Lifestory

I'm back!

Back on blogger and back in Singapore. For awhile, at least.

So, what's going on so far (below is inspired by an article highlighted by L on "what have you done / where are you at 26 years of age":

1. I'm pregnant! Am at 30 weeks, 6 days and counting. And its going to be a boy. We are naming him Caleb.

2. Have spent about a year and a half living and working for about a year. Interesting work, good project, but can be quite frustrating at times. My mandarin has definitely improved though. :)

3. Celebrated my 1 year anniversary with Kenneth (aka PNG). The first year definitely wasn't easy. We had our fair share of arguments and disagreements but we are beginning to understand each other much, and learning lots about tolerance, patience and compromise.

Having said/written the above, I must give thanks and credit to God, for without whom, life probably wouldn't have been as awesome as it has been so far.

In the past 2.5 years, PNG and I have realised that many things have just happened to us with perfect timing and plans have been executed without much effort that it can't just be pure coincidence. Its divine intervention.

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I've finally succumbed to watching the 5th season of Grey's Anatomy (yes, I know it's done airing) after I vowed not to watch it after season 4 when the storyline started getting old: big accident in the hospital, nurse sleeping with doctors, doctors sleeping with doctors, doctors sleeping with interns, people falling in love, people falling out of love, people falling back in love....

The list goes on.

However I must say I do like the thought of Derek and Meredith getting married (I know Derek's supposed to propose to Meredith in season 5 but I don't know if they do get married eventually because I've yet to watch it and I'll boink you on the head if you spoil it for me...) and I sincerely hope they do because it'll make it less emotionally tiring for me when watching the show knowing that at least one relationship finally knows where its going...

I was so sick yesterday I had to come back home one hour after going to work. All I wanted to do was to curl up in bed and sleep but my body wouldn't let me. I was fluctuating between feeling hot and cold, my joints were aching and my body couldn't tell if it wanted to puke or poop or do both at the same time. All I could do was whimper miserably in bed until PNG came home.

Thank God for husbands. On his way back from work, the sweet guy went out of the way to get me cornflakes at the imported foods store because that's all my stomach could take. Then he aired the room, wiped me with a cool towel and cooked his own dinner.

So now I'm feeling really bored and wishing I'm at work but its a good thing I'm not because I think the fever's coming back. I just had someone deliver 3 boxes of fruit juice to my house (yes, you can do that in China!) now waiting for it to cool in the fridge. That's what I love about China... you can get drinks, groceries, take-outs all delivered to your door step. =)

3 more days before the new iphone software is out! Whoopee!

I'll finally be able to cut, copy and paste, send out mms and more *grinz*

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I baked cheesecake again this week and it was YUM. That's the good thing about having my own kitchen. I get to stock it however I want to and cook whatever I want to. So far, I make pretty darn good cheesecake, cinnamon rolls, banana bread, fried beehoon, chicken curry and hae mee (prawn noodles).

If you're in Tianjin and looking to throw a simple party for max 15 people, you may contact me and I'll be happy to cater for your party =)

Menu includes:

1. Salad
   
2. BBQ Wings
3. Fried Beehoon
4. Bak Ku Teh
5. Honey Pork Ribs
6. Dessert

You may also order the cheesecake, banana bread and cinnamon rolls ala carte. For cinnamon rolls, the minimum order is a dozen.

I'm back! I'm back! For how long? I don't know but I'm back!

The past 10 months have been crazily busy hence the abandoned blog but I'm saying it again, I'm back!

Let me do a recollection of the things that happened the past 10 months:

1. Got married
2. Moved to Tianjin
3. Found an apartment (after looking at 50 apartments)
4. Flew back to SG at least 4 times to fulfill visa requirements
5. Threw the mandatory wedding dinner and had the "traditional wedding celebrations" (which caused me tons of anguish)
   
6. Visited Beijing numerous times to get out of Tianjin
7. Visited Shanghai 2 times to get out of Tianjin and Beijing
8. Work, work and work
9. Families came to visit
10. Learnt to cook and bake a few new dishes

Despite the busy schedule, I'm still feeling unfulfilled. I'm feeling that there's more to life and there's something else that I need to accomplish, achieve or do - and they all have nothing to do with work. Hence, I'm back.

