In Memories of….

My Sister had her Solemnization at Flutes at the Fort earlier this month, a colonial-style house converted restaurant/wine bar. Situated beside the Central Fire Station, it used to be old fire chief’s home so that they can be operationally ready at all times.

It was a simple ceremony with about 30 invitees made up of our relatives and the couples’ close friends. Cosy ambience with finger food (heavy snacks or rather), both of them took their marriage vows in Chinese (for the sake of the English illiterate parents) with us as their witnesses.

As promised on my facebook, I will post my ala carte buffet experience in Si Chuan Dou Hua, top of UOB Plaza branch.

The 1st thing I would like to say, the view of Singapore from 60th storey is really breathe-taking!!! I did not manage to take a good shot with my shakey hands though. The reflection from the glass doesn’t seem to help as well.

One thing impressive about this place is how tea is being served. The tea master skillfully fill up our teacups with a teapot with an extremely long spout. He told us he has been mastering this art for near to 10 years.

The way he keeps his teapot is so fast such that the camera couldn’t capture him!!!

Appetizers were served in tiny portions so that we still have the capacity for main dishes later.

For main dishes we had stir-fried beef with spring onions and garlic  (which I don’t eat though), shark fin soup, soft shell crabs, fried butterfly prawns, roast chicken in Thai sauce, sweet and sour prawns, sweet and sour pork, braised egg tofu, steamed Soon Hock, black pepper scallop, 8 Treasures seafood soup and Ee Fu noodles.

For dessert, we ordered almost whatever was available.

An unintended scene: a chef was serving Peking Duck at the next table:

If you wish to know how is the food, I think QJ’s satisfied face should be more than enough to answer your question.

Halloween falls on 31st October every year. The word “Halloween” (also known as “All Hallows Day” or All Saints Day”) has its origins in the Catholic Church and is a Catholic day of observation in honour of saints.

Halloween costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. They are said to be used to scare off demons. Today, costumes are also based on themes such as those of characters from television shows, movies, and other pop culture icons.

We decided to celebrate Halloween with Jackie’s friends this year at our place this year.

Our wedding picture is covered with spider web!!!

I self-baked some cupcakes and a birthday cake for one of his friends, Terry’s birthday. Terry’s girlfriend, Winnie wrote the wordings on the cake.

Halloween dress-up somehow became a Cosplay dress-up.

The Wii team and the PS3 Rock Band team!!!

Finally, it’s time for food!!! Look at the spread we have:

Happy 44th birthday Singapore!!! Today marks the 44th year of Singapore’s independence.

This year’s NDP (National Day Parade) theme is “Come Together – Reaching Out, Reaching Up”. It is about our coming together as one united people, to Reach Out to all Singaporeans regardless of race, language or religion, and to Reach Up towards our hopes and aspirations articulated when we pledge to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.

I remember the 1st year I was involved in NDP was in year 1995 when I was part of Red Cross marching contingent.  1996 onwards for the next 8 years, I participated as part of the first aiders team.

This year I will not be able to watch the parade live but I decided to let my dogs show their love for Singapore too by dressing them in red.

Posting of this part 2 shall include celebration on actual day itself.  I went to the zoo!!!

The last time I went to the zoo was 2 years ago before they renovated it into Safari theme. One reward for going to the zoo is being able to see the zoo’s latest addition,a baby pygmy hippo which was born on 4th June 2009. This little guy has not mastered the skill of trapping water yet and kept jumping up to the water surface for air while following his mother in the water.

During one of the animal shows, we also managed to see a white peacock with his feathers spread out.

A zebra crossing that looks like zebra stripes:

On a side note, Jackie made a birthday cake for him by himself as my birthday gift.

I finally managed to upload all my birthday celebration photos. I know this post is 9 days late. I somehow had issue uploading my pictures to my flickr account earlier.

The 1st birthday cake I had was on my birthday eve. A colleague of mine has her birthday one day after mine so we blew the candle together. The strawberry chocolate cake from secret recipe is sooo rich and delicious, too bad I did not manage to take a picture of the interior.

I am not posting pictures of my colleagues here to protect my company’s as well as my colleagues’ interest.

The evening episode on smoothly, thanks to everyone who has helped in the event. Samson, Eric and Haojie for helping Jackie with the alcohol and the video. Dawn, Jessie and Kaiting for helping out @ the reception. Chae Siong for helping us to take care of the food serving timing; QJ and Ah boy for helping me set up the reception table, especially ah boy for the photo montage (I love the logo!!!)

