Right after the proposal, dearest and I headed to Liang Court’s Party World. Frankly, I’ve been there once and didn’t like it at all. Song selection was difficult and the sound system wasn’t good the last time I went. So when Sheena suggested to go Party World, I wasn’t very keen. But Sheena was very quick to assure me that she knew some big shot from Party World, who could allocate a room with wireless mics for me. And so, being the very accommodating me (wahaha), I agreed to meet there.

On the way there, I was half thinking whether Sheena will tear for me, or whether she already knew it. Dearest & I discussed whether we should bring the flowers up because i) it will be a pity to just keep the flowers in the car, but ii) it’s a little embarrassing to be carrying 99 stalks of roses around and most importantly, iii) will Jackson be pressured by the flowers and had to do 999 stalks of roses when it’s his time to propose to Sheena? Haha… The kind of thoughts that ran through our mind.

When we walked into Party World, and the waiter said “Room 63, this way” without even asking us for our names, I started to suspect something. But I quickly rationalize that perhaps somehow Sheena told the waiter to expect someone with flowers, or something along that line. In any case, there wasn’t much time to think about this while we followed the waiter in a long maze to Room 63.

Along the way, dearest & I saw Sheng Leong, dearest’s good friend from Loyang. And there was another friend with Sheng Leong. I was surprised and greeted Sheng Leong and he said “oh, so coincident… blah blah blah…”. My suspicion grew a little again, but again it all happened so fast, I quickly swept any thoughts away.

Then we reached Room 63. First I saw the balloons.

And knew something was going on. But the moment I saw Sheena, I went towards her with a huge smile on my face.

By now I knew that Sheena must have known beforehand and thought that she must have been in this together with Jackson and dearest. We hugged tightly…

And now for the biggest surprise…

This huge bunch of friends gave me a big shock! A quick glance and I saw dearest’s uni frens and my best pals… and I swore I turned almost hysterical. With the roses still in my arms, I turned away from them and started to cry… sob, in fact. Yes, my first tears… I simply couldn’t believe that dearest has taken the effort to bring together our friends, not just common friends, but his friends, and mine, to share the joy.

I’ve always thought that dearest doesn’t like to share stuffs about us to his friends. Like I was wishing he would tell his friends like Alfred, Jason & Nikolas that we are doing a ring exchange, ie religious engagement on Sunday. Call me insecure, but I always thought that dearest is reluctant to ‘announce’ to his friends of his commitment to me. So when I saw that he not only asked my friends (which was a huge feat on its own cos he’s never really met my secondary school pals, let alone be able to contact them without my knowledge) but his own friends as well, especially those who I am not familiar with, I’m especially touched. The fact that he was willing to share this happiness with his friends, mattered to me, a lot.

I was seriously stunned. I’ve never done anything like that in my life before. I’ve never hosted parties, or organized a huge 21st birthday, for example. Seeing different groups of friends around, I didn’t know what to do. Very quickly, I told Sheena, pls help me. I don’t know how to be a good host. LOL.

The rest of the night… was in a whirl. Dearest introduced me to his friends, those whom I seldom meet. I hanged out with my friends, describing to them the actual proposal. Had some drinks with different friends, etc etc… Jiayi baked us a cake! In the design of Tiffany gift box. How sweet of her… Even Sheena’s mum and uncle Bruce came to share our joy! How honored…

Throughout the night, dearest kept coming to me and asked if I was happy. Each and every single time he saw me, he asked me the same question “Are you happy?”. Obviously he had a little too much to drink. After a few times, I told him “Yes, this is the 200th time”. Then it was “Yes, for the 201st time, I am happy”. The total count for the night was 203rd time. LOL.

Dearest was happy. And that warmed my heart so. I knew dearest loved me with all his heart. But I always thought that I was the only one who wanted us to tie the knot. Seeing him feeling so anxious over the proposal, so concerned about whether I appreciated the things that he have planned, so happy that all our friends turned up for our party, etc… made me realized that he truly truly wanted me. And that makes my day so.

