23rd Birthday Dinner at Mezza9

I am 23 years old!! Used to look forward to becoming an adult so I that can have all the freedom in the world. However, now that I am 23, I am actually looking back to the days when I was a teenager. In 2 years time, I will graduate from NUS and will have to start working full time. That means: NO more long holidays, NO time to go out so often with friends, NO more pocket money from parents, NO more late nights, and NO more DOTA!! Well the only good thing about graduating is that there will finally be no more dreadful exams .. haha.

Anyway, I went out with my parents for lunch yesterday and later in the evening, I celebrated my birthday with Roy, Tian Loon, William, Jessica and Michelle over dinner at Mezza9 at Grand Hyatt. Dinner was fantastic, with good food, nice ambience and great service. Had a great time savouring the food and chatting over dinner.

Glorious food ..

All of us

Towards the end of dinner, Jess, Michelle and Roy disappeared and I suspected something, especially when Tian started to strike a conversation with me (by asking me the same question which he asked me at the start of dinner) .. haha. Nevertheless, I was quite stunned when a group of the hotel staff suddenly appeared behind me (I did not know how they managed to sneak up behind me without me noticing) and started to sing me a birthday song.

The birthday song was really SPECIAL, the tune and tempo was totally different from the usual birthday song. Those of us there would know. I think the rest of the gang wanted also to join in the singing but apparently, they themselves were also a bit stunned by the presentation of the birthday song and just stood there watching =). But it was kind of cool though, a first time for me, haha.

Me with my cake!

I also officially joined the Braun Buffel wallet gang (namely Roy, Tian and William) as they passed me my birthday present handpicked by William. According to William and Roy, all decent guys should own a Braun Buffel wallet, but I always disagree with them. Well I guess now that I have no choice but to change my stand .. haha. Anyway, to William: the wallet is very nice and I like it very much =).

Braun Buffel gang!Jessica and Michelle

After dinner, the rest of the night was spent at Roy's place playing poker and admiring William's new Ferrari Acer laptop, which was quite cool. Ended games at around one plus as Jess, Tian and William had to wake up early the next day for work/go hospital.

I had a really great 23rd birthday and thanks to you guys for everything!!

Pictures from Jess

Gathering at Halo Bar

Spent Friday and Saturday afternoons working for Blue Orange Pte Ltd at the World Book Fair, selling some educational software. Yesterday after work at 10 pm, I met up with some of the army gang (Chris, Weijie, Qianfu, Jason, Chee Wei) at Halo Bar for a KTV/drinking session organised by Weijie.

Haven't seen Jason and Chee Wei for quite some time and it was really nice catching up with each other. Chris and Weijie ordered two towers of beer and according to him, since it is sort of an early birthday celebration for me, I had to keep drinking with them. The rest of the night was spent singing/drinking/talking and of course .. listening to Chee Wei ('Ge Shen') singing.

@Halo Bar. My face is so red due to the sunburn =)

As I haven't been drinking for quite some time, I got quite drunk yesterday and was in a daze towards the end of the session. We left Halo Bar at around 2 am and went for supper before heading home. It was really great to meet up with the army guys and crap about everything, especially Chris, who always has endless jokes to tell us. Thanks a lot! (especially to Weijie who organised the gathering)

Sandcastle Building

Just spent the previous few days (Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) of the week working ad-hoc with Roy for a company called Beautiful Minds. They conduct sandcastle building workshops for corporate companies and also for schools to promote team building. It was quite fun learning how to build sandcastles and apparently, there are a lot of skills involved to build a nice sandcastle and not as childish as I used to think it was.

