Happie Horse Year- Day 1 @ Mr Love's side

Memories

You know the feeling of having memories come rushing back to you when you received news of some one passing away?

I always have this kind of feelings. I believe no matter how close or distance you are from the person at 1 point or another since your path crossed,  there bound to be some memories attached to the relationship isn't it?

We received news a few days ago of the passing of my mum's cousin who is in her late 40s. Though we grew quite distance recent years but I cannot but feel affected by the news. 

Memories came gushing like a huge wave.

I recall her bringing me out when I was 8 to shop at the Orchard which was a very (am still) atas place for a 8-year old girl. Brought me a Chomel pink hair band which costs 8bucks for me. You know how much I treasured that hairband since it was the most expensive 1 I owned? My pocket money was 50cents per day back then. 

I remembered her bringing me to watch Spider man at Shaw Lido with her friend Auntie Rose and brought me a pop corn combo and allow me to finish on my own. This is something my parents never did. Mum always make us bring our own water bottle. 

I remember her asking me to help tend her sofa shop at Shaw center during 1 of my school holidays when I was in my early teens. I would try every other sofa she have in the shop and would go back to her house after closing the shop. 

I remember her buying peanut butter and crispy M&M for me from USA since it was not imported into SG during that time. She knew how much I love M&M and brought them specially for me. 

She will always bring me to her workplace in Paragon where she worked as a jewellery shop assistant and send me off to buy cakes from the then Phoenix hotel after 8pm because of the 50% discount and let me have them for supper.

I remember her having a lot of branded bags and she gave me 2 LV bags during my teens which I returned as I found them to be too small for my liking. She always tell me that she will passed them to me when I grow up. 

I remember her showing me a big diamond ring during 1 of relative's wedding and told me she will reserve it for my wedding. I got married 2 years later but she didn't turn up and I have not seen her since even during her mum's wake. It was later then we learn that she is ill.

I remember staying over frequently at her condo during my poly school holidays as she gives me more freedom to go dating with Mr Love during that time. She always make it a point to stock up my favourite yogurt ice cream when I was there. Knowing I cannot stand hunger, she would make sure there is always snacks in the house during my sleepover. 

I would sleep with her during nights and I remember her lighting up the aroma therapy telling me it would make me sleep better.

You know Ah Yi, with your passing, I realised all I can recall are the good times we had together. I am still wearing the Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty pajamas you gifted me during 1 Xams. I am so sorry not able to see you one last time and sorry for not making an effort to look for you while we were in Hong Kong the other time. 

I really hoped you are better off in wherever you are know. Perhaps you are keeping Yi-po company now in the other world. I know you need not suffer any more due to your illness. Rest in Peace Ah Yi. I hope you have finally found peace.

Randomness

An entry about my random thoughts these few days. Too random and thus I am not sure how to blog down separately.

>>If there is no 1 taking reserved seat in the train, can I take it till someone needy comes along? Or I should stand aside and let the others who need it more to sit? But what if someone else who doesn't need it comes along and sit down? With all these thoughts in my mind, I reached my station and got down without taking the seat.

>>Just realized I didn't buy any accessories for this New Year and for that matter didn't buy accessories since my 2013 Taiwan trip. Went and shop around and brought a necklace and a pair of earrings. Am super happy with my finds though they were a bit on the expensive side.

My wings earring

New blue necklace

 >> Wondering whether I can handle god son on next Monday on my own for 30min (or so Bestie claims) when she is off for her appointment? Stress! The last time I handled him is before he flies off to Scotland but he was just a baby then! He had since grown so much and the only time he sees me is during our Skype sessions which Bestie says he smiles at whoever is on that, not because he can recognizes me. Faints!

>> When I get to go for my Korea trip, I am gonna find my way to Lapalatte shop and buy 1 of their super cute design bags. Whaha. While I am there, I will also go find the CD shop that my guide book recommends and buy a CNBLUE CD for Partner's next birthday (hopefully got a lot of free gifts) as I just realized during the other day's dinner that she also hearts this band! We are really partners! Haha

>> I haven been having dinner with Mr Love for the past 4months and I missed the nightly dinner terribly.

>> Am still thinking of which dress to wear for the 1st 2 days of CNY and cannot decide. Haha

>>I missed the Calla Lilies in Taiwan. Wonder should I make a trip there alone if Mr Love cannot squeeze out time in March. I can then meet up with mummy & piggy bro when they stop over on their way back from US. But I am a bit afraid of going on a trip on my own. Hehe Scary cat.

>> Did all the extra walking these few months (cause the hubs dun drive to work anymore) help me to lose some weight? Mr Love say walking 20mins a day WILL NOT help in losing weight. Thank you for your "encouragement" Love.

