Sailing into the sunset

Attended a wedding dinner yesterday evening. Was a wedding dinner with a twist. It was on the Falcon Princess - a ferry that usually plows the route to Batam. The bride's a colleague of mine, and she met the groom while she was getting her MBA in China. It was one heck of a choppy ride, and the groom got a little seasick.. but all things said, it was a lot of fun. It was a really "chinese" wedding, with pink ribbons streaming down from the ceiling, pink carnations on the table, colored xmas lights twinkling all around the deck, dry ice and one corny emcee. It was definitely an experience for both of us. It was packed with fun and games, and had a dance floor to boot. Kale and I have come to the conclusion that we need to practice more before Thursday so that we don't malu ourselves on the dancefloor. We've both forgotten the dance steps we learnt in salsa class. duh.

Anyway, here are some pics from the ferry.. taken off the stern of the boat.


Jan and I on the ferry

Us at sunset, heading towards the southern islands of S'pore

low- key xmas

We had a pretty low-key xmas this year. It's the first year in many that both Kale and I were home for Xmas (altho home is in a totally different spot for Kale than in past years).

Had a pretty rowdy xmas party at work on Friday morning..carols and turkey and wine made for good clean fun.


Emily, Fran, Myself and Janice at our company Xmas party

The office peeps...

Myself, Glory, Janice, Ba-ba (Janice's bday pressie) and Fran - last time I'll see Ba-ba at the office (Janice leaves for Vertex come 1st Jan)



Lenny and his harem


We then went to pick up a dining table from a parents' friends' place, so after 2 years of living on our own, we finally have a dining table. Had a quiet Xmas eve dinner at home complete with a xmas pizza (ham and pineapple), tree lights and a cycling video (Pro) that Kale ordered through the mail. Headed out to xmas midnight mass.. and it was PACKED! We thought we'd get there "early" at 11:30, in time for the xmas pageant, but we couldn't even get into the church parking lot. It was kinda draggy and kinda weird (everyone was dressed up, like REALLY dressed up.. like they were going clubbing after), and it was about 1:45am by the time we got home.

Woke up the next morning, headed over to my parent's to open xmas pressies (at my sister's behest)... then headed over to John and Ivy's for xmas lunch. Had more turkey, shrimp cocktail, log cake AND xmas pudding... and plenty of wine to wash the turkey down. It was about 5 by the time we finished with lunch, and then we headed out to my parents at 6:30 for dinner (yes, more food). Stuffed ourselves silly with ham and more shrimp cocktail and a pookie-friendly log cake. ugh.


Xmas morning at the parents' place - Dad guessing what his gift is..



Xmas lunch at John and Ivy's - Kale & I, Jessy & Jim, Ivy & John, Elaine & Nick


Decided to be gluttons for punishment and drove back to John and Ivy's for more alcohol and more snacks.. found out that Kale is one mean Jenga player... see pic below:


Kale's mean attempt at Jenga


finally made it home past midnight... and that, my folks, was our first xmas as a married couple, and our first xmas at home together...

In other big news.. we get the keys to our new pad on New Year's eve... not a bad way to kick off the new year, I say. So, hopefully if all goes well, the renovations will be done by Feb, and we can move in in time for Chinese New Year.. cross your fingers and toes, everyone.

OK, time to head off.. we're going to go look at flooring and lights with our friendly contractor.. woo hoo... then we've got a wedding dinner to attend on a ferry. More eating. Damn.

oriental bride

so i did something i never really thought i'd do. i went out and rented a kua for the tea ceremony. for those not familiar with chinese culture, a kua is the VERY red outfit that a bride traditionally wears for chinese weddings.

it's not that i ever had anything against kuas, but i just really never thought of having that as part of my trousseau. after all, i've got enough other outfits for the day. but my aunt brought it up last weekend and said that she thought it'd be something cute to do, and it got me thinking that it'd be the one and only time i'd ever get to play "dress-up" in something like that (well, with reason at least).

so i did some research online, found out it wasn't as expensive as i thought, and my mom, sis and i went to the store today and found one that satisfied our needs:
- reasonable cost
- it fit well
- i didn't look too cheena, in fact i thought i looked pretty darn good (must be this ching-chong face i have that looks good in ethnic clothing)
- it didn't have the usual phoenixes and dragons on it (for my mom.. apparently they're the symbol of the devil or something in the other in Christianity)

so yeah, pretty hassle free. so i'll be kua-wearing bride. i think marrying kale has made this whole chinese wedding thing that much more interesting cos while some of these things seem pretty unnecessary to us since we've seen them so many times, i'm tempted to do away with a lot. but since kale's family hasn't been party to a chinese wedding before (except for celin perhaps), i'm that much more inclined to do the whole shebang (sp?) just for fun.

