Look at the color of my blog background!!!

It's dusty pink!!! See I told you about my love for dirty colors.

I'm lovin' it!

The Return to Conrad Centennial Singapore

Last weekend we spent a "staycation" in Conrad Centennial Singapore. It's the first time we step foot in Conrad after our perfect wedding reception, besides collecting my own birthday cake this May briefly.

The stay is good. Service and hospitality is nothing but real and warm (compared with the ordeal we had in MBS aka Major Bad Service).

The poshness is then again, 1-2 notches below St. Regis. Nonetheless Conrad is always magically in our hearts. :)

Dinner is Sabotei Tonkatsu at Parco Millenia. I would say the meat is as good as Tonkichi but I personally like the salad here better. *thumbs up*

And the rant continues...

So we left the Skypark after the fireworks at about 8+ and we went ahead to get out of Marina area for a breather and for dinner when we do not need to book or queue or break a few limps to get a table.

Dinner is nice and pleasant at 六月餐室 in Tanjong Katong area. Sumptuous tzechar: egg yolk crabs, pumkin prawns (yummy!), pork knuckle, steam fish and many more.

We were all full and rolly after dinner. Slowly we made our way back to MBS, reaching at about 10.30pm. We thought our last room should finally be ready and approached the front desk. They told us it's really and we are pleased that we got a room at the 45th floor along side with the other 3 rooms. Our happiness is shortlived as we soon found out that the room is on the 45th floor of Tower 2! @#$%...

Never mind, it's getting late and we believed that the hotel staff have did their best in getting a room for us. So we pack up and set off to our room in Tower 2. Stepped inside the room and walk to the TV console area and I backed off 3 steps. Erbao asked why do I walk in the reverse manner. I pointed to him that the room is messy and dirty. I'm not even sure if it is still occupied. Erbao stepped forth and checked things out. There is a Nokia phone still charging and a bag of clothes. Obviously the room is occupied by someone else who happen to step away. Gosh! What kind of hotel management and security is this?

We storm back to the front desk and demanded a change of room after telling them what we saw. Alas! There is no more room left. We were told to go rest at our other rooms while they keep looking for a clean room for us. Kinda left with no choice right?

I'm dirty and I'm tired. We waited until 11.30pm. I took a shower but there's no clean tower as my FIL & MIL both had taken their shower and have used the 2 clean towers. So I just reused one of them.

Erbao did not bathe and pace up and down, waiting for the front desk to call. I dozed off a few times. Erbao-mei wanted to take a shower and call the room concierge for clean towels to be sent to the room. To our dismay, they are even running out of clean towels! Erbao took over the phone and started giving them a piece of his mind. 4 pieces of clean and warm towels arrived in our room after 10 mins. Why do they lie about the towels, or are the staff so untrained that they do not know where the towels are kept? We are puzzled and angry.

Time passes by slowly. By 12.30am, finally someone called us to inform us that they found a room for us. We asked where is the room. It turned out to be a room at level 2, at Tower 3 (even further down). Erbao is wary of the situation and ask the guy to go to that room, checked out if it's a clean room and its facing and call us back from that room.

The phone rang. The guy told us that the room is clean, no one is using it but it comes with a Garden View. What the hell is Garden View? It has a big traveller's palm right outside the balcony that we can almost touch it. And why is the stupid palm tree there? It is there to shield the room away from ECP (Sheares Bridge). We are like 8m away from one of the busiest road in Singapore! That's Garden View for you.

Well, it's really late into the night and we are tired of scolding people. Afterall we have been scolding people since afternoon.

We managed our expectation and bunked in. Then more surprises came. The room is much smaller and it doesn't come with a bath tub!!! I cannot imagine a room in a 5-star hotel that down come with a bloody bath tub. WTH! Again, we won't get to enjoy the tub anyway because it's 1am. Erbao make do with the standing shower. Tick Tock.. Tick Tock... 10mins passed... He proved that our damn room has no hot water!!

Erbao walked back to MIL's room in his bathing robe and me following in my pyjamas in the so called posh hotel. I don't wish to dwell much into the shower. We finally retire for the day at 1.30am. We are tired of the whole day of queueing, scolding and waiting. Felt that a Saturday is wasted. :(

Back to normal mode

Now I'm gonna change this blog from a wedding blog to a normal blog dedicated to our lives together as a couple. The wedding day itself is just too much to blog about. I'm sorry if I disappoint anyone. But it's too much details. And the honeymoon, oh god… I'll try to blog about them in bits and pieces every now & then. As I do not want to miss our current lives just because I did not finish blogging about our wedding and honeymoon. I'll do flashbacks, I promise. *fingers crossed*

I started 2 other blogs recently. They are all linked in my blog links to the right. One is called "onetwothreethree", it is dedicated to our new home. From house hunting, to buying it, to designing it. Eventually it will be a reno blog and put an end to it when we moved in. How exciting isn't it? Unfortunately I habit start anything to write yet…

Next blog and the newest blog is called "Our Tiger Bump". It is naturally epicts our baby bump who is to be born at the end of the Tiger year. The blog is officially started last week and is already filling up with updates. Preety cool, stay tuned.

