Sunday, April 20, 2008

Storage

Before choir practise today, we had to run some errands to prepare for our upcoming trip. So after a short afternoon nap, we headed to Marine Parade to do some shopping.

First, we went to Kim Choo at Katong to get those bottled nonya sauces for the family back in Ont. We have always love this particular brand of red curry sauce which we had bought in Malacca. It goes really well when fried with petai and prawn. We discovered later from Mrs Lim that it is also sold here at Kim Choo.

After purchasing the sauces, we headed for the MP Mall which we haven't been for some years. While searching for souvenirs, we found the HSW store which specialises in storage and organisation for the home. So glad to have discovered the store, which apparently has been around for 3 yrs already...

I love to organise my stuff in proper storage, especially since we are living in a small space. So within half an hour in the store, we bought a hanging jewellery organiser and a plastic laptop/breakfast tray. I'm so pleased with our purchase, especially the laptop tray which has side pocket for addition storage and cost us only $13+. We have been looking for one that we could use on our bed, as that's our regular computer workstation. We used to just make do with putting a pillow on our lap. Now, this laptop tray is lightweight, durable, waterproof, good height and I no longer feel the heat from the laptop on my thighs. :)

But of course, we have to be discerning to know if the things are value for money when shopping at HSW, as some of the items are a tad expensive. If we have not been short of time, I think we would have bought more stuff. It's kind of like a mini Ikea, with excellant storage ideas.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Facebook

It's increasingly difficult and annoying trying to access the FB site. It's overly popular and everyone's jamming the network. FB team better do something about it fast before I give up on it!

Old Schoolmates

Yesterday, I met up with some old schoolmates from my HR course. It's been a few years since we last met. Some looked different while others still look the same. I have put on that extra kilos over the years and could not recognise myself in the class photo. We were also trying to put a name to the face.

We have Eileen to thank for organising the gathering. Our topics were mostly about the lessons and the lecturers, and the impression they have made on us. And the one person no one could recall was the lecturer who taught us C&B. His class was so boring that we wondered if we even took that module.

Most of the class are not practising HR despite taking the course. But it did help us gain some useful knowledge to apply in the corporate world.

I was a little hesitant to meet up but am glad that I did. Unfortunately, we have lost touch with two of the members in my project group. I'm sure they are faring well in life.

Well, at least this has reunited some of us, and they are thinking of keeping in touch through facebook instead of our yahoo group. Thank God for technology!

Friday, April 18, 2008

We Will Rock You

Last week, we attended the Queen musical 'We Will Rock You'. Queen is Sam's all time favourite band, after the Beatles.

Well, the storyline was rather disappointing, and the second half of the musical was better than the first. They sang many familiar hits like 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love', 'Another One Bites the Dust', 'Under Pressure', 'Radio Ga Ga' and so on. Of course, they left the most popular hits 'We will Rock you' and 'We are the Champions' for the finale.

Just while I was expressing my disappointment that they did not sing the hit song 'Bohemian Rhapsody', they cheekily flashed on the wide screen asking 'Do you want Bohemian Rhapsody?'. That led to thunderous roar for the encore performance. They performed that song really well to standing ovation. The 8-piece band, especially the drummer and leading electric guitarist rock!

Too bad they did not perform Sam's favorite song 'Love of my life'. He tried to serenade that song to me decades back, and even influenced his niece to learn that song.

Personally, I prefer the 'Mama Mia' musical as the storyline was more interesting. Also, I didn't like one part of the performance cause it was a little blasphemous. They had a guy in a kneeling position with his arms widespread, and someone placed a wreath made of colorful lighted bulbs on his head, resembling the crown of thorns. It was a brief scene with the lights deeming out, but it caught my attention.

Well, apart from the darkness of the lyrics and the influences behind Queen, the musical performance was great! They added some local flavor to the script injecting words like 'lahs', 'bugis street' and 'PCK'. Some parts of the show was funny though forgettable. I did enjoy the evening despite having a stiff neck and not being able to rock to the music and clapping like a moron...

