It's A Small World After All

I was chatting on MSN with a colleague and he was asking me how my trip to Kota Kinabalu was. I asked him to add me on FB so that he could see my pictures. After a while, he messaged me asking me how I knew this guy who appeared as a mutual friend.

"Are you from AHS? Wait a minute, are you that half Chinese half Filipino girl he always talked about???"

Turns out my colleague was from the same primary school as this guy, and well, apparently we had both chatted on ICQ way back when. Lol. What a small world.

10 Things To Be Grateful For

During the Kota Kinabalu trip, we talked about (what else) happiness and such and sometimes it amazes me at how happy I am at this point in my life. No, things aren't perfect, but I'm so thankful that I'm able to recognise that it's not that bad either.

So here are 10 things I'm grateful for. Big and small.

1. My blanket. Love how it keeps me warm when I'm cold. I'm all wrapped up now. Hehehe.

2. My wifi enabled phone. Having wifi was one of the things I insisted on when I was shopping for a phone. Didn't use it much initially, but am using it much more now.

3. Good food in my life. Singapore is really a glutton's paradise and I love being able to eat such a variety of food. Slurp. And having family and friends who cook well too? Best.

4. A roof over my head. A place to call home.

5. A close knit family. I know a lot of people aren't very close to their families but I'm so so so so so thankful that I am. And it's not just my immediate family, but extended family like aunties, uncles and cousins.

6. Wonderful traveling companions. It's not easy to find people that you enjoy traveling with, and I think it's amazing how good a time the 4 of us have when we travel together. It helps that we're all pretty easy going (read: lazy) and don't fluster easily. Lots of laughter on our trips.

7. My camera. Sosososo glad I brought my camera on this trip, otherwise we'd have no pictures. Lol. Plus I never have to worry about charging my batteries since it's powered by AA batteries!

8. A job I'm happy at with a boss I like and respect. Sure, my boss is leaving but I'm glad I had the opportunity to find out what it's like to work under a good boss.

9. Free accommodation in NY if I go in the next three years! One good thing that came out of my boss' resignation. Lol. I'll save a bomb!

10. Wanderlust. Notice how there's an exclamation point only in the item about an upcoming trip? Lol. I'm glad I am curious enough to want to see the world, and that I have the means to.

:)

Busy Weekend

Friday
~ Got back from the airport at about 2am, showered and finally went to sleep at 3ish.
~ Had a farewell lunch for my boss with my colleagues at Hanabi.
~ Met Yummy and LGG for dinner at Lau Pa Sat. Satay, rojak and chicken wings. Slurp.

Saturday
~ Watched Transformers at Vivo City with Ching, 222, Edward, LGG, Che and Dave. Didn't realise it was going to take so long.
~ Met my sister at Vivo and headed to the Line at Shangri La for dinner.
~ Dinner at the Line at Shangri La with the family to celebrate JH's 21st birthday. Food was good. Ate too much.
~ Went to Arena at Clarke Quay after. Apparently had many SMS conversations which I don't recall. Left at 230am and went back home to sleep.

Sunday
~ Slept the whole day.
~ Dinner at home. Relatives came over.

Still In Kota Kinabalu

Did some water rafting yesterday which was quite pleasant but a bit boring (Level 1 and 2 rapids only).

 

Heading back tonight.

Hello From Kota Kinabalu!

I'm in the hotel now, using the business center and freezing my ass off because the airconditioning here is too cold. Anyway, day3 in Kota Kinabalu and so far it's been a blast.

 

I'd write more but 1. I'm MSNing, 2. my fingers are tired. Anyway, 7 hours up to climb to 3275m where we stayed the night at Laban Rata. Through out the climb, we kept going "are we there yet?" and "why are we doing this?". It was steep and there were lots of steps.

 

Had a headache the entire evening and chucked my breakfast, so I decided to skip the climb to the summit. An hour later, there's a knock on my door and the three girls are back, victims of altitude sickness. We decided to just rest and start our descent early.

 

Took us 5.5 hours to descend, and thankfully we didn't summit as it started to rain on our last kilometre down. It was so tiring going down the steps (definitely strained my knees) and the rain made it more dangerous because everything was so slippery. Eventually got back to the hotel in the afternoon, took a nice hot shower and went for a foot massage.

 

Oh! I took a shower at Laban Rata, and I have to say that was the first time in my life that I showered with icy cold water. Within seconds, my fingers were numb from the freezing cold. I don't know why I continued to shampoo my hair and evevntually took a quick rinse under the water. COLD!

