blink The Power of Thinking Without Thinking gave a new meaning to “don’t judge a book by its cover”. What caught my attention first was the simple white and blue cover. Should I or should I not buy it? I went back to the store 2 more times and in addition to my colleague’s recommendation on the third visit, I decided to buy it! The 2 seconds snap judgment had to work 3 times before I made up my mind. Ten pages into the introduction, I realized I hadn’t made the wrong choice.
Although I’ve read both of the Albom’s books (courtesy of hs), I simply had to own them as I’ve refused to return them to her long after I’ve finished reading.
Rich Dad Poor Dad was so hyped about years ago that it was no harm getting it since there was a 20% discount. In fact, what made me get all those books was that they were on 20% discount. I’m not so literary after all. Heh…
Next on my list would be Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade. Only Kinokuniya has it and the last one standing had its jacket torn off. It’s a whooping $30+++ for a small little black book. No wonder it is left on the shelf. Anybody knows where else can I get that book? Ok fine, I think nobody has heard of it before.
Em, hs and me are currently undergoing lessons in blading during our off days. Those "stripes" were caused by wearing guards during blading. My da jie thinks I look like a bumble bee. Em can be her zebra for all I care ;P
This was meant to be a Valentine’s Day post. It appears that I’m one week late. I can’t find the time to blog at all. My comments page trails longer than my one sentence “To be updated when I’ve got the time!” temporary post. My friend, reg, had to help me answer to an anonymous reader before I even got to read the comments myself. I had no time to come online for long, not to mention update my blog.
I wasn’t exactly busy with work. Hell yes, I still bring work home to do but I was actually busy remodeling my social life, catching up with good pals I’ve not seen for a few months to a year. I’ve never been in such high spirits and satisfied with my mundane life for a long time.
Ah… I digress as usual. I was supposed to write about my V day. I will write about my not so mundane life some other time.
Well, I’m not going into the all-so-lovey-dovey-ultra-emotional mode like a year ago.
That only happens once in a blue, pink and purple moon. This V day would be our 5th anniversary and our bond has grown even stronger after some setbacks. Like all the other years, kh is out of town again. (I’m really getting used to this.) So as usual, he called on the eve and we chatted till the wee hours. We were both quite sleepy initially. But the more we talked and reminisce about past gaiety, the more we could not end the conversation. We kept recalling our silly times and poking fun at each other, constantly erupting into spontaneous guffaws. We just kept going on and on, laughing and laughing till the 2nd (or was it 3rd?) 1 hour limit cut the line off.
It was simple.
It was good.
I had sweet dreams that night.
The day itself was spent accompanying mum to polyclinic for her follow ups, tutoring C and meeting raine and HER friends for dinner at Settler’s Café.
C’s family was so cute. They were all up and out to see me to the door. They were looking at the clock as if wondering why I gave C the extra 10 minutes tuition time. When I was leaving his place, his little sister grinned at me, his grandpa nodded at me, his very fashionable mum looked at me from head to toe, smiled away and uttered, “Happy Valentine’s Day. Enjoy your day!” His grandma came to the door and said,”Qing ren jie kuai le!” and they all stood at the door and waved frantically.
I think they think I’m going on a hot date with kh. Haha!
The MRT at Khatib was rather empty. I could slowly walk to a seat without fear of it being snatched up by some kiasu Singaporeans. The carriage was dotted with uncles and aunties, all on their own. No couples anywhere. The guys probably figured it was more gentlemanly and suave to drive or to hail a cab. Along the journey, some young school kid couples came on. They looked so young that I wondered if they were of legal age to drink. A while later, a stinky man came to sit beside me, disrupting my people watching act, for I had to face the glass panel on the other side for the rest of the journey.
I was to meet raine at Clarke Quay for I don’t know anybody else there. They were all her friends and her friends’ friends. I call this get together a “pseudo matchmaking session”. Raine being an avid “matchmaker” collaborated with her friend to organize a singles day out. I was inadvertently drawn into the picture when raine assumed on her part that I had agreed to go out with her on V day since my bf is out of town. Coincidentally, her fiancé is also out of town, so the basic conception was that we should hang out together on a Valentine’s day. And yes that girl head counted me in and I only knew it the day before.