On a separate note, I think this season's top 10 American Idol Michael Johns performed songs from Queen really well. Too bad he's out of the race.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

High Definition

On Tuesday, Sam very excitedly came home with a HD Set-top Box. He has exchanged the very old black box with this one at a promotional price of $48.15 plus free 3 months HD Plus for 1 yr contract. The recommended retail price for the box is $300+ without contract. He also had to purchase a special cable for the connection. And of course he subscribed to the additional sports channel.

After fixing it up, we channel surfed and realised that they have opened up all channels for our preview. There are more than 100 channels to surf. How exciting! Didn't know that there's more than 1 HBO channel. We also came across an interesting channel 70 called Discovery Home and Health, which offers content on health, beauty, pregnancy, parenting etc.

I like the additional feature we get with the new set-top box. There's on-screen TV Guide & Reminders and of course HD pictures. That's enough for us. Now we will be busy channel surfing for the next few days before they remove the preview channels. Anyway, we wouldn't have time to spend on the goggle box.

Crowning

Well, one of the most stressful thing in life for me is to visit the dentist. But instead of suffering any worse consequences, I decided to pluck up some courage to do my half-yearly check, albeit after much procrastination.

So I braved the thunderstorm and went for my check up last Sat. I would have chickened out but I have already postponed the appointment 3 times. It makes me nervous just thinking about the visit.

Within minutes of sitting on the dental chair, Dr Lim quickly determined that I have a hairline crack across my two left upper molars. According to her, there are 2 reasons for the hairline crack. Firstly, I already have a big filling in those teeth. And secondly, there's not enough calcium going to the teeth. It's normal that ladies loose more calcium as we age.

Dr Lim advised that it may crack someday and I would have to pull them out! So the proposed solution is to do a crown which will cost me S$700 and 2 more visits. I conceded as I had a horrible experience pulling out a upper right premolar that cost me lots of money, pain, tears and blood!

I had to make sure that I time the visits well as I will be travelling end of the month, and the treatment needs to be completed before the travel. So I visited her today, and the first thing she had to do was the long needle injection to numb the gums. I was begging her not to give the injection, but she said "Don't worry, I will help you along". I think those words did some comfort, though it may sound like something she would routinely say. She then told me to take a deep breath and gently poked the gums with the needle. The deep breath helped! She did numerouos impressions of my teeth and I could feel substantial amount of bleeding during the drilling to remove the old fillings.

Fortunately it was over in less than half an hour. And I was told that there will be no injection the next time round. Yeah! And coward me survived another round of treatment! Thank God!

Now, I need to deal with the pain when the numbness goes off...

Monday, April 14, 2008

The Greenhouse

I'm supposed to be on a diet, or at least watch my diet cause I've not done anything about the 5 kg I'm supposed to loose since ... 3 yrs back?

Well, one of my bro decided to buy parents dinner for his birthday and a job promotion. He invited us to tag along but go on dutch. And so we did...

It was my first time at the Greenhouse at the Ritz. And no, it's not in a Greenhouse. Boy, am I blown away by the sumptuous and wide buffet spread, a haven for seafood aficionados. There's fresh scallops, oysters, slipper lobster, shashimi, chilli crab, cold crab, drunken prawn, stir-fry prawn etc just to name a few. There goes my diet...

For dessert, there's creme brulee, nice and warm chocolate souffle that melts in your mouth, assorted chocolate pralines, chocolate mousse cake and variety of other fruits and dessert. I only managed to indulge in half of the buffet spread.

The dinner cost us a pretty penny, but it's all worth it. It's been a few days, and I'm still thinking about the food... so yes, it's that good.

After dropping the folks off after dinner, we decided to take a stroll along Clarke Quay. Well, it's just our feeble attempt to get the food down our digestive system instead of up to our brains ...