>>Am secretly pleased with the good bargain I pick up in Esprit the other day. 1 shorts and sunglasses for 80bucks due to having discount of 48bucks with 128bucks spent. The total bill is still lesser than the cost of the sunglasses itself (89 bucks after discount). Always happy to find good bargains. Cheap thrill. Hehe

New sunglasses caused I missed mine

 >> Wanna bun up my hair for CNY but am afraid of looking too matured.

>>I wanna dye my hair red, not those bright red but dark red but still considering.

>> Should I cut my hair short or leave it long and perm it? But I am fed up with drying my hair before sleep every night.

These are a few random thoughts I had the past few days. And I cannot many remember many others to blog down. Haha

Getting ready

This is the last weekend before we hit Year of Horse and we were especially busy with all the preparation since there are 4 workdays next week and 1st day of Lunar New Year is on a Friday.

So, we make sure all our clothes are washed, aired and iron by this weekend so that we get to follow the tradition of wearing new clothes on 1st day of the new year. I had already settled my new bedsheet 2 weeks earlier leaving these 2 weekends for the new clothes. Haha. Clever plot since Mr Love is used to buying his new clothes LAST MINTUE. And he keep maintaining that we need not wash them prior to wearing. Yikkeesss.. I insisted in washing once and he left the job to me.

We had already settled the food part. Went to the supermarket to do marketing this year as I couldn't wake up in time to go the market. Hehe I though supermarket would have more reasonable pricing as the market vendors are well known to jack up prices during CNY.

How wrong I was. Brought a promfet for 13bucks. Usual price would be 10bucks for the same size during normal season. Tiger prawns set me back by 20bucks for 12. I comtemplate buying chicken at the supermarket but decided otherwise as I prefer to buy from my favourite chicken seller in the market. Haha. So we woke up today early to go get the chicken.

Prawns for 20bucks

Man, the crowd is C.R.A.Z.Y. Really, I literally had to be push along as I walk in the market. Mr Love was having a black face and luckily we were there for the chicken only. Had it been full marketing, I think he would have parked himself somewhere and wait for me instead of walking together. Lovely husband.

We also brought rice to fill up our rice container as it is believed that we should maintain a full rice container during CNY in order to have rice to eat whole year round. And also 5 stalks of leeks to hang in the kitchen. Both mummies say it's to ensure we get to calculate (money) all year round. Ahh all the customs. Hahah. My colleague was amazed that I still follow some of the old Chinese customs or old folk tales. I am amazed by myself too.

I also finished preparing all the required ang baos, separating them into different sizes for the different values so that I don't give out the wrong ang bao. Hehe

Ang bao for the 1st day

And lastly, I did ironing of all the new clothes in 2hours all the while blasting CNBLUE's "Blind Love" repeatedly on my phone. Whaha Mr Love nearly went bonkers with the music and he keep grumbling that I am listening to unknown chanting. Haha

But the good thing about democracy in our household is that whoever does the housework would have the last word. Haha. So no matter how irritated with the blasting of my current favourite song, he tried his very best to endure till I finished all the ironing. Haha. But it is pretty therapeutic to iron clothes while blasting CNBLUE's song.

Our full wardrobe

Now what is left is only changing our bed sheet on CNY eve so to ensure we sleep on new bed sheet during the year. I think we are ready to welcome the Year of Horse. How about you?

李式笑话- From Kittens to Lions

Was listening to Kiss 92 last night where they were playing Atomic Kitten's "The tide is High".

Then I was telling Mr Love that this pop girl group was formed pretty long ago, like I was in Secondary school? Then I mumbled that they shouldn't be called Kittens now since it's been more than a decade since their debut.

The very smart ass hubby answered: " Now, they are called Atomic Lions" Since they had all aged and grown up.

"_"

Celebrating Partner's BIG 3

Partner is the 2nd among us (1st in 2014) to hit the Big 3 birthday and we had our annual gathering few days before the actual day.

As usual, they arranged to meet in ION (haven finish familiarising me with the shopping centre).

We chose Dynasty Paradise this time round and was actually not every impressed with the food, but it wasn't a very big problem since we had great company. The funny thing is we realised after dinner that Partner had mistakenly suggest the wrong restaurant. No wonder we couldn't find the item she recommends despite flipping through the menu 3 times. Hurhur

Sweet & Sour fried chicken & Original Xiao Long Bao

Ramen set that both Dear Dear & I ordered

Special XLB that tastes exactly like the original

Spend a long time eating and talking. Not much catching up as we just met during Xmas so we talked a bit about work, upcoming Lunar New Year plans and bonuses or the lack of it (for me).

