My Thoughts @ My Feeling @ My Day

Horrendous week

The last 2 weeks has been extremely horrendous (think my coming month would be the same as well)!! Its the worst in my whole audit work life!! Really set me thinking if the amount of pay would justify the level of stress that comes with it. But anyway judging at how my current job (as in my current audit client) is going, i dun think my yr end appraisal will turn out good and promotion most prob wont happen.

Law always tell me,"How much you get = how much stress u must take." But seriously...is it really worth it? Furthermore with our recent "No more OT hrs claim", i wont be able to justify the amount of hours i put into the job for OTs during weekday nights and when we work during the weekends. A normal day would means an avg 15 working hrs, and to add in hrs for weekends and to compare with my salary, per hr i am only earning about $15. And plus the stress, who says auditors are highly paid! Its a myth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Law, if i quit my job, "ni hui yang wo mah????"

Happy Valetine's Day!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!! Its a working day for me and for Law :( Thus we just met up for breakfast. Law gave me a gorgeous dozen of white roses! Thanks dear! It would be our last yr celebrating Vday as bf and gf. Alot of ppl said that there would be no more Vday celebration after marriage. Hopefully its not in our case (hint hint..) :P

Flowers + laptop = working on Vday

Happy Birthday (Ren Ri)

Ren Ri - 1 Feb 09

HAPPY BIRHTDAY EVERYONE!! Since today is Ren Ri, so it would means that its everyone's birthday! Had a dinner gathering at my uncle's place at West Bay Condo. We did a potluck by the pool so that the host dun need to prepare all the food :)

Yummy Mee Goreng and fried rice

Then we have sambal prawns, Lou Han Zhai, duck and fried sotong balls

And the yummy cheng tang made by my mom. All those ingredients in the plastic containers are the ingredients for the cheng teng! Its delicious!!

Yu Sheng from the famous Dragon Phoenix

Putting in all the sauces

And we are ready to go! There are too many of us, thus we went in batches :P

Law manage to join us for this gathering :)

My grandmas (ya, all 3 of them :D)

Sis with a tired Trishelle and po po

Trishelle with yi yi

With my aunty

After dinner, we went up to my uncle's place where he prepared programmes to entertain us! We started off with a series of slideshow. Its really nice and effort of my uncle to go ard Singapore, collecting the old photographs from us and made its into a slideshow. It really brought back fond memories. :)

Pic of my aunty and uncle when they are young.

My blood related grandam when she was abt 22-23 yrs old. She really knows how to pose ya...lol

A family photo of my dad's generation. The baby in the photo is my sis. The eldest grandchild for my generation.

Everyone are getting very amused by the younger times and older days. Sure had a good laugh!

After the slideshow, guess what we did?? We played..........................................BINGO!! Ya man..nv would i tot that i would be playing Bingo with my family and relatives! One of my grandma was very generous and the sponor the prizes for the winners. An ang bao each containing amount that is not small too and we had at least 5 round of the game!

And Law won one of the game!! :P

I didnt win any bingo but am happy with my fortune cookie. Cos my msg inside says......

My stars are shinning, everything seems favourable! :D (The top one is Law's_)

Had a great night! Thanks uncle Kevin for organising it and making the effort to keep us entertained!

CNY 2nd day

27th Jan - CNY 2nd day

Our normal practice is to go for Tim Sum lunch on nien chu er. This year, we decided to go to Club Chinios (part of Tung Le group), on the recommendation of Candice.

See me looking and feeling fresh after a good nite sleep :D

With my beloved granny!

Club Chinios is located at Orchard Parade hotel

The deco of the restuarant is quite good. My granny on this authentic chair.

Their table setting. The rectangle yellow thingy is actually a toothpick holder. And the long huge chopsticks is for us to "Lau Yu Sheng"

See the length of it!

As the tim sum selection was very disappointing, we decided to go for set lunch instead. But when i saw the bill, i almost fainted! We have 2 tables and the bill came up to almost $2k. Its the most expensive lunch i have ever eaten!!!! The food is quite ok but not really fantastic! Definitely not worth the money! Tsk tsk tsk..think would be our last time there. The only dishes which i liked were the yu sheng and shark's fins.

Their yu sheng. Its slightly different from the normal ones where this include some crispy noodle like stuffs. So when you are eating it, its actually quite crispy,(you kou gan) and yummy.

All ready to Lau Yu Sheng. Waiting for the other table to be ready.

Below are some of the dishes that were served. Did not take pics of all, cos some were aleady eaten before i can take the photo..lol

This is their own style ba kua with wasabi sauce.

Shark's fins. Its unlike the normal ones too. This shark's fins is very concentrate and the broth is not like those watery type with egg whites. Their broth is very thick and fragrant! Am salivating just thinking of it!!

Cereal prawns

Roast duck

Mushroom with abalone

There were a few more dishes like fried rice, fish and dessert. Verdict of lunch. EXPENSIVE and NOT WORTH it. Next time we should stick to the more traditional places for normal tim sum ok.

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CNY 1st day

26th Jan - 1st day of CNY

HAPPY NIU YEAR EVERYONE!!! Woke up at 830am depsite only sleeping at 5am, due to the aroma from the fried carrot cakes!!!!!!!! Simply cant resist them! First thing, went to wish my granny Happy New Year. :D my parents were still sleeping thou..lol. My sis came shortly after and followed by Law. He is a good boy today. Reached at 915am as told and was not late (for once) :P

My granny's ever famous carrot cake. Yummy!!

With Trishelle in her cute halter neck chinese cheongsum bubby dress. See our dressing colour so coordinated..haha.

