Happy Lunar New Year

It has been a great 4 days of rest for the new year. Not a bad way to start the mousey year. :) This is also the 1st time I am spending the new year with a whole new "experience". Giving out ang pows instead of receiving (though we did receive some as well), visiting a new group of relatives and also having visitations from pple to our very own house. Not too bad an experience a part from being more tired than previous years. New groups to visit and also we made some adjustment and sacrifices too, like not visiting some groups that we used to. But lunar new year is a 15 days span and we still have time... so take it easy. :) Interestingly, we have given out more ang pows than we expected but we also received more ang pows which we expected as well. Haha.. come to think of it, we even have a small "earnings".

So how have we spent our new year?

CNY eve, dear dun need to work and as such, I pon-tan and stayed home as well. Speaking of which I am glad that I didn't turn up for work as no one was in office at all and I wasn't even told! See... this is the kind of environment I am working in. Thank God for a good boss which makes working there worthwhile. Anyway, we laze around till mid morning and we went for a good lunch at BK wheelock place. Been's a long time since we tasted our mushroom swiss... heehee. Then we queued up to collect the abalone gift set that we gotten from Singtel @ Shaw Center. The queue was really really long... guess everyone went for the last min redemption so they can either give away as gifts or cook it for the reunion dinner that night. Since we were in town, there goes without saying that we shopped around for a while for last min CNY clothes. But alas, all we gotten was household items and we only manage to get clothes in Northpoint. Imagine that, orchard has nothing we fancied. LOL!

Since we do not intend to cook, we decided to "gate-crashed" my parents' place for a simple home-cooked meal, which of course much to the delight of my parents. If not will be the lonely dinner for 2 of them. But dear dear misses his family so it's kind of an adjustment for him. :( Can sense his "missing-ness".

Ist day of CNY, we travelled all the way to JB to visit my mom's side of relatives. Dad's side has always been a choice and preference, as Dad being the eldest the rest should be visiting us instead. But guess my aunt and uncle are spoilt for choice since long ago as grandparents stayed with aunt and we were the ones visiting instead. Now that grandparents were no longer around, dad didn't make it a point for us to visit them. So we will always be in JB on 1st day of the new year. Huge jam and my "clever" brother only picked me up at 11am instead of the pre-arranged and agreed 10am! And guess what, still ask me to buy breakfast and when he eventually arrived, we got to make a detour back to Sengkang coz clever man forgot to bring all the ang pows! In the end, only reached JB close to 1pm! Man and the most maddening thing, we went off at 2.15pm!!! It's a miscommunications between mom and brother. Mom was so upset that we have to leave so early and she was definitely grumpy about it. Well, take it in a lighter way, since all of us have to go for 2nd round visitation and to factor in the jam, it's good to leave earlier. For us, we dropped by JUSCO for shopping since bro likes to travel by 2nd link... dun ask me why. It's so far away from granny's place. Then juz before we crossed the causeway, he treated us with super duper nice chicken drumlets and winglets from a petrol kiosk! Really nice at RM$2.70 per stick (3 wings in 1 stick).

Following bro's car also have advantage, we got a free ride all the way to my in-laws' place. Save us the trouble of taking train and bus and also we being tired and lazy. Haha. Went dear's grandparents' place for bai lian and to his nanny's place as well. Then of coz with my in-laws and dinner was a treat from his 3rd aunt and uncle at Turf City. Man, they really let loose during the dinner. Lots of drinking and karaoke-ing and funny dance moves from the uncle. Too crazy for us i guess.

2nd day, we went back to my in-laws' place to meet up with the other side of the family. Other side namely the DGM and all. Well, not too interesting for me as I dun have a good impression of the DGM. But nonetheless for dear dear, I will make sacrifice. Haha. Not too bad an experience though. Afternoon was free on our own and we make a trip down to dear's uncle's place at Hougang/Serangoon area. Wow, they got a huge house i tell you! And the aunt bakes really good apple pie!!! I must learn and make it too. Heehee... Went home and to ntuc to get some grocery. Supposed to go his grandparents' place for dinner but as it's my TOTM time, I was feeling crampy at the tummy and dizziness, we stayed home and dear made me porridge. Dear dear cooks the best porridge nowadays, and it makes me happy and well after eating. (",)

3rd day, we have a simple get together with a few brissy pple at our place. Now homely get together and catching up. went dinner with gretel and reuben and shopping of course. Late night shopping at orchard for some shops :) Yesterday was spent going for church service and shopping at parkway parade. Church service was awesome! The church was in Valentine's lovely dovey mood and pastor made all married couples renewed their vows for each other. So lovely right... love is in the air. Parkway parade is another awesome shopping mall. We reckon that pple who stayed in the east, need not travel downtown anymore as what you find in wisma can be found in pp. We spent our howards storage vouchers getting shoe racks and some containers... nothing much to buy but coz the vouchers are expiring and it's a good amount so we just buy something useful lor. We took a cab home after that, reason being that we have bulky items and it's heavy also becoz 1 of our friend with the boyfriend mentioned that they want to drop by our place. We waited till 9+ at night and still no call from them. Dear and I were getting rather cranky and tired by then. Dear obviously getting impatient and told me to tell them not to come. I thought it's not that nice so dropped an sms to this friend and asked if they were still coming. No reply from them after 5mins... i sent another sms again saying that maybe they want to come another time since it's getting late and we were tired and I wasn't feeling exactly well (headache in fact). And guess what! She replied immediately and said "Can... So sorry leh! Come other time k. u take care." As a matter of fact, I was pissed off. I mean, why didn't you reply my 1st sms? Ok, I take it that you didn't see it, but shouldn't they give me a courteousy call or something to let me know what time exactly they are intending to drop by? The thing is, they wanted to drop by becoz they missed the gathering the previous day. But if they have intended to come, then they should be making plans and proper arrangement right? I mean, it's ok if they dun want to come and we are also not particular that they must come you see. Haiz... at that point, we feel that we are like begging them to come and visit us. Oh man! For some reason la, we were really pissed off leh!

Ok, so that marks the end of the 1st 4 days of the lunar new year for us.

Looking forward now to the Valentine's day on coming thurs... wondering what we will do to surprise each other... heehee.