#SG50

it's the year of our golden jubilee, Singapore turns 50! <3

my favourite sunny island in the world, we've come a long way. from a fishing village, our leaders have developed our city state from being a third-world country to a first-world and i am so thankful for it. although LKY never got to celebrate with us at our 2015 NDP, he will always be dearly missed. without him and his contribution, i wouldnt be where i am today. i am grateful to have received a world class education, learnt to be effective bi-lingual, grown professionally and nurtured in a clean and green environment with efficient public transport and access to good infrastructure.

i went back to Singapore for three weeks in july and it's a pity i didnt stay long enough to watch the NDP live in action. and of course, i jumped at the chance to celebrate our #SG50 national day with the rest of the Singaporeans in the UAE. this year, it was held at the grand hyatt, dubai and tickets were a sell-out!

it was a mix of nostalgic and patriotic feelings as we recited the pledge and sang along to our national anthem and some of our childhood national day songs. followed by a open buffet of singaporean food such as chicken rice, rojak, cereal prawn, cheng tng, kueh lapis and live cooking stations of laksa, satay and dim sum *nom nom* they arent the best but i guess the closest they can get to some of our local favourites. and did i mention that tiger beer was on free flow???

all decked out in my red & white

*on a side note, after the event, my boy brought me to barastic beach bar for a drink because i have been complaining he didnt bring me to anywhere nice recently :p

roadtrip to dibba :)

one of the reasons why i moved to the UAE is that i get the opportunity to travel around the middle east or rather anywhere 50km in radius from where i am. i would say i am well-travelled in and around the far east and pacific region. And especially when Singapore makes a good base for travels, i was fortunate to have frequented cities in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Australia as i grew up along the way. and now, being in the middle (east), i have a new base from where i get to explore :D

this will be my first roadtrip to the Dibba Coast in the emirate of Fujairah. Musandam Oman as well as Sharjah also share a part of the Dibba coastal region which is the northern tip of the Eastern Arabian peninsula.

we drove 2 hours from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, then further north another 2 hours to Fujairah. it was an enjoyable as we saw camels upclose along the road (it could have been dangerous but was fun anyway)

my favourite driver in the world

check out the road behind me

then we checked in the Le Meridien Al Aqah Resort as i read excellent reviews online and it was a logical choice for a SPG platinum member. upon check in, we were immediately greeted with welcome champagne and fruits and got a complimentary upgrade to a club room which offers access to the club lounge. we spent the first day chilling by the beach and pool side, enjoying the sea breeze, ordered room service for dinner and had a few drinks at the hotel bar.

sandy beaches with hajar mountains

checked in at Le Meridien Dibba

Gulf of Oman right at our balcony

beautiful pool and beach bar

club lounge for guests

woke up to a decent breakfast spread with good variety and i always need my coffee! a visit to the fujairah fort concluded our trip and i am looking forward to the next one already!

first GROM outlet opens in the Middle East

nothing screams WELCOME to the sweltering heat in dubai louder than Grom Gelato which opens its first outlet in the Middle East earlier march this year!

and so, i recall how i spent two weeks of my 2013 summer travelling the north of italy. other than gourmet italian food and fresh produce, i had my sweet tooth cravings satisfied daily by the homemade italian gelato goodness! my favourites have always been bacio (hazelnut and chocolate to put it simply), biscotti and any dark chocolate variant. just how relieved (from the heat) i was when Grom opens its doors.

grom in milan

my dark choc gelato for just €1

GROM again in Florence store

double scoop along river bank of Florence 

random gelato somewhere in italy

the reason why Grom tastes soooo good is that they use only the high quality ingredients - be it fresh milk, cage-free eggs, freshest fruits from Italy and their very own organic farm. furthermore, they boast no addition of artificial preservatives, colourings or emulsifiers. also, their sorbet contains at least 50% fruits. good to know that my gelato and sorbet arent bad for health ;)

and finally, here goes my grom gelato from boxpark, dubai

just an update - i was just there last week, and they are still not serving cones, just gelato in cups. price was on the higher side, just like everything else in dubai ;)

2 flavours - 19 AED or USD5.20

3 flavours - 28 AED or USD7.70

dont forget to check out their monthly new flavours here 

GROM

Boxpark, besides Adidas store

Al Wasl Road

Dubai, UAE

oh hello there, after a good ol' 8 months...

hello there!