We tried to take a few photos inside but it was just too dark and most the pics turn up poor. I was joking that we will need to use our phones to shine light while taking pictures there.

So we proceed to our gift exchange. Actually it's gift time for partner only but Yiyi being the kiasu type brought pressies for Dear Dear & me too though our birthday is 2months away !! Her reasoning? She forgot our xmas pressies the other day and didn't want to repeat history so she bring along every one's pressies. Which is a bit funny since we are celebrating Partner's bday and end up receiving pressies for our own bday.

Dear Dear and me

Partner & Yiyi

With Yiyi's gift for me.Love it.

Dear Dear and Yiyi's gift to her

The non existence wrapping of my gift

Partner's gifts from us

 We decided to proceed outside for some phototaking before ending the gathering. Man, it is another round of intense laughing before proper photos can be taken. We were like laughing after every other shot since someone will do something unexpectable and funny in between the shots.

And since it was a weekday, Ion is pretty quiet and the floor is filled with our shrieks which we are only embarrassed of after the whole photo taking sessions. But nevertheless, we had fun as usual. The photos will be with us for a long time and it would be good memories as we aged. Haha

The 1st March babies

Dunno what Dear Dear and me are so happy about

We tried a decent 1

And failed 3s later with Yiyi left standing alone

Then we decided to take candid shots except Yiyi

And she attempts to move out

And came back again

Still not joining in our clowning

And every1 decided to move around

Sisters forever

The selfie queen who take good shots

The mankaes of the group

Selfie queen doing her job again

My best part time boyfriend

March babies

Love ya all!

 Happy 30th bday Partner. I cannot believe we are all hitting 30 this year with all our silliness. Haha It's like yesterday that we just started our poly life at 17 and we are hitting 30 in a blink of eyes. Thank you for your friendship all these years Partner. May you be always youthful, happy, pretty in the years to come.

Cheongdamdong 111/ 清潭洞 111/ 청담동 111

Previously I mentioned that I have now converted to watching Korean Variety show, here's the 3rd 1 that I watched recently.

Cheongdamdong 111 is a 8 episodes show produced by FNC Entertainment which showcase the everyday running of the company. Cheongdamdong 111 is the address of the company which is located in Gangnam district if I am not mistaken.

I forgot how I came across the show, but it caught my attention because the boy band that I was recently pretty into (CNBLUE) is gonna appear on the show as it's their managing company. Hahah So it's pretty much because of them I watched this show.

The show featured the various artists like CNBLUE, FTISLAND, AOA, Juniel that FNC is managing and also the trainees that they have currently.

It's pretty entertaining to see how the CEO runs the company since it is quite well known that the entertainment companies in Kimchi land squeezed their artists till the very last bit and demand high proportion of their earnings. The artists themselves are pretty good with talking terms with their boss it seems.

The show also highlight how difficult it is to be a trainee in the Korean entertainment industry. Many had trained for years before the company would consider to let them debut. No wonder I read somewhere that says Korean artists who debut are usually more well groomed than their counterparts in Taiwan or Hong Kong where there is no need to train for so many years prior to debut.

It makes me think that this is pretty impossible in Singapore where we are taught to chase our paper qualifications from young. How many parents would allow their children to start training as artist from a young age without even knowing whether they will succeed or not?

It also featured the only girl group FNC manages currently and how the artist manager (not sure about her post) controls them. There was this episode that she criticises the weight of a member of the group and instruct her to go on diet. OMG. It is like so torturing where the girl needs to think thrice even when eating a piece of fried chicken. I guess this is why my weight is out of control since I don't even need to think 3seconds when facing fried chicken and gobbled them down. Haha

Of course we get a peek into the daily life of the artists, showing their dormitories and how's in a day's work for them. What is more surprising is the ordinary staff are being roped into the show too though not having a lot of screen time. But I think it's a pioneer in real life variety shows.

The most funny part of the show is you get to see how the CEO struggled to deal with the artists while wanting to try get close to them. Hahah What he doesn't realised is every staff would not feel comfortable with your boss around no matter how friendly you are. In fact, the more friendly you are the more scary you are as we will wonder what is it that you have in your bag to get close. Haha

Overall I find this to be a nice show since it provides an insight of the Hallyu stars and of course my favourite boy bands at this moment. Hur hur

Planning failed

Another epic failure of planning. My March overseas trip is cancelled due to Mr Love's change of new job and also the non receipt of my bonus. No mood to go and Mr Love couldn't take leave for the 1st 6 months of his tenure in his new company so it's postpone to Oct or Nov. Or so I hoped.

