Hello & Goodbye

First up, Happy Lunar New Year to all! May the Year of the Rabbit bring prosperity, good wealth and health to you and your family. Let’s all Huat together =)

As we usher in the Year of the Rabbit, I took the opportunity to reflect on the Year of the Tiger and what it brought. It sure was hell of a good year, the year that was very kind to me.

Here are my highlights (in somewhat a chronological order – the good and the bad)…

• Diagnosed with Alopecia areata, had steroids injected into my scalp (ouch!) and am almost recovered. It is still wispy but at least it is no longer patchy. Only a few people knew about it and the BF was extremely sweet – following me to each and every doctor’s appointment
• The Ex-Company went through a M&A – a most tumultuous time in my career as I worked without knowing what the future entails.
• Rock-Climbed!! Okay, it was not the first time I rock-climbed but doing it again was fun! I would love to do it again.
  

  Spidey to the rescue

• Bought 1/2 a car, the other 1/2 belongs to the BF! A Suzuki SX4, we named Sunday – because it starts with a “S” and contains a “Y” – heh. This little baby of ours have been draining my hard-earned money, but when the BF asked if I have ever regretted buying it – a big resounding “No”. It has been more of a blessing to have our own ride whenever we need it. (ps realised this is one of few pictures we have of Sunday, oops)

Sunday's Booty

• The IJ gal pals chartered a yatch for 1/2 a day and we set sailed to the middle of nowhere. It was one relaxing Sunday with us tanning on the deck and taking tonnes of pictures!
• Took a beating in paintball. My team lost 3 out of 3? Or was it 2 out of 2? Anyhow, we were the big losers of the day! It was my first time and probably my last – it can get quite boring eh.

This is war!

• Took Sunday out on her first roadtrip on a 4 car contingent (17 people!) to Melaka! It was one hell of a trip – so much drama, but way fun and one that we would remember for life (which only means that the teasing of mrbu will never end).

drama in melaka

• The IJ gals finally went on a trip together! Something we have been planning for the longest time ever. It was meant to be the Hen’s night for YW but alas, circumstances changed which meant we celebrated the Hen’s night without the Hen. I had lots of fun on the trip, shopping wasn’t as fulfilling with 5 girls of differing taste but what matters most is travelling with friends – talking cock and becoming much closer than before

I love bangkok - a different experience each time

• The biggest event of the year for the IJ gal pals – the one thing we talked about, discussed about, met ever so often about – the marriage of YW and YW. We were the jiemeis but this time extra special since it was for someone closer to us. Alas, we are looking forward to the next one already.. Cheers to that! (heh – speaking of which, we are so losing that bottle of champagne to Btham – boo). Congrats to the newly-wed!!

Wedding of the year!

• And the biggest event of the year for me – I found myself a new job!! I got lucky there – it is in a good firm with great culture and extremely nice team mates. My “neighbour” at work (our workstation is one arm’s length away) is almost like me – opinionated, judgmental and we both love rolling our eyes – except she is way worse than me. If you think I am opinionated, you haven’t met DNg. (okay, if you were the privileged few who has my password – things have moved a little on this front)
• One frivolous highlight: my first branded big ticket item =) the Bf bought me a LV – yums!
• The most important of all, my family and friends were all healthy and mostly happy (many found love in the Year of the Tiger).

Birthdays&Celebrations!!

Woa, that was quite a year for me. As it is, changes are on its way in the Year of the Rabbit and I am looking forward as usual to another great year.

Thank you to all who have been with me in the past year, be it in showing support and encouragement or simply by making my day or making me smile with your presence. Cheers!

Huat arh!

What a lazy Friday morning with everyone else still snug in bed, but here I am doing what I do best – online stalking surfing and blogging, if I do say. You know, I can’t believe that this has happened – that after so much effort put in – it has come to fruition. If you ask me, I am happy but at the same time – my usual fearful and worrisome nature comes to play. The IJgirls helped to allay some of it last night over dinner and drinks – but the monster is still in me, raging and taking charge of all my thoughts. What if?

You know, this is the one thing I fought so hard for – but it also seemed to happen so fast that it is catching me a lil’ unprepared. It is hard keeping it in, but keep it in I shall – until I cuddle it in a sweet embrace. No one asks. Time will only tell.

Ta, mates. Heh.