I'm hoping this will help me with my on my journey to discover what I'd like to do, to find what I'm trying to find, and to reflect on what I've achieved.

(But this doesn't mean I won't abandon this blog again when I'm busy!)

Today, we celebrated with the nation and took a leap of faith, starting our journey together as man and wife...

HR just informed me that my target date of posting is 14th August... 10 days after I come back from my next trip to China. And I don't get posting leave so I have to use my annual leave. Great.

Looks like I have to take no pay leave for my honeymoon.

Have been extremely busy so kinda stopped blogging. Plus it was hard to update in China where all access to blogger, wordtype, typepad, myspace, so on and so forth, is zilch.

Anyway the news is: I'm getting married in 21 days! Way faster than expected (3 mths and 19 days earlier, in fact) because my parents wanted us to be legally married first.

So in 21 days time, I'll be officially, Mrs. Lim. So cool to be able to keep my name but will have to get used to the "Mrs." part. I did consider Lim-Lim but it's slightly weird. Maybe I'll just stick to Ms. Lim.

To those who have wished me happy birthday via sms, e-mail, facebook, msn, etc., thanks guys! And to those who are going "oh yeah.. I was just about to wish you happy birthday", thanks in advance.

I'm currently at home on 2-day MC. Down with the flu.

So. The past week I was in TJ on business and then I spent the weekend in Shanghai to meet PNG for an early birthday celebration. We had quite a lot of fun and lots of good food. He brought me to the Grand Hyatt Hotel or the Jin Mao Building because I kept insisting on going to the place where they filmed 大城小事 (Loving Me, Leaving You) featuring Leon Lai and Faye Wong. I loved they filmed the different scenes of Shanghai in that show. I definitely had a wonderful time there and it was great the PNG knew the place well. I can't wait to go back again.

And did I mention that I have the sweetest husband to be? When I got home from the airport, I found a package waiting for me on my desk from him. He prepared my birthday present before going to Shanghai. I didn't expect it from him because I thought the taking me around Shanghai was a present on it's own. And today, he got his bro-in-law and niece to deliver a bouquet of flowers to me.

I love the surprise after surprise even though I claim to hate surprises. I just hate it when people tell me there's a surprise and keep me in suspense. But PNG surprises me by not telling me that I should be expecting something. Hm.. I guess that's why they call it a surprise right?

Anyway, Shanghai pics:

We were at Arab Street with PNG's mum who wanted to buy some cloth before we went to Shanghai so she could make her Cheongsam there when we walked past a store which had wedding planners and tailored wedding dresses. We went in to grab a name card because we may not have enough time to plan the wedding ourselves. The wedding planner that the people she were sharing the same store space as were having a sale for their dresses and she encouraged us to take a look, so we did.

So i just picked out a gown which looked nice to enquire about the price which was VERY reasonable. Tried it on, loved it. We tried others but none were as beautiful as this one. It was clean, simple, elegant.

PNG talked to the designer and he was moved by her sincerity and her passion for making/designing her gowns. So he gave the nod and we bought the very first gown I tried on! Talk about love at first sight!





Gown from Martini G

I told PNG that I knew who won AI7 and he said: "let me guess.. David?"

...

Photos (taken by PNG and myself) of our Bintan Trip.



















 

I was watching Rouge on Mediacorp's Channel 5 and wondering why it seemed so dull when compared to The Ellen Degeneres Show, The Tyra Banks Show or Oprah.

And it hit me: Overenthusiastic host and underenthusiastic studio guests make a very bad combination.

Clarine can be such a hoot which makes her a hundred times more adorable than she already is.

