Friday, 30th December 2005: It's another half day in the office today. I was late. I couldn't wake up since my MaMa (hehe) have gone to Malaysia for a holiday. She's also my alarm clock. "Ah Girl Ah... U STILL in bed? Time to go to work!!" Without that I can't seem to get out of my bed eventhough I had my hp alarm clock set. Bizarre. Seems like today 3 people (who begin with 'M') are departing for Malaysia today....Mummy, Merv and aMleth (hehehe.. okie, corny pun..).

Anyway, we were trying to beat the clock in the office by rushing out whatever that needs to be done. Being the official last working day of the year... we were expecting and hoping to receive our increment/promotion letters. 1230pm: checked my email and still no announcement whatsoever. Sigh... time seems to have come to a complete standstill.

I was supposed to hit the streets with Sandi after work today but we stayed back a little to wait for the letter. It was 2pm when we received the letter and I opened the envelope sealing my fate. I just wanna Thank God for his grace once more... It said I was promoted to Senior 2. So happy!!!!!!! So please join me in congratulating myself.... HAHAHAH... okie that sounds a tad narcissistic. =P

After that, Sandi, Yilin & I were so famished....we left the office almost immediately for food.
Yilin suggested Pepper Lunch. I have always wanted to try out this eatery but never got down to it. So of cos I happily accepted her suggestion. A good meal to round off the day.

Yesss.... Sizzle ur way at Pepper Lunch... most of the meals had pepper to it.. thus... Pepper Lunch..

Sandi & I. Hungry women are not so radiant women. Okie that applies to me solely. Lol....

Trying to take an artistic shot of Yilin here...hehe.. :)

These are the delectable sauces that are meant to spice up ur tastebuds. Zee~ freshly grinded pepper. Zee~ garlice soya sauce (silver cap) and zee~ honey brown sauce... Okie, I cannot pass off impersonating how the french introduce food. Hahaha...

Finally our food came... & from the pics below you can see who had what for lunch!

Yilin's Pepper Beef Rice set came 1st. Looks very good...... yum....


2nd was Sandi's Pepper Chicken set...Uurrgghh.. Where's mine? hungry people are angry people!! hehehe...

Finally my food arrived!! I had to quickly take a pic of it before my beef become rocks...!!!

Chef Yilin demonstrates to us (with her adorable pout.. can u see? I think she looks absolutely cute here..) how to cook ur food....


Step1: Spread the butter (if yours come with butter.. not all have i think)
Step 2: Quickly turn ur food over before the hot plate stops sizzling..if not ur food will become burnt.
Step 3: If you wanna add the sauces to 'spice' up ur food.. add to ur tastebud's discretion
Step 4: (My own step) You may wish to blow the food before popping it into ur mouth if not u will scald urself. :P And it will become Fiery Lunch instead Of Pepper Lunch.
Step 5: Chew & Smile... hahahahhahaha

Yummy!! 2 thumbs up!!! Pls go try it if you have yet to..... If you don't like it.. don't come looking for me... hahahaha.... And that was my Friday. After that, Sandi & I went shopping and I went home and K.O.

Cycling on Boxing Day

I was sooooo tired... I didn't wanna drag my almost lifeless body out of my comfy bed. I was wishing for rain so that the cycling trip would be cancelled. But alas!! The weather decided I need to get my butt out there to burn some calories.

When we started cycling.... I felt less lethargic and any regrets felt earlier on, vanished almost instantaneously. =) Boy, was I glad that I made my way out of bed to come for this cycling session.

2 boys & their bikes

...

3 boys, a girl and their bikes...

We cycled to another end of old fort road where few cyclists ventured and I paused to take a picture of the "woods". I like this picture very much...

Merv took this shot of me... nice.. I like it too!


Don't know why I just decided to stop cycling half way just to take this pic. Quite like it.

Horizontal perspective:

Jetty @Old fort Road side. Somehow.... this pic..makes me feel or think that it's those kind of retro pics you see in ur family photo album where ur mum or dad takes a pic of.... maybe its the yellow building thingy in the pic...don't know ..don't ask me why!!