The ijclique celebrated B’s birthday this year with a Bang the wall! We met for a little rock climbing at Yishun Safra. We signed up with an independent climbing “school” located there. They have several climbing walls and when the instructor led us to the tallest wall, we all exclaimed – “are you sure?”.It was a  3 storeys high wall when there were other smaller scaled walls around.

A 2 hours climbing package with an instructor was only SGD100 for the six of us. Our instructor, Adnan (if I didn’t remember wrongly) was very encouraging and despite us signing up for the wrong thing (we chose to engage a harness instructor instead of signing up for a beginners climbing workshop), he was very detailed in his explanation and guided us through the rocks on the wall. He was shouting all the time and basically “walked” the course for us.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly, though a lil’ nerve-wrecking at first but we soon got along with the help of Adnan.

Gung-ho, fearless YW went first… and she set the benchmark so high, it was hard to beat until of course long limbs WY broke the record.

Yit climbed amidst a lot of screaming, B lacked some of those mental strength of Yit’s and Mel turned pale with blue. Me? My only aim was to not be the last! Hehe.

Side track: I have always wanted to try rock-climbing because I’ve always wanted to test my own mental strength or maybe really because of one of my favourite blog author. I have pestered the BF to go together but we haven’t found the right opportune to, so it was a good experience to try it out with the ijclique That said, I do want to go again!!! To challenge myself and go to greater heights! – literally. Perhaps I should ask the peeps along – don’t just waste those iron-pumped muscles on tight-fitting tee-shirts.  

After our 2 hours, we headed over to AMK hub for some lunch – Popeye’s and Koi!! A reward for our hard work. We then proceeded to B’s place to wash up, chit-chat and plan THE event of the year – The October Wedding!!

Girls being girls, we took nearly 2-3 hours to wash and dress up before we were ready to drive to Picotin at Bukit Timah for our nice dinner. We learnt our lessons from over-ordering, so this time round, we ordered and shared the dishes all around. I think we had steak, pizza, pastas, pork belly and some sides. This way, we could try a little of everything instead of being stuck with one lousy dish.

As usual, the topic of the day was the Wedding of the Year and our Hens’ night party in Bkk – although along the way we kept deviating from the topics. Hehe.

It was a fun-filled day and well-worth the hole in the pocket and the ache in the arms.

Putting to plan my New Year resolution (2) – January meet ups!  

Finally met up with my NTU mates for what-is-becoming our bi-annually meet up and catch up session. Funny how, we graduated from the same HR Consulting course in NTU but yet going such separate ways with some of us deviating from a HR career. We never fail to laugh at the same “strategic” jokes. This time though, it was more of a grilling session for us to find out more about Ah Bi, the newly attached.

My ijclique is meeting more and more often, as we come to the realization that the other is not as busy as we thought they are. Hehe, even so, having to coordinate 6 schedules can still be quite a headache, especially when we have B who keeps going off-course =_=

So anyhow, a bitching session was organized so that we can hear Yit’s side of the story as well as her juicy news. Really, we were there to show her support and accompany her while she mends her broken heart (or maybe, not).

We met at “The Book Café” located at the end of Mohd Sultan. It was so difficult to locate that place and it was a hot and long walk from the bus stop. I would definitely recommend the cafe as a relaxing place to hole up with a book. However, it was quite the gay magnet though, when we saw like two “couples” hanging out. One more thing, they have power plugs and free wireless internet access, perfect when for gossiping and stalking facebook. Hehe.

B left after our lively discussion and we headed to Robertson Walk for dinner. We tried Cafe Epicurious. The food was so-so only though I’ve heard rave reviews about its brunch menu (to the BF: next brunch place, perhaps?). I must say though as compared to its rowdy neighbour, Robertson Walk is a quiet enclave with the riverside dining and rather romantic settings. We were also entertained by the fireworks ignited from Chinatown.

Yit’s trademark fingers

Hehe, a gay couple was taking pictures and posing with “style”. We tried to emulate but fail!

After dinner, Yit, WY and I headed to town to meet up with some of the peeps. Matching making – fail! =_= but I had fun anyway.

And that’s the highlight of my January (other than the usual peeps meet-ups)… Oh wait, there is B’s birthday celebrations but that is a post for another day/time.

