Thirty days hath September

~*September is a month filled with birthdays*~

Baby Cheyenne's birthday

Let's start with the the tiniest September baby -- Baby Cheyenne.

The celebration was held at L'entrepot Bistrot. That was my 1st ever high class one mth old celebration. Usually one mth old celebrations are held at home with buffet food. Since J jie jie is a hot mummy, naturally birthday celebrations for her kids are hip.



There was another first time for me, that is to have carried a baby of that age. Before that, I only dared to carry toddlers coz babies of that age would squirm uncomfortably in my arms.

I merely carried bb Cheyenne to take a picture and my mum happily asked kh to stand with me. After a shot, she barged in and the next minute, my whole family tropped in as urged by my mum. LoLz... machiam my baby!


The food was good! I'm getting hungry all over again looking at the photos.




How could I resist snapping pictures of cheeky Dylan with his notti boy hairstyle?



~*~*~*~*~

Viv's birthday

We had a surprise birthday celebration which wasn't exactly a surprise for viv.

We got her everything that she likes. Strawberry [cheesecake], Precious Moments snow globe, hand-made card. Oh how I wished I were in her shoes.








Over the weekend, we met up with apr who still owes me lotsa delicious food pics.



~*~*~*~*~

Dad & da jie's birthday

After's mummy's hearty birthday buffet, daddy requested for a simple ze char dinner coz he wanna (in his words) "faster eat and faster go home watch F1".

We went to 1036 Eating House to have a crab feast.







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~*D & D 2009, The Salon @ National Museum*~

I'm a museum buff and hence was quite enthusiastic about our D & D being held at the museum. The last time I set foot in the National museum was definitely more than a decade ago. Sad to say, the museum tour was quite rushed and I could not immerse myself in the tour.

The dinner was fine. I love the laksa. Everything else was pretty normal.

I had fun during the competition coz I was only "participating" as an audience facing no stress at all.

I did not win any prize during the lucky draw segment. I had been lucky the 1st 2 years. The previous year, I only went home with the door gift. This year, my luck picked up a little. I won a small ang pow for the "Don't Forget the Lyrics" and also an edu award and gift vouchers, together with another colleague of mine.

Let the photos do the talking now, shall we?



















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~*Touched by angels*~

Do you believe in angels?

I do.

There are many occasions when we see glimpses of God's work right here on earth.

I believe that God sends angels on earth in human guise and places certain people in our paths to give us love and hope when we need it the most.

In times when you feel that hope is gone, God would send someone to make everything better.

At times, people may not realise that the little acts they do can touch others; be it something as simple as offering little words of encouragement or going all out to help others in need.

You know how I always say God has given up on me coz I don't go to church and only look for Him when I'm in trouble? Well, Charmaine's plight has certainly changed me a fair bit. I've witnessed the acts of and even rubbed shoulders with so many angels on earth.

I met up with 2 organisations which lent a hand in raising funds for Charmaine's treatment. Funds aside, their kind words and thoughts are things that money can't buy.







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~*New Japanese Haunt*~

For authentic Japanese food, Tamako does it the best.

Being in Tamako makes me feel as if I was transported to an old little eatery in Japan.



The food is so good that nowadays whenever I crave for Jap food, I would have Tamako in mind.

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~*The best gift you can give a teacher is your effort & if possible, your results*~

That was what I said to all my students just a week before Teacher's Day. I also reminded them to save their money and not to buy me any gifts.

My students are obviously a stubborn lot.







For every kid that came up to me to hand me the gift, I chided them for not listening and they would just go "hee hee hee" in a sheepish manner. The most unique reply so far was:

"I told my mother already but she don't [sic] want to listen."

=D

I was quite touched by 2 boys. One is a tall and big-sized P6 boy who looks like he belongs in a Sec 4 class and the other is also a big sized P3 boy in a P4 class.

Pardon me if I sound rude by emphasising their size. It's just that I thought it was rather sweet of the former to make an angel handphone charm for me in an origami box and the latter for making a miniature shop made of cardboard. Accuse me of generalising but I simply can't imagine big boys engaging in such crafts.

Imagine this stocky P6 boy holding up a hand-made box which looked so tiny in comparision to his huge hand.

"I thought I said not to buy me anything?"

"I didn't buy it. I made it."



When I opened the box and saw the angel handphone charm amidst the bubble protective sheet, I asked him how he made it.

"I learnt it from my friend. This is my learning piece."

As for the P3 boy who is in my P4 class, he's the chubby bookish sort, rather intelligent. I didn't expect him to be able to make such an exquisite little shop.



When I stepped into the class of one of my cute and funny P6 class, a gal announced,

"See Ms Loh, we listen to you. We really didn't get you anything."

-_-|||

And yes, they really didn't get anything, except for a girl who gave me a card. I thought I might receive more cards since that would be the last year I would be seeing them and also since they're such a fun bunch.


Cards for my graduating P6 classes


I wonder how they did for their PSLE.

fast friends

Today instead of doing the household chores, I walked over to my neighbour's house, sat on the rattan sofa under the pavilion and once on the antique metal swing and chatted with her for hours on end. All these while the gentle breeze blew and bugs landing on us every now and then.

I'm sooooooo happy that kh's buddy who stays just a few houses away is marrying his gf in a few months time and am even happier that she's moving in with his family after marriage.

We are both really really really excited at the prospect of having each other within walking distance.

Having a bimbotic fren who gets along so well with me in this ulu estate is like having kh to stop playing WOW (World of Warcraft) for a day or two.

We had sooooo much to chat about. Wedding stuff, girly stuff, bimbotic stuff, gossip stuff... It's neverending! I can forsee ourselves hanging out together more often in future. In fact, both of us and our other halves are quite enthusiastic about our impending honeymoon trip together.