on another note, i took the afternoon off to go settle "wedding-ish" stuff. i am amazed i can still fit into my wedding gown.. picked it up from the bridal salon today. guess the 3 packs of potato chips a day haven't really done TOO much harm. i can't believe my afternoon off is over just like that. i did nothing except try a kua or 2, pick up my dress and do my nails. DAMN. i want my afternoon back. thank goodness it's thursday and i only have to go through one more day of work.. and i can do that in jeans! woo hoo?!

random pics

just some random pics taken at home

this is Kale's lovely chubby cat... enjoying the sun on her belly.. she's capable of lying like this for hours on end...

Chowe Fatone - sunbathing her tummy...



it started pouring last nite.. like blustering, which is pretty amazing for singapore (we're used to boring ole rain that doesn't last very long and only comes down vertically in a sort of depressing fashion.... but last nite it was raining so hard that the rain was coming sideways. in the light, you could ALMOST imagine it was snowing (a long shot, but when you're desperate, your mind can play tricks on you)


Huge rainstorm last nite .. the make-believe snowstorm...

Putting up the xmas tree

Ok, this is my first VERY amateurish attempt at Photoshop... am beginning to think that a course in Photoshop may be in the works.. sigh. This whole manual thing is not working... reminds me of when I was learning to code C++ from a book in freshman year. Eeks.

Anyway, yeah, here are some pics from a couple weeks ago... Kale's the photographer hence he's not in the pic...


Rocking around the xmas tree..

a techie christmas

i'm having a very uncharacteristic christmas for me.. the first christmas where my only (known) presents are all tech-related as opposed to jewellery/apparel/beauty related.

my latest fad has been blogging (surprise surprise).. what else can i do from the comfort of my home that combines my love of endless jabbering and being a couch potato (i can blog during the commercial breaks of my fave tv shows)? yup.. blog.

so anyhow, i've been exploring the vast number of blogs out there.. it's amazing how many people blog about their children, marriages, love lives, hobbies, etc... the funniest ones are usually the ones with babies.. cos they are always chock full of cute baby photos to go goo-goo-ga-ga over.

anyway, back to the point of the post.. yes, a techie xmas.

went xmas shopping yesterday and found my xmas present from the husband.. a guide to adobe photoshop. not just any guide, the ACCELERATED guide.. oh yeah baby. figured i'd enhance my blogging abilities by learning how to edit and hence put up nice pictures... hopefully i can learn how to make pretty collages so you poor readers won't have to suffer through my long vertical string of multiple photos ever again. my next self-improvement effort will be learning html code.. but hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves...

on top of that, we're going to get a combined xmas pressie from my parents this year.. instead of the individual ones..so we're going to ask for the ipod travel speaker set (i think from altec lansing).. kale really wants them and i think they're pretty neat (altho i have to say that a new wallet would be pretty neat too... not quite as high-tech but still neat).. and they would go so well with the new ipods. so yeah, think that's what's for xmas this year.

so it's been a while, eh?

ok, haven't blogged in a while.. guess life has been busy..

so kale's started a new job, bought a new commuting bike, we put up the christmas tree at my parents', put up xmas tree lights at ours and are in full planning mode for wedding #2. can't believe the planning process is starting already.. it barely feels like it's been a month since the charleston wedding, let alone december!

it's a typical singapore christmas season.. orchard road is decked out in tree lights, the streets are thronging with people, kids are everywhere (it's school hols) and it rains every afternoon. yup, xmas in singapore is marked by rain. if it doesn't rain practically every day, it's not xmas!

the hubby and i decided to get productive this year. we started the xmas shoppping early. got the nieces and nephew some goodies... and have started hunting for the bigger kids =).. shopping in maddening crowds is definitely the true test for a new marriage, i tell you!

on another note.. kale and i made it into a local magazine.. granted, the writer's my best friend, BUT, hey, still pretty nifty.. will scan a copy in and put it up if i can....

ok, bed beckons.. write more soon.