It was great that I went along. I had great fun. Her friends were all nice people and got along well with each other. In fact, they got along so well and I was confused as to who knows who long before or only on that day. It was truly a friends kinda outing and no moment of awkwardness. Hence, the term “pseudo matchmaking”.
We were so engrossed in this Saboteur game where the objective would be for miners to pave their ways to the gold nugget while the scheming saboteurs well, sabotage their efforts. It was fun lying and acting. But when I became honest, nobody believed me. It seemed that I’m not very well-liked saboteur or miner, as I’m often blocked and even double blocked by people every single game.
The Saboteurs win!
Complementary Crunchies From Settlers.
The people that night... Not quite.
2 more came back... Still not the full group. 1 was out running errands.
Everyone outside Settlers Cafe.
Me, Fran and Raine does a neoprint.
Another one.
That night was fun. Thank you raine, for asking me along and counting me in without my approval. I’m letting you off on that and thanking you sincerely from saving me from another night of V day spent at home. Now I have more friends to add to my social circle. Heh heh!
The year of the dog is MY year!!! Yay!!!! But this incidentally means that another multiple of 12 years has passed since the last year of the dog and now I’m a freaking 24 year old this year! So damn old!
Once again, this will be a long post full of photos so either open this page, wait for it to load and go do something else before coming back or just click the X button on the top right hand corner of your browser window and don’t come back.
This was what happened during the whole of last week…
Preparation for CNY
The flowers around the “pond” as well as a few more pots out by the recess area of my house cost a total of $50 only! Cheap and beautiful.
We tied a little red ribbon on Simba’s collar to put her in the festive mood.
Simba zz
I could never resist taking a photo of Simba.
My room is so damn neat now. It has never been so neat for months. Oh but the neatness is a façade. All the mess was stashed into the drawers and cupboards.
I cleared up the mess above my bed and arranged my vodka bottles in a row. These bottles really served as great decoration. Please do not be mistaken that I’ve drunk all those. I merely tried a sip of each of them. The rest were drunk by my sis who insisted on me collecting the bottles for her.
Vodka bottles in a row adorning my headboard
CNY eve (Saturday 28 January 2006)
Once again, I did not do much of my part in spring cleaning this year. This job is really a good excuse for it.
We still gotta work on CNY eve! Everyone was in such a CNY mood. Lessons were relaxed and unstressful. Majority of teachers with 6pm classes had their lessons postponed to attend reunion dinners.
As usual, we had our steamboat at Ah ma’s place (Paternal grandmother). Every year, I would be sitting at the table eating and eating and eating till all the people sitting around me kept changing. For last year and this year, I just ate 1 bowl and left the table. I’ve been sick for so long it’s affecting my huge appetite.
Leftovers of reunion dinner
This year was special, firstly we “lo hei” on the eve and secondly, the raw fish slices were salmon sashimi. So untraditional... What’s tradition anyway?
Me. I wanted to capture my whole outfit including my pretty boots… hehe
Next we proceeded to big aunt’s house on mum’s side. By the time we reached, it was already so late that most of the relatives have gone home. I was so glad that kh could drop by to bai nian. Big family gatherings scare him off. And my extended family is really BIG with 4 uncles, 8 aunts, 30 over cousins and a few nieces and nephews on my mum’s side; 7 uncles, 6 aunts and about 15 cousins on dad’s side.
Went over to kh house to bai nian.
Deardear and me
CNY Day 2 (30 January 2006)
At 6th aunt’s place (mum’s side)
Small aunt’s place (dad’s side)
The mahjong kia! All 4 are siblings. I realised it's good to have 4 children. You can just kai zuo and play mj among yourselves.
Delicious food prepared by my uncle. A fusion of east and west… traditional and modern: Home-made pizzas, seafood pasta, roast chicken, curry, century egg porridge etc etc…
The man behind the food…
This uncle not only cooks good food (he has a restaurant… duh), he makes sure everyone drinks something alcoholic. When cuz Allan asked for coke, he gave him bourbon coke. When he saw my 2 sisters and me he immediately poured drinks for us saying it was “coke”. Of course it turned out to be bourbon coke again. I’m not surprised if he gave all my younger cousins “coke” as well. He poured red wine for everyone else. I hate bourbon more than anything else and was so thirsty but there wasn’t a single packet or canned drinks without alcohol in his house. Anyway have I mentioned before that most of the people on my dad’s side are alcoholic, except my dad?
