batam 3D2N

back from an awesome batam 3D2N trip!

this was my 4th time here, and honestly there is nothing much you can do at batam, but i am more than willing to escape singapore just for a short getaway. and the best thing is to have a short getaway with the person you love the most, who is none other than my darling.

besides having darling with me, the other things that i like most about this trip are:

1. the buffet breakfast at batam holiday inn (not say super fantastic, but is more than decent)

2. the massage at tea tree spa (always a place to pay a visit to when i stay at batam holiday inn). darling and i took the 1 hour head and shoulders massage, and it was so so so so good. it costs around S$42 for that 1 hour of awesome massage.

3. having a wonderful guide, William, to bring us around batam (his email address is williamoei1@gmail.com ). he is really a super nice guy. not only he drove us around, he also help us order the kueh lapis at batam layer cakes, gave us recommendations on where to eat for lunch, and even let us change our sg currency with him at a good rate of 1 sing to 9600 rupiah when we were running out of rupiah and all money changers were closed at that time.

4. the little niece who entertained us throughout the 3D2N. she always will come into our room and climb up onto our bed and roll around the bed with shrieks of laughter.

here are some advice from me:

1. before you buy stuff from the Chocolate House, make sure you only buy those that are only available at the Chocolate House, and not available at supermarkets, for example their signature tiramisu chocolates. chocolates that are available at supermarkets cost two times cheaper than the same type of chocolates at Chocolate House.

2. if you want to buy kueh lapis, but from Batam Layer Cake! it is so much nicer than Layers (the one with purple packaging). i prefer Batam Layer Cake because has many flavours - original, cheese, cinnamon, pandan, mocha, coffee, prune. secondly, and also because when i received the kueh lapis, they are still WARM, and when i open the box, the aroma came into my noses and omg i felt like i was in mocha and pandan heaven. 

3. if you want to go try golden prawn for seafood, there are two side by side. one is golden prawn 555, the other one is golden prawn 933. go for the golden prawn 555. but honestly speaking, dun go for both. go for sei enam seafood restaurant! the seafood is good, and has gathered alot of positive reviews on tripadvisor! 

4. go to 1st Factory Outlet! the clothes and shoes there are cheap. William told us that these are original goods from the actual brands that are made in indonesia, but because they got slight defects, so they are not being sold by the actual brands. famous brands include fred perry, armani, tokyo superdry, nike, adidas, and many many more. we spent like 1 hour at that factory outlet! 

on the ferry to batam! it has been a long time since we wore the harvard tees!

sunset taken from delima seafood restaurant. everytime go batam, everytime will eat at delima. delima is not say very delicious, but we rather eat here than at the expensive restaurants at holiday inn. delima is just five min walk away from holiday inn. 

ta da! the famous batam layer cakes!

our dinner at sei enam! both the food and service were really good! i give it a 8 out of 10 for the overall experience!

dont you think the niece looks super cute in that minnie mouse outfit? :D

down the slide! the niece is really a super active kid. always hyper and always full of energy. 

next stop, vietnam, with my colleague, mr tsg!

saturday post

it was quite a spectacular opening ceremony. i love the video segments, and the portion when our singapore sports legends (c kunalan, ang peng siong and jocelin yeo, etc) were shown recognition by running into the stadium in the gold colour track suits. 

on a solemn note, my heart is with those students and teachers who are still missing at kota kinabalu. the latest update was that the death toll is expected to rise to 17. 

tomorrow i am going to batam with darling and her family. i am sick with sore throat and cough. darling is down with fever. the niece xx has running nose. darling's sister and mum are also sick. let's hope we all can recover fully tomorrow so that we can enjoy our trip.  

wednesday post

yesterday was one of my happiest moments because i cooked for my parents! 

on monday night they only reach home at 12 am because they were stuck in the malaysia customs for 4 hours. and the respectable thing about both of them is that when they finally cleared woodlands checkpoint, they didnt want to take a taxi. they insist on taking mrt back home. luckily my younger sister was with them and she asked her husband to come to buona vista to pick everyone up and send my parents back home. very thankful that she was with them throughout the KL trip. 

they only slept at about 1 am and the next day they have to wake up at 530 am to go to work. then when they come back they still must cook dinner. so i decided. i decided to do the cooking, and so i msged my dad and he said ok. and off i went to buy the groceries! 

the dish i prepared for them is the cod fish with potatoes, tomatoes and sweet peas. is quite easy to prepare, and i prepared this with darling 3 times already. although i still feel a bit lost when she is not by my side. 

and so the dish is done, and both parents tried it. 

