Sour Mood

So I was in horrendous mood this week. I have no logical explanation. Office has been normal – one of the weeks with excellent working hours, in fact. I don’t have to stay at office more than until 8pm for any calls on day, except for Monday. My boss has been pretty tolerant and didn’t ask me to do anything too irrelevant.

Despite all those, I still felt restless at night and could hardly bring myself up for work every morning. I was uneasy to go home from work, afraid that I missed something important. I got irritated when things don’t get done as per my plan, even the smallest thing like missing a bus or when my Yoga exercise started 5 mins late. I was disappointed to myself for not meeting my jogging target, and I’m furious when people asked me out of concern on why I skipped my Thursday running exercise. I forgot sending a report and blamed myself for the whole week on that… In short, I almost can’t recognize myself.

Now I understand why people said that happiness is all about choice. You can have your life goes your way and still be scrutinizing every single imperfections. Or, you can decide to enjoy the present and be grateful about what you have – care less of what others think and listen to your own heart. I don’t know why I have chosen to be the grumpy type this week, but I don’t expect to keep it that way. Life becomes horrible when you except things to be horrible – This is the Self-fulfilling prophecy.

As the week draws to a close, my mood has been so much better :) despite remembering that I forgot to do some stuff earlier this week, I managed to restrain myself to go office. Haha… To err is human, no? :p Let’s reset the week on Monday and wish for a better ending next week! (currently listening to Reset by Charice and I’m loving her voice :D)

Btw! this week I was addicted to a new game in iPhone – Sushi Go Round. It kept me occupied for 3 days in the morning bus… but that’s about it. I finished the game on my third day and go back to my novel reading.

This week, there are another batch of interns joined our office in Alexandra. They will be around for 10 weeks. 4 from NTU + 1 from NUS. 4 guys + 1 girl. Now our lunch gang is becoming bigger and bigger :D on Friday we went to Pizza Hut for the lunch… 10 of us! Gosh. I got to chat with most of them… and I must say that they have impressive resume. Exchange in London, Double degree in 3.5 years, 2nd internship with the first one in BoA… they are all have so much to offer. I’m glad that I joined couple of years back when the competition wasn’t that tough. Haha… one thing that I have to start get used to? To see their surprised face & mouth saying “So old!” when they asked me about my graduation year T_T


Friday Lunch @ Pizza Hut, Harborfront - with youngsters

This Saturday and Sunday have been very relaxing. I did my monthly house cleaning on Saturday, then went for a buffet (T___T) at Joaquim, Suntec for Helios’ B’day. We got a 50% discount, thanks to the Groupon we purchased earlier. However, we’re just one of the 22,000 people who have bought the voucher. Winson and I reached the place at around 5pm and it was almost 7.30 when we finally managed to enter the buffet place. Phew! The steamboat is OK, but I really love the spring roll and pulut hitam. I regretted that I didn’t go for another helping yesterday v_v. haha.. talk about diet.

Jess and Fidel went all creative and created a special b’day cake for Helios, using the small cakes available at the buffet table. Lol.


The most customized cake so far - Kudos to Jess and Fidel


Happy Birthday Helios!

Back home, we watched half an hour of “Unbreakable”, then I decided to call it a day when I can’t even keep my head straight anymore.

Sunday, we went for badminton as usual. Back home, I played my weekly COD and SHS, dozed off for an hour, then start browsing and responding to mails. It’s almost 10pm now… and I need to get ready for tomorrow.

Before I close the blog, I would like to give my best wishes to my roomie, who is leaving for India tomorrow morning. All the best for the voluntary work!! And hope that you’ll enjoy the awaiting holiday at Australia afterwards =) Staying alone in the room for two months won’t be easy :( Will miss you badly…

Take care lots... and I will see you again this August!
ED

Bye, holidays :(

No more public holidays until mid August! It means welcoming freaking 3 months without a single break!! Even though I can make use of my leave provision, it won’t be as fun if it just to be alone at home. I need a break when everyone is also free to plan a tour :( I’m looking forward to August…

But, before August! I have the Jurong Lake Run coming up this 10 July 2011… I can’t wait!! My first 10km run… but I guess I need to speed up my training process. Just glance through the website and it said that I need to complete the 10km within 1 hour 15 mins to be qualified for the run. Man! My current speed is 10mins / km! I start panicking now.

This week, Eric paid a short visit to SG… so some of us went to meet him for dinner on Wed. The last time we met him was more than a year ago, and he looked even younger now =_= We planned to meet at 7.30pm @ Kim Gary, Vivo.. I reached at 7.50pm and still am the first to reach!! In the end, we ate at around 8.30pm, which is not too bad for medanese :p hahaha..


