Family portraits

Yasi ( my sis) had her graduation ceremony some weeks back and in typical Lim family style, we had to have a family portrait taken with all the "uniforms". So 8 years after my own graduation, I once again had to don the gown for my sister ( well more for my parents really... ) Poor Weiming had to look for a formal police uniform and the suit he finally got hold of had pants that were too short for him! Thankfully, our legs weren't part of the photo!

Sky high quote

I received the first quote from a contractor yesterday for our home reno and nearly had a fit! It was SGD$32,000!!! That's to hack away the existing tiles and wall, replace tiles around the house, replacing doors, replacing the kitchen cabinets, building in a wardrobe and storage shelves...

That's waaaaaaaaaaaaay to much. We have to replace the furniture too thanks to our tenants who ruined my sofa, dining set, shoe cabinet and washing machine. Ah! And they took my electric kettle, iron, ironing board and high stool. I can't find eaither of these items in my house. piss me off!!!!

Eating in Singapore

So there I was today walking from our house to the bus interchange ( it's a 15min walk) thinking, "I've eaten so much in the past few days. Should skip lunch" But then... I reached the Bukit Merah Hawker centre and succumbed to temptation to eat a plate of Hainanese Chicken Rice and ice cold glass of sugar cane juice. I was hot and parched so the juice tasted like nectar. All that walking also made me real hungry, hence the rice.

Then it occurred to me what was the other thing I missed about home! It's not just the food, it's the easy accessibility to delicious glorious food 24/7. Seriously! I was trudging from Little India to Jalan Besar to look for a shop selling hobs. And at every 10 paces, I swear there was a coffee shop/ hawker centre/ Indian restaurant ( afterall, we're in Little India) . We're not talking about main roads. I was walking along little lanes and HDB carparks and when I got hungry, lo & behold! there's a little coffeeshop in a corner selling Hokkien Prawn Noodle. I could smell the pork lard frying from a distance.

It's amazing there are still so many skinny Singaporeans.

you are a glut when...

...When you eat 2 Tung Lok mini mooncakes, followed closely by a cup of Maggi Mashed Potato, then 30mins later, a lunch of shrimp wanton noodle ( Shui jiao mian), fried carrot cake, oyster omelette and famous Bedok Cheng teng. Er... of course, I shared the lunch with other people. After that, I was so stuffed, I had to walk around Changi Business Park to lessen the guilt ( and to look at kitchen sinks lah!)

I soooooooo have to go for a run tomorrow.

Good food good life

Caught up with my ex-colleagues at Nestle today. Meeting old kakis, old bosses was a really quite nice after 2 years. It made me miss the fun days I had at Nestle where the marketing team was really a TEAM. We not only worked together, we played together. I think back nostalgically of the times we stayed back late just to decorate our work areas to reflect the festive seasons, or to "welcome" people back from their annual leave. It created a pretty tight bond between co-workers and it helped that we were all around the same age, same "pattern" as we like to call it in Singapore.

My favourite memory of our decorating session was the night we decided to plaster a colleague's office room with blank lottery tickets ( she's a lottery fanatic) . even the ceiling was plastered! That was truly hilarious!

Another was the time we pooled cash and bought materials for X'mas DIY decor. It started a trend! Our Christmas-y area inspired the sales team to put up their own stuff and created some friendly rivalry between the departments. Of course, with bigger budgets, they managed to get a lot more stuff but I like to think we had more creativity - stretching our budgets and doing loads of DIY.

While sight-seeing in the new office today, I realised that there were so many new faces and the atmosphere felt different. Nothing wrong with different. Just not the same as I remember it. And we all know... memory sometimes erves us false. Things always seem better when you look back on them...