Meng chong with his blades... Only brother who blade that day. Well done!! When I took this pic... I had to back away from him a few more steps just so that he can FIT into my 2.5" camera LCD. Can you imagine? 2.5" LCD I still cannot capture him entirely on my camera until I back away. Lol..hehehe.. sure his name not yangming? Kiddin...


Yangming.. I meant Meng Chong.. hehe.. had to "lower" himself once again to take pics with Gab & Adelyn.. Btw.. if you squint hard enough ... you will wonder if Gab is sleeping while smiling or he is squinting his eyes.... Can't figure.. I think is the earlier. hahaha..


Hobbits trying to sell 100 plus to Gandalf. =D


Transaction closed. Gandalf happy with his purchase.

The happy hobbits trying to clear their remaining 100 plus stocks..after selling 1.


Me playing with my camera feature "Photo Ascent" Captured yellow and all other things similar in shade and the rest is monochrome.


Pics from Mervyn's cam:




And that's our cycling trip..
Note: The skies were mainly cloudy .. YET I got sunburnt.. Poor me!!! Hehehe..

Christmas Service On Friday, 23rd Dec'05

It's half day in office today! I'm feeling the festive vibes already thus my bling bling top! =) And of cos, my office photo buddy came round my desk to say hi. Joel was in his new top as well a nice Muji shirt.... Since we are both in new tops and feeling rather festive.. we decided to take a picture of cos!!!

Nice or not our new tops? Hehehe..

When our official half work day was over, we went for a late lunch at a Sze Chuan resturant @Amara Hotel, called Silk Road.

Liz and Lily....my new team mates..

Yilin & I ....

Brought Ben to our church Christmas service today and we took a picture before he departed and met his friends. Glad he made it to the service eventhough he just arrived in Singapore this morning. Thanks, Ben!

Company Christmas Event

3pm today, we'll be heading to Fort Canning for our department (Tax - Human Capital) Christmas-cum-team building event.

Brought my baby today and as expected, my fellow colleagues are a bunch of NON-camera shy folks. Which I think it's good.... better than people who scurry away from the camera... And you end up not taking any shots.

So here are some shots while we await 3pm's arrival.

While photo-taking, I started receiving an influx of Christmas presents from my sweet colleagues!! So nice of all of them!!

Joel gave me the orange Christian CD from his church. I like the songs and can't believe that the girl from his church youth section sang so well!!

Pann gave me the Mambo Goddess Keychain in pink. He said the minute he saw this he knew that it was definitely for me! Hahaha... Lol.

Cluster of presents included a present from Yilin & the Gingerbreadman, a pair of dangling earrings from Noel in small red packet. Big blue present is from Patrick...the pink pig handphone holder that is oh-so-adorable is from him! And a Precious Moments momento from Weeslee. Below is a cute elephant photo holder from Yilin. Good taste girl! =) And the bottom present is a pink mug from Lily. I asked Lily how does she know I like pink and she said 'Normally, vain girls like pink...hehe'.. wahahhaa... I had to agree unfortunately! Heheh.

Angie & Liz, after they changed their attire to prepare for the team building event, they gave a kawaii pose! Hahaha... Christmas sure does make people merry at heart!

Boarding the bus to fort canning, while Joel was ticking the attendance... as you can tell from the pics... we entertained ourselves by making funny faces.

Finally, we arrived at our destination. Fort Canning Centre!

Heard that there will be cooking classes as well as team building games today... While waiting, Sandi, me, Yilin & Weeslee took a photo together...

We have to get to the grass patch where our games would be held..... hmm... have not been to this place for some time now... it's quite scenic with the rather "colonial" kind of architecture building.

And soon we found our hands entangled as we were playing entanglement with like 60+ other people in the department. As you can see from the pics... people have to squat, cross over each other, go underneath people's armpits (hahaha... its a hilarious sight thats why I like this game..) and in the meantime... while the rest were detangling themselves, Liz, myself & Angie were already detangled and relaxing..waiting for the rest to finish.

Next, we played blindfold christmas tree. Basically any asst. managers & above have to be blindfoldeed and seniors & below have to pair up, tie our legs together and go find the blindfolded people to form a christmas tree without communicating with them verbally. I was paired with Liz so we just grabbed Lily and yanked (okie, not so violent... guided her by gentle pushing and pulling) till we are in position... From the 3rd pic, you can see Pann being bullied by the seniors as they led him in a big roundabout and Pann was screaming Molest & Help while he was being led. hahaha... Finally, we form a Christmas tree!!

