Arranged Marriage?

We go through various stages of our lives and how we view affairs of the heart changes as we age. Chatting with a friend recently made me realised how different people think. Some freak out at the thought of being left on the shelf, others yearn singlehood whilst some dying to get married. Speaking of which, I've got 5 bombs to date this year! OH NO! I guess the pressure's up when people around u are getting hitched. Particularly for a girl whose biological clock ticks faster than her male counterparts. But do women really NEED a man these days? I mean apart from Sex, seriously we are quite capable of looking after ourselves. Well perhaps I'm saying this blatantly coz I'm married!haha. However, I think women of this millenia should be more independent and live for herself. Easier said than done i know. But we must really try. Be if emotional of financially, I really hope there are more women stepping out and not live in our mommy's era. True, as a princess, we dream of our knight in shining armour. But dont be obsessed girls! Embrace yourself in an ambition. Live life to the fullest. N if your prince charming comes along, treasure him and have fun!

If Janice can cook, so can u!

After a great episode from the previous housewarming with my relatives, I decided that I have quite a bit of culinary skills in me. It was rather frustrating to hear comments like "hey i didn't know u could cook!"..n when u try to explain to them it's coz mommy dearest doesn't like me to mess up her kitchen (she's a hygiene freak for those of u who dont know. She cleans the kitchen inside out even after steaming a fish) Anyway, I dont need to explain myself to them.

Went to market today. FInally I've got Saturday off! Since the beginning of the year (or should i say since last yr!!) I have not had a Saturday off! but tmw will be hectic. *snore*. Tonight's dinner was fabulous. Steamed promphet ($7), Drunken prawns ($2), Stir fried vegetables ($1.50) and bak kut teh ($3) Definitely beats going out to eat (that is if you order the same amount of food la!) N the verdict -- Hubby loves my cooking! Yeah! :-)

You know the strange bit about my dearest is that he likes to "fight" to do the cooking. haha. We often quarrel over differences in opinion. To put the dark sauce first or the light sauce. U know those trival matters. hehe. but hey, that's the joy of cooking!

Today's a special day

Guess what day is today? (it's 27th Feb that I'm talking about by the way...as usual, my blogging isn't very up to date). yes I'm a year older. Groan. Happy birthday to me! Strangely, this year came without much feeling. Perhaps coz of the stress I'm facing with work and earning more money for future expenses. Having a house and family certainly comes with a lot of nagging financial problems. We really have to learn to hold each other's hands and not quarrel too often over monetary matters. But it's easier said than done la. Got money then no quarrels lor. Life is such. So sad. Revolves around money and materialistic wealth. Sick.

Anyway, it's sad that my parents didn't call me to wish me Happy bday ;-(.....they dont love their little gal liao. ;-(

well, nevermind, nothing to be sad about. It's another year of being older. That's not really a welcoming thought. Especially when i'm getting forgetful. I thought I was getting senile but after chatting with Rachel, I realised that it's normal! U can be thinking about something for one minute, and when u arrived at the place to do that task, u forget!!! n it takes u forever to remember! That's horrendous!

Anyone care to guess wat was my present?
ANSWER: AIR

14 Feb -- valentine's Day

This is the 10th yr we are celebrating V-day. but this yr was extra special as we were celebrating it in our love nest. I have to work till about 10 that night but sweetie said he wanted to cook chicken chop with spaghetti for me. I didn't expect him to wait for me for dinner. But he did. It was a great meal which I truely appreciated.

Hey! I did something too ok in case u guys think I'm not very pro-active. Check out the picture! That was made by me. Awwwww so sweet hor?

Hope the new year will bring us more luck

So exciting to be celebrating CNY this yr as husband and wife. It was a little freaky to be eating with a whole bunch of strangers. My Wong family must be missing me. My cousin was especially moody coz no one was with her during the gambling session. Poor thing la. but hey! that's life. n reunion at granny's place was cool. we had ABALONE. fresh from the shell, boiled for 3 days 3 nights. they were little fresh abalones which tasted fantastic! I've never eaten such fantastic delicacy before. Looking forward to next year already!haha

First few days was really hectic. having to visit this aunty n that uncle. Mainly all my side coz my end are the麻烦ones. the annual CNY drama also happened with daddy not wanting to visit some people. WHen asked if it's coz they offended him, he merely said he wanted to keep it simple n dont make it so troublesome. Perhaps he was having his PMS. Mom on the other hand wanted to visit. Thus I had to be her ahmad. There was a lot of logistics headache in the midst and not to mention, dad's face was as black as 包公。Can't the two of them just grow up? I seriously hope my baby will tolerate with the nonsense i have to face at home and dont give me problems. Just do what u are told and life will be peaceful. Give and take la. The both of them are already over 50, yet they act like 5 yr olds. sianz.

