We stole into Timbre@Old School in broad daylight and took to the stage... Actually we didn't exactly plan to take shots in Timbre and were kinda taking shelter waiting for the temperamental rain to go away... but somehow the messiness looked kinda interesting and so we decided to give it a go :)

We received our pre-wedding shots today! There are quite a few nice ones to choose from, though I think we need to think up more creative shots than the nose-to-nose type of shots. I actually tried to do a "flags-line" put together with little pegs and twine the night before the photoshoot; it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped it will, but okie lah, the final product still looked relatively cute.

Here's our fun flags picture that spells out both our names, taken at Old School @ Mount Sophia :)

Sadly the weather did not hold up and so later part of shoot with the gowns had to be postponed to another day. It had better not rain again then! :( I got a little upset and slightly grouchy ard noon time when the intermittent drizzle got heavier and sky grew darker, cos it meant having to buy flowers again and wasting my balloons, on top of having to set aside another day/ half-day from my meagre balance of vacation leave for another shoot. Bridal studio also want us to pay $80 for re-steaming the gowns/suit that we didn't even wear!

Thankfully our photographer was pretty professional and his positive attitude prompted me to make the best of the rest of the half-day shoot for our casual shots. Think they turned out somewhat promising in the end. We will end up spending more $ for the shoot; but this episode also reminded me to look at the brighter side of things; and of the wonderful people around me (e.g. parents were nice about it and tried to comfort me a little, so did D... even though I'm sure D was also upset all cldn't go as originally planned)

Hai, these flowers (freesia + wax flowers) are now a little wasted sitting pretty at a vase at home ;(

Have been trying to prepare for wedding photoshoot next Tues and beauty comes with a pretty hefty price tag! Have to fork out more for more elegant flowers; french tips for manicure cost $5 more (and now some nail boutiques charge you CNY surcharge! what a way to rip ppl off) and pre-wedding shoot make-up costs quite a bit (with extension of MUA services chargeable at $100 per-hr with min of an hour)... It's so expensive to look nice :(

On lighter note, D & I prepared several props for some fun casual shots in casual wear...  Hopefully we will be blessed with good weather in this rainy season (the past week has been very promising) and that everything turns out well :)

My wedding florist must be quite disgusted with me 'cos I refused to pay $195 to rent 18 pom poms for a night and decided to go the harder way to look for my own online + ship them from the States + fluff them up myself and just pay her labour costs for putting them up at dinner. It ends up costing me about the same actually, BUT, I will at least get to keep all the pom poms! Haha I hope I will not regret this.

My sat mornings continue to be taken up by site meetings at new place, but things are starting to shape up and meetings with contractor (my uncle) are finally getting shorter. Yay! Both D and I are really relieved that my uncle turned out to be an excellent and extremely patient contractor - he also allocated his good workers to our project and they have retiled the entire first floor and the bathrooms quite nicely. People generally don't seem to hold construction workers in very high regard; but to me, good tiling seems to require quite a lot of skill, patience (and prob experience)! And I was really impressed by how they have managed to tile all the irregular outdoor portions of the house so nicely.

As part of DIY house-reno, I also attempted to design our own gate... and I am quite happy with my little gate design! But erm dunno if this can be translated that accurately into an actual gate design heh.

 

Today was a productive but tiring Monday off..  Day started at abt 930am, and ended at like 1030pm! Hmm hours-wise it was actually more xiong1 than work; but I ended up with some surprise finds/ bargains, including an off-the-rack dress I can wear for ROM, so I came home a broke but happy girl. Amidst all the shopping I even managed to catch a glimpse of the Abercrombie guys (in sweatpants only) outside the new A&F store along Orchard! The shoe-search was tough 'cos there just aren't that many choices out there within my budget; I managed to find something decently pretty, so if I cannot find anything else I'd prob just go with this pair.

It's so painful that I have to wake up at 715am tmr to go to work... :(

p/s: I have developed a newfound respect for good salespersons (who know their stuff and are not out to pressure you to buy a certain product/ model). It's also pretty inspiring to meet people who know their trade really well and look like they love what they do for a living..

I get easily stressed at work... so life is hard when it really doesn't have to be that tough :( And stress tires me out. Was stressed over two not super stressful things and ended up feeling very tired tonight/ yest night. I have another stress coming up... have to find wedding shoes in time for my gown fitting next Tues! Bleah...