I don't know how we did this with self-timer. It's cool to have a tall TV to act as a ledge to accommodate everyone.
Then we hopped over to big uncle’s house at mum’s side.
I’m so preoccupied with taking photos of my niece, Ziwei. The last time I saw her was last year and she was still a tiny toddler then. Now she 2+ years old.
She is a camera whore and so very cuuuute! She could pose exactly what we tell her to do.
We told her to act cute, she did.
We told her to do gong xi gong xi, she did.
She did her xi nu ai le too.
xi3
nu4
ai1
le4
Ziwei’s 6mth old sister, Gladys.
My cousin is only 2 years older than me and she has got 2 kids. Where would I be the next 2 years?
Next the whole relatives entourage trooped to my place.
We lo hei again.
A video of us lo-ing at my place.
When people lo hei, we usually cry out all those strings of mandarin couplets like “bu bu gao sheng”, “nian nian you yu”, “wan shi ru yi”, “xin xiang shi cheng”, “sheng yi xin long” etc etc ( that’s as far as how my Chinese vocab would take me). However, I supposed all my relatives are also very ang mo pai (English ed) so all we do is say “Ohhhhh” and “Loooo” and words that sound in the middle of these two.
CNY Day 3 (31 January 2006)
We went to 4th aunt’s place at dad’s side. The same place I go every week to tutor my cousin. I love going to my 4th aunt’s place because she always “stuff” me with a lot of food.
We had Tom Yam steamboat.
It was so delicious that I just sat there and ate for an hour.
We savoured our favourite “drinks” for another hour. My uncle and aunt, being very good host, would never fail to present their guests with alcohol.
We savoured…
Sake…
White wine that was a tad too sweet, it tasted like dessert wine…
Kahlua on the rocks…
Chinese tea to end it all
4th aunt’s favourite wine bottle… the bottle is very special. It has 2 openings (symbolizes friendship) and she could not bear to open it.
My Snow White cuz.
All those attached cousins brought their partners except me. I was a bit disappointed that at the last minute kh could not make it. SIGH… almost 5 years together and my dad’s side has yet to see him. Their impression of him is forever overseas.
CNY Day 4 (1 February 2006)
Since our Monday and Tuesday off days were “eaten up” by CNY, the company decided to give us an off day on Wednesday. I went out with a bunch of hh colleagues for KTV cum buffet session.
Me as usual being self-absorbed
Our buffet food spread
My share
Food
Food
More food
I got so sick of my fave salmon sashimi after this buffet.
A video of us singing Alex To’s “tuo diao”. For non-Chinese, it means “take off” as in take off clothes. I thought that taking a video of this would be fun but they were so shy to even pretend to tuo diao their jackets. Then the video time ran out and didn't catch Alex To tuo to his yellow ducky.
Then it was back to work the next day. Work has been very fun the whole week. Everyone was still in a cny mood.
Cancelled all tuition last week to spend more time with kh as he was flying away again. There goes another year of Valentine’s Day cum anniversary not being physically together. But to look on the bright side of things, it’s only for 1 month. Yay! By now, 1 month is nothing to me. And yay again coz people, my non tuition nights (Wednesday and Saturday) are free till beginning of March. Jio me k!
For the whole of CNY week, I have been visiting this mother dog and her pups every night. They would be sleeping at the electric plant (or whatever you call that.. those who stay in HBD flats would know) downstairs my block. Many people visit them too. Apparently the dog is highly favoured by joggers from the stadium nearby, uncles, aunties etc. She is such a gentle dog. The first dog ever to allow me to pat her and play with her despite having puppies to guard strangers from.
From 7 pups to 6 to 4 to 2 to 1 pup. The 7th one died 2 weeks ago while the rest of them have been adopted. Every few days, people would adopt the puppies. All the adopted puppied were well accounted for as the were people with experience and dog lovers. One of it, i'm not sure as it was taken away by an Indian boy to be sold to a cake shop! Bloody hell! Cake shop? Now the only 1 left is the most active one and it has reached its 30 day period, it would soon be running around and I'm so afraid it would get knocked down by reckless drivers. I hope somebody adopts it soon.