Over the next few days, we had frens over and on the following Sunday, I did a housewarming for my immediate family. not bad! earn money!hehehe.

Back to reality. Gong xi gong Xi gong xi ni!

My Cute little Fatt Choy Orange plant sitting quietly in my fortune corner
Cute rite? Told u so! We got it after Reunion Dinner @ the nursery along Bedok Road
Look at the decoration we've got for the house. It was super cheap. Gonna reuse for next yr!

Our living room, looking spic and span!

Started work. Schedule was in a mess and crazy as kids had CCAs, supplementary classes etc etc. really frustrating to plan. But finally all was settled and life has officially started. Am still in the honeymoon mood. It was such a great honeymoon, I miss it everyday I'm back. I'm still thinking about how much fun we had during the trip. It was really gonna be one to remember for years to come. Anyway, life as husband and wife has started and the next hurdle is Chinese New year! Yup...the dreaded ang bao giving time. technically since we are newly-weds we dont have to give. unfortunately, over at my family, that tradition doesnt realli hold. So off we went to shop for CNY goodies and dressed up our house for the new year. even bought a lucky orange plant to bring life to the house. I think it did us good coz i won at Mahjong at our house! Yeah!

Major Jet-lag!

We arrived in Singapore at 2pm. By 5pm we were zombies and wanted to coma. But we tolerated and told ourselves not to sleep. However, after dinner, we both concussed! At 8+ we were in bed. Woke up at 3am and didn't know what to do. Did our laundry and unpacked our lugguage. Then fetched MIL to her work place at 5am. this went on for a couple of days. Everyday wake up at 4am/ 5am really no joke leh! Sweetie adjusted a few days later, but i took almost a wk!!!

The Last day of our Honeymoon :-(

I wasn't kidding about the winds! Look at my hair!
Cool art!
IN & OUT BURGER!

YES! I finally arrived at the last day of the trip!! 6 January 2008. Kind of sad when I'm writing this coz I didn't want to leave! 舍不得！We woke up after 10 horus of sleep and took a leisure drive down the coastline. visited Seal beach, long beach, Sunset beach and Huntington Beach. They were all about the same and we checked out Long Beach. Was dirty. Further up, there was a happening area where yatch was a galore. many merry-making teens were gathering their equipment and all ready to hit out to sea! Then, we alighted somewhere at Huntington where we saw some oil drilling machines. hmmm.....wonder if we can strike it rich there!haha..Facing the gold mine was the Pacific Ocean. Hearing the waves lap against the shore, I really felt like in paradise. The winds however was blowing and God knows how many knots per hour! Feeling bored, we adventured to downtown and Chinatown. It's ur typical dragon gate design and grafitti-filled buildings. Searched high and low for "In & out burger" which Neil said was a MUST TRY. finally after hours of searching, we found it! NOW WONDER IT"S A MUST-TRY! many ppl were there and it was cheap! only $1.69 for a burger! now we are speaking the same language! After our so called dinner, we thought of checking in the airport earlier as our 5 luggage was a little too much for us to stomach. Alas! the fellow at the counter said we couldn't check in till 8pm (it was 6pm then) as our flight was at 1145pm! what crap man! So we hung around (there were heaps of ppl) and by then we were really tired. I was having a headache after such a long wait and my mood wasn't exactly cheery. Finally it was 8pm, we headed to the counter n there was a long queue. Great. After that queue, we had to join some other queue to check in our luggage. Yes, be glad that SQ in Singapore Changi Airport does it for u there and then at the counter. We had to lug our 5 pcs of luggage to some other counter where there's 101 people there waiting to check in as well! It was a torture especially when u have a group of In****s in front of you! They come with their whole family! I was panicking when I saw large groups of them for our flight. I was like "that's it. this wasn't gonna be the more pleasant smelling flight ever" True enuff, all around us on board the plane, were the people who were gonna make our nose miserable. One passenger (i have no idea from where) was coughing as if she had TB!! I almost wanted to ask stewardess to chase her out the plane! Slept for a while and soon it was dawn. Food time! yeah! To be honest, i really look forward to meal times on board SQ. Unfortunately, service that day wasn't fantastic. The stewardess kept forgetting my orders. Finally after two rounds of such F***ed up service, I told the chief steward. Sorry to that person if she got a lecture from him, but then again, it's a service industry...u must uphold the standards! Else I sue u like for talking to my husband ah!hahaha..

