千六百十六； Midweek

This week is coming to an end too soon.

I had dinner with S for the past 2 nights, discovered some shocking news & secrets. the only consolation is that I am not alone in this.

New Year party tonight, maybe i will be overdressed. hmmm.

千六百十五； Prego's

I had dinner at Prego's last night.

the bill came up to $168 for 2 including taxes. (o.0) i think it was due to the drinks but the dinner was pretty good. very filling, the crab meat chef made pasta roll was a novelty. had a good chat thinking and talking about stupid things during dinner, but things are just not the same when u are chatting face to face. sighz.

千六百十四： 月末

Finally nearing the end of February.

Feeling unwell these few days, came down with a cough, and have been having headaches at work so took 1 panadol everyday. today i seemed to be having fever and my hands felt numb.

Stayed up late doing french homework the night before, cos we were supposed to submit a paragraph describing a country to our teacher by email so that he can correct it before class tomorrow and the short paragraph took me an hour. -.- I want to say so many things in Japanese but nothing came out in French. hmmm

and then now suffering from cramps. very unfortunate this had to happen now of all time, cos I had some stuff planned next week and this would really be a hassle.

at least february is a short month so its very fast to the next pay day ;D

千六百十三： I support Edison Chen

maybe this incident will tell pple to start learning how to fix their own computers..

From the online Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120359843718182823.html?mod=hpp_asia_whats_news

千六百十二： Giraffe

I'm writing this as i'm waiting for my hair to dry, so late for the second night in a row.

worked until 7+pm while all the rest waited for me; can't help it since I had to clear UAT requests from PMs as well as assigned test cases from core team. (excusez moi while i ramble abit about work) A beside me was a big help in clearing the explore test cases while I tried to clear as much as I could for the rest of the projects. Projects not launching could afford to wait, but suddenly some of the adhoc tests were raising some questions (& bugs). finally could leave after sending replies to the PM to inform him of the results so far and what I should do next. thought it was a relief I had finished his requests, but guess I did it too well, he came back with a 2nd round of requests to add on. (T.T) I guess I can plan to OT til late tomorrow.

anyway... our team went to PS for dinner then to Giraffe for the guys to see what the place was like so they can plan for the NY party performance next week. Our party is going to be there.. I guess very apt since the theme of our party is Animal wildlife. I can't wait, cos the PMs will be here next week and its been >6 months since we last saw them. when they come to the office, they certainly up the quality quotient of the jp guys in the APOC office. :)

ok .. hair has about dried (stopped dripping at least) so i'm off to bed. good night!!

千六百十一： Made in China

had a huge huge lunch today, 8 course chinese meal courtesy of our team's boss. We went to Made in China at Haw Par Villa (there were 3 tables of us, so about 30 pple??) must have been pretty pricey, cos there was a very huge plate of lohei, sharks fins, abalone with sea cucumber, wasabi tiger prawns, roast chicken, fish, glutinous rice and an almond soup with 湯円 with sesame filling. delicious! luckily I was at the Japanese table, no one dared to eat sea cucumber much so they just told me to eat everything up. with pleasure!!! in the end I ended up eating more than half of it myself. hohoho

my plate cleaned out of sea cucumbers

it was a 2 hours plus long lunch, and when we got back to work, we were so full and sleepy. couldn't stop yawning, everyone's brains could barely work, i guess this is the trade off between employee morale and productivity. high morale but low productivity after the lunch. hehehe.

but.. long lunch leads to long hours as well, there was work I had to do daily despite the hours, and I had to stay until 8pm to finish my work. luckily S helpfully kept me company by trying to beat my high score at Bejeweled. (of cos he can't). Tried to top up my ezlink card at the EZlink machine at the PSA bus stop but there was something wrong with it and it spat out my nets card so far when i pushed it in. was very surprised and luckily S was there to pick up my card. -.- in the end I travelled to harbourfront cos there was another machine at the bus stop but guess wat, the Nets reader is spoilt there too!!! aRGH! in the end had no choice but to walk into the MRT station just to top up the card. pui!!!!

next week will be the new year party. yay!

千六百十： High Tea

Friday nite went to Vivocity with H and S and A. the 麻辣面 was pretty good, but not spicy at all. shared an ice kachang with them and had to eat about half of it cos the guys tot ice kachang tasted weird and another guy just hate to eat cold stuff. (he hates ice cream because they are cold -.-)

Saturday was French lesson and dinner at grandma's house. Noisy (abit bratty) boys were there. oh no, i really can't stand kids who are ill-behaved and I have the urge to raise a hand and slap them. was glad to go home finally as they were beginning to give me a headache with their screaming & shouting.