Cannot help but helped to feel disappointed, since I read up so much on Korea and is already drawing up an itinerary for the trip already. But what to do? I have learn that no matter how much we plan before hand, once something crops up, we need to adjust our planning accordingly.

My only consolation is Mr Love is still ok with going to Korea of the free& easy trip I proposed. YAY. I am still excited with just the thoughts of it. Even if I don't get to go this year, I can still use my itinerary and research when I get to go given that the landmarks are still there. Hehe.

So while waiting for the trip to materialize, I started to learn simple Korean words hoping that by the time I go, I can use simple phase to communicate and Mr Love will feel more at ease. In any case, I can smoke him with my limited knowledge since he have totally no knowledge of Korean language. Muhahah.

Another idea pops up the other day while I was watching Grandpa over Flowers. Heheh. I realized Switzerland can be be planned with as a free& easy trip too!!Backpacking in Europe is not new but I am not keen due to language and vast areas to cover. But from the show, I gathered that it can be done by taking the public transport too. Hehe

Read up a bit on it and become more interested. Especially the home stay that the Grandpas stayed which overlook the mountain. How romantic!

But Mr Love brought me back to reality and told me to stick with my Korean trip 1st before venturing to Europe. Okie, I shall keep Switzerland on my reading list on the time being and after I complete a free&easy to Korea then I starting dreaming of the Switzerland trip. Hehe

Dong Dong Dong Qiang

We will be ushering into the Year of the Horse in a week's time. With the biggest festive season for  Chinese around the corner, many of us are busy with preparations for the biggest celebration of the year for us.

Chinese New Year cookies is a must in every household to serve to our guests during house visiting. Not that we have a lot of visitors but it's just a habit or custom to buy some to eat during the New Year.

This year, we decided to homemade 2 types of snacks on our own as it is just too expensive to buy from the shops.

We brought 1Kg plus of arrowhead (茨菇）at $5.40 from the market and went home to clean and de skin them. After which we sliced them thinly using a slicer. Then we deep fry them using our deep fryer which was collecting dust ever since we got our air fryer.

Mr Love realized we cannot dump all in at 1 go as it will stick to each other. Thus, he gotta put in piece by piece to deep fry. Deep frying the chips is pretty fast,we can finish 1batch in 2min. After which, we will cool it for a while before I transfer them to the container for storage.

The raw pieces

The end product is quite nice even though we did not add anything to it. It is just as crispy as potato chips but a bit on the oily side even though we did use kitchen towels to absorb the oil during cooling. We managed to make 1 big, medium and small bottle. The small bottle is now in our stomachs, gave a medium bottle to our neighbour  as a return gift and only the big bottle is left. Wonder whether it can last till Bestie comes back for her holiday to let her try. Hehe

Cooling down before transferring to container

We also prepared deep fry crab stick. I brought 2 packets from the supermarket,"unroll" them and cut into pieces of 1cm each then throw all to deep fry. Since it is already seasoned during manufacturing, we need not add any seasoning while preparing. The snack is salty by nature and is a great snack even during normal time.

Took 20mins to cut them into pieces

All the bakeries we went to sold these 2 snacks at 15-17 bucks each which makes us pissed off at the high price despite the main ingredients being relatively cheap. Though there is quite a lot of work to do but we enjoyed spending time together in the kitchen making the snacks.

Jjang Jjang!My fried crab sticks snacks

Happie Lunar New Year!!

Work Life balance. WHAT WORK LIFE BALANCE???

My gahmen is always asking us not to put off starting a family, at 1 point trying to promote work life balance, encouraging us to go home earlier to spend time with loves one and for our case- Make babies.

Many of my peers heed their advice and gave birth, we did too except that we didn't manage to keep the baby (which my mum blames it on my being too stressful at work).

Recently as Mr Love hopped to his 2nd job in 3months, I realised there is no work life balance to speak of. He moved on to a higher position but in return spend most of his waking time during weekdays slogging away at work. Higher position is essential since it equates to higher pay which will make starting a family more comfortable and affordable.

To reach home at 8pm nowadays is a miracle. Having dinner together is as difficult as seeing Lee Min Ho upclose when he came to Singapore the other day. Making babies? The mood is as good as asking both of us to work overtime.

Now the only conversation time is during his quick dinner which I will have to prepare when he informs me that he got on to the cab. By the time he finished dinner, rest a while, take a bath we are both ready to hit the sack and sleep almost immediately. It's tiring for him and for me who is in charge of his nightly dinner.

