20th Dec is Judy's Wedding Day~~ Yeah~! Big Day! Hence this post is totally~~~~~ about Judy... The Judy I've known since Secondary Sch (12 years~ 12 years~~!) The Judy who is always so straight with people you'll know she won't ever lie to you or back stab you... the Judy who's always the life of the party~~~ The councillors days ... etc etc ...
So we had our hen's party~~ First at Fosters for a lovely dinner... we had wanted to dedicate a song for Judy but since the performer did not know how to sing, he sang another song for her in Spanish... though none of us know what he meant but since the song is nice... it doesn't matter so much ;D
Was quite a fun night since we seldom actually meet up each other though we have always remain in contact. Actually they are the only group of friends from Sec sch who still remain close to me after all these years....
Next is to Wala Wala! Being the clubbing queen of the group, this stop is inevitable.... chatting while enjoying the drinks and the cool wind... it was an enjoyable night.... ;D
It was at this place that we planned what games we are going to make Vernon go through before he can get to Judy ;P
7 (+3) games! A total of 2 stages: A Jie Mei stage and Judy Stage
We got to know Vernon via Judy and I have to say, he is really a very good guy~~ Judy's so lucky to get someone like him ;D (Way to Go Girl~!) However, knowing Vernon and playing games are 2 different things though we do try to make things meaningful for him and not just trying to embarress him .. In fact, there weren't anything embarressing for him ..(More for his brothers)
Ermm... yes, those are wings~! Fairy wings that our pretty bride borrowed from her company event for us ;D No doubt we had eyes staring at us ... but .............. Hack AH!
Nothing much... just to comment that my voice seems to be very unstable for the past month ... and its getting very airy .... perhaps partly because of my sitting position when I sit in front of the computer. Squashing my diaphram with my ribs and hurting the lower back of my head and neck ....
gotta change gotta change ...
................
Going out soon .. just as soon as I get myself to get out from my seat and wash the toilet ... lolx
Today is Judy's Hen Party!! Yeah~~~ even though the wedding day is next Sat .. but I guess its best to let the bride rest well before the wedding yeah?
Went to Claire's house the night before the trip ... and well, I guess its just too obvious that none of us gotten much sleep lolx... I slept a whooping total of 2 hours before its time to get ready for the flight.
Having slight flu, lack of sleep and bloated-ness from hormone pills didn't really do my mood well... but since its a trip with June, Claire and Phil its gonna be fun ;D
(ok~ we are not bringing the pooh family along no matter how cute Eeyore looks)
A whole lot of people waiting for the check in. 3 lanes including one that was transitting at Phnom Pen. (There's 1 idiot group of people in the 3rd lane from Ngee *ahem* Poly making lots of noises and screaming/laughing like 3 yr olds with an excuse of going on a mission)
(Cost: S$259)
Though a short trip but I was still rather restless. Having a noisy bunch of poly students (who went woo~~~ when the plane set off) behind was not that much but its a trip too short for rest, too long for anything of interest. Only Claire seemed to be very active and keep taking photos of the scene outside the plane.
Yeah~! Finally reached Siem Reap International Airport. It looked like a resort more than an airport~ having a big area that seems to be reserved for a garden. Clean, decorated and organized area. However, we were delayed somewhat when we were stopped at the gate going out the airport. The guard there insisted on taking our declaration form which the Jetstar should have given to us but did not. So we waited there since the person refused to talk to us except for a "Wait" and a hand signal until one of the officers there finally passed us the declaration form. We proceeded to fill in the form and pass to the guard. And guess what? He didn't even look at it. He just gave us a satisfied smile that left us wondering whether his pay was on commission basis.