During the 1st march-in, the dry-ice effect was a little too much and totally covered me just before we reached the stage. We chose Andy Lau’s 《结婚进行曲》as the song for the 1st march-in.

We did not get to try the cold dish during our food tasting but I thought it made itself a grand entrance.

The song used in our 2nd march-in was 吴克群’s 《情人节》. We had actually planned to sing 王力宏 and Selina’s 《你是我心内的一首歌》with Gavin playing on keyboard but he fell sick at the last minute so we had to change it to karaoke version.

These 2 cups of disgusting drinks is ’specially prepared’ by my red cross friends of more than 15 years. It is made up of red wine, toothpicks, the sauce from the spicy chicken and some other ingredients that I was unable to make out.

These are what we have chosen as our wedding favour and the little champagne bottle is actually bubble bottles.

After the whole event, we went back to Swissotel Merchant Court for the night’s rest. I simply love the view from the room.

For more of my wedding pictures, please refer to this link.

I guess everyone involved did not get to sleep at all…. After sending Rinko to the boarder @ Buddy Buddy and Kookie to Dawn’s place, another long night was in place for us. Everyone of us woke up @ wee hour in preparation for my wedding.

My makeup artist, Sandy was at my place by 5.50am:

The 姐妹 arrived at 6.15am and started preparing “ice-cream” for the 兄弟. The “ice-cream” is made up of wasabi, soy bean paste, Yōkan, red bean paste, super lemon as well as Chilli Padi and the most bitter part of cucumber (both with courtesy from my mum).

Jackie and his gang was made to eat the “ice-cream” as well as drink vinegar before they were allowed into the house (not forgetting the ang pows for getting into the house of course).

Jackie was then made to carry Whitie and sing a song at the door of my room and Whitie kept licking him.

After consuming some red dates with hard-boiled eggs soup, we set off for Jackie’s Jurong house where we paid our respects to his ancestors and the gods worshiped in his place.

As Jackie had 17 relatives who came over from KL, the tea ceremony was held in our new house instead.

Our last itinerary was back to Hougang where tea is offered to my parents and relatives.

Now, how could I miss posting pictures of the 姐妹 and  兄弟? If there wasn’t their help, everything would not been so fun….

New Year Day was celebrated at Singapore Zoological Gardens with my family. It’s a pity that Dad and Jackie couldn’t join us on the ‘excursion”.

The last time I went to the zoo was 16 years ago when Inuka, the 1st and only polar bear born in the tropics was born. There’s currently 2 polar bears in Singapore. However, the hot climate in Singapore is unsuitable for polar bears and the bears are reported to have shown abnormal behaviour due to heat stress. ACRES (Animal Concerns Research and Education Society) has called for the Zoo to send Inuka away when his mum passes away. Inuka’s mum, Sheba at the age of 29 has way past the normal life expectancy of a polar bear of 25 and is too old to withstand the travelling.

I did not get to watch any animal show this trip but I got to see a sesame plant for the 1st time of my life. I also saw turtles mating and got to touch and feed goats for the very 1st time.

This post is 4 days late but I have been too busy to blog and Taiwan earthquake has caused a disruption to the Internet service in Singapore.

Christmas countdown was done at Eric’s place with Jackie and his friends. This is the very first time I celebrated Christmas outside home. Jackie dressed up as Santa and this excited some kids at the void deck of Eric’s block. However, they soon ‘accused’ him as a fake Santa.

We played Superman edition Monopoly and Big 2 which I caused Jackie to drink a glass of green tea mixed Vodka.

Christmas itself was spent at CSL’s house playing mahjong and the sole loser is our Mr Jackie Tan with me winning most of his money.

As promised, I shall post the photo of the “bear tree” in habourfront as well as some photos taken in Jewel Box on Mount Faber.

Wednesday was Choon Meng’s birthday. As he has taken leave on that special day, we celebrated his birthday one day later instead. It seems like birthday lunch has become a norm in this department, and this time round, lunch is at Oscar’s at Conrad Centennial Singapore.

I was a little surprised by this black kitten wondering outside the restaurant. There are stray cats in Singapore, but they are mostly found at housing estates. This is the first time I spot a cat in town.

The food is generally nice; well, it has to as this is an award winning restaurant we are talking about. I simply love the desserts! However, there were some hiccups like the captain not being able to find our reservation under Donald’s name.

I was very much attracted to the Conrad Bears-decorated Christmas tree and this reminded me of another “bear tree” in Habourfront. I shall post the picture of that tree here later.