Happy Birthday Cobby 2011

Thru Cobby's workplace, we managed to book a night's stay at the Ritz Carlton at a very good price. So we decided to make it a birthday treat for Cobby! Before we checked in, we had lunch at one of our favourite place, 2nd Mini Steamboat. We usually eat alone, so it's different with Jolie around. (BTW, check out Cobby's Liverpool jersey! Hope that his team would have more luck this year, go Liverpool!)

After a long wait, we finally checked into the Ritz Carlton! First thing we checked out was their famous bathroom with the giant window overlooking the city. Cool!

The bedroom has a sofa area, a desk and of course, a king size bed! The sheets were crazily soft, but the downside to everything was that they have ran out of extra beds! DUH!!! The last time the whole family shared a bed, we were at Sentosa and Jolie-the terrible kept us up all night. I was hoping that we wouldn't have to go thru that again, but no such luck!

Anyway, it was nap time for Jo, so we made her take a nap. After her nap, we headed down to the pool. It's pretty cloudy and cool, but we went anyway. The water in the pool was too cold to swim in, but thankfully they have a warm jacuzzi pool, so it's like swimming in a giant bathtub! SUPER SHIOK! Cobby and I didn't want to get out, but Jolie was determined to torture us by dragging us to the freezing pool every once in awhile.

After we've washed up, we headed out for dinner at the Food Street at the Singapore Flyer.

After dinner we went for a ride on the Singapore rider. The last time we were there, Marina Bay Sands wasn't even finished building yet, so this time round the view was spectacular! My home country looks SO beautiful! *PROUD*

I've promised Cobby a birthday cake, so after the ride we went to Marina Square for a slice of cake. Too bad there's no candles!

Happy Birthday Cobby! I love you!
Last year's celebration

Service Balcony Revamp

Chinese New Year's coming, so naturally my mind is in full gear once again. Cleaning, baking, and most importantly, rearranging furniture to maximise storage space. There seemed to be quite alot of potential in my service balcony, so after some discussions and measurements, we headed down to IKEA to hunt for our cupboards.

We decided on something more hardy, so we chose the FAKTUM kitchen cabinet series. I love the flexibility of IKEA furniture, how we can custom make the whole cupboard according to our needs. It was too big for us to carry home, so we arranged for delivery the next day.


It didn't help that the IKEA delivery men work on rubber-band timing:

The delivery slip says 3pm-6pm.
At 3.30pm they say they'll be there in 30mins
They arrived nearing 5pm. -_-


We made a decision to put together the cupboard ourselves. Afterall, Cobby and I were experts in putting together IKEA furniture. I mean, how hard can that be right? Turns out that the cupboard was the toughest thing we have ever assembled. Not because it was complicated or anything. It's just that, there were SO many parts, and the thing was quite tall, so most parts were tall, long, heavy and tough to manoeuvre around our little kitchen.

Not forgetting we weren't experts, so much time was taken up figuring out the instructions and the trial and error of putting things in, taking it out and putting things in again. THANKFULLY, Cobby decided to buy a BOSCH heavy duty cordless screwdriver a few days ahead and that has helped tremendously during the assembly.

Meanwhile, Jolie was at my Mom's place. So we quickly got to work, but we had to stop around 6.30pm, as it was getting late. We had to go to mom's place for dinner and pick up Jolie. Besides, we could tell we were getting tired when Cobby counted the number of holes in the cupboard 3 times and still gets it wrong! Hahaha...

So we quickly cleaned up and headed to Mom's place. When we got back, Cobby wanted to finish it, so we got busy again and put on the finishing pieces. Finally it's done!

I loved my new cupboards to the max!!! The smaller one was made a day earlier, simple one to keep all my rags and cleaning tools and double as a bamboo stick holder. The big one was so spacious, we managed to liberate quite alot of space in the store room by transferring some stuff over. So happy! Best of all, we managed to finish it in a day, so tomorrow, we could check in into the Ritz Carlton and enjoy our little family vacation in peace. Cheers to that!

Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas! Yesterday Cobby was on duty, so we waited for him to come home in the morning before we opened our presents. Last year, we bought Jolie a bike. This year, we went easy and bought something more simple.

A snapping crocodile game! Jolie loved the mini version while we were in Hong Kong, so Cobby chose decided to buy her a giant one. Unfortunately, now she's so nervous that the crocodile would snap at her hands that she wouldn't even play with it! -_- But Cobby and I loved it. Hehe...