i know it has been a while but as i'm sitting on my bed with my laptop on my lap and mtv channel playing in the background, i'm feeling kinda bored :/ been sitting on my ass for the past 14 hours to be exact, i haven't been getting active (physically as well as mentally) ... i left my yoga mat back home in Singapore (ok lame excuse), i am on morning shifts at work this week, i wash my hair this morning and i cant go running then wash my hair again in the evening (say NO to double shampoo-ing in a day). all these above-mentioned excuses have rendered me a new chance at blogging

let me just do a quick recap in a hundred words and less. i decided to relocate away from Singapore last october. then is the point in my life where i still stay with parents and have absolutely 0 household chores to do, no lack of a social life - family and friends and am very well-settled in my job or life you can say.

i wasnt in a bad place, i was just getting too comfortable. and then that is what they say - if  you always stay in your comfort zone, you will never grow. i was never looking to move away from my firm which have always sponsored the premier league until recently, and then, this opportunity came along. fast forward 8 months, i came to realize that i actually quite like it here and have no plans just yet to move back (contrary to what many people might think). even though it's an easy and simple kind of life over here in abu dhabi, i can make do with a few travels a year to exciting cosmopolitan / cities with a rich heritage. besides, dubai is just a 90 minutes drive away. speaking of which, i'll be heading over to grand hyatt dubai for SG50 national day dinner this weekend! cant wait to don my red & white and have delicious (spicy hopefully) local food!

anyway, i will do up a few more posts from the past few months so as to fill the space during my hiatus in cyberspace.

and i really do hope above is a hundred words and less. well, at least i've tried ;)

i bow to the divine in you

Namaste
~ traditional Indian greeting of respect and thank you, with spiritual and symbol meaning

Am lucky to be able to take a day off work today, spent it worthwhile like a yogi with instructor Adam, who just won the champion title at Singapore Yoga Asana Championship held at harbourfront just yesterday. Congrats and wishing him all the best at the International Championship which will be held in LA this summer! As if enduring the forty degrees temperature for 90 minutes isnt enough, it was also tough (and starting to get a tad bit boring doing the same routine over and over again) completing the standard 26 poses. Today's session made me think a lot this time, thinking and re-thinking about the things that are not within my (our) control. BUT what we can do is, taking full 100% control of ourselves. We always have a choice over our actions as well as our reactions. You know, it's always easier to master one pose when you fixate your eyes on a single spot in front of you. Not specifically saying that i've lost my life direction once again, it's more like my PMS period (as we all know it) right now.

Thought the below image would be funny, exactly how i felt in the first 5 minutes of class. Nevertheless, enjoy!


the awesomeness 26 poses of bikram yoga
www.theironyou.com


P.S.On a side note, yea they did try to apologise, wanting to do it personally instead of over a lifeless text but im just choosing not to meet up now. It's THE weekday. beauty sleep ^^

Namaste~

(X-M), X>M=surplus

it amuses me some of the wonderous things that my next-favourite country after singapore (i would like to think that it is true) is exporting or rather, can export.

first up, we have gmarket that is rapidly expanding into singapore. but items have become slightly dodgy ever since it was acquired by ebay in 2009 at a value of $1.2 billion.

then, there came a kpop craze whereby even till now, korea is still exporting its lucrative entertainment business and you see teenagers in singapore parting with a few hundred bucks to see bigbang and SNSD in concert. and i dont refer to just singaporeans who boast the highest GDP in the region but a recent bigbang concert in taipei raked in a record amount of KRW5 billion. mind you, that's about USD$5 million in topline. and no prize for guessing the all-time #1 video on youtube. PSY's gangnam style is/has been internationalized. my favourite cover of this song is also performed by a pair of korean twins. OK, you have to see this and i mean it.

already in the pipeline or out of the pipeline, i am seeing increasing number of korean cosmetics shops and beauty counters popping up around the island. to name you a few - faceshop, etude house, sulwahsoo and laneige.

this afternoon while i was on hsbc women's champions, i noticed that choi na yeon, is leading in round3 with a score of 14 under par, ahead of stacy lewis and paula creamer (who was involved in a recent car accident in thailand) at golf (a game primarily american-dominant). at a mere of 25 years old, choi already has a few titles under her belt after turning pro in 2004 including winning the US Women's Open just last july. a few players hot on her heels also including a few other koreans. i really wonder who will bring home that S$1.7 million tomorrow at sentosa's serapong golf course coz i have already thought out what im gonna buy when i win toto next friday.

as a country with borders confusion (notice: north and south korea) and with a greeting (an nyeong ha sim ni kka = meaning "安宁吗?" traditionally used to greet neighbours and checking if they are still alive with invasion from China on their west and Japan on their east), the Koreans have sure progressed a long way.

disclaimer: by no means is this a post on nationalism, instead i applaud the country's determination and efforts to succeed. you go girl, new korean female president Park Geun Hye *^^*

HELLOOOOO

hello!! after a long hiatus of a few months or so, im back again!

in a blink of an eye, ny and cny have already past by and nope, i have no other updates other than the fact that i have disowned all my degenerate buddies. now left without a string of weekend-past-midnight activities to engage in, i have been good and am staying at home on nights where i should really be out there. this is only the exordium of a brand new me.


