Hello & Goodbye

Got to thank the Tan family for an awesome time in Penang – they showed us what hospitality is all about. Our timing of the trip could have been better as we were of a little inconvenience but nonetheless the Tan family made our stay very enjoyable and certainly very well-fed

We can’t wait to reciprocate and bring Di and family around Singapore – first stop, Sg lor mee )

Thanks Di Your parents are awesome, what happened to you??? :p hahaha!!

And Happy Birthday to you too. I have found many others who share the same birthday but none as special as you and none as important as you – because without you, what would become of me, would there even be me?

As each year passes, the memories of you fade, we have been apart longer than we have been together – but there will always be a part of me who still clamours for your help whenever I hit a wall and I know and it comforts me to know that you are still around.

Happy Birthday

The BF and I have continued our “dates” on Saturdays and I am so loving the time we are spending together.

Aloy!Tom!Cycling!

On one of the Saturday, we headed to Shaw Towers for Thai Food – Ah Loy, highly recommended by The BF. I must say the food was really good. I loved most of the dishes that we ordered and the price was very reasonable too. The Thai Pineapple Rice was adequate for two to share with generous amounts of seafood. Across Ah Loy is Tom’s Palate, an ice cream joint that serves creative concoctions and changes their menu almost every other week. This time round, we tried the Fizzy ice cream! It was filled with chocolate pieces infused with the sweet that goes fizz in your mouth. Oohh.. after New Zealand’s Natural Hokey Pokey, this comes second.

With all that food, we headed to East Coast for a lil’ cycling. We cycled all the way, for nearly 2 hours before getting a call for duty from Vices Captain and we headed to Seaview for a bolt of Mj!

Sports Day!

Last Saturday, we had a blast! We worked it! In the morning, we headed to the range for a bit of golf and spent a good 2 hours in trying to perfect our stroke. Sometimes, I don’t understand why I still continue to play, perhaps I am like what his Brother says – “You no talent” – I just can’t get it right. While I have improved, my progress has been turtle slow and am so bad at it, sometimes, I just want to dig a hole and hide.

After that, we headed over to Kallang Leisure Park where we had lunch at Coffee Bean (the food sucks!) and then had an impromptu bowling session! I lost to him in the first round but kicked his ass in the second round, but of course with points given to me =)

We rushed back to his place to send his parents to their dinner function before heading to Bishan Park for a jog. That was our Sports Day and boy was I tired out from the day’s event. The BF even had the energy for some Royal Rumbling at home while I was totally zonked out. It sure was tiring but I truly enjoyed myself and very glad we are working at our Fitness level together =)

I’m lovin’ it. Our date Saturdays.

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.

The BF dated me out on Saturday – our first brunch together (alone!) as we headed to Riders Cafe. We finally got a chance to try it out after the previous failed attempt with Di. As usual, I had the usual English Breakfast – Rider’s Breakfast – I thought the food served was rather standard but liked the potatoes on the side very much. The serving was rather small for my standard, thankfully the BF ordered some sides to share - more of those potatoes and a plate of smoked salmon. The “eggs-intolerant” BF had to settle for the Pancakes with Berry Compote – the serving was huge but a tad too jialat to be eaten on its own.

After our rather enjoyable brunch – it has been a long time since we had such a long chat about random stuff – we headed over to Sunset Way where we finally tried “The Daily Scoopz” – the ice cream cafe. We both had 2 scoops each – him the strawberry and avocado and me the kookie monster as well as peppermint. The peppermint was a little too overbearing and I didn’t like the combination much.

(very sad incident happened afterwhich…)

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In the evening, we headed to the Golf range with Soon, the seowsis and hai after a hiatus of so many months. It was nice whacking the balls although I am still consistently bad at the game =_= Gotta work harder at it and no more breaks. Gotta work it, baby!

2009 marks my second year in the recreational club and I am so glad to relinquish my role as the chairperson. I could be part of the action without actually making all the major decisions. You know how people start to question you after the fact and when people complain? I hate that. There is a reason why we do somethings but some people just don’t understand. Duh.

Anyway rant aside, with the news of the merger, we only had time to plan for a mini Christmas party in the office. The event was held in our reception area. A group of us set up the Christmas tree in the morning and spent a good half of it decorating the place. I never knew decorating could be so fun! Spent a great time bonding with the colleagues.

The caterer that I chose on random – hantum-boleh-boleh – Lavish Dining turned out to be really good and received rave reviews from the employees. That was quite a relief. Food is always the most crucial elements in such staff events.

We also had a round of lucky draws with rather attractive prizes for such a mini event. And….. I won!!! Okay, not the grand prize (a SGD1000 travel voucher) or the 4D3N stay at Fairmont over the New Year’s holiday of which I was aiming for but… a microwave and SGD100 vouchers.

Be careful what you make fun of because I was so laughing at the microwave – making comments like “wah lao, so heavy. Suay ah the person who gets it” – and viola, my name is called for it.

See the big smile? I didn’t know what I won at that time! Oh well, I am not complaining. I guess it is always better to win something than not!!

The event was quite a success, I guess the sheer number of prizes satisfied most of the people. The event ended pretty early and the BF came by to pick me and the prize up!

Oh yes, we had our own department Christmas lunch too and it was an unsatisfying 3 course meal at Sage, The Restaurant (Fried eggs with Asparagus, Cod Fish, Fruit Soup with Sorbet). I enjoyed the Fruit Soup the most =_=  I still prefer the food at Flutes at the Fort, it was more gratifying.

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!