After hours of flight, we finally arrived on transit at Taiwan. Hmm....I should make that my next desitination. Airport's very clean n nice. All passengers had to depart and board again. So troublesome. Fortunately there were some refreshment given by the airline. Only handicaps n those who were too old to get down, were pardon. N guess wat? When we re-board, our seats were used as a Bed for an old lady. wah lau! Made my cushion n blanket n seat smell la! (this time i'm not trying to be mean, but seriously her feet was on my cushion! Where's the courtesy la!!). I immediately threw the cushion onto the ground n refused to use it throughout the trip! at long last, we arrived at Singapore Changi Airport. For a moment, baby and I thought we were at T3, coz the place looked unfamiliar! haha. guess we were away for too long. but nah..it's T2. if we postponed our trip to 2 days later, we would have landed at T3. FIL came to pick us and we were back to our home sweet home shortly. I miss our cosy love nest!

Shop till we drop!!

Nice cosy place where we spent the night. I think it was Best Western Inn.
Nice car that we rented. What brand issit??

See...dio summon @ Washington! Can't show my complain prowess in foreign land

Dont believe your man when they say they wont shop and that they have nothing to buy! From this trip I've learnt that no one can resist the great bargains at outlets!!! We shopped @ Leesburg till 2pm. It was pretty much a ghost town that's why we got out of the place that quickly la! Tax over there is 5%. Drove back to Philly and along the way, we stayed @ Days inn. Together with breakfast, it cost us onli $55!!! the cheapest and best so far!! Had an extremely relaxing night. Drank two bottles of Sprite and watched bimbotic show -- americal Modelton! hahaa...it was realli bitchy and next morning when we woke up, it was still showing .. it's a MODELTOn duh!.....

Drove back and had KFC again. This time the utility wasn't as high. Went shampoo shopping. ...call me sua ku but they had Redken, Biolage n other main salon brands on the shelves of a supermarket! I mean such brands you probably can get them from your hairdressers at a premium! I bought myself two big bottles of Tresseme. very nice smell but Very heavy too! haha. Neil cooked CLam chowder and the very oily but extremely delicious Clam Linguni. Watched Sex in the city and went ot bed early coz we had to wake up at 4am the next morning.

In a blink of an eye, it was 4am and we had a huge breakfast of Scrapples. It's somewhat like luncheon meat. Neil drove us to the airport @ 5am and when we arrived we realised that the flight was delayed! 1145am was the take off!! oh my God! what are we to do!! the place isn't as bustling as Changi Airport. There practically nothing except a restauarant and a newsstand! BORING. we slept and finally boarded the plane @12noon. but it was only at 1pm that the plane departed! They said there's some technical fault and they had to bring in their technician from LA to repair! What a thing to say when we were in the plane!! ANyway, the weather was getting stormy over in LA. California was snowing!!! the Storm centre was moving rapidly and my heart was racing when i heard about it. Fortunately, God was watching over us and we arrived safely at LAX once again. We waited for quite a while for our luggage, booked a car and headed off towards the coastline. Had a magnificent feast of white wine mussels, little neck clam and clam chowder by Redondo Beach. Crashed for the night at a nearby inn. Slept for 10 hours that night!!! before sleeping, we saw this really hilarious HBO production -- How to lick pussy! Hahahaha...can u believe it?

Lunch with Mr President @ The Whitehouse?

Most of the buildings are typically the same style as the one above.
hmm...wonder if President George Bush is free for lunch today?
Unfortunately, he's busy having some meetings with Hilary Clinton & Obama. Who's gonna win?
Dont' be deceived by the rays filtering through the clouds! The wind chill factor was tremendous
See how happy my baby is with his dinner @ Best Western?

It's new yr's day. White fluffy clouds were waltzing across the azure-blue sky. Well, not very azure actually, coz it was snowing. Visibility was reduced. We went to Denny's for a big breakfast. Drove allt he way to outlet (Exit 42) -- Waterloo Outlet. Had fantastic buys from vanity Fair. $6 for a gorgeous nightie! Boy, is my baby in for a good one tonight! Had pizza for dinner. n Beer to complete the meel of coz. Nittny was in for a treat --- he had the crust!

