Some photos taken over the past 2 weeks...

Just to set the record straight - YL is NOT pregnant... We've been talking about names but thats about it, talk only... We're not that keen on dramatically altering our lifestyle just yet.

Anyway, here are some photos taken over the past 2 weeks.

Our wedding anniversary celebrations along the River Thames. Its quite interesting actually... having lived in London for almost 5 years but getting a different perspective of all the buildings for the first time in my life. It was a fantastic meal, nice jazz band next to us, nice window view... it was a good change to the nice quiet dinners we had before.

2 weekends ago, we went picking our own fruits and vegetables... Credit crunch la... gotta save ££. It went from shopping at M&S/Waitrose to Tesco/Sainsbury then to Asda/Morrisons and finally to have to pick your own produce. If it gets any worse, we would have to plant our own fruits - tsk tsk tsk...

Hat Trick!

So Today's the day! Actually, its today and tomorrow since we got married over 2 days… so I'll always have an excuse if I forgot ("Isn't it tomorrow dear? Oh you mean the church wedding, I was thinking about the wedding banquet!" tsk tsk tsk – I'm sure I'm going to need this in future)

Oh well, I can still remember 3 years ago, trying frantically to steal my bride from the experienced (and international cast) of jie meis (there were Singaporeans, a Malaysian, a Hong Konger, a BBC and an ah lian)… I doubt Das reads me blog so I think I'm safe… heh heh…

Anyway, as the clock struck midnight last night, I turned to YL, gave her a kiss, wished her happy anniversary and told her that I loved her. She was (as usual) sleeping so she grunted her usual "mmm, I love you too" back… and then she buried her head in her pillow… and I continued to watch my discovery channel. A year ago, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary in Chicago and 2 years ago, we celebrated it in Singapore… I wonder where we will be celebrating it next year…. Dubai?!

Thanks CY! I hope you are well in NY.

Pammy, we have settled the names already: Boy – Matthew, Girl – Charity/Faith. So hard to find a good name without re-using! I think "Sarah" will be nice as well. I heard from mum (in fact many many times) that you're expecting again (congrats by the way!) but hiyah, the pressure… Every time I speak with mum, we'll have this topic in the conversation (she even got Ruth to convey the message to me):

Mum: Son, happy anniversary!
Me: Thanks mum!
……
Mum: eh, did I tell you? Pammy is pregnant again
Me: Yes, you told me yesterday… (feeling of dread)
Mum: Yes, she's pregnant again… with her second child… her second child!!
Me: Yes yes… I know (now waiting for the inevitable)
Mum: When's YL's turn?
Me: I told you before, when we come back to Singapore la… 3 years time.
Mum: (pretend not to have heard what I said) You know ah, Pammy is pregnant again, I'm waiting for my grandchild also leh…..
Me: Yes yes, 3 years from now…
Mum: I can take care of your child for you, I can take care of YL, I can come to London, I can…….
Me: Yes yes yes, 3 years from now…
Mum: Pammy is pregnant again…
Me: Yes yes yes…
Mum: When's YL's turn…
Me: 3 years… yes yes….

So you see la… stupid Pammy… now kena pressure again…

Tomorrow is our 3 years wedding anniversary!

Sianz… every morning there's some bad news around the world – Flyzoom, Oasis, XL.com, Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, now Lehman Bros… sigh… What's worse, the sterling is dropping like a stone.

I think we should all go for a holiday… hehehe…

Anyway, tomorrow is our 3rd wedding anniversary! How time flies when you're having fun! These 3 years have been the best years of my life! We did say that we'll have a child 3 years after we are married, but I think that it has been a moving target (much to mum's exasperation) cos the plan now is still to have a child 3 years later. Heh heh… children can always have later, now must earn money so that my child can have a head start in life right?! Heh heh heh… actually (don't tell mum), the real reason is that we still wanna roam the world and go on holidays…

Anyway, yes – 3 years have passed so quickly. Since then, so many things have taken place, we have both changed firms, relocated to London, picked up diving, I've changed my specialty from competition law to corporate M&A and funds, and YL is now practising in debt capital markets, many of our friends have gotten married etc. I was kaypoing Steph's and Chay Ying's blog this morning to see if they wrote about their accounts of our wedding day 3 years ago… hahaha… and they did! (http://pigginginsydney.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_archive.html http://stephie81.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_archive.html) . Steph have since had a son, Josh and is now expecting another child! Congrats Steph! and if you're reading this, I know it's belated, but pai seh about the food portions…. we did tell the hotel to stuff our guests till they're bursting.... hahaha. tell HC we shall go for a big nice dinner the next time we return to Singapore! CY on the other hand has moved to NY after her round the world travels... we'll visit you next year CY... hahah I didn't know you were so kan choing and that it was so draining during the wedding! hahaha…. it was quite fun though heh? I wouldn't wanna do it again though!

This is what the jie meis did to "torture" my brothers and I 3 years ago!



Anyway, the plan for tomorrow is to go have a Thames river cruise dinner (told you we like cruising! Hahaha). It should be nice if the weather holds up so fingers crossed...

Nothern ireland photos

Chicken rice ginger sauce!!

Bank holiday weekend went by so quickly – it always does especially when you are having fun. I don't think a bank holiday weekend will go by quickly if I'm stuck in the office!

