Surprise belated birthday celebration

I had a gathering with my NJC PAE friends on Saturday afternoon. We played mahjong for several hours at Wilson's place. I hadn't played mahjong for so many months and forgotten some of the basic game rules.


Later on we had dinner at Changing Appetites in Marina Square. I went there once during a class gathering with my NYJC friends. The food was alright, price was the standard of a town area restaurant. There was this waitress who didn't really quite like us. She was grouchy when serving water and our orders. But other than that, the restaurant was great. I ordered this dish grilled chicken with bacon, and it was really fantastic. The fish & chips however, was quite bad. The fried fish fillet literally rocked, and the plate was oily.

After the meal, we waited for Tess to come from Victoria Concert Hall where she was attending a concert. Till this point of time, I still didn't have the slightest idea that they were celebrating our birthdays. After Tess came and ordered her meal, the waiter brought out three boxes. They actually bought 3 slices of cakes of different flavours. It was a great idea so that we could all try out different flavours of cake. There was cheese, chocolate and mango, and all were purchased from different cafes like Secret Recipe, Gloria Jeans and Changing Appetites. It was really a pleasant surprise. I received mp3 player and a digicam pouches. Time flew really quickly, and it was about 10pm when we decided to leave.

We went window shopping at the shops which were still open, like Fox and Topshop. I really had a great evening. I'll post the pictures once I get them from Wilson. My next blog entry will be about my 2008 New Year resolutions. I'm looking forward to the New Year!

Edit: Here are the pics

The three October babies


Making a wish that I hope will come true, with Weilong praying hard too!


Ending off with the blowing of the birthday candle.


Unwrapping the birthday gift, lots of strings!

Long break ending very soon...

My very long break, as a result of clearing leave and off days, will be coming to an end very soon. In fact, it's too soon. It'll definitely take me some time to get used to life in camp again. It just feels like the school holidays right now, where I have time on-hand to do whatever I wish.

25 Dec 07
Christmas was alright, although not as happening as before. I went to my aunt's place at near Parkway Parade. We used to have such gatherings very oftenly in the past. But as time progresses, everyone has more commitments to meet and hence less time to meet up. My cousin's only 12, and he has an Xbox and the cool Nintendo Wii. I tried out the Wii Sports game, the tennis and baseball games were fun while the rest like bowling and boxing were a bit boring. I got a book The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford as a Christmas present. It's a UK Sunday Times bestseller. Thus far after reading only half of the first chapter, all the economic theories and terms flashed back into my mind, very intriguing indeed.
After the gathering, I went with my cousins to Paradiz Centre to play pool. There wasn't really a crowd, probably cause people were celebrating Christmas at home.

26 Dec 07
On Boxing Day, I went to VivoCity with Xavier to shop, yeah shop. I figured it was time to revamp my wardrobe for the new year. VivoCity was huge, with several brand names like A|X, GAP, Zara and Esprit on post-Xmax sales. I got myself black jeans from GAP (~$50), a t-shirt (~$25) from Esprit and a long-sleeve shirt (~$40) from some unknown shop Spades. It was also fun trying on clothes from highly-expensive (maybe overpriced) brand names like Ted Baker, A|X and Diesel. Xavier almost wanted to get a $60 t-shirt from Diesel (crazy!), it was originally $119 with a 50% d/count. That day, it took us about 9 hours to completely walkthrough the shops at VivoCity. We started at 2pm and boarded the NEL train at around 11pm.

28 Dec 07
I started the day at 6.30am with a refreshing run at Serangoon stadium. Thus far I've clocked only about 8km in 2 running sessions after recovering from stomach flu about a week ago. It's really tough to recover fitness after being severely ill. Trust me, getting stomach flu will allow you to gain one of the worst experiences in your life.
Later on, I watched episodes of Simpsons and Friends, and later the Ellen DeGeneres show. In the evening, I met up with Katrina at City Hall MRT. It was our first outing together. It started out quite awkward, but fortunately we had several common topics to talk about and had conversations. After walking around Suntec to recce the places we can have dinner, we decided on Suntec's food court. We then caught the movie I Am Legend at Suntec's cinema. It's probably the first movie I've watched where the two main characters (Will Smith and his companion dog) didn't last till the end. After the movie we had desert at the food court. At the end of the day, we took a train to AMK and exchanged birthday cum Christmas gift at the bus stop. It was a wonderful evening together, I look forward to the next chance to meet up again.

Quote A funny quote in an email from my friend
-When you are in a penalty area and you do not know what to do with the ball. Put the ball in first and we'll discuss other options later.

Link
Top technological predictions for 2008
One notable prediction: The death of the ipod. Suddenly, standalone music players look like standalone PDAs did circa 2000. In 2008, they’ll be relegated to giveaway status, like memory sticks.
Interesting...

Updates

I haven't been updating my blog for a while, I had been too busy and also a little lazy to do so.

I just returned from a short holiday to Malaysia. I was in Kuala Lumpur for 3 days, and in Genting for 2 days. A shopping mall The Pavillion was recently opened. It has the same concept as The Paragon, where all the outlets of expensive brands are located, like Ralph Lauren, LV and Giorgio Armani. The mall is much bigger than Paragon though, probably twice as large. I also went to the other malls like KL Plaza, Lot10 and Sungei Wang. These are basically the main shopping centres in KL.
I also went to a Pasar Malam that's held on Wednesdays only. It stretched more than 1km along the streets, and cars were parked everywhere, with so many people around. The stalls mainly sold food and pirated CDs. There were actual road side stalls, where hawkers fried char kway teow by the streets and cooked laksa on the spot there. Singapore's pasar malam is totally uncomparable to this.
The Genting trip was boring though, everything was still the same since I went there in April with my friends. Food there is excessively over-priced, and the theme-park is outdated. A simple meal of chicken rice costs RM13, which is ~$6-7, three times the price if you were to dine in KL.

Overall, it was an enjoyable trip, takes me away from my current everyday life in NS. There's a class outing planned for this weekend, can't wait to meet my friends again. :D