The next part, I do not know how to put into words. Should I describe them as they happened that night, or should I share them as and when I discovered them, a day or 2 days later? LOL. You see, to a certain point in time that night, I had a little too much to drink, and couldn’t remember much.

I remembered forcing Nikolas and Jason to drink with me but I couldn’t recall that they actually managed to make me drink beer (which I had initially refused to because beer doesn’t go well with Martell).

I remembered having a drink with Kok Zhong and then telling dearest I must have a drink with each of his Loyang friends, but ended up having to ask him to identify for me who is Yue Ming and who is Jun Ming.

I remembered a few things, here and there. And that’s about it.

What time did we leave Party World? I couldn’t recall. How did we get home? I couldn’t recall. Almost dead drunk. Bad, very bad…

In part 2 of the post proposal party, I’ll share all the stuff which happened, which I didn’t remember, and had to have different group of friends relate to me, and then we all had a good laugh about it. Stay tuned again!

i came home tonight from a company event and was talking to dearest on the phone when i saw a handwritten envelope on the table. and the handwriting looks so familiar. i was thinking very quickly “what could this be?” and “isn’t too early for a christmas card?”

and then i eagerly opened the envelope from my beloved sister, and saw this!

OMG! this is so unexpected! really… yes, dearest and i are going to be ‘engaged’ in 3 days. and yes, the engagement will be in the presence of Buddha and we do take this seriously. but it’s not like it’s going to be a ROM or wedding dinner or something… yet…

and dear bl was so sweet and thoughtful to send her wishes in the most traditional snail-mail, and also with tatty bear, my fav! aawwww…..

bl, thanks a million for this lovely gesture. i’m truly blessed to have such a dear pal… and you’ll definitely be my 姐妹, that’s without a doubt!

now i’m getting excited… 3 days more…

one of my besties was feeling really down the past few weeks and she confided in me. there was nothing much i could do except give her my fullest attention in the form of a listening ear whenever she needs it.

so we chatted late into the night. she poured out her troubles. i tried to console (i suck at this), gave some advice (more like sharing my own experience) and nagged and nagged (oh i’m good at this! ha).

it was like old times. been a LONG time since i’ve been on the phone for this long, talking about all sorts of different things. you know, like talking about one main issue, then deviating to something else, realise that we have gone off-track, and then go back to the main issue again… …

and surprise surprise, i received a card yesterday! a thoughtful thank you card…

so sweet right? a hand written card, sent the old fashioned snail mail way.

gal, you know who you are. thank you for the sweet gesture. you really don’t have to do this! i know we weren’t the type who could express our feelings well so we seldom chat much. but you & i both know that our friendship is rock solid. and we know each other appreciates whatever one has done for the other. i hope you don’t ever ‘need’ me anymore (you know what i mean) but if you ever do, i’m always there k.

and remember, things can only get better!!!!

finally, the weekend is here. soon enough.

daytime this week has been not-so-good. received sickening news at work. i’m going to have a new boss. the big boys up there decided to give the finance organization structure a revamp and move the teams around as they wish – like monopoly pieces.

i’m pissed about the developments. and i’m even more pissed about the lack of devlepments. this time round, i am not going to sit around and mope without doing anything. i’ve already highlighted my concerns to one level and if nothing comes out of it, i am going to escalate to the next level.

the best thing out of this is that i spoke to dearest about how i felt about the whole issue and he is supportive. if things do not improve, i might just throw in the towel. i can’t always hang around and be bullied just cos the big boys think i need this job very badly right?

anyway, i know i am being ultra cryptic here and you won’t understand much of it. originally i wanted to relate the whole thing at length and then lock it up but i’m just to lazy to do that. anyway, you are probably not interested in what i have to say about my work anyway. heh.

nightime, on the other hand, was not-so-bad! on wednesday, dearest picked me up from work and we went pak-tor-ing! it’s been some time since we’ve done that. dearest was dressed very smartly that night as he went for an interview earlier and maybe he felt very executive, so we went to marina and esplanade and mingle with the working class. ha.

