We are back!

After spending 14 days in Japan, we are finally back in Singapore.

This is one of my longest trip and it's kind-of special. I somehow feel that this is going to be my "last" long overseas trip as I doubt I'm ever going to have enough days of leave to allow for such luxury anymore. It feels weird too to return from a vacation without having to report for work in the near future. I feel quite uncertain about the future but YQ is more optimistic. He says I should take this chance to rest and think about what I really want to do. Hmmm, what if I want to slack forever? Haha!

We had fun in Japan though YQ thinks it's too tiring. Will update on our trip again. :)

我们要飞了！

最近老觉得累，可能是晚上睡不好的缘故。常清晨四、五点就醒来，然后翻来覆去好久才入眠，早上七点又醒了，搞得我变成了一只肥熊猫。

明晚，我们将飞往大阪，盼了好久终于盼到了！行李还未收拾好，所幸行程已拟定得七七八八，只需根据当时的天气和心情做些调整就行了。我是杞人忧天派，因此开始担心起天气的问题。冷一点无所谓，可千万别下雨！京都红红的枫叶也别太早凋落，希望我们赶得及瞧一眼，拍几张照片留念，我就心满意足了。

真希望能快点抵达日本！

December is here!

Today is the first day of December. This means that in a month's time, we will bid farewell to 2007.

The rain adds a nostalgic touch to the atmosphere. Year end is the time for reflection and occasionally, I will think about what happened in the past 11 months, or even events that happened years ago. As for lessons learnt, hmmm, I have failed to think so in-depth yet.

YQ is coming back tomorrow night. Yeah! I thought I would have enjoyed my one-week freedom but it wasn't what I had imagined. I think it is still better to have him around so that I have someone to vent my frustrations. Ha Ha. Eating alone is quite meaningless too. I have to admit that I have lost some (luckily not all) of my ability to be alone.

Hmmm, I wonder what he has bought for me. Ha ha!

The past few days passed by rather quickly as I was really occupied. Met up with Hui, ML, Ban, ZW, MS, Gwen & DP. I also did a lot of shopping (Orchard, City Hall, Marina Square, Vivo, Suntec, GWC) and visited the dentist. Oh yes, I managed to buy donuts from Suntec's Donut Factory (no queue!) for my mum yesterday.

I need to work faster on the itinerary though. Not very productive. Hee!

Feasting @ Tung Lok Signature

We were at Vivo the other day with Ban and had dinner at Tung Lok Signature.

Here are the photos of the food we ordered:

1. 烧鸡




2. 排骨



3. 豆腐



4. 炬菜

5. 荷叶饭

6. 金瓜芋泥

7. 杨枝甘露

Winter preparation

My nose is a little itchy now. Must be the wool from the winter clothings. I just finished sorting them out. Looks like we have enough to cover ourselves for the upcoming trip but I am wondering if I should buy another set of thermal wear to replace my woollen set. I'm afraid I would itch badly if I wear that set. My skin has become rather sensitive over the years. I tend to get rashes easily when I travel to places where the climate is drier, even if it's summer. Not a good sign.

I forgot to drink my collagen drink last night, the first time in 6 weeks. What's wrong with me? Have I turned more absent-minded without YQ around???

Would be meeting Hui & ML for lunch later. It's raining now. I hope the rain will stop by 11 am.

My life in the past 2 weeks

Finally, I have the time and mood to sit down and blog.

The past 2 weeks had been ....... errr.... I don't know how to describe.

12-16 Nov: I nearly went crazy printing all the certificates. Including the ones with errors, I think I have printed at least 500. That's definitely an underestimate. I thought I could "close shop" on Wednesday but there were errors even after the presentation. Not my fault. The FTs didn't check properly. Sigh!

15 Nov (Thu): The first class party I had in 4.5 years (it is a tradition to have a class party on the last day of the academic year here). I was more like a maid, clearing the mess in the classroom. In the afternoon, SS and I visited HY and baby.