 

Anyway, we had breakfast this morning. Took a cab out and had laksa and beef noodles- delicious. Went to a supposed wholesale market but there wasn't much to buy. Came back and here I am, blogging and FBing.

 

Water rafting tomorrow. Back on Thursday. Yay!

Sense of Urgency? Erm, No.

My sis just asked me, "You don't feel any sense of urgency to pack your stuff huh?" and honestly, I don't. Lol. The flight's in 5 hours, and that's more than plenty of time to pack, go to LGG's house for dinner and reach the airport after. Plenty. Lol.

Anyway, thanks to every one who has been sending me good luck and happy climbing SMSes. I promise to take more pictures at the summit. Woohoo!

Kota Kinabalu, Here We Come!

Woohoo! This time tomorrow, the four of us will be happily sitting in a plane to Kota Kinabalu. The plan for the trip is that we'd arrive on Saturday night, rest at the hotel, have an early breakfast, and start out on Sunday morning. Register ourselves at the HQ before climbing, stop over at Laban Rata (which I reckon is 3/4 of the way up), rest for the night. Wake up and head out at 2am on Monday morning and climb to the summit. Take lots of photos of happy-us, watch the sunrise and then make the descend.

We'll rest on Tuesday, probably go check out the markets and stuff, and then white water rafting (Level 1 and 2 only, don't worry) on Wednesday. Chill out some more on Thursday before flying back at night and arriving on Friday morning.

Everyone who knows we are going to climb Mount Kinabalu has been telling us how we tough it's going to be. And I'm sure it won't be easy, but I'm just as sure that we can do it. We've got the gear we need (new hiking shoes which now seem a tad loose. Need to try them on with a double layer of socks) and all the positive energy in the world to propel us forwards (or should it be, upwards?). *grin*

Anyway, as usual, I've not packed. Have an entire day to do so tomorrow and after that it's dinner at LGG's before heading to the airport. Yay!

3 Years, 3 Months

Wah, I was reading through my old blog and just found out from an old entry that I bought my laptop on 12 March 2006.

Discipline, I Need You

Yikes. I had a badminton game on Thursday and after that, haven't done anything except booze and snooze. Need to do my squats today or go climb some stairs.

This time next week we'll be in Kota Kinabalu, probably on our way to start climbing the mountain. Got to buck up! Suffer now so suffer less later.

Friday Night

Lazy to type so much.

- Met Larry and Jacqueline at No5 for dinner and drinks.

- Peggy joined us and we chatted till about 10pm.

- Headed to the Pump Room where Larry's colleagues were.

- Danced.

- Ching joined us at about 11pm.

- Danced some more.

- Left at about 1am, completely stoked. Had a fabulous time.

--
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My Legs, They Quiver!

Decided to heed cousin.e's advise and tried to do some squats last night. Managed to do 50, and then another 50, and then my legs turned to jelly.

100 squats was all I could manage. How am I going to survive the climb?

Absolutely no idea, but it'll happen. After all, if grannies can do it, so can I. Lol!

Some Encouragement, Finally

neovicarius says:
u gonna climb?
bon is getting excited about kota kinabalu.. never mind that i've not trained a bit says:
yah
hahahahahahahaha
neovicarius says:
if grannies can do it
so can u

My Muscles, They Burn!

Argh. I'm aching from every possible body part, thanks to an over-enthusiastic workout session at the gym yesterday. I decided to start off by doing interval runs for about 20 minutes, then walked on an incline for another 10 minutes. Did some rowing for another 10 minutes or so, took a breather and then hit the weights machines.

I must have been possessed or something and went at the machines with no plan in mind except to make my muscles burn. And burn they did. I did exercises on my biceps, triceps, inner and outer thighs, my back, my chest and shoulders, my abdominals. I went nuts!

Woke up this morning and could barely roll out of bed and peel off my clothes. Tried to do some stretching, but the damage had already been done.

Anyway, was chatting with cousin.e about my upcoming trip to Kota Kinabalu and she advised me to train as hard as I can for the remaining days that I have left. She suggested I do squats- 5 sets of 100 reps a day. That's 500 squats a day. *faint*

Being the good girl that I am, I decided to give it a go, despite all the aches and pains I was having. Managed to do 50 squats, took a break and did another 50 squats. And my legs were feeling quite jelly-like. Yikes. So unfit. How to climb mountain like that?

I'll try to do a couple more squats in the morning and again in the evening and hopefully my leg muscles will toughen up some. *crosses fingers and toes*

In An Annoyingly Good Mood

Yippie! I've booked my tickets to Da Nang!

