Tag-Archive for » celebration «

November 09th, 2009 | Author: gabriel

Had a small birthday dinner celebration with Elaine and the guys at Jurong Point last night. It was very difficult to ‘secure’ their time and most of them are busy with FYP and exams. A big thank you to Ela ine for organizing this and getting people to come.. =)
So happened that night I was to stay overnight in NTU as I will be going to Bukit Batok the next morning. Much nearer to travel from NTU instead of Hougang. Took the opportunity to meet up with them in Jurong Point where they Shaun made reservations to Pu Tien for dinner.

It’s my first time in Pu Tien although I’ve heard of the place quite a few times before that. It’s the Chinese restaurant kind and they ordered a lot of types of dishes.

food-cockerelfood-yam food-bunfood-beehoon

Actually, it’s been a while since we hang out.. The last time was the house warming a few weeks ago. Anyway, this time round they self-decorated the cake…

 bday-cake

As you can see, there’s a number of nicely decorated ‘shits’ down there and the writing says “Happy Sai Birthday”
At the sides, they added in their ‘signatures’

bay-cake-1 bday-cake-2

And their gift for me.. A $50 G2000 gift voucher. Haha

G2000-voucher

Anyway, thanks guys for spending the time out for the night. =)

group-pic-bday

October 31st, 2009 | Author: gabriel

To ‘commemorate’ the birthday celebrations of all the Ipoh October babies in SG, we set a date on the 30th Oct for a mass celebration. The celebration is for myself, Ferdinand Peter and Pinkie. But Pinkie couldn’t join us as she has some family matters to attend to back in KL..
Anyway, our celebration started of with a small group of 8 for dinner (plus Bishan who joined after dinner)  in Bugis Junction where we ate at NYDC.

 

nydc-dinner

We ate a variety of different western food such as lamb stew, chicken chop, baked pasta, spaghetti, sandwich and pizza. I ordered a sandwich served with German sausage in between. This is the ‘appetizer’ to the main event – we headed for Karaoke at kSuite @ Iluma, the new shopping mall next to Bugis Street. There was an addition of 6 more people. It feels like hanging out in Ipoh again where out of 15 of us, only 3 are non-Ipoh and that’s because they are the plus ones. It was thanks to Susan who managed to get us a free room with no rates but provided we ordered alcohol/open bottle at our ‘party’. 

KSuite is one of the better karaokes I’ve been to. The room is quite big with 4 mics and two screens. The song selection screen is a stand-touch-screen-panel and is quite user friendly. There is also a mini-room with a computer inside where you can surf the net and play many pre-installed games. Can even facebook there…

We started singing from 11pm and lasted all the way until 4am. haha.. We had a ‘karaoke rehearsal session’ in the house a few nights before using youtube. We even printed out cheat sheets aka ‘pinyin lyrics’ for some chinese songs cause most of us can’t read mandarin. The session was fun and many went crazy as you can see from the video below.

 

karaoke singing

 

We had a good time of dancing, singing… We even dance the Wondergirls – Nobody song… And did some impromptu ‘yam seng’ when there was a very long draggy note in the song….

wondergirls-dance 

yam-seng

Halfway through, they brought out the birthday cakes to celebrate me and Ferdi’s birthday.

gab-ferdi-birthday

All of us had a great time there.. Thanks for organizing and planning it!

all-karaoke

October 27th, 2009 | Author: gabriel

This is my first birthday which I spent it on a night bus… I was back in Ipoh for the weekend and took the night bus back to Singapore with Chee Lim on the 26th.. She’s going to start work in Singapore and is going down to do her medical checkup.. Anyway, I’m in one of the older Sri Maju bus and when the clock strikes midnight, begins my mini-birthday celebration – 2 slices of Secret Recipe in a box. Chee Lim brought it up in the bus to celebrate it with me..

secret-recipe

 

Shall remind myself not to take the 11pm bus anymore. We only reached Singapore at 730pm as the bus took a big detour in JB. Then, there was jam in the expressway on the way back to Hougang as it’s the peak hours.. By the time I reached, it’s around 9am. I’ve to quickly unpack, wash up and get ready to go out for an appointment at 11am. I met up with jit-vern, yee weng, chee lim and yuet min for lunch. We ate at Raffles since everyone is working there (or is around there). Just a short ‘lunch celebration’ with them where we ate at KIlliney Kopitiam in Raffles Place.

