Saturday, November 7, 2009
So, last Saturday was Zi Jie's and Shan Yi's wedding! A joyous occasion indeed! In the line of cousins, I think Zi Jie is about one year older than my sister.
We went for the tea ceremony in the morning at 5th (note: 4th) Uncle's house, where we got to see the tea-serving, tea-drinking, the pretty bride in her impressive gown and the groom in his shiny suit! We also ate lunch there, while the couple had to run off to her family's side for the same thing.
There was much fun playing with Gwen, though her parents weren't there - the grandparents brought her along. Yue played with her like a lot! I even took a photo with my phone :) She's fascinated by the pictures of herself on Yue's phone as well!
I had to go for tuition, then went home, and the solemnisation and wedding dinner was held at the Marina Mandarin Hotel, I think. Their wedding invitation was so cute, like a movie promotional postcard titled The Proposal!
The wedding dinner started rather late, and for once I was at a table with some people I don't know.
On Sunday we went to see Yan's performance at the Sounds of Hope charity concert held by MGS, in which the performing arts groups each did their own performance. I quite liked The Happy Prince play by the drama group, and the secondary dance troupe, and of course, the string ensemble!!
Today is 1st Uncle's birthday, and as always, we celebrated the dinner, cake and all, at this Ah Yat Seafood Restaurant at UE Square. Actually because my tuition ended at 5:30, I was prepared to take a straight bus from Toa Payoh Interchange to UE Square, but in the end I met my family at Newton and got fetched, yay!
Our table had the four of us kids, the four from 8th (note: 7th) Uncle's family, and Gabriel and Angie. Natalie was MIA for more than half the dinner - I think she was fascinated by the fish!
The babies were evenly 'distributed' at different tables: Natalie, Ke Xuan and Anthea, who are all terribly CUTE!
Zi Chong's table kept passing food over to our table, and at a certain point we had to redirect the food to Anson's table, haha!
The cake was pretty nice, with milk chocolate flakes and blueberries. Apparently there was some alcohol in it too. This might explain why Natalie spat it out after being fed by Grace. Clever girl.
Anyway, it was kind of funny seeing all our relatives again, because it felt like we only just saw them a week ago! I love how our family is so big!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Otherwise read as ni hon bu kan no yoru, or something like that!
This evening, I went to watch Clarissa at her dance performance, organised by the NUS Japanese club that she and Xiaowen are in, inclusive of dance, tea ceremony, koto, and a guest drum troupe from SP.
I just missed the 151 when I reached the bus stop, but any way the trip was only about 15 minutes (so quick!) that I reached my destination earlier than I needed to! Then Yi Hoong and Samantha met me there and led me to the LT where the performance was.
Xiaowen came in at the 3rd item, and we all took pictures during the intermission!
It was pretty interesting, and I especially liked the last dance. It was so energetic, and had lots of performers on stage, plus people off stage chanting, SORAN, SORAN!
After that XW and I went to the BK to have a sort of dinner thing, and I realise how much I miss having my friends around to just talk about everything.
Just sitting at the bus stop earlier and seeing this whole bustling activity, made the campus really seem alive. I hope my university experience will be fun as well! I'm kind of scared, because I haven't been studying for the past year, I hope I'll be able to adjust to schooling again!
Well, so far I've just been doing my data coding job, getting used to the programme.
I'm also currently waiting for the responses of the residential colleges I applied to. I'm feeling rather nervous, but perhaps they're not used to applicants so early in the year, since their Year 12s haven't finished their exams yet.
On Wednesday my sister and I followed my mum to NIE to have a nice sushi lunch and watch this Japanese acapella group called Permanent Fish perform at NTU. They have 5 members - one vocal percussion, one bass, and three others sharing the lead and chorus parts.
And they're really good! Okay, perhaps I'm not an expert on acapella, though I have been in a group before and watched other groups from choir, and I think it's cool that their total singing is pulled off by 4 people, since the 5th guy does the VP.
They really had a lot of energy! I think the VP guy really just went on and on without needing to drink water! And the bass guy went pretty low! And the 3 chorus guys all have excellent strong voices! Plus one of them can make these cool sort of electric guitar sounds with the mike!
Apparently they've also released Korean albums, including a version of the old Korean song Balloons, which DBSK sang a remake of! I bet that there were some DBSK fans in the audience, because they looked excited when the middle guy introduced Balloons as their next song!!
They had a concert on Wednesday night at the Esplanade, but anyway I couldn't go because I had tuition. I think it's cool how they just keep singing non-stop, and don't seem to need any time to get their notes for the next song immediately after finishing the previous one!
I hope they really can go 'from Kobe to the world'!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Yesterday was the last day of the interviews for the project, and I'm quite sorry to think that I won't get to do them anymore. Especially because the last school we went to was that one at stevens road, it was so interesting to hear what they had to say during the interviews, and I really enjoyed it. I also met Jodie on the way from the bus stop - she looked pretty surprised to see me! Labels: work
I feel like I've met so many people who were also administering surveys and conducting interviews for the past two months or so, and I've had the chance to go to so many different schools in this research position, it really was fun!
But anyway I was the youngest one doing the interviews - most of them were either undergraduate students or masters students already. And of course there were older adults too!
I'm just going to list some of their names down here so that I won't forget them next time - I hope it won't complicate anything: Yongqing, Xinjie, Huihui, Zoe, Joanna, Selina, Guan Leong. I didn't really talk to the masters students, I mean they were their own friends anyway.
I wish them all the best on their future endeavours!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Today I went to Changi Airport Terminal 3 Row 2 to send Yihui and Yiwen off to England (going with Aunty Sabrina). Daryl, Michelle and Rachel were also there!
