuttgart town for a walk. It was real crowded over there as there were some events holding at Stuttgart. There was a wine festival carnival where there were many tents built up selling many many different sorts of wine. It's like a high-class pasar malam. There was also some olympics gymnastic event , which they broadcast on a huge screen the competition held in Germany, Stuttgart. These group of contestants were staying in the same hotel as me and who knows one of them who was on TV and won the gold medal could be the one I saw having breakfast in the cafe together with me that day! :)

We reached the hotel at around 9pm and I was extremely tired after all the walkings!

9th Sept 2007
On Sunday, we went in search of this beautiful lake which everyone is talking about - The lake Konstonz. This lake divides Germany & Switzerland. So if you cross over to the other side, that is Switzerland! Since we are already so near, it will be stupid not to cross the border and step our feet into Swiss. So off we went through driving which took us about 1.5hours from the lake. It was a huge lake. I would prefer to call that as a SEA! It was not as beautiful as what I had expected (But after we went back to office, I was told we might have miss out the other portion of the lake which was the one they are talking about).

As it was already quite late when we reached Switzerland, we didnt managed to walk much over there. We just stayed at the town (nearer to the custom) and walk around viewing the lake. This time I am viewing it from Switzerland watching over Germany. Shops are close on Sunday in Europe. Therefore I couldnt managed to get any gifts from Swiss. Nothing much to talk about in Swiss because it looks quite similar to Stuttgart and other towns in Germany. Probably I will try the Swiss Alps or Lucern in my next trip. It should be nicer there.

On the way to see the Lake - Still in Germany
100m ahead and we will reach Swiss
Doesnt this look so familar?It's in the center of the street and I have seen this in Singapore Science Center!
Found a chinese restaurant in Swiss
In Swiss, view of mountains and lake
Went back to hotel at around 8.30pm and get myself in bed ready for another week of battle.

10th - 14th Sept 2007
I was extremely busy on this week. I worked practically 13hours per day and hardly had a proper dinner since I came here. But that really saved me alot of money by eating cup noodles or biscuits as my dinner in my hotel room. I really missed my mum's soup and my MIL's cooking. I want to be back home! I always had "dinner" at around 9+pm, which is 3am Singapore time. On thursday during the 2nd team dinner, I had my meal at 10.30pm, which is 4.30am in Singapore!! But on Wednesday, I had the best dinner so far in Stuttgart.

The all-time favourite worldwide!
Team Dinner on 12th Sept
A homely restaurant
For work, I had managed to deliver my items and present to the review board on time and got an approval for it. This was the greatest achievement I had in this workshop with many help from the team. There is really a difference between working with Singaporeans and the Angmors. The culture does matter!

And for this weekend, plans had been made to reward ourself for the real hard work spent in this workshop. More shoppings and sight seeing!
Shall update the acitivities for tomorrow and Sunday in my next entry.

1 more week to HOME!

@ Stuttgart Again

Now is Saturday morning 9.45am and here I am typing this entry in my hotel room. Just had my breakfast downstairs and waiting for Hui to come online and chat with me.

I am here on a business trip for 3 weeks and will be back in Singapore on 22nd Sept. This workshop was much much stressful then the previous trip. Everyday we had to work 12 hours and the schedule is fully pack for the whole day.

We had a mission for this workshop. We had to deliver. The management is waiting for our deliverables on their comfortable chair. !@#$%^&*!!!

So far, work had been quite smooth for me. Had went to my first presentation of my design document to the review board on Wednesday. The feedback I got was pretty good and I got an approval. Yesterday we had a presentation of our solution design to our teamlead because he wanted to view those documents that requires to go for the review board on 14th Sept.

I had 2 items going for review on 14th Sept so I presented my solution design to him yesterday. He was quite impressed and said the work doesn't seems to come from a new member who had just joined the team. I felt slightly relief because it shows my hard work had paid off. But whether the design can pass through the review board, it's another question. I am keeping my finger cross!

Later I will be going shopping with my colleagues at Stuttgart town. I will need to get a jacket because the weather is getting colder as Summer is ending soon. I didnt bring enough cold wear here and it seems the wind is too cold for me to stand outside even for a few mins. I still have 2 more weeks here and therefore a thicker jacket is really neccessary for me now.

