Monday, February 11, 2008

Long Vacation - Happy Chinese New Year!!!

Huh? So fast finish? ZZZzzz...

And I'm not done enjoying it yet. Aaahh...

Anyway went to work today almost half-dead. Slept so little because couldn't fall asleep. Always the case of sleeping VERY late, waking up VERY late, causing a domino effect that its difficult to rewind. I remember the time I tried to oversleep and roll over the natural sleeping-waking up routine back in university. Sounds chim? Well I actually try to sleep later and later everyday, waking up later and later everyday. From sleeping at 6am, waking up at 2pm, to sleeping at 8am, waking up at 4am, etc, etc...until I shifted my sleeping routine back into a normal human being's timing. Think it turned my life upside-down then. Thanks to too much gaming back when I was staying in the halls. Wahahaha! I still remember the period when I must sleep at 6pm, where everyone in the block were going for dinner, were astonished to hear that I wanna skip dinner just to sleep. LOL

Oh well back to our topic. UPDATES! Been too busy (read lazy) for the past few days that I actually don't have enough sleep the day before I start work. ZZZzzz...

6th February 2008, Wednesday, Chu Xi

We all went back to work, didn't we? Yeah we all went back to work. Really! Honest!

And so we went to Sam Yee(3rd Auntie)'s house for the reunion dinner gathering on this eve of Chinese New Year. This was the first time I went to their house since they shifted there. Wow the interior really looks like some hotel room or something. Can tell that loads of effort has been put in to design, decorate and furnish the whole room. I forgot to take pictures of the bedrooms, but they're no less "designer" quality than the rest of the house. Longfei showed us his room, or was it rather Junfei's room, whereby they sang KTV using video clips from YouTube, and using microphones plugged into a separate compartment on the PC specially for KTVing. There was a huge plasma TV on the wall right above the LCD monitor. They sure know how to enjoy haha.
We sang a bit of songs before the rest arrived. Soon then, Dai Yee(Big Auntie) and Dai Yee Jiong(Big Uncle), cousin Wilson and his wife Chiu Mee arrived and we all gathered for the Lao Yu Sheng. Then it was all hell-break lose... Ahh well not exactly. Haha it's the usual feast of ten dishes or so of home-cooked delights. So everyone tucked in. Oh forgot to talk about the people present. There were of course all the aunties and uncles of the 3 families. Cousin Eric brought his cabin crew girlfriend back for the dinner. Cousin Junfei brought his girlfriend who's working at ChemOil for dinner too. (Where's mine!?) And of course there was Longfei, Cindy and me. [Above shows the picture of the aunties and uncles after finishing the dinner.]

[Below shows the picture of the youngsters slacking in front of the TV after the meal.] There was this Jack Neo movie staring Sharon Au and Adrian Pang etc, shown on TV. As usual, it's one of those silly movies directed by Jack Neo. But we still watched it anyway since our stomachs were all filled with dinner and could hardly do anything else. Then we proceeded with what else, gambling session. Oh and cousin Vivian with husband Melvin arrived after dinner, together with their toddlers Reina and Xavier. This time round Xavier didn't like me to carry him like last time. The last time he saw me he was chuckling with joy everytime I carried him in my arms haha.

Ok so we're not playing with cards or mahjong tiles. As cousin Eric has been in Hong Kong for some time, he brought two games back and enthusiastically introduced the games to everyone. It was none other than Yu Har Hai (Cantonese for fish, prawn, crab), as well as the famous Da Xiao. I wasn't very enthusiastic cos I think I'm always super unlucky when it comes to gambling. Therefore I only passed some money to Cindy for her to place the bets instead. Haha...eventually Cindy even won more than $10.
And so I merely played around with the two kids and watched TV until about 12+ or so. Then Mummy and Papa then felt like leaving. Wah tired sia... And here's a picture of me carrying BOTH Reina and Xavier. Wahahah! Just felt like doing so since they're the cutest kids ever.

And so that ends the celebration for this year, for Chu Xi, that is.