Jolie always loved playing with balls, and loved a game of throwing balls into makeshift baskets. So I chose a mini basketball with hoop. The hoop could hook onto any door, so it was really versatile. We were playing with it in our PJs and challenging each other. Super fun!

For Cobby, I bought him the same basketball and hoop so that he could put it in his office. :) I've got my Xmas presents a few months ahead. It's a brand new camera, Canon Powershot S95. Super awesome camera, love it much much!

After washing up, I heated up some left-over pancakes from the freezer for breakfast. But since it's Xmas, I jazzed it up by making a chocolate sauce for dipping! Oooh, it was so good! Jolie and I loved it!

After breakfast, we left Jolie with MIL while Cobby and I went to Marina Bay Sands to catch WICKED. I would say it's like a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, a story of the characters before Dorothy dropped in.

During the interval, we pampered ourselves with a glass of bubbly champagne! Merry Christmas!

It was great! Great story, great acting, great songs and brilliant costumes! Money well spent! After the show, we walked to the Robinsons inside Marina Bay Sands, as I remembered that they actually displayed the costumes of the 2 main casts in their window.

That night, we headed out to New Ubin Seafood for a seafood dinner!

What an eventful day, Happy Christmas!

Xmas Eve Tea Party 2011

It has been so long since I've met up with my 2 poly friends, so I was suddenly inspired to invite them out for tea on Christmas eve. I love my friend Ting Ting, but she have a serious habit of cancelling on us last minute, so in my invitation, I added a "no last minute cancellations allowed!" clause. Alas, I forgot to add the "DO NOT BE LATE" clause, so as expected, our tea party started very late!

Our 3pm date ended up with me and Serene meeting up at 3.30pm at TWG ION, then Ting said she would be here at 4pm, so after a long queue, Serene and I settled down and enjoyed our tea and super yummy sandwiches.

Only nearing 5pm, Ting said she's arrived, with her 2 kids!! There's no space for another 2 seats! So we had to finish our food and find another location at ION. We went to...

Marmalade pantry - full house
Coffee bean - full house
Starbucks - full house

Finally we settled for TCC after queuing for 10mins, by then it was already 5pm plus! But Serene and I still ordered a drink and accompanied Ting and her kids awhile before we bade farewell.

Serene had to go home for Christmas dinner and I had to go fetch Jolie at my Mom's place. Cobby had to do duty, so it's just me and Jolie tonight. Although short, it was nice to meet up with my friends. Hope we can still keep in touch no matter how busy our lives get.

过冬 2011

Mom wasn't planning to celebrate 过冬 this year, but since Bro said he was coming home for lunch, Mom asked me to bring Jo over for lunch, and we'll go over to MIL's place for dinner in the evening. I didn't have breakfast at home, so when I went over, I got to eat Mom's delicious 汤圆, which has gula melaka filling with sweet ginger and pandan soup. Yum! Our family's 汤圆 is the best! Home made, unique and delicious!

Lunch was excellent as expected, like CNY feast!

Jolie wasn't a fan of 汤圆, so we gave her a mini cornetto instead.

After lunch I coaxed Jolie to take her nap and went for my dental appointment. In the evening, I asked Cobby to drop by my Mom's place after work so that we can go to MIL's place together. Taxi fare is so expensive, and I hate to take the bus and train in this wet wet weather.

For dinner at MIL's place, we had steamboat. We ate so much that we exclaimed that couldn't take another bite! But shortly after that we were asking why there wasn't any 汤圆! Haha, I guess even though we were super full, there's always room for 汤圆. Afterall, it's tradition, and it wouldn't be right without it.

So ends another year. How time flies! This was last year's entry.

Happy 6th ROM Anniversary!

Yesterday was our Registered Wedding Anniversary, and we had planned to drop Jo at my Mom's place and go for a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant before going to Serene's housewarming party in the evening. But we got caught up in our standard Saturday routine, which was to go watch a movie, and we totally forgot about our anniversary until we were on our way home that night.

Cobby was driving along when suddenly he exclaimed, "Oh Shit!!!". I thought he had left something back at Serene's place or something. Then he said that we forgot to go for our anniversary lunch. I was so clueless that I even retorted him, saying, "duh, that's tomorrow lah...". No sooner had the words left my mouth when I realised that he was right! Haha...

