beloved bel

I went to Stuttgart last weekend to visit Pris and family.  Taking a break from our Christmas tradition, I had told them I should probably give the some family time together and I spend my first Christmas in London, as funny as it may sound.  Yes I have never spent Christmas in London - even my manager knows.  He was anticipating me discussing me taking holiday over Christmas because I need to go Germany. Of course I still needed to see them - say hi to everyone - and so I picked a random weekend before air ticket prices crept up towards Christmas. Oh wow Sammy has grown up so fast!  It was funny how we met early Saturday morning.  I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in their study and I heard him wake up and playing in the room beside mine.  Suddenly my room door opened and he wanted to dash into the room but stopped short of doing so because he saw me.  He immediately closed the door and ran away lol.  Later on I found out he told P...

Well I say as long as there is no work, it's always bliss.  Weekend started early for me with the annual Banking Christmas Party organised by the head of banking, held now for second year in a row at the Royal Exchange.  I missed it last year because I was back home for our second wedding but am glad I could make it this year.  Everyone was in anticipation because our CEO Jamie Dimon would be attending.  People have various opinion of him, but to someone like me who has been in this bank for almost 10 years, it is a secret dream of mine to meet and greet him someday.  He has been diagnosed with throat cancer a few months back and I understand this party would be his first official engagement after his series of chemo.  He still turned up looking all smiley and stood at the door to shake hands and greet every.single.person who walked through that door that night.  K says it's a very good strategy "because that's how you get into the hearts of people". P...

One of the highly kept secrets (well at least to my family) to the reason why we went to Surrey three weekends ago was partly to see Godalming… but the main reason was to do an autumn shoot.  Together with my love, against the beautiful backdrop of fall colours… this is something which I've been meaning to do!  And now that it's the perfect season to do it, I figured I had better do it this autumn otherwise I need to wait for another year.  After much persuasion, K finally agreed and went along with this crazy idea (Gabby told me "omg he's an angel!"). I did some research before our trip to Singapore on who we could get to do it and finally settled for Hajley whom we originally engaged to do our wedding photography.  She later passed on our "assignment" to her associate Ben who did a fantastic job.  Being repeat clients, she agreed to give us a really good price this time - hallelujah! After roaming about Godalming that beautiful Saturday afternoon, ...

So now you know this is one of my favourite movies.  Marketa mentioned to me about this town Godalming in Surrey because she went hiking in some nature trail a couple of years ago.  I read on Wikipedia that part of the movie was filmed there which got me all excited.  That famous scene which Cameron Diaz drove her little car on the high street was filmed here. K and I visited three Saturdays ago and explored this little (posh) town, close to 2h drive from where we live  It is said that Goldalming is voted to be one of the top towns to live in the UK.  We stopped by for lunch at this Italian restaurant called Piazza Firenze where we each had a plate of seafood pasta.  (Always start with food, you will never go wrong.) Thereafter we walked along the high street, and I can see that this is a quaint English town. Post lunch shot I found this beautiful home store hidden away… Don't you love the front door of this shop?  My kind of ...

We visited Hillsong Kent this morning with the intention of meeting up with Janine and Louis.  Gosh I think we haven't properly caught up with them for more than a year.  Now that they are married and back from their mega moon (yes 7 months over 10 countries, 4 continents to be precise), and are living in Burgess Hill, 15 miles north of Brighton.  Tonbridge in Kent is probably somewhere midway for all of us now.  Pretty cool place to meet up isn't it - at our Kent church. Grant was preaching about growing as a person today and something he said made me sit up and ponder.  He said we should all aim to grow and learn more everyday.  He doesn't want to be the same person he is next year today.  And with God's wisdom guiding us everyday, I don't see why this is not achievable!  Then a random thought popped into my mind… I will blog about 20 (random) things about me today, and it would be interesting to look back a year later. Not in order of cours...