Us, outside Kim Gary – too much talking that we forgot to take pic any earlier.

Thurs, I spend my whole day in the office.. from 8.30am in the morning until 12.00am the next day, with a break in between for Yoga and running. These days, I have been sporting and eating a lot ^^; I looked at my camera pictures and I can tell that 90% of them are food =.=’’

Friday went OK, with more and more pressure at work. The frustration was quite high that I have to force myself to go to work every morning. Too many things, too much ambiguity, and no time to think… In addition, my boss kept calling me for ad-hoc task… I was quite overload.. but who wasn’t? One of my colleagues in Germany shared his situation with me and it sounds similar… well.. I know I should sympathize with him… but somehow I just feel glad to know that I’m not alone. I need more motivation for work!! Rooooarr… I left at around 8pm that they, then went to Pizza Hut for dinner. They came out with new menu for their 30th Anniversary... and I tried their new Hut’s Chicken Steak… which was nyummy!! Priced at around SGD13.90 for the set meal, it was value for money =D


Worth the 20 minutes waiting time – Hut’s Chicken Steak

At night, we watch Big Bang Theory… the last episode of the season! :( After that will come the days of no movie series and no public holidays… oh.. tough days ahead :(


One of the posters that I find quite unique :D

Saturday, I went for a swim at NTU Alumni Club. It was all sunny when I woke up, but there were the dark cloud and strong wind which welcomed me at Buona Vista MRT T_T Maybe I’m a rainy woman after all =_=’ Anyway, Henry and I didn’t give up this time. It started raining as we came out from the changing room, but we jumped in anyway. We had the pool for ourselves for almost the whole swimming session, and the weather started to turn sunny again as we were done… sigh. After showered, we went for brunch at hawker center nearby, and then I went back home.

Reached back home, I fell asleep for an hour... I had nightmare about office, and then decided to go to office to finish some jobs. I wasn’t at all conscious when I left home… I forgot my thumbdrive… and also my wallet! =.=’ after waiting for the bus for half an hour, I needed to go back to home again to get my ezlink card. What a waste. In the end I reached office at around 2pm, and worked until around 7pm. Time just flies! And I still have 3 urgent things that I need to finish by Monday – anyway, worry about it later.

For dinner, we went all the way to Joo Chiat – the famous road for food and everything else. Using the Deals’ voucher we got couple of months back, we had Fatboy’s Burger. We waited for almost an hour before we finally get our food – “Fat Basterd”. The food was good. I was unfortunately too hungry and forgot to take picture of the burger. Ehem. It was basically a huge burger with layer and layer of beef, bacon, cheese, eggs, more beef, more bacon, more cheese, and even chips. Nyummyy! After the food, we had a walk along the Joo Chiat and I’m quite amazed with the choice of food they have there.. guess what, they even have a restaurant called Malacca Celup – which is the signature food in Malacca! I definitely want to try it here one day! Anyway, I’m glad that I didn’t stay around that area… with so many choices, it would be hard to keep my mouth away from food.

Sunday, I woke up 15 mins to 9, and quickly prepared for Badminton. Despite waking up an hour before, we still arrived 30 mins late =.=’’ Hope that next week will be better. After the badminton, we went for lunch together, and I had one of the best Sarawak Kolo Mee I can find in Singapore.


Sarawak Kolo mee @ Jurong East Food court - A picture to remind me of the goodness

Anyway! Last week I played this one game in iPhone called Crazy Formula. It was in the Top25 for free app for a while (then it moved to paid app). The graphic doesn’t look promising, but the game was pretty fun. I actually got addicted and completed them in 3 days :p Now, I again look for some games… apart from SHS and COD which I have to wait every week for new episodes, I don’t have any good game in hand :(


The Last level in Crazy Formula

Thanks to Che, I got another novel to read “Why Do We Have to Live with Men”. The book is not as bad as “What the dog saw”, but is not as easy reading as the earlier chicklit. This one is… well… it used quite a lot of unusual vocabularies that the first few pages made me doubt if I understand English. Haha. I first started with still spending some effort trying to find the meaning in dictionary. Now I just don’t care anymore :p

What else? I noticed that I have been using my iPhone camera more than what I wanted to… I need to start carrying my LX3 again! I don’t want to keep having grainy pictures for my precious memory!! (but still better than nothing. Hehe)

Till next week!
ED

The Pulai Desaru Beach

Along with my other 10 fun seeking friends, we went to The Pulai Desaru Beach on weekend, which is located at west Malaysia, around 2 hours from Singapore (half an hour bus + one and half hour of taxi).