1. 一场欢嘻一场憂 – one typo error, one small mistake like that and it is enough to make me so grossly disappointed. Why like that. We are such selfish creatures aren’t we?

2. There is only one person other than the close ones whom I remember confiding to, so why was it that way? Have it been so easy to read me?

3. I met a primary school friend today and it is such a small world cause said friend is a friend of yl and a colleague of michelle. So queer. Funny how I can still remember snippets about her – what a good gymnast she was and that she lives in Toa Payoh. Her parents were hawkers at the de-funct TP hawker center? – last fact to be reconfirmed.

4. Are we jumping to conclusions? Nightmare of yester-years seem to have returned. The only problem is that there is nothing that can stop this train-wreck.

5. How do you instill family values in one? That sometimes, family comes first? Teach me to teach him.

The IJ clique celebrated our annual Christmas dinner on 18 December 2009. We had our first little gift exchange. Plans were changed due to some unforeseen circumstances and we ended up at Greenwood for Italian food at Donna Carmela. I had the ride for the weekend, offered to pick some of the girls up from Orchard – huge mistake, I was stuck in a traffic jam on the slopes of Orchard Road for a good 15 minutes, it was a damn stressful drive.

As usual, we entertained ourselves with chit-chats and plans for YW’s hen’s night for 2010!!

We had copious amount of food starting from the starters and our mains. The servings for the pastas were huge! I think most of us left about 1/2 of our food uneaten. The food was not up to my standard though, I could get better pasta else-where. I didn’t enjoy my food much.

We adjorned to another restaurant (some of them complained about the “noise”) to have desserts and do our little gift exchange.

Wondering why Mel was like this? That’s cause “she didn’t bring her gift exchange present”. Tsk tsk. Haha.

We had to guess who picked us and those who got it right will get to open their presents! There was much laughter at the gift for BT from me. I really thought hard on the gift! It would surely spice things up ;P

The night ended early as we concluded plans for our getaway 2010 and the north-siders had a taste of my reckless driving. Haha.

Till next year!

The outing look forever to organize, what with WY as the organizer but we eventually met up two Sundays ago and , boy was it a long day. It can be said that we went around the world Singapore, okay, around the Tanjong Pagar area or thereabouts but this was quite out of the norm for the usual sit-down and chow meet-ups we have.

The day started with brunch at Prive. Most of us had the Ultimate Breakfast, which as it’s name suggests is really ultimate with two eggs (scrambled or sunny-side up), bacon, toast, baked beans, baked tomatoes and a sausage. We also shared the pancakes – I love, love, love the whipped cream that comes with it. It sure was a heavy and filling meal.

At Prive

It was a really hot day and the heat was a little overbearing. I had requested for outdoors, al-fresco dining overlooking the beautiful and calming scenery and it was a bad decision on my part. We had the waiter shift the fans towards us but the make-up still melted at an alarming rate and we left quickly.

Next up, to Tanjong Pagar we go, famous for sleazy bars bridal shops! We went in to a few shops to ogle at all the pretty gowns and enquire about the packages. The bridesmaids’ dresses are really pretty and I so want to wear a tulle!! It is the few times you can dress like a cake and no one will say anything. The day was all about yw as we accompanied her and gave our two-cents worth on the gowns, one of the shops actually allowed her to try on two gowns which was against their policy! It was a touching sight and whoa, the reality sank in that she really is getting married!

The day didn’t end there, we headed over to Pit Stop Cafe at Boat Quay for two hours of games! We played some really brainless game – one ala heart attack, some murderer sorta game that we gave up after one round and Big Taboo (Bendy Bob, again!). It was fun, especially when we busy office girls just wanted to play brainless games. Hehe.

We loved the dog-bone game!

Mel's Classic Look

B left us and we drove to Novena to meet up with the groom-to-be, Ian and his friends for dinner! It was more chit-chat for the girls over dinner before we ended the night.

My, my it must have been one of the longest meet-up we had. A fun and fulfilling day!

Jump for joy! Do you hear it? The sound of wedding bells ringing? No? I do!!!! I am so excited….

Nope, not my wedding bells but I am excited nonetheless. It will be the first amongst us. A lil’ surprising since she has never given us any indication and just last night dropping the bomb on us, over a MSN chat with an “I have an announcement to make”. 

I’ve got a feeling… wooohooo… that Sunday is going to be a good day.