Baby Chengrui sleeping

16 Nov (Fri): Prize Giving Day. Only excitement was that I saw Mr Lee H Y (our PM's brother) and his wife. Their son was one of the prize winners. Oops, that means I printed his cert. So honoured! They are a loving couple. :) At night, I went to TM to meet up with my ex-colleagues from CZ. It was supposed to be a farewell dinner for GP.

17 Nov (Sat): We went shopping with Ban. Had dinner at Tung Lok Signature at Vivo. Yummy! I enjoyed this meal more than the one at Li Bai. After dinner, we went to City Hall to continue our hunt for the perfect bag, fit enough for the newly appointed SH, Mr Chow. I think the Crumpler bag is better but he set his eyes on a Samsonite one. In the end, our mission failed. However, we bought a set of Audrey Hepburn DVDs from HMV. Haha!

18 Nov (Sun): We watched "Roman Holiday" (my first black and white movie) after lunch and napped. After that, we went out for dinner, I think. I seriously can't recall!

19 - 23 Nov: Day time was sheer torture. Most of the time, I had to sleep with my eyes opened. I think I have mastered a higher level of 石头大法. Really unproductive. I'm so glad it's OVER!!!

22 Nov (Thu): PSLE results was released. Thank goodness, all my monsters passed. However, there were 7 failures overall. We had dept lunch at 嘉香酒楼. I don't think I will go there and eat again. At night, we watched "Hero" at GWC. At 1.30 am, I woke up and puked. I had to clean the toilet and wash my hair after that. At 2.30 am, I woke up again for a "second round". Luckily, this time I was in time and aimed accurately at the toilet bowl. I guess it was the food I ate for lunch......

23 Nov (Fri): Had dinner at mother-in-law's place. The dogs were hyper-active and kept scratching me. Sigh!

24 Nov (Sat): We finally went to Huige's place. A nice condo at some ulu part of the island called Yew Tee. Baby is cute! We were there from 3 plus till nearly 10 pm!


The cupcakes I bought for tea


Baby Yiheng

25 Nov (Sun): Went to Kinokuniya and bought some magazines in the late afternoon.

26 Nov (Mon): Sent GP off early in the morning and waited at the airport to have second round of breakfast with YQ. He is in HK now and will be back only on Sunday. 时间多出了一半，该怎么过？

Not to worry, I have quite a lot of stuff to do (provided I don't procrastinate). I have already spent half the morning and afternoon shopping. In the next few days, I should:
1. Continue shopping
2. Clear my stuff in sch (done)
3. Plan itinerary
4. Sort our winter clothing (completed on 27 Nov, 9.30 am)
5. Pack luggage
6. Change money
7. Buy SD card (done) and extra battery
8. Meet up with friends

It's going to be a busy week ahead!

My Black Monday

I am in a really foul mood today. I think my face was really black. All thanks to the tonnes of certificates to be printed. I still have about 2.5 levels of certs to print tomorrow as the list of prize winners was still not ready by 4 pm so I couldn't complete my work today.

My eyes are feeling rather tired now. Talking about my eyes, I bought this eye cream by Laneige last Saturday.

It's a surprise that I actually bought something from a Korean brand. I've tried their water sleeping pack plus mask and I must say it's quite good. So far, the eye cream feels good too. I hope it's a worthwhile investment. Ha ha.

Just watched on the news that T3 is open to public till 9 Dec. I must go there and take a look. Unlikely to fly Singapore Airlines so chances of me using T3 is slim. Hence, I must make use of this chance to tour T3. I'm looking forward to it!

Shopping Spree

I went on a crazy shopping spree this weekend. Metro, OG and Robinsons were having 20% storewide discounts! As usual, I went to Metro and took the opportunity to stock up on skin care products, enough to last me for X months. I shall not list the items I bought as that would cause me to feel the heartache again. Yes, I know I have only ONE face but there are so many brands and products for different concerns and 20% discount is quite a lot of savings. How can I resist? Ha ha!