Sunday morning, woke up with a really weird dream of my sis abandoning me while holidaying in bangkok and I couldn't remember our hotel's name. Then dreamt of R and K and I was trying to avoid both people and see them both at the same time and woke up feeling very torn and tired. Decided to head to marina square with my parents who were going there to meet an Italian supplier who's in town. My dad treated him to high tea and he asked us if we wanted to eat :D we ate at Mandarin Oriental hotel & it was very worth it. saw a woman steal bread into her bag to try to dapao it back though. very disgusted, did she need to do that!? ok back to the high tea, it was about $33 per person and soo much variety. their roast duck in particular, was exquisitely fatty. (my diet for the week was ruined by this meal) finally finished at about 3.30pm and we went to marina square to look at shoes. Chanced upon the john Little sale and i got 2 pairs for $37 after using my $50 robinson's voucher. :D a pair of gold tracce sandals and a pair of white everbest wedges. my first pair of wedges with abit of psychedelic colours on the wedge. pretty cool. I finished quite quickly and spent the next 3 hours waiting for my parents to finish shopping. very bored, and sat outside at the side near Ritz to enjoy the breeze (strong winds most of the time) and play ds until my eyes started to hurt. :(

roast duck and siew mai


desserts


looking up from my couch

finally reached home at about 9+ and did some skipping to get rid of today's meal. hopefully next week i can keep to the no extra sugar diet.

千六百〇九： Animal Horoscope

Finally Friday.

Despite having only a 4-day week, this week feels extra long. We had Lo Hei today, and Lion Dance performances at the office.

The Japanese have this Animal Horoscope thing: 動物占い
Its pretty easy, just input your DOB, and you can see what animal you are:
http://d-uranai.shogakukan.co.jp/uranai/kekka/animal10.html
You probably won't understand the details, but if you know chinese, u can probably roughly understand the headings. or use the translation websites or email me if you want to know what it says. I'm a lion by the way..


beating S at Hexic all week. :D:D

千六百〇八： Blackout

I just blacked out for no reason.

I was going to switch on the lights and the next thing I knew I was lying on the kitchen floor with my sis shouting at me *are u ok?!* in my dreams and then I sat up not knowing I was actually sitting on the kitchen floor and realised I had an excruciating pain at the top right back of my head and an enormous bump on my head then dunno why tears just started flowing cos it hurt like mad.

then for a while i couldn't stop bawling, just couldn't stop.

I can't remember what happened at all. Or what I hit my head on. head still hurting like mad.

千六百〇七： CNY gathering 2008

Gathering ended successfully! :D

steamboat for lunch~~ was preparing the food this morning until about 12 when S suddenly msged me that he reached and could he come in. I was like ok, just walk in, and i realised I was still in my sleeping wear... so in 5 min i had to wash up, put on some decent clothes and look decent (face still had all the pimples so i look horrendous in the morning) luckily, S walked very slowly, so when I was about ready, he just barely reached. hehe.

He helped me get some of the vegetables ready (cut and wash) but luckily I had cut up most of the fish. it was hard to cut fish.. at least i learnt something..

everyone else was kind of late, so lunch only started at about 1pm. but it was fun, and i dunno why i kept taking S's ladle instead of my own. they kept laughing at me, and i felt quite silly. haha. but everyone brought tidbits, so we had more than enuff food.

After lunch, we played Uno. Super fun, especially since we haven't played it in a long time.

Harry Potter Uno

Poor S, he didnt win a single game, but every one on his left kept winning. very funny and unlucky. A had to go back early, so later on, when there were 5 of us left, we played Mario Kart. had to stop the games when my parents came back though. must set up a mahjong game next time ~~~

千六百〇六： Mahjong

Joined in my first mahjong session of the Lunar Year yesterday, and .. .. lost $50. :(

first time playing with D and his frens, turns out that i've been hearing the name of one of them for a while from another fren but didnt think that i would meet him at the mahjong game. another guy holds some super paying job and owns 2 cars, one of which is a Maserati (Spyder i think). I got to ride in it when he gave me a 3-minute ride home after the game :D very cool looking, but engine is disgustingly loud. good game, as in everyone was fast and 2 rounds finished at about 3am when we started at 9.30pm. but my luck just wasn't there as i was always stuck without cards to form even 1 double. but quite fun overall.. although this morning i am feeling very very headachy from the lack of sleep. zzzz

visited xH and the baby this morning (XX) and she was so cute! but... clingy to the mom and refused to let me carry her ;( only fed her, played with her abit when she sat on the ground, and tried to take photos with her. hehe

baby getting away


baby playing with blocks


a happy baby!

:D had a good afternoon playing with XX.

千六百〇五： Qooo

Did any one notice the Qoo mascot is using his breath to move his little boat along?