Early Saturday morning, all of us gathered at Kranji Mrt, then took SBS Bus 170 all the way to Johor Bahru. We reached the immigration at around 10am, then decided to have KFC for breakfast cum lunch. I don’t have to describe how happy I was. Accompanied with KFC chicken rice + Cheese Wedges, it was the perfect start of the day :D


The Famous Bowl – RM4.95 + Potato Wedges – 3.60

After brunch, we split to 3 taxi and travel to the hotel. Our driver was an uncle with a typical yellow cab. I bet he drove F1 when he was young. All the 3 taxi travelled at the same time, but we reached half an hour earlier than the rest. Wew!


A Glance of the Resort – The Pulai Desaru Beach

At around 2pm, once everyone gathered, we planned for the agenda of the day, dropped our stuff in the room, then spend the afternoon at the beach. The weather was awesome that day. The rain just stopped, the sky was clear and the place was windy. We go for canoeing for around an hour, and then play some water sport, before continuing with swimming at the hotel’s pool.


The Water Fun

By the time everyone went back to hotel room and showered, the time was already 6.30. We went to the resort’s restaurant and had a nice serving of local kuetiaw. Some of the guys decided to go for the buffet, and I almost drooled looking at the BBQ meats. We had dinner and chitchat, then went for a firefly tour.


Dinner @ Palm Brasserie

To watch the fireflies, all of us boarded a small boat, which bought us to the center of the calm water, surrounded by bushes at both side. As the boat got near to the bushes, we can see clearly the many fireflies in the bushes. When the “tour guide” started to drizzle some water to the bushes, the fireflies will fly across our boat… it was quite awesome!! One of the passengers actually comes really prepared with a net and a bottle. She managed to catch at least five fireflies at the end of the journey. I have a newfound love for fireflies. Haha..


Before going to the boat for the fireflies tour

When we reached back hotel, time was already 9.30pm. We hang around at Pulai Lounge for a drink (actually, to make use of the RM60 voucher), then gathered at one of the hotel rooms and played cards – which Julianto introduced as “covering nose”. It might be the drink, but I believed more that it was because of the companion - we had so much fun! I laughed so hard that my stomach was kind of hurt the next day. Thanks Boly for being our star of the day :) And of course, thanks Helios and Boly again for the snacks :D we went back to our hotel room and dozed off soundly at around 12am.


The Card Game - Aftermath

Sunday, I woke up at around 7am, then showered and went for a buffet breakfast. Oh I love buffet~~ Everything look really delicious… I guessed I have around 3 helpings before remembering about my diet T_T After the sinful breakfast, we went back to the beach, had some walk and photo shooting.


Wrong attire for beach =.=’

We checked out at 12pm, then went to the Fruit Farm, which was located around 15 minutes from our hotel. It was a well organized tour. The tour guide was quite an experienced one. After the one hour tour, each of us were given a packet full of excotic fruits. That become our lunch for the day.


The fruit farm includes a mini zoo, where I found my siblings :D

Ok… the story is almost coming to an end. We left the resort at around 3pm, reach back Johor at 4.30pm, then went for a dinner at Secret Recipe, which prices are half from Singapore’s. It was around 6.30 when we finally reached immigration and took bus back to Singapore.

Everything else went OK. We have to queue for around 40mins for at the Malaysia’s immigration, but less than 5 mins for Singapore’s. We took bus all the way back to Kranji MRT, then went our separate way…

That pretty much summarized the short gateaway to Desaru. I really wish to have more of this kind of outing… so much fun to be away from all the usual day once in a while and surrounded by friends for whole day :)

Back on Monday, all the normal routine started again T_T To make thing worse, I forgot to bring my ID card and was unable to get in to office T_T It was a busy day… and I went out from office only as the clock hit 12am.

Tuesday, I took revenge and slept until 11am. Went to McD for lunch with roomie and Winson.. it has been dunno-how-many months since the last time I ate McD. I had the salad.. which was quite good (but ehem… too small in term of portion :p) Back from lunch, relax for a while, then went to Vivo to watch Fast and Furious Five. Another great movie of the month! What a wonderful month for movies :D After dinner at Xi Men Ding, we went back home and now preparing my self for tomorrow...

Happy Vaesak Day, all!
ED

Happy Mother’s Day!