me: (pointing to the dish) 爸爸， 还 ok 吗？

dad: hmm, ok! (followed by a 哈哈)

mum: 真的太好吃了！我把全部汤喝到完! 

feeling super happy that my parents love it. :)

today i was filling in our chinese names in the marriage vows document. i naturally wrote darling as 许月婷 and then as i was filling in, i suddenly got a shock. is it this 婷? or is it the 亭亭玉立 的 亭? 

i know darling will be disappointed that i forgot her chinese character but i still have to ask her. and true enough, my natural instinct is right, it is 婷. and also true enough, she was disappointed. #OHohhhhhhhh

i apologised to her, and promised to write her a love letter in chinese. it has been ages since i wrote her name in chinese and hence that's why i was unsure. 

so anyway, i will start with this love sentence first:

我愿化身石桥，受五百年风吹，受五百年日晒，受五百年雨打，只愿你能从桥上走过。

monday post

yessss june hols is here! 

love this gula melaka pandan cake from joe & dough cafe! joe & dough cafe is at leisure park kallang!

supported netball singapore, where they played against thailand and recorded a convincing victory. appreciate our classmate chen huifen for coming out just to say hi to us, when she is swarmed by all her fans. cheers to our strong friendship! 

weekend post

weekend was well spent. saturday morning i went to ntuc with darling, future MIL and the niece to shop for groceries. 

credits to darling for taking this photo!

we cooked our signature codfish for lunch!

it looks beautiful isn't it? tastes very good too!

darling went to studio M hotel to celebrate her good friend's hen party, while i went to republic poly to watch Momentum 2015. Momentum 2015 is republic poly's arts festival, giving a platform for the students to shine on stage. they also invited other schools to come and perform, and NUSCD is one of them, and that is the main reason why i went to watch because some of the Rain friends are performing.

the malay dance items from both secondary schools were good! i also like the One People One Nation item by NUSDE. the crowd favourite item has to be the hip hop item by ITE college west. i love that item too. full of energy and the choreograhy was great. 

and then i found out from yokekay that they will also be performing the next day at tampines, and the location is very near my house! since i got nothing to do at home i went to support them. 

from 16 people yesterday to 5 people today. a bit pathetic, but the stage was a bit small, and the audience was totally not interested, and the technical crew was awful because they screwed up the music. but i think they had a great time? hahahahaha. kudos to them because none of them are easterners and they come from the west/north. congrats for arriving safely in one piece! 

sneak peek!

sec 2 experiential camp 2015

most probably my last camp with the workplace. this year the camp is at camp christine, located at jalan bahtera ie bird dun lay egg place. 

they had high elements at forest adventure bedok reservoir before going to camp christine. these kids are a lucky bunch of kids. 

bumped into an ex-student who studies at temasek poly. temasek poly's back gate leads to bedok reservoir, and she came out to have a smoke break and spotted me. 

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this was taken on the morning of day 2. 

ta da! outdoor cooking!

they have to design their own menu!

looks good isnt it? cooked by my form class!

the lovely presentation. food tastes good too!

stir fry shanghai green. check out what he is using to do the frying. 

our own edition of 古惑仔. 

the four of us are the judges for the inter-class outdoor cooking competition! we are definitely not as evil as gordon ramsay. 

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sec 2 camp concluded! well done everyone! 

pre-wed photoshoot

pre-wed photoshoot is really no joke. 

woke up at 5 am and went to pick audrey up, followed by the photographer who stayed very near xuehong's place. and then we went to woodlands to pick darling up, and travelled down to seletar north link for our photoshoot part 1!

the trick to taking this shot that shows our natural laughter - photograher to darling: yueting, 去 tickle 他! 

after seletar north link i sent them back home, and i also went back home to have a short rest. darling's MUA will reach her house at 12 pm. went to pick audrey up at 1130 am so that audrey can observe the whole make-up process and she can help darling 补妆 in the middle of the pre-wed photoshoot. 

our 2 locations in the afternoon was at nus and tuas south avenue 5. i haven't got any photos of nus yet so i will share two photos taken at tuas, which has a very nice lalang field. tuas was our last photoshoot location and we managed to take photos with the beautiful sunset as the backdrop. :)

we finally finished the photoshoot at 8 pm, and by the time i reach home it was about 10 pm. i was dead tired and the next day is the start of the sec 2 experiential camp. 

anyway darling and i really want to thank Samuel from pixioo for the wonderful photoshoot experience. we are looking forward to see his photos! i give him a 10 upon 10 and i will definitely recommend his services to couples out there! 

