change.

So in a blink of an eye, Christmas and New Year passed. I told people that it didn't feel like Christmas, coz I spent a huge part of my december fighting fire at work. It was dreadful, and I was super drained by it. I know we sometimes go through moments of anguish in life, but the frequency, and the weight of responsibility is making me weary. Yes, I did see God who made a miracle happen, but it wasn't without tireless days of just getting new people in to brief and rebrief, without control on whether the numbers would increase. But of course, God comes in to make a way. Not sure how He did it, but once again I'm awed.

Anyway, in this new year I can foresee a repeat of craziness and I cannot stop asking God why He is making me go through all this. I've fallen sick many times since starting work. I realised that my last blog entry was about me recovering from sickness, and last week, again I was wheezing away in KL for work and it's taking me a while to recover again. Why, God, why? :( My body aches, and my soul aches too. I want work-life balance, I want to be able to exercise 3 times a week, meet friends on weekday nights, enjoy coffee and a book on saturday morning, pick up singing again, sew all sunday, find joy in serving people without the looming threat of multiple deadlines over me.

In Philippines now for fieldwork, 1 week away from the office. Fieldwork in the day and rushing reports at night. I guess the bright side is that I get to be away from the office, and take a break from the mundane of managing projects from my computer. It's refreshing to talk to people for a change and be reminded of how vastly different people are and how there are many different ways to live this life.

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Despite being all depressed at work, some other stuff happening in life:

my baby niece Sarah was born! she is a chubby chunk of cuteness

 she drinks milk and falls asleep straight after, wakes up and poops everywhere ^^

like a boss

 She celebrated her 1st month at the beginning of this month! So coincidental that Brenda and Chuan got cake bites from Huiyi :)

 Morning faces after a long weekend in Bandung

 Zel with my present for her from honeymoon. I came back in September and only met her in December. My new year resolution is to meet my good friends more. I hardly hang out with them coz all my friends are super busy people and so am I. I end up meeting groups of friends maybe once a year. I need to be a better friend!

 on a mundane saturday afternoon, on the way to church. :D I really like the face on the right.

:D Learning to be a better mentor too!

This is our supper ritual coz it's the only place open near our place, and it requires 2 bus transfers. We usually miss the last bus and end up taking a 20 minute walk back home.

My husband is a cocoon.

He also likes to read the news all the time. From the moment he wakes up, brushes his teeth, essentially every moment he is not talking to me or doing chores. International news hur.

Early morning to church for Christmas service.

Serving with beloved friends :)

lhy's Christmas gift for me! :) Though I end up sticking to my normal tooth brush. I gave him ugly M&S underwear and he claims it's "self-beneficial" haha

 Yummy Christmas dinner at han yang's place

We love maccas!

And more!

We booked flights one week before our impromptu Bandung trip coz I badly needed to take a rest. 

Breakfast! Fried food.

Happiness!

Forever a honeymooning couple

Simple yet amazing Ayam Bakar

Some tofu with overkill of batter

Good morning!

This is Tangkuban Perahu, a volcanic crater. It was breath taking.

We trekked 1km to Kawah Domas, a super nice natural hot spring. 

Had to book a local guide for this trek, but 5 of his random khakis came along and befriended us. In the end, they tried to sell us trinkets when we reached and were trying to rest and get our own time. It was very annoying because I really hate rejecting people, especially after talking to them for the whole trek and they kept helping us to take photos. But they kept persisting and it got super annoying at some point coz i just wanted to enjoy soaking my feet and take in the surroundings. Look, how beautiful. The temperature was just right (20C +/-) and the water was super warm so it was a lovely place to spend time.

Went to this place which supposedly sells the best Tahu Susu Goreng coz lhy loves his tau kwa. It was alright only!

Went to visit a strawberry farm and they had stopped strawberry picking for the day! We had an overly sweet strawberry milkshake. 

There after we got back to the hotel and knocked out! This was NYE and we had wanted to catch some event at the hotel. Woke up at 10pm and decided to order room service instead as we were so lazy.

We started on our usual NYE tradition by sharing the memorable moments of the year.

And at midnight, there was a crazy display of fireworks! Hilton overlooked the city and we could see the entire skyline, and every where in the city people were playing with fireworks! It was so amazing. We turned off the lights and just stood there watching. It went on for 10 minutes.