The major project was at Sentosa where we had to build a sandcastle on Thursday in preparation for Friday's corporate event for 200 over employees of Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Thursday was really very tiring as we had to use shovels to pile up sand into a big pile for the centerpiece and also to carry water to wet the sand. Me, Roy, Anthony and Val (the new part-timers) were basically Bangladesh workers for the first part of the day: piling sand and carrying water, while the more experienced staff scupltured the sandcastle. Only later in afternoon did we manage to finish our Bangladesh work and help to build some parts of the castle. It was really satisfying to see the completed results and here it is:

The castle looks really nice! No chemicals used, just sand, water and pressure =)

However, the sun was really bad and I got a horrible sunburn on my back, feet and face!! Really regretted taking off my shirt.

Roy and Me (Sunburnt)

Anthony and Me (Even more sunburnt) Top half of my face when I got home on Thursday

Well luckily the pay was not that bad and Friday was quite slack, so I managed to survive the sun at Sentosa on Friday with lots of sunblock, wearing a T-shirt and cap .. haha! But it was quite an experience (minus the sunburn) and hopefully my sunburn will recover soon.

Chalet at Aloha Loyang

Just went for fencing chalet over the weekend from Sunday to Monday at Aloha Loyang. Haven't attended any chalets for about a year plus and thanks to Weiquan who kindly organised the chalet (which is also the first time fencing is organising a chalet), we were able to take a break from the usual training routine and have fun at the chalet.

BBQ was held on the first day and I ended up cooking my own food as Grace did not help me cook any food (despite her claiming that I was her 'best-est' friend). Usually I just hang around the pit and steal food from others, but I decided to be nice this time, haha. BBQ turned out quite ok except the potatoes, which had to be microwaved instead as it was too troublesome to BBQ them. Xinling and Yaowen turned up late and happily went to the living room to watch TV, waiting for food to be served. However, after some time, they felt bad and decided to help by collecting money and washing dishes respectively, haha.

After the BBQ, we started playing mahjong/poker/board games/watching DVDs. At some point in time, I believed I was tricked into going into the room at to play Big Two by some of them and a while later, the rest of the fencing gang showed up with a birthday cake and singing me a birthday song. I was a bit shocked that they remembered my birthday although it is 1 week later. Really touched and THANKS to everyone!! (especially to Shirlyn who reminded me that she spent 10 minutes choosing the cake with a rat on top .. haha)

The rest of the night and the next day was spent on more mahjong/poker/board games/watching DVDs and TV. It was a great time at the chalet and I thought it was quite nice that there was no activities related to fencing for once and everyone could just relax. Hopefully we can have another chalet during the next holiday (**hinting to the next Chairperson) and hopefully those who were unable to join us this time could attend the next one.

Fencing resumes

After 1 month of break, fencing training finally started this week on Tuesday. Training started off training with a slow jog around the track for warm up. It was really a SLOW jog as everyone was quite unfit after a long break, and some of them were complaining that a 10 minute jog was too long. Luckily I started training (for IPPT) a couple of weeks back and so it was quite relaxed for me. The rest of Tuesday was spent doing some basic footwork and free fencing so that everyone could refresh their memory.

Coach came down on Thursday's training and there was only 1 word to describe it: SHAG! Apparently he did not realise that we have not been training for the past month and drilled us quite a lot. My poor legs and arms, they were totally aching after training, such that I had a minor cramp halfway when I was driving home, luckily it recovered quite fast and I did not get into an accident.

After such a long break, I realised my fencing has gone down the drain, forgot all my moves and did silly stuff while fencing .. haha. Hopefully I don't get scolded by coach on Saturday when he trains one-to-one with me. I really need to work doubly hard and train up to a reasonable standard. Next competition is in June which means I have less than one month (minus all the trainings I will miss due to work).

Well I guess I have no choice but to work doubly hard. I need to OWN everyone else .. haha!

Dinner with ex-Starhub colleagues

Just met up for dinner on Monday evening with Junli, Junzhong, Jingxiong, Eileen, Joanna and Kai Jing, some of my ex-Starhub colleagues at Fish & Co. The last time we met up was almost one year ago. Haven't seen them for quite some time and we had a great time catching up over dinner.
It was interesting to find out what everyone had been doing over the past year and of course, we also reminisced about old times, when we used to listen to slack together (after finishing our work of course .. haha). Jingxiong and Junzhong are both doing their internships and only me and Junli are slacking away. Eileen has found a boyfriend and cut her hair short! Kaijing is still as thin as ever. And the ever so rich Joanna is going to Japan again (2 times within 12 months .. although according to her it is once a year .. once in 2006 and once in 2007 haha).