7th February 2008, Thursday, Chu Yi

We went to Dai Yee's house for lunch this time. Just a meal together with Dai Yee's family and ours. There's this "Zhe Ge Ah Ba Zhen Bao Zha" movie starring Tony Leung Ka Fai and Charlene Choi of the Twins shown on cable. Quite a silly but interesting movie. Nothing better than such a movie to pass the time on a lazy afternoon right after lunch. I also played Puzzle Quest on my PSP after the movie until cousin Wilson suggested going over to his house, which was just right across the corridor at the end of the block. He and his wife actually got a unit right in the same block as their parent. And their home was so well-furnished too. Cozy home with nice interior design. Cousin Wilson's wife, Chiu Mee made us banana boat ice-cream worth an estimated $5.90 for me and Cindy and Mummy. Shiokz! Hahaa... And so... The two eldest cousins have got married, the next in line are me and Eric. ZZZzzz.... Not anytime soon... And so that's the end of Chu Yi.

9th February 2008, Sunday, Chu Si

Jialatz had to wake up early in the morning at 9+. Sunday mornings are never a "wake up before 12 noon" routine for me. I drove to White Sands to pick up the gang of 6, Sharon, Siying, Ah-ma, Uncle, Peiyi and Peyyong. And ZZzzz they win already loh. Told them to get two of them to walk over to Uncle's house first, but they didn't. And they squeezed into my car. Luckily it's just a short distance to Uncle's house. Wonder how much fine I'll get... But we'll talk about fines later. ZZzz..

Uncle's Place

Huimin joined us at Uncle's house. I was wondering how my car fitted 7 passengers, including me as the driver. Wahahah! We reached Uncle's house at about noon and we sat around chatting and playing Harry Potter Uno. First time I saw this version of Uno. There's an extra card in which you can appoint anyone to receive the punishment of those +2, +4 cards if you were at the receiving end of the punishment. We finished one round of Uno, which lasted at least half an hour, LOL. Uncle's father, the real uncle, gave us a red packet each and we greeted him back with oranges and new year greetings. So the next stop we went was at my place.

My Place

Ah-ma had to rush for driving lessons first, and so Sharon decided that they took a cab to send Ah-ma to her driving instructor first and then back to Sharon's home to get her car. So the rest of us went to my home first. I immediately brought several DVDs out for them to select for watching. But instinctively I psychoed them into watching Ayumi's latest DVD containing her latest MTV which stars Shawn Yue (Yu Wen Le). That was probably the 4th time I'm watching that MTV. And before the MTV finished, Sharon and the rest arrived, with Yaokun arriving right after them. And due to some of the late-comers asking what happened at the beginning of the MTV cos they were blur of what was happening at the end of the MTV, therefore I replayed the same MTV again. Wahahah! 5th time! Then we watched Initial D Stage 1, first 2 episodes. It's been ages since we've all watched this anime series. Just love the music and driving sequences. Mummy prepared dessert for us, and also spaghetti. After slacking through the MTVs and anime, we left for the next destination - Sharon's place.

Sharon's Place

Sharon's parents prepared Chinese tea for us at my request. I wonder if it was troublesome or not. I suggested tea because the whole living room was nothing but Chinese antiques and Chinese teapot sets, teapots, teacups, tea leaves. Haha... Couldn't resist not asking for tea. The tea prepared was really aromatic and awesome, paired with some special nuts which weren't oily at all. Then there was this silly Hong Kong movie starring Sammi Cheng and Gu Tianle on TV. (Why are all Hong Kong movies shown on TV so silly?) And we watched a bit of it, while playing a game which Sharon introduced us - Drinking Goggles. At first it seemed kinda silly, even Uncle was quite reluctant to play this silly game, but soon everyone was so good at the game that everyone reacted faster and faster. Won't bother to explain the game here, but it sure is fun looking at the bizarre faces when someone makes a mistake.

Peiyi's Place

Next we went to Peiyi's place. Sharon's sister, Shirley, joined us from then on. Therefore there were altogether 10 of us MKGians on this round-island MKG Bai Nian trip. Then me and Sharon just parked at the carpark right in front of Peiyi's block where we always drop Peiyi when we send her home. Little did we realize that we would kena parking ticket!!!!! #%^*(@! When we went back to our cars after visiting Peiyi's home, I didn't even realize there was a parking ticket on my windscreen until I saw Sharon holding up a piece of paper and pointing at it when I turned my head at her direction. ZZZzzz... $30 donated to the Singapore Government. Holy cow. Better off donating to Singapore Pools man!


