Skip to main content

Ushering in the year of the Horse


Happy Chinese New Year everyone!  Hope you had a great CNY so far!

Ours is a memorable one this year.  We spent the whole of Saturday steam-boating: we had two steamboat parties.  Lunch at TC and Cecilia's, and then dinner at Jixian and Rongxuan's.  We felt blessed to have friends around during this festive period.  And then on Sunday we finally completed our move!  So officially we have stopped shuffling between two properties.  

Understandably everything feels new and foreign right now.  It would take some time for sure to get used to it.  And we still need to get some bits and bobs here and there.  On Sunday we did probably the most important thing of all - changing the locks on our front door.  We didn't feel very safe using the existing locks, and so K managed to find a locksmith to come down.  We wanted to invite some friends over for some festive cheer in our new place but as it was so last minute with the locksmith coming and boxes everywhere, we thought it's best to postpone it.  Next on our priority list are the curtains.  I must admit I am a little paranoid knowing people across the road can look in our rooms directly and also the morning sun shining into the room especially on weekends.  And probably thick curtains could help shut out some of the cold.  This morning we took our first official long journey to work, and mind you this is coming from someone who hasn't taken the tube to work in the past 1.5 years.  I had enjoyed my fair share of a lie-in every morning and now it's time to denounce this little bonus.  The journey door to door for me took 50min.  I guess it's not that bad.  I just need to get used to squeezing with the morning rush hour crowd.  And getting used to the fact that during off peak hours the train frequency is only twice per hour.  This one I think would need the  biggest getting used to.  I mean, twice per hour...

Back to our Saturday.  We didn't really take photos of the steamboat lunch.  But we did take two for the sit down steamboat dinner at Jixian and Rongxuan's.  We got to know this super couple from CL, who has moved back to Singapore.  Apparently they were from the same batch in their junior college days and are my age.  And I say super couple because one is a lawyer and the other a doctor specialising in the eye.  We were chatting about our future dreams and Rongxuan said she would love to open a small practice in a small village and help all the people there.  Seriously big hearted girl.  Making the rest of us at the dining table feeling slightly ashamed.  Just slightly.  Professions aside, they are a really nice and friendly couple.  We were also introduced to Jixian's cousin Rachel that night, and Lawrence was there too.  Funnily I found out recently that Lawrence and I were from the same JC too, what a coincidence.

From left: Us, Rongxuan, Rachel and Jixian

with Lawrence in the middle, my fellow AJCian!

It was a great dinner, with the host couple serving konnyaku jelly and red bean soup for dessert too.  We were stuffed by the time dinner was finished.  And we didn't stay too late because the power couple (sadly) had to work the next day.  Now we look forward to hosting them at our new place in return.

Everyone we meet is so excited for us, and everyone wants to come round and visit us.  I think it's because of this that I am a little stressed wanting to complete the house a bit more before having friends over.  I guess I have to chill a bit with regards to this!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jubilee Weekend | Afternoon Tea Party

http://www.thediamondjubilee.org/ Today is the end of the Jubilee celebrations and how better to end it off than to have an afternoon tea party in the company of friends, while watching the celebrations on our TV.  It has been quite an emotional afternoon, in the good sense of course.  I don't think I've ever seen Queen Elizabeth on TV (and heard the national anthem God Save the Queen) more than these 3 days combined, but this Jubilee weekend has made me grew to love and admire this lady.  She is 86 and reminds me so much of my own granny, and her strength is amazing.  Imagine being sworn in as queen at the age of 26.  (I mean, what was I doing when I was 26?)  On Sunday when she and Prince Philip went onboard the Spirit of Chartwell boat to watch the River Pageant, it was cold and windy but they stood throughout the 3 hours event.  It was said she was offered some hot tea and a seat, which she both said no to.  I love my grandma but ...

Murder Mystery Dinner Party

Two Saturdays ago we were invited to the Kim's for a themed dinner, specifically a Murder Mystery dinner party.  What is that, you might ask.  It was our first time attending such a dinner too, and so how it works is: a group of people attend a dinner party.  Each is assigned a role and will be given a script to read that night.  The aim of the party is to identify a murderer in the midst of us by the end of the night.  The hosts would work off a dinner game set (they got it off Amazon) and it comes with proper invites, setting/ scene, table name cards, scripts and even a suggested menu.  Clearly RX is an Agatha Christie fan. Two weeks beforehand, we received our invites in the postbox, telling us what roles we each have been assigned and the suggested attire (and props if necessary).  Interesting yes? The dinner was to start at 7pm and we were to have 8 people that night.  It's all very mysterious… Our invitation cards assigned K the...

Cooking mee pok dry | bak chor and fishball noodles

When I touched down at Changi airport a few weeks ago, I was very hungry and K suggested grabbing a quick bite at the food court.  I immediately went for the queue at the bak chor (minced pork) noodles stall.  This one dish is very local and we simply can't find it here.  London's Chinatown has a few Malaysian restaurants with fried kway teow, chicken rice, laksa, etc but there is no authentic fishball noodles or minced pork noodles. When my friend Corinne shared this link last week, I was intrigued and I didn't know K was too.  He suggested going to the Asian supermarket on Sunday to get the necessary ingredients.  We found Dodo fishballs from Singapore here - what a win!  Unfortunately the mee pok (yellow, flat noodles) is of a darker shade here and tastes slightly different (maybe a different type of wheat?).  We found fishcakes too. http://delishar.com/2015/12/fishball-noodles-mee-pok-tah.html This is a healthier version of the hawker center'...