Post Christmas

I GOT A PART-TIME JOB!!! This is very exciting news because it means I won't be going broke anytime soon hehe.

So here's how I got it: On boxing day I wanted to go to Cedele at Wheelock to apply for a job there because Hanying is working there and she said that they were shorthanded. But smart me went during lunch peak hour and the staff there told me to come back at 3pm. Then I remembered that I saw a 'Now Hiring' sign at one of the shops at Scape underground when I went shopping there with XH on Christmas eve. So I went there and asked if I could apply, they asked me to fill out a form with my particulars and everything and told me to come the next day for a trial... and I thought wow that was easy.

So I went the next day from 12-7pm and learnt a lot of stuff. Namely the prices of the items in the shop, how to use the cash register app on the ipad, how to use the nets machine and how to tell the difference between samsung, iphone 4 and iphone 5 cases. Haha how enriching. The boss also came at around 4pm. He's n entrepreneur and he's younger than me! He started Art with a HeART Pte. Ltd. and also opened the shop My Box (which I'm working at) to help young people in Singapore. At the end of the day when he was giving me my pay I asked him directly whether he was going to hire me or not and he said YES!!!! I was really freaking happy omg. So now I work from 12-5pm Monday to Friday. The job can get stressful when there are many customers, but when there are none it's quite slack so I'm pretty happy with it :D

Anyway I spent the evening of Christmas eve with Xinhui :) We went to eat Makisan together and did a lot of weird stuff like visit an art gallery at SOTA.

Walking at Orchard road

Interactive piece at SOTA

Haha. We also went to Cold Stone for ice cream which was an item on XH's post A's bucket list. Orchard road (the part near Somerset 313 at least) was super crowded with people taking pictures with the Christmas decorations and XH and I had a hard time getting to Cold Stone. All part of the Christmas eve experience I guess. After that I went off for midnight mass.

Nothing much happened on Christmas day, just had lunch with relatives from my dad's side and dinner with relatives from my mum's side. Boringgg.

Went to Kristen's 70s themed party and Brice's Indian themed party which were both fun. And they made me seem non-loserly lol. So I didn't have to be like oh I'm just staying at home on a Friday and Saturday night. Cos that would be uncool.

Rambling,

It's so easy to idealise people when you can't see them or interact with them physically. Now that I know how it feels, I really can't blame my sister for falling for someone she'd never even met before. Whether we want to believe it or not, we've all imagined somebody to be exactly who we want them to be, often someone they are not, just because we can't see them or maybe because we don't want to face the truth. And sometimes it's comforting to be able to tell yourself that they are exactly what you want, what you need even. But the truth is, you'll never know until you meet them and have an actual conversation with them. Everything can seem perfect through a screen because emotions can't be felt in the same way as they are in person. You can't tell if a person is lying from the words on the screen, just like you can't tell if an apple is sweet or not from its appearance. I have to assume the worst, take precautions and not subconsciously give too much of myself, because I don't want to lose yet another friend. Or perhaps we were never friends to begin with.

Also, I finished The Kite Runner and started on a new read!

It's disappointingly not as interesting as The Kite Runner, but it passes the time.

Loving life right now! xx

Selfish Gene Café and Turtles outing

I got back from Australia last Friday morning and after taking 1 day to unpack, dye my hair and catch up on The Heirs, I was back into the swing of things!

21 December, Saturday

I went out for brunch with Grace and Tiff at Selfish Gene Café at Tanjong Pagar! 

Unsurprisingly, Tiff was late hahaha so Grace and I went to the café first and ordered our meals. I had The Valerie, which is this:

And Grace had scrambled eggs on brioche, which Google claims is highly enriched bread hahaha. Tiff still hadn't come even after we finished eating so we chatted for awhile but then Grace said they were going to chase us out if we didn't order something, so we ordered coffee and drank s u p e r  s l o w l y.

Oh and on a side note, Grace thought the cashier at the café was someone from her school! And she got all excited and showed me his instagram and everything. But when we went up to the counter to order, it turned out it wasn't him at all...................... Omg it was so funny! We had to stop ourselves from bursting into laughter while ordering hahaha

Anyway, Tiff came when we were halfway through our coffee. She ordered coffee too and we talked for awhile. They gave me my super belated birthday gift too! It's really thoughtful! And I was wondering why they kept meeting up when I was away haha.

After that we wanted to take a picture outside the café so we had to ask passers-by to help us. It was soooo difficult to get a nice photo! In the end we asked 3 or 4 different people to help us take but none of them were satisfactory! Hahaha it was kind of embarrassing, I wonder what the people sitting in the café must have been thinking cos we really spent quite a long time standing outside lol.

The first lady didn't even include Tiff in the picture -_-

Ok la this picture not bad... but...

...we wanted one with the sign

But Grace was too dark so we asked another person....

LAST PHOTO:

 Grace brought her polaroid with a self timer and tripod stand (wow so professional haha) so we walked around the area in search for a nice place to take a polaroid. When we found one we set up the polaroid and tripod on a table and all the passers-by were completely judging us! One lady even gave us a judging frown.... I don't understand! What's so wrong? Anyway it was quite worth it cos the picture turned out really nice!