And as usual, after shopping, we went to feast again. We had dinner @ Lingzhi last night as I was on vegetarian diet.

This morning, we went to watch 《色戒》. This time, it was the full, uncensored version. It's highly recommended! After that, we shopped again and had early dinner @ Sushi Tei.

I think this will be my last shopping spree in Singapore for 2007. Must conserve my energy and resources for the next shopping spree in Kyoto & Osaka! Yes, it's time for me to plan our trip. I have not been very enthusiastic and this is so unlike me.

But before that, I must clear some work - just completed typing the dreaded EPMS and the next 2 days, I must type and print certificates for the prize winners! 5 more levels to type and print! The thought of it makes me sick. It is NOT supposed to be my job in the first place. Sigh! This is the root cause for my stress and sleeping disorder this weekend. That explains why I need to go for retail therapy. Ha ha.

Deepavali (8 Nov, Thu)

I went to Parkway to meet up with XL & Co. The journey on board Bus 76 brought back lots of memories. The whole Tanjong Katong Road has changed so much that it's beyond my recognition. No more Whirla Whip, no more CD shop, no more 东海 coffeeshop... ...I really miss the good old days.

I haven't been to Marine Parade for ages and the place has changed tremendously.

This photo was taken as I was crossing the old overhead bridge.

And the once familiar Parkway Parade now feels so alien to me!

Actually, I didn't step into Parkway at all. We were at Marine Parade the whole afternoon. XL, SS and I settled at a cafe near NTUC. The food at the cafe was VERY BAD and I am very sure that's our first and last time there. HF, FH and RZ joined us later. WJ brought Caeden to see us and we were all very excited. However, our little friend kept crying! He must be frightened by 7 pairs of eyes looking at him. Ha ha! It took him quite a while to get used to Aunties looking at him and by the time he stopped crying, it was time for him to go home. Hopefully, he will warm up faster next time. :)

Recovering......

My TV is recovering. We borrowed the cable box-set from our neighbour to establish the cause of the breakdown and found that besides the faulty remote control, our cable signal was weak too.

After some meddling with the connections, we finally could watch TV. But we can't use the remote control.

Looks like some servicing needs to be done before it's a FULL recovery.

My Poor TV!

My poor TV is sick! Sob! Sob!

It was still working when YQ's colleagues came to play Wii. When we tried to switch off the TV and go off for dinner, the remote control simply refused to work. We had to off the main switch! After dinner, we tried to rectify the problem but failed. As today is Deepavali, we can only call the service man tomorrow. This means I have to live a couple of days without TV!

I love TV soooooo much! This is really a BIG blow to me! No 《超级星光大道》for me tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First Times

Part I

For the first time in my working life, I overslept! I was semi-conscious when I looked at my handphone and when I saw that the time was 6.06 am, I really jumped out of my bed! That's the time I usually step out of my house and I was still in bed TODAY! I quickly bathed, changed and dashed to the bus-stop. I have to catch the bus that comes after my usual bus or take a taxi. Luckily, I managed to board the bus and reached school at 6.50 am. Phew!

The feeling was really scary! What if I was really late? I can't imagine the consequences!

Part II

Today was my first excursion with pupils in 4 years (other than NE show). We were supposed to go for a Heritage Tour @ Chinatown. The weather was bad and it started drizzling at 9 am. No heavy downpours, luckily!

At several parts of the tour, I felt like digging a hole and hidding inside. The guide made a few "classic" and honest comments:

1. This is the noisiest class I have ever taken.
2. I really pity your teacher. She (that's ME) has been shouting the whole day. I am really glad that I am NOT a teacher.
3. I hope I will not see you again (then she heard pupils say "so bad" and added the word "joking". I think "joking" is her honest "joke").

I wonder how the parent volunteer felt... ...I was (and still am) utterly embarrassed.

Feasting @ 李白

I know I have said this umpteen times but I am quite sure I WILL go on a diet after this meal. Really can't afford to put on any more weight. If not my Japan photos will turn out to be really ugly!

