Anniversary weekend

2010.10.29 Friday

We were off to our Pre-anniversary dinner.

Poppy kept me in suspense right to the last minute, reassuring me from time to time, that I'd love that place.

Still, every 30 seconds or so, I'd ask him "so where are we going?", "are we there yet?" or "is the place so-and-so?".

I even tried sulking to make him talk. Nope, no go.

Finally, we arrived at that place I indeed love so much -

Asian Civilizations Museum.

Of course, where else in ACM could we dine but Indochine?

Absolutely love Poppy to bits.

I should've guessed it, because he asked me to use him phone to call Alex a couple of days back, and I questioned him about the Indochine number I saw on the dial list. He flatly denied, saying it was his colleague who borrowed his phone. Ok, I'm that daft too.

Anyway, the food was awesome - mix of Indo-China cuisine.

Poppy ordered my favorite comfort food - Salmon Carpaccio (Japanese equivalent of Salmon Sashimi); followed by Pan-seared Red Snapper Fillet with Grilled Zucchinis; Hot Basil Chicken and rounded it all off with another of my all-time favorite Mango Sticky Rice.

'twas a lovely meal indeed.

After the meal, we took a quick stroll around the ACM before it closed for the day. It's already been a couple of months since we've been there... Then we walked over to One Fullerton for a cuppa and people-watched for a bit. Headed home early for we had a long day ahead on Saturday.

Marina Bay Sands across the bay

2010.10.30 Saturday

Woke up slightly earlier today.

Packed a little and made sure Custard has sufficient food and water to last her for the next 2 days.

And yes, we're off to Sentosa!

Headed straight for The Sentosa, checked-in and watched Marmaduke in the room before wandering outside.

We are such suckers for their feather pillows and quality bedding. Poppy even insists we should ask them where to get those pillows!

Took a good, long stroll from Tanjong Beach to the Beach Station.

Queued for our first Luge ride.

It's much more fun than Disneyland's Autopia!

Skyride + Luge

Afterwards, we hopped on the Yellow Line shuttle and took the car out to meet Alex, Mich, Loh and YM at Vivocity.

Early dinner with the rest at Marché

Songs of the Sea

Poppy gave everyone an ice-cream treat at New Zealand Natural.

Drinks were also on him at The Pavilion back at the resort. Such a sweet lad, ain't he?

After bidding the guys goodbye, Poppy made a beeline for a soak in the tub while I snacked on my cake and wine.

The toiletries provided by Spa Botanica were heavenly. I was lemming to get a good spa treat the following day, but of course, that didn't happen because we slept right through to the afternoon.

Bummer!

2010.10.31 Sunday

Slept all the from the night before, after watching 身娇肉贵.

Poppy's plan to hit the gym and swim was foiled too. Hah.

Snappily washed up, packed and checked-out reluctantly =(

If not for work, we would definitely have stayed for an additional night!

While Poppy was driving us to breakfast, I told him:

"Poppy, say bye-bye to Sentosa. We'll be back soon right?"

And Poppy cheekily replied:

"Sure, very soon. I'll make a U-turn right in front."

*rolls eyes*

Dim Sum at Yum Cha

Took another stroll around Chinatown after Dim Sum at Yum Cha.

Poppy wanted to queue for Koi but held back after I told him not to take so much sweet drinks. Oops.

Then it was back to home. Fed Custard, unpacked and took a catnap while Poppy sat himself in front of the telly again.

Yet another weekend has zipped past.

We've decided it's been too short, so...

We're heading back to Sentosa again tomorrow, yippee!

Weekend with Family

Had an ultra fulfilling weekend.

But I'll let the pictures do the talking since I'm pretty stoned after an entire night at work.

I've just received Google's invitation to App Inventor earlier yesterday, and I simply have no energy left to start today. Although tomorrow's my off-day, I still have to back in office for meeting, followed by dinner with the team.

Zzz.

23 Oct '10

The boys went to get their cars serviced while Mich & I went to do 美美. teehee.

Lok-Lok with Poppy, Alex, Mich after BBQ tze char

24 Oct '10

Had late lunch at Lucky Plaza with Poppy.

Headed off to Tangs to collect my Clarins Hamper afterwards, followed by Suntec City to collect the V-Cam. Yay.

Poppy's Ayam Penyet & my Pecel Lele

My renewed look

Had this style a couple of years back, and now again =)

Hamper from the generous folks at Clarins

1 more coming my way, by the way! Can't be luckier!