Qoo mascot puffing his way to safety

super cute. :D

This year's not bad, ang bao collections of nearly $200 over 2 days w/o having to visit anyone. People are more generous this year (better bonuses??) so I got alot more orange notes than purple notes this year. Many Japanese managers oso joined in local traditions in giving us red packets, $10 each, so its really a good haul. had dinner with S at Sketches on first day of CNY, cos my family went to the uncle's place (see previous post). I was ready to go home for maggi mee dinner, but tot I would try my luck and msged him and he said was ok to wait for me for dinner even though he already left. We headed to Chinatown, shops all closed, alot of PRC / Indians walking around, felt quite overwhelmed, so we headed to bugis.

Luckily, Sketches was open. Oh, then there were alot of disappointed looking tourists who was in Chinatown as well. I had a good chat with him, which was a relief, cos I really needed some guidance on the situation I was facing and felt so much better after the chat. Did some planning for the CNY gathering, decided what we needed. Haven't had a gathering at my place for ages, feeling abit nervous about it. Hopefully everything goes well and they enjoy the food / games.

千六百〇四： 新年快楽

A very normal workday today, even more hectic than usual because some people were just so uncooperative. But was good to receive angbao from our boss, even though she's japanese. :D

no dinner for me even, cos I had to work a little late and by the time i finished work my parents were heading to some uncle's house for dinner and there were screaming kids there so I totally did not feel like going. I have no tolerance towards ill-behaved kids. Yesterday's reunion dinner was pretty ok, first time in years the cousins have actually spoken and had any exchange of words with us. I dunno what happened.

Planning a trip to tokyo, probably in May. was expecting to go by myself actually cos I wanted to meet up with colleagues and ex-colleagues and other frens there but found a travel buddy by accident, an old fren who's already in Japan. we haven't met in years, would be fun to tour around for a week or so, especially in summer. :D:D at least something to look forward to, hopefully it isn't blackout period for my ticket redemption from UOB credit cards. & hopefully testing goes smoothly in May so that I can take my leave at that period w/o much problems.

千六百〇三： Gone Baby Gone

I watched the movie with my cousin and D at Vivo after work. Managed to rush & complete my work properly by 5.30pm on the dot.

Pretty good movie, the twists and turns my head spin but the foul language was abit of a turnoff. I always liked a good mystery though, and the mystery of how the kid disappeared and who did it and why kept me intrigued for the whole movie so that I could know the whole story properly.

CNY eve tomorrow. no CNY mood at all this year. Just feels like a normal day, with normal work tomorrow, and I realised i had forgotten all about buying CNY clothes altogether. But luckily bought a lot of red-pink clothes in abercrombie so can just wear them.

midweek tomorrow. long weekend ahead... sianz...

千六百〇二： Emotional Drain

Alvin the punk

Got this when I bought popcorn when watching movie with X. added a Coke keychain to him. Very punk look now. abit like those robber with hoodies.

Face threading yesterday morning. Hurt like mad, when i left my upper lip area was all red, so embarrassing, luckily I scheduled it in the morning. Used a tissue to cover my upper lip (like i was having a cold) all the way home.. and applied some pore tightening cream the moment I reached home. luckily all the redness subsided by the time I had to go for French lessons, but I was late for class anyway, with traffic jams all over bukit timah road due to roadworks & cutting of tree branches (shouldn't they be doing these things at night when the traffic is less busy??) . it took me almost an hour to travel from my place to Newton by bus... and i fell asleep towards the end of the journey, almost missing my stop to alight.

French lessons going well, doing ok in class. the teacher seems fine with my pronounciation too, I guess the key is just imitate whatever you hear.the teacher got sorta mad at some people who don't even want to open their mouth and try.

Tired of not having anyone around. Vday coming around again.. another normal day for me and a day to avoid all the couples around who make me feel damn sianz.

千六百〇一： Funerals

January 2008 seems to be just full of bad news. almost 1 death a week, My mom's uncle (my granduncle?) chose to end his life the day before. It was a shock to us, as we had only seen him a few weeks ago, gleefully saying that he would definitely be collecting his angbaos during CNY. A single man in his 70s, he was always pretty cheerful. unfortunately, within the short few weeks, we dunno what happened and he left us for no reason we could see. went to the funeral/wake tonight, a short one as he didn't have much family. sighz. please learn to treasure every single person around you cos you nv noe when you might lose them.

my mom was telling me that maybe I should seek a new relationship in sg if there doesn't seem to be any end or any future to things with Ryo soon. its clear that my youth is on the decline, and that before I know it, i'll become an old hag in my 30s and then 40s in the blink of an eye. :( everyone tells me the same thing and I really don't want to do that.... even though I know that they are probably right and that this relationship is going to be stagnant because all we will do is just maintain LDR forever until we get married.

my sis heard me speaking very loudly in my sleep. loud enuff for her to hear me from the dining area (i'm sleeping in the furthest room from the dining area) and she got a little freaked out hearing me speak so loudly (and sounding irritated) but when she checked, I was asleep and speaking 夢話。 creepy. I really want to know what i said though.

just want to rest this weekend, the shock of the news of the death is very very draining. Je suis fatigue.