Anyway only Peiyi's Ah Gong was at home. We greeted him with well-wishes and oranges. Peiyi's mother actually left red packets for us at home. We then played a game which is similar to the one I played at Mind Cafe, about the one having to exchange cards until you get similar cards and you have to grab a bone before they all disappear. This game introduced by Shirley was similar, but the bone was replaced by a small plastic token. LOL I'm never gonna lose this game. All you have to do is try to match your cards as per normal, but always keep a lookout for any tokens missing. Then just GRAB! We played several rounds, until we decided to play Drinking Goggles again. This time poor Peiyi was defeated unsparingly by us, despite having homeground advantage. Wahaha! More of homegrown disadvantage I think. Cos the forfeit was to eat the brownie which Peiyi prepared for us. In the end she was the one who probably ate at least half of all the brownies present. LOL So we left for our final destination - Huimin's house, the furthest from our cluster, Buangkok area at the Sengkang region.

Huimin's Place

Although I've been to Sengkang several times, this is the first time I've actually driven there. And being quite unfamiliar with the winding roads, I merely blindly followed Sharon's car, who had directions from Huimin herself. This time we're not taking any chances. We were taken to an underground carpark just opposite Huimin's block. The whole carpark was virtually empty with only a few cars near the entrance. But Sharon and I still placed $2 worth of coupons to last us two hours. So we went up and had dinner comprising of vermicelli, curry chicken, prawns, veggies, chicken wings, etc... Hungry! And what's MKG without mahjong? 4 of them played mahjong while the rest of us played Bridge. I actually played Bridge before, but forgot the rules. So Sharon explained the rules of the game to us. After playing a few rounds, I started to get the hang of the game and finally won a few rounds. Before that was anyhow bidding and putting of cards only LOL.

Huimin said one of her brother's friends look a bit like Felicia Chin. Wow amazing. Indeed, the secondary school girl roughly resembled the hottest rising local artiste. Is Huimin's brother going after her? Hahaha!

Before long, two hours had passed. Sharon and I therefore went down to renew our carparking. ZZZzzz... I suggested looking for nearby free parking lots. There surely is one somewhere, usually at multi-story carparks. So we went to search around for one, and luckily we did find one which was about 200m away from Huimin's block. So we drove our cars from the $$$-eating carpark to the MSCP. We had to keep winding our way up the MSCP until Deck 3B. Phew! Save money this time. We can safely stay as late as we wanted without worrying about putting more parking coupons. When we went back, we had Albert set up the Nintendo Wii that he brought for us to play.

And I must say that Nintendo Wii is weeeeeeeee! Fun!! Every single game required you to point your controller onto the TV screen. And shooting games were my favourite back when I was dominating shooting games in the arcades. Wahaha! First up, we played the sports games DVD, which included tennis, bowling, golf etc. It was so realistic that I almost really felt like I was bowling at the bowling alley. I still swung my arm as realistic as possible, and managed to get two strikes. LOL! And what's more, my balls can hook! LOL! I can never do that in reality. The tennis game was very interesting too. Siying was so ecstatic that she kept jumping up and down after winning every ball LOL. We played almost every game there is on that DVD. Then we proceeded with the other DVD comprising of several mini-games. There was a shooting game, a "find 2 matching faces" game, billiards, table-tennis, an arcade-style table hockey game, a fishing game, one which u have to select several human figures to fit onto bubbles which drop from the top game, etc etc etc.... ALL SO FUN! Maybe gonna get a Wii soon eh? Wahahha! Almost wanted to take videos of us playing on the Wii, but I was very tired already at the end of the day. LOL

We ended off the day of touring and bai nian at Huimin's house, with everyone enjoying themselves, except maybe Sharon and I a bit less cos of the stupid parking fines. But nevertheless it was the most exciting CNY with the dudes and dudettes of MKG. Looking forward to our next CNY.

I drove Peiyi and Peyyong back to their homes as usual. But before that received a call from Mummy to pick Cindy up at Simpang Bedok. She went to a friend's place for house-warming-cum-CNY-celebrations gathering. It was already 12 midnight by the time we reached home. And I'm dead beat. Still gotta work today some more. What's more even chatted with Lilin on MSN late into the night some more. Still haven't finish leh.

And guess what. I've already spent about two hours on this very entry. Yikes! Time to rest!