Off to Tampines to fetch Mommy & Papa to Ikea.

Bro had to stay in Hall because he had some project meeting.

Browsed a bit, then went to Century Square to look at some sofas, then had dinner (on me) at Imperial Treasure Nan Bei Restaurant at Tampines 1.

Love my parents so much.

Unlike most parents, no matter how little I visit them at home, they will never nag at me.

Without me telling them, they will already know I'm tied up with work and even encourage me to rest more. I just can't love and pamper them enough.

My fave: Lotus Root with Spare Ribs Soup

Vegetable stew and some leftover from the BBQ combination

I'm a slow eater, so I didn't manage to take any pictures of the deep-fried prawns with salad sauce nor did I manage to read and remember the names. So whatever names you see above are made up by whatever my goldfish-memory can recall.

Please don't quote them when you do visit the restaurant! LOL!

Almond Tofu with Longan

not fantastic IMO, but had to make do with it since they ran out of Red Bean Paste.

I'm glad everyone liked the food lots!

And Poppy is lemming to bring Ah-Po & Gong Gong there soon too.

We're always bringing them to Ah Yat's dim sum, we need variety!

The next time will be Poppy's treat. bwahaha.

... and before we knew it, weekend was over in a flash.

I'm looking forward to many more fulfilling weekdays and weekends ahead with my family and friends =)

Plan finalized, finally.

As I was saying in the previous post... Our anniversary is this weekend!

I've finally managed to make changes to my roster with some swapping,

And we've also finally decided that we'll spend the day in Sentosa (not on gambling, I hope).

Managed to get ourselves a night's stay at The Sentosa Resort & Spa by Beaufort despite being SO SO SO last minute.

I wanted to stay at New Majestic but 'twas already fully booked =(

Had to go with Sentosa instead and decide between RWS Hotels (Hotel Michael; Hard Rock Hotel; Festive Hotel) & The Sentosa, but a quick look at TripAdvisor gave us a clear answer. So The Sentosa it shall be. Unfortunately, they ran out of Junior Suite so we were only left with either Deluxe Room, Beaufort Suite, or Garden Villa to choose from. Siao, of course take Deluxe King - Beaufort Suite and above costs around 2-grand. Lao-niang will have to apply for bankruptcy after 1 weekend. Not really, never mind.

There seems to be a lot of activities lined up on the island over the weekend since it's Halloween. Pity though (for him), the day tickets to Sentosa Spooktacular are sold out. I'm not a fan on spook-me-out, and you probably can't never imagine how relieved I am about that, especially after the Demon Jungle trail in Hong Kong Disneyland.

I'll be more than happy to just hang out at Cafe Del Mar for their 1-for1 instead.

Anyways, I'm ecstatic!

Update: 1:01am

Just remembered that although this stay is a treat for Poppy, I still ought to buy him a proper gift, ain't it? (Ahem. I've conveniently eliminated the Dyson vacuum by now).

My trusty companion, Google, came up with this interesting list of Traditional Anniversary Gift List created by a lady, Emily Post.

The first ten goes like this:

1st	Paper
2nd	Cotton
3rd	Leather
4th	Fruit or Flowers
5th	Wood
6th	Candy or Iron
7th	Wool or Copper
8th	Bronze or Pottery
9th	Pottery or Willow
10th	Tin or Aluminum

Oh, I love Google. It always has the answers to my questions.

Decent Dyson

Poppy has an infatuation over Dyson stuff recently, thanks to Stanley who kept promoting his Blade-less AM03 Pedestal Fan after buying it a couple of months back. We almost bought the DC31 (Handheld) Vacuum Cleaner while at Carrefour yesterday. Almost - for now.

This little "gadget" costs a whooping S$319 before tax.

Should I buy it as a gift for our anniversary?

(I'd very much rather top-up a little and buy an iRobot for sure. But considering it's a gift for him, I should buy something he likes. Or not.) Decisions decisions.

Now, here's what it looks like. Very Transformers-ish.

Before it sucks the dirt clean, it sucks my pocket dry. *Applaud the power of Dyson*

喜歡。你

Always have been. Always will be.

♥

喜歡你 by 庭竹

So Lucky.

Time really flies these days.

Work schedule's so tight, i can hardly stop and relax. November's roster is out, and there's lots of complaints... can't imagine what December will be like with so many people on leave and reservist. Bummer!