Afterwhich we had a spice hunt where we had to go in our groups and searched for spices in the spice garden at fort canning. It was fun although the fat drizzle of raindrops were pitter pattering on our heads and got my hair ather drenched. The spice hunt came to an abrupt end when the drizzle became too heavy and we returned indoors. Inside, we have to use whatever spices provided to us to form a picture of either christmas, or of our company, whatever we deem fit. And here are some of the creations:

Then we started our cooking classes at the Singapore Culinary Academy called "at-sunrice".

As you can see, the kitchen below looks wow!

Nice right the kitchen? Well, to me its not bad at least..

After awhile the lesson got a bit dreary as Patrick & I were too tired from the earlier games. As you can see, we weren't paying attention to the cooking class and secretly took pics of ourselves while the lesson was conducted. tsk tsk!! Hahaha..

Patrick posing as Chucky with the Chucky lookalike knife and me supposedly to be a psycho housewife. hehehe...

Don't think we play play our food not nice ok!! Our mango spring roll Viet style and our herbal roasted chicken turned out well!!!!! *yummm....*

Patrick & Yilin posing with their mango Spring rolls as well. Looks good!!!!

After that we have to eat what we cook!! *gulps* hahah... accompanied by candlelight!!! Well.. the food turned out good... really. The chicken was cleaned off its plate! *Slurps*

Took this picture of plants for the fun of it after dinner..

When dinner was done, we proceeded to have some christmas carols before the gift exchange. Look at the presents by the mini christmas tree. Hehe.. lovely.

The Christmas carol group. Joel leading with the guitar and Noelle and Joyce as choir!!

Finally to end the night.... Assignment services rulez!!!!!

Going To Max Out Soon...

Uuurrgghhhh! Okie... I just need an outlet. It's 2 days to Christmas eve and I'm drowning in a sea of emails..... personal emails reached a record high of more than 30 emails in a single day ..just today alone! *Faint*

That aside.. I never think that the day would come for me to say this but I have been so busy shopping for Christmas presents, Christmas stuff, Christmas this and Christmas that... that I'm sick of shopping or hitting the streets.....*gasp in horror* Okie.. at least for now. I just wanna be home and sleeeeeeep and recuperate..

On top of that.. am so swamped with new account work, previous account adhoc work, adhoc account work and also will be covering for a colleague on her account when she goes on leave. Arrrhhhhhhhh!!

**Reminder to myself: Tis the season to be jolly... Tis the season to be jolly....**

Disclaimer: I still love christmas amongst all other seasons ... just that am gonna maxed out soon. Someone send me a teddy bear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I need a hug!!!! lol.. Okie.. turning in now... zzzZZZZZ....

2 Weeks Before Christmas

Gonna blog the entire week's events and stuff in a single entry here...so please go grab ur popcorn, ur refreshments and drinks or go pee break first ... hahahaha .... cos I lazy la..... wanna blog one shot at a go. :) Pardon moi~ ya?

Monday: Came into work feeling a little sad. Cos I'll be shifting out of the nice fishtank of my office and will miss my working neighbours since I will be going onto a new account. So I have to sit near my new team.. which isn't too bad ... just that I've grown accustomed to having a wall to hang my 'art gallery'.. hahahhaa..Yan helped me to shift my stuff to the new desk... Thanks Yan! And here I am with a new account, new team, new policies to learn and I think this is a good start for the new year also. I thank God for being faithful to me.... for giving me this account to work on.

Anyway... guess where's my desk?

My new team and my new seating area...
Here's a clearer pic of my desk

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Tuesday: Met up with Serene for dinner to have a mini celebration for clearing our final exams and being able to throw our grad hats high on convocation .....NEXT YEAR. haha.. I teased her by congratulating her for passing & she laughed and congratulated me back. After some shopping, we went to Republic Food Court (If memory did not fail me) @Wisma Atria. The food seems appealing but we ended up ordering Dim Sum. Lol...we had a good catching up session. I like & miss talking to Serene... she is someone that I feel very free telling about everything and anything about.. without worrying that she will pass judgement on me or anything like dat.