Van from Molly Malone was already waiting for us when we got out.... Hom took us (Cost: US$7 divided by 6)from the airport to the guest house.Along the way we saw bangalows perhaps influences from the French. Numerous Korean and Japanese restaurants no doubt to cater to the tourist crowd. Although end September was in the wet season of Cambodia but we heard from Hom that rain falls were still seldom and won't be there till Oct/Nov. Roads were dusty and though the sun wasn't particularly weak, the feeling wasn't uncomfortable like the humid weather in Singapore.
Yoo Hoo~ The flight is Thurs early early morning and by now we should have finished packing.
Being a woman of few clothes (<-----my husband will give me the quizzical look when he read this). I should say a woman of few sleeved clothings. I had a hard time trying to find tops and bottoms to bring for the Cambodia trip. Sleeved clothings are recommended it seems. This is especially so when we go and visit temples and religious places though I'm more interested to go to places like the Killing Field and the Mine Museum. These are what I found (and bought.. yay~! Fila 70% sale!! Polo T for only $14++)....
A mess~ yeah I know .. don't be so Kan Chiong.....
Try out the combi first ... in case I look like an auntie going to the market....
Deuter bag I kop from Dar haha ... Cause I don't have back packs and not going to buy one.
Pack pack fold fold and they became neater right? Lolx .. but of course I won't be putting them into the bag like this ... will take up too much space.... So they will be rolled up... yes~! Rolled up. Especially the shorter and thinner clothings ... they can be rolled up and tucked into corners to save space.... No matter what I still have to put in a pair of sports shoes~~
Was struggling with what to bring for my going out bag... sling? or waist pouch? In the end I got a waist pouch... Although Siem Reap is not that a dangerous place, I am too kiasi to risk it.... a waist pouch seems safer... I'll just have to make sure no strange people loiter too close around me....
Got one in this erm ... UGLY shade of brown today... oh well... its the best design and size I can find ... I can put my passport, camera, wallet and handphone in there without bulkiness....
Yay~~~ finally finished packing.... Don't see that the bag looks very big its actually very very light as I tried to eliminate things that are unnecessary.... Now should I bring a towel??? (Lolx)
Looking forward to Siem Reap and hope my Camera won't die from over usage.... and that it won't rain cause I never bring poncho~~
Watched this movie Journey to the Center of the Earth just now at Bugis, oh man it was a great choir watching this. (No worries, no spoilers involved) Starring Brendan Fraser (same man as The Mummy), Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem as the 3 main cast.
I won't tell the story here but will just say the plot was planned, with little time to relax in between and peppered with several laughable points. If you immerse yourself in the movie, you will find yourself holding your breaths as they met with danger or wonder at the beautifulness of the setting. Or be scared by the creatures that appeared. Or the sadness when the truth was finally found out with regards to the aim of the characters in the movie.
However, I would feel that it's a bit too rushed as the characters don't seem to be to have gone through hush conditions and a lot of danger. Not much of discoveries by the characters. Rather, they are just confirming or going according to what was already there in the book (now what book is that?). It made me felt as though there's nothing new to see. The whole movie made me feel that it takes a damn short time to reach the center of Earth. Several points also made me wonder "How is that possible?" like when they found diamonds, rubies and emeralds all in the same room (oops spoilers~! just a minor one hoped you don't mind).
Obviously, this movie is made for light hearted viewing and not to be dwell too much in. Great for the kids and a lazy weekend for something fun. I will give it 4/5 for entertainment and 3/5 if for depth.
Lacking in motivation to work and feeling like Nua-ing at home everyday. I asked my husband whether I can be a housewife ;P and he asked me whether there will be enough income if only 1 person works. Haiz... seems like reality weighs more~~~~~
But I'm looking forward to a holiday end of September. With Claire, June and Yanxing. Yupz, my husband is not going. Seems like he don't like the hassle of traveling and instead, prefer to stay at home and Nua (hmm... that sounds familiar)... no wonder they say Birds of a feather flocked together Lolx~
Woo Hoot~ its the 301st post and 1 week of non-blogging. Lolx~ No I'm not sick of blogging just that I've been too tired (and LAZY) to blog.