Dinner ended at around 10 as some of them had to work the following day. Joanna promised to organise the next gathering, so we shall look forward to the next gathering. Hopefully more people can join us the next time round.

Grandma's 80th birthday / Mahjong night

Just celebrated my grandma's 80th birthday at the Teochew Garden Restaurant at the Concourse on Saturday night. I always thought my grandma was in her seventies and only realised that she was 80 yesterday night (Oops!). Time really flies.

The food there was really fantastic, especially the shark's fin (the fin was huge). The portions were also quite large and all of us were quite full from the dinner, especially myself. When it was time to cut the birthday cake, my stomach simply had no space to contain any more food and I had to forgo the cake.

Grandma was really happy yesterday, especially during the cake cutting. Dinner ended at about 10pm and the rest of the night was spent at Tian's place playing mahjong (again).

Well, yesterday was another crazy mahjong night with myself winning like over 10 bucks at the beginning of the game. However, towards the end, I started to lose but overall, I still made 4 bucks =). Roy also won some money, which means only Tian and Jess lost. Actually I felt kind of bad for winning their money, especially when they kindly hosted us, but I guess they won't mind .. haha. (Next time it will be your turn to win)

2 consecutive nights of mahjong was really SHAG! We should start earlier next time and end earlier so that we can make the winner give us a treat for supper. But I guess the next weekend will probably be board games or poker with more people, unless Tian and Jess wants to recoup their losses .. haha.

Mahjong at Tian's place

Have been waking up at 11 plus these few mornings due to late night DOTA games till 3 plus in the morning. Yesterday afternoon was spent trying to spruce up my blog and the remaining time was spent on DOTA (again ..).

Luckily there was mahjong to look forward to at Tian Loon's place yesterday night. Haven't played mahjong with the gang in quite a while. The last time we played mahjong was during Chinese New Year at Roy's. Well, the game started off slowly (with Michelle happily snapping away pictures of everything) and things only seemed to speed up towards the end when everyone was tired.

Luck was on my side for the BEGINNING of the game, with myself on a winning streak (but in SMALL denominations) but towards the end of the game, lady luck seemed to have migrated to Roy's side. So Roy was the big (ONLY) winner after 16 rounds. According to him, he has been on a winning streak on his past few mahjong games.

Tian and I wanted to continue for another 4 rounds to recoup our losses but Roy refused to give us a chance for revenge, citing that he has soccer at 12pm that afternoon and he needs to sleep (haha just joking). Jess was also not in favour because she has to give tuition that morning.So we ended the game at around 3am. However, being a nice guy, Roy offered us souvenirs he brought back from Chiang Mai and a treat the next time round to make us feel better =).

Nonetheless, it was a great time chatting and joking with each other, especially after such a long absence from mahjong. Next time round, it will be my turn to give a treat .. haha.

Bored ..

Yeah! Finally I have my own blog. Been wanting to start a blog for a very long time but I am kinda lazy to do it. Now that its the holidays and I have nothing better to do, thought that I better get down to it before I procrastinate again. Haha

After trying out several sites, I decided to settle for Blogspot. I am still trying to get the hang of things and hopefully I can figure it out over this long 3 months break.

Now that the long awaited holidays are here, I suddenly find that I have too much time and too little things to do. Been meeting up with friends the past few days and hunting for part time jobs to pass time. Of course, the remaining time is spent on DOTA (which is a pretty good way to waste your day away .. haha)

Well, I guess next week would be a better week as fencing training starts. At least I will be occupied on my Tues/Thur evenings and Sat mornings. I need to exercise more and workout for my IPPT in June =)