Celebrating my Grandmother's Birthday

My family celebrated my maternal grandma's birthday last evening with a specially arranged dinner in a private room at a club. Another family gathering time which I enjoyed. The food was great..and amidst the yummy dishes, we also belted out a few songs on the karaoke system they had in the room. Quite like some of the latest Jay Chou songs once again...I must say that his songs really do sound very similar but still cool!

Anyway, here are a few more pictures....

Family Portrait

Of packing and cooking...

Over the weekend we started to pack up our home a little. I guess you can consider this the start of our 'spring cleaning' before the Lunar New Year! Besides our usual weekly cleaning of our home, we were just packing up our wardrobe a bit so that it is less messy. Yes...throughout the course of the year, the home can get quite untidy indeed! Just putting some of our stuff into boxes which we bought from IKEA and Courts...

Another thing that we have started doing is to cook our own dinner on Mondays...well, we only started 2 weeks, and I can't be certain how long this will last, but it has been pretty fun so far :) It kinda gives you a little something to look forward to after work. Although technically speaking, Dear is the one really cooking, but I have certainly been helping with the food preparation and cooking parts of it like the beef bolognese sauce..hahah....

This weekend...

....did up my hair and also attended my jc classmate's wedding dinner. Not quite used to my new hairdo...hope it's not that bad?! Haha...

Anywayz, glad to see my ex-classmate get married. Quite an interesting background to her love story. Turns out that she and her hubby had a long distance relationship for many years before finally surviving through it all to settle down together. How many people are able to make such relationships last? To stand the test of time and distance...

Not a lot of my classmates turned up, so here's some of them:

Our 1st Wedding Anniversary... :- )

Now, for the thing worth celebrating as I mentioned in my last entry...it's our 1st year wedding anniversary on 8 Jan!

The day at work was quite ok for me, not too stressed on a Monday. My sweet surprise came around 11 plus in the morning. Got a call from the receptionist that I have a bouquet of flowers. It may seem cliche, but I'm certainly touched by what my dear hubby did :) He gave me a lovely big bouquet of pink tulips. It's the first time I received tulips too as last time he used to get me mainly roses. :) Well, guess that really brightened my day! Took a picture with it back at home...

After work, we came home early to prepare our anniversary meal. It was quite fun as usual when both of us get down to cooking up our meal. I think Dear Dear is really quite an improved cook...he certainly can cook steak that's for one! As for me...I helped as much as I could too! Anyway, we were famished and really enjoyed our food. For both of us, it's really the quality time spent doing things together that we appreciate and cherish.

Thinking back on how our wedding day had been 1 year ago, we are really thankful for our friends and family that really helped to make it a special day. Anyway, Cheers to many more years of love and happiness!!

Sweet Sixteen

This week at work was felt good mainly due to the long weekend earlier resulting in only 3 days of work. Starting to indicate dates with the '07 number still needs a bit of getting used to! Ha Ha.. Met up with some ex-colleagues this week, as well as attended one ex-colleague's wedding dinner. It was really a good time to catch up with many old friends. Quite amazing to see so many of my ex-bosses and ex-colleagues there.

Over the weekend, Dear and I had quite a relaxed and easy-going time. I guess the main activity was my cousin's Sweet Sixteen birthday celebration. She held a bbq session with her school friends plus our family members. It's been quite some time since I attended a bbq session, so there we were helping out. My aunt over-catered and by the time the night was over, we were really quite full but still helped to 'ta bao' some food back! I think my cousin is really fortunate to have us family members...coz we ended up being the main ones bbqing the food while the youngsters just ate and chatted away! Nevertheless, here's some photos to share...

Dear helping out to get the fire going...and here's the flaming charcoal...

Us and the birthday gal...

The cousins...

This birthday celebration is the beginning of a few more to go..Renee, Granny, Dad all coming up soon! Coupled with wedding dinners to attend next week and early Feb...omigosh...quite a heavy expenditure month!! Anywayz, it's also a time to celebrate and be happy I guess. Ok, now for another full week ahead at work...plus something worth celebrating.... ; )

Happy New Year, it's 2007

Happy New Year to all! Can you believe it, we are already in year 2007. How time flies! 2006 has indeed been a year to remember...with lots of things happening for me and Dear, be it choices we have to make, places we went, things we did, etc. Most important of all, we got married this year, and till now, we are enjoying our married life very much :)

Really appreciate the long weekend break! Managed to meet up with some friends and also watched quite a few movies - Night at the Museum, Curse of the Golden Flower, Death Note 1 & 2. The last show is really quite an interesting and witty show..I'm now reading the comic to find out more about the original story...

Anyway, below is a picture of our pre-New Year's eve gathering with NUS friends. We had dinner at Marina Sq and interestingly, we all sat in a very 'SDU' style. Haha.. guys one side, gals one side. Anyway, a few of them will be having their customary weddings this year...so more wedding dinners for Dear and me to attend!