General Election topic is everywhere this week. Every morning, there will be a small group formed in the office, summarizing the rally from previous’ day and discussing about their politics view. It was a nice discussion, and the election this time has made me realized that even Singapore has its own problem. Before that, I always felt that Singapore is perfect – that they have a plan so sophisticated that it can predict and tackle any crisis in the world. Now… well, I still praised them for their awesome planning and their quick reactions…. But I’m quite surprised to know that they are so many people wanting a change. The escape of Mas Selamat, the flood in Orchard, the high price for HDB, the congestion in public transport, etc etc… Even though those all sound like tolerable issues for a country, turns out that it’s big enough for people here to start questioning their government. Well…

Anyway, the result is out and… well.. Some surprises but the majority remains :) Hope Singapore for an even better future! (Suddenly felt embarrassed as I know nothing about Indonesia’s politic) One think I'm surprised with is: Singapore actually SELLS accessories of the parties. Supporters have to buy for the flag, the pin, the umbrella, etc. In Indonesia, all are given for free (especially tshirt and flag). I don't think anyone will bring anything if they have to pay for it ^^;

OK, so much about my politic view :) Office is OK this week. My boss took MC on Wednesday, which was the busiest day of the week =__= Attending most of his calls and follow up on the items took almost half my day in office… In the end I had to stay late on Wed and Thurs, to make sure that I can run out before 7 on Friday.

This Friday, finally I managed to meet up with my AM's “mum, dad, and didi” for a drink near ORQ. I haven’t been visiting the area for soo long… so long that I got lost for 20 mins trying to look for the bar which was 3 minutes from my original location =__=.. Even though our conversation didn’t run very far from election topics, I’m still glad that we managed to catch up =) Good to hear that they are having a better work-life balance now :)

At night, I slept well after a pint of Erdinger, and woke up at 10am the next day. We were almost late for the movie at 11am at Bugis. Thanks that there are so many advertisements, we still made to catch the movie from the beginning :D We watched “Thor”, which was quite awesome. I like the character Thor, and I love Natalie Portman! I will definitely go for the Thor 2 :D Coincidentally, we watched the movie during election day... and the sacral hammer somehow reminded me of something. hahaha...

After the movie, we went for lunch at Food Junction, then I went to Cityhall to meet up with Glen, Jingxi, and Sapna. From 2 – 6pm, 4 of us were busy playing board games at Mind Café. We only managed to play some: Ingenious, Pandemic, Pay Day… and the time was already showing 5.30pm, which was too little to learn another new game :( In the end we played another round of Ingenious before heading for dinner. I must say that Chinese are really good with IQ games. Both Glen and Jingxi got top score in Ingenious.


Mind Cafe @ Funan Digital Mall - awesome games, friendly waiters, nice drinks, good companions :D

We had dinner at Paradise Inn, and then I went back home, watched election result for a while, then start to watch “The Lost Bladesman” until 12.30am before calling it a day.


Super filling dinner @ Paradise Inn

Sunday, I woke up at around 9am, then get ready for Badminton @ Jurong East. After the session, we had lunch and chatted until around 3pm before heading back home. Weather was unforgivingly hot these days, and I was really tempted to take taxi from Queenstown MRT to my place. It’s around 36 degrees outside. I kept drinking water until I feel bloated, but still feel thirsty and hot T_T no wonder there are so many people falling sick.

I’m enjoying the rest of the weekend… Next week my big big big boss is coming from Germany to Singapore. There are 1-1 session planned with him the coming Wednesday… and I have no idea what to discuss with him.

… and! There is a short gateaway planned for next weekend! Can’t wait :)

Happy Mother's Day! I love you, Mum :)
ED

Bye, Long Weekends...

I’m totally worn out this long weekend!

Not one day did I get a chance to sleep until 9 AM!! I guess I’m living an even more hectic life than weekdays.

On Saturday, some sport spirits seem to get into me, and I woke up early before 7AM in the morning to jog at Queensway Sport Center. It was unfortunate that it started to rain around 8am, so I went back home. After awhile, the weather started to brighten again... =__=’’ I was somehow possessed by some crazy spirit at that moment, so decided to call up Helios and dragged him to join me for swimming. I reach Buona Vista at around 8.50am… then at 9am, when we just about to walk to NTU Alumni Club, the rain started to pour down heavily. Me, being in my usual stubborn me, decided to carry on against the storm. Oh my. It was such a bad decision. It rained so hard that we totally can’t proceed after we reach MOE building. After staring at the rain for 15 minutes at the deserted MOE, we decided to go back home.