The whole family was out shopping on Tuesday evening. She and PNG were playing together in a store when I, being irritated that they were playing and stuck in one store whilst the rest of the family were moving on, barked at them to get going. Clarine then muttered, "Da jie don't know anything one".

I turned around, glared at her and without missing a beat she said, "oops! I said something wrong.." and scuttled out of the store.

PNG and I couldn't stop laughing. Funny little one she is.

Oh man... I realised it's been a months since I blogged! So here's a quick summary of what I've done in the last month:

1. Flying to China and back
2. Working
3. Spending time with the fabulous fiance of mine
4. Caught up with the girls (esp Lou!)
5. Trying to split our time between the family and future in-laws
6. Eating and getting fat
7. Shopping
8. Got bangs
9. Moving on with life

Yeah so that kinda sums it up for last month. Doesn't seem like much but trust me, it was much.

Notice "planning for the wedding" wasn't in the list of things I did? For those of you who keep asking how the plans are... well, the plans haven't exactly progressed much since we found our perfect venue. We did identify some people who could assist us during the wedding but we've yet to inform those people so I guess that doesn't count for progress. Darn.

A friend has offered to hand make the corsages. It was quite amazing how it happened. She approached me during one of our weekly work-related meetings and told me that she made corsages for her friend's wedding a few weeks ago and had some left over material, and she would gladly make corsages for me as well. And as it turns out, her left over materials were of the exact colours I was looking for! Wonderful, isn't it?

But i'm currently torn between the perfect shade of green: grass green, pistachio green, olive green, apple green, sage green.. and the list goes on. I mean like how many shades of green can there be right? Apparently, many, many! But one thing I do know: I want Ivory as one of my colours. Not only is it my namesake, it's a pretty colour and I bet there is only one shade of Ivory.

So that's it for now. Will update soon (say, in a month's time?).

下了飞机而刚到家。。。觉得很累但还要准备去上工。一会儿PNG就会来我家接我， 所以我还能在车上睡。不错吧？

这次去中国做工，去了上海，苏州，与天津，也买了许多东西列入鞋子，包包，手表，等。全部都很便宜应为能讨价。

Ok. That's about how much I can stand writing in Mandarin. Shopping was EXCELLENT which is bad because I couldn't stop myself. I loved the thrill of being able to bargain on everything. I managed to get a watch which was supposed to have cost be RMB380 for RMB50. The woman who sold me the watch said she was impressed at my bargaining skills, but I think that meant that I could've pressed the price down more! Argh!

I need to stop shopping!! Will post photos soon.

Argh I've been on a shopping spree lately but the buys were so freaking good I couldn't resist.

White lace top: $35
White tunic: $15
White shoes: $12.90
Beige Linen Mandarin Embroidered blouse (after 81% discount!): $13
Gold thai-silk-looking-material blouse: $23 (after discount and bargaining)

Total damage: $98.90

I love terrific bargains. Even Kenneth admits kowtows at my amazing ability to get such things at such prices

I'm supposed to state my short and long term career objectives and I have no idea what to write.

I wonder how's:

"I'm piled neck-high with work that all I really care about now is getting things done, and doing it to the best of my ability. I hope to get a pay increment and a promotion, say in 1 to 2 years time. I leave my career development plans in the trusty hands of my HR managers. I have full faith in you guys."

Sigh.. I really don't know what my career objectives should be. I've been programmed to "get a job and do it well". Pretty sad, eh?

It's a Monday and I'm already POOFED. My schedule is booked for the next 30 odd days with meetings, seminars, training sessions, and 2 trips to Shanghai, Suzhou and Tianjin.

Need.. to.. breathe..

Not too sure how to plan for wedding. Things just seem to be moving along but there's no real planning or doing after we booked the hotel, and each time I fly off and come back, we seem to be one month closer to the wedding day.

I have no dress, no ring, no photographer and no idea how my decor and my pastor are going be settled. Ah well. But I do have an emcee a colour scheme...*beams*. See! I'm getting somewhere =)

My worth is measured in oranges, dinner tables, cakes, gold and dowry money...