A family portriat :)

Our 1st stop is to my father's side to bai nien. We gathered at a relative house at AMK. This is also the first year that Law came to bai nien with us on Chu Yi. Cos his family side only go around to bai nien on Chu Er, so normally he would request off only on Chu Er. But as this year we are getting married and he has yet to meet my father's side relatives, thus decided to get Chu Yi off so that he can meet them before the wedding. Thanks dear for sacrifying your own family's bai nien. As we only slept for only about 3 hrs the previous nite, we are trying our best to stay awake, be alert to ppl and concentrate when they are talking to us..lol

Trishelle doing Gong Xi Gong Xi.

After that, headed to my mom's side relative's place to bai nien. Same as my dad's side, all will gathered at a particular relatives's place and spent the afternoon together. The normal things we will do is to eat Shark's fins!!! My 2nd aunty always without fail will cook shark's fins on nien chu yi. Sorry...no doubt i am a diver, but i just cant resist shark's fins. Also the must have food or rather dessert is "Cheng Teng". I love the ginko nuts that my aunt made! There is also the steamboat.

When we reached and after wishing everyone or we think are everyone (apparently law missed some of them out), we sat comfortably at the sofa and still trying to stay awake. Haha its easier for me to focus as i was not working the day before, but for Law, he was working full shift cum the shou ye, he is totally knock out by noon. See law trying to smile and yet didnt managed to for the photo...lol..

Finally its our turn to eat!! Was getting very hungry.

My cousin Winnie and her daughter Estella finally arrived. See the 2 cute little cousins giving each other a hug.

As its really rare that Law got his Chu Yi off and we dun wanna waste it, thus decided to go for a movie after that (even though he is dead sleepy!) Went to watch "The Wedding Game". Quick a nice show..its funny too and love the theme song! Can consider as a march in song too :P After the movie, we headed back to his place to bia nien with his parents and shortly after went home to sleep le :P Its really a tiring day.

Reunion Dinner

25th Jan - Reunion

The mood is finally setting in. My dad has put up all the CNY deco, minus the "Ying Liu" tree that we will get yearly, cos my niece's baby cot has taken up the space where we normally put the tree.

Today would be another busy day cos its REUNION day! Wake up early to pack my room (only a bit :P). Thereafter, we headed to IMM - Giant to get the ingredients for tonight's reunion dinner. As my aunt, Cheng Cheng gave us a steamboat set for Christmas, we decided to stay at home for our reunion dinner this year. There were a lot of ppl at Giant, we luckily we still manage to get all our required stuffs. Oh ya, also to introduce my granny's famous carrot cake. Its like a CNY food which she would for sure make for us every year!

The whole carrot cake (cantonese style) fresh from the steamer.

Our Yu Sheng that we got from Giant. Its very delicious and taste exactly like those in the restuarant. We got this from the Japanese section and were still deciding if we should get this or those that are pre-packed and in boxes. There was a yr where we get our own yu sheng from Cold Storage and it just taste horrible! Thus we decided to get this from the Jap section as its fresh (can see the staffs shredding the carrots) and luckily it tasted as good as it looks :)

Hee..my mom pouring the seasonings in and at the same time saying all those blessing phrases just like in a resturant.

The result before the tossing

The yummy food. This is to feed 5 of us (including the domestic helper) and we cant finish the food!! Its already considerably much lesser in terms of quantity as compared to the time we went to my sis's place for steamboat..but we still cant finish it. We even need to force one and other to finish the abalone. The soup tasted great though and almost not enough to go ard.

After my dinner and later in the night, Law came to pick me up and we headed over to his place. Its our annual practice to go fetch the God of Fortune on the eve of CNY. Luckily its drizzling a bit and the night is cool, so its still bearable. They say the drizzling is good cos "Shui wei cai" ie, water is money. So hopefully this new year would be a good one. After the ceremony, headed back to his place and continued to help him do some of his work and at the same time to "shou shui". Its say to bless the elders with longevity. I only reached home at 5am... -_-" and u can guess i was like a zombie the next day.

Look at all the goodie bags at the temple where we went to fetch the god of fortune.

Good New

Yahooo!!!! My Company has just announced that they are not going to cut our pay (for my level at least, managers and above has a cut of 2.5%; previous is 7.5%). That is after the government has introduce the Job Credit Scheme. But our OT would still be cut thou...but at least its better than nothing and i am happy with the decision :)

Anyway, met Ruowei for lunch today. She is back from Australia and came to my office to meet me for lunch. Sigh..she would be in Australia at least till mid next year. Cant confirm that she would be back in time for my wedding. Wanted her to be one of my jie mei, but now has to put her on hold first...

24th Jan

Today, i went back to Chinatown again where i met up with XH, JH, Daph, Val and Qingyou for CNY reunion lunch. We went to a Teochew resturant called Lee Kee (Ah Hoi) located at Mosque Road. Been a long time where all our us (also my wedding jie mei gang) met up together. Had a fun time eating, chatting and taking lots of photos. Would just let the photos do the talking.

JH baked some cookies for us

Teochew style Yu Sheng (dun quite like it)

Qingyou cant wait to get started

Their famous cold crab

Salad prawn. Yummy!

Assorted fried items which the boss assemble for us.

Omelette with oysters

Goose meat

Starting to "lau" yu sheng

With Daph

XH & JH

My group of bestie cum jie meis (yes, including qingyou...he keeps on nagging that he wanna be my jie mei too).

After lunch, accompanied XH to buy some new year decos after which, me, XH and Qingouy walked to TCC at Boat Quay for some coffee cum rest and relax chat. Really love the ambience there. We practically took off our shoes and lay ourselves on the bean bags, chatting and drinking coffee.