Did I mention that being in Singapore is very stressed up. I took leave for the day as well and as my phone is set to receive work emails, I received a lot of e-mails that requires my attention. A few people were chasing me for documents, requirements, etc. Was quite stressed up. I ended up blocking my emails from entering my phone as not to be emotionally ruined on my birthday. haha… Otherwise, leave will be like no leave.

I went back to take a 1-hour afternoon nap before I really start emptying my luggage. It’s good to be at home without any disturbances; tidying up the room, arranging stuff – basically housekeeping stuffs.

Yin Sin planned for my dinner celebration. We met up at Clarke Quay to have Jap Food at Tom Ton! She saw the description of a ‘black pig’ for Tom Ton and wanted to go there.. haha..
Anyway, there we were – we ordered the crispy black pig. It’s very juicy and yummy. *slurp*

yin-sin

Then, she kinda surprised me when they came with a candle on a dessert.

gab-birthday

And the day I went back to Ipoh, she did a very thoughtful thing. She bought balloons and made a birthday card and left it in my room. Saying that when I return from Malaysia, I’ll see those things already there waiting to ‘wish’ me Happy Birthday. In case nobody’s around to wish me. Thanks dear =)

birthday 

birthday-bed 

Oh, and thanks to all the birthday wishes via phone, sms and facebook. Those really made my day. =D

Category: birthdays  | Tags: ,  | Leave a Comment
October 04th, 2009 | Author: gabriel

It has been two years already…
This year around, it has become something simpler..
Basically, it started off the night before where she came over to make spaghetti meatball and mash potatoes.
It was a very good meal despite her first attempt to prepare the dish.

Then the following day, I had to run my own errands first. Went to apply for my PR at ICA where the appointment was made like a few months ago. It was pretty fast though. About 15min, the whole process is done. We went to Kuishin bo for lunch. She always wanted to eat there and had a very long craving of sushi. Can you imagine, she actually ate more than me! Or is it because age is catching up with me and I can’t eat as much anymore… =/ We started off with the soup, sushi and salmon sashimi. Then, it’s followed by the grilled meats… Took lots of stuff like prawns, meat and we ended off with many different desserts.

We then went window shopping around Suntec – Milennia Walk – Marina Square. Meantime, trying to look for something to buy for each other. Made it something different this year to buy something that we each really like. We went to many different shops.. From electronics, to clothes, to shoes.. In the end, I bought a top for her from Zara and she bought an earphone for me from Creative.

We went back after that as we were too tired from the walking.. Oh, did I mention that it falls on the same day as mid autumn festival? We wanted to stroll around Punggol Park, under the moonlit sky but alas, it rained since late afternoon. But we had mooncakes at home and spent the evening watching tv on channel 8 along with my housemates. It was a simple but yet a memorable day. =)

Category: personal  | Tags: ,  | One Comment
December 21st, 2008 | Author: gabriel

Every year, my family will celebrate ‘guo tong’ or better known as the winter celebration. It has the shortest day in a year and somehow, Chinese people will make ‘tang yuan’ to celebrate this ‘festive occasion’. I’ve been wondering many years.. Why do we need to celebrate the start of winter?? Here are some excerpts that I found on the web:

There may be two reasons why the Chinese hold celebrations on this day. One, is that after a hard working year, farmers always take a rest to enjoy their bountiful harvest. The second reason has to do with the theory of Yin and Yang. In Chinese philosophy, Yin symbolizes the feminine and negative qualities of the universe while Yang the masculine and positive. It is dialectical and dynamic in a sense. When something has reached one extreme, it will turn to the oposite. On the day of the Winter Solstice, the Yin is at its peak with the longest night. From then on, it will give way to the light and warmth of Yang. And the Chinese consider it a right time for optimism and joy.

http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa122200a.htm

Oh well, all I know is.. on that day I have to wake up early in the morning to make tang yuan. The more I make, the more money I’m supposed to make over the next year… =/ Over the past few years, I have the help of my sisters to make all these tang yuan; waking up at 6-7am and over the years, we’ve been waking up later and later. This year, it’s only me and my mum who made the tang yuan and we only started at 9am (cause I couldn’t wake up) haha…

Then we’ll have sumptuous meals over lunch/dinner. This year, we had a whole chicken, fish, duck, vege(s) and soup and we invited family friends over for lunch. I had my fair share for lunch. Home cooked food is always the best!

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