Happy New Year 2013

New Year's Eve Dinner - Teppanyaki plus Steamboat

My friends (David and Sheryn) who stay in the same area, just the opposite of our block, invited us for New Year's Eve dinner at his home. He and his wife prepared the food for teppanyaki (Japanese style cooking using iron plate) and steamboat or also called hot pot (Chinese style simmering the ingredients inside the pot). They also invited his close friends and sister. There were 11 of us.

It was raining since afternoon and keep continuing until night time. The air was very cooling, suitable for this type of dinner. David also opened a bottle of red wine to warm up ourselves.

We ate, chit chatted. It's third time we gathered like this. Our ages are similar and most of us have just moved into new flat of our own, while Bernard (David's buddy) and his family will move to new flat soon (they have already purchased the built-to-order flat, and now is being built, but not done yet). So we share the common topic for conversation. Sheryn's sister, Hui Xin, also stays nearby, just one block away from our place. She is now pregnant and will give birth estimated next Feb.

After dinner, we took rest for a while, watching King Kong on Channel V. Hui Xin has made cupcakes - carrot cake - and each of us took one. Hubby bought a can of coffee capsules and some of us had a coffee so that we could stay awake. Hehe... We stayed until 11pm then went back home. Hubby didn't feel well. He was having fever, perhaps eating too much pizza the night before, and working too hard cleaning Baobei's room.

So we did count down at home. We could hear neighbors around counting down loudly. Some even counted down minutes before the right time. Haha... There were fireworks in two separate areas nearby our neighborhood, but we couldn't really see it as it was blocked by HDB buildings. We could only see when it was bigger one, flying much higher.

I slept at 2am and woke up at 10.30am.. hehe... As hubby was still sick, I decided to cook porridge for our lunch, also took out vegetables and egg from fridge, cooked three simple dishes to start the new year :)

The weather today was so hot and sunny!! Perfect for drying up clothes. Haha... I did the laundry and hung it in our balcony, let the sun and wind drying it up. Then I took a nap for about an hour. Was woken up by the call, and also my sister-in-law was sending me message, asking me which vodka I wanted to buy (they just reached Singapore airport, coming back from Jakarta). Hehe... I managed to add one more flavor Absolute collection, but too bad they couldn't find the other two that I wanted. But that was good enough!!! :)

Since the weather was so good, I decided to have a brisk walk in Punggol Waterway. I asked my son to take his bicycle and let him cycling while I took my time slowly walking there. Baobei went to the other direction, making one round, then going to the same direction as I was taking. I told him to meet up in Popeye. He would surely cycle faster, that's why I asked him to take the longer way so he didn't have to wait for me too long.

Long queue at Popeye

Finally I could do the brisk walking there. Usually I cycle and keep wondering how it feels to walk. So I did. Hahaha.... I used the headphone listening to the music from my hand phone. It took me an hour to reach Popeye and when I reached, Baobei had also just arrived and he was going around Popeye to check if I were there. Haha... I asked him to park his bicycle. Wow, it was dinner time by the time we reached (8pm), and there was a very long queue... Since Baobei wanted to eat, I asked him to queue, while I was outside looking for a seat and also to take a look at the bicycle.

Finally!!! (His bike behind him hehe...)

It took him half an hour to queue and got the food. Kekeke.... So slow... If I was alone, I would just give up and cook something at home. We shared the food and finished it up with ice cream (there was free ice cream with the package we bought). Not bad, but sinful.

We took the other way to go back and stopped by a supermarket to buy ice cream, carrot and tomatoes. It took me an hour to go back and my new shoe stepped on the dog's poo... Haiz... When I was walking, I kept looking up, at the people's new flats. To see what it looks like, how they decorate, and so on. Hahaha... Then I felt my shoe stepped on something soft yet watery... Hahaha... Although I didn't see what I stepped into, but I got the feeling that it was the poo.... Hiks.. my new shoe.... Reaching home, I removed my shoe and washed it right away.. and now dry it up in the balcony.

Well... it feels good after the walk. Hope I can have a good sleep tonight (despite drinking green tea and eating ice cream). Tomorrow it's gonna be a busy day again!! Closing time!!! Just hope everything will go smoothly. Wish us luck!!!

Btw, it's the 800th post in this blog. Although in the beginning, some posts were not written by me, and there were 9 post in draft that I decided not to post as it's too personal and I wanted to keep it to myself, this blog has been around since November 2004. So it's been over 8 years. Wow! I didn't realize that it's been so long. If Passu didn't tell me, I also didn't notice actually. However, not many people know about its existence as my goal to create this blog is just to record what I feel, what I do, more on personal thing, to recall things back one day when I get old or maybe lost memory, and to leave some stories to my son and families if they miss me one day when I am no longer around in this world. No matter what, I will keep writing while I can. It's been part of my life unknowingly. Just to express what I feel.....

Well, write till here. It's late now. Time to sleep. Have a good rest everyone!! And have a great day!!!