Yiwen's going for a year to do intense studying for her Masters. I didn't know that a Masters degree could be finished in only one year!
Yihui's going to study law at Leeds, I think, but this means she'll be separated by a 5-hour coach ride distance from Yiwen, poor thing. I don't think she's living exactly on the campus? I vaguely remember her saying something about cycling 4 miles to school.
I'm really going to miss them, but because Australia timetables are such that the long holidays are at the end of the year, while the UK one is in the middle of the year, it means while I'll see Yiwen at the end of 2010, I won't see Yihui until she gets back to Singapore!
Oh, but to go to England, how cool! The land of sarcasm, royalty, musicals and the Queen's English! I love British English!!!!
I hope they'll have a safe journey; they're still on the plane now I think, silly Yihui asked for my letter to last her the whole 14 hours. I said to her at the farewell on Friday, to watch the free movies! That's the best part of flying! That and the playing cards you get to ask for.
Yihui's been my church friend for as long as I can remember, and it's going to be ultra weird not seeing her on Sundays any more. What's happening to our Sunday School class!?!?!
God bless the both of you! :D
Monday, August 31, 2009
My gosh, I'm not sure I've ever had a job that felt like it just dragged on forever. Labels: family, friends, MGS, work
Data coding was my job for one of the projects done by CRPP in NIE, and it was essentially to assign codes to the answers given by the survey-takers in an Excel file.
Now, there were 13509 survey takers, and 4 responses each, though not all of them filled in all the entries, so there were blank cells here and there.
So thankfully, instead of 13509 x 4 = 54036 entries, it was only about 46400 entries. And also, there were already pre-assigned codes, so it wasn't as if I had to come up with a whole set of codes by myself.
It was really easy at first, because being an excel file, I could arrange the column in alphabetical order, which would put all similarly spelt answers together, and then just put the correct code in the next column, click and drag until wherever necessary.
Unfortunately as it went on, I had to try to figure out typo errors as well as make decisions on creating new codes, or conforming to older ones.
I kept doing it, until the point where I thought I was going to go crazy because after entering the codes so many times after a while you it kind of just sticks in your brain.
And FINALLY, as of 11:15am this morning on the 31st of August, I finished the last entry, completing my job!
The good thing was that I got to work from home, so I didn't need to go to NIE like every working day. I think my general knowledge has increased as well.
Now I'm going to have lunch with Jane and Adeline (old MGS friends!!), and they just missed the Teachers' Day celebrations at MGS. I THOUGHT SO, they wanted to be there at what, 11:30, but my younger sister came home at about 11 already, so they must have been late!
EDIT: We had lunch at the Soup Spoon, a first time for me. And it's really filling, until I couldn't finish the bread bowl. It was really nice to see them again, but they're both flying off this month to the UK for university studies! I actually didn't know that Addie had been studying there for about 2 years already! She talks a little like a Brit now, how cool! And Jane's gonna do medicine (in Scotland), like me!! Yay!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Yeah, so I know I haven't blogged in forever - I keep meaning to, but then get lazy when I actually sit down in front of the com, and then end up not doing it at all.
Recently everyone's been going to university, except for us overseas-bound people. I'm still working!
This morning Xiaowen, Elizabeth and I sent Sheryl off at the airport, where she's headed right now for USA to commence her university studies! Actually I didn't feel as sad as I thought I would, because she's coming back in December. What the heck lah, going for like 4 months then coming back for Christmas??? It's barely going away!
I spent so much effort making her farewell card too! But at least I think she was pleasantly surprised by it :D I also got her a birthday card she can open on the 23rd when she's there.
After that Elizabeth's mum fetched us to TP where her dad works, and we were talking and walking around and chilling in the library before her mum very nicely sent me to Toa Payoh where I had tuition.
After tuition on my way home I met Jane Lua coming down from the overhead bridge on her way home with her da-baoed lunch (just like me, haha), and we talked for about 25 minutes? She's also going to study medicine, but in Glasgow, Scotland, and she's leaving in early September. Everyone's flying off!!
Nothing much exciting has happened in this month, I guess. Let's see, there was the sort of choir lunch that not many people actually went for, including k-boxing in the afternoon, (including Yong Jian, Gabriel, Ann, Chee Jun, Zhirui, Amanda).
Then there was the choir alumni gathering at Thomas' house that I couldn't stay for because of our family gathering on the same day. At least since I arrived earlier I got to play guitar hero, as well as eat yummy satay!
Oh yes, we had our church 70th anniversary on the 16th; the service was at this church near Harbourfront, after which we walked over to Harbourfront Centre to have the anniversary dinner at this Dragon Gate restaurant place.
The entire dinner is kind of a blur for me now, but I remember that there was tonnes of food, but our table always had like one person's share extra leftover, probably because my sister was barely eating. She and Andrea were both studying for their bio common test the next day, haha!
Then there was talk of this Farmville application on Facebook that I was talked into adding by Ian, so now he and Rachel are my neighbours, and I ought to go add Daryl and Nat too.
And then Melody was trying to call Ian at the next table regarding Alicia's flying back to USA on Wednesday, and it went something like this.
Melody: Ian! Ian Wong! (no response)
Me: Haha, let me try - watch this. FARMVILLE!
Ian: Did I hear someone say Farmville? [Doesn't respond to his name but hears the word Farmville. Good grief.]
Yeah, I think I'd better try to post more, or it'll become a dead blog, and I don't think I want the idea of a dead blog hanging over me.
Thanks to all the blogs i referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
Adobe Photoshop Elements for supernatural abilities