I now have 3 blogs to man, so do give me some time. ;)

14th - 15th Dec 2009

And we continued to work...

15th Dec 2009 is the day before the Pedro Buy. Usually it's a late night for me. True enough, 11pm.

Final countdown to the Wedding - Something taboo, something happy!! - Dec 13th, 2009 Sunday

Continue with montage in the afternoon at ErBao's house.

In the evening...

13th December is ErBao's colleague's wedding. Ermm... we attended it. (ssshhh...)

Held at the Regent Hotel, nice & cosy event. Here's some pics.

Final countdown to the Wedding - Dec 11th, 2009 Friday

Took a half day leave, eventually only left office at 4pm. !@#$% What's new?

First brought the wedding bands to Ah Kung for cleaning. Made an appointment to colour my hair and do some treatment at Gataomo. I simply only "top up" colour are hair root and Jacky charged me full price... Sob...

ErBao joined me shortly to for a haircut too.

End the day with a long-waited dinner at Fish & Co @ Paragon. ErBao bought a new iPhone shell in Shocking Alu Pink for me. I loved it! but its colour runs... I end up with Pink Hands.

Final countdown to the Wedding - Dec 7th - 10th, 2009

Work goes on as usual for ErBao & I. Samples came in for the buying. ErBao's project finally ended.

Apart from work, I return home to make floral corsages for my bridesmaids, (blood) sister and Iris. Materials with compliments from Joyce Chan.

From left: for bridesmaid, for morning Iris' small wrist, for evening Iris, for 大姐 (to match with Iris)

Made Iris 2 hairclips too.

Final countdown to the Wedding - Dec 6th, 2009 Sunday

This particular Sunday morning we woke up at exceptionally early as it is an important day leading up to our wedding - 过大礼。

The night before having had a hell lot of fun with my sistas' I went home to a sulky mum who complains that I'm not helping with 过大礼 stuff. So the night before, I sat down at 11pm tying red ribbons and sticking 囍 stickers onto whatever things that I see.

8am, woke up to wait for my Groom to come with his 媒人 to 提亲。They came with 22 boxes of cakes, many many oranges, 2 Martells, munchy goodies, etc. All these are called 聘礼, together with 聘金。

Mum & 媒人

They are suppose to give a lot to symbolize their generosity in this marriage. My mum & dad are suppose to keep some and return some to symbolize that the Groom's family is overly generous and that the Bride's family is humble and not greedy.

Ang Pows given back to the Groom's family members and the Groom himself (aka 女婿买田地礼金)。 So that he can buy land to plough with $28 lah... LOL...

In return, my mum also prepared many dowry for me to bring over to his house to symbolize the new Bride is ready to move every important possession over to her husband's place to start their new life together as a Couple. (those things that my mum spend $100 over to buy, which I clumsily tie red ribbons and stick 囍 stickers on.)

The things include sewing kit, splitoon, face basin, baby bath basin, towels (to represent cloths in the olden days), face towels, toothbrushes, toothpaste, mugs, 大圆小圆，bowls & chopsticks (for eating auspicious food stuff like rice dumplings on AD at Groom's house) and teapot set (for tea ceremony on AD at Groom's house).

Part of the 聘礼 are offered to Gods and ancestors to "tell" them that the daughter of the 甯 family is about to be married off and pray for their blessings to the new couple.

Did I mentioned that all the above happen at 8 in the morning??? Went back to sleep till 12 and get up to deliver the wedding cakes to relatives.

Mum, dad & I made rounds to 9 different places from Jurong to Toa Payoh. Finally end the day in my sister's place for dinner. My Bro-in-law cooks well.

Iris put on her new dress for us. She's gonna wear this new dress to our wedding banquet.

Did I mention that ErBao went on to participate in the Apply Discovery Race Finals and he won the 3rd place with his partner Cheng Wen. They each got a 16Gb Black iPhone complete with a 2-yr contract from Singtel. What's the catch here? They already have iPhones before the race. Humph!

Well the iPhone eventually fetched ErBao $1000 cash by selling to his colleague.

I'm baaaaaack!

I have been uber busy with the days leading up to our marriage. And the days after the wedding is just pure relaxation, packing and trying to accustom to my new life at new home.

Nonetheless, I promised that I'm gonna post everything that I held dear to my heart and swear to god that I will not revew before for the wedding. Now everything goes!