After that we walked to the bus stop and parted ways cos I had to meet church people at GWC to prepare for our FIT dinner :'( 

I spent the afternoon cooking at Marianne's house. Steven even taught me how to poach an egg!! :D :D Dinesh did most of the cooking though, I just helped whenever I could. In the end this is what we came up with:

Fruit salad, 

scalloped potato with sour cream and bacon,

 eggs benedict and 

cooked salmon with sugar and garlic sauce.

I guess it was nice spending time with church friends. Since I'm not very close to them, this was an opportunity to build our friendship. :) 

Anyway FIT is going to get more intense next year because we're going to have to recruit new facilitators and impart our skills to them! I don't think I'm ready to graduate yet :O

22 December, Sunday

I met up with the Dare 6 team in the evening! We were supposed to go cycling from 6pm-8pm but everyone was late except for Gin Kee so we decided to scrap the cycling haha. Instead we headed to Penny University for dinner, but we found out that they stop serving food at 5pm so there were only desserts and coffee... Super disappointing :( Then we walked from Penny U to i12 Katong and decided to eat at Fatboys after longggg deliberation. 

 After dinner we headed to Blackball at i12 for dessert! YAY. It was my first time trying Blackball and I really loved it! Anyway after that we walked around the shops looking for presents.

 Here are some Rena-inspired photos (because she uploaded some model poses on FB) which we took really long to take because we couldn't stop laughing. How did Rena do it...

 These are also Rena-inspired:

It was a really fun night and I love the turtles! :)

Anyway, today I have to go Christmas shopping which is the most stressful thing ever (other than exams) so byyee! xx

Grandeur the Premiere

It's hard to believe that SDD (aka prom) is over! I was anticipating it for so long and I guess it turned out to be what I expected it to be: taking lots of photos and eating basically haha. 

In the morning, I met up with Vanessa at Far East Plaza to get our nails done, but my nails were really short sobz so it didn't really look that nice. 

Then we had lunch at Toss & Turn at Ion, which was somewhat a ripoff. We paid $8.90 for a really small sandwich! But I can't deny that it tasted pretty good. Then we made our way back to my house to get ready, and along the way, we met up with Belinda.

Back at my house:

 We actually had a lot of time to spare so we just sat around waiting and chatting haha.

I helped Bel curl her hair then we started putting on our makeup! I was quite fun! And Van was obssessed with drawing her eyebrows lolol! She kept asking if she should draw them darker hahaha it was really funny! We all just put on very light makeup because I think we all thought that being natural was the best. After that, we set off! By then we were a little late, sigh from early to late haha.

Us in the cab:

We reached the hotel which was Grand Copthorne Waterfront and took some photos with our classmates before going to sit down at the table. Our table was just beside the stage and the view wasn't as bad as we thought when we were choosing the table yayy! 

After that the program started with a band but I won't go into that cos the entertainment for the evening was quite boring. The fun part was walking around and taking pictures! Here are some group shots, the rest of the photos I took are on Facebook.

The Tenacious Turtles!

 Some of the girls at the table

Beloved PW group!

 Darlings from PAWS

Aaand with one of the best friends I made in VJC <3

Oh and here's a comparison of Gen and me 2 years ago and now:

Anyway, after the programme ended, many people went off to their hotel rooms but Van and I had nowhere to go, so we went to Clarke Quay together alone... like losers... But it's ok, it was quite a once in a lifetime experience because after we finished our drinks, we walked to the Esplanade (in our heels) and slept at a table beside the merlion for around 2 hours hahaha

We saw so many VJ people at Clarke Quay, it was kinda embarrassing... At The Pump Room:

I think we were lucky that it was a Monday night because mum said that last time when she went to Clarke Quay at night, people were drunk and throwing up everywhere. But thank goodness we didn't see such people. There were many tipsy people dancing on the dance floor though, and it was quite amusing to watch haha. I think we looked quite loserly because some people from the table beside us asked us to join them, but in the end we didn't cos like who knows what they were going to do to us.

Super proud of this photo! One of the rare moments that my camera didn't fail me haha.

Sleeping

In the end, we took the first train home at 5+am. We were super tired but we still had to walk quite a distance to the MRT station!! And by that time, my feet were swollen already. :(

I reached home at around 7am, quickly bathed and went to sleep. It was definitely an experience to remember! No regrets! xx

PS I'll be going to Australia until 20 Dec so I won't be posting anything from now till then. 

What Freedom Feels Like

2 December, Monday

Went shopping with Rena and Belinda at Far East Plaza! It felt super good to hang out with them outside school. And I finally bought my prom shoes which I really love!!! I also bought another pair of really cool shoes for $15 :)) Rena bought a pair of boots for $19.90 when they were $50+ originally! But Bel didn't buy anything, I guess because she's going to Bangkok and everything there is like a fraction of the price. *envious*

Anyway, we were a bit sian of shopping so we decided to watch Catching Fire at Cineleisure yayy, I've been wanting to watch it ever since it came out! It was really good as expected but the ending was so sudden... still enjoyed it though :)

After the movie, it was already quite late so we went to the Charlie Brown Café for dinner. I feel that the food there is kind of overpriced, like the dessert crêpes were $9.80! I had a chicken salad and pancakes with maple syrup and butter haha weird combination I know.