Only had a day to rest last week, thank goodness, i get the weekend rest this week!

You must be wondering what's with the title. Well, that's coz i won myself two prizes from contests! Nothing huge - just a digital video camera (i'm guessing it's some cheap-plug old stock. still free nonetheless.) and a $100 Clarins Hamper. Hah!

Material gains aside, it's also nearing my 4th anniversary. Though we're bogged down by work, Poppy still makes it a point to spend quality time with me. Once in a while, he'll try to come home a little earlier; or bring me out for nice lunches and dinners (he never wakes up in time for breakfasts); or offer to make me dinner when i'm too lazy to eat out.

He's also a consistent help with majority of the chores - from strenuous ones like carpentry work; putting the laundry out, to mopping; fixing bulbs and doing laundry when i'm not around. He never grumbles (although he loves nagging). Wahaha!

We've been spending lots of time apart due to work. And i guess he's right, we have come to cherish the rare moments we get to see each other. Some of the time, we visit our parents and grandparents, other times, we have gatherings with common friends. And more often than not, we simply go for a drive in his car... spending time during the ride chatting about bits and pieces of our lives.

Much of our focus right now is on the financial aspect. The touchy "to-have or not-to-have" topic. Making plans for mid and long term. Life is just so tough, isn't it? I'm glad just so glad I've got a confidante in him, sharing (almost) the same objectives.

All in all, what i wanna say is... I LOVE MY POPPY!

I'm SO lucky to have him in my life.

So lucky to have someone who loves me, loves my family and my oddities. My life would have been completely different if not for him =))

Then again, he says he's got plans for us, but I just can't pull myself away from work on that day. Ughh, I hope I can work something out by then. *Pulls hair in frustration*

Dale Carnegie Course

Completed 2 full days of Dale Carnegie crash course worth more has 700 buckaroos.
Fulfilling, insightful and most importantly, relevant!

But I'd also like to conclude that the rate of absorption (of information) is definitely inversely relative to age.
Bleh.

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Raaaaaaandom.

back from KL / Genting on Monday.

since Custard's motion-sickness episode after our HK trip, we decided to keep Custard home instead. managed to get MIL to help us feed and attend to her once a day while we're away. turns out that wasn't a very smart choice either. on the morning following our return, we found Custard's "freshly baked" poo-poo right outside the toilet door. and not far from the crime scene, we spotted a puddle of pee / barf-like substance (was hard to identify since we figured Custard must've done it the night before). the best part was, for some reason, that didn't bother our tenant coz he gladly left it as it was. oh bummer!

Custard ended up getting a day-long quarantine in her cage to make sure she does her business proper at the pan. we took the opportunity to finish up our holiday laundry and carry out a thorough spring cleaning from the bedroom to the kitchen. aired the house proper (since we rarely open our doors these days after Custard attempted 2 runaway stunts and scared the sh*t outta me. will talk about that some other time.).

anyhoos, KL was the usual humdrum. we drove in with Linda and her BF, up to Nilai, where they parted and headed to Genting straight. caught up with some sleep right after we touched base at the hotel. got up a couple of hours later, lunched at Jalan Alor, and did some shopping at Pavilion before a quick cuppa and some Uhuhu's at The Loaf. scurried back to the hotel after my new shoes from Hong Kong (got a matchy pair with Mich) gave me terrible blisters plus my relative came to visit (read: 大姨妈). afterwards, got our usual dose of KTV at RedBox in Sungei Wang and headed back for Zzz.

Poppy was apparently more excited about going to Genting anyway, but since we spent most part of the stay in the casino anyway, there's nothing much to write about. we did catch the match between Chelsea and Arsenal over a couple of beers though.

over the years, it seems we have developed a penchant for patronizing pubs/lounges for sports matches whilst on holidays. guess our travel habits have shifted from being hectic-fanatic to slower-paced and relaxing. alas, maybe that's an indication that age has crept upon us. so random and so depressing. hah. (i think i'm getting high on caffeine.)

on another note, i made a teeny weeny bit of fortune from the stock market recently. yay.
and so, Poppy says we're good to go for another trip, on my account though (that bugger), but leave slots for year-end are ALL snapped up. bummer X 2. persistent me strongly suggests that we should try to squeeze in an island getaway on one of the weekends in any case.

while i rack my brains over that, i suppose i'll end here today.