We finally met at Li Bai @ 1830 hours today to feast. Before that, MJ and I went shopping at Isetan Scotts. I bought a limited edition set of Fancl cleansing oil while she bought a pair of pink shoes.

Ok, back to our dinner at Li Bai. The place is a lot smaller than I expected. Although it's a high-end restaurant, nearly every table was occupied. Singaporeans are really rich!

After sitting down, I started taking photos of the cutlery. Ha ha!

We thought the green thing was the menu, but it's not.

Wow, tea cup from Narumi!

And they served thin tapioca chips! I ate a lot of this!

After examining the menu for a long time, we finally placed our order (or rather, Richard placed the order). The first dish was Bejing Duck.


We ladies were served 2 slices of duck while the guys had 3 slices. Gender bias???

Mark: Yummy! (MJ said the Beijing Duck is better than Lei Garden's.)

The next dish was 鲨鱼骨汤. This soup tasted really good! I think it was the highlight of the dinner.

The cod fish was very good too. The tangy sauce was very tasty! Each serving cost $13! We only ordered 3 servings to be shared among 5 of us. Ha ha.

The tofu tasted so-so only. Quite disappointing.

Mark insisted on eating abalone so we ordered some vegetable dish that contained abalone and sea cucumber. We couldn't afford to eat a whole abalone per person. So sad!

This 京都排骨 was quite hard but the sauce was nice.

The last dish was fried rice. The duck meat from our 北京烤鸭 was used in this dish.

No meal is complete without dessert! I had wanted to order fried ice-cream but upon hearing that this 黑糯米雪糕 is the signature dish, all of us changed our mind and ordered this instead.

I think this is quite easy to prepare. I shall buy the 黑糯米 from dessert stall and add ice-cream next time. Then I said that maybe we can have tau-suan ice-cream and we started discussing what flavour ice-cream would look good with the yellowish tau-suan. Strange, we did not drink any wine tonight but suddenly all of us so "high"! Ha Ha! Richard even brought a book of collections of 李白's poems for us to recite. He said he just know today that “窗前明月光……”is called《静夜思》! 天啊， 他可是中文系毕业的!

And of course, the highlight of the highlights was the bill! After 10% discount, the bill amounted to $387!

The entire dinner and the cost reminded us of a wedding dinner. I must say the service was quite good and they kept changing our plates. At the end of the meal, we were so boliao that we decided to take a photo to make it look like a "real" wedding dinner. Ho ho ho!

Food again

Thursday, I went to the canteen to buy some food. To my surprise, I saw these at the Malay stall:


I was so happy to see fried chicken wing! I bought one and a chicken patty. Guess what? These 2 items cost $1.50!

After buying the tickets, I went to Bras Basah Complex to have lunch before going for facial. I missed the 水饺面 so much! I haven't patronised the stall for a long time and that was my first visit since it's renovation.



I remembered how we used to da-bao the noodles to Jubilee Hall to eat when we visit MS! Those were the good old days!

城中最热

Presenting you the HOTTEST item in town
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90% of the tickets for the initial show was snapped up within 2 days! And that's only for OCBC cardholders! On Thursday morning, my brother smsed to tell me that sale of tickets for the additional show would start on that day. After checking the website, I realised that sale is for OCBC cardholders. Public sale would only start on 5 Nov.

So after work, I made my way to Wisma's Sistic outlet (the sistic website is down likely due to heavy traffic!) You know what? From 10 am to 3 pm, more than half of the tickets were sold! Those waiting to buy on 5 Nov probably won't be able to get tickets! I already had to compromise with not so good seats!

杰伦的魅力无法挡！

Celebration

Last night, we went to Wheelock Place's Sun with Moon for a mini celebration. This is one of our favourite restaurants. I like the ambience a lot! If only the food is cheaper, I think we would frequent it much more often! :)

YQ ordered a 牛肉釜饭。I've always enjoyed looking at the hour glass.