Have no mood to work at all, so guess what? Not gonna do a thing. Lol!

I hope no one in the office reads this. Hehehehahahaha.

An Oldie But A Goodie

Lol

http://unleashyourinnerbitch.blogspot.com/2006/11/what-we-really-do-at-work.html

Yawn. Tired.

Wah. I've been going out late for the past 3 nights, reaching home at past 2 or 3am each time. *yawn*

Had dinner and drinks with the Martian on Thursday. Had an interesting chat about relationships and monogamy and marriage and life. Lol. Dinner was at some Vietnamese restaurant and drinks were at No5 after, and we sat at the "platform" area behind the DJ console. I'd blog about some of the things we talked about, but I vaguely remembered promising not to do so, so.. Got back at 2am with barely enough hand-eye coordination left in me to open the padlock and gate, and fell asleep on the couch.

Took half the day off in the afternoon on Friday. Was totally zonked out in the morning, and didn't do much at all in the office. Finally left the office (and coincidentally, my energy levels surged at that point haha) and got tickets to watch Terminator with Ching. Thought the movie was so-so only, didn't quite enjoy it as some of the other movies that were screening at the cinemas.

Went to Carrefour to pick up some groceries for dinner at LGG's place, then picked her up on the way back and headed to her home. We didn't even need to cook anything because LGG had packed some stuff from her company event and there was tonnes to eat. We were nibbling on cheese and crackers, canapes, chicken wings and these tiny little mushroom puffs.

Helped her to assemble the DVD player and we decided to watch Sweeney Todd. And then, Zoolander. And then the first episode of The L Word (bad script). And then the first episode of Californiacation (Gracie from The Nanny has grown up!). We eventually grilled the vegetables that we bought and snacked on them too. Can't remember what time we left her place.

Slept in on Saturday then went to Tampines1 (I think that's what it's called). Checked out some of the new shops there and grabbed a couple of tanktops from UniQlo. Ate lunch at Manpuku and tried their oh-so-famous fruit tarts (not too bad, but I wouldn't queue as long for it anymore). Also tried the "nice"-cream from this shop at the basement that makes ice-cream using liquid nitrogen.

Headed to Balestier to have dinner with the cousins at the mutton steamboat place and we ate so much. But getting stuff from their a la carte menu was so much more worth it, we ended up eating more and paying less (of course it helps if you know what you want to eat). Trotted over to SY's place to chill by her poolside while JH made caprioskas. Niice. Went upstairs to play with the cats for a bit and then went back home.

*yawn*

Time to rest today.

Holiday!!!

Yaay! I'm in such a good mood. 15 days to Kota Kinabalu! WOOOHOOOOOO!!!

 

Absolutely no mood to do work. Taken half the day off this afternoon. Maybe shall go catch a movie with Ching. Hehehehehe.

 

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

Yes, I Know. Spam.

Deal with it, people. When inspiration hits (or in this case, when we do something fantastically spontaneous like book a trip to KK after 10 minutes of deliberation), I spam the blog. LOL.

In Total Trust

I like what Ching said.

I like the carefee spirit we have, in total trust for the universe to give us the money we want, the places to go, meet people who we like and loved by them......

And To Answer Any Burning Questions..

Yes, I've decided to make the decision to not not drink.

Quite simple really- several events that happened recently made me rethink this whole "religion" thing. And while I still believe that there is a God, I'm finding it hard to reconcile certain things.

Here's an example: Homosexuality has always been something I've never really been biased against, after all, I've got family who are gay and I think that it's perfectly fine. However, the recent AWARE meeting put in me touch with several gay people who I've gotten to know and respect.

I don't really know how to articulate it, but I guess it strengthened my conviction that you don't choose to be homosexual, that it's ok to have a different sexual orientation and that guess what, they are normal people too!

So at the end of the day, it was hard for me to "believe" in a religion that said otherwise. There's no point following certain practices when you don't buy into the whole thing.

I'm sure there is more I can say, but work beckons. Maybe more later. :)

The Absinthe Story

So here's the absinthe story. LGG and I discovered one day that No5 was selling absinthe. Not knowing that it was the clean stuff, we wanted to give it a try, to see if we'd get to see the green fairy.

We were too chicken to get our own drink each, so we ordered one to SHARE, and just in case we passed out, we gave our addresses to Larry with instructions to take us home safely.

We sipped the drink, and waited. And waited. And wondered whether we'd be able to see the green fairy.