we also want to thank audrey for being such a great help. she helped darling change the wedding gowns, help her touch up the make-up, help to arrange her gown during the photoshoot and even took video footages for us. 

without further ado, please watch the video that she had done. it is really good! she has great potential to be the next anthony chen (singaporean film director and film producer, director of award-winning IOIO). :)

TGIF

yessss friday is here! 

looking forward to the pre-wed photoshoot this sunday! in the morning we will go to seletar north. and then in the afternoon we will go to nus. nus is a special place for us because it is where we first met and knew each other. our kevii hall is not really a scenic place to take photos so we will go to utown. i want to thank yoke kay for bringing me around utown on wednesday night to look for nice photoshoot locations. :)

and then after nus we will go to Tuas, where there is a beautiful lalang field. we will also do the coloured holi powder shoot at Tuas. 

next monday to wednesday i will be involved in the sec 2 level camp as the camp commandant. the campsite is at super ulu camp christine, located at jalan bahtera. i am really looking forward to the outdoor cooking, because we will be given one whole chicken, pizza and kebabs! 

and today i just received the news that i will be the chief examiner for the end-of-year national examinations. the last time i did this was 2 years ago. hope that i will be doing at a school that has an air-conditioned hall.

next week is already term 2 week 10! time flies really fast. batam and vietnam here i come!

monday post

yesterday evening my photographer msg me to tell me that the holi powder that we are using for this sunday's photoshoot can be found at mustafa. so i drove to mustafa and i got a shock with the numerous indians over there and it should be known as Gigantic India. 

i had to park the car at city square mall, and i combed the different mustafa buildings for an hour, and still couldnt find the holi powder. i gave up and went back home, and was irked by the one hour parking fee of $3.50. 

this morning i went to ask my HOD (who is indian) where to buy the holi powder. and he told me tampines round market has a indian mama shop that sells it, and the tampines round market is 5 min walk from my school! woo hoo! i went to try my luck during lunch hour and ta da!! got sell! sense of jubilation! 

i bought 3 packs of this! 1 pack to try out this afternoon with audrey yong. 2 packs for this sunday's photoshoot with darling!

thank you audrey for taking the photos! can't wait to try out the powder with darling! 

and after that i went to have dinner with my colleagues miss chua and miss chen. we just finished our marking so we need to reward ourselves with good food. especially for the both of them because they are english teachers and english teachers take very very very long to mark as they must mark numerous essays with horrendous grammar and sentence structures and vocabulary. now i hope that my english teacher did not vomit blood while marking my essay back in secondary school. hahaha. 

dinner was at 金隆, bedok ave 2. i forgot the block number. at first my colleagues did not have high expectations because is a chinese seafood restaurant located at a hdb block. but when the food comes, OMG. we were all blown away. and after we came there were many customers and then we realise how popular this restaurant is! 

this was the favourite dish of the night! salted egg prawn balls!

this meal cost us $65.50. a bit expensive but the food was really good! 


next we walked over to Fat Cat for ice cream. Fat Cat is located at 416 bedok north ave 2. we ordered their signature black waffles with salted egg sauce, with two ice creams that look like SG50. we also ordered their signature mojito lime balls! 

awesome company, awesome food! :)

high blood pressure

i had a health check up on tuesday. prior to the health check i had to fast for 10 hours. which means when i woke up on tuesday morning i cannot eat breakfast. i can only drink plain water. luckily i scheduled my health check early in the morning at 830 am. 

so i measured my blood pressure. the first time reading was at 158! my normal blood pressure should be less than 130. the lady was also shocked to see my blood pressure was so high, and she tell me to measure again. after 15 min i go and measure again, using a different machine. this time it was 148. i got a bit worried and told darling. darling was worried also, and tell me to have a healthy diet and stop drinking gravy. 

for the next few days i was still in a state of shock because i cant get over the fact that i have high blood pressure at such a young age. ok lah i am 31 approaching 32 already not that young anymore, but still it is hard for me to absorb the truth. 

darling bought me a blood pressure monitor so that my parents and i can use it to measure daily. my father has high blood pressure too. 

and so i measured my blood pressure in the afternoon. 122! woo hoo. i felt assured. 

in the evening i measure again. 104! 

i will measure again tomorrow morning. tomorrow morning shall conclude whether both machines on tuesday were wrongly calibrated. 

POTD

went to The Gown Warehouse this evening to try out my suit. darling tried out her blue evening gown too. :)

we are excited about next sunday's pre-wed photoshoot! we are meeting our photographer tomorrow to discuss the details.