It was the best treat ever :)

So long Bandung :)

First brekkie of 2017.

We had so much time to kill before our flight coz I buffered time for the train back to Jakarta. Went to the mall and walked the whole afternoon. 

Indo is crazy about batik. and I love batik too. They have batik everywhere. Some dated, some contemporary. There is this place called Bateeq, selling super nice modern stuff.

More amazing batik.

<3

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Here's a random photo of an orange with a giraffe on it.

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Malaysia work trip!

Hilton love again.

our colleague Theresa was back in KL for the weekend, and brought us for dinner!

amazing sedaplicious KL Hokkien mee.

I prefer KL grilled stingray! It's so tender...

We went to Alexis at Bangsar to eat amazing Tiramisu and some meringue fruit cake. Really amazing.

Spent the weekend at focus groups and falling sick :(

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A night to remember - it's been a year since he proposed! He remembered, and I didn't. He took me to a fancier place for the night, but we ended up quarrelling about my work coz I was being sensitive about things. Being irrational/emotional coz it's really affecting me. Eventually we made up coz I was being silly. Regardless, I'm so thankful for this understanding husband of mine.

I amuse myself with such photos when I need to finish work and he can go to bed earlier than me.

berkat-berkat

sneaking an entry during lunchtime while drinking my vitagen collagen and uh, no food. maybe instant pasta later on in the day?

these past few weeks have been so hectic and my body failed me - i fell sick and finally took an MC on wednesday and got some rest. nose is currently still a leaky tap. been working from home for the past 2 days since and i guess this freedom to work off site has really been a blessing (we get to take 5 days a month of work from home, and usually i take them during reporting period, which is now).

since i've decided to use less instagram and blog more, here are some things i've been up to!:

a shoe box?

my parents in law are super sweet. they usually pack food for us when we go over so we can get to taste home, and this week we didn't go over cos of our schedules. hy's papa dropped by with 2 portions of macaroni in a shoe box haha i really need to start cooking 1 dish meals for my husband soon

meeting up with my jellyfish buds

 because julie lo is late

 just right for 3 people

 fabric shopping for my adorable baby niece! need to start sewing the christmas clothes ASAP.

the husband saying a little prayer every morning hehe

Other sartorial escapades

My bridesmaids' dresses, lhy's and Gabriel's (my ring bearer) suits were less of an emotional affair.

What i regret though, is that we didn't carve out time to take much photos together in our outfits.

My bridesmaids were super relaxed and we didn't have to go shopping cos I just picked their dresses from Taobao. Most of the stuff there were ugly and I decided to go for a sweet heart neckline since it was supposed to be flattering for most body types. I wanted them to look chio and not puffy!

Gorgeous girls

There was still my sister and Zel but they were so busy with the church prep. For Cass, Juls and Hui Yi, I didn't give them much to do. Their objective was just to look pretty. Ha.

Anyway, the Taobao dresses were pretty cheap - all in with shipping worked out to be around $28 per dress. But most needed pretty simple length alterations and we paid additional $10 per dress.

Gabriel's spiffy suit was also from Taobao and cost about $35 all in. He looked so smart! I also bought him new shoes for about $25 but they were too small for him!

As for han yang's suits, we procrastinated for so long! He wanted to tailor make and I went to enquire rates with CYC (which is kind of my dream gift for him, with a monogram shirt) but they were so expensive (1k up per suit). My colleague also recommended a thai tailor who would make trips to Singapore for tailoring appointments but I wasn't very impressed with their quality.

Went online to search for some good tailors in Singapore but they all didn't fit the budget. I found out there were a few tailors in JB and one of them was Men's Focus in Holiday Plaza. Even though I knew Holiday Plaza as a lok-kok, run down shopping centre in the middle of JB, I liked that they took photos of the suits they tailored and posted them online cos you can actually inspect the cut and quality and also get a sense of the tailor's style. Overall I was impressed as the suits looked extremely fitted and smart. There was also a sense of the price range from some of the comments online (his prices started from S$250 and up), and this made me feel safe knowing the tailor was not going to overcharge me if he knew I was from Singapore. With that we took a trip down!

Haha before we went into the shop we pakat to speak Mandarin with malaysian accent. But in the end fail cos tak practice. Anyway I was very impressed when we met the shop owner Lawrence Chia (i think). He is this no nonsense sartorial-nazi who couldn't be bothered to upsell stuff.