Next morning, we drove to Washington. Headed off at 11am. tok us approximately 2.5hrs. Saw KFC along the way n had a sudden craving. It was De.li.cious! Felt a little adventurous and decided to turn into one of the streets. Nothing much and headed off. Parked at 21st St H and walked to the Whitehouse which was on 1600 Penn Avenue. It was a ghost town n FREAKING WINDY! Cold was an understatment. After seeing some monuments and capitol building, we cheong back to our parking spot, only to discover a US$25 SUMMON! Wah lau! in singapore dio summon liao, go US still dio! n we were only 10 mins late! It was a boring little place thus we drove round the famous monument which was fetured in Forest Gump -- the one with the lake? remember? where Forest was giving a speech and Jenny started running towards him in the waters? Yup, that was the place. Saw the Pentagon, can't go in due to tight security. There were several art museums with wannabes. We wanted to be one too, but had to pay money so we gave it a miss. Drove towards Dulles Airport and stayed @ Best Western @ lesburg. Needless to say, i was getting ready for tomorrow's shopping trip at the Lesburg outlet! =) Dinner was settled in the room. We packed Nathan's from Lesburg and ate to our heart's delight. SHIOK!

Happy 2007!!!!! WEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Welcome to Niagara Falls (We had dinner @ Hard Rock that night n officially became Rockers for life!)
SNOW!!! I saw snow the next morning when I woke up! It was amazing!
Rainbow @ Maiden of Mist (I think that's what it's called la)

My Shy Baby

Behind the Falls. Niagara Has eroded several metres over the years. Several people died too coz they were engaged in the silly Barrel Challenge which involves sitting themselves in a wooden container and splashing down with the falls. Crazy people!

From The Ferris Wheel

ROCK ON!! but we dont know who the hell was singingThe Fireworks were beautiful. *SOB SOB*

ok, let's not get too excited first. I'll get to the highlight in a while. it's the eve. We were on Canada's side of the falls. GOSH! Freaking expensive la!! at least 30% more ex than on American side! 4 cups of coffee and one plain water together with a slice of cheesecake cost US$30! I kid u not! that excludes tips! We arrived at around 10am and toured behind the falls. Had soup and burger for lunch, walked around, sat on the Ferris Wheel and was about done by 2pm. Shit. it's a long way before the fireworkz at night. Walked to the casino and killed time at Denny's. It was very cold there. Fireworks was deem to start at 9pm and 12pm. There was also a concert to celebrate 2007. We finally survived and after dinner at a nice little cosy pizza place, we made our way to the Falls where the concert was held. The falls was beautifully illuminated by the lights and laser. We hung around and saw the gorgeous display of fireworks at 9pm. but wanted to tahan till midnite so that we could countdown. So off to the trusty jeep where we stashed beer! We drank and chatted till midnight and went out to join the crowd at the falls. When passing the Maid of mist, we really felt the chill (again, i think it's me again). And at the strike of midnight, I hugged my baby and whispered Happy new Year into his ears. The look in his eyes was so sincere that it made me feel so lucky and happy to be with him on this day at this place. Amidst the fireworks, I shed a tear.

What date issit today?

Bye Bye Washington Bridge
Sands motel-- Our "suite" @ Niagara Falls

Time flies. Memories fade. Well, u can say that again coz me and sweetie totally forgotten what date issit. It's normal when u are having such fun for such a long time and totally put your work aside. Well anyway, in case u are just as lost as us, it's the 29th of December. It's gonna be the end of 2007 (n yes, it's already 2008 n yet i'm updating 2007 events! Janice, u gotto move on gal)

Anyway, nothing much happened today. We went to WB outlet again. Shopping is becoming a bore when your money is running out. Amex even sms my honey to tell him that his limit is almost up! OOPS! well serves him right....he bought a TAG HEUER 2000 series. I wanted my monaco too..but it was too ex la. That night, we ate @ Applebee with Jiazhou n Esther. Was pretty sad that we were leaving New York that day. I mean wonder, when we'll get to see them again.


Next day, we had to go back to fetch Neil. Unfortunately his 20 yr old jeep had to break down on the day we were suppose to meet @ Niagara. So off we went to fetch him. Along the way, we stayed at Hilton Inn. My dears, it's Hilton..but an inn. haha..but seriously not bad. Big, microwave, fridge(no bar sorry). Finally, we met up with the Ross family and drove up. it took us 6 hours!!!! Almost died coz we had to squeeze in the jeep n could not wind down windows for fresh air coz it was pretty cold out there. (At least I was cold. apparently I'm always cold! I'm an ANIMAL!) Once we arrived, it was evening liao, we recee on the American side and decided to go to the falls on Canada side the next day. Looking forward as tmw will be New Yr's eve!