home again.

after almost 2 weeks of:

quality time with the family;
being greeted with friendly “ありがとう”s everywhere we went;
seeing countless Hondas, Toyotas and Mazdas on the roads;
using broken Japanese to ask for directions,
and trying to understand what i’m being told;
nice cool weather, with pretty snowfall on certain days;
sushi, sashimi, unagi, tempura, crab, hokkaido soft cream and other yummy-licious food;

i’m once again back in Singapore.

too much that cannot simply be written in a blog entry. i reckon i’ll just let a few photos do the talking. all the other photos will be up on my flickr site after i’ve collated everything from my aunt’s camera, which will probably be within the next few days. check them out if you have time and bandwidth to spare. though i’d have to warn you first that i’m pretty certain the total photo count will be at least 1000.

xmas decorations at Changi Airport.

a candid shot of my sister while on the cable car at Hakone.

THE Mount Fuji.

a hawker peddling his wares at Asakusa.

a fallen leaf at Ueno Park. i played around with the contrast and saturation, ending up with this. it’s my wallpaper now :)

building a snowman at Rusutsu Ski Resort.

Sapporo White Illumination.

delicious Hokkaido ice cream in lavender, milk, melon, strawberry and chocolate flavours.

captured in action :P

pretty ferris wheel at Asahiyama Zoo.

visit to the fox farm.

trapped in Abashiri Prison!

experienced my first ever 温泉 (onsen) on Christmas eve. and no, my sisters didn’t come along, they wore the yukata just for the photo shoot ;)

ししゃも (shishamo) at the fish market.

with daichi, my mum’s friend’s son. so cute :P

2 sleepy heads.

good night, for now :)

meet-ups.

Tuesday: dinner at Sushi-Tei at Taka with the primary school friends. a night of updates, catching up, and digging into the abyss of our brains in search of old but fond memories.

Thursday: dinner at Fish&Co at Glass House with the meddies. a quick catch-up session with live music and song dedications.

Thursday: KTV at Cineleisure with the 7b-ians. hours of craziness, belting out love songs from deep within, singing our hearts out.

and in between all these there were also lunches with the boyfriend (ie chicken rice at Serangoon Gardens, mos burger, qiu lian ban mian - YUMS! :D), as well as a swimming session on Thursday morning.

off to Japan from tmr till the 28th. i’ll be back with lots of photos, i promise. in the meantime, take care :)

Hello I’m a Mac.

randomly took a few shots of the Orchard Road lightings because i was early in meeting fio and the rest of the 03s33 peeps. don’t think that i managed any good ones. ah well.

did quite a fair bit the past few days. Wed and Thurs were spent with the boyfriend, despite the horrible rain and no tennis. nua-ed at his place, had bah chor mee at Crawford Lane, walked around Sim Lim for his RAM upgrade, headed to town and got my early xmas present. other than having dinner with fio and co on Friday, i also met up with some 7b peeps and played tennis. well, even though i haven’t played in months, i managed to hit some decent shots, so it wasn’t too bad ;) the night ended off at Muddy Murphy where the boyfriend, his friend, RongYao and i chilled out to some pseudo-U2 live band. i wouldn’t say that their music was bad; it was pretty entertaining. though it was a band you could listen to but not watch. enough said :P

today went shopping with mum and aunts cos my aunt had a 50% voucher to use at G2000. so i took the opportunity to get some formal wear. in the end i got 1 shirt, 2 tops that looked like a vest/blouse pulled over a shirt but are actually 1-piece, 1 pair of pants, 1 tank top, 1 jacket and 1 knit top for only $155! how awesome is that :) and i drove for the first time today since coming back, a bit not used to auto, haha. we had the fish steamboat thingy for dinner, along with spare ribs, kangkong, kailan and my favourite hot plate tofu! :D yum yum yum. more good food tmr cos we’re going for some Penang buffet thingo at OCC. maybe i’ll take some pictures tmr. heh.

anyway, back to the subject of shopping, i realised i’ve spent $3000 on material goods within a week. OMG, need to stop spending already :( and referring back to the title of this post, yes, yours truly got a black MacBook after much consideration and debating with myself. the change-over has been alright so far, transferred my documents over and even found programs to read .chm and .djv files which some of the textbooks i have are in. i’m so proud of myself :P still playing around with the different features and keyboard shortcuts. iPhoto makes my photo organisation neat and nice and pretty. whee~

honestly, i love my Mac already :)

home!

yeah, i’m back in Singapore. it’s nice to be back amongst the beloved family and friends. but i really have to complain about the weather! it’s been hot hot hot, and somehow my sensitive nose is not used to the air, so i’ve been sniffing and sniffing since i landed on Sat. boo. i walk around town and i see people in jackets or windbreakers, and i’m like thinking to myself: wth?! i feel hot for them just by looking at them. sheesh.

anyway, i’ve been pretty occupied the past few days. Sat night had a brief catch up with wx who dropped by to collect his krispy kremes. i think he was more happy to see the krispy kremes than to see me. muahahaha. kidding :P woke up on Sun morning not feeling too good (ie nose was a lil blocked and i was mentally tired), so ended up not going for the 10km run. missed the opportunity to catch up with the meddies :( ah well. maybe next year IF i train, i’ll try the half marathon. though i remember saying exactly the same thing last year. coughcough.

the rest of Sunday was spent at home, resting, reading Bourne Supremacy, playing Wario on the Wii with my sisters. haha, i kept losing cos it was months ago since i played it on rongyao’s Wii. i like that game; it’s fun. at least now i have something to entertain me if i get bored at home.

got my flu jab on Monday morning with my sisters and dad. then had yummy yong tau foo near Braddell MRT station!! =D and the rest of the afternoon i was window-shopping in town with the boyfriend. we actually met ah beng Danny just outside Wisma! what a coincidence, lol. finally bought a Crumpler bag, after wanting one since AGES ago (i think back when i was in J2). gave up the idea of customising one back in Melbourne because 1) i don’t have a design, i don’t know what to design, i don’t know who has the time and effort to design for me and 2) it’s going to cost at least twice the price of a normal one, i really can’t justify to myself paying $300 for a bag, despite it being one and only.

today is mum’s birthday, so Happy Birthday mum!

met wx for lunch, that stupid boy overslept. tsk tsk. had some yummy fish soup at Jalan Besar =D thanks! after which, because he was heading to uni, i followed him to SMU to explore a bit since i’ve never been there before. nothing much lar, just like any normal uni just that it’s new, haha. then since i was in the area, i popped over to bras basah complex to buy the Oxford Clinical Handbook for Medicine. only SGD$48, when it’s selling at AUD$75 according to daryl. woots! dunno what other textbooks i’ll need, and i’ve never really been dependent on textbooks so far these 2 years except for Anatomy, so i didn’t buy anything else. and on my way to the bus stop to go home, i just whipped out my camera for this random shot! haha.

tennis with the boyfriend tmr. probably spend the rest of the day with him :)

the lonely tennis ball