On New Year's eve, it was quite a simple affair. Dad & Mum booked a hotel room at M Hotel and we joined them for steamboat buffet dinner there.

We rested in the hotel suite and at about 10plus, we headed down to Esplanade area to catch the fireworks. It was crowded as usual, but we managed to grab a spot and waited around half hour before it was 12mn and fireworks away!! Quite a lovely sight, especially the finale part :) So happy to see fireworks again...:)

Well, with a bit more shopping (spent money again!) and eating, that about wraps up the long weekend break! May 2007 be a blessed and fruitful year to all!

Christmas Celebrations! (23 - 25 Dec 2006)

Back to where I first started this blog, it's Christmas time now. I really enjoyed myself this long weekend doing simple stuff with my family. The mood started at work on a Friday where everyone was happily exchanging gifts, eating and feeling merry. Then came the long weekend. Dear and I watched Charlotte's Web (which was really sweet and touching) on Friday night.

On Saturday, we went to watch a concert called Passion at Victoria Concert Hall. It was a band/group from Sydney that performs music that hails from anime and video games. There was a drummer, a guitarist, a pianist and 2 violinists. Quite an interesting group as they come from Japan, Australia and Russia. I kinda liked a piece they played from a game called Chrono Cross. Another familiar hit they played was the SuperMarioBros theme. Although I don't really know these anime stuff well, the concert was actually quite enjoyable.

Then on Christmas eve, we had dinner at my Uncle's place. As usual, there was a spread of food and the Christmas tree was surrounded with lots of presents!

Here's the food and some more pictures with my cousins

At the end of the party, we collected some presents which our family bought for us. I guess you can say that my favourite was really my newest watch...thanks to Dear Dear who bought this lovely pair of matching watches for our Christmas gift... :)

On Christmas morning, we attended a Christmas service together on invitation from a friend. The nicest part was when the whole hall lit candles and sang songs like 'O Holy Night' and 'Silent Night'...it really felt good.

Later that afternoon, Dear and I prepared for a simple pot luck dinner we were going to have with his family. We ordered pizza and Mummy brought fried bee hoon, otah, KFC etc. Thank goodness it did not rain today and was quite breezy. We had our dinner then watched some TV, while Phyllis, Ivy, Dear and I played some UNO. Haha...childhood game!

With one more round of gift exchange, that about wraps up our Christmas celebrations and long weekend... It's back to work for another week before Countdown to 2007 :)

Wisdom Teeth extraction...eeks! (16 Dec 2006)

This week Dear Dear had 4 of his wisdom teeth extracted at one go!! That was really so brave of him to do it one time so that he will suffer the pain all at one shot...haha. The 'minor' op lasted around 3 hrs! As a result, he had really swollen cheeks and could not eat too well at first. But I would say that he seemed to recover quite fast. Most people I heard would be on liquid diet for at least a week. Dear was already eating slightly more solid food after 3 to 4 days. Anyway, this pic was taken outside VivoCity. Wanted to show his puffy cheeks, which don't seem to look that bad on photo after all.. Ha...

Grandma's Birthday (13 Dec 2006)

Quite a bit happening this week...this evening after work, my family celebrated my paternal grandmother's birthday in advance. We had dinner at Grand Shanghai restaurant next to Corpthorne Hotel. Another filling meal!! Anywayz, Happy Birthday MAMA! Thank the Lord that she is still going strong...

Mini Christmas Party (12 Dec 2006)

Since I started work at my new company, I was informed that there would be a early Christmas party this evening for the Airtime Sales and Market Research team. That day, we were allowed to go off work earlier around 4pm to get dressed for the occasion. It was an International Costume theme, so guess what, my Indian punjabi suit I bought for my previous D&D really came in handy!

Anyway, the event was held at a pub in Red Dot Museum. Drinks were free flow and some food was catered. Many of the Airtime Sales people came dressed up in different costumes representing Japan, Korea, India, Holland, China, etc. Although I do not know a lot of the staff yet, I did get introduced to a few people. There were quite a few games and some prizes to be won. I think the best part was really when the 3 heads (Long Jong, Melvin and Edwin) were 'saboed' to do individual dance items to Alex To's really 'hot' song - Tuo Diao (Take off your clothes!)

Well, not much luck with the lucky draw, but I was also saboed... :O Yeh, they wanted to know who were the new staff on board and got them all to go up front, blind-fold and dance to whatever music that was being played till we were told to stop. I think I really felt soooo paisei after that coz I probably dance like crap!!

Here's a picture with my current colleagues who were there. From left: Clara (my boss), Me, Lee Lian, Yvonne.

Here's another taken with some other colleagues