We requested for a bunch of fabrics and he handed the swatches to us, and just rattled off the pros and cons of the different qualities. The prices were all written at the back of the swatch booklets.

lhy and I decided to go with 2 suits with quality that was mid-range:

1) Tweed like dark blue with hints of black (for dinner). We paired this with a brown inner vest.
2) Teal, for the church wedding. This was really a 20 second gamble cos after 20 minutes of looking, we were so set on boring brown, and suddenly came across this colour, and because lhy has a red skin tone and so fair, it looked pretty good when we held the swatch against his skin

Lawrence proceeded to take lhy's measurements and I was so impressed because he spent almost 20 minutes on it. lhy told me that usually his tailors take much less time. He was very meticulous and kept asking about his preferences - whether pants should be tapered, whether button should be 2 holes or 3, whether collar should be thinner. He took great pains to explain which was more traditional and which was more in fashion.

I took this time to explore his work space and noticed that he was extremely neat too! Things were really in order, and his own shirt didn't have crinkles and his hair flopped neatly in place. In my mind chided myself for being such a mess whenever I sew. My workspace is perpetually full of thread, pins, loose cloth and I could go hours without eating and washing up. I almost always look like a monster when I emerge from my room. Much to learn! For Lawrence, I think he's the one that does the drawing and cutting, and he probably sends them to a factory to get them sewn.

A happy us having settled everything in a day!

And this was how his suits turned out! My extremely handsome husband.

If i'm not wrong, we paid about S$400 for each suit, and an additional S$100 for the vest. we probably could have gotten something within that range in Singapore for lousier quality materials, but it was extremely satisfying to pay the same for much better workmanship and quality of cloth. And much to learn from Master Chia!

Men's Focus Branded Taste Tailor
G59, Holiday Plaza, Jalan Dato Sulaiman,
80250 Taman Century, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

mighty morphin

the obsession started 2 years ago, when his dad pulled out an album full of his baby photos.

i couldn't get over how much his features hadn't changed much and his ears were already so huge and flappy then. whenever i missed him when he was on his work trips, i would look at his baby photos hahah! how can anyone look so cute:

apple face

recently i got his dad to show me more photos and i found out that lhy used to be an old man before his cute days:

 HAHA i was so shocked when i saw this photo cos i couldn't recognise this old man at all. look at his double chin and how the width of his face is wider than the height. if i had a fat and pale baby like that i would be so amused.

 baby fats squishing his already small eyes and his lack of a neck. and look at how the face and shoulder width are almost in the ratio 1:1. sharp and defined nose starting to take shape.

 this is where he starts to morph into a baby and his ears start to stick out and he starts to have really cute expressions.

 on some days he looked like baby swee pea

and his eyes became slightly bigger cos some of the baby fats disappeared

 and then he learnt how to roar like a dinosaur

because i want my eyes to look even smaller. 

i would be very pleased if our not-so-near-future offspring resembled him.

so these few days he has been away again and i have been looking at these photos, laughing to myself. 

love-sickness makes one crazy. i can't wait for him to be back!

in other news, i've uninstalled facebook and instagram mobile in efforts to increase productivity. i've since finished 1/2 a book in a span of a few days of travel time, cleaned up the house a little and traded my beloved sewing machine for a better model.

loving my new lifestyle.

小白船

what my dad used to sing me to sleep.

a lovely cacophony of our different cultures. 

heard this live 2 weeks ago at the SSEAYP Singapore opening! 

Totally wasn't expecting such a treat, but they sounded even more exceptional in real life. 

I must say, watching Teng's inception till now and just hearing how their music has morphed over the years makes me feel strangely proud of the few whom i once did music with.

breathless

Work has been consuming me these past weeks as I spend a bulk of my time settling things not within my scope at work. I know I gotta just pull things together now in this season to help out in areas that lack, but I constantly question when it will end, and how these things are taking me away from

1) free time for personal growth/ reflection

2) God

3) breathing space

4) building up the more important skill sets like analysis, broadening and deepening depth of industries I'm more interested in, exploring new ways of research.

I'm tired. Really tired.

I guess, the only thing that is making me hang on to this thin rope is watching how my colleagues put in so much effort to make things work out.