I picked something from the seasonal menu. This time, the restaurant is serving seafood from Hokkaido. I ordered this ramen from the Hokkaido menu. It's a bit salty.

We also ordered 秋刀鱼. Ever since we ate some very nice 秋刀鱼 in Laos and Bangkok, we have fallen in love with this dish!

And of course, no meal is complete without dessert. I picked this shio ice-cream from the Hokkaido menu. It's actually salty and sweet ice-cream. It tasted a bit weird at first but once I've gotten used to the taste, it's quite unique actually. :)

Cutie

We saw this at Raffles Hotel on Sunday. Cute right? :)

If I am a tourist, I might buy the plush toy if it's for sale! Haha, but I am quite sure I will regret my decision when I reach home. It's cute but certainly quite useless! :p

倒帶

星期天，我们突然心血来潮，约了Ban、MS 和Mr Tan 去喝咖啡。我们先在津津解决了午餐，然后到Ah Teng 去。途中，我们看到了这辆有趣的三轮车。这应该是为话剧 Tim Sum Dollies 造势用的吧。

三轮车上的这两个包真可爱！看了好像捏一捏！

我们来到Ah Teng，他们三人都还没到。我叫了咖啡、Tiramisu 蛋糕和蛋挞，边吃边等他们。我不是很喜欢这里的蛋挞，“蛋”的部分略嫌硬了点，吃起来倒像是custard。

MS和Mr Tan有事先走，留下我们三人。不久，天空下起了豪雨，我们只好留在Ah Teng避雨。雨停的时候，已是傍晚五点。我们往Cathay的方向走去，不久便来到了商务的旗舰店。最高兴的当然是YQ，他的目的终于达到！


将近一个小时后，我们到PS 的老北京食堂吃晚餐。是的，又是老北京食堂。这回，我们点了：

北京烤鸭

黑木耳、百合、西芹

烧饼

（肉碎是烧饼的陷料）

小笼汤包

这一餐吃得很累，因为烤鸭和烧饼都得DIY。踏出老北京食堂时，我感觉自己的肚子已经五个月大了！

接下来几天真的不能再暴饮暴食了。糟了，下个星期天好像得到李白去吃大餐！

注：我的生活一直在倒带：津津、Ah Teng、老北京……几乎相同的人物在同样的场景吃着几乎一样的食物！哈哈！

快乐帮 vs 星光帮

昨晚，我看了《快乐星期天》的特辑——《快乐谢师宴》。只有两个字形容：Very entertaining！

突然发现，郑博夫很帅，还有点像周杰伦！我的鼻血直流！哈哈！

其实，快乐帮的帅哥比较多，加上他们年轻，的确在外形上占优势。不过，论歌唱技巧，我觉得星光帮比较强。MJ，你同意吗？:)

超级星光大道

我迷上了《超级星光大道》。虽然能从You-tube看到精彩的演出，但每个星期我还是会守在电视机前追看。很期待这个星期天播出的那一集，因为杨宗纬将演唱《人质》。其他人的表现看起来也相当不错。上一集刘明峰真情流露，为了搭档被淘汰而哭了，我有些感动。

哈哈！星光帮的两张合辑我竟然都买了！可见我有多疯狂！

I Live in a Slum

I cancelled my facial appointment so that I could come home early to do some cleaning up. The whole house is SOOOOOO cluttered! I feel that we are living in a slum. It's amazing how 2 people can accumulate so much rubbish at so many corners of the small house! I think laziness has a BIG part to play too.

My mission for the afternoon is to clear the pile of things on my study table - at least those that lies within my territory. It's really getting out of hand, just like my cubicle in the office. Haha! See for yourself!

After an hour, there is some improvement, though it's still not good enough.

Many parts of the house are in a mess too! I better spend some time cleaning up during the school hols! Chinese New Year is coming!

Yeah! I also managed to change the bedsheets! I quite like to do this. Maybe I should be a chambermaid? Ha Ha! I'm thinking of buying new pillows and bolster for the new year. How often should one change pillows and bolster actually???