Inspiring TED speech by Amy Purdy - double amputee and pro snowboarder, on how to draw inspiration from life's obstacles

Fridge Talk

I never thought that buying a fridge can be so complicated and mentally + physically exhausting. After several rounds of browsing in the past couple of weeks (we have been eyeing some Fisher & Paykel ones), we ended up buying a pretty big but reasonably priced two-door LG stainless steel one tonight. We hung around the fridge display area for more than 2 hrs, making repeated rounds to compare the potential candidates, their number of NEA ticks (ie. annual energy consumption) and agonising over the amt of premium we were prepared to pay for chio-ness (For the F&P fridges, the chio-er stainless steel ones cost abt $400 more than their plainer sandstone/white counterparts...)

Our purchase was something we totally did not set out to buy; but LG apparently produces good, high-tech energy-saving fridges. Hopefully we made the right choice; even if we didn't, I can regret later cos I can minimally sleep well tonight knowing that my fridge is not gg to be camouflaged by my kitchen wall :)

[p/s: I think I actually mentioned this in an earlier post - In our pursuit for chio kitchen appliances, we had initially set out to buy a SMEG fridge. But the poor space efficiency and exorbitant price tag quickly led us to strike it off our shortlist :P]

Need to snap out of a very negative outlook/ attitude at work :( Somehow many things seem quite pointless and bureaucratic; and in turn motivation level has plunged significantly of late. I have also been less nice to boss lately; including giving slightly sian3 looks when informed of the need to present stuff at dept planning sessions etc. Bleah... On personal front, life is pretty hectic with renov and wedding stuff to think about every week. I think my tendency to want to be perfectionist about the slightest details also makes life more tiring for myself... Perhaps need to learn to let go and enjoy the moment more, at work and outside work!

The highlight of my work day was a roundtable discussion chaired by my CEO with visiting CSC fellow & co on the "evergreen" topic of housing affordability. My office and another section in my dept kinda co-organised the event so I got to sit in the session as a back-bencher... While our visitors from the States left us with some 'food for thought' comments towards the end of the session, the "star" of the discussion was actually my CEO cos she was really really zai. I don't think I've ever had a boss so outstanding and clear and eloquent in delivering her arguments/views... She's also really skilful in disagreeing in an agreeable and sensible way. Have also found her very humble and approachable despite her very impressive achievements. Such an inspiration for ppl working with her :)

 

Christmas colors on the sunset deck of our junk at hazy Halong Bay

I didn't like Hanoi very much to be honest, and this time round we also had a series of unlucky/ unpleasant little incidents on the trip... :( Sadly my experiences with Vietnam haven't been that great; also ended up with like a bad throat/ nose due to the bad air, so I was pretty thankful to be back in clean and green SG heh.

Later part of this week was split btwn some bridal stuff and house renovation business. I got rather upset with the bridal studio's pricing policy for my made-to-measure evening gown (design with too many folds = $, two diff colors on gown = $, extra bow = $, cheongsam cut = $, extra crystals =$$$). On hindsight, I shld have asked more questions before taking up the package, but oh well sometimes you really wouldn't have known better beforehand. 

Quite a bit of the old house have also been stripped free of old wall/floor tiles; and it was interesting to see all the hidden pipes/ wires beneath the false ceilings and such.. This evening we also visited a SMEG showroom to checkout their bright and retro-looking fridges; but concluded that chio things can be rather impractical... so will prob give up idea of buying a very chio fridge and in turn try to settle for a relatively chio but more functional and reasonably-priced one. The Harvey Norman salesman at Millenia Walk also gave us a very informative overview on induction cookers, ovens and dishwashers... but need to do more homework and research bit more on which brands are more reliable/ durable... The 3 main contenders for the kitchen appliances (esp a good oven!) I want to get are BOSCH vs BRANDT vs ELECTROLUX... recommendations are most welcome :)

Tmr's early morning flight to Hanoi will be on Tiger Airways - an airline I honestly quite dislike.. But since the tics were really pretty cheap we decided to be cheapo and get them anyways. We didn't have time to prepare v much for this trip at all, but perhaps this wld be a good opportunity to just chill and do more of nothing after a relatively stressful few days earlier part of this week :) After > 4 mths of being grounded, I can finally say yay holiday again!!