At home, I started my weekly cleaning activities – sweeping and mopping the whole house, washing toilet, etc etc. It was around 12pm when I finished the chores and prepared some bread for my lunch. I flied to dreamland afterwards, and woke up only by some sms notification at 4pm. At 5.30pm, we again tried our luck with swimming and yes :D we managed to swim in the end. I can’t remember when was the last time I swim… it was definitely more than 2 months ago. After 20 laps and 2 hands full of wrinkles, we went up and showered, getting ready for dinner. We went to Tiong Bahru for a dinner, then went to Henry’s place to try out his new 32’’ inch HDTV + XBOX Kinect. It was awesome! After couple of hours of laugh dosage, we went back home at around 10pm. Thanks Helios for the invitation :)

Sunday, I went for Badminton at Clementi. I played really bad this time T_T I don’t know what happen… It’s true that I skipped badminton last week, but can a skill just deteriorated so much within two week? Or am I just getting older T_T hahaha.. anyway, I still had fun playing until around 12pm. Afterwards, we went for lunch, then I went back home… and decided to wash my cloths and tidy up my wardrobes. At night, we went to Toa Payoh for a KTV session from 7pm – 10pm. I tried my sing my new found favourite song – Teenage Dream, but man... it was so hard. I totally can’t bring it on. After an hour, Fendi joined us for the KTV… and all the girls just go crazy over his voice. I know he is a good singer, but never knew that he was THAT good! When he first started to sing, it was so good that we thought we didn’t turn off the artist’s voice. LOL!


@ Ten Dollar Club, Balestier

After the KTV, we went for a supper @ Popeye’s. Coincidentally, It was having one of its biggest promotion: 5 pieces of chicken for SGD 5.9. We got 2 boxes and shared it among 7 of us. After the supper, we went back home and knocked off to bed around 1.30.


@ Popeye's Pay Day - 5 Bonafide Chicken for SGD 5.9

Monday, I forced myself to wake up at 6.30am for a trekking at Macritchie. We supposed to reach the place by 7.30am, but due to one and other reason (woke up late, got down at the wrong bus stop, etc), we only started the trekking at around 8.30. Weather was cloudy with some drizzling along the way. I was initially hesitated to go for the trekking due to the weather forecast. Thanks God it turns out to be a very pleasing walk. We finished the 11km walk at around 12.30, and then took a bus to Anchor Point to celebrate with KFC. Hahaha… there goes all the burnt calories. After doing some shopping at Queensway Shopping Mall, we then went back home and rest for a while. I finished my last piece of chores, which is to change my bed sheet and wash my muddy shoes. Relax for a while, and then had dinner with the Gank at Spize :D



We made it to Tree Top, again :D


The muddy shoes after 4 hours of trekking

This week, I watched the usual TV series, as well as some movies: “No String Attached” and “What Women Want”. Both are comedy romantic – one from Oscar winner artist and another one by all time superstars – Andy Lau and Gong Li. Both have similar plot – one guy and one girl started as friend, then the guy fall in love with the girl, then the girl doesn’t want to admit it and run away, then comes back as she realized she is also in love with the guy. The end. Hahaha.. of course there are lots of funny scenes in between, but those are the main plot. I gave 7 / 10 for both movies.

Despite the exercise I did, I can see fats building up on my stomach. I don’t know what happen :( Probably my metabolism isn’t as good anymore as I grow older :( What should I do! Help! I will do anything except stopping food intake. Haha..

It’s an election next week, and the dialogues have been pretty tensed these days. Apart from that, there is crazy news everywhere… there is another attempted suicide in NTU where the girl was found with a knife in her head. There is a cannibal who cooks and eats his own fingers. There is news that Osama is dead. There is a finding that Apple’s is tracking everyone’s whereabouts. I can hardly follow the news anymore..

Well, what’s else? I have been pretty ignorant in office this week – big boss is on business trip and small boss is enjoying his time, so I followed. Haha.. I have a dinner with Venny, Glen, and TXL and Thurs, and we chatted about everything – about work and future, mostly. Seeing how prepared they are with the future impressed me quite a lot, but at the same time it still can’t motivate me enough to start planning ^^;

And yeah, on Friday, the eve of long weekend, no one seems to have mood to work. Literally no one. We went to Chinatown for a two hours lunch @ Chuan Garden Restaurant. After lunch, the VPs are pretty much engrossed with the election topics, while I was busy planning for the weekend. I left office at around 7pm and went to Dhoboy Ghaut for dinner @ Café Cartel. It was such an awesome weekend…


Friday Lunch @ Chuan Garden Restaurant - Nyummy & Spicy Food!

… and now that it’s coming to an end, I guess I just have to feel satisfied about these three fully amazing weekends :) There are deadlines next week and I’m expecting hectic weekdays ahead… so…

Come what May!
ED