dinner was at the glutton bay – steamboat in individual claypot style, cooked over charcoal, plus a mini bbq! it was rather special but the slow cooking time disappointed us a little (cos we were sooo hungry!). food is alright, not exactly fantastic but not bad enough to complain about.

then we strolled under the cool breeze, hand-in-hand… it feels great! to be able to spend time with someone you love in the middle of a lousy work week. and then we did something which we’ve never done before in our 7 years together! we went to 爱琴海!

i’ve been to the music cafe before with my ex-classmates but not with dearest. and dearest had always wanted to go. most of the times when we go to marina square together, we will walk pass, think about going in but never did. this time we finally did! yeah! it was pretty enjoyable… i think we might just go back there again.

i was so pleased by the mid-week dating that i slept like really really soundly that night… and… overslept the next morning! wahahaha…

work sucks. but i’m happy when dearest is around.

meeting the old pals later! should be full of gossips and complaints later… yeah! =)

14 August 2009 – two thousand five hundred and fifty seven days of togetherness.
it was our 7th anniversary. how time flies!
8 months ago i had imagined to myself that this day might be the day when i receive a diamond ring.
heh. the wish didn’t come true. in fact, we didn’t even celebrate the day with gifts, like what we used to do for the past 6 years.

but it’s ok! i wasn’t disappointed at all.

instead, we spent a long weekend with sheena and jackson in genting. jackson drove us all the way up, and back again! where to find such a selfless pal? so we spent most of the time gambling. wahaha…. no shopping, no rides – just eating, gambling, eating, gambling, sleeping and gambling again.

as usual dearest and i didn’t have much luck but we still enjoyed ourselves a lot.

we returned home on sunday and then at night, dearest and i went to harry’s at chjimes and watched the first liverpool match in the latest epl season. i have decided to join dearest in being a liverpool fan. hahaha… finally, like after 7 years! well, liverpool lost. but it’s ok. they are a strong team.

and today, i was on unpaid leave and dearest and i went to topone. guess what? we got ourselves like really high on martell. in the afternoon! hahaha… so we went home by evening time and crashed out.

after about 2 hours’ sleep, dearest woke up and went to the toilet. when he came back, this really hilarious conversation took place:

D: 我们的 dice 赢多少？
K： har？
D： 我们的 dice 赢多少？
K： aiya， 不要 talk cock lar
D： 我没有
K： talk cock leh
D： 我们躺在这里可以拿多少钱？

at this point in time i finally realized that dearest wasn’t joking
the conversation carried on for a little while before dearest himself realized that he was talking nonsense
and then we had a really really good laugh over this

die, my dearest is becoming a gambler! hahahaha…

Friday 10th July

dearest set off to JB with alfred & gang and then picked me after work.
so we went to east coast park lagoon for dinner & beer
then off we went to… Marina Barrage! we wanted to go kite-flying (with a lovely huge lizard kite, courtesy of buck my colleague) but there was absolutely no wind!
what a bummer…

Saturday 11th July

a movie marathon day for dearest & me! FOC! cos we watched dvds at home.

first it was “Departures” – an academy award winning japanese drama

it was a slow movie… but dearest & i weren’t the least bored. because the story is touching. jaslyn, if you feel like dropping some tears, watch this, can borrow from me. nice and touching…

then we watched “Goal III”. dearest & i first caught Goal in the cinema and i absolutely heart Kuno Becker, so we watched Goal II on dvd which wasn’t as good as Goal, yet we still insists to watch Goal III.

but well, Goal III sucks.
firstly, Kuno Becker is no longer as handsome. because now he has hair
secondly, Kuno Becker is no longer the main lead. though his has the most exposure in the poster
thirdly, one of the main character died. just like that.

sucks. bad movie. thank god we caught it on dvd and not in the theatre.

so after 2 movie marathon, we went out to dinner and dearest braved the rain to ta-bao durians back home.

