Monthly Archives: March 2010

Lift at every level is good but…

March 28, 2010 – 10:42 pm

I felt that the neighbourliness is gone! I remembered more than 20 years ago when I was still staying in a HDB flat, we didn’t have lifts at every floor or to be exact, lift at our door step. We got to wait at some specific levels and walk along the corridor of our neighbours’ flats. Then we would stop to say Hi or chat up a little about whats happening around our neighbourhood.

While I appreciate the government’s effort in installing the lifts for us at every level, but I thought with lift stopping at our doorstep, it simply reduces our time to catch up with our neighbours. What would happen is you press for the lift, lift comes and brings you to your flat. In some cases, I presume you will not even see or have chance to interact with your neighbour.

So what do you think?

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Our first family montage

March 27, 2010 – 10:45 am

I was exploring my MacBook Pro and started to play with iMovie. Its something like Windows Movie Maker and when I first started playing with it, I thought, why not I do a family montage. Then the search begin, the search for photos and finding a suitable music. Well, the theme of the video is about the 4 of us, Me, Jingyi, Ethan and Ezanne. Its about their growing up years and when the montage was completed, I thought, it could have been done better. In case you are wondering, I completed doing the montage within 3 hours. This video is dedicated to the 3 most important persons in my life. Enjoy the montage…

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Punggol Ministerial Community Visit 2010

March 25, 2010 – 8:40 pm

For this year’s Punggol Ministerial Community Visit, I was tasked to design the tickets for Station 3, My Punggol, Our Future. This station is about the future of Punggol, the Punggol Waterway, the activities in the future and eco-living in Punggol. There will be caricaturist (I hope I spell it correctly) drawing the faces of Punggol and of course for the first time, pocket bikes demonstration.

I hope all my friends will be able to support me and attend the event. Tickets sales will be starting soon and each ticket cost just only $1/-. Please email me to book your tickets.

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Is wedding all about Ang Bao?

March 24, 2010 – 12:22 am

This is the question that I’ve been asking myself since I attended one wedding over the weekend? Is wedding dinner about how much we give or is wedding dinner about sharing the joy of the couple? Having been through the process, I always thought to myself that if my friends attend my wedding, regardless how much they give, I’ll just be as happy cause I just want them to share my joy. I’ll never ask who had given me how much, to the extent of writing down names, as long as you’ve reported yourself with the reception, you are welcome to enter the room for dinner.

Apparently, for the last wedding I attended, I was “forced” to have my name pen down on the ang bao. I was asked, “Did you write your name on the ang bao?” I said “No” So the receptionist told me, “Can you get a pen to write your name down pls?” I was like, “Huh?” It’s not that I did not have a considerable amount in it, but I thought, why should you force me? Alright, we reciprocate, how much you give it to me I will return you that same amount or if not, I’ll follow “market rate”. I stop to ask myself, is there such a need? Chinese has a saying, 有来有往, but I thought it means if you attend my wedding dinner and I’ll attend yours and not how much you give me, I return it to you the next time you attend mine.

Anyway, to my friends out there who are reading this, you might have 2nd thoughts after reading this post, but trust me, if you know me well, you know how much I would have put. Nevertheless, I thought wedding dinners these days has somewhat commercialise.

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Hiang Ji Roasted Meat and Noodle House

March 21, 2010 – 4:15 pm

While I was on my way to collect some items from Popular at Toa Payoh HDB Hub, my colleague brought me to one of the famous roast meat shop for lunch. We ordered a plate of mix roast meat that consists of roast meat, char siew and roast duck.

They served plain rice with a bowl of sauce for everyone to share. I thought the sauce was good but wonders why there are so much residue in it. The roast duck was abit oily, but the skin was really crispy and I love it. The duck meat itself was not too hard and quite chewy. I love the char siew, it was really thick (reminds me of the char siew I had in Hong Kong) and juicy. The roast meat was quite good too.

Overall, I thought I will give return back to the shop again to try it. If you are interested to try it, its located at Blk 190, next to HDB Hub.

Tags Duck Rice, HDB Hub | Comment (1)

Poly Reunion

March 21, 2010 – 1:15 am

I had the chance to meet up with my poly classmates at our classmate, Benedict’s wedding at Swisstotel, Merchant Court. He invited 8 of us (including Cynthia’s partner) and I thought I could see more of our classmates, but unfortunately, those who were invited were not able to make it for this event.