Food wise, it is better because with experience from the last trip, I know the food name refers to what kind of food so now I can select my food more carefully. Anything with Gnocchi, swabian noodle, pretzel, pork is a No No for me!

We had a Team Dinner on thursday night and I ordered a smoked salmon with baked potato. It was nice, but would be perfect if it was serve without the creamy sauce. It was too creamy for me.


Counting down to be back home...

Boyfriend 5.0 Vs Husband 1.0

Dear IT Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a slow down in the overall performance, particularly in the flower, gifts and jewellery applications that had operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 un-installed many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, but installed undesirable programs such as Formula One 5.0, NBA 3.0 and World Cup 2.0.

And now Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and House Cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate Housewife

---

Reply:

Dear Desperate Housewife,

First keep in mind:

Boyfriend 5.0 is an entertainment package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.
Try entering the command C:\ I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME and download Tears 6.2 to install Guilt 3.0.

If all works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

But remember, overuse can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Late Night Teh Tarik 6.1.

Late Night 6.1 is a very bad program that will create SnoringLoudly.wav files.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-Law 1.0 or reinstall another Boyfriend program. These are not supported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have a limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly.

You might consider additional software to improve memory and performance. I personally recommend Hot Tasty Food 3.0 and Tongkat Ali 6.9.

Regards,
IT Support Helpdesk

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Just for laugh

我的家就在这里; There's No Place I'd Rather Be

华文版是好笑的咯!

Happy 42nd National Day to Singapore!

如果。。。IF...

如果我需要帮忙，我会打给我朋友。
IF I need help, I will call my friends.

如果我生病没力气去看医生，我会打给我妈妈。
IF I am sick and have no energy to visit the doctor, I will call my mum.

如果我撞车了，我会打给我同事。
IF I had a car accident, I will call my colleagues.

如果我快要生产了，我会打九九五。
IF I am going to give birth, I will call Nine Nine Five.

如果我被打抢了，我会打九九九。
IF I get rob, I will call Nine Nine Nine.

如果以上事情真的发生了，我绝对不会打给他！
IF any of the above really happen, I will definitely not call HIM!

因为他都不爱接电话!
This is because HE doesn't pick up calls!

A new workstation

Due to company expansion, the workstations in the company had reached the stage of demand over supply. Therefore, the management rented another big office on the 4th floor since 6months ago and the new office was ready for operation recently.

There was a reshuffle of seats among the department. Some department moved down to the 4th floor, while some department remained on the 5th floor but changed of lorong (that's what we called in the office. It actually refers to the rows of cubicles).

For me, I had moved from an underexposed to an overexposed workstation! When I'm always late for work, I usually take the cargo lift and "secretly" enter the office by the back door. Previously my workstation was near to the back door entrance and therefore I could enter the office without walking pass too many people. This back door access requires approval and therefore not many people have access to it. The toilet behind this door is also much cleaner compared to the toilet near the main entrance and I walk in and out of this door so frequently throughout the day.

But NOW, my seat is near the FRONT door entrance and management like to walk in and out from THAT door! If I take the back door, I will need to walk pass many lorongs in order to get to my seat. So means the whole world will know what time I report to work lor!! This seat is also near to 3 main meeting rooms and therefore it will be very noisy as employees like to stand around the room and talk before and after their meetings!

I hate my new workstation!! I can forsee more working from home....

I will miss this seat!
The new overexposed workstation

Saturday outing with a "little" boy

Yesterday Hui and I brought my mum out for shopping at IMM. Before we went IMM, we headed to Jurong West to view a showflat. Although it was never one of our choice to build our home in Jurong West, but there's no harm going there to take a look at the house and environment since we were already going towards the West.

The location was not that bad as what I had imagined. Just cross to the opposite and you can find Taman Jurong food centre, NTUC and some other shops. The environment is quiet and peaceful. The showflat is at the 15th story with unit number 115. My mum said 5115 came out as first prize in 4D 2 weeks ago! I quite like the design of the showflat of the living room. But the guestrooms and MBR were a little disappointing. The cost of the showflat is 285K which really fits well into our budget, considering all the renovation were done up and we just need to spent money on furnishing. But Jurong West, hmmm...still requires certain consideration.

