Lovely December ^^ - Part 1

December is my favorite month of the year :) Although it’s not me  – usually it’s my son who is having the holiday – but I can feel the atmosphere and mood it brings hehe… 

Baobei 11th year Birthday - 12 December 2013

Starting with celebrating my son’s Birthday on Thursday, 12^th December 2013. As per previous blog post, it went smoothly. My son was satisfied and happy with his favorite Korean food and his birthday’s presents adding his precious collections – what a lucky chap he is!!!

Friday, 13th December 2013. Last Friday 13^th of the year. It's time for year-end Karaoke with my colleagues. I asked other colleagues to join us, also from our department, but they had already arranged their own. We couldn't join them as there would be too many people, which meant less chance for us to sing as we were only allowed to stay for three hours in one session. Therefore, we organized it and went on our own at a different place because we had to become a member in order to be able to book that place, which no one from our side was the member.

Year-end Karaoke session - 13 December 2013 :)

We went to Party World at NEX Serangoon, right after finished our work. My ex-colleague joined us and she came late due to unfinished work. At the end, it was only 4 of us. It was only few of us so that we could sing more songs hehehe.... Don't know why, this time my song lists were mostly slow ones and some were sad ones. Overall, it was good. We had a great times. We ordered 5 bottles of Carlsberg and 5 bottles of Corona. I drank 3 bottles, enough to make me sleepyzzz.... hehehe... We went home after that :)

Sunday, 15^th December 2013, my son and I joined the X’mas BBQ gathering party organized by my colleagues in one of my colleague’s staying place in Bishan. There were 7 of us. Some brought their spouse, I brought my son, and the person who stays there would automatically invite her family members. We went there before for our Finance BBQ party last year, but this time, my friend managed to book the BBQ pit where there was roof on top. Other than that, the grilled machine was using electricity – not charcoal. There were chillers, oven, washing area, dining tables, and outdoor round chair made of rattan provided. Wow!! What a wonderful place! It located near swimming pools too.

Few of us met up at the nearest MRT station and went to buy some items required at the supermarket. After that we took bus there. At that time, the weather was quite hot. Once we reached the place, my son immediately went to the swimming pool and enjoyed his relaxing time there. I helped up preparing the things for the BBQ. About half an hour later, suddenly heavy rain poured the earth. Luckily there was a roof. We didn’t get wet. Only that many times the loud thunder and lightning scared us. Hahaha…. 

Christmas BBQ Party @Clover by The Park - 15 December 2013

While raining, we started barbecuing. Different type of sausages, enoki/golden mushroom wrapped with bacon, pork/chicken satay, otak otak (made of fish paste), and marinated chicken wings were grilled. Hhhmmm… It smelled nice. We cooked first for the children to eat. After that, while barbecuing, me and my friend were eating it too. Hehehe… 

My friend prepared the sangria – fruit based wine punch – made of red wines, green/red apples, and soda mixed with ice cubes. Perfect for the raining day as it warmed our bodies up ^^ She also prepared Sherpherd Pie – meat pie (beef) with a crust of mashed potato. My son loved it so much and ate it for few rounds hahaha… She also mixed tortilla chips with some minced beef and mozzarella cheese then put it into the oven until the cheese melted. Nyummy!!! I bet your saliva drops while reading this hehehe… just kidding ;)

We also barbecued the corn (brushed with butter and honey) and sweet potatoes. In the evening, another colleague came and his wife made Macaroni & Cheese for us. As the Sangria finished, I started preparing ‘Malibu Ananas’ – mixed of Malibu liquor (Caribbean rum with coconut flavor) and pineapple juice. It’s been always my favorite mixes since my school time until my schoolmate called me “Ms. Malibu” :P It’s a refreshing, not a heavy drink, suitable for women. 

We ate, chit chatted, listened to the Christmas songs, enjoyed the cool air, drank, laughed, and so on. For desserts, we had beautiful crunchy watermelon (chosen by my guy colleague who phoned his Mom to ask how to choose a nice and sweet watermelon :D), cut by my friend’s Mom into this kind of beautiful shape.