back home, we watched another movie! “12 Rounds”!

hmm… actually this is the second time we are watching this show. the first time, we fell asleep like 5 minutes into the show. it’s not a bad movie really… your typical action movie, like speed. but i have to admit i fell asleep again, and during the most exciting part! so… you can deduce for yourself how nice the show is.

so yeah… 3 movies in 1 day! wahaha… really no life huh?
it wasn’t that bad, really. lazing around at home…

Sunday 12th July

First things first.

daddy: what did you 2 eat last night?
me: huh? durians. why?
daddy: wah… damn smelly! it’s so smelly it woke me up. didn’t you hear me waking up to get air freshener?
me: LOL

funny daddy…

so dearest and i met up with jackson for some sports. i was the one who was kpo to suggest cycling followed by swimming. worse still, just as we were turning into east coast park, i suggested to cycle to changi coast road, cos it seems like the in thing to do – every now and then on the way to work i will see many cyclist along the long long road.

and i had to suffer from my words.

so we started from macdonalds. once i got seated on the bike, i knew it will be a bad ride. the seat is damn hard! butt hurts!

i won’t go into details but the ride was really really torturous. i was a bad cyclist to begin with – as in, my sense of balance is bad. i could cycle straight, but i can’t make a good turn. if i ever need to u-turn, i will need to stop and turn the bike around myself, on my legs. and i was always tensed up cos i was afraid of falling.

so, imagine a tensed up body, resulting in aching hands and wrists, cycling like… what… 10km?
ok, i dunno how long the distance is, really… but from macdonalds to changi coast road (somewhere before the changi exhibition center… i couldn’t endure far enough to changi exhibition center), and then back again… it must be like….. DAMN far, isn’t it?

anyway, i gave up. on our way back to return the bike, i gave up just before the bedok jetty. dearest had to ride his own bike and hold mine at the same time, while i walked to the food centre to wait for him to come and pick me up in his car.

wahahaha…

am i a loser or what? dearest couldn’t stand me. he thought i was being a baby. ha…
oh and did i mention that i couldn’t balance myself at one point and ended up scratching the back of my knee a little.
jackson was worse… we left him alone for a period of time cos i absolutely had to rest and i guess he was too bored alone, so he did a mini stunt to entertain himself and lost his balance and jumped off the bike. heard he scratched his leg & hand.

i think jackson will never want to cycle when i’m around. ever. hahaha…

after cycling, dearest & i went to soak in the pool at nik’s place. it was… SHIOK…

and then we met up with alfred & nik and had dinner… and then they decided to catch crabs. and guess what? for the first time, i volunteered to go home instead of joining them. tired… too tired… and my butt hurts…

i hope the gang is having fun right now… and now that i have completed this week’s task (of blogging!), maybe i can watch grey’s anatomy now? just 1 episode before i go to bed… just to satisfy my ‘craving’? yes?

yes. season 3 here i come! yippee!!!

better late than never… here comes the entry on our long awaited Penang trip.
the trip to Penang was supposed to be (at least to me) a havoc durian tasting trip. but alas… it was not meant to be. nevertheless, the 4 of us had lots of fun – with food, driving on tiny roads full of bends, and visits to temples (and… my poor useless tummy full of shit – no kidding!)

let me start off with a complaint – the next time any of you takes air asia, don’t bother to check in online and print out your boarding passes. why? because when you are at the airport, you will still need to queue up to have your passports checked, which is, fair enough… except that the queue for online check in is longer than the one for counter check in! and the dumbest thing is, after you show them the boarding pass which you have printed out, they keep the boarding passes and issue you with new ones! DUH!

random pictures taken at the changi airport, all of us still sleepy…

with advice from alfred, we decided to rent a car for our 2 days trip, and i’ll say, it was good advice! we’ve had a lot of freedom driving around, stopping as and when we feel like it to grab food, and not to mention the thrill (for the 3 drivers, not me) of driving up and down winding hill roads, which can suddenly change from 2-way lanes to 1 single lane – at a bend! wooo… that was scary (for sheena, i believe)

and here’s our car – a dark purple proton persona, and one of the drivers… heh. the indian guy at the top left hand corner was the staff from hawk-rent-a-car who was pretty friendly and had a shock when dearest took his picture.