So the next day we dropped Jolie at MIL's place and went ahead with our original plan, lunch at Da Paolo Bistro Bar at Bukit Timah. We passed by the place before and heard good reviews of the place. As expected, it was a delicious lunch.

The appetizers and the main dishes were great, and the desserts were not bad, but not as fantastic. It was quite nice there, quiet, even for a Sunday lunch time. Unfortunately it proved to be too quiet, as it would be closing down this 27 Dec. Haha, it seems like Cobby and I are quite a jinx. Many eateries we patronize and like would end up closing down. Anyway, we were thankful for the great experience that afternoon. Happy 6th Anniversary dear, wishing us many more happy anniversaries to come!

Last year's entry: Happy 5th ROM Anniversary!

Movies and Parties

Watched Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol at Marina Square today. After the show, we wandered over to Suntec City and we saw that BMW was having a roadshow. The star appearance was definitely the BMW i8!

Super cool show with a super cool car. I'm not a fan of mission impossible, but this episode was pretty intense! Check out the trailer here.

Later that night we headed to Serene and Benny's housewarming party. Jolie was wandering around the house when she spotted a dust roller, so she started rolling the house! Haha, hey free labour! Need to collect pay from Serene. :P

So suay, her place was very windy, so the sudden cool wind gave me a bad cold! Thankfully a dose of panadol cold did the trick. Their new place was really nice and cosy. I missed having a brand new home! So clean, so tidy, so new, and you have a sense of new beginning. I missed that!

Graduation Party 2011

It has been a very distressing week, for reasons I shall not discuss here. But by Thursday, I felt better, and by Friday, I felt fine and ready to dive right into the festive mood of Jolie's graduation party.

Well, it wasn't exactly her graduation. She enrolled one year earlier then her classmates, so she would be doing another year in the playgroup while almost all of her classmates would be graduating.

I think Jo would be quite confused in the new school term as to where her best friends have gone.

MIL and SIL were there too, SIL took leave to come see Jolie perform!

It took a long while before they started. Everybody had to wait for students who were late. Hmph! So inconsiderate to make the whole school of children, parents and grandparents waiting! Anyway, there's two sessions in the playgroup. This was Jolie's group.

There were many performances, this is one of the shorter ones.

I wasn't bias, but Jolie's group was way better during the performance. The first group probably got stage fright and just stood there while only one or two sang and danced. Jolie's group sang and danced and recite poems with so much enthusiasm! It wasn't award winning performance, but it was loud, lively, joyous and carefree, it really puts a smile on the adult's face.

So after the song and dance, everybody rushed out to pig out on food prepared by the family members of the students. Look at the spread! Everybody was bringing stuff like cakes and bee hoon and fish ball. I thought it would be good for the kids to have something nutritious, so I made watermelon and honeydew balls. The honeydew was so small, it outnumbered the watermelon by too much! So I hollowed out the half watermelon and used it as a bowl to put the rest of the watermelon balls.

Everybody was like "wah, so cute! so much effort just to make the balls!". But seriously, I think I did the least work there. It was so quick and simple as compared to fried bee hoon! Heehee...

Because my dish was "disposable", I didn't even had to wait for everybody to finish before leaving. We're going Hong Kong early next morning, and I haven't finish packing yet, so we bade farewell and went home. Happy Graduation!

Kite Flying at Marina Barrage

I don't know why, but Cobby had a urge to go Marina Barrage to fly kite. Well, it was a very beautiful and sunny day, so went after Jolie woke up from her nap. The only kite we had was a crappy Winnie the pooh kite that won't fly, so we decided to buy a proper one at the store there. Everybody was buying kites with cool modern colours or with silly cartoon characters, but I spotted one in a corner with a big traditional print of a pink goldfish, and I knew that's the one. It's also the cheapest, I guess it wasn't very popular, which made me love it more.

Like I said, it was a very sunny and windy day, perfect conditions for flying kite, so as expected, the place was quite crowded. The wind was so strong that it didn't take much effort before our kite was airborne. But Jolie kept jumping up and down, wanting to fly the kite herself, so we locked the line and let her hold her kite. Look at her proud and happy face...

It wasn't difficult to fly the kite, the only challenge was to get it to go really high up. I keep working on it, but there was simply TOO MANY kites in that small area! So we ended up getting tangled with other kites quite often, so each time we had to start over again, frustrating!