Soon it became apparent that we wouldn't be experiencing any hallucinations. We were stoked that we tried absinthe (went around asking our friends, have you tried absinthe huh huh huh? WE HAVE!) but obviously we didn't do it properly.

That's why when the opportunity arose to do it right, we just had to. Lol.

A Wonderfully Productive Evening

Waaaah I'm so pleased! Had such a productive day yesterday. *grin*

Got off work on the dot yesterday and decided to head to the gym to get a run in before meeting LGG and the rest.

I've always had problems with my mental discipline, always managing to find some excuse or the other to cut short my runs, even though I'm not utterly exhausted. Decided to be a good girl though, and somehow managed to complete 5km without stopping! Well done, me!

Called LGG and got directions to meet them at the coffeeshop at Upper Dickson Road. And as usual, I got lost trying to find my way there. Ching called me and walked me through where I should be heading, but I still managed to end up in the backlanes. Lol.

Eventually found them and ordered a yummy masala thosai and mango lassi. Carol ordered appam to share and we all sat there chatting while I finished my meal. It was delicious.

Wow I haven't seen Kenneth since 2005 when we went to Angkor together. Can't believe it's been that long. Lol.

Anyway, we trotted across the road to have kufli ice cream and Carol was telling us about the time she went to Kota Kinabalu. Looks were exchange (wanderlust!) and before we knew it, LGG had her laptop out and was checking flight details while I was on the phone begging my boss to let me take leave.

(Boss: can we discuss this tomorrow? Me: Erm, we want to book the tickets now.)

(I bet he wonders why he hired me. Lol.)

Anyway, thankfully I had our passport details from our Bhutan/Nepal trip saved in my gmail account (gmail is da bomb!) and we managed to book our tickets right there and then. Took us what, 15 minutes to decide to go and get the tickets booked. Lol.

Confirmation email in hand, we happily traipsed on to this little bar that Carol recommeded. It was a nice place to chill and they had a promotion- for every alcoholic drink you order, you get a free plate of tapas. We scanned the menu and our eyes lit up (ok, just me and LGG) when we saw "absinthe"*. And not just one type of absinthe, they had absinthe green, absinthe red, absinthe blue and absinthe black!

*more on the absinthe story in another post

We just had to order it. She had the green one and I had the red one, Carol ordered a mojito, Ching and Kenneth had tea. We toasted to Kota Kinabalu. Lol.

The place we were at was really nice, and we just sat there chatting till it was time to go back. Grabbed a cab back, showered and then headed to bed. Fantastic day. I'm now in a holiday mood. Lol.

It's A Battle Of Wills

Ta ma de. I used to be able to get LGG to meet me according to my schedule because that's just the way it is in my universe. And now the girl is using the same universe to make me meet her! We're meeting today, Friday and Saturday. Wah.

A Boring Post About My Day

Did absolutely NOTHING. *grin* Sent a couple of emails, made a couple of calls, had a meeting and that's it. Didn't have to use my brain today- which is the best kind of work day, really.

Spent the afternoon laughing my head off at the literal videos on youtube, grabbed a bite at the cafe opposite the office, and just MSNed my day away. Woohoo!

Anyway, going for a much needed jog later and then dinner with LGG, Kenneth, Ching and Carol. I wanted to take an hour off so I could do the run earlier, but my boss took off, leaving me alone in the office. Pfft. He said I could take half day off on Friday though, so YAY! Long weekend + cookout at LGG's place.

One more hour to go before the day ends. I wonder if anyone will notice if I sneak off. Hahaha.

I Likey

LGG has added Bets and Ching to our blog to the universe, and Bets' first entry is hilarious. Yes, great sex for all!

It's June Already?!

Time seems to be passing sososo fast. Seems like I was recently just lamenting the fact that it was already May, and time just had to do it's thing and whoosh on by to June. Lol.

The highlight of May definitely had to be my mom's 60th birthday and the arrival of all my aunts over the past weekend. All 5 sisters had the chance to come to Singapore, and it was probably the first time in almost 10 years that they got together.

It was a hoot having them here. Makes you really enjoy the simple pleasures like good food, good company, song and dance. We had lots of food (yum yum chili crab and fish head curry) and sang songs every day. It was a blast!

We also did the touristy thing and headed up to the Singapore Flyer. Nothing that spectacular but it was an experience nonetheless. Took lots of pics too.

I'm so glad that we managed to celebrate my mom's birthday this way. (Haha I forgot to buy the cake.) Makes you realise and remember how important family is, and how wonderful it is to be a part of such a loving bunch of people.