and of course… must show you guys the FOOD!

there was penang laksa (duh… by the way this is my fav of all!), char kway teow, lor mee/prawn mee (jackson! i am very sure you ordered prawn mee, not lor mee!!), curry mee, mctucky fried everything (chicken skin, sotong, fish, chicken meat, etc), apom, oyster egg, bak kut teh, fish bee hoon, fresh tropical fruits, durian (not so good), etc… YUMMY!

we went to the toy musuem which cost us RM20 each (for non-malaysians). i was quite excited about it… until i stepped in. the whole place was a maze of display shelves with hundreds of small little toy figurines locked behind glass panels. if you ask me, it’s not worth the money. but then again, i’m not one who loves toys, so i’m not the best person to comment

and… i’m not writing this in sequence, but the first place we went after collecting the car was the snake temple. despite being given directions by the indian car rental guy, we weren’t that confident of finding the place until jackson pointed out “there! ular! ular means snake”. LOL. so we found the place.

contrary to what was shown on tv, the snake temple isn’t that huge, and doesn’t house that many snakes. but it was still quite cool because it seems like dearest is not as scared of snakes as i thought he was.

so it was a quick tour for us, some photo-taking and off we go to head to the sunway hotel.

we also visited the tropical fruit farm where i had my mini disaster of diarrhea immediately after eating the ‘fresh’ tropical fruits. so much so that i had to miss half of the guided tour. the saving grace was that the toilet has a long water hose so that i can clean myself up after every… erm… ‘burst’ (?). haha…

the uncle who was bringing us around for the guided tour was chinese, but spoke in english with an accent. on and off, the guys try to talk to him in mandarin or hokkien but he always replied in english. makes me wonder why. he wasn’t the sort to make jokes but was friendly enough to answer our questions. he was quite pissed off at another indian group who didn’t want to join in the tour though. ha…

we also went to the air hitam dam. just for fun because we were running out of places to go to

it’s like this huge reservoir with a small dam in the center. we walked all the way inside to go to the man-made waterfall, only to find that the area is off-limits

another temple visit – the reclining buddha. it was not easy finding this place. we had to stop and ask for directions a few times.

when we finally found the place and stepped in, dearest held my hand and said “do you feel it? it’s so peaceful here i have goosebumps all over me”. at that moment, i felt… touched… and held his hands tighter. he’s my love.

and another temple:

there’s a really sweet story here, but i won’t share it for now. heh…

and beaches of course!

and here’s the various busy scenes of gurney drive, the famous tourist place with all the delicious food, esp the penang laksa!

and last but not least… the place with the good bak kut teh… except that we didn’t like the taste very much…

ok ok ok… i know this entry is not exactly that exciting. but that’s because it is almost 2 am right now and i have a ferry to catch early in the morning. yes! dearest is bringing me to desaru!

got to sleep…

this is a quick update for all the dear friends who wished me well and gave me lots of encouragement.
the op was completed in about 10 min, by 10.55am. doc says it’s a success.
dearest came and fetch me home and i slept from 1.30pm to 6pm, waking every 2 hours (dearest set alarm for me) to put eye drops as instructed.
now, i feel perfectly fine. can see very well (hope it’s 6/6, will know tomorrow), except that i’ll see some halo effect on things with lights. this is normal.

i will blog more in details tomorrow, now must let my eye rest more.

i declare it was SUCCESSFUL!!! yippeee!
Dr Lee is going to get more business after i recommend all my friends to him! wahahaha…

by the way, i saw shuwen at the clinic. wanted to see kelvin (he came to fetch her) but my eye was too stinging then to open fully, so i missed the chance.

sheena & jackson called dearest after work to see if we are free for dinner.
dearest couldn’t make it as he was rushing for a deadline.
so they came all e way down to tanah merah to pick me up for dinner!
we went to tampines for the yummy curry fish head. a
nd sheena knows i’ve been spoilt by dearest all these years, so she asked jackson to pick e fish meat for me! and then they even sent me home after dinner.
and best of all, dinner was free!

where to find such great pals??!
thank you thank you thank you!!!