Before we knew it, the sun was setting and it was time to go for dinner.

Just as we finished packing up the kite, Jolie found herself some new playmates. A bunch of teenagers were kicking a ball around and Jolie decided to join them in the game. I was worried that they may find her annoying, but surprisingly, they were very nice and let her kick the ball with them. So sweet! I'm so happy that my baby girl is so extrovert and sociable, and proud as can be as the teenagers exclaimed in surprise how well she can kick the ball.

As we sat and watch Jolie play, the setting sun was casting this brilliant colours over the horizon. At that moment I felt so at peace. I felt so proud and fortunate that my country is so beautiful, and that I was blessed with a loving husband and a wonderful daughter. At the moment in time, to me, the world was perfect.

Visit to Jacob Ballas Children's Garden

One time, while dining out, we spotted a road sign to the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden. I've heard a few friends bring their children there, so we decided to bring Jo there too.

In my defence, I didn't think that the Chinese top was appropriate for a trip to the gardens, but the Princess insisted on wearing it. What to do?

Anyway, at the carpark I was wondering why was most of the kids were in wet clothes and holding towels. Apparently, there's a play fountain and most of the parents and their kids would go straight there. There's also a playground right near the entrance of the park, which I thought was super stupid. After seeing the water fountains and the playground, which kid would want to move on to look at plants? Duh, so we were "stuck" there for quite awhile before we tore our screaming toddler away. We didn't drive all the way there to play in the playground only!

Anyways, after a mini tantrum session, we moved on and got to see quite alot of interesting parts of the garden.

I think it would be more educational with a guide, or more information about the plants other then just their scientific name. But Jolie had alot of fun with the tree house, mini draw-bridges and other kids friendly stuff.

Happy Halloween

I never celebrate Halloween, I think it is a meaningless, commercialized holiday. So I didn't really liked it when Jolie's teachers celebrated by giving them each a bag of sweets. (*frown*) But I did like the pumkin mask that they made in class. It's simple but the small paper plate fits Jo's face perfectly and she had alot of fun with it. She would wear it and shout "BOO!". Very cute...

On top of that, the Disney channel is filled with Halloween specials, so she learned to say, "spoooky..." in a spooky voice. Very cute too.

Punggol Waterway Opening

We heard on the radio that the new Punggol waterway was opening, so we asked MIL and SIL along for a walk and dinner afterwards. They should build a public parking space nearby, there's nowhere to park our car! Both sides of the street was lined with cars parked illegally. After driving around for awhile, we found a spot just as someone was leaving. Lucky!

The place was packed! I think there was some sort of activities there too.

Jolie was so excited with all the people around and all the space for her to run and hop. But we had to keep reminding her to stay on the pedestrian walkway. There were many cyclists!

We walked away from the event area and enjoyed the peaceful park.

After awhile, our Princess decided to take an egg tart break. Ah Ma exclaimed that it's too hot and sunny for her little precious, so she quickly whip out her trusty umbrella while her majesty enjoys her snack. The rest of us just hung around in the afternoon sun, waiting for her to finish. -_-

No time is wasted as we took some nice photos while we wait.

Time to try out my new camera!

Jolie saw us jumping and decided to do some jumping herself too!

I like the stairways to the water edge. Jolie likes to throw little rocks into the water, but her sitting on the edge made MIL and Cobby super nervous. Don't worry, the water at the edge was quite shallow.

After that, we headed to Sakura Charcoal Grill and Shabu Shabu. Located at Marina Country Club, it was only a few minutes drive away from the park. As most people stayed at the park for the fireworks, the place wasn't too crowded.

It was our first time there, and I really liked it! We got an outdoor seat and it was just next to the waters. The satay was really yummy, and there was more food then we could eat. MIL and SIL don't eat beef, so I didn't even got the beef for the steamboat. But it was enough food to fill our tummy. We were so full that I almost forgot about dessert! My favourite was their durian puffs. So durian-ny!

When I told my beautician who does my facial about our trip to the park, she was quite amused. The young girl in her early twenties just don't understand why do we want to go to the park. "Why? What do you do there?" she asked. I tried to defend myself, explaining, "Well, we walked around... and... enjoyed the scenery... and...". Somehow, even I find it lame when you say it out loud. But really, it was quite fun. Hot and sunny, and made my skin all red, (beautician nagged at me for not putting sunblock) but it was a nice outdoor activity for the whole family.