Anyway, we still need to go for balloting round and wait for queue number. I hated the idea that HDB came up now that everyone had to go through balloting first in order to purchase a new flat from HDB. It so depends on luck and luck just doesn't seems to be with us! The property market is booming now and resale will be out of our budget considering the upfront cash sellers asked for when they sold above the valuation price! How long do we need to wait before we can get our lovenest? We really need the LUCK!

After shopping around IMM and had dinner with mum, we sent mum home and headed to Orchard since it was only 8pm. We went Paragon Toys r us to take a walk and trying to find this remote control car which we saw at our polymate, Gek Eng's house 2 weeks ago. Hui was so attracted to this little car at her house and kept playing with it together with Gek Eng's hubby! Can you imagine 2 big kids playing with the remote car while 2 young ladies sitting at the dining table discussing about houses? What a match!

We managed to find the toy car and of course to fulfill this "little" boy's desire, I bought him one. It was the same brand and had the same function but different model from what Gek Eng's hubby had. This car had a startup sound, horn sound, brake sound and also an alarm system. It's like a real car where you get to hear the engine start, the braking sound from the tyre, car horn and also the car alarm system. When the car is at a stationary position and you try to go near the car and touch it, it will trigger the alarm system. There's also headlight, brake light and left/right signal light.


We left Paragon around 9pm and rushed to Tampines IKEA before it closed. It was a last minute decision as Hui suddenly thought of something we needed to buy from IKEA. We wanted to buy a frame to put our wedding photos. It would be a DIY frame done by the two of us. We already had one but we needed a second one. When we reached there, we realised the shop actually closed at 11pm on Fri and Sat. So we had ample time to shop around and get the things we wanted.

We reached home around 11pm, bathed and started our art & craft. This was the Nth number of times we DIY stuff together and I truely appreciate this precious time we fork out for each other despite our work is getting more hetic.

Isnt the background paper design pretty? We bought it from IKEA and wrap it around a cardboard before placing the photos on it :)

Dreams fulfilled!

I'm back for one week from my business trip + Paris. The business trip at Stuttgart was not good as the workshop was quite stressful and the last day of workshop we actually worked till quite late at night.

However the trip to Paris, which although was only 2 days had made me wana stay there and not come back to Singapore. It was a beautiful country to stay in. You felt like you are of a certain status - 上等人 when you are in Paris. Everyone is like so classy and plus using French as the mother tongue language, PERFECT!

Everything went smoothly during my stay in Paris until the last day. On the first day when I reached Paris, we had managed to go to all the main tourist attraction and also bought the LV bags. On the 2nd day, we went to Disneyland and stayed there for one full day. It was my childhood dream to go Disneyland to meet all the disney characters and take pictures with them. When I was a kid, I saw TV advertised on Disneyland and how you can meet and have close contact with the disney characters. At that time, going to disneyland was way out of question as we couldn't afford 4 tickets to fly to Europe, US or even Japan. But at this age of 26, my dreams finally fulfilled! I went wild like a small kid when reached and was so reluctant to leave the place until Hui had to pull me out!

*Disclaimer: Heard review that the Hong Kong disneyland was not that fantastic compared to the other 3*

Everything was fine until the last night in Paris, Hui set the wrong timing on the alarm clock on my handphone and both of us overslpt. I managed to reach Paris airport in time for my flight, but that caused us $54 Eur for the taxi fare (we had actually planned to take train) and we also missed getting back the tax refund for the LV bags bought. This is because the counter was in another terminal which I did not have the time to run to and fro to collect the money. It was a big mistake to put my name in the tax refund form or Hui would be able to collect the money since he would be staying in Paris for 1 more day. Anyway, overall it was a very good trip and I hope to re-visit the place again, this time at a more relaxing pace!




*Click here at your own risk. 200+ over photos!*

Photos!

These are the photos taken yesterday while I was out dinner at the Stuttgart town. The building structure was beautiful! It was freezing cold yesterday as it started to rain around 9+pm, stop around 10pm and started to rain heavily again at 11+pm.


This photo was taken at 8+pm. Look at the sky, it was still very bright. Sunset at around 9.30pm
Vapiano, the place for pizza and pasta
My dinner
Pirates of Carribean 3 is very popular here
The cute little SMART car. It can be seen everywhere on the road
"My" little white SMART car :)