Had a whole Sat of activity. Spent the first part of it at choir and receiving my new phone SE 760i which I had the customer service at Starhub searched and checked high and low for the stock for "fancy red" in the end the red doesn't fancy me and there wasn't any stock. I chose the "rocky silver" phone instead. The route to receiving this phone was rocky too as the customer service person had to call me numerous times and dragged 2 weeks before I finally relent to giving up the red phone. Not that I love red but this model looks better in red. A thumbs up for Jiawei, the customer service person who served me. Real patient and polite~!
2nd part of the day was 1) KTV where we recorded a horrendous version of Stephanie Sun's 第一天
Mushroom and steak sandwich. The mushroom looked a bit erm.... wormy but the sauce for the mushroom was flavorful and real tasty though the cut of the steak was not so good though the crispy bread was totally awesome.
Chicken dumpling soup. Though it doesn't taste really that nice but it was the best among the soups that we ordered that day. Soup made of Cordyceps (I guessed) and other herbs together with dumplings with chicken meat filing. Chicken meat was plain in flavor together with the soup that was also plain in flavor summarizes into ... oh well, you got the idea. Its a tad ex too... being $5++ for a small bowl with 2 dumplings.
Pasta dishes were nice and rated higher than average in comparison to those I've eaten. But there's nothing special worthed a mention cept that the amount of garlic in their cream-sauce types of pasta was a huge heap.
Flaky pizza. Husband commented that the crust of the pizza taste and feels like curry puff skin. (Thats why its called flaky pizza ba) He didn't like the pizza's crust but finds the filing very nice. I didn't had a taste of it but it seems like the dressing of the salad was great enough to make my husband eat the greens though he hates to eat vegetables.
Desserts were the best of the lot. We were having a headache trying to choose what to order.
I would recommend this to people but provided you like the combination of dark chocolate and orange. The portion was big though compared to its creme brulee etc but one can gag from eating so much dark chocolate cake at once. The orange slice and vanilla ice cream seems to be there to lessen this effect. I was oohhing and ahhing when I ate this and they wanted to box me in the head. Lolx....
As per usual, after dinner was lim jiu time~! We are not like Foxxy and gang as we usually go to pub for small drinks and the atmosphere. Partly cos we are all poor but wants to enjoy too. Went to Giraffe this time round~~
First time I've been there and we walked from Paragon to Plaza Sing. I've heard about Giraffe and read its review so I was rather interested in going there for drinks. The atmosphere down stairs was very good though we pampered kids prefer sitting indoors as we were sweating ourselves silly and there weren't any seats down stairs.
The deco upstairs disappointed me though. It looks like a wilderness wannabe that failed. Especially the uniform of the service crew there. The top was still fine but the pants made me think that they wore sleeping clothes to work. Untidy was the word.
Ordered Chamomile tea, San Miguel and grape Cosmopolitan. At first the San Miguel tasted like a plainer Tiger (That's not their fault). Then dirty cups and plates were used for Dephil's Chamomile Tea changed quickly on request. No honey was served with the tea too though available on request. I was rather happy with my Grape Cosmo. Prices seems to be lower than other pubs with an extensive menu to choose from.
It closes rather early too. The counter closes at 1am and the area upstairs closes at 1230am. I do hope it can close later especially on a Saturday night which we usually will go to a late night cafe/pub and sit there to talk/eat/drink.
Ok ok I know the photos are not a Wow but hey! they are considered good when I have to pretend that I am not taking photos while aiming at the object with my not-so-good Nokia phone camera.
Anyway, Tango's at Holland V. We went there after eating at Coffee Club (Yes, there's still space in there). Oh man~ this place is a HOT house. Not hot as in popular but hot as in not cool, warm, hot and sweating. I think this is due to its open concept (Look ma~ No doors~!) but yet used a lot of yellow lighting. By the end of the night, I'm uncomfortable not because of tiredness but because its too warm.