————————————————

reached home and had a quick chat with daddy.
and he started telling me about stuffs which happened to his girlfriend’s daughter at work.
i tell you, the feeling sucks.
sucks beyond any description.
i always consoled myself that daddy loves me the most.
maybe i have been deceiving myself all these years?

————————————————

an unexpected announcement was made in office today
something which meant that people may lose their jobs
basically, HQ has decided to consolidate the current many regions in only 3 regions
asia pacific is to merge with middle east
what this means is that 2 regional offices will now become 1
i won’t state the obvious but one can imagine the number of redundancies that will come by soon
will i be affected? i’m not sure.
frankly, i’m not VERY worried that i will lose my job
but i’m pretty sure that i will have additional duties
well well… this is going to be one interesting year…

• celebrating 6 years and 8 months!

early in the morning, when dearest and i had our usual morning call, he said ‘happy anniversary’ to me! yippee… he remembered! hee…

 in the evening, we met for dinner as usual. but this time round we went to the newly opened tampines 1 and had japanese food! i think it’s called manpuku or something like that. it’s like marche. the food wasn’t fantastic but i quite enjoyed it… after all, it was spending precious time with dearest

after tat, we actually queued up to go into uniqlo! i saw this really cute t-shirt but dearest felt it was too kiddy for him. so after a long consideration, we didn’t buy it.

• bought 2 lovely dresses!

then we walked back to tampines mall (the parking is cheaper there!) and on the way i bought myself 2 dresses from ness and also a belt to go along! both blue but i really love them. total damage $221.45 *phew*

and, totally inspired by the dresses, i went home and ironed them immediately! wanted to wear one of them today but ended up wearing another dress (which is brand-new, rotting away in my wardrobe for like a year?!).

i feel pretty! hahahaha…

• on leave tomorrow!

i didn’t mention this before but my company has mandated a 10-day unpaid leave for staff, effective from April. On top of that, we are unable to carry our unused leaves to next year. effectively, this means that i have a total of 33 days leave to clear in the next 9 months – this is about 3 to 4 days per month!

so, basically apart from the first week of the month, i will be taking at least 1 day off every week. 4 day work week! how shiok is that? nah… it’s not shiok at all because it means i suffer a 5% pay cut every month, and is still expected to complete all my projects and deadlines anyway.

but well, looking on the bright side, i’m off from work tomorrow! and i have many activities planned…

• planning to perfect my eyesight!

first up! i have decided to pamper myself and go for lasik treatment!

one fine day, a colleague stopped me along the corridor and asked if i’m short-sighted. cos on somedays i’m wearing spectacles, and some days i’m not. then he asked casually why wouldn’t i go for lasik? and he shared the success stories of him and his wife who were like serious myopic before, but now enjoying perfect eyesight!

so he recommended his doctor and i did a research for feedback on dr lee hung ming and he has got fantastic reviews!

so i made up my mind and will be seeing dr lee tomorrow for my lasik evaluation, which is just a series of tests to determine whether i’m suitable for lasik. excited!!!

at the same time, i have made another appointment to see the gynae for a regular pap smear test. both doc are at gleneagles… so convenient!

• meeting besties!

and then… after my appointments, i’m going to meet J&J! looking forward to hearing how recharged jackie is after quitting her job and also to cheer jaslyn up! we are heading to a fren’s restuarant at bugis… yummy avocado milk, here i come!

• getting bonus!

and… last but not least, today i received the bonus letter from my boss! this further confirmed that i have sufficient funds to do lasik! haha… and buy a few gifts for dearest, and more! hooray!