Not only beautiful but also sweet and crunchy!!! ^^

We also had Bubur Chacha – it’s a dessert made of coconut milk with taro/yam, sweet potatoes, and tapioca pearls. Oh, we were all very full!!! Not forgetting Vanilla ice cream with hazelnut as our last touch! It was a wonderful and enjoyable evening and I was glad being able to bring my son there to join in my activity again and again; let him socialize, mix around, learn something new, and not forget feasting the food together. He has joined in most of my activities with my friends. Lucky him ba! ^^ We stayed until 10pm then went back home as I need to work the next day. 

Tuesday, 17^th December 2013. While Bhutanese celebrated their National Day all across the country and even outside the country – Happy belated 106^th National Day to all of you! – I also took my last childcare leave from the office. 

My hubby, son, my brother’s daughter and I went to Adventure Cove Waterpark at Sentosa Island. This place was opened last year in November. I didn’t even know about it until my brother and his families went there few months ago. This year, I really didn’t touch the swimming pool at all. One of the Running Man series had allured me to visit into this place hahaha… I was craving of water park adventure lah and since this place provided the entertainment, I decided to visit it, at least once. Apart from my own interest, I also wanted them to have fun. 

Adventure Cove Waterpark - 17 December 2013

Whole day I’d been praying so that we could have a nice weather during that day. It seemed that my pray and wish came true. It wasn’t that hot (the day before that the weather was very hot and burning!), and it wasn’t rain at all too! Fiuhhhh….. You know, I’d been avoiding swimming since I couldn’t stay under the sun. Therefore, the weather that day had made my day :) 

Once we entered, we changed our outfit and applied sun block cream all over the body. My hubby went buying goggles. Ours had broken since it was stored and wasn’t used for so long. When coming back, he forgot to apply the lotion. Poor hubby!!! Then we put our belonging into the rented locker. The locker was very expensive. Medium size one costs $10. Since we seldom used it, we didn’t know that once we locked it, we still could re-open it without additional charge. We put our things in, except the glasses that my hubby and son wore. Hahahaha….. We looked each other after we locked the locker. At the end, we just put both glasses on top of the locker, of course, with a risk of getting lost or broken. Luckily Singapore is considered a safe country with majority of its people being honest in their behavior. Lots of people put their slippers on top of the locker cabinet too. Also, in front of each ride, they had open round-shape rack provided for us to store our goggles as we weren’t allowed to bring it into the ride. So far, our four goggles were safe at all times. Felt grateful living in this country! :)

We started our day by dipping ourselves into Adventure River. We made half round following the water flow and went up. We saw the Rainbow Reef where people could snorkel to view the beautiful and colorful tropical fish. The place is 2.9 meter depth and you must be able to swim in order to experience snorkeling there. We didn’t try it. The queue was quite long and without doing that, we still could see the beautiful fishes from the glass mirror from the outside.

We chose to play the rides :) We started it with Riptide Rocket. We had to queue for some time before our turn came. Two persons sat in the tube. We had to go up using the elevator (sitting on the tube), then we started our rollercoaster ride on water in a high speed, plunging us up and down, twisting us here and there before coming out from inside the pipe. It was fun, but we felt the journey was too short for half an hour queue :P

Once we went out, the waves came on the Bluwater Bay. We dipped in ourselves there, jumping and playing with the waves. Ohhh… it felt so good!!! :) Everyone enjoyed it so much! Once it’s over, we continued with other rides: Pipeline Plunge, Twidal Twister, Whirlpool Washout, Spiral Washout, and Dueling Racer. Everyone was having great and fun time.

After that, we went to Adventure River again. This time we saw the fishes on top of us and from the glass window next to the river. We had so much fun watching the different kind of stingrays and tropical colorful fishes. 

We played most of the rides there and went back to Bluwater Bay again to enjoy the waves over and over again hehehe… We reached there at about 10.15am and went out at about 4pm. We spent almost six hours there until I got hungry. They had a restaurant there, but we felt like eating outside. Therefore, we went to Bugis to look for the chicken rice plus steamboat restaurant. But it was closed :( We ended up eating steamboat plus grill near the Bugis Junction.

Steamboat and BBQ at Bugis :)

All of us were soooo hungry. We immediately put in the ingredients into the pot and cooked some meat and prawns on top of the transparent glass. We ate until very full. Once finished, we had a walk in Bugis Junction (shopping center) and went back home at around 8pm. I had an early sleep since I had to work the next day. 

To be continued at part 2 here