celebrating july.

july is a month of celebrations for me, it is my birth month. 

celebration started with brunch with the babes at the canopy garden dining & bar, bishan park. i love the environment, the ambience and the cozy-ness of the place. the restaurant caters for both indoor and alfresco dining. though the food is a lil pricey, the quality of food pretty much justifies for the ka-ching ka-ching. still, it is way to far from jurong; not worth the effort to drop by frequently. hee.

Canopy Garden Dining & Bar

1382 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1, Bishan Park II

the first birthday cake, loves from the boyfriend.

lava cake from the tcc, keppel bay.

there's a new extended area turned park in keppel bay, a really nice and windy place to take a walk in the evenings. :)

breakfast in the revamped delifrance in jurong point. loves the new settings of the place, but their breakfast menu needs to improve pretty much before we can bring ourselves back again for breakkie. i say, as for now, let's just go for their regular sandwiches and set meals!

the highlight of my birthday treat gotta be the dinner in morton's.

totally different experience, superbly great service, top notch food and of course, burnt a mini hole in the boyfriend's pocket. :)

i like how they customise the menu for their patrons, very personalized!

i have to mention their super tasty onion bread which they serve as a starter, i suppose just in case the food takes a long time to cook. the onion bread is huge, smells good, tasty and super difficult to resist. however, we cant eat too much of it as the main course is even better!

sparkling water for you? that's 14 bucks on the bill. ha, but i felt the sparkling water is a good idea to wash down the food.  

and the real birthday cake with a mini candle.

desserts is their signature hot chocolate cake serves with a scoop of vanilla icecream from haagen dazs. 

Morton's the Steakhouse

Level 4, Mandarin Oriental Hotel

oh, did i mention that i'm obssessed with fro-yos lately? i love fro-yo!

frolick!

Yoguru!

i shall dedicate a post for fro-yos when i have the time, hee.

dinner at brotzeit with the boyfriend and the guys from office.

not my first time there but yes, first time in 313's brotzeit. i like that place too!

not a fan of pork but still, their pork knckles is the best.

in fact, much better than that of tawandang!

Brotzeit

Level 1, Somerset 313 (outdoor dining area)

finally, we explored liang court on the last friday of july. the japanese-focused mall is so near our office that walking to and fro was a breeze.

our latest recommendation got to be this italian restuarant lookalike on level 2. for the price we paid, the food served was definitely value for money. unfortunately, they ran out of their signature wings and drumlets on that day. this is certainly a good excuse to go back a second time! 

Saizeriya Ristorante E Caffe, #02-22

desserts was lychee sorbet on waffles at haato and it was damn yummilicious. oh, and you have to top up the 50cents worth of maple syrup, it's perfect for their hot and thick waffle!  

Haato, #B1-50 (inside meidi-ya supermart)

well, it is now august and guess what, the countdown to the beginning of a new year has already started. in fact, we are less than 5 months to 01.01.2012, SCREAMS!!!

i hope i can blog more often! :)

happy birthday to me!

was pleasantly surprised by the many birthday wishes and blessings on fb and whatsapp. thanks everybody thanks, i feel the loves from all of you!

of cos, to the gfs and kkj for the pressies and to the bf for bringing me to morton's for a yummilicious dinner!

shrugs, cant seem to upload any pics tonight. 

will upload all the photos of places and good food that we've explored in july soon!

the preparations.

it's already the first day of july. time doesnt just fly, i think it rockets.

the first and most important thing in a chinese wedding is to find a reliable master to calculate the dates, that is if the couple believes in it. well, we rather we do and so, we did.

master long was recommended by yunn and both the boyfriend and myself were very comfortable with him during the appointment. he's almost like a wise grandfather giving opinions, advices and simple instructions for us to follow. most importantly, we heard what we wanted - wedding is a simple affair and all the wedding customs can be simplified.

i love the fact that we were given 3 years worth of auspicious dates suitable for the both of us. it might sound like a lot of dates but in reality, we were left with only a few after we decided that the wedding should be held over the weekends.

i also love the fact that all the instructions for 过大礼 and 安床 were also recorded in the little booklet that was given to us for references.

our first choice was the grand hyatt along scotts road.

even though we were on the waiting list for the 2 shortlisted dates, i was pretty sure that we would be able to get the dates. however, we were played out; not by the fact that the couple in front of us had confirmed their reservations but the management of hyatt decided their ballrooms need a revamp in 2012, hence, no new bookings for next year.

 thanks to the babes and gfs, i was able to shortlist a few more options almost immediately after the call from hyatt. a change in venue will also mean a new round of search for the availability of dates and unluckily enough, both dates were taken up when i called up the other hotels.

anyway, we've decided to push forward the wedding and settle for a lunch banquet instead. the date has been tentatively booked but we are still in the middle of negotiations with the hotel. however, the fact that the date we want is still available is a big load off the mind, really.

the next item on the agenda is all the photography stuffs, luckily the gowns have been settled! 

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encouraging.

that's almost my june.

no more stagnant sales figures, no more appointment-less days. of cos, and with much loves from the boyfriend; he made this bookmark!

so, for all you peeps out there struggling to make things work - pain is only temporary, eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. however, if you quit, it lasts FOREVER. :)

have a lovely week ahead!

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the proposal.

this is my proposal, over a round of pictionary on the ipad.

you must be thinking that im damn good to guess my bf's drawings? haha the fact is, i only managed the whale. it started with him casually drawing the above on his fashion accessory and asking me to guess his drawings. the whale is simple and after many promptings and clues, i finally got the merry-go-round and noodles. so while i was wondering about the real identity of the brush-lookalike thing, my bf dropped the biggest hint: these 4 pictures form a question.

the question was then obvious,

will (whale) you (yea, it turns out to be an unagi = eel) marry (merry) me (mee = noodles)?

thinking it might be one of his lousy impromptu stunts, i obviously said no.

the next surprise came when the pepper-plus paper bag was literally thrown to me BECAUSE i was holding that very same paper bag a week ago. it turned out i was carrying my own proposal ring the day my bf went to collect it. the reason why i wasnt even suspicious, that was because he told me he got to meet his client to collect her policies. thus, when he reappeared with a paper bag, i didnt give much thought to it.

fanciful gimmicks, romantic poems, gigantic bouquet of lilies and kneeling on one knee, i have none of that.

still, i was probably grinning like an idiot when i saw the ring. the pepper-plus bag incident caught me off guard totally!

my diamond got upgraded on the 21st April 2011!

just as my bf thought the proposal is the end, it's just the beginning of his nightmare, haha.

since our house should be ready for collection in q1 2012, we have decided to prepare for the wedding. im surprised by my efficiency though. thanks to the uobs and the gang's recommendations and feedbacks, i managed to shortlist some hotels and got their wedding packages, all in less than 2 days.

we will be meeting the coordinator on coming monday and if negotiations are ok, we will most probably go with that. having said that, we're perhaps one of the really lazy couples around.

the next item on the list will be the pre-wedding photography. :)