Before I dwell too much, Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year!!! 2010 will be a great year!

It's the final countdown!

Every weekend is packed with shopping for wedding traditional stuff, toothbrushes, combs, basins, "double happiness" stickers, ang pows, brothers' ties and ribbons.

过大礼 items are checked, purchased and "leh-bin" tie nice nice liao. Mum is getting jittery about this whole 过大礼 thing and sorta raised her voice at me as I went out for a some "me-time" with sisters. Oopsie!

Wanna snap some shots of the sistas meeting but all are shy and I'm also distracted by the discussions so never take any. Erbao did.

Bought new PJs, I never really spend money on PJs. Usually my mum will buy me some "3 for $10" shorts from pasar malam and Giordano t-shirts as homewear. On top of that, I now have 4 new combs. LOL!

We got conned all the time for the wedding, money that is. What's new? 过大礼 we are also not spared, except this time is my Mum.

For everything other things are under control. Like schedule, meet the sistas, final gown fitting, floral corsages, red slippers to go with Kua, red hair accessory, hard liquor, etc. I mean every other things are under control. Other.

Things like ang pow list, video montages, 2nd march-in songs, erhmm...

Oh by the way, the Simmons mattress came yesterday. It is super luxury as we always believe.

Tomorrow is 过大礼 & 安床 day. I'm gonna take many pics and post on blog. It's also Erbao's Final Apple Discovery Race Day! 加油二宝！！

14 days more to go. 14 days left to be Miss Nam!

So far so good

I haven't blog about our wedding preparations for the longest time. That's because there's nothing to blog about.

Eversince the pre-wedding photoshoots are done, we basically lazed around doing many things but seemingly nothing. Aaah... I know, a lot of attention when into home shopping and loan-seeking. *any kind souls out there, please...*

We are now designing our own wedding card, target for printing early November. It's gonna be nice, fingers crossed.

The "matchmaker aka Erbao's aunty" came last Sunday to talk about betrothal items. Geez, I have not idea what they are talking about and Erbao cannot catch any ball too. All the traditional lingo in Teochew some more!

But I do look forward to taking pics of those betrothal items and I can post them here.

We are also finally starting to work on our montage and also met up with the Banquet manager.

Now I gotta get offline and prepare for D&D (with a runny nose and a coughy voice). LMAO!

I'm a Manchurian, perhaps

The Ning surname (Chinese simplified: 宁; traditional: 寧;pinyin:nìng) is a surname of Chinese descendant. Its literal meaning means "peace". The surname is believed to have come from Northern China and is not known to be of Han origin, instead it is believed to be of Manchu or Tungusic origin. This surname is also known to be extremely rare as it was not on the top 100 of most common surnames in 2006 and is most common in New Zealand with 18.69 Frequency Per Million.

（taken from wikipedia)

Our New Home

For a dear price, we are now proud home owners of #12-33. :)

Justice of Peace

We are experiencing some hiccups with THE most important thing of the wedding - the Solemniser.

We almost believe that we are getting Mr Chan Kai Yau as the solemniser who will officiate our marriage. Alas! He does not conduct solemnization on Sundays.

Then we look around to find another hot favourite - NUS lecturer from my former faculty, Prof Yu. Again, we hit the wall. Prof Yu is booked for 6.30pm of 20 Dec 2009.

Why must such things happen to us twice? Now we are looking around for our 3rd choice...

Quickie updates

We did the food tasting last Sunday, changed a couple of dishes. I love Conrad. But my dad, as usual has one too many comments.

We can't wait for the big big bed to come in October!!!

My New Toy

Just unboxed my new 15" MacBook Pro with Erbao. The welcome video is fascinating and special. The hardware is so chic. Ooh, I love it!

My Lust List

The Earthquake

Today I landed in Jakarta for a 3-day work-related trip. Lunch was late and we almost only eat at about 2pm JKT time. When lunch ended at about 3pm, we hang around for a chat in the restaurant when the table and the bench that we were sitting on start to "move" side by side. We looked at each other strangely thinking what it was. I was pretty cool about it as it really did not occur to me that it's earthquake. We were in the topic of funny ghost-catching topic as I joked that the table shook because there's a friendly "hantu" playing, while I thought it's my colleague who moved the table. As people started to evacuate, then we know it's not funny, it's earthquake.

The Seismic movement lasted about 2 mins in lateral movements, bad enough to make you giddy, to make you worry and to make you want to run for your life.

The mall made an earthquake announcement in Bahasa. Some stores closed. My JKT counterpart said that it's been years since he last experience any earthquake in Jakarta. This means it is very serious, and I know at some part of the world, near JKT, people are suffering.

Disaster has never been closer. My well wishing goes out to all...