This place has got impressive menu though and it took us some time to decide what we wanted.
Dar ordered the half Chix and according to him, its value for money and definitely great tasting. I had a piece of the Chix too and indeed, the skin is crispy while meat is tender not to mention the size of the portion given. Grilled squid took a long time to cook and came out Cao4 Ta1 and oily.
We ordered Margarita, Tropical Paradise (Martini) which took damn long to come and Erdinger. Can't really say anything good about them which I think its mostly because the heat there made the iced drinks warm fast. Cold drinks soon became room temperature and doesn't taste as nice as should be.
We should have stay at the outside seats which seems to be cooler. No wonder there wasn't much people sitting inside when we went there.
Was like damn sian at work that day and so Phil asked so shall we do something, go somewhere since I'm so sian. So we came out with going to watch a movie = Kung Fu Panda in fact its a long delayed trip. As the last time we tried, we ended up in the KTV.
So went down to Plaza Sing squashed in a world class transport with people from around the world and smelly armpits.
Dar says : "We are on the 5th floor at the Comics Connection." So I reached and saw . . . "Spotlight" and 3 shadowy people standing on the 6th floor Comics Connection. At that time I did a hand signal .. arh arh~ not the obscene kind. *tsk tsk*
Ate at Secret Recipe as we had wonderful experience with the food at Secret Recipe Malaysia. We are definitely and absolutely stupid to think that if the quality of food is the same at the Singapore branch.
My chicken Cordon Bleu looked like (all 4 opinions) : Sweet potato deep fried and there's hardly any cheese in it, just a bunch of ham and chicken a bit of cheese here and there. Compared to the time at KL that I've eaten, where the cheese will flow out when we cut the chicken. Dry texture and not much taste. This dish certainly failed.
My husband ordered Black Pepper Chicken chop with rice and my husband's comments were:"not bad but besides that nothing to say."
Besides that, we were told that plain water is at the cost of $0.50 and since we couldn't find anything we liked in the menu, we decided to get plain water instead. When it came, we were speechless as the so called plain water is just bottled cold distilled water. Its not even the 500ml types but the 300ml type that was just sufficient to fill a cup. The meaning behind the bottled water was that it cannot be refilled. So There~!
Since a main dish cannot really fill my husband's stomach, he decided to order the cakes. As Secret Recipe was well known for having its cake menu half unavailable, we raised our hands to ask the service crew what were available. As expected, none of the crews came over. Nor did they look around or walk around but just hover at the payment counter. That happened when we raised our hands to order our food too.
However, a read up on the reviews will show that there were many positive reviews on the cakes they served. Its too bad that the service crew made us turned off otherwise we would have ordered the cakes and my review of it won't be too bad.
We walked around Plaza Sing till it was nearly time for the movie before walking to The Cathay. Right at the door, I saw someone in bright orange T-Shirt looking suspiciously~ like Mr Brown. Whom noticed me looking suspiciously at him~
Timing was right and we didn't have to be bombarded by numerous advertisements before we can watch the show we paid for.
Sitting down, there weren't too much people there and luckily not too much children around as we all know its a bit irritating to watch movies with children around.
The movie had us laughing all the way through though the movie wasn't exactly that funny. It seems funnier when my friends are around.
The movie was about a Panda who dreams of becoming a Kung Fu Master but in actual fact, he was just the adopted son of the Noodle Shop's Goose boss. Things happened and the Jade Palace begin looking for the legendary Dragon Warrior to help them in their adverse situation. Ping Peng Piang~ and the Panda (PO) was chosen as the Dragon Warrior much to the disgust of the Shifu and the Furious Five (FF) (argh~~~!). Po was rather dejected as he didn't believe he was and will be the dragon warrior and being disliked by his idols (The FF).
Po was encouraged by Master Oogway who later passed away due to old age. Shifu had no choice but to depend on Po. He discovered Po's hidden talent while Po was stealing food and launch a special training just for Po.