Anyway, as I mentioned before, we were in Northern Ireland for the bank holiday – it was a quick and cheap holiday! Flights were less than £100, car rental was £60 and accommodation was less than £200. It's kinda like the Brit version of our quick getaway to Genting. Anyway, the scenery was awesome! We could see similarities with Norway although the vegetation was definitely more luscious (I guess due to the high amount of rain it gets).We visited the Giant's causeway (which is a UNESCO world heritage site) and some other random tourist sites like the ropebridge and duclace castle. What I really liked were the scenic routes and driving next to the sea (apparently, the costal road is the 5th best costal drive in the world – whatever that is supposed to mean to me). Belfast was quite a grim place. The whole city looked like East London and it was pretty dreadful. Fortunately, we were in a car so we did it quite quickly by driving around. It also allowed us to have dinner at this happening restaurant situated in Belfast Castle which was quite nice. We couldn't bring ourselves to eat any of the Irish fare (such as stews etc.) so we just went for typical British. The history of Northern Ireland is pretty upsetting actually, with graffiti on the walls that depict the troubled times between the republicans and unionists. There were more union jacks flown around the city than I remember seeing in London (and even along the roads leading to Buckingham palace). Anyway, it was a good holiday and being part of the UK, there was absolutely no hassle in terms of customs, we landed at 10.05pm and were home by 11.30pm (which in the UK, especially for an airport almost 40 miles from home, is quite a feat).

Oh by the way!!! I "learned" to make chicken rice ginger sauce recently. The idea was planted by Sally during the cruise when I told her that I really missed the "Wee Nam Kee" or "Soup restaurant" ginger sauce. She said the most commonsense thing – "make it la! – pound the ginger and add some chicken essence sauce". So that's exactly what I did, but with some modifications. So here's the recipe – (1) use a spoon to scrape the outer skin of the ginger, cut the ginger into small pieces, (2) blend the ginger (with sesame oil) but not too much such that it becomes pureed (just chopped and grinded will do), (3) add some chopped spring onions to the blend, (4) boil your chicken for chicken rice – for the chicken essence, (5) heat a wok, fry some chopped garlic with sesame oil, add the blended ginger, a dash of pepper, soya sauce, salt, a little bit of sugar and fry the mixture, then add some chicken essence (3 tablespoon to a bowl of the ginger blend) and fry till it is dry. The result is yummy ginger sauce (now I can get unlimited wee nam kee replica sauce in London!!) If I'm in Singapore though, I'd just head to wee nam kee, pay $20 and eat there and save the trouble.

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance...

Came across this while I was reading an article today… and how true it is. Proper prior planning prevents (or at least minimises or prepares you for) all sorts of eventualities that may occur. So be it work, or holiday or family gatherings, weddings, or even buying a home, planning is the key. When you plan, you research, you prepare and you pre-empt. So many times have I noticed things get messy at work (or like some people say, we spend the day fighting "fires") because someone somewhere in the work chain (usually ahem, the bankers la) doesn't know how to plan properly. Now, I'm not saying that we have to go crazy and have plan b's and plan c's and d's and whatever (in fact I read the other day about the Munich Olympics massacre and they said that the events were similar to a prediction in one of the (get this!) 26 different case scenarios that the experts made for the planners of the Olympics – fei hua la, you have 26 scenarios of course there will be one that is similar, I bet if they continued, there will be a prediction of an alien invasion or something in scenario 49 or something), but not planning may lead to being turned away at restaurants (cos there's no reservation) or missing flight departures (cos no taxi was booked and none available when you needed it last minute)… Anyway – you get my drift.

So on a separate but ahem *related* point on planning, lets talk about holidays!! – since our last holiday now seems like a distant memory (no more King crabs or Lobster – just plan ole fish and chips for lunch!), I decided to do some "planning" for our next trip… as I mentioned before, we booked ourselves on a Azamara cruise next October to Israel, Egypt, Turkey etc. but while "planning", I decided this week that next October is a bit toooooooooooo far away. It's 14+ months away so by the time I actually get on board, I might be paralysed with excitement – so we (YL and I decided together ok, after much cajoling from me) decided to cut it short!!! YEAH!!! Now we're going on a May sailing instead. 1 May 2009 to be exact! So its now 8 months to go. In fact, this itinerary is slightly different (and better) from the previous one in that we will be going to Istanbul and Ephesus (I think this is where the book of Ephesians was named) instead of south Turkey and Sicily, plus – the port days and sea days are nicely spread out so we get a break every few days of excursions to just chill out in the ship. The only sianz part is that the disembarkation will be a day before my birthday so that will be quite a depressing birthday, plus come October next year we'll be wishing we didn't change the dates!

Oh well back to the present and reality - this weekend is Bank Holiday weekend – so it's a long weekend!! YEAH! YL and I have planned some time ago a short trip to Northern Ireland to visit Belfast and the countryside up north. Apparently there's this world heritage site called the "Giant's causeway" which is quite spectacular. Hopefully the weather will be good though, as last weekend there were flash floods around Belfast (the worse in many years). It would be a shame if we have to avoid parts of Belfast because of any flooding. Argh – after this trip there'll be a holiday drought for 4 months till Christmas, but I'm not thinking of that yet :)

What it takes to get a nice photograph!

We took about 1000 photos on this trip... its quite a bit so thank goodness its digital. I have to show you these 4 photos taken in Molde though. It gives an illustration of the frustration of trying to get the best shot. As we took these photos from a tripod, they have to be on timer release... and it took 4 photos to get a proper shot. We got a photo with every type of vehicle in town! And trust me - they don't have many!

first shot - blocked by a van...

second shot - a car...

third shot - a bus!!!

Finally a proper shot. And if you notice carefully, we only missed the vehicles narrowly. And come to think of it, its not even that nice a photo...