Our office headcount increased by 50% this week when my new admin exec (V) started work on Mon. For now, find him a little tough to read because he seems to have the tendency to look a little sian/ sad even though I suspect he may not necessarily feel that way. And I think I prob shouldn't have used the word "cute" on some of the little things he decided to place on his workstation (like a sitting bear that's actually a USB hub and a trio of sitting monkeys with heads that rock from side to side) - he gave me a bit of a "What the..." face when I said that, but aiyah, he prob wasn't that pissed with me lah heh. Good thing he's very organised and a self-professed neat freak, so the newspapers lying around on the table got reorganised into nice neat stacks; cos V just "couldn't take it"...

On the personal front, I have to try to settle reno stuff by this Sun, as we are trying to start work next week! Major stress, cos i cannot seem to decide on the bathroom tiles, esp for the ones in the main bedroom. Spent quite a bit of time yest trying to draw up what kitchen can look like; and it was pretty satisfying when I finished; though I felt really exhausted at the end of the day and actually slept before 12am for the first time in a long while. Am now supposed to be doing some work; but am really too lazy to get down to them :(

"Nothing worth doing is ever easy" - words of wisdom from a dear friend!

today I uncovered a pretty silly SOP required for reimbursement/ making purchases. All I wanted to do was to buy a few post-its that my dept admin inventory didn't already stock (they have yellow ones but i needed other colors). The officer in charge of stationery purchases shared with me (to my disbelief) that I had to put up an approval paper before I cld proceed with my (claimable) purchases. In fact, I was told, I had to get approval to buy just about anything. While the officer was nice enough to offer to put up the approval for me; I just thought this step of seeking approval for the most petty of purchases was just plain silly and a waste of time lah. D says it's some new SOP put in place after the SLA saga and not unique to HDB... Think this new procedure has been in place for a while alri, just that I didn't need to make out-of-pocket purchases until now... isn't it kind of an overkill.. why cannot just apply this SOP to bigger purchases. Maybe I shld find out more about this and try to "complain" when I am free ha. Meanwhile, perhaps I shld just stick with yellow post-its for my meeting to avoid creating unnecessary work for other ppl :(

there are a 1001 things to do every weekend and I find myself feeling more tired than rested pretty much every Sun night.. and it's another dreaded Mon tmr! As usual, we did a little bit of wedding/ house stuff during the week. I finalised the design of my gown on Fri, but didn't  quite expect the BV designer to suggest that I put myself on a strict diet plan... the challenge is for me to take 2 inches off my waistline by Mar next year - a tall order for someone who loves snacking and isn't particularly conscientious at exercising :P But I suppose I can try to watch my diet a little more and stay away from unnecessary carbs. Also went down to Balestier to take a look at tiles this afternoon; am now racking brains over the type of tiles/ layout for the bathroom/ kitchen... DIY can save us quite a bit; but it's certainly a lot more time consuming!

This morning I accidentally sent my director an email meant for my boss, which had my frank comments on what I thought about his comments about our slides...!!! (obviously it was not meant for his eyes at all) I immediately realised my boo-boo while the email was being sent; but there was nothing I cld do... In my dismay, I hurried to my boss' room and I think I cldn't stop saying "oh no oh no" for the first 30 seconds... Boss was nice enough to try to call the ISD guys to see if anyone cld do anything for me; in the end I also called the SOE guys myself - who informed me that LN had no recall function whatsoever, unlike Outlook. Hai, so in the end had no choice but to send a supersede email to my director to ignore the bad email... but erm obviously tt made it more obvious... Though director later emailed me to say "no worries", my CEP prob fell to rock bottom overnight... It's been a while since I last did anything so silly, but oh well, it happens :(

Have neglected blogging this past week 'cos life was slightly stressful starting last Thurs, when we had to do some major changes for a set of slides to be used to brief CEO for the first time. The worry wart in me reared its head the whole time and so I fretted over the contents of the slides a little over the weekend and for most of Monday... Thankfully everything went quite well on Tues; and both boss and I got to take a slight breather! Through this episode though, I was reminded of my own pessimism and perfectionism. It's nice to have optimistic ppl around me to balance off the negative thoughts.

I chanced upon a really cute creative poster on Etsy... feel tempted to get it, but then it's damn ex for a piece of paper.... Good reminder though. To chase and not just follow your dreams!