Nevertheless, it was a good catch up session with everyone. We find out how everyone is doing, not only those who were present, but also those whom some of us seemed to have lost touch with. But I realised that we had one common topic, FLATS! Buying a home seems to be one of the main issue for people around my age, most of my friends were sharing how difficult it is to apply for a flat these days and how many times they have tried to ballot for one, I can only say that I feel really lucky to get my flat 4 years ago without much competition.

As usual, the meet up with the girls were all about gossiping and re-living those school days, discussing which canteen has the best food and how much school has changed since. While the discussions continue, I’ve not forgotten to take pictures too…

By the way, did you know that we took the group photo by ourselves? How did we do it? Make a guess.

Tags Merchant Court, Swissotel | Comment (0)

Corporate photoshoot, my very first time

March 18, 2010 – 9:57 pm

It is something that I’ve some time dreamt of doing and finally I’m finally doing it. I’ve taken my first corporate photoshoot for my department. For this very first time, I wasn’t really prepared as it was pretty last minute and I not really well dress. I was in a short sleeve shirt.

It was really tiring and I tell you, it is more difficult to take as compared to wedding shots and family portraits. I remembered for one of the shot, I was supposed to look at my female colleague and do some discussion and the photographer has requested me to look into her eyes. I simply couldn’t do it as I found it so difficult to look into her eyes and ended up, I looked at something else which was in her direction.

After looking at the end result, I can only say that the photography skill of the cameraman was fantastic.

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Life is short…

March 15, 2010 – 11:54 pm

While I was walking today, I saw this!

A dead bird. Though I was busy trying to take a picture of it, but it makes you think that life is really short. Will we just fall like the bird did? I can only say that we should cherish the people around us and enjoy as much as you can. Take the opportunity to do the things that you like and try to make a difference in yours and others life.

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Ethan @ 3.5, Ezanne @ 1.1

March 15, 2010 – 12:44 am

The children are growing up. How do you know? You will know when they become more responsive when you talk to them.

First, its Ethan. Ever since we came back from Sydney, many people had said that Ethan had became more talkative and more open to people. He became friendlier and speaks more in English, something which I think is really good, but of course, we can’t forget our roots and got to speak proper Chinese too. His Chinese pronunciation is so Hong Kong. For example, he pronounced 吃 as 七. He had learnt how to bargain and even ask for toys that his friends has. I remembered once he pull me to the room and told me,”Dad Dad, Mao Quan has Ben Ten watch and shoes.” I said, “Then?” He said, “I got Thomas only, I want Ben Ten too!” As he is approaching 4 years old, he starts to fight for his rights too. When he sits in the car, sometimes, he will tell me the radio is too loud and he wants to lower the volume. Well, Ethan had been requesting going back to Tumble Tots for his enrichment programme, I guess, I just need to check with the school when he can join them again.

Next is Ezanne. At 1 year old, she is still having 2 teeth. As compared to Ethan when he was the same age, Ezanne is more expressive. I’m glad that she no longer becomes frighten when sitting in the car at night and she has become more sociable. She likes the toys that her brother plays and likes to eat what her brother is eating. But I’m glad that the first person who can make her smile or laugh is always her brother. Both like to do the same thing at the same time, just like this…

I’ve always been having parenting talk with my colleagues who are experienced mummies and I’m looking forward to seeing them grow.

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Its finally here, MacBook Pro

March 13, 2010 – 11:35 pm

The wait is finally over and now, I’m the proud owner of MacBook Pro! This is my 3rd Apple product and like my iPod and iPhone, I’m sure I will not be disappointed with this.

I actually bought it on Thursday, but due to my busy schedules, I only managed to start setting up last evening (about 1am) and complete the software installation by tonight. So far, I’m enjoying every moment of it, its simply different as compared to using the conventional Windows OS. I’ve downloaded Echofon which is helping me so much for tweeting, I will no longer need to visit Twitter website to tweet and will no longer see this message, “We are experincing over capacity, please try again.”

My thoughts on the first 24 hours after using MacBook, loading is so much faster than Windows, booting is definitely an enjoyable process. I’m still trying to getting used to the new functions, but for now, I’m really happy and contented with what I have.