It doesn't matter how long or short one knows another or how many times you've met. As long as there is mutual understanding and trust, people can easily become fast and firm friends.

I still remember my very fond first impression of her when kh's buddy introduced us about 3 years ago. And only today did I find out her first impression of me. Dunno whether to strangle her or to thank her. Hahaha... I'll treat it as a compliment.
;P

Haha... and now I know she reads my blog, I must compliment her more often. Haha... For the record, the "bimbotic fren" quote up there is a compliment ok?
=)

For the Villain

Atrocious, abhorrent, artlessly appalling
Bastardly, beastly, blatantly base
Callous, cruel, clearly cheap
Diabolical, detestable, downright despicable

EVIL

Filthy, fetid, fiendishly foul
Grim, ghastly, gloweringly grisly
Hellish, hateful, honestly heinous
Immoral, ignoble, immensely insignificant

JERK

Loathesome, lowly, loutish loser
Malevolent, malicious, miscreant MONSTER
Noxious, nefarious, notorious nimcompoop
Odious, offensive, outrightly obnoxious

PATHETIC

Quarrelsome

Revolting, repulsive, remarkably repugnant
Stinking, shameless, sorry soul

Totally and
Utterly
Vile, vulgar and vicious

Wicked

- Jo

Just coz I love this so...

Pretty Pinky Lappy

I got my lazy ass down to saving my stuff from this old compaq to an external HD, set up the pretty pink laptop I bought during the last IT fair but try as I might, I can't connect to the internet.

It's back to this old laggy one again but at least now I feel safer that my folders have all been backed up.

Halloween 2009 -- East VS West

I know it is a little late to post Halloween pictures here when all the hullabaloo and strings of hilarious remarks have already gone stale on Facebook but...

On my blog, everything is always late right?

;P

Halloween 2009 was a blast coz it was the 1st time ever that my hubby participated and willingly let me do his make up.

It was also great fun to have his friends and my friends partying together. I reckon that after the wedding, we all sorta knew one another better and got along quite well.

My bro-in-law went to rent costumes for kh and himself w/o even telling kh what he was getting for him. It was almost like a make-do-with-whatever-I-get-you-I-dun-give-an-eff gesture.

His friends were so ONZ that a bunch of them went to rent costumes with similar theme. After kh and I knew what they were dressing up as, we mentally declared Halloween 2009 theme as:

East vs West

~

"We'll go to your family house ok? Coz your parents are so used to us and we dun wanna scare your parents-in-law by going to your current house." -- you know who you are

It seems like a tradition to gather at my place to make up and dress up before heading to paint the town red.

This year, there were addition of members and my little room almost became a sardine can.




Kh was the first to be transformed to... gee we dunno what he was. DEATH?



We were all rather confuse this year.

The only person sure of her character was gera who came dressed as fallen cupid.



I think evan was a deranged life sized puppet who was raped and killed.

Tif was a Chinese ghost.

JQ was... well... kinda confused.

Fabio was a Westerner trying to be an Easterner with ethinic motif on one eye and jester patch on the other eye. In short, confused.

As for me, I am Goth __________. I dunno what to fill in the blank with. Goth Jo?

Zanne arrived much later and I think she was Goth whatever too.



Ooh... we're almost ready.



My da jie likes to take parting shots of us every year.



Those on my Facebook friend list can view the shaky video taken by my er jie on her hp here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=160277&id=741817783&saved#/video/video.php?v=163115491663

No, we didn't scare the taxi uncle. It was quite exciting looking into other cabs and seeing ghosts and ghouls in them as well.



Kh's frenz were all there at Zouk waiting to tekan him.



They dubbed themselves Tang Dynasty but of coz, after everything, we realised that pigtails are quite modern and should be Qing Dynasty instead... I think.

They looked like jiang shi but they kept insisting they were "Tang Dynasty". -_- |||

The jiang shi-s were hot property coz so many clubbers kept dragging the whole lot of them to snap pictures. That's what would happen when you dress as a theme. Poor Eug (the very very nice and sweet wife-to-be of one of kh's buddies) was always left out when the jiang shi-s were dragged away.











The West got sick of being West and so started going East by wearing part of the Eastern costume. Actually it was more of the Eastern ghosts being sick of their costumes and dumping their sweaty caps on our heads.



When kh went off to the loo, he had to go without his cape coz DUH... he didn't want to soak up all the puke and what-nots in the loo by dragging his cape across the filthy floor. This leaves me with a chance to assume a different identity.

Snow White's stepmum incognito








Ghost and ghouls do get hungry... so off we went to eat bak kut teh.



There were some unpleasant happenings at the bak kut teh stall but fortunately the ghostly entourage managed to "fight back".

Edited to add:
The people there practise price discrimination. Fancy charging 12 of us $170+ for normal bak kut teh with drinks. They thought we were drunk and they could carrot chop us. For those who frequent the nearest bak kut teh stall near Zouk, please take note when paying the bill. Ask them for the break down of prices if you think that the final sum they quote you is too much.

That was what the guys did. The guys counted out aloud the break down from the soup, to the rice to the extra dishes and finally at the drinks, they sacarstically exclaimed that our drinks cost $100++. The stallholders were dumbfounded.


~

Sweet Eug lent me a beautiful mask which she got from Europe and I almost swayed from my goth idea to dress in masquerade theme.



Ghosts retiring when dawn broke.



Time to get a good eye shut.



Kh and I slept from sunrise till sunset. That was the 1st time I slept the whole day away.

Glad that everyone enjoyed themselves. As what everyone had said after the party over sms...

"We should do this more often!"


Edited to add photos from eug's camera