We shudder to think about how to cope when our little one comes along. Who will have to be in charge of rushing back home to fetch the baby from nanny or child care. Who will have the energy to take care of the baby at night etc etc. Being in the accounting field means we don't take uncalculated risks. So the idea of telling us everything will work out when the little one comes along is all crap to us. The end vedict is I tried to stay on to my job for as long as I could as Mr love still need some time to adjust to his new enivironment and see whether he would be able to leave earlier on non peak seasons.

 So dear gahmen, while urging us to quickly reproduce for the sake of future Singapore (or so you claimed) why don't you try working on the issue of balancing our work and family life? I see you telling us to think about the trade offs when we wanted work life balance telling us that competitors are out to steal our lunch.

But then again, did you stop in your track and think whoever let the competitors into my country to steal my lunch? You wanted us to produce more babies but yet told us to work harder and longer during work and not dream of having work life balance. So, you expect my kids to grow up on their own, feed and clean themselves, walk/crawl home at 7pm from childcare centres?

By work life balance, I did not mean less stress but yes I need more free time. By free time, I don't mean to take work home so that I can get off work on the dot or to worry about the things I need to do tomorrow by going off on the dot today. I mean I can really get off work and go enjoy a good dinner with my hubby and maybe after that we will be in the mood to make babies.

It's like a rat race everyday for the 2 of us and many more couples like us. Look into the root cause of the problem please, not by asking us to play our part and live with whatever situations we are facing. Truth to be told, this is not the Singapore I would like to bring my child to for it would be more stressful for him or her in future as compared to us now.

Work life balance will come one day when you are not obsessed with our GDP, world rankings and competitiveness. But I guess that day will never come in my era.

I just realised

Am not feeling in the best of mood recently due to work. It's difficult to throw those feelings out and I am trying very hard.

On good days, I might not think too much and can get things done on my to do list. On bad days, I just wanna find a hole and hide from the awful feelings.

Many times,  I seems withdrawn.  It's like I'm too lazy to talk and just need some me time to get angry at what I am angry at. It's part of my self healing I guessed.

But in the process of self healing, I might have neglect alot of things.  Mummy especially, I chat a lot lesser with her recently. I don't want to let her know my worries but yet I am no mood to listen to hers too.

This is bad, especially for her whom have no one else to talk to. While I am fine just keeping things to myself, I am not so sure about her. I still call her everyday to check but guessed she can sense my ugly mood and dun revealed much to me too.

As I try my best to spring back to normal, I am also reminding myself to show more C&C for her. For I cannot imposed my problems to her can I?

Nail Colouring

While I don't really "colour" my face i.e put on eyeshadow, lipstick, eye liner. I love colouring my nails. Thus there is a bigger collection of nail polishes than make up.

Got this habit since poly days and I used to save up to buy Sally Hansens' nail colour as I believed in using better quality nail polish to get better results and also minimises damage to nails. Years later now, I swear by OPI which gives a better colour to the nails and most importantly, they don't dry up that fast. This is essential as I have too much colour and will take a long time to rotate throught the colours.

Since I major in Engineering during school days, my lecturer was amaze that I came to school with nicely painted nails and not afraid of getting chipped or decolour during the many pratical lessons we had. One even asked me why did I paint my nails since I am in Engineering faculty. No link to the faculty. It is just personal perference. Hurhur.

Once upon a time, I would diligently change my nails colour every week, sometimes taking pains to paint flowers or dot them. It would take at least an hour to do my nails. Many had asked me where did the patience come from. The trick is to park myself in front of the Friday or Saturday night movie and do my nails while watching the movie.

Even for my pre wedding, ROM and wedding day, I did my own nails. Refusing to pay others huge fee for something that can be DIY. Although I might not have the professional skills but I reckon that  it's quite a nice job done for many had compliment my nails. 

Nails I did for my pre wedding shot

My DIY wedding nails

Nowadays due to housework and lesser me time after marriage, I try to change my nail colours bi-weekly, sometimes I would not get to change till the 3rd week. In this case, I would trim the nails in between to keep them tidy.

Still it's my pride and joy to change to different colour and at times experiment with a bit of DIY nail art. Some would be successful but many times they turn out ugly and I have to leave with it for at least the next 2 weeks since I don't have the luxury to clean up and start painting all over again.

So while I sat here typing this post, I am actually waiting for my nails to dry. Haha I have master the art of typing using my fingers and not smudging the nail colour, this would of course requires years of practice. Haha

Show casing some of my recent works :

Pink & glittery

My 2013 bday nails

3 tone colours

Pastels look good too

For 2013 NDP

Because I find them too white or purplish alone

Stary Stary Night

Purple fever