It has been quite a whirlwind. K and I went back to Singapore for Chinese New Year for 2.5 weeks, my longest trip in my 8 years here in the UK. It was our first CNY as a married couple and so we were not spared from giving out red packets to the kiddos in our families and boy can I say, his family is so big that we lost count of the number of red packets we gave out, hah. Mine, on the other hand, is very much smaller and gave out less than 10 red packets, phew! ;) It was nice to see our extended families since our wedding more than 3 years ago.
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| My niece has grown so much now we are having conversations! |
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| Love her cheongsam dress |
The trip started off really intense for me at least. I had a very, very busy January at work with consecutive late nights for the whole month, and I literally rushed to Heathrow, luggage in tow, and got on that plane with panda eyes and a very frizzled brain. When I landed in Singapore 13h later, it was less than two days to CNY. Battling jet lag and coming to terms with the hot weather (-2deg to +32deg) and the intense boisterous atmosphere for the first few days of CNY made my head spin at times and I be honest to say I wanted to crawl into a hole and enjoy some quiet time. I do love my solitude, call me a caveman if you may. Oh and air conditioning at full blast, please. Of course reality was far from the ideal scenario in my head, so we were glad that 'proper CNY' lasted for just 3 days and the intensity went off a cliff afterwards which was very much welcomed. Being home for CNY also means that most of our favourite hawker stalls were closed, boo. As there wasn't enough time for me to do my personal grooming before CNY, I did my facial, nails and hair all post-CNY which meant I managed to escape the price hikes, yay to that! In between K and I went out and explored the malls.
It's all about food, food, food
We ate so much in this trip, it's almost obscene. Actually I might just rename this as the food post. It was so unreal that I picked up my running shoes and went running one morning because I felt so unhealthy. And also because I knew that afternoon was our second buffet lunch so not only did I go running I skipped breakfast too. Thanks to my aunt's AMEX offers, we enjoyed two eat-till-you-drop buffet lunches at half price. Seriously, yes. The first was at Marriott Cafe, and the second at The Line @ Shangri-la which I might blog about later.
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| At Marriott Cafe |
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| At The Line |
Being home means I get to enjoy home cooked food such as the below at grandma's
What else? Oh yes and I tried queuing up for the extremely popular Japanese cheese tarts
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| My verdict? It's good but overpriced in my view. Probably won't queue too long for it either. |
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One of my friends love chicken rice and I had to snap this and send her. K brought me to a really good stall near his home.
This was oh-so-succulent which still makes my mouth water even as I type now. |
With a longer break back home, it also meant I could meet up with more friends, some of whom I've not seen for a long time. And it was awesome to have a complete Queen's reunion since Pris and Stephan were also home for CNY. We were counting and we think the last reunion we had was more than 4 years ago!
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More kids in the pictures now ;)
Love it that K knows most of the people at the table, he's almost like an unofficial member! |
Had a quick catch up with Corinne and Mandy before the girls' hotpot dinner
Below: My girly group since 1999 ;) We met up for a really nice hotpot dinner at Vivocity. It was so good I wanted to bring K but looking at the amount of food consumed thus far, I can safely say this can wait till our next trip.
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| We joked that we are all ageing gracefully. Ok maybe half-joked lol |
So yes I mentioned in between food, K and I explored some malls and took a few pics at Vivocity
One morning we woke up and I suddenly thought of MOS Burger, a fast food chain which we used to go so much during our JC days and we loved the iced milk tea. Very random, I know. I asked my girl friends if MOS Burger is still around and K got quite excited too. Lol - cheap thrills like that. And yep so we went and ordered a large iced milk tea to share.
No pic of food below but that was because I forgot to haha. I saw an article in the Straits Times on the best ramen places in Singapore two months ago and suggested to Z we visit one together. I chose the lobster ramen place at Clarke Quay. Haven't been to Clarke Quay in ages I actually got lost and walked around quite a bit (hence the pic) until I finally found the restaurant. The lobster broth was really good, but I might order the clear soup the next time as the one I ordered was a bit too thick for my liking. Whenever we meet up, we manage to catch up from where we left off and have deep conversations about life in general; so glad I managed to keep this friendship all these years.
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| Clarke Quay |
We also met up with Cyn and Neo at their new apartment, and thereafter met her and WH for drinks just chatting and catching up with old colleagues.
Last but not least, I am so glad I finally got to introduce my family to the Tews! Having played host to me for the past x Christmases, this was a small gesture to host them and treat them to some home cooked food. Of course we needed a group pic to end the night. Shame we missed little Gabe, but there is always a next time ;)
Now that we are back home in London, we are enjoying our quiet time and weird as it sounds I've never missed the cold this much. I spotted some bulbs appearing in our garden, I'm so excited to see the flowers which we planted last November make an entrance in Spring. One thing for sure - I've missed our home.
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