Strangely when I think back.. I only know her for like almost a year and yet we definitely gelled from the start. I was glad to see her and told her about some thoughts that were bugging me for sometime already. The talk was good.....Babe, if you're reading this.. I wish we have classes sometimes cos now without classes..we cannot doodle and laugh during lectures. Hahaha..
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Wednesday: Yahoo email account was quite flooded with emails about a birthday party surprise we were planning for Ink on the coming Friday for his birthday and I was cracking my head for a good sabotage. And that was Wednesday.

Thursday: Frankly..I can't remember.. Hehehehe..
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Friday: Finally!! Received nice chocolates from the new account's vendor.. very nice & pretty.. rembrandt art...classy.

The weekend hits and the party that we planned for so long is going to materialise. So at 6:15pm I was happily shutting down my comp when I received a call from Ty at about 6:20pmish that the birthday boy Ink has to work OT until goodness knows when. UURRGgghHHH.... The phrase "man proposes.. God disposes" came to my mind! Quickly prayed and seek divine intervention!!

Anyway to cut things short... we headed over to Ink's and while waiting for him to come home we blew balloons.. drew on it and took group pics and sang a Happy Birthday "MTV" to send to Ink since he was at work still at that time.

Ming printed some of these nice looking fonts and pasted in Ink's study room to decorate the place:


Check out the ballons that Organiser Ming bought..

Cute right?

From:

To:

By our creative Reina...look like powerpuff girls not? hee hee..

More balloons:

(Balloon portrait of Irving? Hehehe)

Balloons galore!


Me & my lemon boy balloon:


Funny face group shot:


When we got round that Birthday boy is back .. we spring a surprise on him cos he thought we have all gone home already and then we sang a nice birthday song that Ming composed and proceeded to cake cutting. The cake is sooooo Ink!


After cake cutting or was it before? (My memory is running short this week man... too tired from the so many things to do) I recited the poem I came up with for Ink (after CS, Ming & Merv reviewed..heheh). Some of you have asked me to post the poem here and so I will:

Our Care Leader

A great leader is one where people can approach...
One who never fails to adorn a smile.
One who takes time to also crack small jokes.
And one who's never hostile.

Many a time, he is tired & exhausted,
And eventhough sometimes we rebel,
That didn't stop him from caring..
To ensure that we are all well

It's tough following-up with everyone
When the group is more than twelve
Don't know how he did it...
When he doesn't even have time for himself
We're blessed with a leader & brother in Christ
Who never fails to encourage and give us good advice

A caregroup was started this year in March
and you were a leader anew...
Almost a year has gone by now
and we look back to review
From strangers to friends to a knitted family...
The caregroup is where it is today...
all because of you.

After that was the SABO!!! So knowing how Ink is very well read... we decided to give him TRIVIA with a twist of cos.. hehehe. Every wrong question he answered his fingernail would have to be painted! Hehe.. and of cos.... I set the answers.. which means... whatever multiple choice answers he picked are the wrong answers. Hahahah..The right ones have been removed. Hahah.. and luckily knowing how smart our CL is... I prepared another TRIVIA qns on capitals of the world as Ink quickly found out that the 1st set of trivia qns have been doctored. Hahahaha..

Here are some pics:

Ink cracking his head to think on the capitals of the world..

Saboed!! Ming happily painting Ink's nails.

All Pink!! Cos we picked all the hardest countries for Ink to guess the country's capitals..

Still at it! hahaha..

We were laughing hard at this picture because the head of the ballon deflated and it looks like a character in Beetlejuice. Lol.


Ink as Lemon Boy:

Say Cheese!!! Hahahhaa..

And finally! Group pictures with the birthday boy in it:

okie... I specially cropped out Wee Leong's face cos it's super farnieeeeeee!

Never seen Wee Leong's face like dat before.. ahahahaha...
Another group shot.... hehehe


After the group shots we headed down to Geylang for Ink's dinner (Us supper)... the party was well planned by Ming and everyone coordinated well.. it was fun seeing Ink shocked when we sprint the surprise on him. Think I'm gonna be soOooooooo dead when it comes to my birthday next year.. I suspect my dear CL will wanna get "even" or more than even on the sabos.... hahahahhhaa....