When finally Po managed to obtain the Dragon Scroll, he discovered a secret that led him to defeat the evil presence that threatened the Jade Palace.
Main aim of the movie was the message : "Believe in yourself and you can do it" kind of thing. Healthy and funny show for all ages to watch. Voiced by many big shots like Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu.
I like the Tigress (one of FFs) voiced by Angelina Jolie. Beautiful character and the one which was short changed as she was the strongest of the FF, the one who stayed by Shifu the longest and would have been chosen to be the Dragon Warrior. Even though she wasn't chosen, she still stood by faithfully.
However, the tone of voice, the facial expression of the characters and also the MO of the story reminded me of Shrek. I don't know for sure but the show gave me the feeling that perhaps the production cast overlapped, causing the similarities. This should be taken note of as if the next cartoon is similar again, it will cause a deja vu feeling and will not raise the interest of audiences.
I also don't like the Chinese subtitles as some of the puns were supposed to be funny but as I am able to understand the English spoken as well as the Chinese subtitles, the subtitles gave the game away and I won't find the puns as funny. However this is inevitable as no matter what the movie needs to cater to those who rely on the subtitles.
Sounds Easy had the honor to be invited to sing for the Singapore Arts Festival 14 Jun 2008 at Jurong Point. "Arts on the Move" is one of the initiatives organized to bring Arts into the neighborhood to get more people interested and involved.
Although I won't brag that I've never had stage fright for performances before, I must say performing on stage hadn't been getting on my nerves before. However this time round I was more nervous than before. Its more difficult singing in A Capella groups. One of the obvious reason is that each individual is the voice and the accompaniment. Each error we make can be clearly seen or heard. Furthermore, we are a small group with only 1 or 2 person for each part. The amount of stress on each person is greater than being in a big group, each person is a soloist. Blending is of course a more difficult task when the number of singers reduce.
I kept making mistakes during the practices too... for my soloist/melody parts especially for "不想睡“ I keep getting the pitch wrong.... had problems remembering the words.... and all these add to my nervousness. Luckily the people around have been singing with me for a few years now and we are close friends. Having them there was a great morale support (anshin desu) before the big thing.
Even though I felt that we did not do very well for the performance especially for my solo parts and that we kept rushing our songs. A bit of flats here and sharps there. We can still see that most of the audiences enjoyed our performance as they stayed put throughout the performance and that is a good sign. We have experienced singing in the public and keeping audiences throughout, is tough and nearly uncontrollable. (Unless we tie them to the chair or they absolutely cannot leave the place e.g Weddings)
Despite some glitches in our singing and screams from the kids directly below the stage (potential 追星族 practicing for chasing idols in the future), some audiences were singing along with us for the more familiar songs like Kit Chan's "喜欢你“ or nodding when we sang "Stand By Me".
However, I would say people are still not accustomed to A capella, especially the more contemporary remixes like the arrangements that June did for “车站” and "最后一夜“.
Listening to the video recordings of our performances (Haha~! Cannot show you ~! Pending approval from higher Management *wink*) I kind of have a feel of what its like when we perform on stage. We had never recorded our performances before and I think this is a correct step to take.
Now I know co-operation and coordination among the members are very important, not only for the sound quality but also for the outlook of the whole group. The group will look strange when some of us look like we are enjoying while others are not. Looking at each other during the performance can help us communicate and also to calm ourselves down. Its real difficult to sing well when we are nervous wrecks. In fact we should actually be too busy on stage to think about being nervous. Thinking about the pitches, coordinating our pitches and blending with the others, our volume, quality of sound, feel of the songs, the mics and expressions.
All in all, we are glad for this performance opportunity. It also gives us a clearer guide to performing.
Also a big Thank You to all the friends who went to support us. Qian~~~~ Phil, Allan, Renshi, Alan, Jing Jing and Dawson. Arigatou~!