GONE! NO MORE!


oh well, lemme have some me-time again before i start some drinking sessions (tonight!!!) and go on my exercise-crazy phase. speaking of which, i can combined those two activities, cant i? had dinner w leong on tuesday at mbfc before heading to a few mini tennis games at the sail then for his drinks + ladies night (maybe). and later today, i'll be heading to another few rounds of real tennis games at jalan duad before house bbq dinner. man, how i miss my hall mates...

mundane mundane < repeat>

woke up, went to work, came home, ate dinner, bed time. <repeat> <order good till cancelled>

am suffering from post-holiday withdrawal symptoms, so please pardon me. with a half-unpacked luggage still sitting at one corner of my room, i decided to switch on my selective-sight sense and ignore it while i am typing away at this entry. work today was a blur because i kinda forgot the SOP (standard operating procedure) while also having to clear some dormant emails rotting in my office inbox at the same time.

highlight of the day: i came home to a relatively healthy and yet yummy dinner (refer to previous post as to why i will love to eat rice this week before i revert back to sandwiches the next).
additional bonus: favourite soup!

rice, lotus root peanuts ribs soup, rice, lotus root peanuts ribs soup, rice, lotus root peanuts ribs soup,  ignore the other dishes

back for grains

goodbye steaks!

hellooooo rice!

ten wonder herbs roasted duck, spicy prawns, mongolian ribs, tofu with minced meat and greens

perhaps i am a very asian girl at heart, even though 75% of the time i'll pick sandwiches over chinese hawker food during office lunch hour. ask my neighbouring colleagues and you can prolly guess how many subway 6-inches i can eat in a week. then again, my trip this time round has taught me things i have never thought about before. during my 216 hours (if your math is bad, it's 9 days) overseas, i never had a single grain of rice (and that seafood risotto at jamie's italian doesnt count). it was all basically a lot of red meat such as ribs (think hurricane's) and steaks (again, rump at hurricane's), kangeroo meat, rabbit meat (yes i had that, surprisingly good), sandwiches, burgers, pancakes (on the rocks!!) and more angmoh desserts. so the first thing i did after i touched down was to hit dian xiao er aka 店小二 at terminal 3 for a quick dinner before heading home. dad and bro came to fetch and of course, chinese food fits the family's sunday dinner best.

rice never tasted that good before.

travel is not for the faint-hearted ~

holidays are often about expanding your horizons, gaining new experiences and trying out new things during the course of the vacation. how about pre-holiday? surely, it shouldnt entirely be just about printing itineraries and maps, purchasing travel accidents, wikipedia-ing touristy hotspots and packing luggages right? caught up a bit on feeding the soul with this book before i embark.

favourite page of the entire book, makes so much sense.

within a limited time frame (aka # of days you have there), you gotta decide what do you wanna see which leads to where do you wanna go and how much you wanna see and do.

take for instance, for every tourist attraction you visit and every restaurant you patronize, you could be missing out on a certain local attraction and a roadside food stall. the point here is not about doing things the local way instead of the over-rated tourist manner, but rather - it highlights the concept of opportunity cost. oh well, if i hadnt been studying finance, i guess economics minus the econometrics will be my next best choice. with that said, it doesnt meant travelling has to be stressful. some people chose to manifest the ethical theory of utilitarianism which prioritizes the maximisation of overall happiness regardless of who gets what amount. it's average happiness (idontknowwhatstheoppositeof utilitarianism) versus total happiness (utilitarianism). some holiday-makers prefer to maximise the value out of their vacation by a typical filled-to-the-brim schedule:- must wake up early, have to visit xx1, xx2, xx3, gotta eat yy1 and yy2, die-die must do zz1 and zz2, whereas some travellers can have an equally fulfilling vacation by just waking up (own time own target), chilling by a cafe which they happen to chance upon, basically no checklist to accomplish by the end of the day. there is no good or bad method of taking a holiday, it's merely just about what meaning you wish to get out of your vacation. be it a break away from work/family, have some me-time or gaining new experiences, it's YOUR holiday, no one can dictate how it should go (BIG BIG mistake to let your travel-partner decide how it should go, so decide and pick a right travel-matey). and ultimately, as per above-mentioned, traveling is all about decision making:- decide on a destination, your travel buddy, the budget, what to bring, where to go, how to go, how you want your holiday to be, ... (you get what i mean). who ever said i was faint-hearted?

quite a long and boring post trying to make some sense of itself. hope it's perfect for your bedtime lullaby anyway.