hanoi day 1

we took vietnam airlines to hanoi. my colleague was feeling apprehensive about vietnam airlines, because he heard from another colleague that the ministry blacklisted this airline. thank goodness the flight was ok, and the flight meal was not too bad. 

the highlight for day 1 is actually jw marriott, the hotel that we are staying at! 

open concept bathtub! dun play play!

the pool. a bit small though. haha. 

love the architecture of the hotel, that symbolises a dragon!

the hotel has its own lake!

dinner was at one of the restaurants opposite our hotel. it was a very interesting experience, as we walk in and dunno what to expect. we dun speak vietnamese, and the staff dun speak english. the menu was in vietnamese and there were no pictures. thank goodness the boss knows a bit of english, and he said 2 words: pho? chicken?

and ta da, that settles it, and we nod our heads, and gave up the thumbs up sign to the boss. hahahaha. 

that's the restaurant! very popular!

the food taste good! although it was a bit too salty. but nevertheless we were both satisfied. hahahaha. 

and we slept early tonight because we must wake up early tmr morning to embark on a 4 hour journey to halong bay! 

sunday post

yesterday night was cake overdose with darling and her parents. we discovered a cool bakery at sembawang called Baker's Brew Studio, all thanks to jiawen who uploaded a photo of the ondeh ondeh cheesecake that she bought, and i asked her where she got it, and the next thing that happened is making a trip down to Baker's Brew Studio! 

(pictures taken from Baker's Brew Studio website)

paddle pop cheesecake! 

ondeh ondeh cheesecake! 

earl grey lavendar cake

we also had the lemon passionfruit! all cakes are nice, but i highly recommend you to share them. if you have the whole slice of cake by yourself it is a bit too jerlat. 

today darling's mum prepared dumplings! always love the dumplings made by her. inside there's generous servings of scallops that she bought from Tai O last dec during our hk trip. 

tomorrow i am going to vietnam, for 7D6N! will update the blog once i am back! 

JCI Mauritius The Outstanding Young Person Award 2015

i will like to extend my heartiest congratulations to my good friend xuehong for being nominated for the JCI Mauritius Outstanding Young Person Award 2015! his nomination is certainly well deserved for the exceptional work that he has done in the arts, and bringing the arts from Singapore (where he established himself) back to his home town. this is certainly contributing back to his nation and also to the community that he belonged. 

do like his photo that is on facebook and leave a comment for him! 

here's the link: 
https://www.facebook.com/jcimauritiustoyp2015/photos/a.1380736242254560.1073741829.1379187892409395/1405679289760255/?type=1

alternatively you can type JCI Mauritius The Outstanding Young Person Award 2015, find his photo and then like it. :)

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. 

t

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. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

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). :)