Here's a picture of us with Snoopy. A little distorted cos my camera sucks.

3 December, Tuesday

Class outing day! We met at Bugis MRT station at around 11+ 12ish and went to have lunch at Food Junction. Then we went to Ksuites at Bugis+. I was kinda apprehensive cos everyone knows my singing is terrible haha but it was ok because there were only 2 mics and I didn't have to hold one yay. I still sang though and it was quite fun! I realised Yan Kun's singing is really good hahaha

In the Ksuite:

After our time ended, we didn't know what to do so we went to Marble Slab and ordered the special 10 scoops of ice cream with waffles.

After we finished eating our fill, we put all the leftover melted ice cream into the center and played some number guessing game in which the forfeit was to eat a spoonful of the mixture. Gross right?! Yeah I kena like twice only I think phew. 

After the class parted, Rena and I went shopping at Bugis street. Sighh, can't express how much I love shopping! I bought 2 pairs of denim shorts, and one of them was only $5! Rena bought a really nice pullover because it's winter in Vietnam and she can use it when she gets home.

4 December, Wednesday

Today we went to send Rena off at the airport :'''''( I'm really going to miss her and I hope that we won't lose contact and this is not the last time I'll see her... :o 

Rena and me:

After Rena entered the departure hall, the rest of us went to the food court for lunch... which was... awkward... so I quickly ate and left with Gin Kee to take the bus to town and we met Vanessa at the bus stop haha.

I met Tiff and Grace at Cineleisure and we watched Frozen together! I must say that Frozen didn't meet my expectations because I felt that the story was a bit rushed and the plot wasn't very well-developed. Like they didn't really show how Kristoff's feelings for Anna came about, it was really sudden. But I still think Elsa is really pretty omg. 

After the movie we walked to Ion because Grace and I wanted to eat 4 Fingers but it was soooo crowded! I don't even know what this many people are doing out on a Wednesday night... But it felt really good to walk down the streets of Orchard Road because I felt so free and unconstrained! Plus the Christmas decorations were giving off the holiday season vibe.

Don't know why this photo came out so blur...

In the end, Grace and I ended up going to Dhoby Ghaut to eat at Saybons after Tiff left because everywhere in Orchard was just too crowded. Then we walked around and I bought my clutch for prom :D I was wearing the shoes I bought on Monday and guess what?! My feet bled at the heel part! And a salesgirl had to tell me because I didn't even feel any pain so I didn't know... Yeah I have high pain tolerance, too high sometimes.

Anyway, tomorrow I can't go out and play because I have to prepare for my church's youth camp... Sigh my co-facilitator is someone I have never ever talked to before, and I have a feeling it's going to be quite nightmare-ish to facil with him. Not to mention I'll be completely sleep deprived and have really dark eye circles for prom. :((((( Like seriously they only let us sleep at 1am and expect us to wake up at 6am for 2 consecutive nights. And not like the activities they plan aren't strenuous... I'm also SUPER scared I get suntanned or sun burnt because Monday is my prommmmmm!!!!! Sigh I pray for cloudy weather or rain pleasssseeee. Hopefully nobody from my church is reading this...

I better go to sleep, it's going to be a long few days ahead... xx

OMG

'A' LEVELS ARE OVER!!! Yesterday was my last paper and I think I could burst with joy!!! But I still have quite a lot of things to do, like sign up for the driving test, get a job, clean my room etc.. But that's ok so long as I never have to do another math or physics problem or write another econs essay in my life! Actually I think I may have to do these things in uni but let me be self-delusional for now haha. 

On Tuesday it was daddy's birthday so we went out for dinner at a Spanish restaurant to celebrate. Daddy chose that restaurant because the wine was cheaper than most places. I can't remember the name of the restaurant but the food was quite pricey, I think the total bill for 5 of us was around $200. But the quality was good and the company was even better so I guess it was worth it. I make it sound like I paid hahaha. 

Yesterday after the last paper, I went to Wild Honey at Mandarin Gallery with Gen to meet Alison cos she's working there, which is really cool! We also met Caitlin there. The place was super atas and reminded me of restaurants in Europe, mostly because of the smell I think, and the decor and lighting. I ordered the Norwegian all-day breakfast, which was eggs benedict with salmon, asparagus and avocado, it was really yummy! 

 Drinks on the house from Alison! 

After that, Cait, Gen and I went shopping for Cait's Dr. Martens but they were sold out everywhere! I had no idea they were so popular even in Singapore! We walked around until 9+ and by then I was super tired, I think I could barely keep my eyes open so I headed home while Cait accompanied Gen to wait for her mum to fetch her. Yup! that ends my very eventful last day of 'A' levels haha.

Ok byee, gotta clean my room now and remove all my disgusting books and notes. xx